Reflective Parenting by Curious Neuron

When you discipline your child are you also doing this one important thing?

• Cindy Hovington, Ph.D. • Season 8 • Episode 5

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The one mistake many parents make when disciplining their children is forgetting to teach the underlying skills needed for emotional regulation. Focusing only on consequences without addressing skill development leaves children unable to manage emotions like disappointment and frustration.

• The purpose of discipline should be education, not just punishment
• Children need to learn how to regulate emotions like disappointment before they can behave appropriately
• Co-regulation requires parents to first recognize and manage their own emotional state
• When children are dysregulated, they need connection before correction
• Creating "scaffolding" helps build skills gradually through small, manageable challenges
• Waiting until both parent and child are regulated before teaching new skills
• Skills like patience, emotional expression, and frustration tolerance must be explicitly taught
• Disciplining without teaching skills creates a cycle of continued misbehavior
• Reflection helps parents see past the behavior to the emotional need underneath

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Speaker 1:

Hello, my dear friends, welcome to the Reflective Parenting Podcast. My name is Cindy Hevington and I am your host, and we are going to try something different today. So, for those of you who are watching on YouTube, my solo episodes are usually only on any platform that you listen to for the podcast, but today I wanted to try something different. I would love to put out more videos on YouTube, because we are trying to grow our audience here at Curious Neuron and the Reflective Parenting Podcast and I just want to make sure that we can reach more parents, and today's message my solo episode, I think, is an important one, so let's get it out there. If you are new to the Curious Neuron family and community and more specifically to this podcast the Reflective Parenting Podcast that used to be called Kirstenoron Welcome.

Speaker 1:

I'm a neuroscientist, I'm a mom of three and my goal is really to help parents, to support parents specifically. So this is not your typical parenting podcast. It's for parents, but I want to help you understand what emotion regulation skills are. I specialize in emotional health for both children and adults, and I want to make sure that parents specifically learn how to regulate their emotions so that they can teach these skills to their kids, because we know from research that when a child is in a home environment where the adults know how to regulate their emotions, are not yelling all the time, are not suppressing either their emotions. They are modeling very healthy emotional coping skills to their child, and that means that that child is going to know how to regulate their own emotions, how to cope with emotions, how to cope with stress as well, and when they grow up and become adults, this is a protective factor for their own mental health, and so I'm here to help you specifically with that. And, as you're going to learn if you are new to the podcast, there are so many aspects that impact how we manage our emotions, and so I try to cover all aspects of that. Some episodes are about how you speak to your child, and that's what today is all about. We're going to talk about discipline specifically, and then some episodes are truly about your own well-being and mental health, because, as parents, sometimes we forget that our mental health and well-being not only matters, but matters even more now that we're a parent, because if we don't support ourselves, if our inner dialogue is very negative, if we are struggling with our mental health and ignoring that, if we are not addressing certain aspects of our past and unbreaking or undoing some of these patterns, then all of that is going to trickle down into how well we cope with emotions when our child has tantrums or big emotions or is rude to us, right, and so we have to understand emotions, and that's what I'm here to do. So welcome.

Speaker 1:

I want to make sure that I thank the Tannenbaum Open Science Institute as well as the McConnell Foundation, because both of these organizations are supporting the podcast, and without the support of this podcast, I would not be here talking to you, and so I'm grateful that we have these two organizations that believe in the importance of science, as we do here at Curious Neuron, and the Reflective Parenting Podcast. And the reason why or the yeah, I guess the reason why I came up with this topic for the solo is because of a parent inside the Reflective Parent Club. So if you listen to any of our podcast episodes or follow us on social media, you know that we launched in the fall last fall, in 2024, the Reflective Parenting Club, and I want to make sure that a reflective parent is what we are becoming here at Curious Neuron. So the Reflective Parent Club I said parenting before I meant the Reflective Parent Club is really a place for you to learn how to pause, to see certain aspects of how you are regulating or struggling to regulate, so that you can work on that. It's a skill. It takes time. You are going to be educated and learn tips here and there through the podcast and our website, curiousneuroncom, which is a brand new website, by the way. I really encourage you to check it out. You have all the episodes that we're trying to build up as well the podcast episodes, if you want to catch up on them, but there's also a lot of blogs that are written by PhDs. We interview scientists as well so that we can get the information and summarize the right articles for you. And then there's social media. We are on Facebook. We are on Curious Neuron, so you can follow us there as well. We are on Curious Neuron, so you can follow us there as well. We are on Instagram as Curious underscore neuron, and so you can follow us there as well.

