Have you ever found yourself in a moment where your child is hitting their sibling, stealing snacks, or yelling something hurtful, and all you can think is, “How do I make this stop?”

But what if I told you that the very first thing you do when your kid acts out can change everything about how your child learns to manage their feelings and behaviors?

In This Episode:

• Practical things you can say and do as a parent in order to create an emotionally safe environment, teach your kid to regulate their nervous system, and help them become an emotionally healthy person
• Real-life examples of how to validate emotions while also setting limits around behavior
• How to find clues that will help your child regulate their nervous system
• Tons of ways to help kids release emotional energy from their bodies

Listen to learn exactly what to do the next time your child is acting out, so you can create more calm, safety, and connection in your home.

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Why Your Kid Acts Out (And Why Correction Isn’t Step One)

Let’s start with something important: All behavior is communication. When your child is yelling, hitting, grabbing, or melting down, it’s not just about disobedience. It’s their way of coping with big feelings or an unmet need that they don’t yet have the skills to communicate in a better way.

When we immediately go to correction - "Stop it right now!” or “Don’t do that!” - we’re skipping over the real problem: the emotion or need underneath the behavior. If we move too quickly to discipline or redirection, kids don’t learn how to name and manage what’s happening inside. And honestly, they often have no idea what to do instead. This is why just correcting doesn’t work, and why the chaos often repeats itself tomorrow, or even five minutes later.

So, what’s the first thing you should do when your child acts out? You connect before you correct. The Connection Tool is the heart of the Connected Parenting Process, and it’s a practical, step-by-step way to help kids learn emotional regulation, from the inside out.

The Connection Tool

One of my all-time favorite tools to teach parents is the Connection Tool. In it, you:

1. Notice that something is off with your kid
2. Narrate the behavior you’re seeing
3. Name the emotion
4. Validate how they’re feeling
5. Regulate the nervous system by helping them move through the feeling

Basically, you’re helping to connect the dots between what's going on on the outside and what's going on on the inside.

Validation (letting your kid know that the way they’re feeling makes sense) is crucial, because when kids feel seen and safe, their nervous system begins to calm. Emotional connection always comes before learning or problem solving.

Once you’ve connected with their inner experience, you can move into regulating and problem-solving. Your child needs new ways to cope and to communicate their feelings, thoughts, and needs in ways that work. You can validate their emotion and set a limit at the same time.

Ultimately, you give them the responsibility to figure out better ways to cope with that feeling in the circumstance that they're in.

Here are a few examples:

• “It’s not okay to grab your brother’s snack, but you can ask me for a snack and I’ll help you get one.”
• “If you need to move your body, let’s do some jumping jacks together.”
• “You can’t call out to Mommy at bedtime, so what can you do instead? Do you want to hold my scrunchie while we’re apart from each other?”
• “You can’t hit your brother, but you can hit this pillow.”

Regulating emotion is a tricky thing. It's hard for all of us. Discharging emotion is almost always done through the body. We let the feelings that are stuck inside of us release through our hands, our voice, etc. The goal is to discharge that emotion in a way that doesn’t hurt or cause problems for other people.

You can suggest and show your child other ways to release or change their energy. And their behavior can serve as a clue to what they need. If they want to scream really loud, is there a way that they can regulate by screaming in a way that works for everybody? If they want to hit or be physical, is there a way that they can be physical that doesn't bother anybody?

Try these movements:

• Do jumping jacks
• Drink a glass of water
• Wash their hands
• Do a shimmy-shake
• Hold your hands up and let them use their hands to push against you
• Roll them up in a blanket
• Stomp their feet
• Do a small, simple task like putting a toy on the shelf

Shifting from Correction to Compassionate Witness

I know this approach can feel counterintuitive. Most of us grew up hearing, “Stop that!” or “If you don’t calm down, you’re in trouble.” It takes practice to pause, connect, and wonder about what your child is feeling or needing, instead of jumping right to judgment or solutions.

