Kids hold it together during the day at school and camp and daycare and grandma's house because they instinctively trust you to hold their tenderest emotional states. It's called RESTRAINT COLLAPSE.
Your attachment relationship is the place they feel the most comfortable expressing their strong feelings.
So many things happen during their days that they don't have the time or the secure place to feel and process, so those things come out at the end of the day with you.
But not always directly. Sometimes they go sideways about something seemingly small because they just don't have executive functioning skills to connect their emotional state to something that happened hours before.
When your kids get home and start melting down, offer them compassion and a safe place to be emotionally messy. And a protein snack. And be kind to yourself, you're not failing, you're their safe place.
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In this video, learn about the importance of timing when teaching children how to regulate their emotions, and why it's essential to wait until they have calmed down before offering guidance.
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Learn how to support your child when they feel jealous with these 3 essential steps - empathize, regulate, and guide - to help them understand and cope with this normal and complex emotion, in this insightful video.
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In this video, Dr. Laura Markham shares practical tips on how to help kids and parents manage boredom by staying in a place of compassionate teaching, which involves expressing empathy, helping kids notice body sensations, developing the habit of seeing boredom as an unidentified need state, being patient, and teaching kids to discover their own options without collapsing into despair.
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