We have all experienced that saturation point, where we are overwhelmed with joy, anger, sadness, frustration or any other intense emotion and we short-circuit. When our children were toddlers, they had meltdowns; now that they are older, the meltdowns have become shutdowns.
They stop talking, crawl under the table and refuse to come out of hiding. These episodes often happen at school or when completing homework, especially with children who are starting to feel frustrated with learning. It is important for our children to understand and tell the story of where their fears come from. When left unexamined, these fears often grow.
Here are three things you can do to help your child get out of paralysis mode:
- In the heat of the moment, use emotion—not logic—to connect with him. Using a comforting, nurturing approach, sit with your child and just…be. He may not want to talk; if that is the case, allow him some time to just sit and calm down. (Even if he seems calm, he is probably flooded with emotions, hence the shutdown.) Let him know that when he is ready to talk, you would love to listen. When we approach our child using logic, thinking we can reason him out of his mood, we create a wall and leave our child feeling misunderstood and, sometimes, uncared for. There is a time for reason and logic, but the peak of a shutdown is not it.
- Later, when he is more even-keel, help him make sense of the emotional experience. One way to do this is to help your child tell a story around the upsetting event. Fold a paper into three sections and label each ‘beginning’, ‘middle’ and ‘end’. Ask your child what happened at the beginning, right before or right when he first became upset. He may still be so emotional that describing it may be difficult. If this is the case, offer a sentence about the first part of the event from your experience. (Example: “It looked like math was going fine until you got to the division section…is this right?”) Ask your child if this is accurate and then write it down in the ‘beginning’ section. (If he disagrees with your statement, ask him to give his own sentence about what happened first.) Ask him to provide the ‘middle’ and ‘end’ parts of the story. Invite him to illustrate each part. And then ask him what feelings he had during each part of the story. This will help him link the facts of the event with his emotions. Fears and anxieties are much more likely to be resolved with reflection and understanding.
- This may seem surprising, but there is a lot of research to support teaching children about the brain and how it works. When children learn the basics of how they think, learn and process emotion, it often gives them feelings of empowerment and hope. A child can learn that his brain is constantly changing, he can improve in areas that are difficult for him and there are scientific reasons he experiences intense emotions. With this in mind, you can explain the “anatomy of a shutdown” by telling your child that…
- The brain has a part called the amygdala, and it is in charge of really strong emotions like anger and fear.
- When the amygdala gets fired up, it can easily get carried away and hijack the whole brain!
- There is another part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex, and this part is in charge of staying calm and making good decisions.
- Sometimes the amygdala goes wild and turns up the volume on feelings and we don’t know what to do. But when we give ourselves time to calm down, the prefrontal cortex can get back in control. Once that happens, it can help our brains to think back about an upsetting event and make sense of it. This helps our prefrontal cortex grow and get stronger.
Dr. Daniel J. Siegel, in his book The Whole-Brain Child; 12 Revolutionary Strategies To Nurture Your Child’s Developing Mind does a great job at describing these two pieces of the brain as the “upstairs” and the “downstairs” brain. This book is a must-read if your child is regularly shutting—or melting-down!
A note to parents regarding the brain; the prefrontal cortex does not fully mature until the early 20’s. So while it is possible for children to use reasoning and solid problem-solving strategies at times, they are not wired to do this well or consistently. We need to keep our expectations reasonable and flexible as we model and guide them toward growth.
