3 Calming Tools That Often Fail Parents of Neurodivergent Kids
You know your own dysregulation is playing a role in the chaos at home. You’ve heard it all: take time for yourself, take a deep breath, take a break.
But in the second your kid melts down, the siblings start fighting again, or your kid leaps off the fireplace (yup!), you’re yelling before you even remember to breathe.
You aren’t failing. You just haven’t been given the right tools.
In this episode of Connected + Capable, I’m walking through the three calming tools parents hear the most. I’ll share why they often fall short on their own, and what needs to come first. I’m also sharing my own story of how my regulation fell apart when I had two kids close together.
In this episode, we’ll talk about:
- Why “take time for yourself” helps, but can wear off by 11 AM the next morning, especially if you’re touched out, have sensory needs, or are neurodivergent yourself.
- Why you can’t remember to breathe in the moment, and how so many of us were taught to hit mute on our own feelings growing up.
- “I know to pause, but I can’t make myself.” Why taking a break can feel impossible, and why that’s neurology, not a failing on your part.
- What has to happen instead: catching it, shifting it, building regulation into your day, and creating a toolbox that fits YOU.
Your needs matter too. No matter how big your kid’s needs are, or how dysregulated you feel, there’s a path forward, one small step at a time.
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Key Timestamps
[04:00] Why “take time for yourself” falls short
[09:00] The MOST common tool that doesn’t always work in the moment
[11:30] Why taking a break can be so hard (it’s not you)
[14:30] The missing piece to turning around your dysregulation
[16:00] Building regulation into your daily routine
[17:00] Creating your own regulation toolbox
Show notes
How to Stay Calm When Your Kid Can’t: Adult Regulation Workshop
Episode 7: The Secret Key Each Parent Holds to Regulating Their Kid
Episode 17: 3 Steps for When You’re Too Dysregulated to Help Your Kid
TRANSCRIPT:
Adult Regulation: Why Common Calming Strategies Aren’t Enough
As a pediatric occupational therapist, I was never taught how to also support the parents of the kids that I work with. And I actually think this might be the most important strategy of all when you have a neurodivergent kid yourself. Kids with ADHD, autism, sensory processing disorder, or even kids without a diagnosis who have huge sensory needs, struggle with focus and executive functioning skills, or have big emotions, often experience dysregulation. If you have not been taught how to regulate your own system, especially in the midst of your kid’s dysregulation, it can be incredibly challenging. So many of the challenges and quote-unquote behaviors that we see from neurodivergent kids are driven by their nervous system’s dysregulation.
All of it, all of their other challenges get heightened because of it. This is called co-regulation, and if you’re new to co-regulation, I wanna invite you to check out episode seven where we talk about exactly what co-regulation is. You can also look at episode 17. We get into three tools that you can start using to start moving towards regulation.
But the truth is this goes a lot deeper, and as parents, believe me, I know this, I have fought it myself, I don’t have time to deal with that. You may feel like you are on a treadmill that you can’t get off of, and while you know, you know that your own dysregulation is playing a role in some of the overwhelming feelings and what may feel like chaos in your home, while you know that that’s playing a role, you have no idea in the busyness of your life how to actually start to regulate your own system.
And then what ends up happening is we end up not responding to our kid the way that we want to in their dysregulation or the challenge that they’re having, whether they’re struggling to focus on their homework, or there’s another sibling argument that’s breaking out, or your kid is leaping off the top of the fireplace.
We react in the moment in a way that we don’t want to. It’s the actual thing that we are trying not to do, but in the second, our yelling happens, we get frustrated, maybe, we’re crying. There are so many different reactions we can have from dysregulation, but we know that we feel this sense of reacting and not really being in control of what we are saying or how we truly want to be parenting our kids.
And so if that’s you, this episode is for you. Welcome to the Connected and Capable podcast. My name is Alisha Grogan, and as you already heard, I am a pediatric OT for 22 years, and I am also the mom of three kids. One of those kids has ADHD. And so the reality of living this combined with working with thousands of families all over the world, has shaped so much of where I see parents are at and the tools that they actually need and are going to help, much of that based on what has helped me as well.
