Picture this.
It is a Tuesday evening. Dinner is on the stove, homework is on the table, and your child loses it completely because their cup is the wrong color. What started as a normal night has turned into something that feels completely out of proportion to what just happened.
It is normal to feel frustrated in these moments. You had a long day at work. You are physically and emotionally exhausted. Somewhere underneath all of that, you are probably wondering what is actually going on inside their head. Why do the littlest things seem to set them off?
Understanding the why certainly won’t make the meltdowns go away, but it can provide empathy and understanding.
Nothing is wrong with your child. They are not trying to make your life difficult. Decision making portions of the brain are not fully formed until almost 25 years old. Your child is doing the best they can with the brain they have, which is very much under construction.
The prefrontal cortex which is the part of the brain responsible for logic, impulse control, and regulating emotions is not fully formed until a person’s mid-twenties. Your child is not conciously choosing to fall apart over a cup. Their brain genuinely does not yet have the tools to manage big feelings the way yours does. Understanding that changes everything about how we respond in those moments.
Dr. Dan Siegel coined a term I use constantly in my work with families: flipping your lid. It is a simple hand model of the brain that explains what happens when emotions take over. When we flip our lid, the thinking part of our brain goes offline. We are no longer able to reason, problem-solve, or regulate. We are just reacting. This happens in children constantly. And if we are being honest, it happens in adults more than most of us would like to admit.
This video is one I share a lot with families in the beginning stages of therapy. It is great to watch with your child also, as it gives them understanding and language to use when they feel like they are close to flipping their lid.
When we know this, we can approach our child's hardest moments from a place of curiosity instead of frustration. Instead of asking why would you do that, we can get quiet and ask ourselves what they needed in that moment that they did not have the words to ask for. That shift is small in theory. It is enormous in practice.
Dr. Gary Landreth, whose work forms the foundation of a lot of what we do at KMG, talks about five attitudes he calls the Be With Attitudes. They are simple and they are powerful. I See You. I Hear You. I Understand. I Care. I Delight in You. These are not about agreeing with every behavior or rescuing your child from every hard moment. They are about presence. About staying in it with them, even when it is messy.
Twenty years from now, your children will not remember the cup. They will not remember the meltdown. What they will remember is whether they felt seen. Whether the person they needed most showed up. Whether they knew, even in the hardest moments, that they were not alone.
Building that kind of relationship starts with understanding. And understanding starts with the brain.
Parenting is not a straight line. We all get it wrong in new and creative ways every single day. But the goal was never perfection. The goal is connection. And that is always worth working toward.
-Kallie