Why Self-Regulation Matters in Parenting
The good news is that self-regulation isn’t something you either have or don’t have. It’s something you build—step by step, over time. Every time you notice yourself getting upset and bring yourself back to calm—even a little—you are strengthening the neural pathways in your brain that support self-regulation. That’s how change happens. With practice, it gets easier to stay centered, because you’re building your brain's capacity to return to calm more quickly.
Being a parent loads you with so many responsibilities that it may surprise you to hear that after keeping your child physically safe and cared for, your most important responsibility as a parent is supporting yourself so you can stay regulated.
But it's true. Being a parent is just plain hard, and guaranteed to push your buttons. So your #1 responsibility as a parent is to support yourself so that you can self-regulate under stress.
That's essential if you want to be the patient, emotionally generous parents that your child needs. After all, you may know great parenting skills or strategies, but you can't use them if you're not calm. And when you’re calm, you can help your child feel safe—and that’s what allows them to learn, cooperate, and grow.
If you’re finding it hard to stay calm in the moment, you may want to start with how to control your anger with your child.
Why Your Calm Is the Foundation of Your Child’s Self-Regulation
Your child is fairly certain to act like a child, which means someone who is still learning, has different priorities than you do, and can’t always manage her feelings or actions. Her childish behavior is guaranteed, at times, to push your buttons. That's normal. The problem is when we begin acting like a child, too.Someone has to stay regulated, if we want our child to learn how.
There's a reason the airlines tell us to put on our own oxygen masks first. Kids can't reach those masks or be relied on to use them properly. If we lose function, our kids can't save us, or themselves. So even if we would sacrifice ourselves to save our kids, it's our responsibility to put on our own masks first.
Kids can't manage their own rage by themselves, either. They can't find their way through the tangle of jealousy that pushes them to whack their little sister. They need our help to handle the fear that we don't love them because they somehow just aren't quite good enough. They know that if they were good enough, they wouldn't want to hit their sister, or sneak that piece of candy, or throw themselves down on the floor and scream. But they can't help themselves, however hard they try not to. (Sort of like when we eat that extra piece of cake.)
So just as with the oxygen mask, it's your job to help your child with his emotions, which is what helps him with his behavior. Unfortunately, when you're stressed out, exhausted, and running on empty, you can't be there constructively for your child, any more than if you black out on the plane.
This is why building your own self-regulation isn’t just good for you—it’s how your child learns to regulate themselves.
You Don’t Have to Stay Calm—You Just Have to Return to Calm
How can you stay centered? The truth is, you probably can't! What you CAN do is keep returning yourself to center.
Your emotions are useful, like indicator lights on a dashboard. If you saw a blinking red light in your car, you wouldn't cover it up or tear out the wiring that caused it, right? You would listen to the information and act on it, for instance, by taking your car in for an oil change. The challenge with human emotions is that so often we're confused about what to do when we feel them.
We're hard-wired to respond to all "negative" emotion (cues of “danger”—or those blinking red lights in your psyche that light up throughout your day) by fighting or running away—and if that doesn’t work, we collapse. Those strategies may have worked to help us through emergencies in childhood and throughout our lives. But parenting—despite our fears—is not usually an emergency.
Usually the best response to upsetting emotions is to pause and restore our nervous system to safety before we react. When we aren’t calm, we can’t help our child feel safe. And when we’re dysregulated, our unpredictable tone and tension can actually trigger our child’s nervous system further.
You can count on finding yourself triggered at times, but if you can train yourself to notice when you start to lose it, you have the choice to return yourself back to a state of equilibrium. That peaceful place inside ensures that our actions are wise and loving.
If you find yourself getting triggered often, you can also begin working through those patterns here: How to Heal Your Triggers.
3 Ways to Strengthen Your Ability to Stay Calm
Self-regulation isn’t about never getting upset. It’s about noticing when you’re getting pulled off center—and knowing how to bring yourself back. Here’s how to begin building that ability:
Each time you do this—even imperfectly—you’re strengthening your ability to regulate yourself in the future.
1. Notice When You’re Losing Your Center.
That might mean you notice you're getting anxious, annoyed, frustrated, tired, overwhelmed, or shutting down.
2. Use your Pause Button: Stop, Drop and Breathe.
That means you stop what you're doing. You drop your agenda, just for the moment. (Yes, he has to take a bath. But for this moment, drop your agenda and step away from the fight.) Then, take a few deep breaths and blow them out, to calm yourself. That stops your slide down the slippery slope toward losing it and lets you choose a better way.
If you want a step-by-step guide to using this in the moment, see Stop, Drop, and Breathe.
3. Shift your state toward love.
Consciously choose a thought or action that will make you feel more calm and emotionally generous. It might be as simple as taking a few minutes alone and giving yourself a hug. But even if you realize you need a big change, take a small action now to move toward a better future. That means making a conscious choice to respond to whatever situation you're in with love, for yourself and for your child.
Every choice, deep down, is between love and fear. Choose love.
The bad news is that it takes practice even to notice when you start that downhill slide. Even harder, it takes courage and self-discipline to give up your upset in that moment. It's always easier to have our own tantrum. This is tough work, and invisible -- no one even sees what it costs you. But would you rather be right, or at peace with yourself and your child?
And the good news is that while the work may seem invisible, the results will blow you away. With practice, you'll find yourself calmer most of the time. Your child will be more cooperative, just because you're different. And when you're in a more peaceful state, you'll find that some of the challenges with your child simply begin to melt away.
Because this work of choosing love over and over stretches your heart as well as your nervous system. It connects you more deeply with your child. And it makes you happier and more emotionally generous.
So you find yourself living in a family with a lot less drama. And a lot more love.
For a full roadmap to staying calmer in everyday parenting, see How to Stay Calm With Your Child.
