10/31/2024
This happens all the time in my own home, though it looks somewhat different with older children, not all that much. THIS is true coregulation and DEVELOPMENT of emotional regulation. It's not something you can teach, it's something that develops inside of a safe relationship with a regulated other, often a grown-up.
My oldest child is incredibly good at independent play. My youngest strongly prefers a play partner. It makes a lot of sense, both from their personalities and from the fact that she’s never lived in a world without him around.
Recently, my oldest has been super interested in video games. This has been a big adjustment for Summer, my daughter, because it’s hard for her to figure out what to do with herself if her big brother doesn’t want to play with her right then.
We were having a cozy sleepy weekend, home all day both days, recuperating from holiday chaos and back-to-school transitions. My husband played with Summer for a long time. I played with Summer for a long time. I did some chores and she followed me, participating on and off. My husband did some chores and she followed him, participating on and off. She hung around with my son, watching him play a game. She and I watched a movie together, snuggled on the couch.
In the evening I sat in the room with them and was reading a book. Summer was doing front rolls on a mattress we have on the floor and she kept begging me “Watch me, watch me, watch me.” I watched her do front rolls for about ten minutes and then told her, “Okay, I’ll watch one more roll and then I’m going to read my book!”
I figured this would be disappointing for her. I was ready to support her through it, as I have been all day; as we all navigate this new transition in growing up.
I didn’t expect *how* hard it would be for her. She sat down on the floor and burst into tears. “I can’t roll without you watching me!”
I reassured her of several things: that she literally could keep rolling around if she wanted (i.e. that I wasn’t telling her that it was time for her to stop, or that she was being unsafe); that she was welcome to do something different if she wanted; that it was sad and hard sometimes to play by herself; and that I truly believed she was capable of it. I also invited her to come sit with me if she wanted, and read a book or do something else.
She continued crying about a lot of things, most of which I suspected were really just rooted in her wishing someone would actively hang out with her. For example, she insisted that her brother’s game was too loud and he needed to turn it down, so I reminded her of the same things I always remind everyone in our house when there’s a sensory mismatch: that she was welcome to put on headphones, or go to a different room, or close a door, or listen to music. She went through the motions of all of these things, still crying and insisting that no solution would work except him have to stop playing his game.
I empathised that I understood that she wished he would stop, but that he was allowed to play a game that made noise. I also understood that she really just wished he would stop and play with her. It might have felt in her body like noise was the problem, as her 4-year-old brain scrambled for logic to make sense of what she was feeling. I wasn’t going to tell her that her internal logic was wrong, which is why I kept talking her through the solutions. Someday, she *may* actually have a problem in our house with noise, and knowing the solutions is still helpful. I also empathetically explained my view of the situation, because to me, the logic of the situation seemed likely different than the one she was guessing at.
Things escalated. She began kicking toys around on the floor and screaming at her brother, so I put my earplugs in to keep my own nervous system safe, and picked her up and carried her to her room. I sat inside her room on the floor by the door while she wandered around her room screaming, crying, and kicking things. I didn’t say anything at all. In fact, I kept my eyes closed, because she’s very sensitive to feeling like she’s being “looked at” right now.
She told me, “Get away from me.” When she was younger she used to say, “Get out of my room.” Anytime I tried to actually leave her room while she was in this state of dysregulation, she would immediately begin sobbing, “Don’t get out of my room,” then when I came back in, she would sob, “Get out of my room,” and so on, in a loop.
Back then, I usually made a decision about what to do based on my own level of regulation. Did I need a breather in the hallway before going to sit with her, or was I okay to cope with her emotions as well as my own? Today, when she said “Get away from me,” I said, “Okay. I will be right over here by the door,” and stayed exactly where I was. I know that what she’s expressing is a conflict of two emotions, a feeling of push-pull. “Don’t see me when I’m in this state of pain, but don’t leave me alone in this state of pain!” It’s a tough thing for a 4 year old to hold.
I remind myself in my mind that I am safe and that everyone is okay. That crying in the presence of a supportive loved one is not dangerous, or bad.
Sometimes my brain reacts in a state of panic to child crying, especially child “whining”. My brain thinks subconsciously that this is making us unsafe, making the situation unsafe, that I need to stop it by any means possible. Ironically, this panicked state makes *me* the *cause* of a situation being unsafe. So, that’s why I remind myself in my head that there is nothing unsafe about my daughter crying. I am not in danger and she is not in danger. We are together and she is feeling an emotion, and I am here to be with her. I can see so much of myself in her. My heart panics and freaks out and flops around screaming when I feel like someone I love doesn’t want to hang out with me, too.
So I sit by the door with my eyes closed, taking deep breaths and focusing my attention inward into my own body on the breaths I’m taking.
“I don’t want to kick things,” she screams at me, while kicking things.
I take another deep breath and feel so powerfully empathetic in my body for how it felt to feel like your brain was screaming one thing at you and your body another. For all the times I’ve laid on the couch, utterly drained of all capacity to do anything other than grieve, with my brain screaming at me, “I don’t want to do this. I cannot possibly do this again.”
“I know you don’t, babe,” I say gently.
“I want to go downstairs,” she screams.
“I know. We will soon,” I say. I try not to put qualifiers on these things for right now. I try not to tell my kids, “when you x, we will y” because it so quickly slips into “we can’t y until you x” and other types of threats. I don’t want her brain to be yelling, “get your crap together, look like you’re calm so you can get out of here,” I would rather she feel angry at me for blocking her way while she’s deep in the grip of irrational raging emotions than to tell her, “when you calm down we will go downstairs”. At least that’s what I do right now when she’s 4. So I just said, “we will soon.”
She sits down on the floor and stared off into the distance for a few minutes. The violent waves of emotion that were crashing through her body and mind slowly wane with time.
She picks up some of her toys and brings them over near me, and sits down next to me for a few minutes without saying anything. I also don’t say anything. She picks up a pony and puts it in my hand, then picks up one of her own and makes it start talking to my pony.
After a couple of minutes of play, I make a suggestion. “What if we took these ponies downstairs to make a toy house out of the play mats?”, I suggest, thinking of an activity that would be 1) related to what she’s currently doing; 2) combined with another activity she likes doing (making houses); 3) novel (they haven’t ever made houses for ponies before); and 4) something she could eventually shift into doing independently when she was ready for me to be able to step away. She agreed eagerly so we took the ponies downstairs to make houses for them.
After a few minutes of pony houses, which expanded into ponies playing the piano keyboard, I stepped away to make dinner and listened to her playing independently in the other room. She would set the piano keyboard to play one of its pre-programmed songs and took the microphone and made the pony sing made-up lyrics to the tune of whatever the song was. I cut up bell peppers and chicken and listened to her sing “I was sad because my friends don’t want to play with me, it’s okay, I be your friend, we can play together, thanks, you have beautiful hair, it’s okay to feel sad sometimes,” between a couple of ponies, to a vague approximation of the tune of Für Elise.
[Image description:
A picture divided into a top blue half, and a bottom purple half, that reads:
“What people think “learning emotional regulation” is “supposed” to look like:
take a deep breath
do a yoga pose
point to a feeling on a feeling chart”
“What “learning emotional regulation” might actually be, when it’s child-led and play-based:
singing made-up songs about ponies being sad to play by themselves to the tune of Für Elise”
End description.]
