Five Steps to Calm and Centered Even When Your Child is Out of Control (with Printable)

5 Steps to master your own emotions and know your triggers so you can be a calmer parent-- even when your child is not calm!

Let's face it—when it comes to the child-parent relationship, there is one person who has mature self-control and one smaller person with considerably less self-control.

As parents, we not only have to regulate ourselves but also have to help our kids regulate. Early childhood is a prime time for learning emotion and self-regulation. Our kids' brains are primed for learning, but at the same time, they are immature and literally under construction. That immaturity is sometimes on full display in the middle of the grocery store 😬. The question is: How can we regulate our emotions as parents in those situations and help our kids learn to regulate theirs?

1. Reframe Your Expectations: Observe and Pause

In my last post, I discussed pausing and accepting your own emotions. It’s the classic: put on your own oxygen mask first. Once you check-in with yourself, turn towards your child and truly see them. Children are more emotionally dysregulated than we are. With limited regulation skills and constant cognitive growth spurts, they are bound to have out-of-control moments.

So, the next time your child screams because you cut the toast the wrong way, yells because they can't get the Lego structure right, has a breakdown after school, or starts whirling around in a ball of emotions for seemingly no reason -- look at them and observe. 

Observe them as if they are from another planet because, in a way, they are. Remember that their brains aren't like ours yet. See their smallness. Observe with open curiosity and see them. Once you look at them, you'll begin to empathize with this little being who just can't even right now. 

Remind yourself that self-control skills are not organized in the brain until the age of three and do not mature until age 5 or 6. There is continuous development throughout childhood and a second major growth spurt of self-control in the brain during adolescence. Some estimates place final brain maturation at the age of 30.

Use the printable below for more on what to do when you pause and how to center yourself (also See Step 2). This will help you be open to your child's bad days, crankiness, and lack of regulation.