This is why it’s so important to distinguish behavior from underlying feelings and experience. While it’s important to contain a child who is out of control and exhibiting “bad behavior,” it’s also crucial to recognize that under the behavior is a child (or in IFS language, a part of a child) who is in pain, has an unmet need, and is in desperate need of connection. Children interpret our interactions with them not as a reaction to the specific moment but as a message about who they should be. So when your child says, “I hate my baby brother, send him back to the hospital!” and you yell,
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