Now, today’s episode is sponsored by our upcoming deep dive workshop, How to Stay Calm When Your Kid Can’t. We’re going to spend an hour and a half helping you build a personalized system you can actually use. You’ll have access to this recording so you can break it down into small chunks, listen to it. There’ll be some awesome printables.
So make sure you check that out in the show notes. Those links to the other podcast I mentioned are also in the show notes. But today, I want to get into three different adult regulation tools that you have likely been told to use, but that may not be working for you. We’re gonna talk about why that is, why people keep saying to use them when they are seemingly broken. So the first tool that I think I was told the most often when I had young kids, and please know this was just sort of general parenting advice.
This was long before, I knew that my son had ADHD, although from a very early age, and I’m talking 10 months old, we were already seeing challenges in his life. I’ll get back to that in a minute when we talk about some of these, some of these other tools. But the thing that I heard on repeat, particularly when I had young children, was, “Take time for yourself.
You’re not taking enough time for yourself. Take time for yourself.” I, as a pediatric OT, wanted to be with my kids as much as possible. I had spent my career already working with kids. I mean, I was babysitting at the age of 11. I always was working with kids. I was the oldest of three, and I was often caring for my siblings.
It was kind of in my blood to be with kids, and it was just in my wiring to be with kids. And so when I had my own, I really wanted to be as present as possible. Now, if you’ve showed up or have different feelings, that’s totally great. we all kind of show up our, you know, our different personalities and experiences in how we wanna show up in parenting, and there isn’t a right way of what exactly that looks like.
But for me, this is often what it looked like, and I was spending a lot of time with my kids, and I was tired, and I was dysregulated. But whenever I heard, “Take time for yourself,” I thought, “Okay, great.” And I did that sometimes. I had the family member come over and watch the kiddos. I went out and did the thing.
And here’s the thing. That was beneficial to a degree. The problem, I think, with this advice that is often given to parents is that it is only helping us a fraction of what we need. So the advice just falls short. It’s like we’re missing the mark when we are just repeatedly telling parents, “Oh, make sure you’re taking time for yourself.”
Because even if you take time for yourself every week, let’s just say you have a sitter, you get out every Thursday night for a few hours, do what you wanna do, maybe you even go and spend time with friends, that is going to help with your regulation. It’s going to help give you capacity for when you probably walk back in the door, but it may not be enough by 11:00 AM the next morning.
Mm, you know, maybe you make it a little longer, till 3:00 or 4:00 PM, because kids in general have so much going on. And as we, as we talked in some of those early, earlier episodes, if you also have some sensory needs, if you have a history of trauma, if you have neurodivergence yourself, you may be feeling touched out.
Your brain may be dysregulated from the constant bombardment of stimulation that is coming in. If you have a kid that is always moving, if they are always talking, if they are always asking questions, and your brain is not really getting a chance to regulate, that regulation that you got from the time away is going to collapse pretty quickly And so we are failing parents, especially neurodivergent parents, when all of that is amped up because our kids are often trying to manage their own dysregulation.
They are often struggling with executive functioning skills like attention, like following directions, like having self-control. And so all of that gets turned up even louder for parents. And when we say take time for yourself, it may feel like it’s completely falling short, let alone the logistics of you may not have a sitter that you can leave your kid with.
If your kid has neurodivergence and extra needs, you may not have a qualified sitter or family member that is capable or willing to babysit your kids. And so we have to find other ways to help parents regulate. We’re gonna talk about that more in a minute. But I want you to know that if you are feeling frustrated being told, “Hey, you just need to take time for yourself,” or you do actively take time for yourself, and you still feel like you’re getting really dysregulated and reacting to your kids in ways that you don’t want, you are not failing.
You have not been given the right tools.
Why Deep Breathing Does Not Always Work in the Moment
Okay, so the second tool I wanna talk about is one I actually teach. It’s probably the one that we hear the most often, and that’s to breathe. So I love this tool, but it falls short or misses the mark because again, we often say it in isolation, “Oh, well, just take some deep breaths.”
