Neuroscientists have determined that children need four things in order to develop into whole human beings who have healthy social-emotional skills. They need to be seen, soothed, and to feel safe and secure in their relationship with a significant adult in their life. It is the adult’s response to a child’s big emotions and behaviors that will determine if the child develops social emotional competencies, or not. If parents are nurturing, children develop a strong nurtured part of their personality, and in turn, develop very nurturing ways of treating others. If shaming, hurtful parenting is experienced often, children develop the victim part of their personality and come to believe that it is normal for there to be power over others in all arenas of life.

In order to consistently show up as a calm, patient caregiver, we need to nurture ourselves. During the November Mountain Strong Families Series, hosted by Teens, Inc at Nederland Elementary School, parents learned how to build new neural pathways that will nurture themselves and their children.

None of us are 100% nurturing all the time. Ninety-percent of parents yell and sixty-seven percent say they have reactively spanked their child. However, when parents feel nurtured, the reactive and victim parts of our personality are less likely to show up.

One way to understand why we may react instead of gently responding to our children is to look inward and backwards at our own childhood experiences. How did our brains get wired when we were in emotional pain? How did we learn to cope with the traumatic and stressful times in our lives?

Dr. Dan Siegel reminds us that “having difficult experiences early in life is less important than whether we found a way to make sense of how those experiences have affected us.” Making sense of our childhood helps us break unhealthy generational patterns and rewire our brains for health and wholeness. Local counselors can help with this process if we are stuck in a parenting habit that doesn’t feel nurturing.

Every parent has knee jerk reactions at times to their child’s behavior. Certain emotions, comments, and behaviors trigger a strong reaction from us. As children, these fight or flight reactions served to protect us. As adults, we may have gotten stuck in a reactive pattern to cope with the stresses of life - easily punishing and shaming, escaping on screens, or numbing ourselves with substances on a regular basis.

Emotions that were stuffed, and coping patterns from childhood, don’t disappear until we process them. They live on in our bodies as tense muscles and chronic levels of cortisol. Part of parenting is learning how to re-parent ourselves so that we don’t dump our painful baggage onto our children.

We can interrupt our automatic reactions and rewire our brains to respond in more nurturing ways. Mountain Strong parents learned a 3-step process to use when we begin to feel overwhelmed with our child. When we first feel agitated, we can make the conscious choice to stop talking and doing. We can pause to notice how our body is pushing us to yell, grab, pull, or swat our child. Noticing these sensations begins to bring our rational brain online. We can also intentionally drop our task-oriented agenda and prioritize modeling self-regulation for our child as we purposely slow our breathing. Stop, Drop, and Breathe. More than any other regulation strategy, slowing our breath connects us to the responsive part of our brain.

Secondly, we can regulate our reaction by reframing the defensive and negative thoughts in our head. We can tell ourselves a different story. We can turn off the alarm system in our brain by creating a calming mantra while continuing to breathe deeply. Favorite reframes included - “This is not an emergency,” or “Don’t take this personally,” or “My child isn’t giving me a hard time, my child is having a hard time.” With these new thoughts, we are nurturing ourselves back to calm.

Finally, when we are reactive, excess energy is pouring through our bodies. To fully integrate our brain, we need to move that energy out without harming or scaring our children. Giving ourselves something to do redirects the energy away from our child, i.e. run hands under water, walk out of the room and return in a few minutes, drop down and do some planks, or, dance like a rock star! These exertions change our body chemistry which is preparing us to fight with our child.

The more we know about how our brains function, the easier it is to learn habits that rewire our brain toward empathy. Parents considered how to use these steps in a situation that often turns into a power struggle. It takes about twelve weeks of practicing this regulation strategy to stop yelling, shaming, and punishing our children.

Parents also explored the amount of stress in their lives and their inability to get their basic needs met. After reflecting on the six dimensions of wellness, attendees generated ideas for restructuring their lives to get their needs for physical activity, sleep, creativity, intellectual stimulation, social interaction, emotional wellness and spirituality fulfilled. It is hard to be emotionally generous with children if our own cups are empty.

Caregivers set intentions to nurture themselves. Millennials questioned damaging gender roles, unhealthy demands at work, living far from extended family and friends, and difficulty advocating for “me-time” as bigger factors that have led to high stress levels. With a renewed awareness of the need to nurture themselves, parents resolved to deepen their friendships, exercise more, develop their breathwork, schedule time with a therapist, speak to themselves using positive self-talk, and prioritizing parent’s night out. Dads were determined to take things off their to-do list so they could be more present to themselves and their family. Moms were especially cognizant of the need to ask for more help from partners, friends and neighbors.

One mom sighed and said, “I’m really loving these classes. I’ve seen a shift in my parenting, and it’s nice to feel like the group gets more comfortable with each other each time we meet.”

The next session of Mountain Strong Families will be on Tuesday, December 6, from 5:30 - 7:30 p.m. Contact ann@teensinc.org to register for dinner, childcare, and the class.