And you might need to wait a little while for your child to regulate. If they’re in the middle of a Big Feeling Cycle, talking to them and trying to coach them can actually be really triggering. Stay present in that compassionate or neutral space while recognizing this is a kid who's having a hard time.

When my son was 4 years old, he would rage around the house everyday around 4pm. These intense meltdowns would last about 45 minutes - every day! I decided to shift into the role of witness. that I would be there to make sure he (and everyone else) was safe, but I didn’t come at him with any big energy. Almost immediately, his Big Feeling Cycles were shorter and less frequent. Within a week or two, they were almost completely eliminated.

Shifting your lens from “behavior judge” to “compassionate witness” is one of the most powerful changes you can make in your parenting. It means holding the thought, “My child isn’t giving me a hard time. They are having a hard time.” This mindset shift alone can help you stay calmer and more regulated yourself, which in turn helps your child “borrow” your nervous system as they settle down too.

As a parent, you are the emotional leader in your family. Kids’ nervous systems are immature and easily activated. Everything is bigger, louder, and more extreme for them. Giving them grace, and modeling emotional regulation yourself, is a gift that will help them for years to come.

This takes time, and that’s okay. You have to learn to reframe the way you look at the behavior in the first place and then get better at making those guesses about what’s actually going on for your kid.

Keep practicing CALM. Take care of your nervous system and practice self-regulation. Look at your child’s behavior from a compassionate (or even neutral) place. Lead your family with calm confidence.

Related Episodes:

• Episode 2.16: The Connection Tool [New & Improved]
• Episode 87: The 3 Rs of Emotional Regulation

Free Resources:

Get your copy of the Stop Yelling Cheat Sheet!

In this free guide you’ll discover:

✨ A simple tool to stop yelling once you’ve started (This one thing will get you calm.)

✨ 40 things to do instead of yelling. (You only need to pick one!)

✨ Exactly why you yell. (And how to stop yourself from starting.)

✨A script to say to your kids when you yell. (So they don't follow you around!)

Download the Stop Yelling Cheat Sheet here

Connect With Darlynn:

• Book a complimentary session with Darlynn
• Learn about the different parenting programs at www.calmmamacoaching.com
• Follow me on Instagram @darlynnchildress for daily tips
• Rate and review the podcast on Itunes

Welcome back to Become a Calm Mama. I'm your host. I'm Darlin Childress.

I'm a life and parenting coach. And over the last couple

of weeks on the podcast, we've been talking about connection.

So in the connected parenting process, there are four

pillars. The first is calm. It's all about you and

your ability to emotionally regulate. And the tool we

use in calm is called the calm break. There's been a lot

of episodes on how to emotionally regulate yourself and

how to take a calm break. Then I've been talking lately about

connect, which is the second pillar of the connected parenting process,

and that is your emotionally coaching your kids,

connecting with them in order to help them connect with

themselves. When I think about the connection pillar in

the connected parenting process, I really think about how important

it is to. To help your child connect their

behavior with what's going on inside of them. I think

about connection not so much as how you connect

with your kid so that you have a good relationship with them. In my mind,

that's a byproduct of emotionally coaching your child,

creating a space of emotional safety,

helping them manage their feelings, teaching them skills to

regulate that emotion. And. And when you do that, and you

are validating and kind and compassionate, a

byproduct of that is that your child and you have a good relationship, they feel

safe, they feel seen, they feel soothed by you. But how do you

actually do that connection? How do you

actually sit with a child who is emotionally

dysregulated or is just struggling with something

or has a behavior that's out of bounds? What are the

practical, actual things you say and

do as a parent in order to create that

emotionally safe environment, to teach them to regulate

and help them become an emotionally healthy person?

That is my job as your parenting coach, as

your guide in this process, is to help you know what

to do and say. So when you have a child who's upset

or that you have a behavior that's out of bounds, most of

you have learned that you're supposed to validate their emotion, right?

And you're like, oh, you're sad. You know, mostly we know how to

validate sad, or maybe we can validate angry.

