Arousal Misattribution in Parenting: How Clinicians Track Reactivity Before Intervention

Arousal Misattribution in Parenting: How Clinicians Track Reactivity Before Intervention

Jeffrey Besecker:
This is The Light Inside. I'm Jeffrey Beesecker. Welcome to the community where clinicians sharpen formulation before intervention begins. Why? Because behavior has a context. Reactivity. When it comes to arousal misattribution, reactivity often begins when a parent's body activates before the parent has fully understood what the child's behavior is actually signaling.

This early developmental structure becomes the pivotal hinge. because the parent may experience their own urgency, shame, tightening, or overwhelm as proof that the child is the cause, rather than recognizing how early developmental learning, unmet needs, stress, or role pressure may be organizing their response. Clinically, this gives practitioners a clean alliance pathway. So how do clinicians help parents spot the organizational hinge where arousal becomes attribution before the child is made responsible for a state shaped by earlier developmental learning, unmet needs, role pressure, or unresolved data?

Tune in as we explore how reactivity forms beneath the surface of parenting and what it reveals about the deeper patterns shaping clinical alliance when we return to The Light Inside. 

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Jen Lumanlan: It's great to be here, Jeffrey. Thanks for having me.

Jeffrey Besecker: So before we jump in today, Jen, if you would share a brief description of your background as a parenting coach and how you typically approach trauma-informed intervention within your model.

Jen Lumanlan: Hmm, gosh. My background came from having my daughter 12 years ago and realizing I had no idea how to parent. And so I decided to go back to school and get a master's in psychology focused on child development and then got another in education and decided to share what I was learning through the Your Parenting Mojo podcast with other people who were interested. And it's just kind of morphed from there as I became interested in, well, why am I having such a hard time parenting? and exploring these things for myself, discovering intergenerational trauma, my own intergenerational trauma through a podcast episode in live conversation on the air and kind of developing from there a series of workshops and programs and memberships to help parents to really parent in line with their values. because I think it's so easy to get caught up in, well, this is what my parents did, and I don't really want to repeat that, but also I don't know what else to do to help you kind of not just not react to that, but to say, okay, yes, this is where I am, this is how I want to parent, and I'm moving forward from there.

Jeffrey Besecker: I think it's such an essential point to frame how we typically enter that client container through our client models and interactions. So Jen, I want to hold this conversation in the same spirit we used in our pre-call, not as a script for parents, but as a clinical facing map for what happens inside the relational container during session. When arousal arises, meaning forms and the child begins to carry more of the parent's state than the present moment can actually support. As we move through these questions, I'd like to stay close to the concrete examples you mentioned earlier. Tying the shoes, putting on the shoes, toothbrushing, and leaving the house. Those simple models can often create a tripping point for parent. That leans back into an early developmental model or early cue. So does that feel like a direction we can explore together today with room for you to pause, revise, and redirect the clinical frame as we go?

Jen Lumanlan: Yeah, definitely. And of course, parents who are listening clinicians who work with parents are going to recognize those as examples in relatively young children, but we can sort of address how it shows up in older children as well.

Jeffrey Besecker: Thanks for your transparency. I feel this mirrors the client alliance very well. Many parents describe moments when a child's behavior produces a rapid shift from frustration or concern into urgency, helplessness, withdrawal, or the need to gain control. Clinically, the first task for us becomes not whether we decide if the parent is triggered, flooded, traumatized, or dysregulated, but to observe the sequence between the child behavior, parental arousal, and assigned meaning. So that action begins to feel immediately necessary and essential in how we're addressing the client. when we're gauging that frame. How do you utilize this data to determine when a client is content with engaging parental instruction or there's a need to shift that realm toward trauma containment?

Jen Lumanlan: Well, I think the first signal comes from what is happening in the parent, right? And I think ultimately the thread that's going to carry us through our conversation today is what data is the parent seeing in their body and in their thoughts? And how are they attributing that? What are they attributing that to? And is that actually what is happening? And many of us, myself included, have sort of gone through the world relatively okay with most of our, you know, our childhood challenges. We're sort of like, okay, I think I've got a lid on that. And then our kids come along and all of a sudden we find we are going into fight, flight, freeze, fawn, right? And we're having a really hard time. And so it's very easy to kind of approach this from an, oh, I was OK. Now I'm not OK. It must be my child that is the cause of what is happening here. And the task that I see as somebody who works with parents is to say well is that necessarily really what is happening here. Is it possible that the arousal that you are experiencing is happening because something your child is doing is reminding you of something that happened to you in your childhood. So I think that's the sort of the core thing to address. And of course, I'm sure your listeners are fully aware of the distinction between being triggered and flooded. Triggered when it reminds you of some sort of past trauma. Flooded, very kind of similar experience, but more linked to what's happening today, right? I didn't get enough sleep. I haven't eaten today. I haven't moved enough in a long time. And that can lead to the flooding. Whether or not, whichever of those things is there, we want to do is to say, OK, my child has done this thing and now I feel triggered or flooded. Is it actually because of the thing my child did or is it something else that's happening?

