When Your Kid Loses It, Try This Instead
It’s a Tuesday morning. School starts in 18 minutes. And your seven-year-old has just declared, arms crossed, jaw locked, that she is not wearing those shoes. Not those. Not any. She’s never going to school again.
Every instinct says pull rank: “Put your shoes on. Now.”
But according to Dr. Tina Payne Bryson, best-selling co-author of The Whole-Brain Child, that approach is about to backfire. Bryson describes a child’s brain like a two-story house. The “downstairs brain” runs on big emotions and fight-or-flight instincts. The “upstairs brain” handles reasoning, empathy, and impulse control but isn’t fully developed until the mid-twenties. During a meltdown, the downstairs brain slams the door and locks the upstairs out.
Her strategy? “Engage, Don’t Enrage.” Instead of triggering the reactive downstairs brain with commands and threats, invite your child to think, problem-solve, and collaborate.
Back to our Tuesday morning. Instead of the power move, you crouch down: “Help me understand what’s going on with the shoes?” She tells you they squeeze her toes. “What if you wore sneakers today and we find better shoes this weekend?” She puts them on. Crisis averted, no tears required.
It works beyond the shoe standoff, too. When your 10-year-old shoves his math homework away, declaring he’s stupid, instead of “Sit down and finish it,” try: “Which problems feel the hardest? What if we tackle three together?” You’ve just given his thinking brain a job to evaluate, plan, and choose instead of shutting it down with a command.
Each time you invite a child to think instead of simply obey, you’re building the neural pathways they’ll need for a lifetime. After all, “discipline” comes from the Latin word meaning “to teach,” not to punish.
Dr. Rose Hanna, Psy.D., is a licensed marriage and family therapist and the owner of Rose Hanna Counseling Services in Long Beach, CA. To learn more, visit RoseHanna.com or call 562.291.6356.
