Hello. Hello. Welcome to become a kamama.

I am your host, Erlyn Childress, and this is the podcast

where you learn how to become a calm parent and raise

emotionally healthy kids. And I want to talk

today about emotional health and also talk a little bit

about the process of self

regulation. I wanna talk for a few minutes about

emotional health, what I mean by that. And then the process

that you will take your children through so that they can become

emotionally healthy adults. I teach these classes

called, you know, it's like the emotionally healthy series. Right? So we've got emotionally

healthy kids, emotionally healthy middle schoolers, and emotionally healthy teen.

And when I define emotional health, I

really talk about it in terms of emotional

literacy. Emotional literacy

is really the ability to manage our

emotions. And when we can do that, when we know what to do

with our feelings, then we can activate

emotional health. We can move towards greater and greater experiences of

emotional health. Emotional health is not always feeling

happy. It's actually more about

how to know that you're feeling happy. How

to know that you're, feeling sad, how

to be aware. Emotional literacy is I know

what I'm feeling. I know how to talk about what I'm

feeling. I know what to do with my feelings.

And then compassion or empathy is the ability to help someone else

Manage their emotions. So when we break down emotional

literacy, I know what I'm feeling. I know how to talk about

it, and I know what to do with it. The

knowing what to do with it is really

the biggest thing that I help

moms do with themselves and then helping

moms and dads parent their children. So their children

learn What to do with all this messy stuff

that's inside? We all have

in emotional life. We all have you know, experiences

and stimulation in the external world that we are responding

to all of the time. So, you know, if you're a little

kid and your mommy is on the phone talking to

someone or looking at their phone or working

and you look at your mommy and you want her to pay attention to you,

which is a valid desire, and she's not able to is

also valid. You might feel sad.

You might feel a little bit uncomfortable. That

feeling, you might feel unsafe. And when

you don't know what to do with that feeling, it shows up in

behavior. Why I always say feelings drive behavior.

Now there are times where our feelings,

kinda get ahead of us. Like, they become so intense, so

overwhelming, or are our

external stimulus, whatever's happening or circumstance,

it feels like we're in danger, or it

feels like Something bad is going to happen to us.

When our brain interprets that situation

as dangerous, or we experience it as

dangerous, we can be flooded with a lot

of big feelings. So what does that look like when you're a little kid?

We call it a temper tantrum. We call it a meltdown. I call it a

big feeling cycle. When a an adult gets

overwhelmed, we say they're losing their shit. They're in freak out mode.

They're a hot mess. Whatever. So we have these words

describe this overwhelmed state.

And in psychology, I'm not a psychologist

or a therapist, but I do do a lot of studying about it. And what

is what that is called is dysregulation.

So our brain has these, you know,

chemicals that we get flooded

with when our stress response is activated. And

the purpose of those neural chemicals, like

adrenaline epinephrine, cortisol,

dopamine, all of those different neurochemicals that you've heard of,

what the purpose of it is that there there

to cut off thinking so that we can respond to our environment with

and do it fast. That's the idea that

our our dysregulated state is there so that we can

respond. And that's per the purpose of

of of stress and dysregulation is to move us to action.

But in that process

of action, It looks

like off track behavior. It looks like misbehavior. It

looks like a kid who's wild. It looks like a kid who's out of control.

It looks like a parent who's raging. And I want to

help you see that that behavior is really just

somebody who's struggling to manage their emotions. They're

doing their best to move through their big feelings. They're in a

dysregulated state, and they're doing things to

regulate themselves. So that process

of self regulation is what

I wanna talk about. I wanna go into depth a little bit more

on how we regulate ourselves, how we

go from a dysregulated state to a regulated

state. I recently read this

book called what happened to you. We'll link it in the show

notes, and it's by Bruce Perry, who's a

PhD and a doctor. So Doctor Bruce Perry and Oprah

Winfrey. And she sort of interviews him, and that's the structure of the

book. And the purpose of the book is

to really help people understand

how trauma and, you know, adverse

Childhood experiences affect us in our

regulation, in the way that we process our

emotions. And it's it's an incredible book. I highly recommend

it. And what he talks about is the

3 r's of regulation. And

I think it's really helpful for you as parents to understand

that when your child is dysregulated, their

behavior are those are tools that they're

using to cope with the overwhelm. So

sometimes we see kids, you know, screaming, crying, kicking,

punching, threatening, yelling. Some kids run away, slam the

door. Some kids go into internal shame spirals. Some kids do all of

those things. Right? So their behavior is

there really their, their attempt

to regulate themselves?

