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Brain-based parenting

What is “the crage”? In my family, it describes “crazy rage” - the sort of shouty anger and tantrums you expect of a toddler- but in this case, it was my adult tantrums that coined the term. There is also the “blage”, a portmanteau of “blind-rage” which would happen when emotional overwhelm and PMS coincided! This embarrassingly unregulated behaviour started before I had children, but when I did have children, I saw it reflected back at me. Of course, my children have the excuse of having under-developed frontal lobes, what’s my excuse? It turns out no-one really taught me how to manage my emotions, maybe this resonates with you too?

What does emotion regulation mean?

It’s a parenting and psychobabble buzzword - but what does emotion regulation actually mean? Managing our emotions appropriately is a cornerstone of our mental health. When emotional responses are excessive, inappropriate, or even non-existent there is a lack of emotion regulation. A lot goes into emotion regulation- first we need the ability to recognise something internally (like tiredness) or externally (like someone insulting you) and assign a value to it. Based on our prior experiences and physiological factors (like our levels of sleep, hormones… hangriness), various triggers will initiate some sort of action in the world. All of these complex processes rely on networks of brain regions -coordinating internal states, emotions, memory, motivation and responses. No surprise then, that kids might not be the best at this- and that even grown-ups can end up with a disproportionate response to situations (ever shouted in anger at someone on the road for taking 2 seconds too long to respond to a traffic light turning green?!)

The student and the teacher

Many of us find ourselves learning how to regulate our own emotions while teaching our children how to regulate theirs. And all this happens on a background of sleep deprivation (one of the top causes of emotional dysregulation), stress, overwhelm and, frankly, exhaustion! It is no wonder that we find ourselves losing out sh*t while our kids are losing their sh*t, leaving us feeling guilty and them no closer to knowing how to manage their emotions. We can’t teach emotional regulation if we aren’t teaching by example- no matter how much you tell your children how to behave- like it or not, they will learn from your behaviour.

Manage your own rage

🔥🔥🔥 Recognise your triggers

My personal trigger is being late. I used to get so frustrated when we were running late and my daughter was taking a long time to do simple things, like getting dressed. So I reframed this- I decided it wasn’t my problem if she was late and she certainly wasn’t getting dressed quicker with me shouting at her. Provided I am giving her reasonable reminders of the time (her brain doesn’t yet have a good sense of what 20 minutes means), her lateness is a consequence she has to deal with. If she is late, she has to explain to her teacher why she is late (she doesn’t want to do this, so she tends to get ready on time). Instead of shouting at her, I remind her of this and I break up the getting ready process into tiny manageable chunks.

⏱️⏱️⏱️ Time things

Your perception of time is affected by your emotional states- positive states make time go faster (time flies when you’re having fun) and negative states make time go slower (a watched pot never boils). This interacts with your arousal state- so when you are in a heightened state of anger (negative state) time goes even slower. The effect might be feeling like a tantrum has been going on for 20 minutes, when it has actually only been 5 minutes. Taking note of the real time, helps put the tantrum into perspective.

🚪🚪🚪Leave

If you find yourself getting ragey, simply leave. As long as your kids are safe, take a time out to breathe and regulate your emotions. Use a body scan to put your attention on your present state and away from the physiological feeling of your emotions taking over your body. Deep breathing works well, by sending signals to slow your heart rate down.

🫶🏽🫶🏽🫶🏽 Apologise

If you lose your sh*t and find yourself shouting at your kids (or your partner), apologise. Explain that it wasn’t appropriate for you to get so angry and that is not a good way to manage your emotions.

What does this mean for my parenting?

✅ Emotional regulation is a skill, we need to teach it. Name emotions, empathise and offer ways to manage them. The first stage of emotion regulation is recognising the emotion before it triggers the action. Kids struggle with this, so they might get upset but not know what is causing it.

❌ Don’t dismiss, distract or diminish emotions. Children feel emotions more strongly than adults. While it is tempting to tell them “it’s not important, it doesn’t matter, it’s not that bad” this doesn’t help children recognise the emotion, it discourages them from sharing it (because it is dismissed or denied) and it causes them to question their own feelings.

✅ Give emotions a scale. This helps further label the emotion and puts some context and a pause on it. Emotions can be overwhelming when they aren’t dealt with soon enough, allowing them to escalate quickly. Put a number from 1-10 on the emotion- for example, a calm state is 1, a bit of frustration is 4 and a tantrum is 9 or 10. Teach children to bring the emotion down from 4, 5 or 6 before they get to 10.

✅ Look out for emotions that are too difficult to manage and are causing disruption to your family, your children’s school life or their ability to make friends. While most children experience most emotions intensely, when anger is really uncontrollable, anxiety or sadness is frequent and affects day-to-day life, or defiance is a constant problem - then seek advice from teachers, a GP or a specialist as these may be signs of behavioural or mental health problems.

❌ Emotional regulation does not mean being quiet and compliant. Although it is easier for us, if children just stop having a tantrum because they are “disciplined”, this is likely just the suppression of emotion out of fear or compliance. That is the opposite of what we want. Children should learn to manage their emotion, not suppress it.

Welcome to the community! If you're new here, I am Dr Michele Veldsman, neuroscientist, tech entrepreneur and mum of 2 (age 4 and 7). 

I am on a mission to support parents with real, evidence and science-backed parenting advice. I want to make parenting less lonely and less overwhelming. 

What you can find in my parenting community: 

1. A fortnightly, evidence-based newsletter (you can catch old editions here: https://playroom.beehiiv.com/)

2. A guide to brain-based parenting here