2e Emotional Regulation

Processing and managing emotions is hard for even the most level-headed of us. For gifted and twice-exceptional kids and teens, dealing with "all the feels" can be exhausting. The skills needed to develop emotional regulation can be developed over time with guidance and compassion from parents and educators. Emily will break down the 4-step process of emotional regulation so we can help our kids who are "a little bit extra" find healthy ways to manage their emotions. Emily is the highly acclaimed creator of the Neurodiversity Podcast, author of several books including “Raising Twice-Exceptional Children: A Handbook for Parents of Neurodivergent Gifted Kids”, and speaks internationally at conferences about neurodiversity affirming topics.

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I'm actually one of the few folks who is probably identified as a kid because I was identified as a kid because I was identified as ADHD when I was probably identified as a kid because I was identified as ADHD when I was in fifth grade as ADHD when I was in fifth grade and this was at a time when girls really weren't identified. And this was at a time when girls really weren't identified as ADHD, but in fifth grade. And this was at a time when girls really weren't identified as ADHD, but also it was.

It was before, it was before Asperger's was even in the DSM. So I've never, it was before Asperger's was even in the DSM. So I've never been assessed for autism or Asperger's, but I know that there are a lot of those traits I have in myself.

I know that one of my children does as well. And you know, it's kind of one of those things that you know, we just grew up in an age when really we didn't even, we didn't even really know a lot about that. So as we go through, I will be doing a drawing at the end for anyone who's in attendance and wants to, I'll do, I'll send an autographed copy of Raising Twice Exceptional Children to whoever the winner is.

And Kelly or whomever you know if you want to jot down that that link bit. Ly slash nd hyphen pod and maybe share it in the chat that way if folks come in a little bit after we've begun they can still get registered before the end of the session and we can do that. Maybe when we stop for questions and answers we can plug that in again. So I'd like to start off by talking about Why young, gifted and twice exceptional people experience?

All the fields and what that really looks like for them. So, you know, As we know, twice exceptionality really has to do with that overlapping. Of the of the cognitive ability layered with disability and that is really very complicated. For just operating in the world.

We know that, for example, twice exceptional kids, when we just look at different profiles of twice exceptional kids. Gifted ADHD ears tend to struggle a lot with emotional dysregulation, as do gifted autistic kids, but for different reasons. A lot of times the hyperactive impulsive characteristic of what a lot of ADHD individuals experience is what's correlated with some of that emotional dysregulation where it's just really quick that those emotions come up related with the limbic system for our gifted autistic kids.

It's more often related to kind of anxiety and not always identifying all of those different emotions as they kind of build up and then that some can sometimes result in either the meltdown or the shutdown or having difficulty regulating that. But beyond even just the twice exceptional piece there's also just evidence that gifted people in general tend to have some heightened emotional awareness or sensitivity. Now, we're talking about mild to moderate and it's not in every gifted individual but the research shows that there is that that is a piece of just Giftness and when I think about all of these things when I think about neurodiversity What we're really learning is about the interconnectivity of the brain and when we think about giftedness autism, ADHD, they're all about

that different wiring that is almost hyper-connected in different ways. There are other types of of exceptionalities right where you know you have dyslexia dyscalculia dysgraphia which are all specific learning disabilities in different areas. And again, we're talking about some of the different brain regions that operate differently. And when you think about those types of twice exceptional kids, think about the anxiety that kids like that feel because they have this cognitive ability.

And they know that they can do these skills and they understand these concepts, but then when it comes to some of these other more basic skills, they're really struggling. And often not enough that people really notice it. A lot of times that's, you know, our twice exceptional and our gifted kids and adults.

And up spending a lot of time masking or camouflaging their differences. Whether it's a gifted middle school girl who doesn't want to be identified as smart or the teacher's pet. Or, you know, an autistic kiddo who tries to hide their sensory needs or their sensory stems, which are like repetitive movements that are often associated with emotional regulation.

You know but they don't want to be appear that they are different so they kind of hide that beneath the surface or even the ADHD kid who overcompensates and becomes a perfectionist because they're so paranoid about making those mistakes. And being seen as, you know, not paying attention or not caring about their work. And so then they try to cover that up.

That masking is really overwhelming. So when you talk about that emotional regulation, when you talk about all of those things that go into that. When you have twice exceptionality, that's a piece of it, that is a layer in and of itself into what magnifies some of those emotional experiences.

So what are some of the other factors that influence emotional regulation? So one of the things that we just see with, gifted kids is the fact that many of them have Very high verbal comprehension skills. They have this verbal ability that allows them to hear and read and see all of the things. They hear conversations that adults are having.

They see what's happening on the news or on the radio in the car. And they can cognitively understand this. And yet, they don't have the life experience or the emotional maturity to put it into context.

So they may feel very helpless about those situations. They may feel really overwhelmed by what they know and not being able to figure out what to do with that. You know, I feel like in life generally. The first time that we experience a lot of things is kind of it sticks with us, right?

It's like the most powerful and often the most distressing if it's a negative experience. But as we have more life experiences as we've progressed through those things and we've, we've. You know, matured, we can often look back on those things and say, okay. You know, I've been through something like this before. It was really hard.

I got through it. But when you're young and you don't have those life experiences, it's really hard to know how you're going to get through that. So.

A lot of our high ability kids, our idealists, they are perfectionists. They see what the way that it could be, whether that's their schoolwork or how their friends are getting along or other things in the wider world. And then another piece is that they have these advanced logic skills. That allow them to see the loopholes in various things, whether that's a teacher at the high school who is, you know, asking them to do something that doesn't make sense.

Or, you know, a consequence at home that again, they're like, well, that's fine, you can take away this because I'll just find a way to do this other thing. But the frustration comes in when they can see the loopholes but can't do anything about it, right? They don't have any control. And also the other thing we have to consider is that Quite often, our neurodivergent kids are placed in educational settings that just really aren't appropriate.

They're not a good fit for them. And so especially for our 2 E kids. When you have that giftedness.

Layered with a learning disability, right? That's a really hard thing to find the appropriate academic fit because on the one hand, yes, they need to be the appropriate academic fit because on the one hand, yes, they need to be challenged. And hopefully we can provide some accommodations for them to experience that challenge. And we need to recognize though that like if they're only being seen as those areas of difficulty, they might be in a classroom that's really too boring for them and not challenging.

All of those things like reduce that window of tolerance. For what we have, and so we are then closer to the surface of that emotional dysregulation at any time. And so we really want to make sure that we're understanding all of those factors and kind of trying to tease out what's really going on with kids.

So what I'd like to do is I'm going to share with you some vignettes and I'm just going to introduce them a couple of different ways that we might see some twice exceptional kids. Who experience some of that emotional dysregulation. So I'll introduce them here at the beginning and then we'll go through the content of the presentation and then at the end we'll kind of wrap up and we'll apply what we talked about during the presentation to these situations.

So Leah is a high schooler who really kind of stands out for her academic talents, but she also really has this perfectionist approach and the streak about how she wants things to be done. She has a really deep sense of what's fair and what's not. And so when she looks at problems like world hunger and then back at her own life it just doesn't sit right with her she gets a lot of feelings of guilt in helplessness.

So when it comes to school work though, She's the kind of student who really likes to think outside the box. Okay. And she really wants to dive deeper, but often the rules or the teachers say that she can't have this flexibility on this assignment.

