Ep #79: How to Stay Calm When Your Child is Storming

Welcome to Real World Peaceful Parenting, a podcast for parents that are tired of yelling, threatening, and punishing their kids. Join mom and master certified parent coach Lisa Smith as she gives you actionable step-by-step strategies that’ll help you transform your household from chaos to cooperation. Let’s dive in.

Welcome, welcome, welcome. Welcome to today’s episode. I absolutely love being with you here each week. Today, we’re going to talk about an important topic. This is a question I get asked all the time from my clients that I work with and from parents that I meet. People asked me, “Lisa, why do I storm alongside my kids? Why can’t I stop? Why do I storm? What do I do about it?”

Well, let me ask you, when your child’s start storming at any age, your child or your kids, whether you have one, two, or many. Ask yourself what exactly is going through your mind at the moment in the middle of the storming? Think about it for a minute. Do you have any idea what’s going on? What is your thought? When your child starts storming, you have a thought. What I want you to do is try to locate the thought.

I know for me and many parents I coach a common thought our brains jump to is things like oh come on. Really? Again? Give me a break. Why can I ever get a break? Well, if this is true for you, I have great news. I want you to keep listening. What this thought response tells me is that your brain is still feeling like the storm is happening to you. That your child is giving you a hard time and you’re taking it personally.

Now, there can be many reasons why you feel this way. It could be from deep seated wounds that you’ve been carrying around your whole life. Or it could just be that you haven’t had a good night’s sleep, and you’re tired. Or maybe you have fears about your kids and your relationship. Maybe you’re overwhelmed by your finances. Maybe your health isn’t going so well, or you don’t love your job. Or it can be a combination of any of these things and more.

Please, please, please hear this. If you are taking it personally when your kids storms, this does not make you a bad parent. Not at all. Let me tell you it takes work to not take the storming personally. It does. But I can tell you with 100% certainty that this work is possible, doable, and has a huge payoff or benefit to it.

The tool I want to share with you today is to train your brain to have a different thought in the middle of your child’s storm so that you don’t end up storming right alongside him, her, or them. Now here’s what you need to know. Our brains do not differentiate between an internal threat and an external threat. That means your brain doesn’t know any difference between protecting you from a charging lion who spotted you falling off the back of a truck on an African safari and protecting you from your six year old who’s screaming, kicking, crying, and throwing, having a storm, and has no idea what need he has or how to calm themselves down.

Please hear this. To your brain, a threat is a threat, and your brain is going to respond the same way no matter how truly life threatening the threat is. Your brain responds exactly the same with fight or flight. Because its most important and immediate job is to protect you from all threats.

Now we live in a time where the threats are certainly not a lion about to eat you off the back of a truck. But, again, your brain responds exactly the same way with fight or flight. Because the brain’s most important and immediate job is to protect you from all threats. For many of us, our kids storming hits us as an internal threat, which makes our body feel as threatened as if we were being chased by a lion. Now, this is all happening on a very subconscious level unless you know what’s going on, which is what I’m here to share with you today.

Because our brain, it’s most important job is to protect you from all threats. If we perceive our kids storming as a threat, we storm right alongside them for protection. It’s almost impossible for humans to remain unaffected by a real or perceived threat unless you’re trained to do it. The good news is I’m going to train you today right now on how to stop seeing your kids storming as a threat, and how to stop taking it personally.

You have the tools and everything you need to train your brain to remain calm in the middle of your child’s storms. I promise. Let me say that again. You, yes, you. You. I know it’s hard to believe, but right now you have all the tools and everything you need to train your brain to remain calm in the middle of your child’s storms.

So here’s the aha moment that I want you to have with today’s episode. Are you ready? Parents who do not perceive their child’s storming as a threat do not storm alongside their kids. Let me say that again. Parents who do not perceive their child’s storming as a threat do not storm alongside their kids. Now, hopefully, the light bulb went off and you’re like, “Oh, I get it Lisa. I get what you’re saying. Finally, I get it.”

So this is your goal, and it’s the tool itself. To stop feeling threatened by your kid’s big storms and emotions. Can you see this? Are you thinking wow, that makes total sense? Right? All right let’s take this a layer deeper.

So here’s how you accomplish this. The work is to convince yourself with your thoughts that you are safe, that all as well, that this storm is not happening to you. This thought work is literally with the intent to brainwash yourself into believing that you are safe while your child is storming. But it’s important to understand that this brainwashing thought work needs to happen between the storms, not in the middle of them. This is so important that you hear this. Before and after and in between the storms, but never, ever, ever in the middle of the storm.

Let me say that again. The work is literally with the intent of brainwashing yourself to believe you are safe while your child is storming. But it’s important to understand this brainwashing thought work needs to happen between the storms.

Let me explain. If the only time you’re doing this work is when your child is already storming and you already have the belief that he is doing this to you, then you’re too late. The threat is already there. At the moment of the threat or attack, your brain will instantly go into protection mode because it believes the attack is a threat and real.

So in between the storms, you have to repeat to yourself 100 times a day, he’s not giving me a hard time, he’s having a hard time. They’re not giving me a hard time, they’re having a hard time. I’m safe when she storms. He is not attacking me. He has a need that has nothing to do with me. I am safe. I am safe. I am safe.

