Our emotions are such an important part of who we are, but let’s be real, they also make our parenting journey SUPER HARD! If I were to pick a time of the day that parents consistently tell me their child’s feelings are most difficult to handle…. It’s at bedtime.
Do you ever feel like this?
Let’s dig in a little into what’s happening so that we can make your life easier.
As the world shifts away from things like “suck it up” and “cry it out” and moves into a space where feelings matter and we want to help children feel validated in their hard moments, there’s a missing piece. Without understanding feelings and building effective tools and strategies, the feelings tend to take over.
They take over the moment, they take over our thinking, they take over everything.
Here’s the tricky layer, most of us didn’t grow up with tools for our feelings. In fact, historically we have supported the idea that suppressing our feelings is a sign of strength and we are learning this isn’t the best path.
This layer might be what is making your parenting extra hard because it can leave you second guessing a lot things, especially at bedtime. It’s the time of the day when many caring adults struggle.
You are trying to comfort your child while also thinking about how they need to go to sleep because they are over-tired.
All this while also thinking about how you need to do some things before you can sleep and so on… We’ve all been there wishing our child would just go to sleep!
There’s an important connection to make here. This situation is creating a big feelings moment for you which makes getting your child to sleep harder because you’re caught in a stress storm. One of those moments you never learned tools for.
A key part of building your tools and skills for handling big feelings moments is understanding how emotional regulation works. There is a module on this topic in my parenting support package because it’s a key component of understanding tricky moments, like bedtime. One of the things I highlight in that module is the picture book I wrote called The Adventures of Team Brain. This book makes learning about this stuff accessible, relatable and fun.
In the book you are introduced to the Brain Control Centre Team: Thinking Brain, Body Brain and Emotions Brain. Now, everything is pretty good when those three work together and that’s when we can do a great job of regulating our feelings, but there are times when Emotions Brain has a really hard time with this. This is the key to what is happening in really BIG FEELINGS moments (emotional dysregulation). When Emotions Brain takes control, this is what triggers a stress response. In the story I call it DINO Brain and the 3 F’s: Flight, Fight, and Freeze.
We all have DINO Brain moments and what they look like is different for different people. Understanding the difference between expressing your feelings and a full on DINO brain moment is key to validating feelings in a way that doesn’t allow them to control situations. A really important part of this process is working on tools and skills in moments of calm and connection to support keeping the team working together to prevent that full DINO Brain takeover.
When we are thinking about bedtime, this helps us to understand the difference between feelings that are being expressed to show disappointment, frustration, boundary testing, annoyance, sadness… as different from a DINO Brain moment.
This will help you navigate your parent feelings of overwhelm, stress, annoyance, guilt, frustration etcetera while implementing effective tools, limits and boundaries that will reinforce the goal of rested sleep for everyone.
Tara Gratto M.S.Ed, MA, OCT is the Founder of Raising Resilient Children.
Tara has been working with children and families for 20+ years as an educator, former preschool owner, picture book author and social emotional expert. She is also the parent of two middle school children. In her role at RRC, she helps parents and caring adults learn the tools and skills they need for the hard and messy parts of parenting, and everything in-between.
Children don’t come with manuals, parenting isn’t a cookie cutter and trying to navigate information in the digital age is nearly impossible. Her proven frameworks and systems will provide you with clear paths to support you and your unique family’s needs.
Website: https://www.taragratto.ca/
Book: The Adventures of Team Brain
Where to purchase: https://www.taragratto.ca/TeamBrain or on Amazon Worldwide
