What To Do When You Can’t Prevent the Emotional Floodwaters

The same is true with our children’s emotional flooding and tantrums.Imagine for a moment. Your 3 year old had a nightmare and didn’t get the best night’s sleep. Then she wasn’t really hungry for breakfast. After spending some time at the park and dropping something at school for your older child you decide to meet a friend for lunch. You can tell your daughter is a bit off, but things seems to be going well.  Then lunch comes and the pickle touches the bread on her sandwich.  She completely falls apart. It starts with a look of disbelief on her face, she says she won’t eat it, you try to help by cutting that piece of the sandwich off and removing the offending pickle, but she gets more and more upset, you get the picture. Too late for prevention, the river is over the banks. The demands of the day have overwhelmed her coping skills and her brain is no longer functioning, now she is flooded and having a tantrum. Here is what I saw folks in Boulder do during the flood. Even as grownups we can get overwhelmed on occasion and feel flooded. These helpful tips are good for taking care of ourselves and our children.

1. Move to safe ground: It is almost impossible to stay calm and to calm a child in a public splace like a restaurant. Most parents feel really vulnerable coping with a tantrum in a public exposed place. If at all possible, remove your child to a place where you feel more privacy.

2. Calm your own nervous system: Many of us get activated when our children melt down. It is natural. Like taking the oxygen mask on the plane, attend to your feelings, take those all important few deep breaths, feel your feet on the ground, relax your jaw. This should take about 10 seconds.  You can figure out what each of you needs, starting with compassion. In the same way no one gets mad at a river that is overflowing, there is no reason to be mad at a child who is overflowing with emotion. Our job is to teach them how to calm down. First we have to compassionately attend to ourselves, and recognize that this too shall pass. This is where I make a pitch for yoga. People who regularly practice yoga are able to calm themselves more easily and quickly than those who don’t.

3. Sandbagging: In order to protect their homes, folks piled sandbags.  I suggest keeping blankets and pillows in the car or home. This helps her feel safe and protected.

4. Trenching: Another technique learned from the flood was trenching. If you dig trenches the water has other places to flow and release the energy of the flood. If we try to calm a child too soon before she has released the pent up energy, she will continue to feel tense. Allow and make space for her to release her energy until she starts to visibly relax and calm down. Talking rationally to her too soon is often ineffective.

5. Recovery, reconnect and repair: After the flood people begin the long process of recovery. For a tantrum this means a loving hug and reconnection with your child. Acknowledge her big feelings and her ability to recover. Later, I like to draw pictures of what happened and talk about ideas for alternative ways of coping.

We can all survive the floods, nature’s, our children’s or our own.  Just remember these five steps; 1.move to safe ground, 2. calm your nervous system, 3. sandbag, 4. trench and 5. recover and reconnect.  Above all remember to have compassion for yourself and your child and don’t be afraid to ask for help. We’ve all been there and we want to help.