Speaker 1:

There are many ways to learn from Curious Neuron, but what I learned after doing this for so many years is that listening to podcasts and books about parenting and even emotions, taking courses, is not enough. We've built an evidence-based program inside the Reflective Parent Club where you can learn the four domains or pillars of emotional intelligence, which has to do with self-awareness, self-regulation, parental awareness, understanding your child and then relationship management, because all of these will influence how well you can regulate an emotion in different situations which influences or impacts your child. And so I wanted to make sure that not only did you have the course, but that you had me to speak to every single week, and so on Tuesdays we meet at 12 pm Eastern time as well as 8 pm Eastern time, montreal time, and you can join whenever you want, as you're working through this course, or if you had a week that was just a really shitty week and you're like I need to speak to somebody and my friends are busy this week, okay, I'm going to jump onto the Reflective Parent Club phone call weekly coaching call and speak to somebody, and speak to Cindy and get some advice. And maybe I had an argument with a partner and I need a different perspective and I actually I don't want to talk to my friends about this argument. Actually, I don't want to talk to my friends about this argument, and so I'm going to jump onto the weekly call.

Speaker 1:

That is the space that I've created for all of you, and there's a parent that brought up something and I realized that I needed to create a solo episode, and so the one mistake that many of us are doing when we discipline is that we forget there has to be an additional aspect to that. Disciplining, from how we, many of us were raised, has to do with giving a consequence. Right, maybe it's teaching a lesson. I'm going to give you different examples of this today in our episode, but, more importantly, I think that it's really important for us to remember that through discipline we are teaching, and so if a child is being disciplined, shut down or given a consequence for having a tantrum or being rude or disrespectful, whenever we say no, well, what are we teaching? What skill are we going to teach that child? So we always have to look at both sides. So let's start actually with the example of.

Speaker 1:

I had a conversation with a parent who's part of the Reflective Parent Club, and this parent in particular is saying that they want their child to obey obey them and I get that many of us want that. Many parents also, who follow authoritarian parenting, were raised in this environment where the goal is to make sure that child obeys, but we brought up the conversation around okay, what does that look like in terms of a child having a tantrum? And, in particular, this one child was having a lot of tantrums when it came to the end of screen time. I don't know if you've ever experienced this, but many kids will lose it if it's the end of screen time. And even if you give them 10 minutes heads up, five minutes heads up, you use a color system green, yellow and red, like I had taught you many, many episodes ago when I was doing this with my kids. It's still not enough and I think that it's important for us to remember that we can have these systems, but in the end, what that child needs to learn is how to regulate the emotion of disappointment.

Speaker 1:

Inside the Reflective Parent Club, we also have monthly calls with kids and I teach kids through storytelling, through books, through activities about their emotions. And last month, at the end of March, we spoke about the emotion of disappointment because, again, parents were saying that they were really struggling with this with their kids, and disappointment is interesting because it can come out as anger. There's a bit of sadness in disappointment, right? So if I tell you, hey, even if my best friend, if she calls me, she says let's go out next week, and then the day that we're supposed to go out, she calls me and says I'm not feeling well or I'm too tired, I don't want to go out, I'll be disappointed. And so we've learned as adults mostly how to cope with that feeling. But we have to remember that our kids have not.

