Are your kids ever irrationally emotional? Haha, trick question. I know they are – they’re KIDS. It’s one of the defining features of childhood!
In this post, we'll teach you the Connect and Redirect method of dealing with this irrational and emotional behaviour.
As a parent, you've probably experience countless scenarios like this one:
Child: “I want the red cup.”
Parent: “It’s dirty, honey, you can have the blue one,” we respond logically. Right?
And does it work...
Child: “I WANT THE RED ONE, sob, scream!!!”
I don’t know why, we know logic won’t work, but hope springs eternal, so we try again.
Parent: “Sweetheart, the red cup is in the dishwasher. The blue cup works just as well and blue is so pretty.”
Child: “Oh, I see that now. You’re right Mom, I’ll use the blue one,” said no child ever.
Logic just can’t quiet those strong emotions. We can try force instead “YOU CALM DOWN RIGHT NOW.” Sometimes this quiets them for a bit, but usually it just makes things worse.
Either way, we are now joining our children in feeling upset. If we know logic won’t work, and possibly no one has ever calmed by being yelled at to calm, why do we do these things?
Well, maybe we don’t know what else to do, or it’s how we were raised, or we’re exhausted and their behaviour makes us feel crazy.
Great, so now we know we shouldn’t use logic or anger, but we don’t know what to do next time. Vowing to do better, be more loving, be calmer just makes us feel worse next time we mess up (and we WILL mess up, because we’re human too). Sooooo what can we do instead?
A word about the brain (understanding our brains helps to explain so much). When a child is melting down, the logical part of the brain goes off-line. And the emotional part is blasting out feelings. So logically explaining things to calm them simply cannot work. It’s like trying to turn on a lamp that’s unplugged. No matter how perfectly you flip the switch, it’s not going to light up. We have to calm that emotional brain and THEN the logical part can plug in.
Daniel Siegel (a psychiatrist who writes great books on how brains work and raising kids) calls this Connect and Redirect. We connect with the emotional part of the brain by naming the feelings and describing what’s happening. Then when emotions have stilled we Redirect with reason.
It might look like this:
Child: “I want the red cup.”
Parent: “It’s dirty honey, you get the blue one.”
Child: “I WANT THE RED ONE!!!”
Parent: “You want the red cup. Oh no! It’s dirty today. And you really wanted it.”
Child: “I WANT THE RED ONE, sob, scream!!!”
Parent: “You love the red cup. You are so sad.”
We may go back and forth a few times. Then, around this point, something amazing happens, the child begins to calm. So we keep reflecting.
Child: “I want the RED ONE!”
Parent: “You feel so sad right now because you wanted the red one. It’s hard to feel so sad.”
For some reason, just feeling understood helps to settle those strong feelings. Once our child calms, the thinking part of their brain can reconnect.
You can watch for the tension to leave and their body softens. THEN you can Redirect with logic.
Parent: “Wouldn’t it be nice if cups changed colour to whatever you want? Maybe you can have the red one next time.”
This isn’t always a magical formula, but many times it almost is. When the emotional part of our brain can name what’s going on, it helps it to quiet. Then we can access the more rational part of our brain which enables us to cope.
Remember Connect and Redirect the next time you’re dealing with an emotional, irrational child. And give yourself a pat on the back for taking on the challenge of creating new ways of responding. It’s okay for all of us to have strong feelings, even disruptive feelings. The key is learning how to manage them.
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