It seems to me that practically speaking, everything goes back to our nervous systems. They run the show of our lives.

When my kids are melting down, it’s because their nervous systems are activated into threat response. Same with the husband, and same with me. Same with other people in other contexts, as well.

This is why authoritarian approaches to parenting are ineffective and traumatizing. Creatures in threat response won’t benefit by being commanded to behave properly. They need to feel safe again.

So the content doesn’t matter when my kids are melting down: what they need is co-regulation, until they’re feeling steady again and ready to function. Then we can calmly discuss the content of the meltdown.

This usually looks like slowing and quieting things down and taking time to sit with them, help them calm down, and listen to what they need.

And the most crucial thing of all, therefore, is focusing on regulating myself—staying observant of how I’m feeling and practicing my go-to regulation and self-soothing strategies to help myself in moments of dysregulation.

I’m still finding my way with all of this, but this model seems like the most effective one I’ve found yet. It’s just a matter of keeping on practicing it…because it’s not easy!!

It’s like my poem from a few years ago called “Our Bodies Drive Us More than We Know”:

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My toddler launches herself onto the floor and cries
	when she’s tired.

My older kids fixate on random demands
        when they're hungry.

My husband picks fights
	when he’s stressed.

My friend thinks of suicide
	when she hasn’t been sleeping.

I spiral in anxiety
	when I’m overstimulated.

Our bodies drive us more than we know.

May we learn to take care of them
	without being taken in by them.

Through every day’s meltdowns, tantrums, squabbles, and tears, that’s what I’m still trying to learn. ☔️

I’ve been working for quite a while on growing better boundaries, especially with my kids. I’ve written about learning to “hold my no’s” and to make “my feelings matter.” Still, I have a long way to go.

Recently, I had a new lightbulb click of insight in this area, when we had the opportunity to go on a horseback trail ride at Pipestem Resort State Park. (It was heavenly!)

The horses, being horses, would try to stop and eat the grass at every opportunity unless the rider made it clear not to. (This was a big lesson in assertiveness for my quiet nine-year-old daughter!)

When we got back to the cabin and I was walking our two dogs around outside on their leashes, I suddenly felt a new understanding of how I have to be the boss. Just like the horses eating the grass, the dogs (especially Papaya) will go where they want to go, unless I make it clear not to.

Just like with the horses, Papaya is not hurt by a firm tug on the leash and a sharp command. Rather, those actions tell her what she is supposed to do, as well as make it clear that I’m in charge.

It was an easy leap from there to my kids: very obviously, they do whatever they want unless I set and enforce clear limits. Which I’m not always great at.

The key that clicked for me is that I can be firm and authoritative without harming them. Just because some adults are cruel and abusive to children doesn’t mean that it’s not possible to be both authoritative and kind.

I can set and hold to clear limits, while also having a gentle and affectionate manner. (If I do speak sharply, we can repair when the moment is passed.) I can set limits without being mean.

Lists help me remember things, so here’s one I can use:

Setting limits with my kids (and dogs) is:

1. up to me

2. not harmful to them

3. actually healthy for them

It’s not always simple (kids are obviously more complex than dogs!)—and there’s still the matter that, as I wrote about last time in this section, I will not railroad over my kids’ capacity and consent—but I think there’s still a lot of room for both being attuned to their needs and holding to clear boundaries.

And of course, it is a true need of kids to have structure, routine, and clear limits. For example, I have found it especially essential to uphold our screentime limits and routine. If I start stretching the limits and making exceptions, thinking I’m being flexible and generous, it always ends up leading to more dysregulation all around.

Diving deeper into my own psyche, I think part of why I have tended toward laxness with my dogs and children is that I myself was so harmed by being forced away from my own inner boundaries that I can't bear to do that to them. Therefore, healing for me involves learning that setting limits and being the boss with them is not the same as what was done to me.

I still have a long way to go, but I’m grateful for this boost in boundaries-learning! (even better that it was inspired by horses!!🐴 )

Here is a major reality of parenting: the consent of our strong-willed dependent creatures (whether children or, in the case of my friend, goats) is a thing that we cannot always predict and plan for.

For example, some days my four-year-old is perfectly cooperative with the process of leaving daycare, getting in the car, and getting buckled in her seat, so that we have plenty of time to get to the school bus stop on time to pick up her sisters. Other days, not so much. I have learned to leave extra time just in case, especially during phases when she’s already prone to fussiness. I can’t count on having her consent to cooperate with what I want her to do.

Consent may not always be the most applicable word here: it may be more a matter of capacity.

This is especially the case for kids are neurodivergent (like mine), because they have more needs and struggles that affect their nervous system capacity at any given time than neurotypical kids. If their nervous system is already maxed out from noise, uncomfortable clothes, and being around people, asking them to tolerate a tightly buckled seatbelt right now can be the straw that breaks the dam of meltdown restraint.

So, it’s a struggle to maintain the school/work schedule when we can’t predict their level of capacity and/or consent. This is (one reason) why we are usually late in the mornings!

(Sidenote: I think this dynamic also applies to internal functioning, within one’s own system of body and mind, especially for neurodivergent people: when we’re scheduling plans, we cannot predict how we will feel--and therefore what our capacity will be--on that future day.)