Speaker 1:

And so if you're a child, I really, really want you to be very aware of what is going on in your home. If you start to notice after this podcast episode that your child truly struggles with disappointment, it's whenever you say no to something, it's whenever you say wait for something, it's whenever you say not now but later. If you are noticing your child struggling with this particular emotion, I don't want you. You know, if you're giving a consequence because you said no to TV or like it's the end of TV and your child has a really big tantrum and maybe throws things and screams and yells and maybe they're disrespectful to you, I get that. There's a part of that that you're going to have to discipline. I get that. But you have to, at the end of all, that when you are regulated, when your child is regulated. You need to ask yourself what skill did I teach my child? What led to this moment?

Speaker 1:

And often there are emotions that a child does not know how to regulate. They don't know how to regulate disappointment, they don't know how to regulate frustration, they don't know how to regulate anger, and so it comes out in really big bouts of emotions that often are seen as the misbehavior. Yes, there's a misbehavior to it. Discipline or I don't like using the word discipline Discipline is often seen as more of a punishment. I hope it's not in your home. Discipline is truly what am I going to teach my child? I'm going to teach my child that you can't yell at me, you can't disrespect me and say things that are really mean and rude. But I noticed, right, this is the language we're going to use with our child.

Speaker 1:

I noticed that you were feeling disappointed when I said no, we can't go out for ice cream or McDonald's or whatever it is. I heard you get really, really mad in the car. You were in the back and then you started yelling at me. I heard you and I felt you kicking my chair. You were disappointed, and the uncomfortable thing around disappointment is that it can't go away. Sometimes I can't magically make it disappear. Have this conversation with your child. In fact, I'm recording this on a Sunday, publishing it on a Monday. I had this exact conversation with one of my kids this morning, sunday, publishing it on a Monday.

Speaker 1:

I had this exact conversation with one of my kids this morning. One of my kids had a soccer practice and the other child wanted to go, but they had a different commitment. They had something that they had to attend to, and so I said we can't go. Actually, I wanted to go to the soccer practice, but I can't go, I'm going to stay with you. And so they became mad.

Speaker 1:

My child became so mad that he had his head in his pillow, didn't want to talk to me. He was ignoring me. I don't want to talk to you right now, and it was just. I let him, let them have their moment of disappointment. But then, when I saw that he was listening to me and he wasn't just putting his head in the pillow, I said you know what, buddy, disappointment is not fun, I get it, you know. Play with you or whatever, but the disappointment of you not joining your sister at soccer is still going to be there, because I can't change that event, and I'm going to sit here with you. It's not comfortable to feel disappointed, but I'm going to sit here with you and what I can tell you is that we made a commitment and we're going to stick to it together. I'm also disappointed that I can't go to see her, but we're going to stick to it together and the moment's going to pass. That's one thing I can promise you.

Speaker 1:

And so you have to find a way to change your mind, to do something different. Let's think about breakfast. Come, let's have breakfast together. We can talk about what we're looking forward to tomorrow, what we're looking forward to the rest of the day. Maybe we can have some sushi today or pancakes, whatever you want. Let's chat about it. But I can't make that one thing of you joining your sister go away. And so I gave him time to sit with that and I sat with him. I gave him the space that he needed to be angry about it.

Speaker 1:

And guess what I always picture? Meltdown Mountain. And if you didn't get it for free, click the link in the show notes. Oh no, sorry, you can't get it. You can't get it that way. If you haven't gotten or received Meltdown Mountain review, leave a review for the podcast and a rating, and send me an email at info at curiousneuroncom and I will send you Meltdown Mountain for free. Or you can visit curiousneuroncom and click on shop and purchase it if you want. But if you want it for free, I will more than gladly, as long as you send me a screenshot of a review and rating, because that is the only way that we can keep this podcast going.

Speaker 1:

So that's one thing. So I always picture Meltdown Mountain and I could see that at the top when my child's face is stuck in his pillow. He's not talking to me, he's dysregulated. There is no point that I give him a lecture. There's just no point in me escalating the situation by getting mad at him that he's ignoring me and he has his head in his pillow. That is how he's choosing to deal with it right now. But I can show him that I'm here and I can also tell him which is what I said Putting your head in the pillow is not going to change anything. You are not speaking to me. That's not going to help me, help you, and so when you're ready, let me know I'm going to here, but just don't speak to me through your pillow.

