Ep #213: Turning Down the Heat on Your Family’s Emotional Temperature

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 am so excited. To be with you here today. Let me share what happened with one of my clients the other day. Her teenager, let’s call him Josh, was absolutely losing it over a video game. Can you relate? I mean, the emotional temperature in their house was at a full boil.

Controller thrown, door slammed, the works. But what happened next made me so proud of the work we’ve been doing together. Instead of matching the heat with her own anger. My client, we’ll call her Andrea, took a deep breath and calmly said to her son, I see you’re having a hard time not giving me a hard time.

When you’re ready to talk, I’m here. Like turning down a thermostat, the emotional temperature in their home dropped from boiling to a manageable simmer in minutes instead of hours. When we discuss this in our next coaching session, Andrea said something profound. She said, Lisa, a year ago, I would have turned up that heat by matching his energy and it would have made everything worse.

And now I know how to cool things down that right there. That’s what we’re going to talk about today. How to cool things down. Learning how to turn down the heat on your family’s emotional temperature is a game changer. It’s about creating an environment where heated moments don’t have to escalate into full boiling points.

Where all emotions are welcomed, understood, and processed in healthy ways. You see, I’ve noticed something fascinating in my last 15 years of coaching parents. Those who raise emotionally resilient kids, they’re not perfect parents with perfect kids who never reach a boiling point. No, no, no, no, no. They’re parents who’ve learned specific habits that help them regulate their family’s emotional temperature.

Let me say that again, those who raise emotionally resilient kids, they’re not perfect parents with perfect kids who never reach a boiling point. What they are is they’re parents who’ve learned specific habits. that help them regulate their family’s emotional temperature. And that’s what I want to help you with.

So let’s talk about what’s actually happening as our kids develop, as their brains develop. Our toddlers and preschoolers, their emotional thermostats are just starting to develop. That’s why a three year old can go from cool as a cucumber to boiling over a broken cookie. They literally don’t have the brain structure yet to regulate their emotional temperature.

Our elementary school kids are slowly building these internal thermostats, but they still need tons of help, especially when emotions run hot and teenagers, ho ho ho, even though they look grown, their emotional regulation systems aren’t fully developed until their mid twenties. That’s why your 16 year old might still heat up quickly and slam doors.

When he or she is upset. This is why co regulation is so crucial. When we maintain our cool, we’re literally helping our kids regulate their emotional temperature until they can develop their own internal thermostat. Think of it like teaching a child to regulate bathwater. First, we do it completely for them.

That’s us providing complete regulation support. Then we guide their hand as they test the temperature. Think of that as the co regulation. And finally, they can adjust it independently. That’s self regulation. Before we dive into exactly how to do this, I want you to take a moment. Think about the last time your child had big emotions.

Maybe it was frustration over homework. Anxiety over social situation or anger about a sibling conflict. How hot did things get? How did you respond and how did you feel in that moment? Here’s what I want you to know. If things boiled over and you didn’t handle it the way you wished you had, you’re not alone.

There’s no judgment. I promise. And more importantly, it’s never ever too late to learn how to regulate your family’s emotional temperature.

Maria came to me struggling with her four year old epic tantrums. Every little thing seemed to trigger an explosion. And Maria found herself often yelling back more than she’d like to admit. Sound familiar? Well, here’s what we discovered. Maria was snorkeling at the surface. Focusing on the behavior, the screaming, the throwing, the defiance.

But once she learned to scuba dive down to the feelings and needs underneath, everything changed. And instead of saying, stop crying, it’s just a broken crayon. Maria started saying things like, Oh honey, you seem really frustrated that your crayon broke. Gosh, it’s so hard when things don’t work the way we want them to, isn’t it?

And let me share with you that the tantrums didn’t disappear overnight, but they became shorter, less intense over time. And most importantly, Maria and her daughter started learning from them and communicating with each other. Amazing, yeah? Okay, now I want to share seven powerful habits. I’ve seen transformed families in the hive.

These are the exact tools that you need to maintain a healthy emotional climate in your home. You ready? Let’s dig in. Habit number one is model calm responses. Think about it. Our kids are watching us all the time. They’re like little scientists studying how we handle stress. Disappointment, frustration, anger.

Let me tell you about Tom, a dad in the hive with three teenagers. He used to pride himself on running a tight ship until he realized his quick temper was creating a home where everyone walked on eggshells. Now, he uses what we call the get curious, not furious approach. Instead of immediately reacting with anger when a 16 year old misses curfew, he pauses and gets curious.

Help me understand what happened tonight. Habit number two, validate your kid’s feelings. Let me ask you, when was the last time someone truly validated your feelings? At work? Maybe your partner? Your best friend? Your mother? How did it feel? Probably felt pretty darn good. Here’s what I need you to hear.

Validation doesn’t mean agreeing with your kid’s behavior. It means acknowledging the emotion behind it. When 12 year old Emma was devastated about not being invited to a party, her mom’s first instinct was to say, Come on, it’s not a big deal. We’re doing something really fun this weekend anyway, but instead she tried to validate her daughter’s feelings.

She said, wow, being left out really hurts. I remember feeling that way too. That simple shift of validating the feelings created a moment of deep connection. Habit number three, teach coping strategies. Here’s where the magic happens. When we’re regulated ourselves, we can teach our kids practical tools.