So that just adds to her frustration. And then socially, she's always acting like trying to keep things undercover with her friends because she doesn't want to put all her worries on them. You know, she carries all this weight. She has all of these stressors. And, you know, it's just really overwhelming to her, but she knows that her peers don't really see it the same way that she does.

So, you know, she has a lot of emotional dysregulation, but a lot of it is internalized. She kind of holds a lot of that in and that causes a lot of stress for her. So Peyton on the next is a second grade, twice exceptional, gifted ADH deer.

He really, really wants a best friend and he is not satisfied when he has to share friendships. He wants someone who can meet. That exclusive friendship criteria. He's also one of the kids who likes to make up his own rules for a game and then he expects his friends to play by his complex rule book.

But the other kids often want to play their own way and he does not like that. He's not interested. A lot of times that can then look like anger or frustration to those who don't really know what's going on inside his head.

So he's got this really low frustration tolerance. So when things don't go as planned, it hits him hard and it really looks like explosive emotions. And if he senses even a little bit of criticism from a teacher or a peer, he gets very tearful, it causes problems not only at recess, but also in class when he's working in groups and in other social situations.

So this is Peyton. And then we have Hannah. So Hannah is a, gifted middle schooler who is gifted an autistic and the world can be really overwhelming to her, especially when things change without warning.

So she often tries to get a handle on her anxiety. I, trying to figure out what's going on, knowing what to predict, and then asking lots and lots of questions over and over again. But that can be a bit much during class. So a lot of times when things just get to be way too much, it looks like she's mad and that anger kind of bubbles over.

Other times she just kind of shuts down and she pulls into a shell to protect herself from everything that's going on around her. And when she's in that place, whether it's that anger or that shutdown, it takes her a pretty long time to be able to re-regulate and get back to her usual self and get back to just kind of being able to get through the school day. So all 3 of these students show what that twice exceptionality and what that emotional dysregulation can look like.

And obviously, you know your own kids, you know, when they experience emotional dysregulation. But what I want to walk you through tonight is a four-step process. Called the I can method for regulating emotions. Now, I just want to say this is helpful for all ages, even adults.

And I want you to know that it is never too late for any age. I mean, if you've got teens, if you've got, you know, intermediate kids, if you've got a partner. Whoever it is. This is definitely a skill that can be built. And what I like about this framework is that you can use it in a lot of different ways.

Basically what I've done is I was reflecting on all of the things that I was doing with my clients and my mental health practice, where I was really trying to figure out what specifically where the steps that I was helping them with when emotional regulation was one of their things that they were struggling with. And this is kind of what I came up with. So you can do you know, very direct, information sharing with your, with your kids.

We're like, okay, let's talk about this. Let's talk about the ICANN method and you can talk them through each of these 4 steps. Or you can just gonna have it in your own mind. And then use some of the skills that we're talking about and try to implement them.

You can use the steps out of order. It's kind of one of those dynamic processes where sometimes you're doing this step and sometimes you're doing that step in all really layers. But ultimately, it's a collaborative process and it's a tool to help all of us investigate for us to investigate what's going on with our kids but also to teach them how to understand what's going on in their own lives.

So that they can build those emotional regulation skills. We want our kids to be independent. And this is a way that we can help them get there.

So the first step in the I can method for regulating emotions is investigate. So what that really is talking about is building awareness around dysregulation. We have to recognize and understand those signals as they build. So this can be really, really hard for kids.

And then, but if you don't know how to predict. The things that might cause stress, it's very difficult to be proactive. To reduce that stress before you get there. So it's it what would be ideal is if we're not always trying to be to put out fires, right?

We want to keep the fire from starting in the first place. So one of the steps that we can do is we can track activators. What are the things that are those those things that that cause that emotional dysregulation. What are the stresses?

What are the things that we notice as a pattern that cause some of that frustration? So first of all, we can just keep track of triggers and we can talk about them and notice, it's like, hey, I noticed that in the mornings when we're when you're running late for school that tends to be a time if you if you feel like you don't have enough time in your rush to you start getting really stressed and it doesn't take a lot then for those emotional emotions to bubble over. Or I noticed, you know, that when when you have your homework and you're struggling with your math homework and having a hard time getting started on it.

That that tends to be something that kind of can can be the first domino that falls towards that emotional disregulation. And so we can have those conversations. We can kind of help facilitate those but also help our kids have some of that self-reflection.

And one of the best things we can do here is like literally kind of track it, you know, and kind of keep keep you know, like either a tally or like a, you know, Google Doc or something where we're just kind of noticing and but doing it in a very non-judgmental way like, hey, you know what? Let's just see if we can notice any patterns. Gifted kids love looking for patterns. So how can we find some some areas where you're really you know where it seems like it's a consistent area that's difficult for you so then maybe we can problem solve through that.

It's really important. As we work to track these activators that we recognize that surface level dysregulation is often not the cause of dysregulation. This means that It could be something that happened earlier. And you know maybe they got through whatever that situation was and then this is just the next thing.

That kind of was too overwhelming for them but also What I find is that sometimes with kids they're kind of these like secondary emotions that they're experiencing. So for example they might be they might have something where they say that they're mad or they're acting as if they're really mad about something. But really when you backtrack through it, anger is not really the first emotion. It did maybe that they were embarrassed.

Or disappointed or surprised when something changed and didn't go the way that they expected it to. And so we need to kind of be able to talk to them about that and try to figure out, what is that? Because I find that I mean anchor sometimes is I mean it's just angry or you know retaliatory or whatever the situation might be but so often it's it's disappointment or embarrassment or something, shame, something like that that's kind of like subtle and hard to talk about.

And so we want to kind of help kids recognize that when that's happening. And normalize that for them. Transitions are huge and that can be any age. I was just talking with a parent earlier today about their child who is you know autistic and struggles to get to school especially when they're sick, right?

Like they just have a sensitive system and so, but then the hardest thing is like even once they're well. Getting back to school after that is that transition it's like it's really hard and I know that's true for a lot of kids like anytime there's been a long break, a holiday break or a long weekend or whatever, whatever that next day is to get to school is always the hardest. And so, you know, it could be transitions like that or it could just be smaller transitions.

Like I have to put away my video game to go eat dinner. But that can be a huge activator for a lot of that dysregulation because it's just, it requires. Some self-regulation, you know, in a cognitively where we're able to like.

Stop this activity. Readjust. And move into this other piece and that can that's that's often hard for our neurodivergent kids.

Unexpected changes is a huge one. And you know what's interesting about unexpected changes is that frequently We don't always know what the expected. See, the schedule of events is in our kids minds. And so then sometimes we don't even know that we made a change because it was just what we were thinking was the plan all along, but they had something in their mind about what they were going to do.

And then when that changes, that can be really hard. One of the best things ultimately to do in this situation is really just to try to give as much advanced notice as possible and really kind of you know set everything up so that they kind of know what to expect. But that can be a huge activator as well. And then also we just want to always kind of try to notice that irritability if there is any irritability.

Because irritability and increase in irritability specifically. Can be a sign of things like underlying anxiety like clinical anxiety. So when in the DSM, it specifically talks about for both anxiety and depression that one of the outward signs that you often see in kids is an increase in And so most people think like, oh, they're just grumpy or they're just gonna be being cranky or whatever it is.

If it's a marked increase in its persistent and it's lasting, that's something that you might want to notice in order to perhaps, you know, talk to the school counselor or, you know, take other steps to kind of see what's going on there. Throughout all of this we're having conversations with our kids. Hopefully they're noticing some of these patterns.

