In response to my assertion that kids are inevitably doing the best that they can do, someone will almost always ask a question about a child who is vehemently endorsing the opposite. A child who is angry and making sure everybody around them knows it. A child who might be regularly yelling and screaming exact … Read more
I wrote a couple of weeks ago about silly-dysregulation for the first time on here. It’s the winter school holidays here in Australia, and it turns out that same silly-dysregulation was kind of the theme of the break. The pattern would be heralded by a grating new stim of hoarse shrieking and then escalate into … Read more
I wrote recently about preemptive co-regulation with my child — when I stepped in to help regulate escalating emotions and energy back down before a meltdown had even started. Here’s another example. I’m gonna be slightly technical here and say that this was an example of me defusing silly-dysregulation. I have loads of writing on … Read more
My kid woke up disgruntled. There wasn’t really any discernible reason for it. I’m not identifying which kid because honestly, I swear they take turns doing this. I had stayed up late the night before, and I knew I was on “wake up” duty in the morning. (Rev. Dr. Mr. TOPT and I usually swap … Read more
I would guess that the #1 question that I’m asked — the top situation that people want resources for — is what to do when your child has already tilted past the threshold of 100% dysregulation and is melting down, right now. I’ve answered that one in my post called Survive about as well … Read more
(All I’m doing in this post is describing adult/child interactions that I observed, but I want to give you a heads up that it’s kind of infuriating. I think that’s important to share and to talk about, but I wanted to put this heads-up here because I know that some readers have been more intensely … Read more
A weird component of running a page like this while my kids are 5 and 6, not grown, is that I’m still in the middle of this. It’s not theoretical and it’s not like I’m reflecting on years ago. Trying to find the balance between not oversharing about my personal life and my kids’ stories, … Read more
We have been watching a lot of hotel TV these past couple of weeks. At home, we really only watch stuff on streaming services; the kids have never had live TV before, so there have been some new enthralling things to watch and some old favorites. I remain convinced that Bluey is genuinely in a … Read more
One thing went wrong. And it led to another. And it was too many things. And he was MAD. I carried him into his room so that we would have a safe space to melt down. He screamed at me, “JUST GO AWAY FROM ME!” I have talked about this before (I’ll link that post … Read more
My son was feeling a little bit “out of whack” (that’s usually the least-jargony way I can describe the word “dysregulated”). He was picking at everyone in the family, emotionally, verbally. He pushed his sister, who was watching a show, far enough for her to lash out at him physically, to hit him and push … Read more