by Mike Peercy, Executive Director of Fostering Grace

How many times have you seen someone with a small child that has flipped their lid and the grown-up, with the irritation of the difficult behavior of the child amplified by the embarrassment of the situation, is angrily telling them to shut up or get a grip or some other “cut it out” kind of expression? I look back on my parenting life experience and realize how often when one of my kids was dysregulated I simply matched their dysregulation with my own—raising my voice, intimidating my child, making the situation much worse than it needed to be.

How often have we uttered the most useless question: “would you please calm down?” Has anyone in the history of the world ever actually calmed down when asked to calm down?

Maybe we need to ask a better question.

When we see someone—particularly a child—loosing their grip, what if we could come close and lend some actual help?

A moment like that calls for us to ask ourselves a reflective inquiry. “How can I share my calm in their storm?”

When a kid’s trauma memories are triggered (sometimes consciously, sometimes not at all so), it can crank up as quickly as an Oklahoma thunderstorm. When this happens, they are experiencing again the fear and panic they went through in that moment of terror. And there are as many possible triggering sensations as there are ways to describe any possible situation: sounds, smells, textures, colors, objects, gestures—all capable of launching a storm of emotional response. They can become very dysregulated very quickly. Veteran foster parents will testify that this scene can go on for hours sometimes even with our best efforts. But the question we have to ask is still this: how can I share my calm in their storm?

(We’ll have to come back another time and explore how we, like a skilled meteorologist, can learn to recognize when the factors are lining up to produce dangerous storms.)

The first mantra of Trust Based Relational Intervention is “stay calm.” Sounds easy enough, but it’s often really difficult. How then can we share our calm if we can manage to ask the question?

There are a lot of tools for such moments, but it begins by coming near with our gentle spirit. It’s much like the way you might see one of those “horse whisperers” on tv approach a spooked or unsettled stallion. They do so very gently, careful to avoid further escalation, respectful of the power and value of this creature. We too must approach a dysregulated child looking past their difficult behavior to keep in sight the inherent preciousness of that child.

Sometimes it all starts with asking a better question.

How can I share my calm in their storm?