Coparent Academy Podcast
Lifechanging Coparenting
Coparent Academy Podcast
#152 - How to Understand Your Child's Window of Tolerance
Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/XYotWpy3HW4
Why do kids suddenly explode with emotion—or completely shut down? In this episode, we look at how Dr. Dan Siegel’s Window of Tolerance model helps us understand emotional regulation in children.
Learn:
- What causes kids to "flip their lid"
- How to spot hyper- and hypo-arousal
- Practical tools to bring your child back into their window of tolerance
- How to expand your child's window of tolerance
Perfect for coparents, guardians, educators, and anyone working with children.
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Have questions or comments? We'd love to hear from you! Send them to ron@coparentacademy.com
Have you ever noticed that sometimes your kids are doing just fine and then all of a sudden they aren't? Today, we're going to talk about why that is and talk about it in the context of the window of tolerance. I'm Ron Gore. I'm an attorney who serves as a gardening ad litem, a parenting coordinator and a mediator. I provide co-parenting education for other attorneys and for parents the window of tolerance is a term that was created by Dr Dan Siegel and for parents.
Speaker 1:The window of tolerance is a term that was created by Dr Dan Siegel and it describes a zone in which adults and children are able to operate well. When kids are within the window of tolerance, they're able to manage their emotions well. They're able to think through things as much as they can. They're able to operate effectively within their world, whether it's at home or at school or wherever else. If they get outside of their window of tolerance now, they're outside of a range where they can control their emotions. Dr Siegel also has this really great way, using a fist like this, to explain how we can flip our lids and lose emotional control, and he can talk about it way better than I can. So let's listen to Dr Siegel talk about flipping your lid.
Speaker 2:If you take your hand and put your thumb in the middle and fold your fingers over the top, this would be the completed model. The top of the brain is called the cortex and would be represented in your fingers. If you lift up the cortex, you'll see beneath it the limbic area, which should have two thumbs to be a perfect model, but most of us just have one. And in this limbic area you see that there are connections upwards to the cortex and even downwards to the area just below it called the brain stem in your palm. And this whole head brain is connected to the body through a number of regions, including the spinal cord represented in your wrist. Now let's quickly review what these areas do and you can see how what you do with your mind can change the way the brain functions If we lift up the cortex and lift up the limbic area. Let's begin with the brainstem. The deepest, oldest part of the head brain is this brainstem. It takes in information from the body and it helps regulate things like how you breathe and how you digest food, how your heart functions. In addition, the brainstem has a very important set of regions that create the fight, flight, freeze and faint response that comes when we feel threatened. In addition, this brainstem works closely with if you put your next area down, the thumb region, which is the limbic area this is a 200 million year old region, when we became mammals that works with the 300 million year old reptilian brain and together they work to create emotion in working with the 300 million year old reptilian brain and together they work to create emotion in working with the body. The body, brainstem, limbic area create emotion. And then, on top of that, you have the attachment experience we have as mammals, where we connect with caregivers so that they can protect us and we can be soothed by them, is also mediated by this limbic region, not just in childhood but throughout our whole lifespan. Now, these limbic functions work closely. If you fold your fingers over and the frontmost part of this frontal lobe here is demarcated by your last knuckles down your fingernails, and this is called the prefrontal cortex.
Speaker 2:Now, you may have heard a lot about the prefrontal cortex. Now you may have heard a lot about the prefrontal cortex because it's involved, basically, in something called integration. It integrates cortex, limbic area. You can see, it sits on top of it brainstem, body and even the social world together. When you're not integrated, it can become chaotic and rigid. It's like flipping your lid. So, instead of living with harmony within yourself and harmony and connection to others, you're literally becoming chaotic with an outburst, or rigid and withdrawn. That's demonstrated by literally lifting up your fingers and showing how this prefrontal region is no longer linking the cortex, limbic area, brainstem, body and the social world. It's become disintegrated. Having this brain of yours become more integrated is the pathway toward more well-being in your life, whether it's at work, at home or in your communities. Integration creates well-being.
Speaker 1:So when you flip your lid, you're losing all of that executive control over these more ancient and less in control portions of your brain. Very simple, not very technical, but conveys the image of flipping your lid and now all hell's breaking loose. This is what happens with your kids. This is what happens with adults also when we go outside of our window of tolerance. So, like I mentioned before, when a child is within the window of tolerance, they're relaxed and well-regulated, they have good self-control. But when a child goes outside of that window of tolerance and becomes hyper-aroused, now you're going to see a kid that's angry, throwing a tantrum. They may be anxious, restless, very emotional, more so than normal. If a child is hypo-aroused now, you're going to see them as sad, quiet, shut down.
