Why Does Nothing I Try Actually Work? (And What to Do Instead)

[00:00:02]Hi everybody. Thanks for joining me live. Uh if you're new to me, I'm Dr. Roseanne and I'm glad you're here because we are talking about how to turn things around. Whether your kid has a medical issue, a mental health issue, or they're just typical kids having a hard time, or maybe you're stressed out, I want you to be here. I want you to stay here. And because this is something I talk about every day that when you're you feel like you're doing something and you're doing or some things you're doing a lot of things and nothing is working.

[00:00:41]So uh you know this is why we have these conversations. So, okay, let's get started and let's talk a little bit about, you know, before we start, you know, I'm doing this because so many of you, right, you think like, I'm doing everything. Why isn't it working? Uh, nothing's going to work. Who's ever really felt like that? Because I felt like that at times as a mom. And you know, maybe you know, your kid's melting down and you know, you're wondering why does this keep happening or they're stuck in an OCD loop or they're shutting down, whatever is going on with your kid. I think what you need to know is all of my work, it doesn't matter what the issue is. So many of you get so hung up on the diagnosis and issue and then you're feeling like you're lying in bed at night replaying the day or what you did or didn't do and you're sitting in your car or you're wondering why you tried to stay calm and it didn't work or the reward chart or the consequence.

[00:01:44]You've tried a lot. And what I want to say to you is maybe the therapy, maybe the breathing exercise, maybe taking away the screens screens, maybe they didn't work because of one thing, right? Because maybe it's that what you're doing isn't really in the right order. And I want you to know you're not failing. Your kid, as I always like to say, is not broken. there's not something necessarily wrong with your kid. Maybe they do have a clinical diagnosis, maybe they're neurode divergent, maybe they're not. But we always try to stuff our kids when there's a behavior, we try to attach a label to it. And I get it. I spent 20some years being a diagnostician. And maybe that's helpful, maybe it's not.

[00:02:34]But the bottom line, it doesn't matter if your kid is still struggling, your family is still struggling. And you know, one of the biggest mistakes that parents make is assuming that this strategy isn't working or I need something completely different. But again, what if that's not true and it's not the strategy that's the problem, but again, the order of the problem, right?

[00:02:58]In how you're addressing the problem, because this is what I've been teaching people for all these years, right? And you know, maybe that breath exercise, which I love, really didn't fail. And maybe the therapy didn't actually fail. I know you're saying it didn't work for Xan. We went 20 times, but you know what I'm going to tell you? Something has to come first. And let me show you what I mean.

[00:03:27]Because so many of you are stuck in this cycle, right? You're trying deep breathing, you're counting, you're taking a break, all these things. and maybe they're helping you. Please let me know if they are helping you because I think you're here because you're wondering why they're not working in gentle parenting, all these different techniques, which are all good things.

[00:03:49]And you know, how many of you, you know, have watched your kid completely forget a skill that you know they know the moment they get upset or disregulated?

[00:04:03]And most parents think, you know, it didn't work or they're, you know, totally doing this on purpose.

[00:04:12]And it's not that the skill didn't work, it's that the nervous system is just too overwhelmed to access it. And you know, if you're following and you're listening, you're starting to really understand if the nervous system isn't regulated, nothing is going to stick. Because when that brain shifts into survival mode, the skills go offline. And it's not because your kid doesn't know them or doesn't want to use them. It's because they literally can't access them because those frontal loes go offline and they're prevented from accessing skills that they know. You have to be somewhat regulated to access your skills. And I always talk about like if you think about when it some major thing happens like a car accident or some kind of major trauma event, what do most people do? They actually move into a state of freeze and they forget all the things that they know. And you sometimes you could see this. Who watches those uh I watch a lot of those uh police interrogation videos? They're so fascinating. or where something just happened and people like literally forget like what their address is and what their phone number is. And it's not because they're being difficult. Maybe sometimes they are criminals, but it's because they're so activated. They're in a fight, flight, or freeze. And you know, this is why your kids go into therapy and you're like, "The therapist says they did a great job and they learned the skill, but then you go out into real life and they don't know the skill." And how many parents have like sat in front of me and said, you know, Dr. Roseanne, my kid understands everything in therapy. And then they can explain their feelings. They can talk about the coping skills. And then the moment they get into a disagreement with their sibling or schoolwork gets overloaded, they forget everything. And then they go, "That is a waste of time.