The more you marinate in these thoughts, the more you will believe them. The more you believe them, the more your brain will find evidence to support them. The more evidence your brain finds to support them, the more you will feel safe, secure, and regulated in the middle of your child’s storm. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, right? Ah, so good. I’m so excited to bring this information to you today.

Here’s the bonus, your mind will no longer be busy protecting you during your kid’s storms. So it’s immediate task will instead be to figure out what is the cause of the storm. It will jump in investigative mode. It will seek out the need that has triggered the storm and immediately start searching for ways to help meet that need. All the while you remain regulated and in your higher brain. This is your goal. This is the work to be done to build deep connection and cooperation with your kids. Coincidentally, this work will also be the key to healing some of those deep seated childhood wounds of your own as well.

Now, let me say if the only time you’re telling yourself you’re safe is when your child is already storming, your brain is going to say see, see, see? There it is again. Your brain will take on its defensive posture. In that defensive posture, you will end up in fight or flight and storm alongside your child. So the key takeaway from today’s episode is to understand how important it is you do the thought work between the storms.

Remember. When you think a thought over and over and over again, it becomes a belief. A belief that becomes a core value that becomes the fabric that makes you, you. When something becomes a belief, your mind looks for evidence to prove it’s true. If it can’t find evidence, it takes things happening in twists and turns it into evidence to support your beliefs. The only assignment your brain gives you is to find evidence to support what you believe to be true.

If your belief is that your kid storming is a sign of him or her giving you a hard time, if you believe that your kid storming is a sign of disrespect, a sign that she never listens, your brain will not stop in the middle of that storm and give you time to practice a new belief. It will not. 100% of the time it will not stop in the middle of storm and discern whether you should believe this belief or not. It will not question it. Really, is that a good idea?

All your brain will do in the middle of a storm is look for evidence to support the belief. Your brain is using the storm as evidence to support the belief that he’s giving me a hard time. So it says things to you like give me a break. I never get a break. This is ridiculous. I can’t believe he’s doing this. The storm will provide evidence that you never get a break. This is exactly why you have to work on it while there isn’t storming.

Outside the storm, you have to tell your brain over and over and over again. Listen, brain, these thoughts are not serving me. This is a limiting belief. It’s a thought that does not serve me, my life, or my relationships. I need to let go of the belief that he’s giving me a hard time, that she’s disrespectful, that I never get a break. I need a better thought.

Then you find a thought that you equally believe and replace it with the limiting thought. Then you think it over and over and over again. Like around 100 times a day.

So the new thought might be my kid storming has nothing to do with me. My kid storming has nothing to do with me. I am safe. My kid storming has nothing to do with me. Lisa says my kid storming has nothing to do with me. Then in the middle of the storm, your brain’s job will be to figure out why he’s storming instead of the job of protecting you from the perceived threat.

So good. Yes. Ah, I love this. I love sharing this with you. Working on new thoughts around your kid storming is a total game changer. I promise you, this is one of the most useful tools you can bring into your parenting to create deep connection and cooperation with your kids. If you do nothing else but work on this, it’s a total game changer in the relationship with your children.

Now, maybe you’re also concerned about the actual storms your kids are having. Maybe you’re saying, “Okay, Lisa, I am going to work on my thoughts. I’m going to work on brainwashing myself that he’s not giving me a hard time, he’s having a hard time. And Lisa, I also need you to understand the behavior is so awful I need to do something. The storming feels so out of control, and I need help.” Maybe you’re saying, “Help me, Lisa, show me what to do.”

I get it. I felt this way too. I was desperate for help, support, and guidance. So if this is you, I want to take a minute here to personally invite you to my free upcoming masterclass titled How to Get Your Kids to Stop Disrespecting You and Do What You Ask The First Time Without Yelling, Punishing, or Threatening.

The class is on July 19. I’m going to share with you three things parents do that lead kids to disobey, disrespect, and ignore them. I know it’s true. I’m going to share with you what you can do instead to instantly get more cooperation and respect from your kids.

I’m going to share with you what I wish someone had told me when Malcolm was four instead of just screaming at him so I could get a precious five minutes of peace and quiet. I’m going to share with you real world stories of parents who turned things around with their kids. Proof that small changes are all it takes.

Now, if you want relief tools, and you want to change things in your household, this class is for you. If you’re ready for transformation and if you want to feel hopeful that the way you and your kids interact now is not how it’s going to be forever, this class is for you. After this class, you’re going to come away with new tools and simple action items to shift things between you and your kids for the better.

After my free class, you’re going to come away with the hope that things can change and know that you’re not alone. After this free class, you’ll know exactly what you need to do next, I promise. Now if this sounds amazing to you and you feel ready for a change, I want you to go to thepeacefulparent.com/workshop and sign up for the free class happening on July 19. You will not be sorry. I 100% promise. Again, either click on the link in the show notes or go to thepeacefulparent.com/workshop to sign up. I cannot wait to work with you. Until we meet again, I’m wishing you peaceful parenting.

Thanks for listening to Real World Peaceful Parenting. If you want more info on how you can transform your parenting, visit thepeacefulparent.com. See you soon.