They're tracking those activators, but also we can just share some of those observations so we can be reflective or we can be direct, you know, we want to give lots of opportunities for feedback. But the biggest thing that we want to do with our tone is keep it really non-judgmental. Everybody has emotions. Everyone gets upset. We have to be really careful not to let their disregulation trigger our dysregulation.

And the more we can kind of step back and kind of remind ourselves that like. It doesn't have to be about us even when it feels like it's about us. The better it is because All that does is escalate everything. Or if it de-escalates things, it does it at the expense of just causing more anxiety, right?

Or like teaching, teaching kids to like hold stuff in without actually learning how to process it or regulate it because you know, they don't wanna make somebody man. So another piece for this is just finding opportunities for check-ins and this can vary based on age and development. You know, we just wanna normalize checking in about emotions on a regular basis. So for little ones.

Make it a routine. I don't know if you've ever heard of this before, but something that my kids always have loved to do is doing roses and thorns and so sometimes it's when we're in the car sometimes it's when we're at dinner or whatever it's like and everyone gets to share what was a rose from today and what was a thorn, a good and a bad. And so, you know, you just can have these conversations. Kids kind of in the intermediate ages really love, you know, finding a rating scale.

It's a shorthand. It's quick and it's easy. And then for older kids, one of the things that, you know, we just have to communicate with them and we're communicating.

And so how can we integrate text and technology or memes, you know, making it kind of engaging in a way, but just like, you know, how is your day? I mean, one of my good friends, actually Amanda Morn, who is the co-author of my next book that I wrote, she and I basically communicate most of the time just in Shits Creek memes. That's like our preferred method of communication. But it's a good checking, right? And you can, and so that's a way even with older kids that we can really kind of, you know, encourage them to kind of share as well in a really safe.

Way that's non-threatening. It doesn't feel too vulnerable, but it allows us to have that check-in. So taking temperature is kind of a rating scale. You can do this, you know, in a lot of different ways.

Or additionally, you could also have a daily rating or a journal. Basically, one of the things that can be really great for kids, I don't know, maybe you could convince your older kids to do this, but perhaps for younger kids it's a little bit easier but having like a journal that you write back and forth with each other. That's kind of a cool way. They like getting like letters, but also you know, it gives it's kind of safer to sometimes write the things out rather than having to say it out loud.

But more than anything with these check-ins, we just want to maintain this detective perspective, which just means kind of this, again, this. Very kind of neutral. Viewpoint about what it is that kids you know is going on and we're just kind of curious about it we just have a sense of wonder and just trying to figure out what's going on and that can help to normalize talking about those things.

The other piece that we really want to do is we want to investigate body signals of emotions. So, one of the things that we have to recognize is that there are a lot of factors that really influence our emotional regulation. And part of regulating our emotions has to do with managing our physical sensations. So we know that sensory integration is closely tied with emotional regulation.

And so When we, how do we know that we're feeling angry? How do we know that we're feeling stressed? How do we know when we're feeling nervous or sad and what are the body sensations that we're experiencing there.

Now what's interesting about twice exceptional kids is that sometimes their sensory systems are wired a little bit differently. And so if they have a hyposensitive sensory system, that can be a little bit harder for them to identify that, but we can build that skill. We can help them find the things that are working for them. And just again, investigating that, trying to figure out what are the precursors to that emotional dysregulation.

So after we have the investigate step, the next step that we have is communicate. So we need to find ways to communicate about being dysregulated. So this takes a lot of different forms, but the foundational piece here really has to do with building emotional literacy.

How do we help kids find the words to say? Because for gifted kids especially, when they're really young, First of all, because of that, some of that heightened emotional sensitivity. And because they have this. Vast verbal comprehension. The word sad mad, glad and scared or whatever, I don't know, are not going to be enough.

They are going to want to find the just right emotion word and finding that just right emotion word is really powerful. So, you know, I think one of the skills is talked about in the place that I know it from, I believe that this was originally where it was published is from the whole brain child is the name of the book, Tina Bryson and I'm not going to remember the other author's name. But. They talk about name it detainment, right? And so when you are able to step back from your emotions and label the emotion.

It gives you just a little bit of distance, right? Sometimes when we're feeling emotional and we're really in it. It's like overwhelming. We're just in the emotion. But when we can step back and say, wow, I'm feeling really frustrated or I'm feeling angry or I'm feeling melancholy.

I don't know, whatever the perfect word is. It gives us that that opportunity to reflect and it kind of brings us back into some of those other cognitive parts of our brain with, you know, that are, that are processing that information a little bit differently. Rather than like the limbic system and everything that's just kind of focused on the emotion. But it can be really powerful.

It gives a sense of control. One of the things that can be a barrier here is a lexicon. So I was mentioning earlier about that hyposensitivity that some neurodivergent people experience.

And so if you have hyposensitivity to some of those internal body signals. It can be really difficult to label those emotions and that can be associated with elixir-themia which is basically a term that means having a difficult time identifying and labeling emotions. So I can think of a client who I used to work with who definitely experienced Alexothymia.

And we would be talking about whatever the situation was. And I would say, you know, well, how, you know, what do you, what are you feeling? What do you think, you know, how were you feeling when that happened? And he would sit there and he would think.

And he would pause and he had he needed some additional processing speed usually and then he would like at me and he just would go. I don't know. And this was a middle school student. He was like almost in high school.

And for what it's worth, like he wasn't being defiant, he really just didn't know how to really label those emotions. So sometimes we have to find other ways to to build that skill, something you can do with kids who really have a hard time and can't find that just right emotion word, you can find other ways to symbolize it. So again, using numbers as a code could be good. So like are you on a you know 1 2 3 or 4 and they can kind of decide whatever those numbers mean or they might be able to draw like a symbol like a squiggle or a spiral or something that kind of represents how they're feeling in their body.

You know, any of those things can kind of be other ways to build that emotional literacy without necessarily finding the word. But one of the tools that I really love to use is an emotion wheel. You can find this. You can go and Google, you can find an emotion wheel, you can find a million of them.

But basically it's just kind of a, you know, tiered circle with all these little spokes that come out and in the center you have this kind of 6 primary emotions. So basically think the characters from the inside out Pixar movie and add surprise in there that's usually the one that gets added in there but then as you go out the feelings are more nuanced the words are more specific. And so I have this tool. I've got it over there in my drawer with all my other fidgets for the kids because we pull it out and use it as just kind of a menu.

How do you decide what emotions you're feeling, what's the just right word here? What I have a picture of here though is actually a reproducible page from my book Teaching Twice Exceptional Learners. So if you want to have your kids, you don't need to buy the book to do this.

You can do this on your own. You can see it's a circle. It's got spaces on it.

That's all you really need. But basically, get online, get on the source. Com and find your own words.

Like what are the just right words that you want to put on your emotion wheel? And so for those kids who love that higher level thinking skill and want some more ownership over it, this can be a great tool for them. The other thing that you can do with kids and you can have this through conversations, this is an activity that you would do with younger kids, but really helping them focus on the fact that there are, we often have mixed emotions, right?

They can layer on top of each other. So this was them something where we drew like these little thermometer scales. And they got to pick what words and what order they went in, which was kind of interesting. But if you notice there's like a little a little slit that's cut through there with a with a paper clip on it.

That they could then move the paper clip up and down as we were talking about it. And so, you know, anything that's tangible like that can be really helpful for kids too to kind of just communicate about those emotions. The other thing that we can do is we can just model emotional literacy. We need to show this to kids.

