Kids impacted by trauma, including abuse, neglect, or prenatal substance exposure, can tend to live in a state of high alert or guardedness, also known as hypervigilance. These alarms tell the child to activate self-protection or survival strategies because of a present threat. How can parents and caregivers help their children re-set the alarms in their brains so they are not constantly living on guard?
Three Parts of the Brain to Consider
If you haven’t had a chance to listen to Dr. Julian Ford and Dr. Amanda Zelechoski’s interview with CreatingaFamily.org, we highly recommend it! They make it easy to understand how the human brain functions and how to help kids find healing from trauma. If the topic intrigues you, check out the podcast series Roadmap to Resilience that Dr. Ford and Dr. Zelechoski host.
The Alarm System of the Brain
The amygdala is the portion of the brain activated when trauma or threat is detected. It is wired for quick response and awareness of the situation at hand. The responses of this alarm system form from living with repeated alerts of threat or harm like abuse, violence, or other danger. The amygdala’s alert systems are unconscious and automatic. The alarm going off in your child’s brain is not something they choose.
Parenting a Child Exposed to Trauma, a FREE guide
The Memory Retrieval of the Brain
This part of the brain holds your child’s memories – of all sorts. However, when the alarm system triggers memory retrieval, it floods the brain with memories of the trauma they have experienced. These memories help inform the brain and body what to do and what not to do for self-protection. The actions that come from a child’s memory storage are automatic and, again, not conscious choices your child makes.
The Thinking Center
Located at the top front of the brain, the thinking center takes in information, makes decisions, and can signal to the alarm system that it doesn’t have to respond with dysregulation or hypervigilance. The brain’s thinking center goes “offline” during extreme dysregulation, like when the alarm system is blaring. When the thinking center is “fed” with repeated, safe, regulated interactions and experiences, it can slow the alarm system. The thinking center gets the time to step in with a voice of reason and strategies to use. It reminds the alarm system in the brain that “we are safe.” The thinking center says that the parents or caregivers are on top of things and will help them navigate a new response safely.
How to Re-set Your Child’s Alarm System
1. Lead by calm example.
As with so many issues of helping our kids heal from trauma, supporting them starts with us. When they see us handling stressful life experiences consistently and appropriately, we illustrate how to manage the alarm system in our brains.
How do you react when a car alarm suddenly goes off in a covered parking lot? It’s jarring, for sure. But most of us have enough experience with that blaring, startling noise to recognize there is no immediate threat to our safety. We take a deep breath and continue searching for our car in the lot, even if our heart is still racing.
It’s similar when our child’s alarms go off – we have responses to their alarms. It can be dysregulating and stressful, right? However, we can show a measured and calm response that regulates the moment. We can help keep the child’s thinking center open to what they know and how to re-set their alarms.
2. Teach replacement strategies.
It’s not enough to tell our kids to stop freaking out or repeat, “You are safe, it’s okay, I’ve got you!” They need new strategies to re-set the alarm-driven survival response they are used to experiencing. Remember, these survival responses are not conscious choices they are making.
For example, their all-out raging melt-down over being told to put the electronics away before bed is a survival response. Their alarm system has learned from repeated threats to their physical or emotional well-being that bedtime is not always safe. Before joining your home, nighttime meant hunger, scary dark shadows, abuse, or a host of other heart-breaking experiences.
How can you trigger their thinking brain and re-set their alarm system’s messages to respond with new, regulated actions? Here are a few common strategies to get you started:
- Breathing exercises
- Mindfulness
- Physical activity
- Calm-down or fidget toys
- Journaling
You can observe their dysregulation and walk them through strategies to re-set them to a leveled emotional state. Preparing and practicing these strategies when your child is calm and regulated gives you the best opportunity to reach their thinking brain. Remember, a safe brain is a learning brain.
3. Do a post-game analysis.
It can also be helpful to debrief after the child’s alarms have finished blaring. When you both feel calm and re-regulated, tell your child what you noticed. Be sure they know this is a judgment- and shame-free zone. Ask them what they felt and saw in the experience. Help them identify their emotions or internal state if they don’t have words.
Then, talk about what tools might have come in handy and what they can try the next time. Review your list of strategies and get their buy-in about ideas to try for future re-sets.
4. Narrate your strategies – the good, the bad, and the ugly.
You undoubtedly have a history of strategies you’ve used to self-regulate with varying degrees of success. Discuss your successful and unsuccessful self-regulation methods, even if you feel awkward or vulnerable. When there is a moment of high anxiety, start talking about how you are handling it. Your child will benefit from hearing your process out loud. You could even pause to ask them what they might try next or how they might feel if this happened.
Bringing them into your process – even when you don’t do it perfectly – makes you more accessible to your child and increases trust and safety between you.
5. Be a student of this child.
Kids impacted by trauma might offer you their worst at the start of your relationship. They want to know that you can handle their big emotions and behaviors. They need to know you can contain the most challenging stuff they cannot. You may feel like they are constantly responding to all the alarms, all the time, in their brains. And that might be how they think, too.
Take time to learn this child:
- What do they love? What brings them joy?
- What scares them? What angers them?
- When do you see their hearts most open?
- How do they push boundaries or exert independence?
- Why do they push limits? Do they need to see your reliability and consistency? Is it because they don’t know what appropriate boundaries are?
How to Avoid Triggering and Being Triggered By Our Kids
6. Know your triggers.
It may take some self-work, but it will be helpful to understand what triggers your alarm system. Our kids who live in a regular state of alarm can and will trip our triggers – intentionally and unknowingly. We must recognize our triggers and how we feel when triggered. It will help to choose to remember their state of dysregulated alarm is not about us.
Even when they intentionally poke at our triggers, they usually do so from their internal state of perceived threat. Take a moment to re-set yourself. Their blaring alarms are not a reflection of your parenting.
Take Good Care of Yourself
We say it all the time, but self-care must be a habit you establish for your whole family’s well-being. Self-care often gets minimized as a luxury or pampering. And it can be delicious (and even necessary) to be pampered occasionally, right? However, we advocate for healthy, balanced self-care to refresh your whole person.
Think of it as a continuum of small moments of peace and joy, ranging up to the more significant and nourishing re-sets that give you the impetus to keep going. Self-care can look like any of these things:
- A meal-planning app that automates grocery orders
- Hiring laundry or yard help
- Monthly massages for your tense shoulders
- Reading in bed with a candle and heating pad
- Binge-watching your favorite show
- Attending a retreat or conference
- Taking a class in creative writing, yoga, or spinning
- Knitting after dinner every night
The point is to find things that feed your soul and refuel you to tackle another day. Raising a child who lives in and acts out in a heightened state of alarm – especially in the early days together – can be draining. You and your whole family will benefit when you fill your tank.
Image Credits: Monstera Production; Meryl Cusinato; Kampus Production
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