What’s happening here? Is there a common underlying struggle for each of these kids? It may not seem immediately obvious, but in each of these scenarios—the refusal to apologize, the stubbornness, the lying—I see a child who is shutting down. These children are struggling to live in their painful realities—the reality of having stolen a sister’s lovie, the reality of struggling at math, the reality of wanting something for herself and not getting it. In each scenario, the parent described a child who felt guilty or humiliated or bad about something and then reacted in a dysregulated way in an
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