by Bethan O'Riordan | Dec 12, 2022 | Blog, Parenting
This is probably ( read definitely) one of my favourite parenting questions to answer. Children cannot regulate their emotions. They do not have the capacity, brain development or life experience to be able to regulate what they feel and think. However, all is not lost. There’s plenty that parents can do to help their children. Begin by rephrasing what you’re querying. It’s not about children gaining skills to regulate their emotions; it’s about creating the inner foundations of a child’s mental health so that their emotions don’t overwhelm them completely when they are older.
Another popular question I get asked is, “at what age do children regulate their emotions?” Well, can you regulate your emotions? If so, can you do it all the time, a bit of the time, or does it depend on what’s going on? We’ve to lower the bar of expectation when it comes to children. Often we expect them to be able to have mental agility skills greater than us as adults. Like us, children are a work in progress when it comes to emotional regulation.
Parents often express, “I thought my child would be able to manage their emotions now they’re six/seven/eight/nine/10 etc.” This creates frustration in the relationship, which children feel and internalise as not being good enough. Yes, it can seem like groundhog day, and it’s exhausting, but we can never make children be anything they’re not.
Here are my tips for how to help support your child’s developing emotions:
Pay attention to them when they are upset
Build your repertoire of how you respond to them based on what they need from you. Empathy is your number one tool in showing that you see and understand that they are upset/overwhelmed/angry etc. You might talk with your child and use your tone of voice, facial expression or body language to show that you care.
Remove consequences for behaviour and, at times, remove the need for apologies
Apologies can often be deeply shaming for a behaviour that was really out of the control of the child. Be unwavering in your support of your child regardless of what they do. Children respond to the environment in which they are, so if they do or say something you don’t agree with, look at what their stressor is and help them with it.
Be self aware and lead by example
Most important is to understand how you regulate your emotions because your children will be learning these soft skills from you.
If anything in this blog resonates with you and you’d like support to create change, you’re welcome to book a free call with Bethan here to explore your support options. Make sure you download your free 5 Steps to Calmer Parenting and if you’re looking for immediate parenting support, you can start your free 7 day trial in the Calm Parenting Club, my online parenting community which wraps supports around parents and their families needs.
by Bethan O'Riordan | Dec 5, 2022 | Blog, Parenting
The ability to hold ourselves at arm’s length and reflect on who we are is everything in parenting. I often say that parenting isn’t about children; it’s about parents and how they respond, rather than react, to their children’s developing emotions. Being aware of what you bring to the gig is essential.
Begin by narrowing down what you’d like to be mindful of. This means things to which you would like to bring awareness. The most important part of this is to consider what your intention is. We could mindfully have sex and mindfully break into a car, so being aware is not enough. We have to take a moment to consider what our intention is with this practice.
An excellent intention, to begin with, is compassion. This is the acknowledgement that something is difficult, while feeling the motivation to turn towards it and help alleviate it. Being compassionately mindful of yourself creates a safe container for what you discover. Without the safety of the compassionate intention, what you uncover when you bring more awareness to yourself could be a little overwhelming. I remember a friend once saying to me, “I think I’ve gone mad. When I pay attention to myself I notice that one minute I am low, the next happy. It’s tricky to follow!”. At least with compassionate intention, when you are aware of your thoughts and behaviours towards yourself and others, you can begin to create change and awareness from this place of understanding.
As for taking action in being more mindful, it’s a matter of practice. Most parents come to me because they want to shout less – in a nutshell – and being self aware is essential to this. Be curious about the version of yourself that you present at different times of the day, in different surroundings and among various people. Notice what happens in your body, thoughts and behaviours at certain times of the day. Do you get a starburst of self-righteous thoughts when your kids aren’t listening to you? Does your heart beat faster when you’re under pressure? Do you lash out when you’re tired?
If so, then welcome to the human mind! Some people find it helpful to write their reflections down to make sense of them. Most important of all is to keep cultivating a compassionate inner voice, one who has your best interest at heart and understands why you do and say the things you do. Going inwards with mindfulness can be a little scary, but your compassionate inner ally will help to make it not manageable.
Inside the Calm Parenting Club are many videos, meditations and most important of all the support to become the mindful parent you’d like to be. You can start your free 7 day trial here and get a taste of how this online parenting community supports you to be the person, and parent, you’d like to be while also getting the answers to your parenting problems. Also don’t forget to get your free 5 Steps to Calmer Parenting which shares tips for helping you to be the change your children need.
by Bethan O'Riordan | Dec 1, 2022 | Blog, Parenting
The first word that comes to mind is respect, though not in the direction you may suspect. You must show your teenager respect. It’s so easy to get into a ding dong with pre-teens (and teens) and create rifts in relationships that, in my therapeutic experience, only gets deeper.
