The best way to help your child feel calm in a crisis is to learn how to calm yourself. It’s incredibly important to be aware that how we feel and how we say things is much more important than what we say.
The Importance of Parental Resilience
The first step when we attune to a child who is struggling is not telling, teaching, or instructing. It is being present with the child.
Our emotional tone, stress levels, and approach can either help or undermine our ability to offer the emotional support to our children when they most need it. The best thing we can do for our child is to pay attention to our own emotional regulation, build our own resilience, and be less worried overall.
There are so many free and low-fee stress-reduction resources available for us. My favorite tools are offered by Dan Siegel.
Prioritizing Safety: Less Is More
While there’s nothing wrong with talking about challenges, like the COVID-19 crisis, often we talk too soon. Talking with a child about these challenges probably won’t be very effective.
In other words, using a cognitive (“top-down”) approach often doesn’t help because the child is functioning from a somatic (“bottom-up”) basis. Not only does talking not help, but it can make things worse. Very often focusing on the stressor can increase the parent’s and the child’s stress.
“Co-regulation” is key to help your child feel calm in a crisis
The key to helping children who are experiencing challenges is providing a sense of safety first, which sets a platform for ensuring growth, and a greater tolerance for stress.
Begin by paying attention to the child’s behaviors. When you start to see distress in their nervous system (as evidenced by the child’s challenging behaviors), offer support right away.
Here are some things you can do:
- Tell your child (and yourself!), “Even if you feel overwhelmed, you are safe.” (Reminding your nervous system that you are safe is key. “Relational” safety – feeling safe with people with whom you are close is the way to fast-track this process.)
- Become an “Emotional Regulator.” Let your child “borrow your nervous system” when they’re feeling stressed. Bring them into a hug and hold them close for at least 10 seconds, ideally 20-30 seconds. Alternatively, you could offer a scalp massage or an arm/hand/foot massage. Or wrap them “like a burrito” in a blanket. Anything to help them “get into” their body and into the present moment.
- Fill a Ziploc baggie with cold water (add a few ice cubes to make it really cold). Encourage the child to lightly put it over their face for as long as they can.
- Gargle water. Gargling stimulates the vagus nerve, which then engages the parasympathetic nervous system (which automatically helps us feel more relaxed).
- Take a sip of water. Encourage your child to notice the physical feelings that go with drinking liquid. Ask how it feels inside their mouth and throat.
- Invite them to get more activity. Anything that increases awareness of where parts of their body are in relation to other parts work. Think: dance party, jumping jacks, standing on one leg, pushing up against a wall, doing a “wall sit,” and/or throwing a ball back and forth.
- Go for walks outside as much as possible. In my household, we’re taking walks at least 3 times a day – one in the morning, afternoon, and evening – rain or shine.
Create a routine that builds emotional regulation into every day
We need to pay attention to our own nervous systems in order to offer a child co-regulation that’s likely to help them feel calm. The current crisis will pass, but your child will remember these lessons for a lifetime: how to regulate their own nervous system, develop increasing levels of stress tolerance, and resilience. You’ll all enjoy more peace and harmony even in the face of a crisis.
If you’d like to find out more, click the button below and schedule a free, 15-minute call with me. We’ll discuss how I may be able to help you and your child regulate your nervous systems so that you can enjoy more peace and calm, no matter what.
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