So often kids somehow feel like adults always have it figured out. And if they don't have it figured out and they're emotionally dysregulated, kids tend to internalize it like it's probably something that I did. Which rare, you know, it's really not. But we want to kind of verbalize our own dysregulation and kind of talk through what's going on.

We can show that vulnerability to them, but we can also then explain our strategies. So for example, this is what this could look like. You get a phone call and it's extremely frustrating to you. And so you're emotionally intense child recognizes this and they are asking you what's wrong.

And so you just kind of narrate it for you. You know, I'm feeling really frustrated about the phone call I just received. I had hoped that the car was going to be fixed today but they found something else wrong with it. Labeling then the what you're experiencing.

My heart is racing and I feel kind of sick to my stomach because it's going to be difficult to pay for another repair. I really felt like I wanted to yell at the man on the phone, but it's not his fault. So I'm going to go and sit for a minute and kind of just relax for a minute and try to think about what my plan is.

The more we can really just model that for them, we can show them like, what are my internal body signals telling me? What is my thought process like? What is my next strategy going to be? Like, what am I going to do?

It can be really helpful for kids to be like, what am I going to do? It can be really helpful for kids to see that process but they don't they might see it can be really helpful for kids to see that process, but they might see it, but they're not going to necessarily be observant, but they don't they might see it but they're not going to necessarily be observant enough to understand what's really happening enough to understand what's really happening. So what we want to do is we want to be able to kind of go through and you know, show them what those steps might look like so that they can really, you know, just understand that a little bit more.

The last piece here with communicating also is just self-advocacy. So we want kids to be able to self-advocate. We want them to ask for help. A lot of times gifted and twoi kids do not like to ask for help.

They are used to being able to do things they are used to being able to be successful with things and it's really hard for them. So I find that one thing that can be really help. Is to kind of give them a script or if it's not a script like a structure specifically.

So that they know what steps there are to to self-advocate. So the first one is. Recognize when help is needed. I'm having trouble with this thing. I identified that I cannot do this on my own.

I need help. Then you have to find help. Who's the person to ask? Who do you trust?

Who can it be? You know, whatever age it is, if it's, if it's the high school guidance counselor, if it's, you know, one of the teachers, you know, if it's, if it's, I don't know, one shade, whoever it might be. But who is the person that you're going to go and ask for that you trust? You ask for a assistance, but then this is the other part that I think is really important.

You offer a suggestion or idea. So I will tell you that one of the things when I was a classroom teacher and I would have kids come up and they would need help or they would have kids come up and they would say to me like they would need help or they would raise their hand, I go over to me like they would need help or they would raise their hand, I go over to them and they say, I don't get it I need help. I have no idea what that means. I need you to kind of process through and try to think about what it is you need help with.

But the thing that I really like to prompt kids to do and push them to do is to offer a suggestion or idea. It might be a terrible idea. It might not work, but at least it shows that they're attempting to solve the problem.

Right? And I think that what they need to know is that when they self-advocate, especially if they're going to somebody who's maybe not they're not extremely close with like a teacher or whatever that might be. When they show that they're actively trying to find a solution. Even if that solution isn't a good one, It I think it goes a long way with just that communication piece.

So we can encourage kids to do that. So, you know, find help who's the person you trust, ask them, describe the problem specifically, and then offer suggestion, you know, or, you know, what is the idea? So we have so that's how we can communicate about regulating emotions. So we investigate, we communicate.

Our next step is that we need to activate. We need to activate our problem-solving skills and use cognitive flexibility to assess and determine best strategies. So when we're talking about this, one of the things we can do to activate is we can assess the size of the problem.

Now this is tricky because the size of the problem for neurodiversity people might be much different. So for example, if you have a twoe gifted autistic hito, something that seems really small, you know, a sensory issue that they're experiencing that's that's causing a lot of discomfort or anxiety about not knowing what to expect, right? That might seem small to us. But it might be much bigger to them and we need to validate that for them and recognize that they might, it doesn't do us any good to to tell them that that's not a big deal.

You get a lot further if you're like, I can tell that's why you're really, you know, distressed about this, you know, let's try to see what solution we can find. But also we can help them put this into perspective, you know, as far as their emotional reaction and how big that is for that problem. So one activity that that. I like to do, well I'm gonna get to that in a second actually.

So one thing is just a quick pause signal. When we notice that that emotional regulation is elevating and we want to try to find a way to implement a strategy. We want to activate it and do a quick pause signal. Like, like, okay, we're, we're ramping up here.

They can use the quick pause signal. We can use the quick pause signal, but like let's just pause. For a second and just assess, right? And it's kind of like just Taking a break for a minute.

And helping to just reflect on that first second before we get into too much too much further without emotional dysregulation. As we're doing that, if we can, we can do this activity called emotional price tagging. You can do this in a lot of different ways, but I love this. Again, I've done this with all ages all the way up through through high school students and I do it in different ways like when I do it with younger kids I do it in a much more concrete way where we literally get out like index cards or construction paper.

With older kids, it's more of just a discussion that we're talking about. But basically, because kids love Money and they love kind of the mathy types of stuff, a lot of types of things a lot of time Emotional price tagging asks them to assign a value. To the emotional reaction that they had. So a, you know, just kind of a sigh and a rolling of their eyes, right?

Maybe that's worth a penny. And then, you know, if they kind of raise their voice and say, you know, something that's kind of, smart alecky or kind of mean, maybe that's 5 cents. I don't, whatever, a dime a quarter, a dollar, $5, you know.

Maybe a $20 problem is where they've totally like had a complete meltdown or whatever. But then what you do is you then reflect afterwards. And you say, you know, how much did you spend? Did you spend or did you save? You know, did you did you spend too much emotional energy on what the size of that problem was.

You know, or did you or was it just a penny problem? The other nice thing about this is as you have this conversation, it gives you a shared language that you can use. And so when you do that quick pause signal in the future, maybe you can say something, hang on.

How much is this problem worth? This is a penny problem? Is this a quarter problem? To just put it into perspective.

So having something tangible that they can assign that to. But again, I think that, you know, it's just helpful. To offer that reflection piece. And sometimes they will tell you, you know, it might be a problem, but let's say for example they think the problem is a $20 problem.

But could you have a smaller reaction in order to save that money? You don't have to spend all of that money. Perhaps you can reduce that reaction in order to try to find a solution in that way. So, you know, that can be something that you can have a conversation about.

Another piece of this, you know, activating is just really doing perspective taking and really trying to understand that that We don't always know what other people are thinking. I think that's really confusing and I know I know that there are a lot of kids and a lot of people who it's like they they feel like they should automatically know what other people are thinking and they don't but so what I'd like to do again trying to make it really concrete for some of our two-week kids I do a lot of drawings with little little thought bubbles. And it's like, okay, what? What are the possibilities? What are the hypotheses that we have about what this person might be thinking in this situation?

And understanding that there's a lot of variables there. We don't always know what it is. So in this example, why isn't Won doing as part it isn't fair that I have to do all the work.

It doesn't fear that I have to do all the work. So what are 3 possible things that he might be thinking? Well, he could be thinking this work is too hard, and Mali will be mad if I mess it up.

He could be thinking, I wonder how I did on my math test this morning. It was really hard. It could be, I wish I didn't have to do this project. It's so boring.