But for the most part, a lot of us don't know what to do after

we validate that emotion. And it can be really

confusing. So with the connection tool that I taught a

couple weeks ago. So if you haven't listened to that episode, go back and listen

to it. Review it. Here you really are

narrating what you are Seeing on the outside,

you're narrating the behavior and the circumstance.

You're painting a picture for your child to

kind of witness themselves. You are their witness. You're

watching how they're acting. You're trying to be neutral about it, not

judging it or making it mean anything. That's, you know, you

staying emotionally regulated, and then you narrating

what you can see on the outside and then naming

the emotion or the needs that your child

has on the inside. So your job

in connected parenting is to help

connect the dots between what's going on on the outside and

what's going on on the inside, and then validating

what's going on on the inside. So we validate the emotion

that's driving the behavior while also setting a limit

around the behavior. So let me give you an example.

Simple one, right? You have a kid who

gets in the car after school and starts to

hit their younger sibling or even their older sibling, or

they start stealing their snack, or they start complaining

about needing the radio louder or a

certain song or what, you know, some kind of behavior.

And you see that behavior, and most of our instinct at

first is to tell the child, stop it. Don't

do that. That's not okay. Right? And that makes perfect sense that you would

want to correct that behavior. But

correcting before connecting makes it really hard

for your child to pivot towards the new

behavior. And a lot of times when we just say, stop it, they don't

know what to do instead. So instead of

just correcting or telling them to stop, which is a natural parenting,

you know, instinct, I want you to say, hey, I see

you, you know, grabbing your brother's snack. I wonder if you're

feeling a little bit overwhelmed from your day. Or,

oh, I hear you asking for this certain radio station and.

Or radio station. How old am I? I hear you asking

for that song. Or you want me to turn the radio up or you want

me to turn it down? I wonder if you're feeling a little bit

bored or overwhelmed or frustrated.

You're making a guess to the feeling, and it doesn't have to be

necessarily accurate. It's not like if you don't

name the emotion, it won't work. Or, you know, what does work mean? Work

means that they won't emotionally regulate.

It's just your attempt to recognize that

the reason they're behaving that way is because they have

something going on inside. So with the connection tool, we're

noticing, we're narrating, we're naming, we're

Validating. Validating the emotion. So saying,

hey, it makes sense that, you know, you get out of school, you're feeling a

little tired, feeling overwhelmed. You, you know, you're hungry,

you're grumpy. That all makes sense. And it doesn't.

It's not okay for you to grab your brother's snack. Then we

regulate. So it's like you offer alternatives.

I'm not going to let you take your brother's snack. But what can you do

instead? Or, you know, are you. Can you say, mommy, can I have a

snack, please? Or you can set a limit. Or you can

say, I'm going to let everybody have snack once everyone is calm.

So right now we're going to take three deep breaths or we're going to do

a squeeze and release with our hands. So you learn

different regulation strategies, and you can learn those on the podcast.

And giving your kids tools to teach them

how to manage their feelings in more appropriate

ways. So we do that through

recognizing that they have a behavior because

of some sort of unmet need or emotion or.

Or, you know, negative thought spiral they're in. Whatever

is going on inside, that's what they need help with.

They need new ways to cope and communicate

those feelings or those thoughts or those needs in

ways that work. So we're validating the emotion while also setting a

boundary around the behavior and giving an alternative

or setting a limit of you can have a

snack. Once you are able to sit quietly

and ask politely or try

again. I'm happy to let you listen to the song that you want to

listen to as long as you say, mommy, can you turn

this song on? And then when your child either keeps the limit or

not, that's just information for you of how dysregulated they are.

Regulating emotion is a tricky thing. It's hard

for all of us. It's one of the main purposes of this podcast is become

a calm mama. It's about how to help you regulate your

emotion. We always do that through the body, through

some sort of movement or some sort

of. Yeah, like discharging the

emotion that's stuck inside of us and allowing it to

release through our hands, through our mouth, through

our voice. Ah. You know, whenever your child is misbehaving

or they're using their mouth like they're being, you know, you're stupid.