Speaker 1:It's very easy for us to notice when a child is hyper-aroused. That's what annoys us, that's what gets us frustrated and we start to deal with that externalizing behavior. It's less obvious sometimes when a child is hyper aroused, possibly because as parents we don't always want to acknowledge that it's a problem. Our child is quiet, they're not causing a ruckus, especially if they were before. This seems like a happy, good change, but we have to be vigilant to make sure that we understand whether our child is just well-regulated and relaxed or whether they've gone into hyper ararousal or that they've just kind of given up. They're in that fawning stage. They may be compliant, but their compliance isn't because they're well-regulated, it's because they've just kind of given up. Whether it's because of a fear response or whether it's because they just can't think about it anymore, they've shut down. Shutting down may be something that provides us with a little peace for the moment, but it's causing lots of problems if we don't handle it. So we have to be very careful not to mistake a hypo-aroused child.
Speaker 1:For a child who's relaxed and well-regulated, this comes with understanding your child and how they express their emotions. Just because they're quiet doesn't mean they're happy. Now we would love for every child to have a huge window of tolerance. But life can start pushing that down and start compacting that window of tolerance until it's much easier to get outside of it into hyperarousal or hypoarousal. Now we would love for a child to have this really wide, huge window of tolerance that takes forever for them to get outside of. You can live a lot of life in a wide window of tolerance without busting into either hyperarousal or hypoarousal. But over time, life can compact that window of tolerance. It can shrink it to where it's a much more narrow band for your child and for you to have to exist within. That's not good for anybody. The things that can compact that window of tolerance over time things like stress that isn't relieved, lots of interparental conflict that a child is privy to, things like anxiety, feeling like children are caught in the middle, experiencing traumas like abuse or neglect All of these injuries, all of these insults to a child can compress that window of tolerance. It can make it very difficult for them to live a life that is full right. Because if you're stuck within this narrow band of a very narrow window of tolerance, then you don't get to experience life right, you're not having the ability to have some highs and lows without it kicking you out of your window of tolerance, into hyperarousal or hyperarousal. It's not good for you, it's not good for anybody. And if you have children who are differentially impacted by some of these circumstances that are negative, then you can have multiple children in a family, each of whom has a different window of tolerance, each of whom has a different trigger that can kick them in or out of that window of tolerance and that becomes a very difficult thing to work with. That's a complex situation for parents to handle.
Speaker 1:What do you do to try to expand your child's window of tolerance? Well, to push back on that hyper arousal side, if you notice that your child is getting a little hyper aroused, then you can do things like take a break, talk to them with a soft voice, accept their emotions, without necessarily accepting their behavior. Instead of giving them a time out, sit with them. Give them a time in where you're sitting with them while they calm down. Maybe you're breathing together. If you start to notice that your child is getting hypoaroused, then you can do some things to help elevate them. You can get them just moving, maybe play a game with them, just have a fun, talk about silly stuff. See if you can get them out of that stuck rumination, out of that downward spiral towards hypoarousal. Help them get back within that window of tolerance, towards hypoarousal. Helping it back within that window of tolerance.
Speaker 1:Outside of acute moments of trying to help a child get back within their window of tolerance, there are things that you can do over time to help stretch out your child's window of tolerance. One thing that you can do is model calmness for your child. Give them a good example of what it means to be able to ground yourself, to center yourself. Kids are never too young to learn some breathing exercises. They can do their own form of meditation, no matter what, that is Something that gets them connected with their bodies and clearing their mind of all of the things that are stressing them out. Just like adults need Remember that your child isn't really able to regulate themselves yet. They depend on you to teach them how to regulate themselves. They are co-regulating with you. So things that you can do to help your child if you notice that they're getting outside of their window of tolerance.
Speaker 1:Know what their emotional triggers are. We each have them. We can sometimes feel like our kids need to behave better, but we sometimes behave in the exact same ways. We just don't have somebody in the house who's an authority over us telling us that we're not behaving properly. So, just like we want people to recognize what triggers us or makes us upset and makes us sad, we need to be aware of what does those things for our kids as well.
Speaker 1:We need to know what their emotional triggers are and to be cautious of them. Right To treat them with care, we need to create a safe, regular environment for them. Consistency is critical for children to feel safe. If you don't have a consistent, safe environment, your children are going to be constantly overwhelmed by the stress of uncertainty, by the stress of conflict within the home. Children need to have that safe, consistency in order to have any reasonable size window of tolerance.
Speaker 1:Lastly, focus on connection with your child, using the PACE idea being playful, accepting, curious and empathetic towards your child, building that connection where they know that they're loved, that they don't have to be perfect, that if something goes wrong it's not the end of the world, they're not going to be abused, they're not going to be left alone, they're not going to be abandoned. Helping your child understand that you're a consistent, safe, loving caregiver who they can repair with if they mess up goes a long way to expanding their window of tolerance. Thanks for listening. I hope these tools help you recognize and expand your child's window of tolerance and helps you figure out how to get them back into that window when they go outside of it. Have a great day.