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Do You Have a Rigid Child from Time to Time?

Highly Sensitive Kids and Teens are more likely to get rigid and inflexible.  It’s really challenging to know how to handle rigid child behaviour, as the usual parenting strategies of consequences, rewards, being consistent etc. don’t seem to work.

The essential mantra that is important to repeat to yourself over and over is from Dr. Ross Greene:  “Children do well if they can versus children do well if they want to”

Dr. Ross Greene is the author of The Explosive Child and Raising Human Beings.  For a summary of his approach click here.

If we can remember, that a rigid child’s wiring makes being flexible and having frustration tolerance more challenging, we can stay grounded, instead of believing that my child is purposefully being defiant.

As parents, it’s really important to model self-regulation, as co-regulation is an integral part of your child’s ability to learn to manage frustration.

We are also the “emotion coaches” for our kids.  In a calm moment, we need to teach them about their brain and the inflexible part or “voice” that comes upon all of us at times.  We also need to teach them specific strategies for growing a more flexible and tolerant brain.

It’s very beneficial to teach them what “rigidity” and “flexibility” means.  I knock on a hard surface to discuss rigidity and I ask them to stretch their body to show flexibility. If they can bend their body to touch their toes, grab their hands behind their back, do the splits or put their head back and touch their toes, then I laugh with them and say they can definitely move their mind in different directions.  (Last week’s lesson in our Self-Empowerment group was all on this topic, and I had a large room of socially distanced kids and kids on Zoom, bending their bodies in many different ways!)

Behaviours don’t just come “out of the blue”, there’s always something that happens right before the escalation, and in behaviour terms, this is called the antecedent.  As parents, we need to be the detectives and as soon as the antecedent is building momentum, see if it’s possible to redirect with one of the following strategies, which you would need to have taught them ahead of time.

Six Strategies for Increasing A Rigid Child’s Flexibility

⓵  EXTERNALIZATION – NAME THE VOICE OF RIGIDITY – Just as we encourage naming the voice of worry (Ie. Worry Imp in my book), we also want to name the voice of rigidity – the thoughts that get very stuck!  Michelle Garcia-Winner describes it as “Rock Brain”® . It could also be “Brick Wall” or some of the kids I’ve been working with have come up with some creative ideas such as: “Brain Freeze”, “Statue” (imagine yourself stuck like a statue), “Rain Storm” etc.  You won’t be able to use your child’s name for the voice of rigidity, in the heat of the moment, but as things are just starting you probably can or afterwards when you debrief a situation.

⓶  CHOICES – There’s always other choices and options. We can stay in victim-mode, feeling powerless, or we can make a different choice.  A rigid child needs to think about other ways of looking at solutions for the situation.

⓷  LET IT GO – Our thoughts aren’t always right and our thoughts can’t always have what they want.  Sometimes we need to give up on our thought.  We need to teach  a rigid child to imagine “plucking” the thought from their brain and putting it into a balloon, bubble or cloud where it can float away.

⓸ TRY ANOTHER WAY versus being stuck – Michelle Garcia-Winner, the amazing founder of Social Thinking® explains that this is a very important part of being more flexible. We need to stop and be able to change our plan.

⓹  ADD IDEAS TOGETHER: My idea + Your idea = Compromise  We each have an idea and we need to put our ideas together.