I receive regular phone calls from exhausted parents asking me to work with their tween/teenager. They often go a bit like this: “They show me no respect and make me feel like I can’t say or do anything right. They are making me feel bad about myself.”
It’s so important to remember that your children are under no obligation towards you. They have no obligation to like you, respect you or be kind to you. They will, if you’ve created a safe and trusting relationship with them during the previous 10 or so years of their life.
Parents must take responsibility for how they feel, and until we do, we can’t expect children to do the same. Children learn their emotional responses from their parents, so you must lead with a gentle curiosity about what’s going on if they are letting you know that life is hard. You can’t do this unless you can turn inwards to yourself first.
When I sit with a tween/teenager what I am really showing them is total respect, empathy, time and compassion. You can begin to foster alla of these with your child at any age so that when these difficult years come, the foundation of your relationship is already there. I don’t have all the answers, but I am prepared to sit with them and tune into who they are until we figure out a constructive way forward together.
I’d really recommend all parents read Brainstorm by Dan Siegal, as it explains the brain function and emotional capabilities of this age group clearly. At this teenage stage, the brain is developing at an enormous pac. Taking risks is part of the brain’s development. It’s so important that you create a safe space and foster a respectful relationship through which this can happen.
Remember, your tween/teenager is looking for you to understand them and make their world safe. This happens in so many ways, including with words, tone, behaviours, strong but flexible boundaries and the relationship you have with them.
If anything in this blog resonates with you and you’d like support to create change, you’re welcome to book a free call with Bethan here to explore your support options. Make sure you download your free 5 Steps to Calmer Parenting and if you’re looking for immediate parenting support, you can start your free 7 day trial in the Calm Parenting Club where you’ll find the answers to your parenting problems and be supported to become the parent and person’ you’d like to be.
by Bethan O'Riordan | Nov 7, 2022 | Blog, Parenting
Q: How can I unlearn the ways of my upbringing and acknowledge my childhood trauma?
I want to assure you that it is possible to unlearn the ways of your upbringing. However, it requires you to acknowledge your childhood trauma with a psychotherapist. I see the word trauma frequently used as a marketing buzzword — self-study trauma courses, etc. It is hazardous to your mental and emotional wellbeing to work through childhood wounds and inner trauma alone. This work requires a safe and therapeutic space.
I’d ask you in what ways do you think your trauma is being brought up at the moment? I often speak about impairing. Our body holds unconscious memories of being the age that our child are. Say you were bullied at age eight. Your body will likely be reliving those memories when your child becomes eight.
As for unlearning the ways of your upbringing, I don’t know if we unlearn them or if we integrate them so that they don’t run the show. The most helpful way to overcome this is to bring understanding into our lives. Compassion sometimes gets bad press as being weak, hippy-dippy, airy-fairy and a bit mythical, but it offers us the skills, strength and commitment to work through the pain. These are precisely what we need to successfully overcome any childhood trauma.
I love a website called Compassionate Mind Foundation. It offers loads of resources to help people carve out space for themselves. I think developing the skills and qualities of compassion helps everybody to carve out an inner ally. We want that trauma to be acknowledged, understood, cared for and cared about by a part of you. I suppose that when you say you want to unlearn the ways of your upbringing, it’s the parts that you don’t like about yourself, parts that perhaps you are repeating within your parenting. The most powerful way to overcome this is to bring in a voice that understands, an agent that’s committed to helping you work through this pain, and one who knows that you can be the person you want to be.
I think for acknowledging childhood trauma, there are so many different therapies that can offer you support. There’s yoga, energy work and many more, but no matter your choice, working through your trauma in a therapeutic context is a powerful way of healing what feels broken inside. I often use art therapy with parents. I bring out art materials when meeting clients to help them express those unconscious memories and help make sense of it all.
If anything in this blog resonates with you and you’d like support to create change, you’re welcome to book a free call with Bethan here to explore your support options. Make sure you download your free 5 Steps to Calmer Parenting. If you’re looking for immediate parenting support, you can start your free 7 day trial in the Calm Parenting Club where you’ll find the answers to your parenting problems and be supported to become the parent and person’ you’d like to be.
by Bethan O'Riordan | Oct 24, 2022 | Blog, Parenting
The first word that comes to mind is respect, though not in the direction you may suspect. You must show your teenager respect. It’s so easy to get into a ding dong with pre-teens (and teens) and create rifts in relationships that, in my therapeutic experience, only gets deeper. I receive regular phone calls from exhausted parents asking me to work with their tween/teenager. They often go a bit like this: “They show me no respect and make me feel like I can’t say or do anything right. They are making me feel bad about myself.”
