Deeply Feeling Kids Need a Different Approach

You're listening to good inside with Dr. Becky. I have so many ideas, strategies, and scripts to share with you right after a word from our sponsor. Hi, I'm Dr. Becky, and this is Good Inside. I'm a clinical psychologist and mom of three on a mission to rethink the way we raise our children. I love translating deep thoughts about parenting into practical, actionable strategies that you can use in your home right away. One of my core beliefs is that we are all doing the best we can with the resources we have available to us in that moment. So even as we struggle and even as we are having a hard time on the outside, we remain Good inside. In today's episode, we hear from three parents who call in about their deeply feeling kids. Deeply feeling kids, or I often use the acronym deep. These kids feel things intensely. They escalate quickly. They go to anger and rage, and they have a harder time calming down and feeling grounded. These kids often don't respond well to so many of the parenting interventions we all hear so much about. When you name the feeling, when you name their wish, there are some kids who feel so seeking seen, and they de escalate. These kids often escalate at these exact interventions. Here's something critical. If you're thinking, wow, I think I have a kid like this, you're not doing the intervention wrong. It just isn't a good match for a dfk. There's also nothing wrong with you, and there is nothing wrong with these kids. They just need to be understood and they need interventions that are a little bit different than other kids. One of the key things for DFKs is that their vulnerability sits so close to their shame. It's almost like they can't feel vulnerable in an emotion without shame getting activated as well. And so what does that mean? They shut down. They push parents away when they actually need parents that the most. They say, get out of my room, I hate you. When they actually fear abandonment in that exact moment. Yes, DFKs are confusing, but I can tell you I love these kids. I understand these kids. I have one of these kids. I work with adults in my practice who were these kids, and I'm pretty sure I was one of these kids myself. So if you have a kid who has intense tantrums, who escalates quickly and stays escalated for a long period of time, stay with me. This episode is for you, and you're going to walk away with a ton of actionable ideas that you can use in your home right away. Let's hear from our first caller Rob.

Hey, Dr. Becky. My name is Rob from Cleveland. My son Aidan is 6 years old and he's a deeply feeling kid that just really struggles with play dates. Something doesn't go his way, or he doesn't really know what to do. He'll say things like, I don't want to play with you anymore. And I'm not really sure what to do when he says this. I've tried telling him to apologize to his friend. That usually leads to an explosion. I should also mention that he has a difficult time of goodbyes. Like, in general, he just doesn't want to do it. So we try make it and say goodbye. He screams and kicks and hits. I'm probably doing something wrong. Any advice would be super appreciated. Thank you so much.

