Utilizing The Brain State Model To Respond Instead of React To Children's Behaviors

0:00 I want to kind of tie the examples that I just gave to our brain State model in conscious discipline so the day that you're feeling great and things are going well and your child's whining about wanting a drink of water and you respond in a helpful way and you say you want a drink of water say can I have a drink of water please and they do it and you're like I did it yay look at me

0:22 that's your executive State that's where we want to operate from that's where we want to help children operate from because it's where we can problem solve and learn so then on the second day when you're feeling really cranky what you did in that situation was very different you reacted to it and said really I'm the only one that you know that can get you a drink of water you can't get someone else to get a drink of water I

0:43 want a drink of water too so in the moment we react in that very negative cranky way because that's how we feel so we're not able to to access our brilliant skills like in our executive State and and we react in our State we have what Dr B refers to as our CD ROM so all the things that our parents grandparents whoever said to us like you better dry it up or I'm going to give you something to cry about those are all

1:10 stored there and we say them whether we want to or not we can say I hated it when my parents said that to me and then when we're in our emotional state we open up our mouth and out comes our mother or our dad and so the point of that is that in that moment we have a choice if we notice that that happens we can take a deep breath [Applause] so that we could actually do it the way

1:35 we want to the way that we did that first day when we're feeling good and everything's going great we can realize that and then shift to that higher brain state but then another one that we could actually do would be also the survival State the survival state is where our fight ORF flight response all all of those kinds of um again more reaction so even though it may not be with words we're reacting in in a physical way so

2:01 we might throw the water bottle at them in that case because we're perceiving them as a threat to our existence in that moment so an important point to note is that all humans experience these brain States so you can have all of the knowledge in the world but still you're going to have those days that you don't feel good that that you're cranky that you're tired you're hungry and you're stressed you know beyond your limits everybody experiences these so I'm sure

2:30 many times like me you've thought oh my gosh I'm the only horrible parent in the world and what is wrong with me and there's not anything wrong with you we all experience all of the brain brain states by Design when we start to really understand this that's when we can give ourselves a break and so instead of going oh my gosh why did I do that you know I'm a horrible parent we can actually stop take a deep

2:57 breath and say next time time I'm going to do this next time I'm going to say say can I have a drink of water please that might even be in that moment you could stop yourself take a deep breath do a little take to and do it again because that is a wonderful teaching moment for your child to see the contrast from the other way to the way that you want them to do it that's a

3:24 huge learning thing for them