When you are stressed, your body creates a number of automatic reactions, over which you have little control.

What used to be known as the fight or flight response can also include freeze and flop. But my children stick to the original line-up.

Flight

Bubbles reacts with Flight. When her emotions, when her world becomes too overwhelming for her, when she doesn’t know how to cope with what she is feeling inside, she runs and hides. In tiny dark corners or under beds, out of reach.

I want to get close, to stroke her back or hand, but mostly I have learnt to keep my distance, until she is ready. Sometimes I stay well away, more often I am close by – sometimes inside and sometimes outside her room.

“I’m right here when you need a hug“

She needs silence and space. Neither of which are easy for me, when I want to envelope her in a big comfy hug and tell her how much I love her.

With time (a few minutes mostly), she calms down, comes out of her room and we have a big hug.

Regulation in Flight

I might want to talk. To soothe away her fears with words and reasoning and more, but I have learnt to be patient. There are 3 stages to helping any child struggling with their emotions:

1. Regulate
2. Relate
3. Reason

(This trilogy comes from Bruce Perry and here is a good graphic about it from Beacon House to print out and put on your fridge.)

Until Bubbles is calm and happy (and it’s up to her to decide when that is), I keep my vocalisation to comforting murmurs:

• No discussion nor debate
• No ‘helpful’ suggestions
• Not even empathic words that tell her we know how she feels
• It’s best when I say nothing at all

Fight Club

Nibbles reacts with Fight. When he can’t process his emotions and feelings, he raises his fists, frowns and growls, and starts hopping about like a boxer trying to pick a fight. The other day as he raised his fists, he said “Do ya wanna piece of me? Do ya?“

What do I do?

• I can’t walk away, for that makes him angrier – he will drag on my clothes and up the fighting ante to keep me in the ring with him
• If I talk to him, most things will anger him even more
• He hates if I try to be playful (“Stop laughing at me!!“)

It used to be that Nibbles’ rages were few and far between, but they’ve been steadily increasing in the last eight months. Last summer (on my birthday!) he spiralled into a massive rage, surprising the heck out of my husband, who’d never experienced a full-blown rageathon before. Let’s just say neither of us handled that day very well.

Regulation in a Fight

Here’s what we are trying at the moment:

1. Breathing deeply and staying super calm (blank or concerned facial expressions)
2. Staying near, but out of arm’s length
3. Reflecting his own experience in firm, clear words (similar to the tone and pace of his goading) “You must be really cross right now.”

Sometimes using the Theraplay paper-punching game helps him calm. Sometimes asking him to push against our hands with his, to use some of the rage in a more physical manner, works.

Sometimes he needs to get control of a situation, as his rage is often sparked by being told to do something. Clearly, since he is flushed with adrenalin, all choices need to be simple and limited (this OR that). For instance, when he stormed off as we walked to the shops, I sat on the pavement and calmly gave him a “Go Now and get something from the bakery for lunch, or Go Later and the bakery will be shut” choice. Within seconds he had calmed and chosen to Go Now.

But we haven’t got it right all the time yet, so this is definitely still a work in progress.

Becoming An Expert

Mostly what we have discovered is that what works with one child, doesn’t work for the other and what works on one day, backfires spectacularly on the next.

We are learning as we go, refining our approach, licking our wounds when we get it wrong, discussing, debating, reading books (like Sarah Naish’s A to Z) and trying to navigate through the fight and flight world of our children.

Let me know if you have any top tips to shortcut the process….