That's dumb. Shut up. Whatever they're saying, it's their

best attempt to get their

emotion and their need met. Like to move that emotion out

of their body. And the way that they're Doing it is not a

good strategy because it hurts other people, but it's a good strategy for them

because it's calming them. They're doing their best. So I'm

just kind of reinforcing that. People behave the way they behave because

they have their internal world is

something that they're struggling to cope with. Just like you. You

are not a bad person if you yell at your kids. You are yelling

at your kids because you are overwhelmed. You are feeling a lot

of emotion or frustration or, you

know, cognitive fatigue, right? Mental

fatigue from being a parent. And it's coming out

through your body, through your. The way that you're expressing yourself.

And there are always healthier ways than

yelling. There's healthier ways than screaming at your parents. There's healthier

ways than grabbing snacks from your sibling. There's healthier

ways than demanding to get what you want. So your job

as a parent is to recognize and connect your

child to themselves. Like, hey, you're behaving this way because something's going on

inside. Here's another way to get what you need met.

That's the connection tool in a nutshell.

And it takes practice, honestly, because

first of all, most of the time, our

mindset is about, like, judging

behavior. Like, we, especially as parents, you look at behavior and

you're like, oh, I got to, you know, get this kid to stop acting that

way. Like, that's not okay, right? That's our first instinct. And I'm

teaching you to overcome that paradigm that you have

that your job is to, like, correct behavior in the middle

of the behavior, instead changing your lens

from judge to compassionate witness and

looking at the behavior from a place of, like, what could be

going on under here? So just asking your question

of, like, being curious and looking at what could be going

on inside it will help you

shift your approach to your child. Then,

when you go to have a conversation with them,

they are not in a. As a defensive space.

They're not. You're not activating their nervous system even more.

Instead, you're coming in as a regulated adult, and

you're helping calm their nervous system so that they can do their

better thinking. Like I said something, that takes time because you

have to learn to reframe the way you look at the behavior in the

first place and then get better at making those guesses.

So really, I always think about, like, how to do this well

is looking at your child's behavior and

thinking about how you might feel if

you were in that circumstance. Like, I think about it, okay, for

bedtime how would I feel if I

was 4 years old, 7 years old, and

my favorite thing in the world is my sibling, my parent,

my toys, Daytime, right? Running around,

moving my body, Those are my favorite things. And then

at bedtime, I lose all of my favorite things.

It's dark, I don't get to move my body, I don't get to play with

my toys, I don't get to play with my siblings and I don't get to

be with my parents. It's pretty hard. So

I think if we narrate that for our child and we say yes, that

makes sense that you would want to keep getting up out of bed or calling

to me or asking me not to leave the room. I hear

you like that, of course. But bedtime is your

job and you're going to be figuring out how to fall asleep.

And so what can I do to help you feel better

within this circumstance? It is bedtime.

So what do you need if you can't be jumping out of bed, what do

you need instead? If you can't be calling out to mommy, what

can you do? And parents often have a lot of trouble thinking about,

well, what can they do instead? They can hold up stuffed

animal, they can have a nightlight, they can sing a song, they can, they can

cover themselves with a heavy blanket.

You can put a little scrunchie on their wrist, a hair tie

of yourself. And then you say, okay, you can hold this scrunchie and think

of mommy when we're separated. So you're doing anything you

can to help them learn to self soothe. But we have to

start from the place of like, yes, this would be

hard. This is a hard situation. The feelings you have

are valid and giving them the responsibility to figure out

better ways to cope with that feeling

in the circumstance that they're in. I think about going to

school. Even if you go to school in the best circumstance, think about

yourself going to work or going to doing something that is

somewhat taxing, how you might delay,

you might drag your feet a little bit. You wake up and you're kind of

in a dreadful state. And we think about children and we're like, well no, they

should be happy all the time. No, they're people, they have

all sorts of emotions and they're not good at

communicating or being even aware of their emotion.

