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Your children’s behavior is more about whatever is going on in their still-developing brains than it is about you.
K Do not get into a power struggle.
K Pretend they’re someone else’s kid.
buttons. If you can pretend your kids are someone else’s, then their behavior is way, way less likely to push yours.
K Don’t take responsibility for their happiness. It is not your job to make your child happy. It is your job to keep them as safe as possible, and to help them mature and grow into reasonably functional adults.
Letting your kids feel their feelings without getting caught up in them or needing to fix them is an effective way to get a little headspace from their chaos.
K Remember this mantra: They may be my monkeys, but this still ain’t my circus.
It can be incredibly hard to find the time, space, energy, and support to take care of yourself, especially if you haven’t been in the habit of doing so.
Noticing is about self-awareness, and self-awareness is clutch.
Paying attention to your tells (as we discussed in Chapter 3) will help you recognize when you’re triggered.
You might go from zero to meltdown in a matter of seconds, but if you can notice that your buttons are being pushed and remember to breathe or step outside or sing your favorite Springsteen song, you may never make it to the Immersion stage, which is a good thing.
Your nervous system is in full-on freak-out mode and you’re FARTing all over the place.
This is the beginning of the recovery phase, which, under the best of circumstances, is when you pull your shit together and reconnect with your kiddo.
Noticing is about waking up to whatever’s happening.
Practicing your BuRPs will make it more likely that you’ll check yourself before you wreck yourself.
And the first step toward practicing gratitude is realizing just how pissy and ungrateful you currently feel. You can’t choose to slow down if you don’t notice how fast you’re moving.
The more often you step back and get some perspective, the stronger your noticing muscles will become.
Practice noticing when you’re lying in bed, sipping your coffee, or sitting in the car for two minutes after school drop-off. The more often you notice when it’s easy, the easier it will be to do when it’s hard.
Notice your thoughts.
Notice your feelings.
Notice what’s happening in your body.
Notice what you’re doing.
Notice your breath.
In the meanwhile, try a little self-compassion, and do whatever you can to make it easier to notice going forward.
Keep a smooth stone in your pocket; the physical sensation of holding it can give you something to focus your attention on. Wear a beaded bracelet (sometimes called a mala) as a reminder to breathe. Write your favorite BuRPs on a sticky note, or keep a list of things to notice on your refrigerator.
You can notice what’s happening at any point in the process, and as soon as you do, you’re ready to pause.
Noticing and pausing are easiest to do during the trigger and transition phases; when you can wake up and realize that your buttons are huge and super pushable or that they’re actively being pushed and you’re teetering on the edge of a massive meltdown, you can choose to do anything other than freak out.
If noticing is a shift in your awareness, then pausing is a shift in your behavior.
The pause can be as brief or as lengthy as you want.
The pause isn’t about a plan; it’s about activating your parasympathetic nervous system (which calms down your buttons) and giving yourself a little time and space to calm those buttons down.
The purpose of the anything else is to (a) calm you down, (b) diffuse the moment, and (c) redirect the tense energy that’s building up.
You’re always practicing something, even if it’s something you don’t necessarily want to get better at.
Don’t choose something that is likely to trigger you.
Do the best you can with what you have.
Do the best you can with what you have, and do what you can to get some space when you need it.
Stay silent. If you’re fairly certain that nothing good is going to come out of your mouth, well, then, shut it.
Simplify your thoughts. Whenever you notice that your brain is full of irritable thoughts about your kids or parenting partner or whomever, do what you can to get some space from them.
Stretch or move. Your nervous system is all amped up and ready for action, so why not jump into action, literally?
Put your hands flat on the counter or feel your feet on the floor. Putting your skin in contact with a hard surface can help you feel more grounded and calm.
Talk it out, but not too much. Telling your kids what’s about to happen is a great way to diffuse the tension. Try something like, “I’m feeling pretty stressed, and I’m about to snap at you. I need to calm down. You can breathe quietly with me, but if you nag or whine at me, I will probably bite your head off.”
Repeat your safe word (some people call it a mantra).
Turn on some tunes and shake your groove thing. Sing really freaking loud if you have to.
Get silly. Unfortunately, humor is one of the most underutilized tricks up our parenting sleeves, perhaps because some folks are worried about undermining their own authority.
Send a little love your way. Cut yourself some slack and practice some self-compassion. Remind yourself that parenting is hard and that it’s OK that it’s hard.
Make a list of your favorite Anything Else strategies. Put the list on the fridge or the bathroom mirror or the dashboard of your car or write it backward and tape it to your forehead.
Notice, Pause, and Do Literally Anything Else. That’s all it takes to not lose your shit with your kids.
This is such a common dynamic that parenting experts have come up with a handy little phrase for it: Rupture, Repair, Repeat. How you handle the aftermath of an explosion has a lot to do with how likely you will be to repeat it. You can emerge from your meltdown fully triggered, buttons ready to be pushed, or you can come out the other side significantly chiller and way less likely to lose it again. Chill is good, so let’s focus on that.
This clever acronym, which I totally did not make up, stands for Justify, Argue, Defend, Explain, or Dismiss.
Similarly, getting all JADED doesn’t offer any insights into what happened or what to do differently next time. It just wears you down, and that sort of emotional sparring is, yup, you guessed it: another trigger.
might help you calm down in the moment, but again, there’s no healing or growth or change.