[00:06:19]I'm not going back to therapy." And actually what often happens is the kid refuses to go because so much of what I do is or what I did because I'm no longer practicing is that I would take somebody who had years of bad therapy year you know of what they called bad therapy. Um because it might not have been bad therapy even though I do think there's a lot of therapists who uh don't do a great job. How about that? Um and I don't think they go deep enough. enough.

[00:06:51]I don't think they push hard enough and I don't think they teach you about what I'm talking about, which is the nervous system. They explain it, but they don't help you regulate. And again, therapy is wonderful, but you must be somewhat regulated to access your frontal loes and your thinking brain. And if the nervous system isn't regulated enough, the skill will not transfer. And that's what also happens like with reward charts or you know trying to enforce expectations and all these things, right? The consequences, all of these things that you think you're clear about and maybe sometimes your kid gets it and sometimes they didn't, but if they're struggling with a nervous system that constantly overflows and gets activated, it's just not going to stick. And and you know what I'm going to tell you is that consequences are important. Doing, you know, discipline, all these things are important, but they're all opportunities for learning. And we need our kids to be regulated to learn. We're never saying, you know, bubble wrap them because I say that all the time. And you know, but charts, um, stickers, talking, therapy assumes that your kid has focus, impulse control, emotional control, flexibility, follow through, all those skills.

[00:08:15]But those are the first skills that disappear when the nervous system is overwhelmed. So why are we asking our kids to stretch themselves and grow when they're overwhelmed? So, you know, therapy, charts, all that stuff. It's not failing. It's a nervous system that isn't isn't really ready for it. So, let me show you what I am talking about. Let me make it a lot better so you can see exactly what's going on. So, when we are teaching kids, teaching anybody, right?

[00:08:48]And and when I mean kids, I mean kids of all ages. My work is for young young kids to the failure to launch kids people. Okay? And everybody has an ability to regulate. We don't have the same ability in the same learning and we don't have the same environmental factors. So there are variables to affect it that do affect our ability to self-regulate and everybody can improve self-regulation. I don't care what you think in terms of my kid will never regulate. I have a trauma background. I have all that. I have worked in the most complex situations for three decades and I have seen cases where people said absolutely this kid's never going to regulate and they did. Now we can't just magic wand it people should have my wand available. We got to move our and do the work. But let's talk about what we have to do in the order. Right? So we often are teaching then we correct and then we reward. This is not how the brain works because when that frontal line when you're when you get activated fight flight freeze fun your frontal loes are going to go offline and that means the part that's responsible for lo logic all those pieces that would help your kid learn and get over whatever is going on also to absorb your beautiful parent teaching because most of us are doing a good job.

[00:10:15]Don't beat yourself up. And if you're really struggling and you're constantly regretting what's coming out of your mouth, particularly because of what you brought to the table from your own history, please see a therapist because you deserve that. You got to love yourself, right? But trying to work in this order is absolutely a fail and it's not going to work. And you need to know that when you are working with, you know, to when you're helping your child because that is absolutely the wrong order. And most parents, right, they're accidentally doing this this constant ability to to think, well, my kid's just going to learn. I'll worry about regulation later. Like, we'll take yoga once a day. That's not you are realizing hopefully through my work but through your own work in your everyday life that that's backwards because if that nervous system isn't regulated first again nothing's going to stick none of that breathing when people say I hate breathing exercise it doesn't work is because first of all they're not doing it properly you're not doing diaphragmatic belly breathing and you're not doing it enough but you're often trying to do it when you're super jacked up now it's a great tool to use when you're jacked up, but you need to use breath work in the moments of calm so your body falls into it naturally, right? Just like, you know, for anybody who drove stick shift um or I can still drive stick shift, you just don't think about it. You just do it. But the moment to get there, how scary was it to learn stick shift? That was my first car. What a mistake. It was pretty funny. So all this coaching all you know whether it's social skills or all these things they have to sit upon a regulated nervous system right so think about it that you can't build a house on a cracked foundation you can't plant seeds in concrete you can't build skills and a nervous system [clears throat] that feels unsafe whether you think it should feel unsafe or not the nervous system decides hold And many parents sit here and feel stuck. They feel desperate. They feel worried. They feel sad. And they feel like why am I teaching these skills? Um but the brain that isn't available is not available for learning. Right? So how do we actually teach? Right? So this is [clears throat] the right order.

[00:12:48]Regulate, connect, correct. Right? that and that regulation we use co-regulation first that means we have to be put together enough and most people don't understand what co-regulation is you don't have to be perfectly regulated but it's not coming in hot where you're seeing red and you're irritated your your body language is right your um tone is right you are coming in you've taken a love pause to regulate yourself enough and then you come in and you be that calming presence. It might take a few minutes. It might take an hour. It might take a hundred attempts.