So when we think about our children and the

behaviors that happen often happen at bedtime, they

often happen before school, they often happen at homework

time, they often happen at transitions after school.

And a lot of the emotion is dropped onto the

sibling. So we think about these times of day that are really

hard for our kids. And instead of coming at it,

like, be better, kid. Like, get it together. We

want to connect with them and narrate the

circumstance, narrate the struggle, narrate their

strategy. So that narration piece is really important

because we're talking through why, why it's

hard, what's happening, that's challenging. So they get in the

car after school and they start punching each other. I had two little boys. They

were constantly, like, dysregulated after school. When we

started to talk about this transition, I say, of course, when you get

home from get out of school, you know, you both want to tell me all

your stories. You're a little bit tired. You have a lot on

your mind that you. Your. You know, you're

hungry. Like, there's physical things going on. There's emotional

needs. So this is a tricky time for both

of you. And that makes sense because you have competing

needs. One of you wants to be quiet. One of you wants to talk a

lot. One of you wants loud music. One of you wants quiet music. You

both are trying to cope with that transition from school to

home, and that makes sense that it would be hard.

Instead, here's what you can do. So when I talk about

regulating, you can give them tools in

advance of how you want to regulate. You can give them tools

in the midst of the moment if they're open to listening.

Sometimes, if they're in a huge meltdown or big feeling cycle, you

doing all of this in your head, you're narrating,

you're naming, you're validating and. And you're coming up with

ideas to regulate their emotions in ways that are

silent. Because for a lot of kids, if you start

talking while they're in a big feeling cycle, it is

extremely triggering, right? They get like, stop talking to

me. Be quiet. You know, they get really

upset. So that's good. That's attunement for you to realize, like, oh,

probably don't need to be talking to this person. But that doesn't mean that

you emotionally cut them off. And you just, you know, fine, I'm not gonna talk

to you. And you shut them out. That feels like an

abandonment to them. It feels like a rejection. And then they're out on

their own to regulate their emotion. So staying

present in that compassionate or neutral

space while recognizing this

is a kid who's having a hard time. I love

that phrase in parent education. It's like they're not Giving me

a hard time. They're having a hard time. It's just thinking that

thought can be really calming for you. And when you're calm

and you're a regulated adult and you're in a space

of compassion or neutrality, your child's

nervous system kind of starts to resonate with that and it starts to

regulate. When I say your child's borrowing your nervous system,

that's what I'm talking about. And if you're in an activated state,

they're going to be in an activated state. Well, they don't have to be. It's

not always true. But they are looking to

co regulate, especially children. They want to be

supported and be in the same emotional energy as the

emotions around them. And you get to be the leader

in your family and lead the emotional energy in your family.

I don't want to put pressure on you, but it is a reality that you

are the adult and, and it is your job to be the calm

one. We often think that our kids should be calm

and we don't give them enough grace to be children.

Their nervous systems fire in a different way. They're

immature. They activate for no

reason. Well, it's a reason for them, but it doesn't seem legitimate to us.

And then they kind of go really, really, really high and then they go really

low and they, they play really big and they're really loud. Like, everything about

children is extreme. And that's because they're immature. Their emotional

regulation is immature, Their bodies are immature. Everything is immature.

And their language, all of it. Right? They're children. And so

we are supposed to be the mature ones. Your job is to be

present in that emotional energy, that connected

space, narrating what's going on for your

kid, naming the emotion, validating it, and

then regulating. Now again, people are like

always confused. Like, what can they do? Think about what they want to do.

Like, if they want to scream really loud, is there a way that

they can regulate by screaming in

a way that works for everybody? If they want to be hitting

or being physical, is there a way that they can be physical

that doesn't bother anybody? If you can look at your child's

behavior and their body and what they're doing and

see that as like, okay, this is their best attempt

to get calm. Let me think about

how they can do that exact same thing in a way that works

better for everybody else. A way that it

is within a boundary. Like, so you would say, you know, you can't hit your

brother, but you can hit this pillow. You can push

against mommy's hands. You can squeeze my hands really hard.