Now a cool thing that I'm not gonna talk about too much in this episode

is the concept of co regulation, and it really is the

process that children, especially use. They

use someone else's nervous system. They borrow an

adult's nervous system or an adult calm

calm emotional state, and they,

you can help regulate someone who's in a dysregulated state if

you're calm. It's kind of a cool process, and I'll talk about it in another

episode. But what I wanna talk about really specifically is

this idea of regulation. And the 3

r's of regulation. So the first r is rhythm.

The second r is relationship, and the 3rd

r is reward. So I often teach

when you are in the pause break as a parent,

right, that You need to move your body and move your

mind. Right? That's what I talk about a lot is that you

probably need your in an activated stress response You're

dysregulated as the parent. When you're yelling at your kids or you're,

you know, lecturing them or grabbing their bodies, you get

dysregulated as the adult. And you are seeking

regulation. And one of the things I teach is how to

move your body. To go jump up and down, to

go wash your hands, to drink some water, to fluff some pillows, to fold some

towels, to you know, do the shimmy shake where you put your hands in the

air and, you know, you shake all the way down. Stomp your

feet. Like, all sorts of things that you can do to

regulate yourself. The other thing I teach you

is how to offer self compassion.

That is really the second r is really about

relationship and how self compassion being able to

put your hand on your heart and say, jeez, this is really hard. I'm very

overwhelmed. These kids are a lot. It's I'm having a hard day.

You your self compassion is really you being in relationship

with yourself. It's you calming you, which is

super cool. So when you're moving your body, you're doing

rhythm. When you are re

self coaching and offering yourself self compassion, You're in

relationship. That's second r. And then reward

is kind of the things that we do to distract ourselves

And, typically, we distract ourselves with something that's gonna give us a

little dopamine kick. Right? Maybe we go eat some sugar

or We go, you know, scroll on our phone for a minute and

trying to kind of get something from Instagram

or TikTok or whatever. We're we're gonna learn something. We're gonna pop

our brain into a a

reward based system. Or we go to tasks

as parents. I think sometimes we regulate ourselves by getting

something done on our checklist and making that really important Like, oh, I

can't play with you because I really need to send this email right now, or

I really need to, you know, get dinner prepped or, you know, I'm I'm doing

the laundry. I can't play with you. And I want you to see that when

you are doing those small tasks that, yes, they're

necessary and all of that, but they might be actually what you're doing to calm

yourself, to calm your nervous system. To to regulate yourself.

So I I'm sharing how adults regulate

when they're dysregulated using the 3 r's do using

rhythm, which I always think of as movement,

using relationship. So, you know, either

self compassion or you call a friend or sometimes we go to the

internet. We go to those Instagram. We go somewhere. Because we're seeking

relationship or reward. We do small tasks to make ourselves

feel better, and then we move on. None

of those things are wrong. They are all

good and healthy and great. I want you to

have a lot of awareness about yourself in

that process. I want you to notice, I am doing this because

I'm dysregulated. I am, you know, shaking

my hands or moving my body, or pacing

or stroking my arm or putting my hand on my

heart. Any of those behaviors that you're

doing with your body, I want you to build awareness and

think, oh, look. Oh, look. Hello, dysregulation. Look

at how well you're doing at calming yourself. And when you bring that

little awareness to the moment and

you see what you're doing and you go with an intention to

calm yourself, to regulate, then you

will have it go faster. That awareness

brings intention and then intention makes the result

happen quicker, which is really, really amazing.

That's when I when, you know, emotional literacy, I know what I'm feeling.

I know how to talk about it, and I know what to do with it.

When you are aware of what you're doing and why you're doing

it, Then you actually calm yourself much

faster. Isn't that great? So that is

how it works for adults. Now for

kids, they also get in dysregulated states.

And what they need is support from the

adults around them. They need someone to help them learn to

self regulate. So what does that mean for you as the

parent? It means being calm, being in a regulated state

yourself. That's why calm comes before connect in my program.

You cannot help your child through their big feelings if you

are struggling with yours. So it's okay to always take a pause

break. And then what your children need is they need

you to validate their emotion. And this is something

that's very difficult in the moment is to figure out what the

heck they're feeling and then to validate it because

you're probably thinking you shouldn't be feeling this

way. It's not that big of a deal. You're getting this a consequence

because of your own behavior or you should know better.

And we look at their behavior. We're judging their behavior.