[00:13:31]But this is where we have to teach your child's nervous system that your nervous system should be the one that it should um sync with. Okay? And that it should do that. Now, again, I think this is the hardest part of this whole process. I talk a ton about it in my book, The Disregulated Kid. um and how to actually do that. Then once the storm has passed, we try to reconnect with our kid. You don't have to say anything. It could be the physical presence. It could be the hand, you know, on the shoulder, especially our older kids who are in a touch deficit, right? We're we're Italian. We like hug and touch everybody, you know? Like I So funny. I was went to my dad's 88th birthday party and I forgot like, "Oh, wait. I'm supposed to do a double double cheek kiss. And they were like, "WHAT'S GOING ON, ROSA? YOU GOT TO DO THE DOUBLE CHEEK." You know, it was so cute. And I was like, "Oh." Cuz you know, we're Italian and we give a lot of love. But, you know, you can be there for your kid and say, "Oh, that was really hard. I'm here." Again, you're not forgiving a a misstep or you're not saying, "Uh, that was not a good idea to punch a hole in the wall." You're just being there to connect. Okay? And then and then once somebody has moved from the red right where you have to regulate to yellow to connect to green this is where we teach this is where we practice. This is where we correct and this is because the brain is going to allow it. Now the magic happens here because all along your child is learning from you how to regulate but they also are learning how to figure out stuff on their own. It's called problem solving. And you do not get your kid problemolving, you're going to have a problem. They are going to really struggle. This is where you should be worried. Your parents spend so much grease and effort around getting through school thinking that is the magic wand. The magic wand is emotional regulation. And without emotional regulation, your kids aren't going to have emotional stability. Right? And this is the order again. Regulate, connect, teach, practice, correct. And most parents are skipping the first two because they think, "Oh, well, they're not 2 years old or all those things, right?" But again, we need to have these things, right? And this is what it looks like, right? Your kid comes home from school and the the homework comes out, the pencil, you know, gets thrown.

[00:16:07]They're like, "I'm not doing it." Right?

[00:16:08]And I bring up homework a lot because I do think it's a very real pain point that even the most regulated kids are resistant to homework because they're kind of done, right? So you immediately move to let me teach, let me correct, let me consequence, right? But what if the nervous system is saying just like what I said, it's overwhelmed, like I'm stuck, I don't have the bandwidth, I'm tired, I'm cranky, like what is it that needs to fuel? There's not a capacity there. You can't make somebody do something if their capacity is gone. Right? And so this is why we need to regulate first and not force the teaching, not correct, not shame. I mean, so many of you get caught in a regulation uh reactivity, excuse me, a reactivity cycle. And that's where when we start focusing on the regulation, that's where everything changes. And and this is like as simple as taking that love pause where you're going to write, you're going to take a minute, you're going to put a what I like to do is like put a hand on your heart, you know, take a deep breath, whatever it is for you to reset yourself, you need to own it and be consistent. For me with you, I tend to either do a four, seven, eight, breath in for four, hold for seven, out for eight. Or I do I actually do a heart hug where I put my hand on my heart, put it on my shoulder. I do this all the time. I do this with entrepreneurs. I do this with parents. It's a powerful reset. And if you take a second, you can breathe through it. Not everybody feels like they can breathe, but the optimal way is to really fill your belly up and breathe. And just give yourself a second. And I do this a lot. Like I do this as much as I do in my work with adults. I have unlimited patience for kids, but adults annoy me when they are downright rude. Like I don't mean my clients. I just mean everyday life and doing all kinds of things. But when we relax ourselves, we soften our face. I mean, even even smiling, you don't want to smile with a angry kid, but like just in those moments, like before your kid gets home, like, okay, it's going to be tough when they get home, right? And you know, and when you sat there for a second and you did that, like did that calm you? Because the first nervous system to regulate is going to be the one to set the tone. So if you are disregulated, you're going to set the tone of dysregulation. And again, that's the hardest part. But they're the calmer nervous system always leads.

[00:18:58]And I wish every parent heard this sooner that you know, your kid isn't giving you a hard time. They really are having a hard time. And if we don't understand that, we keep having the same fight, which is so exhausting.