Speaker 1:

And literally after three, four minutes he sat up and I spoke to him. He cried in my arms and I held him and I said I get it, I'm disappointed too, but we're going to stick to what we have to do today and we have a commitment. We're going to stick to that. And so he moved past the emotion. I could have easily disciplined him and said you know what? How dare you put your head in the pillow? You're ignoring me. I'm trying to help you. You know what? No Nintendo today or no, I don't know, take something away from him. No screen time.

Speaker 1:

I would have escalated the situation which we've had the conversation about on an earlier podcast episode, when we tend to escalate things because we see the disrespect but we don't see the child is dysregulated, who has no idea how to regulate this emotion, and so it's very easy to go towards the discipline which is the whole point of today's episode. I really want you to see past that. You are still going to have to maybe set a consequence, but most of the time, especially with a kid who's six and under, you're going to have to teach the skill. You're going to co-regulate and support that child through those big emotions. But when you start seeing them come down, where they're kind of listening to you, when they're giving you that eye contact if they haven't said anything super disrespectful, they haven't hit you or hit a sibling, or thrown a toy or whatever it is. If that is not there, then you can go right away towards the teaching. Hey, I noticed that you were feeling XYZ, whatever it was. It's not comfortable and I get that, but I'm here for you and the next time this happens, here's our game plan together. Let me help you through that emotion. That's what I told my son.

Speaker 1:

Disappointment will come in all different kinds of ways. We're going to be out, summer's coming and you might want ice cream. You'll be disappointed and be like, oh, I really wanted the ice cream. And I made him laugh and I said you know it's going to happen, but then you have to. I can't help you every single time to work through it, and so you're going to have to say in your head, okay, not today, but maybe another time, and that's okay. Maybe you can even picture the ice cream, whatever you want it to be. But you have to help yourself through this. As you are getting older and bigger, I want you to help yourself. I will be here now, but I won't always be there for you through the disappointment, and it's going to feel like anger, it's going to feel like sadness, but this is what you can do, okay. So that's one example.

Speaker 1:

Again, as a parent, if you are disciplining your child because you want them to obey you, because you said it's bath time and I said no more TV, turn the TV off. I don't want to turn. Turn the TV. I don't want to turn the TV off. It's so easy to right away move into. You're ignoring me, you're you're, you're going to listen to me. Turn the TV off no more. No TV tomorrow or no story at bedtime. It is so easy, rather than seeing the child for what it is, an emotion that they can't regulate.

Speaker 1:

But here is where one of our members question comes in. One member inside the Reflective Parent Club said to me I had no idea that I didn't know how to regulate until I listened to your podcast, and that's why I became a member, because I realized through what I was listening to on the podcast that these were all skills that I had not learned growing up. Many of us haven't learned these skills and so what happens? Our child's dysregulated. Our child acts out and it is much easier for us to discipline that and shut it down rather than get to our child's level, eye level and say, hey, I get it, you're mad. You cannot yell at me and kick me when you're mad, but what can you do next time you're mad? Here's how I can help you.

Speaker 1:

The reason why I'm bringing this example up is last week my kids and I were at. They had swimming lessons and we were waiting in the little hallway and one mom who had a five, six year old kid with her no, I think it was six or seven, because she was in my kid's class and she had a girl who must've been about two or three years old. She was standing, pulling at her mom's jacket, screaming her brains out, just yelling full blown tantrum in a very tiny hallway and I could see all the parents giving looks. I can see this child just dysregulated, completely dysregulated, and the mom was embarrassed. The mom was probably tired and so the mom never gave that child attention and just said arrête de pleurer, stop crying. And she just kept repeating it Stop crying, it's enough, stop crying. At one point the mom even said I know you're tired, but just stop it, stop crying.

Speaker 1:

And the kid just yelled louder, louder and louder and at one point I said, okay, what can I do? I just, I just want to help this mom so badly. First I want to give the mom a hug, but second of all, I want to give this child a hug because she's so dysregulated and she's clearly trying to get her mom's attention. And the way that we can perceive it, especially in a moment when we are dysregulated as the parent, is this kid is trying to get my attention and I'm not going to give them that satisfaction. But the child is getting her attention to co-regulate. They have not learned that skill and they won't for a very long time.

