Episode 374 Transcript
Hello and welcome to episode 374 of Your Parenting Long Game.
If your house sometimes feels like it’s one big chain reaction, you’re probably not imagining things.
It’s often the case that one person gets overwhelmed, has some sort of Yuck behavior, another person reacts, and before you know it, the whole house feels tense and loud and out of control.
A lot of parents tell me it feels like everyone is triggering everyone else.
And if that’s happening in your home, it usually just means that there are multiple nervous systems interacting with each other
So today I want to talk about what happens when people in the house have a nervous system that is affected by someone else and why these chain reactions happen so easily.
And more importantly, we’re going to talk about what actually helps, because when we don’t understand what’s going on underneath these moments, it’s incredibly easy for confidence to be affected both for kids and for parents.
So let me give you an example. Picture a weekday morning that’s already a little rushed. One child can’t find their shoes. Another child is upset because their sibling touched something that they were building. A parent is trying to pack lunches while also watching the clock because everyone needs to leave soon.
The parent says, “Please just put your shoes on!”
The child ignores them. The parent says it again, this time with more urgency, and the child suddenly shouts, “Stop telling me what to do!”
Now the parent’s frustration rises. Their voice gets sharper. A sibling jumps in and says something sarcastic. The first child gets even angrier. The parent raises their voice even more, and suddenly the whole house feels tense and chaotic.
Five minutes earlier, it was just a busy morning. Now everyone is upset.
And later the parent might look back and think, “How did that escalate so quickly?!”
What’s often happening in these moments is that everyone’s Yuck behaviors are triggering each other. One person’s stress response activates someone else’s stress response.
The child senses the parent’s stress, they feel pressure and they react. The parent’s nervous system reacts to that reaction, and the sibling reacts to both of them, and that’s how a cycle builds.
And here’s something really important to understand: When a nervous system is already overloaded, the brain has much less tolerance for discomfort or for pushback or for anybody else’s Yuck.
When one person is in Yuck, they have a hard time with another person who’s in Yuck. They see that as a threat.
So obviously because we have kids who sense things strongly, when we are upset, when we are rushed, when we are in any type of Yuck, that’s going to put them into Yuck. And you’re going to see their Yuck behaviors. Maybe that’s yelling or blaming or being rude to other people. These are their Yuck behaviors, the symptom that they are in fight or flight.
And it could be something going on for them, but it could also just be that they are triggered by our Yuck.
But here’s the really important part: We experience the same thing when your child is in Yuck.
When they’re being disrespectful or shutting down or being slower than you want them to be, your body is also going to experience a threat response.
Your heart rate’s going to increase, your muscles will tense. You will feel anger or panic surge through your body. And when your nervous system reacts, it shows up in your version of a Yuck behavior.
You may raise your voice or snap or threaten consequences or shut down, and that reaction becomes another threat input into your child’s nervous system.
So now your child’s Yuck triggers your Yuck, your Yuck triggers more Yuck from your child.
In families where several people have sensitive or highly reactive nervous systems, these responses can bounce off of each other like dominoes.
One reaction triggers another reaction, which triggers another, and the entire house starts to feel like it’s operating in constant Yuck.
Now, when that happens regularly, it impacts something else — our confidence.
And when I say that, I mean our confidence as parents, but also our kids’ confidence.
So first, let’s talk about our kids’ confidence.
When children repeatedly have big reactions that they don’t know how to control, they often start forming beliefs about themselves.
They might think, “I’m always the problem,” or “I ruin things,” or “I can’t handle stuff like other people can.” Sometimes they don’t say those words out loud or even necessarily realize they’re thinking that, but the beliefs form internally.
But at the exact same time, something similar is happening for us. After enough of these moments, we as parents start thinking, “Why can’t I handle this better? Other families don’t seem to deal with this. Maybe I’m just not a good parent.”
And so our confidence begins to erode too.
So now we have a child who feels incapable and a parent who feels helpless, and that cycle keeps repeating, especially when you have multiple sensitive nervous systems.
So let me give you another moment that might sound familiar. This is a family that I worked with and a parent told me about what happened one evening after school.
This mom was making dinner and her daughter kept interrupting her… First asking questions, then complaining, then grabbing things off the counter.
The mom kept saying things to her like, “Please stop,” “Give me a minute,” or, “I’m trying to cook!” Her daughter’s behavior kept escalating.
