Parenting through big emotions without losing yours.

Last Tuesday, my 12-year-old and my 9-year-old were wrestling in the living room. Not the cute kind of wrestling. The kind where someone is definitely going to cry and something is definitely going to break. I walked in, and before I could even form a sentence, my youngest looked up at me with that face — the one that says "I know I'm in trouble but I also feel like the world is unfair and I might scream."

And you know what I wanted to do? Yell. I wanted to yell "STOP IT" at a volume that would end the situation immediately. I wanted to be the kind of parent whose voice alone restores order.

Instead, I took a breath. And then I said something imperfect and human and probably not what any parenting book would recommend. And we got through it. Not perfectly. But we got through it.

I'm telling you this because I think it's important that you hear it from someone who is both a licensed therapist AND a parent who regularly does not have it together. I'm Alicia. I'm an LCSW, I'm Positive Discipline certified, I specialize in parenting therapy — and I'm a single mom of two neurodiverse boys who have more energy and emotion in their little bodies than most adults can handle. I know how hard this is. Not theoretically. In my bones.

Why your kid's big emotions trigger yours

Before I give you any tools — and I will, I promise — I want to talk about why this is so hard. Because it's not just that your kid is being loud or defiant or falling apart. It's that their big emotions activate something in you.

When your child screams, your nervous system doesn't calmly think, "Ah, a developmental moment. Let me respond with attunement." Your nervous system thinks, "THREAT." It goes into fight-or-flight. Your heart rate spikes. Your jaw clenches. Your patience, which was already running on fumes because you've been managing everything all day, disappears.

This is not a character flaw. This is biology. Your brain is wired to respond to distress signals from your child with urgency. The problem is that urgency feels like anger, and anger makes us do things we regret — yell, threaten, slam a door, say something cutting, withdraw completely.

Here's what I've learned from doing this work with hundreds of parents and also from doing it badly in my own living room: the goal is not to stop having reactions. The goal is to put a tiny pause between the trigger and the response. That pause is everything.

The ropes and swings in my house (and why they matter)

I want to tell you something that might sound ridiculous. I have ropes and swings hanging all over my house. Like, from the ceiling. It looks like a jungle gym had a baby with a living room.

Why? Because my boys were wrestling constantly. They were crashing into things, climbing on furniture, rolling around on the floor in ways that were definitely going to end in an ER visit. And at first I did what most parents do — I tried to stop it. "Stop wrestling." "Get off the couch." "Someone is going to get hurt." Over and over and over. It didn't work. Obviously.

Then I stepped back and thought about it like a therapist instead of like an exhausted parent. These kids are sensory seekers. They need proprioceptive input. They need to move, push, pull, hang, swing, crash. Their nervous systems are literally asking for it. Me telling them to stop is like telling them to stop being hungry.

So I hung ropes. I hung swings. I gave them something to do with their bodies that met the need without destroying the furniture or each other. And it helped. Not perfectly. Not every time. But it changed the dynamic from "stop doing the thing you can't stop doing" to "here, do the thing you need to do in a way that works for all of us."

That shift — from fighting the need to meeting it differently — is the heart of everything I believe about parenting. And it applies to emotions the same way it applies to wrestling.

What Positive Discipline actually means (and doesn't mean)

I'm certified in Positive Discipline, which is a parenting framework based on the work of Alfred Adler and Jane Nelsen. And I want to clear something up because the name is misleading.

Positive Discipline does not mean permissive parenting. It does not mean you let your kid do whatever they want and just smile about it. It does not mean you never set boundaries or consequences. It does not mean you are a doormat.

What it means is that discipline — the process of teaching your child how to behave — happens best when the child feels connected, respected, and involved. Not controlled, punished, or shamed.

The core idea is "firm and kind at the same time." You hold the boundary AND you hold the relationship. You don't sacrifice one for the other.

That sounds great on paper. In practice, when your kid has just thrown a shoe at their brother's head and is now screaming that they hate you, "firm and kind at the same time" feels about as achievable as quantum physics.

I know. I've been there. Here's what I've found actually helps.

What actually works when your kid is falling apart

Regulate yourself first. I cannot stress this enough. You cannot co-regulate a dysregulated child if you are also dysregulated. It's like trying to throw a life preserver while you're drowning. Take ten seconds. Breathe. Put your feet on the floor. Unclench your jaw. You are not abandoning your child by taking ten seconds to get your own nervous system below the red line. You are making it possible to actually help them.