It’s so important to remember that your children are under no obligation towards you. They have no obligation to like you, respect you or be kind to you. They will, if you’ve created a safe and trusting relationship with them during the previous 10 or so years of their life. Parents must take responsibility for how they feel, and until we do, we can’t expect children to do the same. Children learn their emotional responses from their parents, so you must lead with a gentle curiosity about what’s going on if they are letting you know that life is hard. You can’t do this unless you can turn inwards to yourself first.
When I sit with a tween/teenager – excluding issues of suicide or self-harm – what I am really showing them is total respect, empathy, time and compassion. You can begin to foster all of these with your child at any age so that when these difficult years come, the foundation of your relationship is already there. I don’t have all the answers, but I am prepared to sit with them and tune into who they are until we figure out a constructive way forward together.
I’d really recommend all parents read Brainstorm by Dan Siegal, as it explains the brain function and emotional capabilities of this age group clearly. At this teenage stage, the brain is developing at an enormous pace. Taking risks is part of the brain’s development. It’s so important that you create a safe space and foster a respectful relationship through which this can happen. Remember, your tween/teenager is looking for you to understand them and make their world safe. This happens in so many ways, including with words, tone, behaviours, strong but flexible boundaries and the relationship you have with them.
If anything in this blog resonates with you and you’d like support to create change, you’re welcome to book a free call with Bethan here to explore your support options. Make sure you download your free 5 Steps to Calmer Parenting. If you’re looking for immediate parenting support, you can start your free 7 day trial in the Calm Parenting Club where you’ll find the answers to your parenting problems and be supported to become the parent and person’ you’d like to be.
by Bethan O'Riordan | Aug 4, 2022 | Blog, Parenting
Isn’t parenting guilt a big, heavy dark emotion? Did you know that guilt is our in-built mechanism for doing no harm? It’s like a reflex that comes on board without you ever having invited it to show up.
What I am saying is that guilt isn’t your fault. Yes, it is letting you know that you’d try to do something different next time. Still, the vital thing to note about guilt is that it can quickly grow legs and become much more entrenched into a parent’s sense of who they are and how they parent if it goes unchecked.
How did you manage guilt when you were younger? For many adults feeling guilty came with a feeling of shame because parents didn’t help make that feeling safe. I know you’re talking about your guilt here, but this is also an excellent opportunity to help your children with their feelings of guilt.
As guilt comes on board automatically when children do or say something they know is wrong, they will feel bad. As a result, they don’t need their parents heaping anything onto them, which they then internalise and become ashamed. My therapeutic experience is that shame is one of our most damaging emotions and is a driving force behind suicidal thoughts. So when your child feels bad, simply help this to become safe and say something like, “it’s a rotten feeling when we do something wrong/do something we didn’t mean, isn’t it?”. Then watch your child take a breath and release the emotion. Powerful stuff.
And, of course, for you to do this with authenticity, you must be able to talk to yourself in this compassionate way too. You have the ability to allow yourself to make mistakes without internally punishing yourself. This skill can be unlocked and nurtured when you’ve worked through your past in therapy and re-parented yourself. Change is possible.
Staying calm in chaotic situations requires two things:
1. Practice – practice being the calm person that you’d like to be. Start by putting your tongue behind your two front teeth at the top, which helps to ground you, and keep your mouth closed, so you don’t say things you don’t want to be saying!
2. Exploring why those situations feel chaotic for you. What do they remind you of in your childhood? Are the feelings reminding you of feeling out of control when you were younger or reminding you of your mum or dad when they were overwhelmed?
The way to put steps in place to help yourself is to feed your senses. Give yourself regular breaks throughout the day to help your nervous system get as close to baseline as possible. If noise is a trigger for you, listen to podcasts. Are you hangry? Eat something. Can you redirect your eyes to something that makes you smile or look at a clear space in your home/around you (if there is one!)? Take a moment to calm that whirring brain by changing what is being input into it.
Anything you can do to help balance yourself will help your children, too, as they learn how to regulate from you.
Remember it doesn’t always have to look pretty – we are teaching children that they will be overwhelmed at times too and that being overwhelmed is never going to look pretty. And that is more than ok.
If anything in this blog resonates with you and you’d like support to create change, you’re welcome to book a free call with Bethan here to explore your support options. Make sure you download your free 5 Steps to Calmer Parenting. If you’re looking for immediate parenting support, you can start your free 7 day trial in the Calm Parenting Club where you’ll find the answers to your parenting problems and be supported to become the parent and person’ you’d like to be.