Hi, Rob. Thank you so much for calling in. And I'm having flashes of so many similar moments with my kids on play dates where something really difficult happens and my child, I believe, does something hurtful or rude. And with my deeply feeling kid as well, if I make any attempt to name this, the shame spiral gets so intense. And I watch my child go into a deeper and deeper hole. And then often it leads to my child escalating. Right. It never makes the situation better. And yet to say nothing feels almost negligent as well. I just watch my child say something. I maybe watch another kid feel hurt. It's like a no win situation. So I actually do have some ideas that I don't know if it will lead to an immediate win because we can only really be in control of our own behavior, not our kids. But I think there's a lot we can do between forcing our kid to do something and saying nothing. So let's start with that word, forcing. We can't force our kids to do things. Or maybe I would say that differently. I really believe we shouldn't force our kids to do things. If we zoom out, what are we hoping for? I think the thing we're hoping for is that my child feels remorse or my child learns to say something in a less intense way. We're looking for skill building. I don't know anyone who. Who's ever built any skills while they were under coercion or when they felt forced or judged by someone else. The only thing that leaves us with is feeling worse about ourselves and feeling worse in the relationship with that person. So maybe we get a temporary win. Yes, my child apologized, but that actually only makes it less likely that that child will apologize on their own the next time. So we really don't want to go that route. What can we do? Model the behavior ourselves. So Aiden says to his friend, after something doesn't go his way, I'm not friends with you anymore. I don't even like you. Right. I would do this. I would go up to the friend and I'd say, ooh, I probably didn't feel good. Ugh. I think Aiden really wanted to play with the blocks instead of play soccer. Ugh. Disappointing. I'm gonna say it for him in a different way. And then I might go further and say, oh, can we figure out a way to do both activities now? My kid might scream behind me, dad, that's not what I meant. I don't like him as my friend. I would still push forward with this intervention. I think modeling that is important because what I'm doing is I'm preserving the idea that my kid is a good kid by speaking to what was probably going on underneath. But I'm also acknowledging that. That this didn't feel good to somebody else. Same thing with the goodbye. My thought here, Rob, is that it's really hard for Aiden to feel disappointed with friends. He feels disappointed when something doesn't go his way. He feels disappointed at the end of the play date, and that disappointment feels too big to regulate. So it comes out in lots of different intense ways. I would do the same. Same approach with a goodbye. I would model it yourself. So Aiden runs to his room, and you go to Aiden's friend. And I would just say, h. It can be really hard for Aiden to say goodbye. He had so much fun with you. I'm going to say goodbye for him. Bye. That was super fun. Hope to see you at my house again soon or see you tomorrow at school, whatever it might be. Now, if Aiden hears me, which he probably will, he is now having this experience of skill building because he hears me say it for him. He also, again, hears that I don't think he's a bad kid or a mean kid. There's no coercion. Defenses are low. And I have watched so many times with my kids that when I take this modeling approach, there's a day that my child actually does say something similar to what I've modeled. And I know they've gotten there because they've done so in a way where they don't feel. Feel judged, they don't feel awful. They don't feel like they're in a power struggle. Essentially, they're able to learn that skill because we had a condition that was conducive to learning. Now, one other idea, Rob, because These are things you can do in the moment. But I believe there's lots of things you can do with Aiden outside of the moment that can help whatever he's really struggling with, which might be this disappointment that feels unmanageable. I would have a time where you're playing with him and let's say you say to him, hey, let's do blocks. And he says, no, let's draw. I would say, no, I don't wanna draw, I don't even wanna play with you then. And I'd actually say that yourself. So you're essentially being Aiden. And then I do this. Wait, sorry, Aiden, one second. Take a deep breath and then look at him and say, I think I meant to say I really don't wanna do drawing today. I would really rather play with blocks. Can we figure out what to do or can we figure out a third option that's better for both of us? Now, I wouldn say after to him, see, Aiden, it's not that hard to manage these situations. When we go there, we ruin the power of that intervention. And what you're doing here is because you're showing him. Oh, I too can struggle with this. We're decreasing shame. And when we decrease shame, kids can learn these skills because they don't feel alone. So I would do that here and there, outside of a moment of a playdate. I might do that at a goodbye. No, I don't want to say goodbye to grandma when she leaves. Oh, okay, one second. I'm just going to wave. I'm just going to do a small wave. Right, and in all these ways, you're really helping him learn and grow. Our next caller is Abby.

Hi, Dr. Becky. This is Abby. I have four kids, they're seven, five, two and ten months. And I was just calling about my five year old. She's my deeply feeling child and she regularly stresses about perfection. The books on her bookshelf have to be perfectly arranged. Her blanket has to be perfectly lined up on her bed. And the other day she was getting really worked up about how she couldn't write her letters perfectly at school. And now I was this way when I was a kid and I know it kept me from trying a lot of challenging things that would have actually been really good for me because I, you know, was subconsciously afraid of failure or really of just not being a high performer in everything. And I don't want that for her. One of my kids, she. She's a bright kid and I know that she'll benefit from taking on challenges. So I Don't want this quest for perfection to keep her from trying hard things. So my question is, how can I help her to be more comfortable with failure or even just with imperfection? Thanks so much, Abby.