And then the feeling that's driving the behavior, we're judging that too.

That's why, you know, compassion requires us to get out of

criticism and to get into the mind of and the heart of the

other person. So it's hard to do. But

just saying, you know, you're doing this with your body. This

is the connection tool. I see you screaming. I wonder if you're really overwhelmed.

Or are are you overwhelmed? Right? You

can, you know, say you have to leave the birthday party because

your kid, you told your kid. You can stay at this birthday party long as

you don't, you know, keep going to the snack table. And then they go to

the snack table again. They've got like a giant cupcake in their mouth. And you're

like, looks like we have to leave. So you turn to them and you say,

hey, we're leaving because I don't wanna have to worry about you continuing to

get, you know, snacks from the snack table. And then they're gonna

start crying. Right? They're gonna start getting dysregulated.

That's why we avoid consequences is because we don't want to go

through is dysregulated state.

But going through the whole process with compassion and then

coming on the other side, and having your kid say,

I understand. I really shouldn't have, you know, gotten

snacks. Like, I wanna stay at parties, so I'm not gonna, you know, I'm not

gonna take too many snacks. That's how they learn. You can say it

fourteen times. Don't don't eat the snacks. Don't eat the snacks. Don't eat the

snacks. But learn happens through experience. But when

your child is experiencing the negative

thing, the bummer, the result of their behavior, the

impact of their behavior, they are

going to be upset. And they might get dysregulated. So

we're gonna validate their emotion. Of course, you're

upset, honey. It's hard to leave a party. Of course,

you're sad. You love being at football practice.

Of course. Yeah. It's okay to be mad. It's okay to

be mad at mommy. It's okay to be or older

kids. It's okay to be angry with me. It makes sense. It's

okay. So we're gonna validate that emotion, and then we're gonna

listen to their complaints. And then we're gonna offer

ways to help them manage their big feelings. So what

can they do with their big feelings? That's always such a big

question. The now what?

So if you wanna think about the now what? Being those 3

hours, that will be really, really helpful for you when your

kid is dysregulated to think, what do they need? Do they need to

move? Do they need rhythm? Another way you can bring rhythm in

is bouncing a ball back and forth,

or you know, tossing some pillows around, turning

on some music, looking at a fountain, looking at fish,

Right? Anything that you're kind of watching rhythmically can help.

Listening rhythmically can help moving your body rhythmically can

help. Having that feeling of, like, that's why little kids

rock or just think about a baby, like, how we sued them. We shush them,

and we shake them up and down, and we rock them side to side. We

contain them in that little bit of a compression, and that is soothing

to their nervous system. That's the same thing

for older kids and for adults. They need soothing to their nervous

system. So that just means offering them

a way to cert to sue themselves. I like to

look at a kid and see what their what

their natural intuition is to sue themselves. Is it

hitting? Is it eating candy? Is it running away? Is

it, you know, throwing things? Is it kicking? Like,

whatever their body is naturally doing to

If you could see that behavior as a form of regulation,

then you can say, oh, you wanna hit hit this. Of course, you

wanna hit We're validating and we're offering an

alternative. Of course, you wanna hit. Hit this. Hit. Hit hard.

I'm gonna hold this pillow. You're gonna hit it really hard. You

wanna spit. You wanna kick. Right? So we're gonna

continue to offer our kids alternative

ways for them to do what they're already doing.

Your child has so much internal wisdom around self soothing

and self regulation. Sometimes the strategy they're

using doesn't work. It's not good for the doesn't work

for the community. Works for them. Doesn't work for the others. It might feel

really good to take, you know, a sippy cup and hit

my little her on her knee over and over and over while I'm in the

car. That might feel really, really good. Think about how

rhythmic that is. Like, taking a sippy cup and going,

or poking or whatever, like, oh, you feel like hitting

something here? You can bounce that on your knee. You

can bounce that here. You can take these 2, you know, straws. Let me give

you two pins. Click them together. So we're gonna see what our kid

is doing, recognize it as a form of regulation,

and offer another alternative.