You know you can. I'm happy to give you a bite of this

sandwich as long as you dump up and down five times. Being

creative is hard if you're activated, but coming

to ideas of ways that your kids can regulate

their nervous system, move their bodies, and process

that emotion through their body in a bunch of

different ways. They can do jumping jacks. They can drink a glass of water. They

can wash their hands. They can do, like, a shimmy

shake, you know, where you just like, start with your hands in the air and

you just shake your whole body all the way down. They can.

I used to love to do when my kids were like, five or six,

I would hold my hands up and they would put their hands on mine. We'd

stand staring at each other, and then I'd say, push as hard as you can.

Push, push, push, push, push. And they'd push against me, and I'm in a

braced position, so. So they could push against me and,

you know, wouldn't knock me over because I'm ready for it. Anything you can

think about compression, like putting blankets on top of you,

rolling you up in a blanket if you're at home, if

even like a pattern, like a rhythmic pattern, stomping one

foot, two feet, jump up and down. Like, you can do different

movements. So I'm giving you a bunch of ideas

just so you can kind of start thinking, like, how does

somebody calm their activated nervous system?

And primarily that is through

relationship and rhythm with the body

and sometimes dopamine. So sometimes you can give the brain a little

task. Like, that's why limits are really good. Oh, listen,

do you want to play with us? You can play here as long as you

are not hitting. Why don't you go take your toy, put it on the shelf

and come back and then you can play with us. So you give a little

limit and a boundary and a little

task, and the child's brain will be. And

hopefully they can go take their toy, put it on the counter, come back over,

and then they're regulated. You're moving them through

that dysregulation now. Like I said, sometimes

kids, the train has left the station. Nothing you say,

nothing you do is going to get them to calm. They have to

go all the way through the dysregulation. This was especially

true when I first started practicing this type of parenting

with my son when he was 4. And he would have these crazy meltdowns

that would last, like, 45 minutes. And he would be like around

4 o' clock in the afternoon. He was 4 years old. So he would just

like rage around the house, he'd kick, he'd hit his brother.

He was just like a Tasmanian devil. It was sort of insane. But

what I noticed is that the minute I did not try to stop

the big feeling cycle, when I began to just be a witness

of it and make sure he was safe and that everyone was safe, but I

wasn't coming at him with any big energy. Those big

feeling cycles decreased in

intensity, so he was less active during

them. They decreased in time, how long they

lasted. And then they were almost eliminated within a

week or two of me practicing the. The connection tool. It

wasn't called that cause I hadn't made it up yet. But just being in that

compassionate witness space and just being like, I don't know what's going on here,