Do you know what most parents tell me and what I myself have felt many times is I’m reacting before I even remember that I need to take a deep breath. And after I’ve already kind of lost my temper or responded in the tone that I don’t want to or engaged in the argument or gotten snappy and edgy instead of co-regulating and being calm and sharing that calm with my child so that they can move into regulation I am not thinking to breathe first.
It has happened instantly. See, what we’re doing here when we tell parents to just breathe, or really any other kind of regulation strategy, maybe there’s another one that you have heard, when we tell parents that, we are putting the cart before the horse often. Is breathing a great tool? It absolutely is, but you need to know how to recognize the signs of your dysregulation first, as well as your triggers.
Both of those are unique to you. There will be signs that you are dysregulated. Here is the problem: most of us were never taught to notice. In fact, many of us were taught to ignore those signs that we were becoming dysregulated. And listen, I am not trying to blame our parents, because they were doing the best that they could and working with what they had.
But if you were told repeatedly when you were growing up, “Oh, don’t worry about it, you’re fine,” or, “Just get over it,” or, “That’s not a big deal. You’re not hurt. Stop crying,” all of those things not only don’t help us learn how to identify our feelings, they actually teach us how to mute them, to ignore them.
We’re literally hitting mute over and over and over again in our brain in childhood. Let alone the busyness of our parenting life also kind of emphasizes us keeping that mute button on to our own feelings. And so the first step is starting to turn up the volume a little bit so that we start to recognize How we’re feeling and knowing the things that tend to trigger us, whether that’s from a sensory standpoint, like, “Gosh, there’s lots of noise.”
Whether that’s an emotional standpoint, “Oh my gosh, when my kid lies to me, when they tell me no, when they get physical, all of those are the things that trigger me.” Like, we need to know what those are because we will be better at spotting it right in the moment.
Why Taking a Break Can Be Difficult
All right, and here’s the third, regulation tool that parents are often told and yet seems to miss the mark, and that’s to take a break.
Take a break in the moment. You’re getting really dysregulated, take a break. Again, this is a strategy I teach, but never in isolation. First of all, it’s not a tool that works for everyone. If your child is banging their head off of the floor in their dysregulation, yeah, that’s probably pretty dysregulating for you, too.
You can’t just take a break. And so parents feel left alone, isolated, not seen, not understood when we say, “Just take a break.” There’s another important aspect of this. I just had a mom tell me this recently after a free workshop I was teaching. She said, “I know to pause, but I can’t seem to make myself.” And I know what she’s talking about.
You probably can relate to this, too. On some level in your dysregulation, you think, “I should walk away from this right now.” Maybe you can. “I just need to walk out of the room and give myself a couple deep breaths. I need to take a break. That’s an option right now, but I can’t seem to do it.” What happens when we get really dysregulated is that our brain is moving into that fight, flight, or freeze.
And so you are probably stuck in fight or freeze when that is happening. You may want to engage with your child because you are angry, and you wanna show them why what they’re doing is wrong. You might be frozen and not even able to take the next step literal forward, the literal next step, like just to walk out of the room because you’re frozen in your overwhelm.
That is not a failing on your part. That is neurology. That stress response can make it much harder to access the strategies we know would help. Take time for yourself, just breathe, and take a break can all be wonderful tools and supports. But they should not be used in isolation because they are often not enough.
How to Start Recognizing and Shifting Dysregulation
Instead, what we need to do is we need to catch when we are starting to feel dysregulated, and that takes time. That takes some know-how for you to start knowing what are your signals, how do you start recognizing them, and what do you do when you do feel them? You may have been the one muting your own emotions because they were too much for you to handle.
And so when we learn how to catch it, we need to learn how to shift out of it and shift out of it in an emotionally healthy way, not by just always ignoring or muting it. That takes time, and it’s small steps. That doesn’t mean that it’s not possible. It doesn’t mean that you are failing in some way. And gosh, I feel like when I recognized that this is not going to happen overnight, when I accepted that, there was such a peace in it And I also started to learn to look for the small moments and things that were changing.
Often, my kid’s progress was tied to my own, meaning that I could see the progress that was happening in him as I was learning to stay more regulated, as I was watching the things that I was thinking and catching the thoughts that weren’t helpful and moving me into worry, sadness, stress, and ultimately dysregulation.