So the the 3 r's rhythm, relationship,

or reward. So what are those other ones? How

are those available for us? Thinking about relationship is really just having this person who

is

Kind and compassionate. It's so confusing as the parent

because we're, like, the person who said, no. You can't

have a candy. And then we're also the person

soothing the child when they're upset that they can't have the

candy. And it could It can feel like you

are two different people in that moment. And

you are your child's regulating

adult, and you are also your child's responsibility

builder adult. Right? Like, you're both. And you

can hold both together. You can say, I'm

saying no, and I have compassion for you that you're upset with my

no. This might sound easy, but I

know for those of you who are in my programs and and have or been

listening to the podcast and you're like, I'm doing it. I'm doing it. It is

really hard, isn't it, to

sit in your child's discomfort, especially

if you are the reason for it. It's like

your brain breaks because you want to comfort your

child by solving their problem. You wanna just okay.

Fine. Have the candy. And then tomorrow, though, I'm not giving it to you. We,

like, add that little threat for tomorrow. So we give in, we rescue, and then

we kind of you know, kind of threaten them. And all of

that is to soothe our discomfort because

we don't like to see our kids be sad. We don't like how

they how how they feel when they're upset, how they act.

Also, it's very disregulating to be around a person

who's losing their shit. When your kid is

freaking out, it's really hard to stay calm because amygdala's talked to amygdala's.

And so that's why you have to go back and reset your stress response so

that you can come back and connect. So we're in this calm connect

kind of in Yang, right, this dynamic

of I'm gonna call myself and I'm gonna connect and then I'm gonna get dysregulated

and I'm gonna call myself actually what's cool is while you are self

regulating through that process, you're teaching your child

how to co regulate. I wish you could see my hands because I'm, like,

doing this little dance with them pushing, you know, kind of a a figure 8

together. And that is a little bit what it is like

when you're in that process of co regulation

and helping your cat child self regulate.

Parenthetically, You don't always have to do it.

Your kid can, as long as everyone

stays safe, can go find their way to regulate

themselves. You don't always have to be the regulating adult. You

can't Do it. Remember when I said a couple episodes

back about therapeutic parenting and how you really, it's very difficult to be in the

state all the time, to be the regulated regulating

adult all the time. It's why co mama breaks are so important. It's why

taking really good care of yourself is so important. Because this type of

parenting requires a high level of, regulation within

yourself. Really learning to self soothe.

To cope in healthy ways, to be very

aware of your emotions, and and

knowing, oh, I'm not really feeling so great today. What do I

need? How can I bring more delight into my life? How can I

you know, can maybe I should make a cup of tea? Maybe I should make

myself you know, maybe I should set the table nicely today,

or maybe I should candle, or you know what? I really haven't been outside in

a while. Whatever it is that you need to calm

yourself, inviting you to do that as often as you

can. And I promise you'll be able to show up as the regulated

adult that you want to be. Now the

3rd r is reward. And I think

this one can be a little bit confusing. One very simple way

to think about reward is the feeling that we

all feel when our emotional,

you know, big feeling cycle ends. Like,

it's really intense And your child is crying, and

they're really upset. And I call them big feeling cycles because I want you to

always remember that it's a cycle, which means it has an ending.

And so that big intensity, and then it ends,

there's a reward in the ending, actually. There's a little bit of

pleasure that is created from

becoming regulated after being distressed.

So that feeling of, is

regulation. So we get that through movement. We get that through relationship.

And then we feel a little bit of pop. Like, oh, you

know, and you watch this with your kids. They're like, I'm fine now. And then

they just move on. And you're like, What? How it you were just crying

so hard. Like, were you just manipulating me? Were you,

you know, trying to, like, you know, get what you want or whatever?

We think that they were faking it in some ways, but

actually getting soothed feels fantastic.

So that in itself is a reward. We can also be

intentional about how we create reward. And what

we're seeking is, like, a little dopamine kick, but not too much.

And, I mean, that's why honestly we go to our phones and

things like that because our brain is looking for a distraction. It's looking for a

little way to, like, get some ease and some movement out of

it. And Again, nothing wrong with it. But with

kids, we don't really wanna, like, just shove a, you know, a

phone in front of them. Like, that's not it's soothing short term, but it

it actually it doesn't feel great long term because you're not getting the rhythm. You're

not actually getting the release of all of the pent

up like, cortisol and all the pump from your nervous

system. So what can we bring in? I

love to honestly bring in little tasks.

Like, oh, honey, you're crying so so much, and I'm gonna help you.

Can you take this to the your room real quick and come back?

Like, a little teeny distraction, a

little teeny task can be really helpful.

Or if you start to see your kid dysregulating, you can kinda

watch the pattern. You can give them a job

small job, you know, oh, will you carry this to that

room, or can you bring me a cup or some little

task? Then your kid will get a little pop of like,

oh, I did it, and they can actually shift and not have to dysregulate.