I identify so strongly with everything you said in your voicemail. I too was such a kind of people pleasing perfectionist when I was a kid and I've done so much work to try to kind of be in recovery from that or kind of move on from that, having such a grip on me. And one of the things I feel so strongly about is trying to create an environment where my kids don't feel so kind of held down in that same way. And yet I also have a child who has major perfectionistic tendencies. So I'm right there with you. First thing, it's not your fault. I know you didn't ask me, is this my fault? I have something. When I was a kid, I struggle in a certain way. My kid does too. Did I give this to them? It's not your fault. Kids come into the world with different temperaments. We forget that and then because of those different temperaments, they need different things. Right. I can react in a certain way to one of my non perfectionistic kids and that's going to go totally differently than with a child who has that tendency. And so I just give you so much credit for your honesty and your self reflection and that just makes me so hopeful for you and makes me think, your kids are so lucky to have you. So a few ideas and these are things I do in my home and I've watched them have a really, really positive impact. First thing, let's use a child's perfectionistic tendencies to help them unwind their perfectionistic tendencies. I know that almost sounds so confusing. I don't even, I don't even understand it myself. So let me be more concrete. We can use this quality to help them as opposed to taking the approach of you shouldn't be like that. You don't need to be so hard on yourself because actually that just shuts a child down. It shuts us down too. When someone tells us we don't need to be a certain way. We are. I love this idea of playing a reverse game where we actually make it a challenge for a child to make a mistake. Kids who have perfectionistic tendencies, they also tend to be people pleasers. They like to get things right. This is kind of the core of perfectionism. Well, what if we created a situation where the way to get things right was to make a mistake? Right. So this is how we're kind of using those perfectionistic tendencies to a kid's advantage. So here's what I can imagine doing with writing letters. And honestly, Abby, I've done this exact same thing with my child. Because writing letters is so hard for perfectionist, because you do it and you see right away. Oh, that's not right. You erase, you try again. You erase, you try again, and you can't move on. So here would be the kind of challenge for you. The next time your child's working on writing, say something like this. Did you know that kids have jobs and adults have jobs, and one of a kid's jobs is to learn? And now I'm guessing you knew that. That's why you go to school. But here's something interesting. Do you know that we learn the most from our mistakes? When we get something right, our body feels happy, but our brain doesn't grow. It just kind of stays the same. When we make a mistake, our brain changes and we can learn. Isn't that so funny? Anyway, the point is, your job is to kind of make mistakes when you're writing your letters, because that's the only way your teacher is even gonna be happy, because then they know you're learning and you're doing your job. So I'm gonna go out of the room, and I know you're working on writing your name. I'm gonna give you a challenge, and I just think you're gonna crush it. You're gonna do amazing. If I come back and there's any more than one letter that's written correctly, I. I don't know. I'm going to be kind of mad. I might even have to call your teacher. I might have to be like, she's not really learning. So that's the challenge. I want you to write your name and do not get more than one letter right. Okay. Why is this powerful for these kids? Because we've now set up a situation where it's safe to struggle. It's safe to make a mistake. Right. We're using playfulness, and we're using kind of silliness in a way, which are two elements that are often totally absent from intense, perfectionistic moments. Another idea for you, when your child is in this state of kind of shutdown. No, the blanket isn't laid out the exact way I want it to be. A really powerful intervention is to add kind of curiosity and wonder around it. What do I mean? These moments feel so hard because a kid isn't happy with how something went, and then they just shut down. It's almost like the moment happens shut down. It happens shut down. We can't get a child out of that moment, but we can add kind of some space around it. And when we wonder about something, we add space. And when we add space, a child becomes less likely to shut down. Right? They can kind of pause. So how would I do this? My child's so upset that the blanket isn't the way they want it to be. And I'd say, oh, when your blanket isn't the way you want it, that feels so bad. But not normal bad, right? And then I'd put my hands kind of far apart from each other and say, is it like this bad? And then I put them further apart or oh, it's worse. Is it this bad? And then maybe I put my arms all the way out. Is it this bad? Oh my goodness, it's that bad. Wow, that is so bad. Or I might say, okay, it feels so bad. Is it as bad as, oh, that other day when we went to the ice cream store and they didn't have mint chocolate chip. Remember how bad? Oh, woah. Is worse than that? Oh my God, it's worse than that. Would it be as bad as planning a birthday party and forgetting to show up? Oh, it would be worse than that. Wow, that would be pretty bad if you missed your own birthday party. So wow, the blanket not being the way you want it to be. Ugh, you're letting me know. It's like feel so awful now. The exact questions we ask don't matter as much as the fact that we are wondering and we're actually modeling for a child a type of mindfulness. We're doing a type of noticing. We're being curious about this feeling. We're trying to describe the feeling. These are all important strategies in building emotion regulation and these are all absent in, in any moment. Our kids or we as adults, totally shut down. Change takes time here. So even as you play some of these games or you use some of these strategies, remind yourself that we're not going to see change overnight. It's not like your child all of a sudden is going to love making mistakes. But I hope these give you a couple things and make you feel kind of more capable and prepared for those moments. Let's hear from our final caller, Maggie.

Hi, Dr. Becky. My name is Maggie, I'm from Ohio and I have a five and a half year old daughter who is tricky and I'm calling with a question about what do we do? What do you suggest when we've done it all we have all the scripts, we use all the scripts. We parent with compassion and empathy and it's still just not working. I followed you for about a year now. I've taken some of the courses and my five and a half year old is a deeply feeling kid. Deeply. And now at five and a half, the explosions and the really big feelings that just come out of her body are damaging things and hurting people, hurting her sister, breaking my bowls and furniture. And it's really becoming a very big issue now. We use the scripts, we parent with so much compassion. We know she has all these feelings just exploding out of her. And now that we're entering kindergarten, I just this summer I'm feeling like, what do I do? It's becoming too much. And I don't know at what point, I suppose, do we turn to greater help, perhaps testing of some sort of disability or some other underlying issue, or is this typical and I just need to continue with it. Obviously I will always continue with it, but what will sort of help us just end this explosive damaging behavior?