but I'm just gonna make sure this kid's safe and I'm gonna let him get

through this. And when I did that, he ended up

going through the big feeling cycle faster and staying

and having them less frequently. His whole nervous system

reset. My whole family's nervous system

reset. Once I started practicing this

compassionate parenting and using

connection, that took a lot out of me. I had to really

practice my own self regulation. And that's why I

spend so much time on that topic of our own self

regulation. Because to do this connection,

well, it does require you to be calm. Now if you're

not calm and your child is having a big emotion,

I think about like the Hippocratic oath, which is, should be like the

parenting oath is do no harm, don't

say anything, don't get involved. You cannot

parent angry, just like you can't connect

angry. Like nothing good comes from you. When you're overwhelmed and

angry. The type of parent you show up as is

not the parent you want to be. And then you end up yelling and then

you have to repair. And it's just this whole thing. I'd rather you be silent

and neutral as much as you can in the middle of a big feeling

cycle than try to stop it. It's like trying to

stop a train, like a bullet train. You have to wait

until the brakes can turn on and then it takes still a long

time for it to stop before it gets to the next station. So if you're

able to be calm and a witness and you know, be in that

compassionate space, great. If you're not, be a neutral witness, just be

like, I don't know, like it's some other buddy's, somebody else's kid who's

having this whole thing, and you're a little bit emotionally

checked out. That's kind of fine because it's better than being emotionally

activated. That reaction just makes. It's like adding

fuel to the fire. And it makes those big feelings bigger for

your child, more intense. It makes them last longer. So this

episode is a review again of the Connection tool,

reminding you how to notice

what's going on with your kid, what's the circumstance, narrating how

they're acting, why they might be acting that way,

naming their emotion, validating the emotion, and

then regulating, helping them figure out

how to calm their body. So that's the Connection Tool.

Notice, narrate, name, validate, regulate.

That is the tool. And I wanted to do another episode on it

just because I think it's one of the most important things I could

ever teach you. And we've been talking about the last couple weeks.

I also wanted to review it on this episode because next

week I'm going to talk more about coaching your child.

So thinking about after everybody is

calm, and I kind of modeled it in this conversation a little bit.

How to talk to your child about patterns

in their behavior, how to talk to your child about

ways that they're showing up that don't work, that you want to

change skills that are missing. So

I'm going to talk to you about how. How to have those

actual conversations with your kids that are outside of the

emotion. So in the times when your kid is calm, you're

calm and you want to teach them or reflect on,

like, what happened and why it didn't work. I want to give

you a set of tools to have

those conversations because I realize that in

parent education, we don't really do a

great job at talking about how to have

these conversations with our kids

about their behavior and kind of

guiding them, parenting them, ultimately to become

more mature. You all do it as parents, but

you're kind of like, is it a lecture? Are you monologuing?

Are you, like, kind of shaming them a little bit? Like, it kind of gets

messy and confusing. So I want to clear that all up. I want to talk

about how to teach your kids emotional regulation.

I want to talk about how to teach your kids positive mindset.

I want to talk about how to teach your kids how to be responsible, which

means being honest, being on time,

managing money, being safe. Right. You have to have

a lot of conversations with kids to teach them stuff. So I

want to help you with those conversations. And we're

going to call those coaching conversations. So over the next

couple of weeks, I am going to walk you through a series of

coaching conversations that are going

to give you the tools you need so that you can teach

your kids how to emotionally regulate long term, how to

have a good mindset long term, how to be responsible

long term. This is like the crux of parenting.

And I think as parents we often don't know where and when we're supposed

to do it. Especially it. You know, you're like, I'm getting

compassionate, I'm setting boundaries, I have consequences. But

like, when do I do all the teaching? So we're going to do that. I'm

going to talk to you about when do you do all the teaching? And it's

in these coaching conversations. And I'm not teaching it today

because I wanted to review once again that you

cannot do a coaching conversation until your

kid feels validated, until they are

calm. So I wanted to review that again. So the

connection tool is what you use kind

of in an intervention state when your child is

activated or there's like in the moment, what's

going on. The coaching conversations are more around

prevention of behavior, how to

guide your children towards new behaviors long term

so that you don't have to have always intervention,

intervention, intervention, short term, short term, short term.

Coaching conversations are the big picture, the long term

interventions that you need to do so that your children grow in

their skill set. So I think it's gonna be really fun. It's gonna be the

next few episodes pretty much all through May. I'm gonna be walking you

through all of those types of conversations. So it's really, really

helpful, really handy. Be sure to listen every Thursday.

And then in June, we'll start a little bit of a summer series to

get you mindset and get you ready to, you

know, enjoy the time with your kids. Okay, so this week,

keep practicing that connection tool. Keep being reflective

and noticing this week. Like notice the patterns. When

do your kids get dysregulated? What are the most triggering

times? When do you have the most big feeling

cycles? What are they around? What are the circumstances?

Because you're going to need to know those patterns in order to do these

coaching conversations. So pay attention to that this week

and I will talk to you next week all about coaching

conversations. Have a great week.