They can use anywhere, anytime. Let me tell you about Rachel from our hive community. Her eight year old son, Marcus was struggling with anger outbursts during baseball games together. They developed what he called his cooling down toolbox, his favorite tool, the balloon breath breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth.

Like he’s filling and deflating a balloon. Rachel shared this proud moment. She said, watching him step away from home plate after a strike, taking his balloon breath, and then stepping up to bat with renewed focus. I was the proudest mom in the baseball field that day. Y’all that’s the power of teaching coping strategies at any time.

I want that for you. And I want that for your kids. Habit number four, helping our kids name their emotions. Did you know that just naming an emotion study show can reduce its intensity by up to 50%? And that’s exactly why. I teach parents in the Hive to be emotional scientists with their kids. One of my clients, Jennifer, transformed her relationship with her six year old daughter using our emotional detective approach.

Instead of getting frustrated when her daughter would shut down, she’d say, I’m wondering if you’re feeling disappointed about not going to the park, or maybe it’s something else. Just opening that door to the emotional vocabulary made a huge difference. Now her daughter comes to her saying things like, Mom, I’m feeling a mix of excitement and nervousness about my first sleepover.

So good, right? Habit number five. You set clear boundaries or limits with compassion. Hear this, limits and compassion aren’t opposites, they’re partners. I recently worked with a dad whose 15 year old daughter, Sophia, was having daily meltdowns about phone privileges. Instead of getting into power struggles, He learned to say, I understand you’re angry about the phone boundary.

The rule about no phones after 9 p. m. stays the same and I’m here to talk about it and how it feels. What happened next was beautiful. Sophia actually opened up about feeling left out of her friend’s late night group chats. This led to a conversation about finding ways to stay connected with your friends while maintaining healthy tech boundaries.

Habit number six, don’t punish emotions. This is huge, my friends, and I beg you to hear this. When we punish emotions, we teach our kids to suppress them and hide them from us and themselves. One of my clients shared a breakthrough moment with their 7 year old son. He was crying after losing a soccer game.

And she said, Lisa, my old instinct would have been to say, big boys don’t cry. And I realized that statement was punishing him for his feelings and shaming him. She said, instead, I heard you in my head telling me to get curious, not furious. And I started by sitting with him and I said, it’s okay to feel disappointed.

Would you like to talk about the game? Lisa, he looked at me with eyes of love and understanding. And I realized that this simple shift. From shutting down emotions to creating space for them changed everything. She said, I noticed he’s now coming to me a lot more with his big feelings and wanting to talk about him instead of hiding them.

That my friends is connection. And that brings us to our seventh habit, which is encourage and engage in problem solving. This is where we help our kids build real world emotional intelligence. Let me talk to you about Maya, a mom in the hive who is struggling with her 13 year old’s homework battles.

Instead of jumping in to fix everything when he was frustrating, or tell him to just power through. She tried something different. She said to her son, I can see you’re really stuck on this problem. What have you tried so far? What else could you try? At first he was resistant and she was frustrated. He wanted her to just give him the answer and frankly that would have been easier.

But over time, he started developing his own strategies. She said last week I watched him break down a difficult problem into smaller parts. Without any prompting. He’s figuring things out on his own and he’s problem solving in math that he can take to other areas of his life. That’s the power of guiding rather than fixing.

Okay. I want you to take a moment right now. I want to ask you which of these seven habits feels most challenging to you because chances are one does. One really hit you in the gut. That’s the one I want you to start practicing today. Your homework this week, pick one of these seven habits to focus on.

Just one, write it down somewhere. You’ll see it daily. Maybe you want to write, get curious, not furious, or maybe you want to write, my child is having a hard time not giving me a hard time. Maybe you want to write, encourage problem solving. Put it on your bathroom mirror. Make it your phone wallpaper. Put it somewhere where you’ll see it in those triggering moments.

Where you can take the temperature down for the whole family. Now, if you’re listening and you’re thinking, yeah, this is exactly what I need to do. And I’ve tried it in the past and it hasn’t worked, or I don’t know how to actually regulate my family’s emotional temperature. I get it. Believe me, I do. And if that’s you, then I want to personally invite you to join us in the hive.

This is where you and I can dive deep into emotional regulation, both you and your kids. This is where I can help you develop strategies and provide coaching and support for your unique family situation in the hive. You’ll learn exactly how to stay cool. When your child’s heating up, you’ll learn how to identify and address the root cause of emotional storms.

You’ll learn how to build a toolbox of regulation strategies. That work for your family, your unique situation. And in The Hive, you’ll learn exactly how to create an emotional climate where everyone in your family can thrive. Everyone. And here’s the thing. I really want you to hear this. You do not have to figure this out alone.

You do not have to keep riding the emotional rollercoaster of reactive parenting. There’s a different way and I’m here to show you how. So if this feels like the moment or the time to take the emotional temperature down in your family, then I want you to head over to thehivecoaching. com where you can learn more and join our community of parents who are transforming their family’s emotional climate one regulated response at a time.

You won’t be sorry. I promise. Now, as we close today, I want you to remember that emotional regulation isn’t about keeping things cold or suppressing emotions. It’s about finding that just right temperature where all feelings can be expressed and processed in healthy ways. And you’re the leader in the family that’s going to model and co regulate to find that just right temperature for all of you.

So good, right? Okay, until next time, 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.