It's a little test. It's like, Let me just test to see if

the, how stressed they are, how their nervous

system, how activated it is, and you can give a little task.

Or you can give a little bit of pleasure, and that's why,

you know, you know, let's have snack or let's go outside or

let's play Legos. The now what strategies

that I teach in my classes are sort of move your

body, talk about it, show me, do

something else. So the do something else, sometimes it can feel like,

oh, we're bypassing and we're avoiding and we're letting our kid

disassociated check out, not deal with their feelings. I

don't want you to constantly distract your children from their negative emotion.

Absolutely not because they don't learn -- these self soothing

tools. But I want you to also feel a little bit

free to offer a distraction,

especially if it's movement, if there's rhythm involved, and

relationship. Honey, honey, honey, let's go outside through the

ball. Honey, honey, honey, let's let's come over here,

and I wanna show you, how to fold this towel.

Right? So we're bringing a little task. We're bringing a little pleasure. You

know, can you help me real quick? Because I'm trying to figure out how to

put this Lego on this Lego, and I can't. Or I'm trying to figure out

how to button this Barbie's, you know, little dress.

Or I can't get these shoes on. Can you come help me get these shoes

on, especially if it's a dollar stuffed animal or something? Or

I'm arranging your stuffed animals to prepare for a stuffed animal party do you

wanna put this stuffed animal here or there? So

we're kind of pulling their brain out that dysregulated

state and into some sort of task, into some sort of thinking, which

is cool. But you your kid, they'll know if

you're trying to distract them. And not truly being compassionate. So

we always wanna connect first and

then kind of offer some now wet strategies. We wanna

connect by validating their emotion and making sure that

they feel really seen and felt and heard. So

we give that a beat We validate, and then we

try all these different, regulation strategies. Alright.

So that Those are the 3 hours of regulation, and I really

wanted to share those with you on the podcast. If you are interested, I

think the book What happened to you by Doctor Bruce Perry and

Oprah Winfrey is an incredible resource. It's really it's an easy

read. It's not written very academic. It's kinda storytelling.

So I loved it, and I I recommend it. And the 3 hours of

regulation, I got the that concept from that

book. And I

hope for your takeaway this week that

while you're watching your child and they're

freaking out and they're acting badly, like, quote unquote, badly,

I want to invite you to see

their behavior as a strategy that

they are using to cope with overwhelm,

to cope with discomfort, to see their behavior, and think,

I think they might be dysregulated. What do they

need? Rhythm relationship

reward. So that framework if you

work within that framework of seeing the behavior as a

as an expression of unmet emotional needs

or struggle, You will shift into compassion

faster, and you will co regulate faster, which is amazing. This concept of

regulation is just one thing that I teach in the emotionally healthy

kids class. And I am that next

fall session starts I think on October 12th.

And so I really want to invite you. Yeah. We're gonna meet on October 12th

for 6 weeks. It's gonna be a 9 AM session, 12 PM

Eastern. So 9 AM pacific. We're gonna meet for 6 weeks

and a class is $500, and I'm gonna teach you how to calm

yourself, how to connect better with your kids, how to help your

kids regulate, how to set limits in my limit setting

formula and then how to do consequences without

pain and shame. So it's really the the class is

com comprehensive. It's everything you learn on the podcast, but con you you

know, in one very 6 week course. So

you kind of really master the things. If you love this podcast and you

listen to it all the time, And you haven't taken that class yet, get

in there, because I think you will love learning from

me. I teach it live. So it's you know, just us on

Zoom. The classes haven't been very large, and so it's not like

you, you know, you have to talk or anything, but You do

get to ask questions. You do get to talk to me, which is nice. And

you can, you know, we can work through what's going on with your family.

And then you get to be in the club for the next 6 months after

that. So there's a lot then that's when you get to talk to me privately

because in the club, you get 15 minute private sessions with me.

You have access to those every week, which is cool. Highly

recommend that that, I I don't know if we've

opened up enrollment yet, but it's coming. So go to kamamacoaching.com.

Go to that programs page, and you'll see the parenting classes.

And you can sign up for either the wait list or join if the drawers

are open. Alright. I wish you this week

the most regulated humans for yourself

and for your children. And when you are when you are dysregulated,

you have permission to pause, you have permission to take excellent care of

yourself. And when your kids are dysregulated,

Think about the 3 r's. Alright. I

will see you. Well, I won't see you. This podcast. I will talk to

you next week. Have a great week.