How to Calm the Chaos in Dysregulated Kids So They Can Thrive
Join us as we delve into Dayna’s journey, exploring her profound insights, unraveling the essence of her teachings, and discovering how her expertise can transform our approach to parenting, mindfulness, and finding harmony in the chaos of everyday life.
Guest Expert: Dayna Abraham
We’ve all heard the labels. Strong-willed, spirited, explosive, and highly sensitive. As parents of kids who have been marked as “difficult” we need an alternative road map to guide us where conventional parenting tools have failed. We need a way to calm the chaos. My next guest explains that there are five steps to calming the chaos, each step bringing us closer to family success even as emotions run high so that we can build a safe haven in our homes that support healthy kids.
Bio:
Dayna Abraham, bestselling author of Calm the Chaos: A Fail-Proof Roadmap for Parenting Even the Most Challenging Kids. As a National Board Certified educator, parent of three neurodivergent children, and an ADHD adult herself, Dayna brings a unique and out-of-the-box perspective to parents raising kids in the modern world.
Through her compassionate framework, Calm the Chaos, she has helped millions of desperate parents around the world, find peace and meet their children where they’re at when conventional parenting tools have failed them.
Important messages:
It’s so important to see our children as a whole being not as a label, not looking to lead with their deficit, but understanding the challenges that they have and understanding their strengths, which so often can get obliterated by those negative labels.
Five stage roadmap for helping parents calm the chaos: (1) Calm yourself, (2) Renew your energy source (3) Make a plan on how you are going to show up in the heat of the moment (4) Know what is causing the most disconnection and who to focus on (5) Talk to the other kid that was involved
Checking our own self in terms of how we react to tantrums and how we connect or disconnect when our child is dysregulated, is not overly pleasant but it’s important.
Knowing the right time: Now is not the time to fix or solve or reprimand because they’re not be able to access what we’re trying to do with their logical brain. We are not able to access it if we are not calm. But that doesn’t mean I’m letting them get away with it. It just means that after the fact, when we have both gotten to a regulated state, we can solve the problem.
On child being very emotional and sensitive: It can mean that they have a heightened sense of awareness. All the input of the things coming in around them overloads their nervous system that causes them to shut down and become oversensitive.
Kids who are highly sensitive just need time to be alone. It is not about you. They may need time to just interact with something calm, whether it’s a book or something physical.
Reason behind kid’s aggression: (1) Hitting, kicking, and breaking the toy- It is their go-to stress response instead of the freeze or the flea. (2) They lack the proprioceptive input they need.
Operation warm hug: It is a little of two things: (1) Connecting to other adults (2) Connecting with your children.
Notable quotable:
“It’s so important to see our children as a whole being not as a label, not looking to lead with their deficit, but understanding the challenges that they have and understanding their strengths, which so often can get obliterated by those negative labels.”
“Kids who are highly sensitive just need time to be alone. It is not about you. They may need time to just interact with something calm, whether it’s a book or something physical.”
“If we are not feeling connected to other humans, meaning other adults, then it’s going to be hard for us to also then feel connected with our kids.”
“Parenting is an iterative process. I like to think of it like going to get going to get braces at the orthodontist. You don’t go get your braces and the next day you have these beautiful straight pearly whites. Instead it takes years and a lot of painful tweaks over time to get these beautiful, like straight white teeth, which I don’t have.”