Building Regulation Into Your Daily Routine
And so we catch, we shift, and when we shift is when we pull in those regulation tools. That might be breathe. There are dozens of tools that can be helpful, but that’s where we next start to build, and we build in two ways. We first build by adding regulation into our regular routines so that our baseline level of dysregulation is lower.
That is what take time for yourself means. So this is where one of those tools can be helpful, but it’s not the only tool. If you struggle with your own regulation, sharing your calm, you have a super dysregulated kid that you’re trying to help and support, you are likely going to need some other tools, and tools that can be woven into your life, not tools that require more stress because you have to find a babysitter that can watch your kid and that you feel comfortable with leaving.
That might not be an option in your situation.
Creating Your Own Regulation Toolbox
Which leads me to another important step, and that is building your custom toolbox, and we talk about this– we talk about this with kids, too. Like, our kids need their own regulation toolbox because they have unique sensory needs. They have a– they have their own past history, as do you, and so your regulation tools have to also be customized Building and working towards regulation is so important for yourself.
Not only does it give you the capacity to be able to help your child, particularly when they are having big emotions, when they’re having demand avoidance, when they’re checked out, and you’ve told them something 300 times, and you’re feeling so frustrated with them, when they’re running nonstop, jumping all over you, and you feel touched out, it’s not just for those moments so that you’re able to help your kid.
That is a huge piece of it. But equally as important is your lived experience, your quality of life, how you are going about your day in and day out. Your needs matter, too. This is your life, and these years raising kids, gosh, I’m gonna say the cliche, the days are long, but the years are short.
And as my oldest is starting to move into his later years in high school, gosh, do I see that more than ever Even when you’re in the middle of it right now and it feels like, whew, it’s gonna be a long time before we’re out of this season, before we’re out of this change, it’s too long to wait to address your own regulation.
How to Stay Calm When Your Kid Can’t
And that’s why this workshop, How to Stay Calm When Your Kid Can’t, is so near and dear to my heart, not only because it’s what I’ve worked with, but it’s what I know from working with thousands of families in my programs and in the Connection Hive. I know it is the really truly the first step, and that we often are just saying online, like if you, if you’re on social media, you’re probably seeing all the time stuff about co-regulation, share your calm, but we don’t really tell parents how to do that, and guess what happens?
We feel like we’re falling short. We feel like we’re failing when we don’t do that. But you haven’t been given the tools to learn how to self-regulate, especially under really difficult circumstances You know, when I was kidless, before I had children, I was able to maintain a lot of regulation even though I had a trauma history, even though that there was lots of maybe neurodivergence going on.
I don’t have an official diagnosis, definitely have some ADHD traits, but I’m a recovering Type A, which can be common, can be common even for ADHD women. And there are seasons I look back on that were just really, I was struggling with school, but my schooling became a special interest. I was able to hyper-focus on and be so passionate about learning and becoming an OT.
I was able to structure my life in a way that kept me primarily regulated. I had all of these supports built in, many of which were giving myself downtime, rest. When I had a couple of kids pretty close together All of that fell apart, and I was left having to face the fact that I had really big regulation needs, and I didn’t know how to meet them in the new circumstances of my life.
When I could no longer control all of the variables, pretty much having to just worry about myself, my regulation fell apart And so if you are struggling with your own regulation, I can assure you that there is a path forward no matter how big your kids’ needs are, no matter how dysregulated you feel with your, if you have neurodivergence or a trauma history, there is a path forward.
The key is that it’s not a magic wand that is gonna get waved and you’re instantly gonna be regulated. It’s about one small step at a time. There’s so much information out there. This workshop is about bringing you clarity so you know exactly what to do. So I hope that you grab a seat. You can find it on yourkidstable.com, and you can head to that link right below.
It’s a little bit long, so you can check that out there, yourkidstable.com, and that is /coregulation, all one word. So one more time, it’s yourkidstable.com/coregulation. I truly hope to have you grab a seat inside of that deep-dive workshop. I hope that this has been a help for you. if you have questions, if there’s a topic you want me to cover, make sure that you email us.
Let us know. you can head to our website, get on our newsletter, and reply to any email there. It has been so good to be with you. Talk soon.