Get low and get close. When a kid is in a meltdown, standing over them and talking at them doesn't work. Their brain is in survival mode. They can't process language well. They certainly can't process a lecture. Get down to their level physically. Move closer, not further away. Your calm presence is more regulating than any words.

Validate before you redirect. "I can see you're really angry right now." That's it. That's the first thing. Not "stop crying." Not "you're fine." Not "what happened?" Just: I see you. I see that you're having a hard time. This isn't coddling. This is the fastest way to help a child's nervous system come down — by signaling that their experience is real and they're not alone in it.

Wait for the calm before you problem-solve. Do not try to have a teaching moment during a meltdown. The learning brain is offline when the emotional brain is on fire. Wait until everyone has calmed down — and that might be 20 minutes later, or it might be the next morning — and then talk about what happened, what they could do differently, what you could do differently.

That last part is important. What you could do differently. Positive Discipline is not a one-way street. If I lost my temper, I say so. If I handled something badly, I name it. My kids need to see that mistakes are part of being human and that repair is always possible.

The mistakes I've made (and what I learned)

I promised you I'd be honest, so here it is.

I have yelled at my kids in ways I'm not proud of. There have been evenings where I've been so overwhelmed — by the noise, by the demands, by doing it all alone — that I've responded from a place of pure frustration instead of anything resembling therapeutic wisdom.

There was a period where my oldest was going through a particularly hard stretch. Every transition was a battle. Getting ready for school was a 45-minute ordeal. And one morning, after the fourth time of saying "put your shoes on," I just lost it. I didn't say anything terrible, but I said it terribly. The tone. The volume. The energy behind it. My kid's face crumpled, and I knew I'd just made a hard morning worse.

That's a horrible feeling. Especially when you're a therapist and you're supposed to "know better."

But here's what I've learned: knowing better and doing better are not the same thing, and the gap between them is where grace lives. I apologized to my son that day. Not a vague "sorry if I hurt your feelings" apology but a real one: "I yelled at you this morning. That wasn't okay. You were having a hard time and my job was to help you, not to make it harder. I'm sorry." He looked at me and said, "It's okay, Mom." And we moved on.

That repair mattered more than if I'd handled the morning perfectly. Because what he learned in that moment is: people who love you can mess up, and they can also come back and make it right. That's a lesson he'll carry forever.

Parenting neurodiverse kids specifically

I want to speak directly to parents of neurodiverse children for a minute, because this is my life and I know how isolating it can be.

When your child's brain works differently — whether that's ADHD, autism, sensory processing differences, or any combination — the standard parenting advice often doesn't land. "Just be consistent with consequences" doesn't work when your child genuinely cannot do the thing you're asking them to do with the regulation they currently have. "Ignore the tantrum and it will stop" doesn't work when the tantrum is a sensory overload, not a bid for attention.

What does work is understanding your specific child's nervous system and building your parenting around it instead of fighting against it. That's what the ropes and swings are about. That's what a lot of my work in parenting therapy is about — helping you decode what your child's behavior is actually communicating, so you can respond to the need underneath instead of just reacting to the behavior on the surface.

Your kid isn't giving you a hard time. Your kid is having a hard time. I know you've probably heard that before. But I also know that in the middle of the chaos, when you're exhausted and touched-out and running on coffee and guilt, it's hard to remember. So let me say it again: your kid is having a hard time. And so are you. Both things are true. Both things matter.

What I want you to take from this

Parenting through big emotions is not about getting it right every time. It's about getting it right enough, often enough, and repairing it when you don't.

It's about understanding that your child's emotional storms are not evidence of your failure. They're evidence that your child trusts you enough to fall apart in front of you. That's actually a good sign, even though it doesn't feel like one when you're standing in a puddle of spilled milk with a screaming child and a splitting headache.

It's about being willing to look at your own stuff — your own triggers, your own history, your own nervous system patterns — so that you can show up for your kids with a little more capacity and a little less reactivity.

And it's about asking for help when you need it. Not because you're broken, but because this job is too big to do alone. I know because I try to do it alone more often than I should, and every single time, I'm reminded that I'm a better parent when I have support.

If this landed for you — if you're reading this going "okay yeah, that's me" — I'm glad. That's why I wrote it. Not as a therapist dispensing wisdom from on high, but as a mom sitting on the floor of her living room between a rope swing and a pile of laundry, trying to do the hardest job in the world with some amount of grace.

Need support with parenting? You don't have to figure this out alone. Learn about parenting therapy at The Wild Within, or reach out for a free consultation. I've been where you are. Let's talk.