What If Your Child Is Already Solving Their Problem?

We parents often long for the quiet spaces between activities.

For some children, however, those same moments can be surprisingly stressful.

If your child is stress-sensitive, a space without structure can feel not only uncertain, but overwhelming. And these empty spaces can be easy to miss!

It might be the time between getting home and dinner, waiting to be picked up after an activity, or a few minutes before bedtime. To us, they're simply the time between one thing and the next.

When a child's behavior suddenly falls apart during these moments, it's easy to assume they're resisting what's coming next or simply wanting to get their way.

But what if something else is happening?

One father I worked with experienced exactly this.

Sam arrived home a little later than expected one evening with his 12-year-old daughter. His 13-year-old son had already been home for a while and was happily shooting baskets in the driveway while he waited. Feeling the pressure of the late hour, Dad called him inside so everyone could get ready for bed.

That was the moment everything unraveled. His son became defiant, and the evening quickly turned into a power struggle.

At first glance, it looked like he was being disrespectful and just making everything harder.

But as we talked about what had happened, a different picture emerged.

His son hadn't simply been passing the time. He had found something that was helping him manage the uncertainty of waiting. Shooting baskets was helping him stay regulated.

Dad wasn't merely interrupting a game. He was unknowingly interrupting the very thing that was helping his son stay organized on the inside.

Suddenly, his son's behavior made a lot more sense.

Once you see that, it's hard to unsee. The behavior no longer looks like defiance. It looks like a child losing something that was helping them cope.

Suggesting he join his son for a few minutes of shooting baskets wasn't simply a strategy to make the transition easier. It was a way of connecting with his son with support before asking him to make a difficult shift.

Most importantly, this insight revealed something Dad hadn't seen before.

His son was already trying to help himself.

Sometimes our children are already trying to solve the problem. We just haven’t learned to recognize their solution.

Of course Dad wanted to get everyone inside. We parents are constantly juggling the next thing that needs to happen. It's understandable that our focus is often on moving everyone along.

But if we first recognize what is helping our child stay regulated, we can work with that instead of unknowingly working against it.

When we begin to see what our child is doing to help themselves stay regulated, their behavior starts to make more sense. Instead of seeing resistance, we begin to see an attempt to cope.

This week, I invite you to become curious.

The next time your stress-sensitive child's behavior suddenly changes, pause for a moment and ask yourself:

• What was my child doing just before this?

• Could it have been helping them stay regulated?

• How can I support that regulation before asking them to make the transition?

When you begin to recognize how your child is already helping themselves through a stressful moment, you can join them there and provide the support they need to move more easily into what comes next.