Speaker 1:

And so she there was a little wall, and so I stepped to the other side of the wall, knowing that the girl would be on the other side, and I came down to her level and I went peekaboo and the little girl just stopped and she looked at me. First it was more of a novelty, right, like she's very young and so at that age you can distract them. The mom had to stay there and, just again, never even gave her daughter eye contact. And I'm not saying this to criticize the mom. I'm saying this because I know that she was dysregulated and was tapped out clearly. And so the little girl just looked at me and was still like crying and like trying to get her breath, catch her breath from having cried so long, so hard. And then I went back and I hid behind the wall and then I, I, I, I had a feeling that she was looking for me and then I went back and I went peekaboo and then she looked at me and the mom just looked at me and smiled and he said you know, it's okay, like I got this, I'll help you. I could have continued doing that. Then the kids went swimming, so we all scattered around and that little girl left.

Speaker 1:

But it's just to show that that child is dysregulated. And I think that so many parents don't realize what's going on because we never learned those skills and so it's very easy to yell at this young child and say like stop crying, you're being a bad kid, you're embarrassing me, just you're being a pest, you're being a brat, and it's so easy to say these things. But if we learn to address ourselves first, in this moment of that child being dysregulated, we're going to realize that we are dysregulated too. And so what that mom could have done is, in her mind, said I don't have anything left to give my child today, but I'm just going to come down to her level and help her feel connected to me. And actually, personally, in my most disconnected moments with my kids, when I had nothing left to give, when I kind of came down to their level and gave them eye contact, I saw them for who they were a child who needed me in that moment and wasn't trying to piss me off, wasn't trying to embarrass me, wasn't trying to get my connection not get my connection, but like get my attention in a way that was needy. They were just being a child who was off and dysregulated. And so I saw that when I looked at them in their eyes, and if that mom would have taken one second to come down, she might've been able to support her child in whatever capacity she had left, maybe just saying like hi or okay, where are we going after Right, one little question to change that child's thoughts?

Speaker 1:

Because that child's ability to regulate is dependent on her attention span, her impulse, her executive functions, which are just starting to develop, and she has a long way ahead. And so there's nothing. You know she's doing the best she can in this child and she just needs a parent to act as her frontal lobe and to be her impulse control, to be her attention span and to be her executive functions and support her, okay, so the whole point of what we are talking about today is I really want you, the next time that you say that child is misbehaving, they need a consequence or they need to be disciplined, I really want you to also say and what skill do I need to teach them? If you are in line with your child or somewhere and they're being impatient, and so you say stop, wait your turn, you're so impatient, you are so this, you can't do that. Okay, am I going to discipline my child by taking something away from them when we get in the car? And I'm going to say you know what? You were so impatient when we were waiting in line that when we get home, no screen time, no TV or no whatever. It is so easy to do that. But I want you to say, and clearly, I need to teach you to be patient. Clearly, I need to teach you to be patient. Clearly, I need to teach you how to work on impulse, how to? Uh, your how to you know that you're impulsive? You're not. You're impulsive, but your impulse control. Clearly, I need to teach you to be patient and to stay focused on other things when you're bored or whatever. It is waiting in line and we don't have a phone and I'm not giving you a phone to wait, and I need you to learn how to be patient. What is the skill that you want to teach your child? It is just so important and these are the things that are going to support our kids as they are getting older and learning to wait in line, learning not to be disrespectful to somebody when they are angry and frustrated or disappointed. These are the skills that are going to support them.

Speaker 1:

If you're listening to this and you're saying I have no idea how to create those baby steps for my child, which we call scaffolding in research and education, how do we create those baby steps? So, if it's a child, a child who's very impatient, how do we create small moments of them waiting? So, for example, at home, if your child says I want a snack now, you're going to wait five minutes and it's going to be uncomfortable for both of us. It's going to be uncomfortable for me. It's going to be uncomfortable for you, but I would actually like you to wait five minutes, but I want it now. I'm so hungry. Well, you can wait five minutes. Actually, if you say that again it's going to be 10 minutes, we're going to practice this together. Oh, it's going to be uncomfortable, but you need to learn to wait. Buddy, I've noticed that you struggle a lot with waiting right, and it's so easy again to fall into this like you're so impatient. You are such an impatient child.