So recognizing that there can be multiple reactions that somebody is having and that we don't always know what that is so it's so we need to communicate with them to find out what that is so that we can then react or respond accordingly. The other piece about activating is using realistic reframes. Realistic reframes are kind of the answer to what people would call toxic positivity.

I've known for a long time. It's like if you try to use positive thinking or too much positive self-talk with especially with gifted kids they're gonna look at you and go Well, that's not accurate. That's not true. But a realistic reframe is recognizing that There's just kind of a mixed reaction that you might have more of a neutral reaction I think sometimes when I'm working with kids, it's hard because They often think that everybody is happy most of the time.

But really, usually it's like we're just kind of content. We're just kind of okay. Maybe, hopefully. And so we want to put this in, into context for them so they can really understand.

You know, what's a realistic way to look at something? So here are some examples, right? So the first one here says, you know, I got an answer wrong when the teacher called on me.

Now everyone thinks I'm dumb. So that's definitely some negative thinking. Some all or nothing thinking.

And so the realistic reframe might need to be like, I'm allowed to make mistakes like everyone else. I feel embarrassed that I that I messed that up but I know that people probably won't remember you know whatever that might be a realistic reframe and really what this comes from is you know we talk about cognitive behavioral therapy which this is kind of related to but really this is also about acceptance and commitment therapy. Act. Which really has to do with kind of accepting some of those uncomfortable emotions, but then committing to take action on it and trying to figure out like what's the solution to the problem, what can I do there?

It doesn't always have to be easy. What can I do there? It doesn't always have to be easy.

It doesn't always have to be positive. Sometimes this kind of sucks and that's OK. But we can also recognize, you know, it's like. Another example for this would be like nobody likes me.

I'll never have any friends. It's like, okay, I, you know, I have a couple of friends who I would like to be better friends and I know that that's something I can work on, right? That's the realistic reframe, just kind of keeping it in that context So after we have investigated, communicated and activated, our last step is to navigate.

So how do we get through that dysregulation and return to a regulated state? So, you know, a lot of things we can do here, you know, I think one thing to recognize is like there are a lot of kids out there who think that mindfulness doesn't work. Especially gifted kids, especially two-E kids. You know, and when we talk about mindfulness, what we're really talking about is that just that mind and body connection.

But the way that I get kids on board with this is I teach them the science behind it. Right? I teach them about how the key stress response region in the brain, the fighter flight. Part of our brain, you know, activates.

And when we engage with some of these other strategies, we're able to get out of that fighter flight so we might talk about polyvegle theory, we might talk about how these things actually help you know stimulate our bodies to help us relax. So that tends to be. A good way to get some buy in. You know, sometimes I'll have them even do some research on it, you know, to find some ideas.

But, but there's, there is science behind it. It's not like just hokey stuff. But I also would say I don't ever try to get kids to do something that they don't feel comfortable doing.

So like a lot of times mindfulness activities will tell you that, oh well you need to close your eyes. You don't have to close your eyes. Just look at the ground, look at the wall, just whatever, just kind of try to focus like with like have a soft focus in your eyes without really like looking all around at everything.

Or, you know, oh, and this is the other thing about just kind of some of the breathing and trying to kind of like stay really focused on your breathing. This is great for perfectionists, but literally The goal of meditating is to fail. And then to catch yourself when you fail and redirect your attention to your breathing or whatever it is that you're trying to focus on.

Kids think I can't do that. I just always get distracted. Like that's literally the point is noticing when you're distracted so that you can then refocus.

And so, you know, it can be helpful that way. But there are other just some quick things that you can do that can really help and that kids can kind of do on their own, especially when they're not. Like if so that other people won't necessarily notice. So one of my. Preferred. Breathing exercises that kids that have kids do is called is just counting breaths.

Well really adults too. This is great for helping kids fall asleep as well if they haven't. I actually used this to fall asleep.

I notice that a lot of times the clients that I work with, they don't like the really complicated breathing exercises like breathe in 17, hold for 6, you know, whatever. It's too much for them. I mean, those things work. I think they work well. And if people like them, that's great.

But I think for a lot of kids, they're like, it makes me hyperventilator, whatever it is. Counting breasts is just simple. You don't do anything differently with your breathing. You just count your breaths.

And so when you breathe in, it's one. Breathe out, it's 2. Breathe in, it's 3. Breathe out, it's 4. And then when you get to 10, you just restart back at one and start counting again as you go through.

And so, you know, but what happens is naturally as you're counting that breathing, typically it does kind of slow down slow down your breathing and helps you kind of relax. And another little activity here that can be useful I call straw breathing. There's a quick trip right across the parking lot from my office over here.

And so every once in a while I grab an extra coffee stir or 2 just because those are really good because they've got that really thin little hole but basically all this is is like you do a quick little body skin. How is your body feeling? What do you notice throughout your body? What is what are the sensations that you're experiencing? Okay, we're going to take a deep breath in.

And then when I count to 3, I want you to push the air out through this coffee stir and make it last as long as possible. And then you kind of just reassess after that, it usually takes a decent amount of time to finish blowing all of that air out. But most people, and I know what I experience, it's like I feel like my whole body just kind of goes, kind of just relax, you know, relaxes or deflates a little bit.

But that's another really good one. To just kind of help return to regulation. But you'll notice that either of those don't require you to go anywhere differently.

Another part is just about allowing breaks. Or alone time. If you have a kid who walks away in the middle of an argument.

If they walk away when they're angry. Let them go. Let them go. There is no reason for us as adults to force them to stay while we continue to to lecture them.

About whatever it is because I promise you at that moment they're not hearing it anyway. We're doing that we're doing that for us we're not doing that for them. And so, but I'm not saying that they get to walk away and we never discuss it again.

They walk away and if we can in that moment say, I can tell you need a break. Let's come back to this. In an hour at dinner, whatever it might be, or come downstairs when you're when you're ready to when you're ready to talk about what's going on.

Whatever, whatever that space that time might need to be. But sometimes we need to do that too. You know, it's like, what I say.

What I say lovingly to my husband when Because he likes to get in that cycle with the talking and I'm like, okay, I feel like we've reached the point of diminishing returns. We're not we're not making any progress here. We're just kind of talking to say the same things.

And you know it's not a back and forth. You know so so we can really allow that and recognize that that is a helpful and a healthy strategy. To be able to then come back and have a productive conversation. Because when we're in that dysregulated state, it's just not, we're not getting anywhere with it.

Another piece with this is just recognizing that sensory tools and stems can be really helpful. So in case you're unfamiliar with the term STEM, It's really related mostly primarily to autism, but a lot of ADHD or STEM as well. And it really just has to do with repetitive movements. That are coming. If you notice, I'm sitting here in my chair and I even swinging back and forth the entire time.

I'm sorry it's probably distracting. I really can't, it's just what my body does. And so I also have like this little fidget here that I always use when I'm giving a little this little fidget here that I always use when I'm giving a presentation, it's like a little fidget here that I always use when I'm giving a presentation, it's like a little fidget ring and buy a million of them on Amazon for like 4 bucks or something.

I don't know if they're really cheap, but you know. Those things, any of those types of little fidget things can be useful. Sometimes kids need to pace. Sometimes they need to rock. Sometimes they need to, you know, I don't know.

Do whatever but recognize that sensory input can really be calming. So a lot of kids love deep pressure. So that's stimulating their proprioceptive sense. So weighted blankets or just tight hugs.

Right? Those can be things that can also be really regulating for, for their systems. So understanding.