[00:19:17]So exhausting for you and your kid. And whether it's about screens or just getting out the door or bedtime or picky eating and you know, it stops being about whatever that thing is. And it starts being becoming like the thing in your relationship where you never get along and nobody talks about it and you are just in a constant cycle of friction and you feel like you dislike your kid, you feel like you hate parenting, maybe it's isolating you from your your partner, your friends. This is real stuff that people are experiencing and you know the cost is extraordinary for you for your kid because it's just a frustration cycle and you know maybe you have a kid you're walking on egg wet eggshells or you're freaking out in the inside and that's exactly why I wrote the disregulated kid and I'm stepping away from clinical practice because this is larger than just me because we need simple ways to do this, right? So, what actually works, right? What are what are am I going to do? And you're here and you're listening and you're going to take your first steps, right? You're going to work on co-regulating. And yes, I lay it all out in the book and I show you step by step. And it is done in such an easy way that nobody can do it, right? And it nobody can't not do it, I should say. But it's not theory. It's an actual road map. That's why I call it the playbook. And it gives you the exact scripts in the exact order. All different kinds of ages. There's a, you know, a section just for young parents.

[00:20:59]There's in there there's lots for older kids. There's everything that you need there because you know what I mean? I I was with a bunch of entrepreneur parents. And you can pre-order it by going to drrossanne.com/disregulated kid or search the disregulated kid anywhere. But come back to this page so you get your immediate bonuses and whatever you can use. uh you can start using them right away. But I was with a bunch of entrepreneurs and everybody wants to talk to me about kids. They want to talk about their kids, their mental health. They want to talk about screens. They want to talk about picky eating or why can't they learn X, whatever it is. And these are very real things that we are feeling overwhelmed with, you know, and um and you know when that I just want to hit home. If you don't regulate yourself and you don't teach your kid to regulate yourself, which doesn't come automatically, let me say that again. It is a learned component in how we do things, right?

[00:22:01]Your kid wasn't born speaking. They weren't born walking. They learned it.

[00:22:07]It's the same thing for regulation. And so I want to give you that hope that even if you feel like your kid is so disregulated, absolutely they can learn to regulate over time. Um and you know it is that your calm is contagious.

[00:22:27]It is so important for you to understand that again it's pressure on you but it is a shift. You're working smarter not harder. Okay. And this is what I talk all about in the disregulated kid. I make it so ridiculously easy. You're going to love it. It's also really funny. Um, and [clears throat] I really want people to start getting in there.

[00:22:51]And we're for those people who pre-order, you're going to have access to um, not just the tools. Only the people that pre-order are going to get live implementation calls when you b order the book. So, I'm here to actually help you implement what's in the book.

[00:23:06]Even though you don't need me to, I want to be there for you because once you start implementing these things, your life will change your your own life and all the generations that come beyond it.

[00:23:19]It's so ridiculously important for you to understand that that it's accessible.

[00:23:25]You just have to take that one little step. Um, and again, we I thought really thought about, you know, what were the things that you needed to get to make this happen and that's what the disregulated kid is all about. Um, I want to take some questions. People had um uh oh, I have people from all over from Canada and the UK and Jersey. Um, so thank you and I appreciate that. And um I know some of you had some questions about that you sent over earlier about you know what am I doing if my kid I've really tried a lot of things and let me tell you most people who came to me privately I felt that they on average I mean I always use about a dozen but I would say that nobody saw less than five people I don't want to say nobody 95% of people 5% were um people who I was the first person that they saw and they tended to be younger kids or or it was a sudden onset of a problem and so always felt so blessed to be their first path because I got them to where they needed to go where when things are layered over time.

[00:24:40]Um just so many things build up, shame, feelings of failure, agitation, you know, shut down, all the different emotions, both kids and families, parents, grandparents. I know you have so many super fan grandparents. I love you guys so much. You're doing such a great job um navigating this world just like your your own kids are. But I taught them how to regulate. I taught them how to regulate their kids' nervous system. I taught them how to regulate their own and this is my gift to you in this book that you don't have to get on an airplane not available anymore to do this and I walk you through it. So grab the disregulated kid, get on there, order it today and um it's an amazing resource and it's it's almost here. So and you are going to have special access to things that are only available in the pre-order including getting a chance to be on my street team. So, if you're here, please buy the book. Please let me know what your questions are. We're monitoring the chat. These are only up for a very short amount of time. And then also too, if you're looking to bring me to your city, right? I'm speaking at religious institutions, churches, synagogues. Uh I'm speaking at Disney World. I'm speaking at all kinds of places. Please just reach out. I mean, f fills my heart to be able to see you all in person and do these things um and bring this message of how regulation first changes everything and you're here right boots on the ground and don't just buy this for yourself. Buy buy two for a friend. Um so that we can have a more regulated world and you're not doing this on your own. So you got this. I'm proud of you and and I'll see you on the next live.