Sometimes kids have tantrums. And with children who have experienced trauma, loss, a lot of ongoing stress, or abuse, aggressive tantrums can also happen. Parenting kids with these behaviors can be confusing, frustrating and can challenge parents to their core. So what do do? Having specific, powerful tools that truly help us reach our goals of helping our children learn another way is what today’s video is all about. It gives Mamas and Papas a framework to maintain a parenting presence that is strong, gentle and gives their children a healthy template to learn from when stress gets overwhelming.
The problem is, when the most challenging behavior comes up in our kids, that is when our own “background noise” can get the loudest and make us more agitated, confused, and reactive–making it more likely we will make parenting decisions we
don’t feel good about and that don’t help our child learn a better way. Today’s video will help you learn to recognize your “background noise”…noise and tension that is a nervous system memory that has way more to do with how our parents and caregivers reacted to us when we had big or difficult feelings, than with what is happening in the present moment with our kids. Yet when we can recognize our “backgound noise” for what it is, we have the power to discern what is the truth about what is truly important and needed in this present moment. We are more able to stay focused on our example and on knowing that how we relate to our kids is the most powerful influence on them for learning another way that does not involve aggression, angry hands or voices, or reactivity. Instead our children can learn, through what is talked about in today’s video, “felt sense”.
Felt sense is learning at the level of the nervous system and creates the most powerful memory or template our children will have for how they respond to difficult feelings or tension. It has little to do with the words we are using to try to teach them. Rather it has more to do with how we make them feel–and not just how we make them feel emotionally. It has to do with what they are picking up from us from all of their senses–thus “felt sense”. Even more important, because they are in a highly emotional state, this felt sense memory for them will be a potent memory that will either help them know, in their bodies, what it feels like inside of themselves to respond lovingly, calmly and steadily when big feelings happen, or they will have learned instead, a felt sense in their bodies of even more agitation and upset when they have difficult emotions.
I’d love to hear your comments below about what you have found helps your child with really big feelings or even with aggressive tantrums.
To get the resources I speak about at the end of the video, go to https://youtu.be/KfNcAGAOaFY and click on SHOW MORE underneath the video.
