De-escalation Strategies: How Parents Can Harness a Key Tool With Parent Coaching
Why Won’t My Child Listen?
“I said no!” You just explained things for the hundredth time. Your child ignored you or argued with you. Maybe your child shouted at you, stomped away, or slammed the door. You feel more and more frustrated, and helpless.
One of the most common parenting traps involves this belief: If I can just explain things to my child well enough, they’ll get it and change their behavior. It’s easy to default into reasoning, explaining, moralizing, and lecturing. When a child is less than receptive to parent sermons, most parents find themselves propelled to talk more and to talk louder. Calm discussions quickly deteriorate into warnings and threats. Despite that such exchanges commonly result in an unproductive escalation, it’s hard to resist talking.
Parent coaching in Seattle, WA offers practical tools and strategies to break this cycle. By working with a parent coach, you can learn how to set boundaries effectively, foster mutual respect, and improve communication with your child. Coaches help parents understand underlying emotional needs, offering guidance on how to respond calmly and assertively, even in challenging moments. This empowers both parents and children to navigate conflicts more constructively. This leads to healthier relationships and a more harmonious home environment.
Why Doesn’t Talking to My Children Work?
Children habituate to parent voices.
Just as we may tune out the sound of the bus line down the street, children are adept at filtering out parental entreaties. In a sense, when parents overtalk, they are communicating that they are unprepared to take action.
Children are more likely to emotionally flood when their parents talk.
When parents go into talk mode, children get overloaded. They might feel cornered, dismissed, or misunderstood (even when the parent is completely right about things!). Even emotion coaching can backfire because an upset child may miss the parent’s effort to validate feelings. If there is a history of co-escalation, when both the parent and child emotionally flood at the same time, the child builds an internal bank of negative associations to their parents’ verbalizations. These associations may cause the child to emotionally escalate quickly in response to the next time the parent attempts to explain their reasonable request.
Parents are more likely to emotionally flood when they talk.
It’s hard to stay regulated when we use talk in the hopes that the other person will come to their senses and agree with us. In parenting, a common vicious cycle involves a parent explanation that is met with a negative response by the child. Or - more typically - the child begins an escalation after being told no. The parent offers yet another explanation, or repeats themself. The child argues more. Before you know it, the parent might end up shouting demands, criticisms, or threats. Most parent escalations stem from a sense of ineffectiveness, frustration, and helplessness.
It’s almost always best to be brief, intentional, and strategic in delivering sensitive verbal messages to a child. Parents might consider changing their own behavior to address the problem. As surprising as it may seem, most children do not “come around” in response to reason. For example, a child refuses to get out of bed early enough to get to school on time. In this case, the parent might consider allowing the natural consequence of missing the bus and having to walk to school. Most situations are more complicated than this. But most situations have a good alternative to arguments and escalations.
Does This Mean We Should Never Explain Things to Our Kids?
Of course not! Lots of discussions between parents and kids can be productive and connecting experiences. However, when one or more people are emotionally escalated, it’s unlikely that the individuals can listen and register what the other is saying.
“Ok, so what do I do instead?”
There is evidence that the longer the chain of conflict, the more severe a child’s disruptive behavior may become. In other words, a parent’s engagement prolongs the chain of conflict. Over this chain, both parent and child are likely to become more and more dysregulated. In the child development literature, this is called “the coercive cycle.”
The coercive cycle, as described by psychologist Gerald Patterson, is a pattern of negative interactions that can develop between parents and children. This cycle leads to escalating conflicts and behavioral issues. The cycle typically begins when a child exhibits challenging behavior, which triggers a punitive response from the parent. In turn, the child escalates their behavior in an attempt to avoid or escape the punishment, leading the parent to increase their punitive measures. This back-and-forth interaction can become entrenched, reinforcing the child's negative behavior and the parent's escalated responses. Over time, this cycle can undermine the parent-child relationship, fostering an environment of anger and defiance.
This cycle can be broken by adopting more positive and effective parenting strategies. For example reinforcing desired behaviors and strategic limit-setting responses can make a big difference. Limit setting strategies, which may be used in response to noncompliance, do not involve much talking but help to avoid a pattern in which the parent submits to the child’s escalated behavior. Parents decide ahead of time what behaviors can be ignored and which ones need immediate limit setting. Usually, negative verbalizations uttered by the child or teen can be ignored. More abusive verbalizations may need to be addressed later, in a planned manner. Avoid trying to solve conflicts “While the iron is hot!” It’s best to address problems when the iron is cold when everyone is in a calm and regulated state.
So the next time your kid yells at you? Silence.
If you're dealing with communication issues with your child or teen, parent coaching at Child and Teen Solutions can help. Instead of getting stuck in a cycle of constant explaining and escalating conflict, parent coaching offers strategies to foster healthy communication and mutual respect. Therapists at Child and Teen Solutions work with parents to help them understand their child's emotional needs, set effective boundaries, and approach challenges calmly and assertively. By breaking the cycle of conflict, parents can build stronger, more positive relationships with their children or teens.
Interested in Learning More Strategies to Address Challenges in Your Child or Teen? Consider working with a Parent Coach in Seattle, Washington.
If you find yourself struggling to effectively communicate and overcome conflict with your child, discover how parent coaching in Seattle, WA can help you set boundaries and build healthier relationships. Our skilled parent coaches at Child and Teen Solutions are licensed mental health professionals who specialize in working with parents of children with behavior issues or anxiety. If you’d like to start parent coaching, follow these three simple steps to get started:
Send us a message through our contact page.
Our Client Care Coordinator will answer your questions and schedule you with one of our skilled parent coaches.
Begin overcoming communication issues with your child in healthy ways.
Other Services Offered at Child and Teen Solutions
At Child and Teen Solutions, we are here to support you and your family every step of the way. In addition to helping you navigate your relationship with your child in parent coaching, we offer a range of services tailored to meet your child or teen's unique needs. These services include child therapy, teen therapy, support for behavior problems and defiance, Autism Spectrum & PDA, bedtime and sleep challenges, emotion dysregulation, anxiety and OCD, school refusal, relationships and identity issues, depression, ADHD, Theraplay, and LGBTQ+ affirming care. We also provide comprehensive evaluations for ages 3 to 6, and evaluations for learning disabilities, gifted testing, dyslexia, ADHD, and Autism, as well as therapy for young adults navigating anxiety, depression, OCD, and more. Learn more about our services by checking out our blog, exploring why families choose to work with us, and understanding how we can help.
