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." 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 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 emotional state. We have what Dr. Badel refers to as our CDROM. 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 stored there and we say them whether we want to or not.

1:13 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 so that we could actually do it the way 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 orflight 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 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.

2:08 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 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 breath and say, "Next 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 two, 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 huge learning thing for