What your child's sensory needs are is really a helpful, helpful piece to kind of recognize that those things and those stems are regulating their emotions. And so we want to we want to help them find what works for them. So, you know, I think the thing to remember with, with this step here is that we're talking about progress and not perfection.

As I mentioned, any of these steps can really be done in any particular order and it's like you might jump around. But you can see how they do kind of follow each other with the investigate, communicate, activate, and then navigate. But we want to just work towards the goal and recognize that if you have a kid who struggles with emotional regulation, it is not a problem that started overnight and it's not going to end overnight.

And so that's okay. We can we can work on it. Build the language, build the community, you know, communication about it, build the rapport, and just kind of keep focusing on it.

So I wanna go back to these kids that we were talking about and I want to kind of walk you through. The I can method and the steps based on their situations. So if you recall, Leah was our kiddo who kind of had some of those big picture concerns about the state of the world.

She kind of internalized a lot of those things. She would get really stressed when she would want to be kind of creative with her with her schoolwork because she could see different ways that it would be done and then was sometimes shut down with that. But she was always really internalizing this anxiety and was coming home and was really stressed at the end of the day.

So for the investigate piece. These are based on real clients. I kind of changed some of the details, but you can kind of see how we worked on this. But you can kind of see how we worked on this.

But basically we set an alert on her phone. So that several times a day she would check in and she would rate how she was feeling, you know, just from her stress level there and then tally any common factors that were going on. So there's something on my mind or something happening in class, whatever it was, we could look for those patterns.

For the communicate piece once we kind of had some of that information we were able to look for those patterns. And then we noticed that when she was feeling helpless or feeling a lack of agency, that was a huge piece. So we knew that then that was something she could then go communicate. To her school counselor was a go-to person or to her mother, you know, or to me, but but being able to just verbalize that and recognize like I'm feeling really helpless about this situation or I'm feeling like I don't have any you know any control over the situation was really good for her to be able to communicate what was

going on. For activating, one of the things that we did was we kind of just developed a plan for really trying to recognize. Which factors in situations were inside of her control and which ones were out. And so that was the strategy that we would activate.

When she was feeling dysregulated. And then basically for the navigate in addition to just kind of getting through some of those moments it was more of a big picture thing for her but ultimately she really wanted to have a sense of agency in the world. And so she and a friend actually set up a like made a whole bunch of friendship bracelets and did a lemonade stand.

This was, you'll tell you how long ago this was, you know, so they raised money to send down for the hurricane that was in Puerto Rico. I don't even remember what year it was off the top of my head but it was a long time ago it feels like. But that gave her that kind of helped her to feel like she had some control there. Helpful for her though when she had to then navigate it she could kind of plan you know what could I do how could I how could I have a voice in this situation?

As well as just in general trying to trying to focus on if it was outside of her control how could she distract herself from that. So for Peyton, he was our little guy who had trouble with some of those friendships and was really sensitive about things. So we decided with him that we were going to focus specifically on group work. Because it was something that was pretty easy for us to investigate and look for those patterns.

So we used an index card to track how often he went along with someone else's idea, how often he pushed for his own idea or how often he compromised. And so more than anything, we're really just trying to bring that into focus and build his awareness around that. We, for communicate, we developed a script for him to talk about how he's feeling when his group members wouldn't listen.

And so just one of those very basic I feel when because and but we had that on the back of that index card so we had it as a reference. For activating, we work to develop that awareness and perspective taking skill so that when he was in those situations he could remind himself that the other group members also had good ideas and so we really just tried to do that perspective taking right like seeing what what are other people thinking what are other people feeling And then for navigating, we came up with a plan to proactively establish. Expectations with group members, you know, so that everybody was in agreement about who was going to do what.

And and then also just kind of making sure that that if he got dysregulated he had a space in the classroom where he could go to work on his own for a little bit and then come back to it. Then lastly, Hannah and then we'll jump into doing some Q&A and everything. So, you know, so Hannah was the one who was having a hard time when those expectations would change.

So as far as investigating, we really were working on helping her recognize the the physiological signs of stress throughout the day and kind of helping notice a ranking of what those physical science were because she was specifically like it really tight in her shoulders should also pick at her nails. And so that was one of the patterns that we noticed that was helpful to her to kind of recognized when she started to get dysregulated. For communicating just trying to ask for a break when she started to feel overwhelmed about things or or asking for clarification.

For activating one of the things that we really did was we developed a plan with a teacher for plan check-ins because the teacher was getting frustrated because Hannah kept asking how much longer until this, how much longer until this, like it was almost like an obsessive type of request where she just had to ask. To find out. And so she would have these planned check-ins. She knew exactly what time she was going to have a check-in with the teacher a couple times a day so that she could try to wait until that time rather than just always going up and doing that.

She was delaying that, that, you know, that impulse. And then for navigating one of the things that really helped her was she needed a place to stem she needed an opportunity to pace. Wherever that might have been in the classroom where she could just get up and walk back and forth because that was very regulating for her.

So. So the ICANN method for regulating emotions, we investigate, communicate, activate, and navigate. And as we build those skills with our kids, we can really help them to, you know, learn how to manage that emotional dysregulation.

So here are the copies of my books again. I will do the drawing, but I know we've got Q&A, so I will stop my share for now. And I will pull up the thing, but you know what? Let's throw that link into the chat if we can.

For the for the drawing if people signed in a little bit later they can they can hop in there and then we can do some Q&A as we're doing that. Sure, you'll hang up. Thank you, Emily. That was amazing. And I, people are asking for your books. We will also share these slides, this recording.

Oh, hang on that and I got to share my screen too. I went back to the presentation, but I didn't actually share the screen. That would be helpful.

Hang on. Too many. Thank you. Okay.

And Kelly thinks she'll put links to the book. Yeah. Perfect.

And if anybody has questions, feel free to put them in the chat. We had a few. Come in while you were talking.

So one that I thought was an amazing question was, I'm curious about any insights about the unfortunate baggage and stigma around negative emotions. An example in the zones of regulation, there are zones like red that sound inherently negative and they're formed applied to be inferior to the green zone. Similarly, when naming emotions are owning and explaining how you feel is often wide that it's better to have a positive emotion like being happy or fine.

Versus furious or jealous or insecure. It bothers me because I think it can act as a barrier to willingness to accurately name an emotion or zone. Any thoughts or strategies to help destigmatize? At school especially, I feel like there's baggage around being yellow or red.

One of my sons often says he's fine or good when he's not because he wants to be fine. Yeah, yeah, so when I talk to kids I never really I'm gonna stop this share right now, that's alright. Hopefully everyone kind of got a picture of those or whatever. But. Emotions are our body's way of communicating with us.

About a situation. There's nothing good or bad about emotions. There's comfortable emotions and there's uncomfortable emotions and we can normalize talking about them with people, but I.

Really with my clients definitely try to get away from Any of the valuing of a emotions like that they're good or they're bad or they're, Any of any of those types of things. So as far as, yeah, the zones of regulation, I think as can be a good tool. In some ways but I agree with you that there is kind of an insinuation. That yellow and red are not are not what we want specifically.

So I guess as far as getting the school on board That's a difficult one if that's not part of their culture. You might start with the school counselor perhaps and kind of see what their thought is about it or if they have a way to maybe approach the teacher. But I think more than anything The conversations that you can have with your child to normalize those emotions, to recognize that they're okay.