Speaker 1:

Okay, what am I doing as a parent to teach them this skill? It is a skill I need to teach them how to be patient, and so I'm going to create baby steps. I'm going to scaffold until if the goal is for them to be patient at the doctor's office while waiting, and that's like 15, 20, 30 minutes Well, how do I build up the resilience to that? How do I build that skill that I want them to learn without having screen time or screen in front of them? Do I play I Spy with them? Do I ask them to tell a story with me? Once upon a time there was, and then they have to continue it. And then when they say, next, you have to continue it, and then you continue the story back and forth.

Speaker 1:

We did this with our kids when they were very small and struggling to stay seated at the table. We started story time. Now we don't really do it anymore, but that was our way to help them build a skill. When you eat, we want you to stay at the table until everybody else is done, and so there were times that, sure, when we had toddlers, it was like, as long as you eat, you can run off, that's fine. But then we wanted them to have the skill of sitting at the table, and so we helped them build that skill. We didn't just get mad at them that they didn't have the skill.

Speaker 1:

I've seen people in public getting mad at their child for not being patient, getting mad at their child for not being grateful, getting mad at their child for having an emotion that was clearly an emotion of disappointment. But what are we doing in order to teach them these skills? What else was there that I wanted to talk to you about? I think that's it. I hope that this episode reminds you that if you are disciplining your child again, that word to me really means education.

Speaker 1:

It is not punishment. There can be consequences. My kids have received consequences. If you're, there are certain boundaries right, hitting a sibling there's a consequence. You're not playing with that toy and you're not going to play with your sibling right now. I'm going to sit you on the steps and you're going to wait a few minutes until you're calm, but then I'm going to come back and speak to you and I'm going to say well, I'm going to ask you what happened. Were you trying to get your siblings attention? Were they ignoring you? Do you need to set a boundary? We're going to explore that a little bit together. So it's not just about the consequence of being pulled to the side or not being able to play with that toy anymore.

Speaker 1:

There's a really big element 90% that becomes what is the skill that I'm teaching my child, and so I really want you to take the time to notice that this week in your home, how often are you getting mad at your child, even maybe labeling them right and saying you're so impatient or you're so rude or you're so disrespectful, but not teaching them the skill that they need to learn? What does not being rude sound like when you're mad? Right, if they say you're the worst, okay, well, they were mad. What does it sound like when you're really disappointed that you didn't get what you want. How should you behave? Make sure that you take the time to speak to them about the opposite aspect of it.

Speaker 1:

If you need support, make sure you visit kirstenroncom. There are tons of articles and now you can actually create a login on CuriousNeuroncom with our brand new website and you can save the articles that matter to you so that you have easy access to come back to them. That's number one. Number two you can visit us at Instagram Curious underscore Neuron. On Facebook, there's a private page, the Reflective Parenting. I do mixes of all of this.

Speaker 1:

In the end, I really want you to have the skills to learn how to pause and to observe what is happening with your child, and so, if you really need some support, you can try out the Reflective Parent Club for free for seven days.

Speaker 1:

Click the link in the show notes or send me an email info at curesnoncom if you want my calendar link and let's Meet if you want to talk. You have some questions or you have a struggle that you're experiencing with your child and you're not sure if this club is for you, but, most importantly, if you are a parent that really struggles with regulating your own emotions and again, that can look like externalizing by yelling all the time, or it can also look like somebody who suppresses. If you know that you are somebody that often doesn't speak up when you are upset about something, or you keep it inside and you say no, I don't want to start an argument with somebody, those are not healthy emotion regulation skills, and so I can support you with that. That is all I have to share with you today, and so I hope you have a wonderful and a beautiful week, happy reflections and I'll see you next Monday. Bye.