11. Co-Regulation When You’re Not Regulated: Calming Your Child When You’re Overwhelmed

How do you help your child regulate when you're not regulated yourself? If you're raising a neurodivergent child or healing from trauma, this is your daily reality. Your child has big emotions, sensory needs, meltdowns, refusals. And meanwhile, you might be dissociating, anxious, or overstimulated yourself. You love your child fiercely, but sometimes your nervous system just says, "I can't do this right now. I caaaaan't."

Let's talk about what to do in those moments. This is the transcript for Episode 11.

What co-regulation really means

People say "co-regulate!!" like it's this calm, glowing image of mom holding her child and breathing together. Yay! But real co-regulation, concretely, sometimes looks like:

• standing in the kitchen, eyes closed, whispering, "I'm safe. He's safe. Everybody's safe",

• sitting on the floor, not trying to fix the meltdown, just staying nearby,

• taking three breaths or two breaths if three is too much time, before answering a question that feels like a demand.

"Co-regulation is not about being calm for your child. It's about doing everything you can to stay connected while you work on your calm."

That's the difference. We're working to stay connected with our child.

When your body is flooded

There are times when your own body is screaming, "too much, too much." For me, sometimes that's when my child is stimming loudly with sounds. Just these consonants that he likes to repeat and repeat and repeat over and over, really loud with his mouth; or movement, he'll spin in circles or just rock back and forth on the sofa or pacing around the place. And my brain just can't take any more input. So in those moments, I've learned small survival moves:

• I'll close my eyes for a few seconds, if the visual input is too much;

• I'll cover my ears discreetly for a moment, to reset my nervous system;

• I'll step two feet back - not away emotionally, but just physically to create that physical distance where I can breathe and I'm not going to be touched, or hit, or any of that.

  
  

That protects my nervous system. None of this is to create disconnection. It's to regulate myself. And that teaches my child, mom takes care of her body, too. I'm modeling self-preservation, which is something that he will need to do at some point, something he will need to learn to do on his own. So I'm staying connected to him. I'm modeling regulation.

Naming what's happening out loud

Autistic or not, children learn emotional safety through language. You can say, "I'm getting overwhelmed. I need a second to breathe. You're not in trouble." This does two things. It models self-awareness and it shows your child that emotions don't have to mean danger. Emotions are safe. It's fine. We just have to honor them and encourage others to respect our emotions as well. So you're literally teaching safety by living it in real time.

The use of safe scripts

When you can't think clearly, have one or two phrases that anchor you. Just go on autopilot and you use those phrases that you've memorized:

• "We're both okay"

• "This is not an emergency"

• "He's having a hard time. He's not trying to give me a hard time. He's struggling."

  
  

And I'll repeat those until my body believes it. These are short sentences I've memorized and I just go on autopilot and say them if I just can't think clearly at this point. "We're both okay". "This is not an emergency". "He's having a hard time. He's not trying to give me a hard time. He's struggling."

Repair, Repair, Repair.

I'm not always going to get it right. I'll raise my voice, walk away, or freeze. And that's okay, we're being human. Co-regulation doesn't require perfection. It requires repair. So later you can say, "Okay, baby, I got overwhelmed earlier. I'm sorry if that looked scary, felt scary. I'm working on it." And then I like to name precisely what happened. "I raised my voice earlier or I went into my bedroom and I kicked into pillows for a few seconds. And I'm sorry if that was scary. That was me dealing with my emotion." And that time you take to explain and walk your child through what just happened, it rewires your child's sense of safety more than hours of lectures. Just being very concrete as to describing what just happened and analyzing it briefly with the child.

Why this matters

When we co-regulate, not in the pretty Instagram way, with a perfect mother holding her perfect child and smiling and breathing together... That's just not our lot. That's just not how it goes for us. So when we co-regulate in the very concrete, brief ways that I've just suggested, our children's nervous systems learn that emotional storms can pass, that they're not dangerous. That love remains and that people come back.

And that's healthy. So actually by doing that, by going through our emotions and then debriefing with the child, we're actually planting seeds that will protect them from emotional abuse in the future. And I have a whole episode about that. How we protect them from the inside, the seeds that we can plant inside our children. To what I call "narc-proof" them in the future. And what I just described is one of the ways we do that. Because over time we're going to be creating a secure base. Not constant calm, that's not realistic, but repeated repair. Respect of the child, asking for forgiveness, analyzing what just happened, putting words on what just happened and coming back and reconnecting with our child humbly. While honoring our emotions.

So if you're doing all this while healing yourself, like I had said earlier, you're doing sacred work. You're giving your child what you likely didn't have: An adult who stays even while shaky. And you're actually doing more than what a lot of parents that are not dealing with neurodivergence, are not dealing with trauma, are doing. So, yay, that's not "enough", that's more than enough. You're doing beautifully.

Remember to look for Light in the Battle. Look for those beautiful moments in your reality.

If this has been helpful, consider the following: 12. Breaking the Cycle - How to Parent Differently After Generational Trauma