To be calm is synonymous with being levelheaded, peaceful, patient, and composed.Remaining calm, however, is difficult to do with challenging children. The usual reactionsof frustrated parents are to impose their wills, retaliate, or withdraw to avoid a fight. The only effective way to positively influence children is to gain their trust, making them willing to follow your direction. A calm and consistent approach works best. There are several unhealthy payoffs for children when parents are emotionally agitated rather than remaining calm.
• You are not in a leadership role. You are reacting to your child, who is now taking the lead. This erodes your child’s confidence in you as a reliable caregiver and safe authority figure. “How can I trust you when I have the power to make you so emotionally upset?”
• You are allowing your child to replicate the stressful and dysfunctional patterns of relating that your child experienced in a prior family or institution. “I’m used to turmoil and conflict; I can do this well, and never have to change.”
• You are reinforcing your child’s negative core beliefs; “Your anger and disapproval affirm my belief that I am bad and undeserving of love.”
• You are likely to expect less of your child—keep the bar low—in order to avoid more stress and conflict. “I can wear you down, you’ll leave me alone, and I’m off the hook.”
• You are feeding into your child’s discomfort with and desire to avoid emotional closeness, by perpetuating an adversarial and emotionally distant relationship. “As long as we are mad at each other, I don’t have to be close.”
Although it is important to be calm and centered with all children, it is critical to remain emotionally balanced with children who have compromised attachment. These children did not receive adequate emotional regulation from caregivers; they missed the necessary balance of up-regulation (stimulation) and down-regulation (soothing). Over time, securely attached children internalize parental care and learn self-regulation. These children, however, did not develop the ability to regulate their emotions and impulses. They became behaviorally and biochemically disorganized, resulting in hyperarousal, aggression, impulsivity, and distractibility. They overreact to stimulation, stress, and anxiety. Therefore, you must teach your child to be calm by providing an example of calmness. Calmness reduces your child’s “alarm reaction” (fight-flight-freeze), and allows her to feel safe and secure enough to think rationally and learn.
Dr . Terry Levy and Mr. Michael Orlans co-wrote this article. They are the co-authors of two books and co-lead seminars on attachment and trauma. They welcome hearing from you.
