The shrieks! The screams! The calamity of it all!

No, this isn’t a trailer to the newest horror flick. It’s just another day in my house with the kids. *sigh*

Children are not easy obviously, but especially so when their behaviors are on another level. But behind every bit of challenging behavior lies a need that your child can’t quite articulate.

Last fall, I took a CEU course called “Identifying the Root of Challenging Behaviors.” So this week, we are giving you the parent takeaways. This first part on the developing child brain is a lot of what we’ve previously written about, but it sets the stage for how all of these parenting/OT approaches and strategies come together effectively.

Behavior functions in one of five ways:

• Attention. It doesn’t matter if it’s positive (Wow, great job!) or negative (Seriously, what is the matter with you?!), as long as it provides an opportunity to connect with someone.
• Escape. Finding ways to avoid an unwanted situation, like seeing the doctor or cleaning up their mess.
• Access. Actions that will help them get what they want, like that candy at the checkout counter or that toy in the store.
• Communication. Expressing their wants, needs, or feelings through behavior when they can’t find (or don’t have) the words.
• Sensory. Doing things to help them self-regulate, especially if they are tired, sick, or restless.

What makes our kids’ behavior so challenging are the emotional fits and tantrums that come with it. But it’s not their fault. It’s their brain.

The Emo Brain

When there’s behavior, there’s emotions. For kids and their developing brains, they can’t effectively keep their emotions in check just yet. A quick review:

The brain is a two-story house. The first floor has all the structures (brain stem and limbic system) responsible for emotions, arousal level, and body sensations. The second floor contains the regions (the frontal lobe) that provide the ability to reason and organize of the world around us. The “staircase” that connects the two is a structure, called the medial prefrontal cortex, helps give insight into who we are, who others are, and everyone as a collective whole.

When our kids become stressed, their downstairs brain becomes flooded with sensations and emotions. The problem is that their upstairs brain (that includes prefrontal cortex) is still developing, making it nearly impossible to make rational decisions and informed choices. So, when our kids anticipate or experience an unpleasant outcome, their emotions get the better of them, resulting in the equally unpleasant behavior that we’ve come to dread.

Regulators, Mount Up

Because kids don’t have the neural capacity to emotionally regulate themselves appropriately, it’s up to us as parents to help them develop it. Regulation can be divvied into 3 parts:

Co-regulation. Infants and toddlers cannot self-regulate on their own, so a caregiver must help the child soothe in times of stress. For instance, if the baby is crying, we pick them up and rock them. If they’re hungry, we give them a bottle. The consistent care and support we provide our little ones establishes their self-regulation skills as they grow. Fun fact: It also informs the type of the traits/comfort they look for in their future partner.

Self-regulation. As our toddlers turn into preschoolers, their self-awareness has increased. From their co-regulating observations and experience, they begin to test what tools work in managing their arousal level and, in turn, their behaviors to a given task or activity. A lot of trial-and-error and practice occurs during this time frame.

Emotional regulation. Around elementary school age, kids learn how to monitor, evaluate, and modify their emotions as it relates to various situations. It involves behaviors like reframing a thought to reduce anger or anxiety, concealing visible signs or fear or sadness, or focusing on the positives to feel happy or calm.

If the path to emotional regulation starts with co-regulation, that means the relationships we have with our kids directly influence how they handle their emotions.

Some Strings Attached

Attachment theory suggests that babies are hardwired to “attach” to their caregivers. How a parent responds to cries of need can impact a child’s internal thought patterns, including their emotions. The interactions between parent and child can be categorized into four different attachment styles:

• Secure attachment. The child feels safe, soothed, seen, and secure with their caregiver. They view their parents as a secure base from which they can come and go, venturing out to explore their surroundings.
  
  
• Anxious/Ambivalent attachment. The child feels anxious because the parent is inconsistently attentive to their needs (one moment they’re present, the next moment they are unavailable). They may be clingy with their parents and become distressed when they leave. They are also hard to soothe even when the parents return. With an anxious parent, a child can also sense the parent’s anxiety and cannot soothe because of it.
  
  
• Avoidant/Dismissive attachment. If a parent is emotionally unavailable, the child feels like they can only rely on themselves. The have learned to that the best way to get the needs met is to pretend like they don’t have any and learning to disassociate themselves from their own emotions. However, they tend to show aggression with other peers.
  
  
• Disorganized attachment. The child is afraid of the parent due to unpredictable behavior. They do not feel safe with their caregiver but rely on them to feel safe and secure as they don’t have a choice. This results in the child becoming anxious and cautious of others.

Self-Work

One way to address our kid’s behaviors is to work on our own. If we put in our emotional work, we can than be better role models for our children in how they deal with their feelings. After all, they learn by watching us and absorbing everything we do. Some strategies include:

• Learning to regulate our emotions and responses to stress
• Becoming mindful on how distracted or distant we can be when it comes to spending time with our kids and finding ways to reduce it
• Handling our own childhood traumas and habits
• Showing up for our kids, especially when they need us

Remember, a dysregulated parent cannot help a dysregulated child.

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To summarize, challenging behaviors are influenced by emotions. However, children don’t have the capability to appropriately deal with their feelings, resulting in tantrums and outbursts. So, it’s up to caregivers to help them learn to regulate their emotions. We need to be conscious of how we support them (as well as our own emotions) as it influences their actions later on. WOW, no pressure there.

Despite all the hard work and pressure we can put on ourselves to be amazing parents, challenging behaviors can still persist. In part 2 of this round of course notes, we’ll talk ways on how to identify the root cause of behaviors and strategies to handle them.

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