It started with 100 Easter egg halves drop kicked down the stairs. Things went downhill from there. The morning devolved into car seat surfing and finally, signing the “why is your child late for school” form with the words “attitude and chaos.” I drove away from the school drained and sad from the strain of parenting through emotional chaos. Nonetheless, I did not give up and there is a happy ending to this story. Keep reading to learn how we took our awful morning from despair to delight, or at least resolution.
The truth is this. The Easter egg incident isn’t our first go-round with the emotional tornado that is my highly spirited, passionate, bright, strong child. Over time, with the aid of good therapy and solid research, I have developed a system for addressing behaviors and transforming them into understanding that helps everyone “do better.” My 2 step approach helps repair, teach, and correct the attitudes and behaviors that lead to stressful, energy draining behavioral outbursts. Our system isn’t an instant fix, but it has shown positive progress little by little. If you want to stick around around, I will share the 2 part system I use for parenting through emotional chaos.
Part 1: Processing the “Me” of Parenting Through Emotional Chaos
On the drive home, I acknowledged how angry and sad I was that my energy bar was critically low by 8:57 AM. As I reflected, I felt frustrated that this emotional chaos was happening again. Then, I admitted that I was angry at the choices my child had made. Finally, I begrudgingly acknowledged some anger at different things my spouse and I had said during the morning’s chaos. If I expect my child to own her emotions and do the work, first I have to do the same thing.
Once back at home, I found my partner and vented. Each of us got a chance to share the frustration, anger, and sadness that our Thursday morning had gone so poorly. We also went through how each of us experienced the morning. Research shows that when parents regulate their own emotions, they’re more likely to engage in positive parenting practices. This helps their children develop emotional resilience (ScienceDirect). Scientific research has also revealed that sharing your experiences with trusted people decreases emotional distress, regulates emotions and decreases stress. (NIH). So, I shared and got regulated before I moved on. Next up was developing my strategy, aligned with my bigger parenting goals, for the conversation with my child.
Addressing my feelings before thinking about my child allowed me to step away from a “knee-jerk” reaction. As humans, anger and frustration produce a response, and I wanted my reply to be informed by logic and love. Experience has taught me, if I meet her anger with anger nothing is learned and nobody wins.
So, instead of going with my initial idea of “she is grounded until she is 22 and has a 20 page chore list,” I took a moment to re-align myself with my values. I reflected on what I’m trying to do as a parent. Punishment, in my opinion, is a waste of time. I’m not looking for straight behavior modification. (Although, better behavior is part of the plan!) I am equipping my daughter with the tools to effectively manage her beautiful, often overwhelming internal world. This realization helped me avoid rushing into punishment and gave me the clarity I needed to respond thoughtfully. The plan: Reflection, Conversation, and Natural Consequences.
Part 2: Parenting Through Emotional Chaos
Step 1: Setting the Stage
Once I had processed my own emotions and centered myself, I could turn to my daughter’s. I knew that what happened earlier in the day wasn’t about bad behavior. It was about her emotional response to triggers she didn’t fully understand herself. At this point, I needed to help her navigate these emotions in a constructive way. This does not mean those behaviors are permissible. However, my strategy eschews value judgements in favor of natural consequences and long-term transformation.
So, when we got home from school, I made sure to attend to her biological needs. First up was a snack, some water, and a quiet, calm space where she could decompress. (Quick, tasty snack idea here!) Studies support that when children are emotionally dis-regulated, their physical needs must be addressed before they can properly process their emotions (Verywell Mind). Once she had settled into a quieter space and refueled, we could move on to the next step.
I told her we were going to talk about what happened. Then, I let that sink in before continuing. This was a crucial moment—research shows that emotional coaching and guiding children through their feelings help them develop better emotional intelligence and regulation. Instead of simply reprimanding her, I wanted to provide space for her to express what she was feeling and help her understand why her emotions escalated. After all, my goal is teaching and equipping rather than “making her pay” for her choices.
Step 2: Sorting Out the Story
Next, I handed her a journal with prompts that I wrote earlier, during my planning session. The prompts led her in a targeted reflection that established the morning’s timeline and got her thinking about how she experienced the proceedings. I asked her to tell the story of what happened. This process combines two schools of proven parenting research. Emotional coaching and guiding children through their feelings helps them develop better emotional intelligence and regulation (Gottman Institute). Also, studies are showing that storytelling is a powerful tool for emotional regulation. The Journal of Child and Family Studies found that narrative-based interventions, practices like journaling help children process their emotions more effectively and build emotional resilience (SpringerLink).
Stage set and journal in hand, I let her go through the questions on her own, hoping she would do the work herself. I wanted to end her reliance on me to suss out the sources of the morning’s struggles. Much to my relief, she absolutely did! My daughter began dubiously with the first question of “this morning, I was getting ready for school and then….”. But, as she moved from prompt to prompt her face began to change. By mid-story she was neutral and by the end of the story she was deeply engaged and her posture had opened up.
