Teaching emotional regulation to kids

[ShyTurtle]

I just came across an article which describes how the inuit culture raises their children to be cool headed. This quote really struck a chord with me:

"Kids learn emotional regulation from us."

The idea is that when you yell at your kids, it teaches them that yelling solves problems. Except that it normally really doesn't, does it?

My own pd mother yelled at me a lot. I really had to rein myself in when it came to my own children. I had only my own mother experience to go on, but I was determined not to traumatise them as she had to me. Breaking generational trauma is not easy.

Here is the article:
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/03/13/685533353/a-playful-way-to-teach-kids-to-control-their-anger

[IRedW77]

That was a good article. I do wonder how to translate that to our western kids and ways.

The very first thing I started thinking about when I learned about my BPD mom was anger and yelling.

I realized I had lots of twisted up ideas about anger. I taught myself that anger was something that needs to be suppressed and that displays of anger were childish and never appropriate. This is and isn't true.

Everyone gets frustrated and anger is a release valve. Suppression isn't always a healthy thing—especially for some adult children of PDs.

My oldest is very high strung and always having overreactions to things. We do a lot of "Elmo breaths".

But before I learned about all of the PD stuff I was just trying to completely suppress these explosions. I won't easily get over the fact that these episodes are triggering for me, and kids will likely have some baggage about that.

However, I work really hard to get her to accept her feelings now and learn to reign them in. We talk about how everyone gets frustrated and it's ok to get mad, but then we need to calm ourselves back down and fix the problem.

I've learned a lot within myself just about inherited behaviors. I used to yell at the kids all the time—that's just what you do, right? That's what you grew up with.

I had this moment not long before I learned about BPD where I found myself screaming at my kids because one was screaming because the other one screamed at her for fun. So I'm screaming at both my kids to get them to stop screaming. Something there didn't feel right. There was a big logical disconnect that was pretty blatant, but that's what was modeled for me, so that's what I did—even though it never felt right.

Once I leaned about my mom's BPD I suddenly felt like a huge weight lifted off me, most especially with my kids. I have all of this patience in me, but I was channeling someone else's behavior.

Now I'm constantly in super patient mode with both my kids. My wife and I have talked a lot about this because she came from a very screamy household. She has a harder time than I do now, but we're both on the same page about what we should be doing.

I've even learned that I generally get much better results when I'm not yelling.

I do still get triggered, like if they startle me with yelling, but otherwise I'm mostly fine. I will lose my patience if they push me far enough, but I give them lots of warnings when they're pushing it.

Unfortunately my daughter still likes to test limits and will sometimes go out of her way to push us until we lose our patience. She especially does this with my wife. I sometimes wonder if she's just trying to get attention in a negative way.

We do use timeouts, but they aren't super effective. The little one doesn't care. He'll just play somewhere else. The bigger one has to fight and scream until she gets whatever that impulse is out of her system.

It's actually been a terrible week for her doing that, but we've had holiday time so the routine is off—hopefully that's all it is.

I worry endlessly about what our parenting has already done to them, but we do the best we can and have made a lot of changes.

I had a MUCH harder time with them as babies, and I worry all the time now about what that could have done to them. I can't deal with kids properly until they get old enough to reason with.

[Jolie40]

another article:
https://www.pbs.org/parents/thrive/how-to-teach-frustration-tolerance-to-kids

we took our child to a free community class for kids focused on dealing with stress
kids drew outline of body on paper & wrote on it what happens to body when they feel stressed & on other side what happens when they feel happy

they also learned ways to deal with stress
our child likes doing yoga poses & we do deep breathing together

[Jolie40]

hugs are important, too!

we hug our child every day
it's our ritual to hug every night before bed & of course, any other time

https://digitalbloggers.com/kids-and-teens/hugs-are-the-bandage-of-the-soul---hug-your-child-often

^
"Whenever you hug someone you release oxytocin in their body. This will not only improve their health and mood but helps to reduce the overall stress in the body"

[1footouttadefog]

I found that having talks with my kids where we dissected the feelings and analized situations helped them better understand what they were feeling and why as well as coming up with plans to deal with high emotion moments.

Helping them to understand if the stressors were internally or externally applied can be useful as well.

If they are being disrespected/bullied, for example as opposed to feeling jealous /envious.  Helps them to identify if they own it or not. 

Empowering them to leave  toxic situations is also useful.  Whether they leave a scene where kids are using racism or silar as humor, or excuse themselves to catch a breath and settle because they were triggered in some way. 

This helps them identify that they do get to feel the emotiins but are responsible for their behaviours  and that they can become the masters of when and how they will deal with the emotional load.