How I Model Nervous System Regulation with Kids

I receive lots of emails about if I work with kids. And, sometimes I do. But, more often than not, I like to work with their parents. I believe kids regulate with us. For those of you who birthed your children, their nervous systems began forming in utero and they continued to develop over the first 18 months of life. With my son, when he is “off” the first thing I ask is, “How am I?” Well, sometimes that is not the first thing I ask, of course. I am a human and a parent, and so sometimes, I think, “What is wrong with him?” Any way, this story explains how I teach my son about nervous system regulation through modeling coming back into a grounded state following a stressful event. Trigger Warning: police encounter.

I picked my son up from school, and we were on the way to one of the after school curriculars, when I heard the siren. A glance in the rear view brought the flashing lights into view.

This is a common experience for many of us, right? The context is important because being pulled over by the police is unique depending on your experiences. 

The short story is I wasn’t being pulled over. The patrol car happened to be right behind me when they turned on their lights and siren to notify me to get out of the way so they could tend to whatever more pressing issue needed their attention.   

So, breathe a sigh of relief. The story I just told you happened in about 3 seconds of time. From the moment I heard the siren to the moment I realized there was no real threat and that I was relatively safe.  The long somatic story is below.

But, in that time, my legs went wobbly. I felt the blood flow drain from my feet. My heart began to race. My breath stopped. My mind cycled through a long list of causes and consequences. In all honesty, I’ve been pulled over on that street before, and the ticket was expensive, so I pay extra attention. The thought was, “How can I be getting pulled over? I know I’m not speeding.” Enter shame mixed with defensiveness. 

I pulled over, and the vehicle passed. And, my son began with the questions. If you have a child, you know. They just have what seems to be endless questions. Was I speeding? Where was he going? Was there danger? Why was I pulled over on the right side? 

That was about as far as he got before I said, “One moment, Son, I need a moment for my legs to come back online.”

I model coming back to a state of regulation with him from time to time. I do this in the hopes he can track it for himself, too. 

“My legs feel wobbly, so I’m stretching out my toes and engaging my legs. I’ve got my hands on my knees, and I’m noticing how now I can feel the connection from my knees to my feet again. Now the blood is starting to flow. I feel my heart rate starting to slow down.” Although I didn’t say it out loud, the time and attention I offered myself gave my body the sense that it was seen and heard and that all was well. “And, there is my breath again,” I sighed. “Ok, what were you saying?”

That moment I just described of riding the wave back to a grounded state probably took 90 seconds. I am practiced in this work. Jill Bolte Taylor says the lifespan of an emotion is 90 seconds and after that it’s the mind that keeps it alive. 

What the people I see in sessions often need is a little time to process. When I said to my son, “I need a moment,” I was offering myself a little time. Trauma is too much, too soon. Healing requires time. And, in doing that– taking that time– I came back to my baseline of regulation, so I didn’t fly off the handle at him and say, “WHY ARE YOU ASKING SO MANY QUESTIONS? STOP TALKING!” I didn’t take the experience into the rest of my evening. 

And, may I just say that of course, if I had said that, it would have been okay. I make mistakes. I project my emotions on others. Sometimes things come out sideways. I am not a saint. But, in this moment, I feel proud of how I offered myself some time for self-compassion.

In Somatic Experiencing sessions, we stretch time. Those three seconds could be stretched over half a session. Certainly as someone who has a history of complex trauma, it may seem like a waste of time to spend a half session examining a relatively mild experience such as the one I’ve just described. Well, it was a mild stressor– except my reaction wasn’t. If it’s hysterical, it’s historical, so they say. And, those three seconds flooded me to the point of near dissociation. My system is sensitive. I am resilient in ways I wish I wasn’t. And, so, this type of experience offers me information about how I can sense danger, lose my ground, and come back to the moment and the (relative) safety of the present moment. 

I could examine what flashing lights and hearing a siren are coupled with in my past. I have a skillset that I just described to release some of the activation, but why did my amygdala (over)react? This sensation of feeling as if the ground has been pulled from beneath me is an engrained pattern. And, so what else is there waiting to be uncoupled? 

I love the metaphor of a ferris wheel for this work. Without skills, sometimes we feel as if we circle back to the same spot again and again. Except when we tend to our nervous system and examine our patterns of behavior, when we circle back, we find that we have the wherewithal to respond differently. Trauma takes away our capacity for choice. Healing gives it back.