Hi Maggie, thank you so much for calling in. And really my first reaction is just to name that parenting is really, really hard and some of our kids feel harder. I have connect with some of our kids feel more exhausting. That doesn't make them bad kids and it doesn't make us bad parents. I just come back to this truth, which is that parenting can be so hard. I think one of the hardest realizations in parenting is that we can't really change our kids behavior. We can change our behavior, we can think about things we want to do differently, come up with different interventions. We can definitely ask ourselves, ooh, can I frame the situation differently? Because if I frame it differently, I'll think about it differently, I'll feel differently about it and I'll think to do different things. These things are all in our control. And then yes, when we change, a family system changes and this allows our child to change. But this whole process is just messier and definitely less linear than I think we expect it to be and frankly than we just want it to be. So I just want to say that out loud because I think so often we kind of have this false belief, okay, I'm going to do this thing and then my child is going to change the next day. I did the thing and it's not working right. I do believe there's a fine line between kind of when do we tolerate the kind of stage our kid is in, when do we just kind of have to hold space and keep Going. And like you said, when do we need extra help? Here's what I consider kind of a barometer for getting extra help. I think we get extra help when we notice our kids struggling and we feel at a loss. Our kids are having a hard time and we over and over are feeling like, I just don't know what else to do. I feel kind of hopeless. I feel frustrated. I feel so overwhelmed. And then, yes, of course the help is for our kids, but also really the help is for us. Because if we go back to that idea that we can't immediately change our kid's behavior, what we can do is get help to feel like our kid has another space to kind of work through the things that are hard. And we can get help to feel like we have more confidence in our approach or we have more clarity on a situation. Because when we have more confidence and clarity, even if our kids behavior doesn't immediately change, we don't feel at a loss. We feel like we have 2020 vision and can still feel solid in what we're doing, even if we don't see immediate change. And what I hear from you is it sounds like right now you're at that place where you feel at a loss. And I think one of bravest things we can do as a parent is be honest with ourselves and say, yeah, I feel overwhelmed. I feel like I want someone else kind of to help out in our family system again, grounding yourself in the fact that you're not a bad parent, you're a great parent for getting to that point. You don't have a bad kid. It's just messy, it's hard, and it would be nice to have someone else in the mix seeking extra help. Seeking therapy is really a way of saying that there's so much right in my family that we're willing to name what's happening. We're willing to acknowledge struggles. We're willing to say we don't have all the answers. To me, that's just everything right in a family system. So remind yourself of that. And I would say push yourself to take that next step. Find a therapist near you. Ask friends if they've seen someone in your area who they like. Ask a pediatrician or another doctor that you trust, and then feel free to find a couple people, talk to a couple people on the phone, knowing it's all about finding the right match and that there really is good help out there. Thank you, Rob, Abby and Maggie for calling in and sharing so much with all of us. Let's tie it all together with three takeaways. 1. There are kids who feel things more intensely than other kids, who struggle with emotions and with vulnerability, who don't respond well to so many of the parenting interventions that are so powerful for other kids. These are deeply failing kids and there's absolutely nothing wrong with them. They just need a different approach. 2. Let's replace forcing with modeling. Trust your child. Trust that modeling without shame or coercion sets up an environment where learning is possible. 3. Seeking help is a sign of all that is right with you and all that is right with your family. It shows that you prioritize truth over comfort and that you're willing to work on things. I don't know many parents who tell me I regret seeking help, but I do hear from lots of parents we wish we came here sooner. If this episode resonated with you, I know you need more resources than I've spoken about here. I've got you covered with an in depth workshop with many more ideas and strategies for deeply feeling kids. I actually have two parts to this workshop because these kids can be so tricky to understand and actually I believe are so often misunderstood, they're often seen through the least generous interpretation as opposed to the most generous interpretation of their struggles. In this workshop I share a totally different framework for how to understand these kids and what they need, and it is by far my most popular workshop with so many parents telling me this is truly the first time I've ever understood my child and also the first time I've actually felt hopeful. You can find this workshop and Many others@learning.goodinside.com Thanks for listening to Good Inside. There are so many more strategies and tips I want to share with you. Head to goodinside.com and sign up for Good Insider, my free weekly email with scripts and strategies delivered right to your inbox and follow me on Instagram and Facebook at drbeckyoodinside for a daily dose of parenting and self care ideas. Good inside with Dr. Becky is produced by Beth Rowe and Marie Cecile Anderson, an executive produced by Erica Belsky and me, Dr. Becky, if you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to rate and review it or share this episode with a friend or family member as a way to start an important conversation. Let's end by placing our hands on our hearts and reminding ourselves even as I struggle and even as I have a hard time on the outside, I remain Good inside. Sam.