I hear people from older eras of parenting say, “You’re the parent! Your child should obey you! It’s your fault if you haven’t trained them to just perfectly obey you!”

No: that authoritarian model is outdated and harmful. It’s not a developmentally appropriate way to relate to a young child. I prefer the research-supported model of secure attachment (see my recent post about the book Raising Securely Attached Kids by Eli Harwood).

In short: I will not railroad over my children’s consent and capacity.

I want to operate by cooperation, mutual respect, and mindfulness. That means that everyone’s needs matter. It means my kids grow up knowing that their needs and feelings always matter.

It doesn’t mean they always get everything they want--but they do get support, validation, and attunement when things don’t go their way.

If (as my husband would claim) I sometimes err on the side of their feeling like their needs and feelings matter too much (a.k.a. “spoiled” or “entitled”), at this point, that’s okay with me (though I am doing my best to keep holding appropriate limits, boundaries, etc., and I do believe they need to have a lot of practice with frustration and dissatisfaction while in an otherwise supportive environment).

The world will do the rest of showing them ways in which their feelings and needs are not ultimately important to the universe. They will have some suffering.

If their home--and their mom--is a safe place for their needs and feelings to matter, that will at least give them the internal framework for knowing how they feel and what they need (in a way that I very much did not get).

They will learn to recognize and respect their own consent and capacity, as I am still trying to learn within myself.

Kids—at least my kids, but I’m pretty sure it’s all kids—are not only like little monkeys, they’re also like little explosions going off all the time, wrecking your house, your schedule, your plans, your time, your money…and so on. (Thankfully, they’re cute and joyful little explosions, but still.)

They are also, of course, little sponges—not for cleaning up the wreckage they cause, unfortunately, but for soaking up every drop of your moods (while you deal with the wreckage) to receive into their permanent psychological development.

OY.

So, I think the #1 most essential, critical, monumentally important parenting skill—and life skill in general—is self-soothing.

It’s the ability to directly soothe and regulate one’s own nervous system, especially in the midst of intense moments and dysregulation.

For me, it’s knowing how to help myself calm down and how to soothe my own inner child.

I’m still working on it (probably most people are still working on it)—but the more I practice self-soothing to calm down my own nervous system, the better I can help calm down their nervous systems, and the smarter and more effectively I can parent.

I’m a very word-oriented person (inside my head at least), so talking soothingly to my inner child is very helpful for me. On any given difficult day with the kids, my self-talk needs to sound like a recurring refrain of self-soothing: “It’s okay, we’re okay, that’s not a big deal, I’ll get to that when I get to that, we’re going to be okay, this is not a crisis, take a breath…”

This is also a main reason for my “Serenity Splash” poems and my songs—they help me calm down, both in the writing and the reciting of them. I use them as regulation aids the way other people use sensory fidget toys! (They really are like mental fidgets for me.)

I aim to keep exploring for new ways to soothe myself in times of stress, and to keep practicing what strategies work for me, until self-soothing becomes a habit.

What are your go-to self-soothing strategies?

I recently made this list in my journal:

My Thinking Brain understands this, of course; it’s my Feeling Brain that needs help. She’s the one who was trained from a young age to take care of everyone else’s feelings instead of her own.

It has been very helpful and clarifying to rehearse this truth: I am not responsible for any other adults, but only for me and my children.

I care very much about those loved ones and other people, and I want to do all I can to help them with their struggles and sufferings. (I wrestled with these feelings in my Serenity Splash poem today, “Our salt-tear waters mingle.”) If that were not the case, there would be no problem; I’d be able to shrug and say, “Duh, of course I’m not responsible for them.”

My trouble is leaning too far in the direction of codependency, caretaking, people-pleasing, and feeling like it’s my existential duty to rescue other people.

When I’m already overwhelmed by the physical and mental load of parenting, it can be hard for my muddled mind to sort out priorities. The feelings of other adults in my life can feel critical, because that’s my nervous system’s old habit-mode.

It takes conscious attention—which I really hope to get better at through practice and rehearsing—to remind myself that I am only responsible for myself and my children. That’s it!

Not my mother-in-law’s feelings of wanting us to visit more than we do.

Not my parents’ feelings about various things, nor my sibling’s.

Not my friends or others who might feel disappointed by me or critical of me.

Not even my husband, who—though we are partners and a team—has to manage his own feelings and take responsibility for his own behavior.

The more I rehearse these truths, the clearer I think and the stronger I feel—and the more I find myself practicing healthy boundaries in my decisions.

It will be a place for writing about things I’m learning/thinking/feeling about my parenting journey…which very often feels like mud puddles…or fast, roaring waterfalls.

Here’s a recent journal entry, from a mud-puddle (or ice-puddle) sort of day.

Compassion and hold on: this is my message to all parents of young kids and anyone/everyone else having a hard time lately (and really, who isn’t?).

I work very hard to be the best mother I can be to my three girls, and there are a lot of ways I feel like I’m not doing a good enough job. But parenting well in this era of human existence (not to mention the chaos of current events) is hard work no matter what, and I try to just give myself grace and keep moving forward.

A message to future me, in case she looks back on me judgingly: I’m growing as fast as I can!

Thanks for being here to witness my journey.