My 4 year old has been having a super tough time winding down at night the last few weeks. I suspect no daylight saving = less daylight = less regulation, but regardless, tonight was no different.

He refused to give up his brother’s iPod, despite being told it was bedtime.

Finally I pick him up, with the iPod, and said “buddy, iPod needs to go night night and so do you.”

He looked at me, screamed as loud as he could, and then went back to watching a kids science video about tsunamis.

So I took of his headphones and told him again that he needed to turn in the iPod.

“Do you want to brush your teeth first or read a book first?”

“NO!”

“Do you need a snack? You can have cheese or an apple.”

“NO!”

So I said, “i am going to take away your iPod. You can be sad and mad, you can cry and scream, but you cannot hit or bite me.”

I removed it from his hands (he didn’t give it up) and placed it out of reach, then I picked him up. He immediately started slapping me.

I told him again, calmly and quietly, that he was allowed to be mad but he was not allowed to hit or bite. I held his hands as gently as I could away from my face, and he didn’t fight that, but he immediately switched to trying to bite me.

Again I told him he wasn’t allowed to hurt me but he could be mad at me for a long time or a short time. It was his choice.

Then I asked him about his Christmas list. He stopped fighting, put his head on my shoulder, and let me rock him while we chatted about toys.

He told me about all the cool stuff he wanted, and then yawned and said “I tired”

We snuggled for a few minutes and then he was out.

Honestly my favorite part about parenting is helping my kids problem solve. I’m not great crafts or telling stories (not that it stops me from trying) but being my kids’ emotional coach is like... my absolute jam.

Also. My kid isn’t a bad kid just because he cannot emotionally regulate as well as most of his peers. He’s not misbehaving when he has a meltdown or when hits me. He’s behaving totally appropriately for his age, unique brain development, and emotional state.

Punishing kids for not self regulating when they’re upset is literally punishing them for not being adults. Self regulation requires neural connectivity that simply isn’t developed in kids yet. (And adults flip out when they’re at their limit too, you may have noticed.)

I’m pretty wary of talking about my kids on here due to the number of threats I’ve received, and also, my kids’ experiences and lives are their business and no one else’s.

That said I think there is a desperate need for parenting to be informed by neuroscience, not ideology.

I had several people ask when I wrote the big parenting thread that went blew up on Facebook but my two parenting bibles are

The Whole Brain Child by Daniel J. Siegel, MD and Tina Payne Bryson, PhD

and

The Explosive Child by Ross W. Greene, PhD

These are the books I come back to when I’m feeling out of my depth and out of creative ways to problem solve.

(For the fellow ADHD parents, I have TWBC on audiobook, and TEC in paperback so I can mark it up and flip to specific scripts.)