When I observed her pen stop moving, I asked if she wanted to share. And, to my surprise she did. So, we went through the story together. She told me “I was eating breakfast and then you made me stop. After that, people started rushing me. You and dad kept moving me to the next thing and the next thing. Every time I tried to slow down, you pushed me to the next thing. Then, as I was going down the stairs you told me again to get my shoes on for the 7th time, so I kicked the Easter eggs. Then, dad told me I had to pick them up! And then I don’t really remember anything else until we were in the car. You kept telling me I had to go to school and I did not want to go. When we got to school you made me carry my backpack!”
Step 3: Reflection, Evaluation, and Transformation
With that concrete timeline and a record of her emotions in hand, we moved on to the reflection, evaluating and transformation phase. I asked her to take me through the story again, and point out where she went from “yay life” to “I am done with everything!” This took a few minutes to move deeper into the emotion of the story. I had to re-frame the question 3-4 times, but eventually the lightbulb went on and she exclaimed, “You all kept rushing me at breakfast! I wanted to finish my TOAST!”
Once we identified the trigger, we took each segment of the story and identified the emotion she experienced at each turn. We were left with an almost secondary story. It was a tale of escalating emotions that clearly explained how we went form happy home to chaos city. By the time we were done with the second walk through the whole process was so clear that we both had no problem continuing with next steps.
Sitting together, journal in hand and Easter eggs all around I asked her, “Did you like how the morning went?” She quietly said, “No.” Taking the opening, I asked her, “Do you want things to go differently next time you are mad?” She nodded her head. I replied, “Me too. That was really a bummer for each of us, including you. I have a few more journal prompts for you and then we will finish up by talking about your consequences, ok?” She nodded her head.
Turning to another page in the journal, she found the final phrases I had written out earlier. There were 3 lines of “when mom/dad did _________, then I felt _________.” Another 3 lines said “as I was _____________, my body felt _______.” For this one, I helped her fill in the first blank based on the story line we had established. Finally, there were 4 blank pages for her to answer in words and pictures, “Next time I feel ________, then I can _______.” “Next time mom/dad does __________, then I can say/do __________.”
By guiding her through this process, I wasn’t just helping her analyze what went wrong; I was equipping her with the tools to handle similar situations in the future. This is crucial for children and invaluable for highly spirited children. They will face similar emotional upheavals in the future and now they have a road map for the journey. Research supports that children who engage in reflective storytelling develop problem-solving skills and emotional intelligence. These skills are vital for navigating life’s challenges (Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing).
Step 4: Natural Consequences and Moving On
Our narrative story work clearly show-cased how my daughter’s actions had gone awry. It also pointed out, more clearly than I enjoyed, how my own actions had escalated instead of de-escalated things. (Not an easy pill to swallow, but necessary.) The clarity of the problem made her natural consequences easy to understand. So, when I presented her with what would happen next, she didn’t balk at all. As a result of the morning’s craziness, my daughter had two consequences.
First, she would be required to accept help regulating her emotions moving forward. At multiple points during the spiral I asked her if she wanted help. She increasingly, loudly, shouted, “No”, as we went along. I had even tried to model deep breathing and purposeful volume decreases to no avail. So, she committed to accepting help when we saw the signs of our next emotional escalation. To that end, I highlighted that this wasn’t forever. As she learns emotional regulation she will no longer need my help. But, secondly, she was not going to enjoy taking the help if history proved true. However, even if she hated my help she needed to commit to accepting it. After some conversation she did and we moved on to the final part of the consequences.
Her second consequence was to help return energy to the family “energy bar.” The choice to let her emotions seize control and run roughshod over everything had affected everyone, deeply. I was careful to highlight that there is no consequence for having the emotions; simply the way she chose to let them have full control. Her sister was deeply anxious, her brother was hungry and her parents were drained. So, she needed to apologize to each of us in a way that felt safe to her. (That meant she got to do it in private because she feels embarrassed having to do it with everyone around.) Then, she needed to complete 2 chores apart from her normal “family participation tasks.” For us, this is the logical consequence. I run out of steam to do boring, or annoying chores when I use up my energy on parenting through emotional chaos. So, she takes on some of that work and it helps the health and wholeness, or at least the functionality of our unit.
The best way to move on, in my experience is to acknowledge that things were really hard and praise her participation in the process of restoration. After all, a lot of grown ups refuse to do the hard work my daughter had just engaged. Who wants to face their failure or shortcomings? Her courage and commitment to learn needs to be publicly celebrated, and so we do. At dinner, I told everyone that the morning was difficult and my daughter had shown a lot of respect and character to learn from bad choices and make things right. Do not make my previous mistake of going on and on about this, though. I now know one, maybe two sentences is all you need for people to find resolution and move forward.
Fellow parent in the journey towards raising healthy, whole, and mostly happy kids, I would love to tell you that we never faced another emotional outburst after this Easter egg incident. The honest truth is one week later we had a massive blow up while our family walked home from dinner at church. So, this approach will not eliminate the task of parenting through emotional chaos. However, I am happy to report that the repair and learning phase from that blow-up was shorter and easier than all my previous attempts. I take this as proof that engaging in this two step process teaches actual emotional skills and is worth the time and effort it takes to carry it out.
Have you ever faced similar emotional “ragers” in your own home? How do you handle moments of chaos while teaching your child to process their big emotions? I’d love to hear your thoughts and strategies in the comments below. Let’s continue this conversation and support each other on this journey of emotional growth for all!