How To Set Boundaries With Your Kids

Here's a question I get frequently. What do I do when my deeply feeling kid screams so loudly? The noise, the screaming. Is that in the same category as hitting? Is that something I should just tolerate? What do I do? Let's go over this. You are in your kitchen and you're eating and your deeply feeling kid or your non-deeply feeling kid starts screaming. The way I think about screaming It's very similar to other states of dysregulation. If the screaming starts to really disrupt the environment, then your child actually needs you to set a boundary around it. They need to feel contained. Why? Deeply feeling kids. Get even more dysregulated when they believe that their dysregulation is infecting the world around them, it's contagious, it's spreading. Now you might think, then why would they scream like that in the first place? But that's logic. When they're in threat mode, logic is offline. And actually, the more the screaming happens, the more it takes over the family environment, the more it will continue to happen because your child is further and further into threat state. So what do we do? Let's go over a few steps. Step one is what we do in advance. We want to talk to our kid in advance about what we will do when the screaming is so loud or persists. Step two, when it happens, step in and be the boundary for your child. They can't be for themselves. We'll walk through what that would look like. Step three, bring your child to a smaller space. And if you can, and they're very dysregulated, stay with them. Step four. If you are dysregulated by the screaming, name your need. Name what you need to do as opposed to blaming your child. Let's go over all that. Step one. Hey, you know what I'm thinking? Sometimes when you're upset, it can come out in a loud scream. I want to let you know what I'm going to do if that happens. If that happens, I am going to take you to your room. I'll sit with you there. You're not in trouble. But when those screams come out. I need to take you to a smaller space so the screams don't fill up the whole house. Now you've just level set. Your kid doesn't need to agree. They don't need to say anything profound back to you. You've almost just heard yourself commit to what you're going to do. It helps the whole family system. Still, this moment's going to happen. How does that intervention look? It could look something like this. I'm going to pick you up now and take you to your room. Simple as that. And you do that even if your child protests. Hey, you have a lot of screams in your body. I get it. Let's bring those screams to a smaller space. You're not even saying, don't scream. You're actually telling your child, I'm going to give you the opportunity. It just has to happen somewhere else. And let's say you're in that smaller space with your child. Sit there. Be a potted plant. And then there's also the option of step four. You can always say, I need some quiet for my body. I'm going to step out. That's very different than, I can't be with you when you're screaming so loud. Why are you being ridiculous? That step four is important. Own your own need for space. Of course you're allowed to have that space. That's very different than overtly blaming your child.