Eventually the daughter just started screaming and the mom snapped and she yelled too.
Later she said to me, “I knew my daughter wanted attention, but I couldn’t give it to her in that moment.” And because she couldn’t give her daughter what she needed, her daughter became more frustrated.
Her daughter’s nervous system had been holding a lot all day, school demands, social stress transitions, and when she came home, her brain was looking something that would help it regulate — connection, engagement, or attention.
But because the routine did not have space for her need, this daughter tried to meet it in the only way she knew how through her behavior.
And again, when the child escalated the mom’s Yuck escalated too because she had an inkling about what her daughter needed, and she knew she couldn’t give it to her.
She felt like she was making a decision between dinner and giving her child attention.
And so she was in a lot of Yuck because she was overwhelmed, she was confused, and she felt like she wasn’t doing a good enough job.
It was Yuck triggering Yuck triggering Yuck.
Most of us, understandably so, in this situation, we’re going to focus on the daughter’s behavior.
But if you want to break out of this cycle, we can’t just focus on the behavior.
We have to ask the question: “What is happening that is overwhelming everyone’s nervous system before the behavior even starts?”
Because we can reduce the inputs that are coming in so that our nervous systems aren’t as triggered to begin with.
So let me tell you what that might look like. Imagine that same early evening routine, but instead of going straight into dinner chaos, the routine changes slightly when the kids walk in the door after their afterschool activities.
The first 10 minutes are predictable. Maybe both kids build a short obstacle course in the living room so they can get their energy out or whatever it is that works for that family, but it is predictable and it is meeting the needs so that nervous systems aren’t on high alert to begin with.
Once the need is met, a parent can say, “Okay, now I’m going to go start dinner,” and the child’s nervous system is much more capable of tolerating a parent, being able to go make dinner.
It’s the same parent, the same child, the same kitchen. But what’s affecting the nervous system is different. There is less Yuck created.
So you’re going to see fewer Yuck behaviors and less Yuck triggering Yuck.
So we’re not solving this behavior in the moment, reasoning, explaining and reminding why a parent has to make dinner. Because when the underlying issue is nervous system overload for both parents and children, those strategies rarely work very well.
So again, the question when you have multiple sensitive nervous systems in your home is not, “How do I get everyone to stop triggering everybody?”
Eventually you can do that when everybody has better coping skills.
But in the meantime, you want to ask “What is causing our nervous system overload in the first place?”
Often it’s things like unpredictability or too many transitions, or too much stimulation, or not enough downtime.
When we start looking at these inputs, we can understand why the reactions are happening in the first place. And once we understand that we can start doing two important things.
First, we can address any of these issues — the lack of predictability, the too many transitions or too much stimulation, the too many transitions, or not enough downtime.
And eventually we can also teach everyone skills to tolerate discomfort when it shows up.
This is how we’re addressing our capability and our children’s capability.
We’re making it less likely that these situations will happen, and then we’re learning the tools to address them when they do.
This is how we build confidence.
And when that capacity grows and confidence grows, everything gets easier.
Kids feel more capable. You’ll feel less like you have to walk on eggshells.
Now if you want just a small step to move forward, what I’d suggest you do is think about whether your child has what’s called a narrow tolerance for discomfort.
Because if that’s the case, the strategies you choose to support your child are going to look different than traditional discipline advice.
And I created a free assessment that’s going to help you identify whether your child does have a narrow zone of tolerance.
It’s going to help you see whether your child’s nervous system is getting overwhelmed more quickly than other kids’, and if that is the case, then changing these routines and teaching the strategies that I mentioned will have such an incredibly positive impact.
Because once you understand a little bit more about your child’s zone of tolerance, it becomes much easier to see which skills need to be built and how to reduce the daily stress load that keeps triggering their reactions to begin with.
You can find the zone of tolerance assessment in the link to the show notes at Rachel-bailey.com/374.
And just remember this, when a household feels like a chain reaction of emotions, it’s because the nervous systems in the house are working very hard to manage more discomfort than they currently have the ability to handle.
And the good news is small changes can be made and skills can be taught.
So go check out that short free assessment to help you understand your child’s zone of tolerance and you’ll be taking your next step as a leader parent in your parenting long game.
Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you again soon.