You know, and it's like, I was like, there's no, there's no wrong. Emotion to feel in any situation, it's just like, what do we do with that emotion and helping them to kind of figure out how they how they handle that so that they can be you know, not not feeling uncomfortable when they have when they have those experiences. Yeah. Great point. Okay, you mentioned not letting their dysregulation trigger our dysregulation.

This is definitely a challenge at home. Do you have any strategies you recommend for that? You know, I think that The best thing

So what I tried to do, this is, this is because my kids can get my emotions going too, right? It's hard because we're all tied up together and all of this stuff and our emotions are tied up in how they're feeling and if they're successful and all of those different things like that is just a fact. But what I try to do is like I try to like put myself in the position of what I do when I'm here in my office.

And when I'm here in my office and I'm talking to my clients. I just really try to be really curious. I ask a lot of questions. I try to try keep I try not to make any assumptions. About what's going through their hat.

Well, I here at the office, I really don't. It's harder with my own kids because I just feel like I know them really well. But I just try to try to get them to kind of share about those things and ask some guiding questions to say.

So tell me what what you were thinking when that happened or tell me, you know, what was going on or, or help me understand, you know, like what, what is it that we could do that would help and really kind of trying to put the kids in charge of those conversations as much as possible. Okay. I think what ends up happening is when we put Like when we make suggestions and they reject them, that can get our, that can get us going, right?

Or if they argue with us, right, even if even if we're right. And so, so the more we can kind of like take a step back. And Enter problem-solving mode, but but putting them in the driver's seat of the problem solving.

Like we don't need to solve the problem for them. We just have to kind of be there to help help them figure out what the that solution might be. One of the things, and again, love and logic, if you're familiar with love and logic.

I like some of it. I don't like all of it, but one of the things that that they talk about in love and logic. It's a little mantra that you can use to say in your head, I love you too much to argue.

Love you too much to argue. I'm just kind of going to stay neutral here. And that can be, that can be helpful as well because a lot of times what ends up happening is we just get in a power struggle with them and you're never going to win.

Because I mean you might win but did you really win if you know what I mean? Yes, no. You don't.

No, you think you you might win in it might be a temporary win, but it is not. It does not last long. Yes. I am a notorious problem solver, so this is good advice. So the next question is I'm curious about suggestions for working with a child with PDA.

I'm not sure about suggestions for working with a child with PDA. I'm not sure everyone here knows about PDA. I'm trying to figure out a way to get my kid on board with wanting to work on this even though his brain perceives the demand as a threat.

Yeah, so so PDA for those that maybe aren't familiar is a term it's not it's not public display of affection it's pathological or pervasive demand avoidance. People describe it as a kind of a subtype or profile of the autism spectrum. And specifically what it is is like it's an intense need for autonomy and an intense need for independence and a feeling of control because what what often ends up happening with these kids is like any sense of demand kind of triggers that fight flight or freeze and so then they they have a hard time then regulating to get through that.

Now I've lost the question. Can you repeat the question for me as I was giving the description what PDA is. It's just I'm trying to figure out a way to get my kid on board with wanting to work on this like what are suggestions for working with PDA kids?

Okay, so, so what I would say is, You know, in general. Trying to really Well, pick your battles is one thing. And try to really find what to foster that autonomy, right?

Like, okay, so this isn't working for you. Let's try to figure out what what will work instead. I know a lot of parents of PDA kids will talk about how like making things like kind of game like and novel can be a huge success where it doesn't feel like it's demand.

There are some great resources on the PDA Society website that ask us to, you know, or that provide some ideas for how to communicate with kids because one of the things that really is influenced is when they they have the opportunity to like Use humor. You know, or, or just aren't feeling threatened by it. Like that's kind of the best way to do it, but I would definitely recommend that website.

They have a lot of really good resources there. And so yeah, I would definitely check it out. Alright, hi Emily. I'm gonna jump in and give you a little break. So great, we have a few more questions.

One of the ones I'm really interested in to hear what your perspective is. Somebody writes, I have a brilliant bright to E 9 year old with ADHD. What strategies do you suggest to address impulsivity and stems like coming and singing that are disruptive in a classroom setting?

And I think there's more generally we hear this a lot at schools, you know, something that regulates one student will dysregulate another and and how can How can we make that work? Yeah. Oh yeah, I get it. No, I mean, you know, I love it. I love the idea that in a utopian society we can.

Everyone can have all of their stems and sensory needs met, but in reality like I mean we have that like I am very I am very sensory avoidant. I like all of the sounds. Listen, I will tell you if anyone has, okay, I just did see this, this is why I don't watch the check because I get so distracted with things.

The PDA website is the PDA Society. And if you just google PDA society, you'll find it. As far as sensory needs, I'm closing the chat now. I did put the link back in there for the drawing I'm going to give it away one of the raising twice exceptional kids book.

So like if you have any ideas about how to get your kids to use their headphones or earbuds on their phones because my kids play their volume of their phone like just beneath the threshold of when you can actually hear it and it drives me bonkers. I hear all of the things. I'm very also Very smell avoidant. My 15 year old has discovered Cologne.

Hmm, I'm really hoping that that We grow out of that phase real quickly. But the point is like going back to your question about the mouth noises and different things. So an accommodation, you just have to figure out like what's what's the accommodation balance right so on the one hand if it's one kid that's really being bothered maybe it would be easiest to give them some headphones, right, or some earbuds where they can listen to something else if they're distracted by some of those noises.

Sometimes with kids I find that like giving them an accommodation where they can use gum can be helpful. But that is one of the hardest ones. Perhaps the accommodation is having a space where they can go where it's maybe not, you know, not as noticeable if they're making some of those noises, a special space in the classroom.

But the biggest thing with sensory stems is it's very difficult to eliminate them. It's better to try to substitute something else in. I saw something talking about someone talking about the balancing on the back of the chair. That is definitely a stem.

They're stimulating that vestibular sense where they want to balance there and they have to kind of do this. But there are a ton of different things like wobble chairs, t chairs, like there's lots of resources out there that stimulate that in a much safer way. But I think, you know, the When we ask people to, when we ask people to try to just suppress those stems, basically the amount of energy that goes into just trying to suppress it.

It's just really not, it's really hard to make that. It like the you have to weigh out the benefits and the drawbacks and for in a lot of times like it's like if your kids trying to work and they hum while they work. Are they gonna be able to work if they're not humming? You know, it's it's hard to do that so is there something else that they could do that would that would fulfill that need without causing the destruction to others.

Great, thank you. Okay, so we have another question that says I have an 11 year old to a daughter can you talk about hitting my daughter hits me when she's just regulated. Yeah, you know, I think Well, I mean that's one of those kind of non-negotiables, like as much as possible, right?

Like, I, you know, helping kids realize like, You know, it, I guess my question would be, is that a sensory thing? Like are they looking for that that pressure and is there some other way that they could fulfill that? If it's a way that they're communicating their anger you know just really kind of trying to really express how you know, that they need to find a different way to do that.

My thought would be to really try to disengage in that moment when they're doing that. Try not to. Try not to escalate this situation, but I wouldn't like try to I wouldn't try to appease the situation either.

It's, it is, it is really hard with kids who that's when they get to that point where they have that physical aggression. I wish there was an easy solution for that and I think it's just one of those things where they really have to try to Probably the best way is the more that you can get it so that they're not getting to that point. Not that you have to get on there, but that they can build that skill. You know and they'll eventually mature out of that but it's it's it is Tricky.

