How to Use Your Child’s Natural Response to Avoid Frustrating Behaviors
Does your neurodivergent child EXPLODE when they’re angry?
Or maybe they cry and scream over the tiniest thing?
Or maybe you have a bolter who takes off and hides.
Oh, or maybe your child just STARES at you and refuses to respond?
If so you’re not alone.
Every kid has that go-to response that they do whenever they’re angry or overwhelmed.
(Or even just when things don’t go their way!)
And we want to totally accept our neurodivergent kids for who they are and support them where they’re at…
But sometimes their responses aren’t safe, or are just really not helping the situation at all.
So over the next five minutes, I am going to walk you through exactly how to recognize what your neurodivergent child does when they lose control (and why they do it).
Plus I’ll share how to USE that natural response in a healthy way when they’re angry even if you’ve TRIED to teach them to take a deep breath or use their words and nothing seems to get through to them.
How to Use Your Child’s Natural Response to Avoid Frustrating Behaviors
Oh, and to make this wicked simple for you, I am going to share my Coping Strategies Cheat Sheet.
This cheat sheet has options for pretty much every response so that you can start implementing this TODAY.
I made this cheat sheet for my private clients, but I’ll share it with you since you’re taking the time to read this post. :)
(Pssst: Prefer video? Watch the video version of this blog post above!)
But if we haven’t met already, hey friend, Kaylene here!
I’m a neurodivergent mom of 6 neurodivergent kids and I empower parents of neurodivergent kids to become the architect of their neurofamily to build it by design instead of default.
Now in the next 5 minutes I’m going to share exactly how to use your child’s natural response to stress to help them react in a HEALTHY way so that they stay regulated and you don’t have to deal with the frustrating behaviors!
4F Responses
To do this, I use what I call the 4F Responses.
You may have heard about these or at least some of them before
But I teach it in a slightly different way.
So the 4F’s are
Fight
Flight
Freeze
Fawn
These are the four options of what our brain tells our body to do whenever we encounter stress.
Using the 4F Response for Behavior
It’s all good and well to know that your child hits you because their brain told them to, but that doesn’t stop them from, you know, hitting.
What most people do is teach their child to “take a deep breath” or “use their words”, but when your brain tells you “HIT!” and you take a deep breath, it leaves your brain being like “HELLO! I SAID HIT!”
Instead, what we want to do is help your child find an alternative to their natural 4F response that fills the same purpose for their brain.
If your child naturally hits, we’re going to give them something (that isn't a human or animal!) to hit
If your child freezes and stares at you, we’re going to help them take a minute
If your child bolts, we’re going to give them a safe place to run TO
If your child immediately apologizes, we’re going to give them a script to apologize AND share their opinion
As a society, we have glorified the ability to “take a deep breath” as the ultimate “good person” way to handle stress.
I don’t buy into it.
It is just as valid to need to scream as it is to need a breath.
But that doesn’t mean we need to scream mean things at someone, you know?
Because the reality is, when we try to give our child coping strategies that go against their natural 4F Response, we are setting them up for failure.
And it will only end in them and us being super frustrated.
Putting This Into Practice
So think about what your child’s natural 4F Response is.
Then get granular - what does fight look like for them?
Are they hitting? Are they screaming mean words?
Finally, try out a coping strategy that fills the same need.
And remember - Click here to DM me and I’ll send you my cheat sheet that has tons of coping strategy ideas for each of the 4F Responses so you don’t have to do this work from scratch!
I’ll send it to you in messenger so you can find a coping strategy to try out TODAY!
If you love this post, you will also love…