Respond Instead of React: 3 Essential Keys

You don’t want to be so reactive anymore, but you still want to respond to your child's behavior and to your child’s needs - 

You can go from that “fight-or-flight”, “always on edge” feeling - 

to a place where you can RESPOND to whatever your child throws your way.

These 3 essential keys will take you from reactive to responsive:

Key #1: The Pause

Key #2: Nonjudgmental Observation

Key #3: Nervous System Regulation

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” -Viktor E. Frankel

A stimulus could be anything that HAPPENS:

Your child throws a toy at another child

Someone starts crying because you cut the sandwich the wrong way

Your child falls down and you're not sure if they're hurt

- it could be literally anything - negative OR positive

When you're in fight-or-flight, the space between ‘stimulus’ and ‘reaction’ is very very small or maybe seemingly nonexistent.

So you snap at your child - 

you speak with irritation in your voice- 

maybe you yell - 

maybe you say that thing your parent said to you when you were little that you SWORE you'd never say to your kid. 

No judgment - we've ALL done things we don’t feel good about later. 

And I want to point out that the world is very stressful right now. The context we are living in - that we are parenting in - is quite heightened.

This baseline stress also leads to that space between ‘stimulus’ and ‘reaction’ being very, very small.

When you take a pause and expand that space, even by 1%, you engage the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which is where all your rational thinking comes from.

When you OBSERVE and DESCRIBE your own experience, you engage the prefrontal cortex, which begins to regulate your nervous system. 

This is one way we can expand that space between stimulus and response.

The concept of nonjudgmental observation of self and of your child comes from mindful parenting theory.

This is a skill you can cultivate that engages the prefrontal cortex and takes you out of fight-or-flight responsiveness.

Have you ever done that grounding exercise where you notice and name 3 purple things you can see and 3 red things...?

Anything like that is designed to anchor you to the present moment, which reminds your brain and your nervous system that you are safe.

This applies to parenting because sometimes when our kid is dysregulated - especially if they're yelling "I hate you mommy" or throwing something or hitting - we subconsciously view our child as a threat.

That's WHY we go into a state of fight-or-flight

In the parenting education world, we’ve shifted the conversation from talking about emotion regulation to nervous system regulation.

What's the difference?

Emotion regulation involves awareness of your emotional experiences, combined with the ability to DO SOMETHING with that emotion, to process it, to experience it fully and move through it

Emotion regulation is often misunderstood or the term misused to mean: emotional suppression (which IS a form of emotion regulation, but not necessarily a healthy one). 

Emotion regulation is also often misunderstood as simply "being calm" or "calming down" which is also inaccurate.

And there are times when having a big emotional response to something is TOTALLY APPROPRIATE.

So I like the shift to nervous system regulation because it brings in the additional physiological level of the body - the breath, the heartbeat, the actual activity of your parasympathetic nervous system (which is the rest and digest system as opposed to the fight-or-flight system).

Fun fact: the breath is the only part of the stress response system of the body that you have any CONSCIOUS control over.

Nervous system regulation is about moving energy through the body.

Some ways you can do that are…

• Jump up and down/Shake it off

• Feel the feeling all the way through

• Bilateral stimulation

• EFT Tapping

• Humming or singing

• Long hugs

If you’re looking for more support to show up as a RESPONSIVE, regulated parent, you’re invited to check out my Regulated Parent Toolkit which gives you practical tools that are quick and easy to implement in the moment.