Alright, and the next one is. My 8 year old, to me boy has chuckled generalizing he thinks he learns so he learns ways to help with his emotions in one situation but he can't seem to remember to use them in other similar situations. Is there a good way to help? Make the connection that the strategies we learn can be used in more broad situations.

Okay. Once you have those skills in some situations, hopefully then it shouldn't be too much of a leap, even if they need a little bit of a bridge. To go from one conversation to, you know, or one situation to the next. Hopefully you can have a quick conversation say, hey, let's think about this.

This works in this situation. How could we, how could we apply it in this other situation as well? And I think that that is something that will will help. You know, get to that point where they really are are seeing some of that.

Generalizing. You know, I think maybe also as they're building that skill, maybe when you notice that they're building that skill, having a proactive conversation saying, hey, this really works in this situation. Can we can we predict what other situations it might work in to kind of do it a little bit ahead and see if that can be helpful for them as well.

Right, and another question about kids who are homeschooling. How do you teach this to kids who are home schooling? Do you set aside time and and do explicit teaching.

You could. You could do it. I mean, you definitely could. You could do it just like I said, like in conversations, whatever works for your kid.

If your kid benefits from explicit instruction, then I would definitely lay it out in a very logical way. And say, you know, let's come up with some strategies for each of these. If you want to just focus on one first and then kind of move on to another, but you know be you could be really flexible with it but the whole The hope of it is being able to then have some again, some shared language and some, and some opportunities to kind of just really intentionally reflect and develop some plans for everything.

One question that I thought was very interesting because this came up a lot when my kid was little with different behavioral techniques. How do you tell the difference between dysregulation and attention seeking behavior? Yes.

I don't know that there's a difference. Would say that they're probably one in the same and I guess my thought about attention seeking behavior is like When I think of attention seeking. I guess my thought is like where is that need coming from? Is it coming from a place of insecurity?

Is it coming from a place of? Needing validation or needing recognition. You know, I know that this isn't maybe necessarily what that question was directly asking about, but a lot of times when I think of like kids who self-injure, right?

And people say, oh, well, it's just attention seeking. And I'm like, well, then let's give them attention, right? Like, what's the harm in really in fulfilling that need? And I guess my thought about it is like If they are dysregulated and but it is attention seeking.

How do you then Develop a plan to to meet that need in a way that is not disruptive. Right. So like I've had kids who have a lot of dysregulation and it looks like attention seeking where they're just asking for reassurance, asking for reassurance, trying, you know, whatever it is that they're really struggling with.

And sometimes it's like, okay, we're gonna set aside this amount of time. And this is the time where you're gonna tell me about all of the things that are stressing you out, right? And then, but it's like you have this amount of time and then after that amount of time we're done we're gonna be done talking about it you know if we come up with a solution great if not I will listen to you that is your that is your time.

And that can be something that can kind of help. Help put that into perspective for kids. But I don't know that it really, I don't know if it always matters if it's if it's a emotional deregulation or if it's attention seeking behavior because Either way.

They need some support in that moment, whatever that might be. Alright, and what about this question? Our moments of executive dysfunction counted as emotional dysregulation.

Hmm. So we just did an interesting podcast episode about this. With Danny Donovan, where we specifically talked about the overlap between emotional regulation and executive functioning is very hard to have executive functioning skills in place if you are emotionally dysregulated and if you are struggling with executive functioning skills you are probably emotionally dysregulated.

So it's kind of this overlap of like cycle with both of those things that kind of get wrapped up together. I think in general, I, you know, if you're talking about like which came first the chicken or the egg, I think in general emotional regulation kind of is the foundational piece if you're you know as far as then developing. Developing executive functioning skills and being able to implement executive functioning skills. But it is You know, I think.

I think it's very hard to sort out. Which you know when you're having that executive dysfunction. There's almost always an emotional dysregulation piece that's maybe underneath it.

And this is most likely our last question. Maybe we can stick in one more, but my son is 16 autistic demand of and can explode violently at times. He's resistant to therapy. Do you have a recommendation for a book or video series to help him take ownership of anger management and emotional regulation.

Hmm He's a language or intellectual disability. He is too E as you described today.

One thing I would suggest as far as the therapy piece goes, even though he's kind of resistant to it, is if you can find, there are some resources out there and I don't know them off the top of my head. But there are some PDA friendly like therapist directories. I think maybe PDA North America maybe has one.

If I recall. But, but if you can find at the therapist who's familiar with that type of demand avoidance, they may have some strategies to kind of get them engaged with some therapy. Like I've had kids before who it's like, I started off just by writing emails back and forth, you know, it was like very, very non stressful, not a lot of, you know, no real demand, just kind of, you know.

Putting some things back and forth. And then you kind of build up from there. So, so that might be one thing.

As far as books. I don't know that I know any off the top of my head. I'm sure that there are some out there.

I don't know if you've ever heard of the term strewing specifically, which is kind of, you know, this term that they've come up with in the PDA community. But basically like if you could find a book something or something like that you basically leave things around the house so it's not like hey you need to read this book because then that can elicit that demand response. It's like, oh, I'm just gonna kind of have this here in this area. And, you know, maybe it's something that if you, you know, maybe they'll see it and they'll kind of pick it up.

I'll try to think on that. And if I can come up with anything, maybe you guys can email it out. I like I said, I just don't know anything off the top of my head. So I do, I do have, I don't know if we time, but well, I know we have time for this, but I don't know if we have time for another question or not, but this is our drawing connect. Let me go ahead and do this real quick.

Yes. Alright, the big winner is Sure, yes. I do love the wheel of names. It sinks with my Google. Yeah.

I love this! All right, more a Jansen, you're the big winner. And so, keep an eye out.

I will send you an email, tomorrow or if not tomorrow than Monday and I'll get your address and everything and we will get the book sent out to you. So awesome, thank you. For letting me do that little piece there.

That's so fun. Congratulations, Okay, I'm gonna end it because it's we have 1 min. I'll end it with just someone asked. How do you know when it's time to get professional help?

So you do all these techniques. How do you know where that line is? Yeah. I'm writing now Mora's name, so I don't. So I don't forget who it was.

Okay. Yeah, so finding professional help. Anytime your kids are talking about self injury. You know, death and dying.

You know, suicidal ideation, obviously that's kind of a giveaway. If it's gotten to the point where it is a disruption on a daily basis or even a few times a week. I would try to find somebody who can help. It doesn't ever hurt to just have somebody That is is a resource and is available.

And that you can develop a relationship with. And so then they're there if you need them in the future. So yeah, I would. But any time that you notice that increase in irritability that I've mentioned at the beginning of the presentation, that's another one.

But lots of lots of those pieces. And if you just feel like you're in too deep and you're not making any progress. I mean, there's there's a lot of people out there who could who could help with all of those things which I think would be useful.

Yeah Emily, thank you so much. I literally think I wrote 20 pages of notes. I love all your practical strategies.

I wanna try them with my kids. We can't thank you enough and thank you everyone who joined tonight. We will be sending the slides, the recording and everything so you can all watch it again.

Awesome. Thank you so much for having me. Good night, everyone.

Thank you. I love the spinny wheel thing. We should use that.

That was so fun. Yeah. Can you guys hear me now?

Yes. Yeah, now, now, now that we don't need to, now you can talk. Well, I figured it out about 5 min. I mean, nothing I did. It just for some reason my AirPods would not connect tonight.

That's frustrating Very frustrating. Alright, shall we end?

Yeah, can I? Good morning. RightBye