Jeffrey Besecker: Jen, when that data enters the clinical room or your client interaction, where do you yourself draw that distinction in your own coaching program? And when you determine, hey, we're moving into a trauma realm here, is this something I address or do I invite in or refer another practitioner to go after that trauma model?

Jen Lumanlan: Yeah, so many parents who come to me have worked with therapists in the past, if not have a therapist. I run a program called Taming Your Triggers, and it's very common for parents to go through that program and come out realizing, okay, yes, I need to work on this more with a therapist, right? And so the therapy sort of interacts with that in a variety of different ways. It can connect uncover the need for more work on understanding why we feel triggered. And also the process of understanding can uncover the need for more therapy. So it's sort of this reinforcing model. I should be clear, I'm not a therapist, right? I'm not trained as a therapist. I'm trained as a parent coach. And so I think where I sort of hand over the reins is where the client is experiencing extreme disorganization as a result of the trauma that they've experienced. and making sense of it and creating this new sort of through line of, okay, yes, I know where this is coming from, is not producing enough of a shift for them. In that case, it's sort of handing over to a therapist who can support them with that.

Jeffrey Besecker: Thank you for sharing that perspective with me. I think that's such an integral key to watching any of our practices, even within the clinical realm. When we start to stray from that client alliance, when we might have that rupture repair cycle, and when it's time to maybe shift or reconsider where we're gaining actual traction and contact with that client. Jen, in many parenting conflicts, the first clinical useful signal may not be the child's behavior, but the parent's body state, as you mentioned. Urgency, heat, tightening, jaw tension, chest pressure, shame, or collapse just being a few examples of that signaling a recurring state underneath. So when a parent notices urgency, tightening, heat, shame, or collapse, how do we help clinicians treat that arousal as the first clinical cue rather than a proof that the child is a problem.

Jen Lumanlan: Yeah, I think this is such a rich question with a lot of scope for exploration. And so I think where I typically try to take this with a client is to ask them to think of a specific recent incident. And usually, of course, they come to me with something very alive. So maybe even something happened that morning. And so they have this sort of physical arousal in their body. And even if it happened a few days ago, just thinking about the thing can very often create this physical arousal. And then we start to notice, okay, what is happening in your body now, if you just experienced this thing this morning? Or what is re-arising as you think about something that happened a few days ago? And so what they might notice is, oh, I feel a lump in my throat. I feel tightness in my shoulders. I feel some sort of real nausea, scrambling, something going on in my stomach. And so we're having them tune into that as a signal that, oh, OK, something about this isn't right for me. And then I think the part that is really significant for parents is that very often their cues are similar over and over again, right? It's not like their body's throwing up a new cue every time and you have to learn a new one every time. It's the same one that's coming up over and over again. And so when they are about to enter a situation with their child, right, maybe it's time to get out the door and you've asked your kid to put their shoes on and you've just brushed your teeth, you're coming down the hallway and you know they don't have their shoes on and you feel you're tightening in your throat, in your shoulders, you're scrambling in your stomach. That is your first signal, okay, this is, something is going on here for me to pay attention to. You don't have to wait for you to actually get down the hallway and see the shoes are not on the feet and be in that moment of explosion or shutdown or wherever that goes for you, right? You can see that coming because your body has been through this experience before, because so many of these triggers happen on a regular basis, right? If your kid's refusing to put their shoes on today, chances are it probably happened yesterday and the day before and the day before. So that becomes really useful to be able to identify our individual patterns and spot them when they come up and say OK here it is. OK stop. What's my plan here. Where do I want to go from here.

Jeffrey Besecker: And that trigger itself typically becomes, from a therapeutic model, the core hinge point or pivotal point that, again, is pointing back to that early developmental pattern or that early relational pattern. So holding that in frame. Once arousal appears, the parent may quickly attribute the state to the child. For instance, they're causing this. They're disrespecting me. Or if they would just stop. I'd be okay. You know, I think we've all found ourselves in those shoes and that's quite normal and natural for us as parents as we begin to overload. So the Alliance task is not to help the clinician hold arousal as relevant data without allowing it to become a premature verdict about the child, the parent, or how the clinician is responding to it in a room as a cause of the interaction. So the signals are relevant context. I want to pre-frame that. All of that data is relevant context, how are we holding that? The next question being, what meaning evolves from that and what understanding evolves from that? But they do not automatically reveal the underlying causal Q stacks or cause itself. That becomes a much more dynamic process. We're not necessarily going to dissect that today. How do you help parents regain contact with their earliest developmental and relational cues when that's the source, or is that a level you go to? And how, again, do we find that gap to create the space between immediately turning those signals into a story about the child?

Jen Lumanlan: Yeah, I think this links back to an episode that you did on a blog post actually on arousal misattribution. And I see that as being very much linked to Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett's research, right, where she talks about how we construct emotions. They don't just kind of arise spontaneously in us, that our brains are constructing them from the experiences that we've had. the new data that we're getting today. Or potentially, right, our stomach might be turning because of something we ate last night, is an example I think she likes to give. So, seeing all these sources of data, right, and how do we do this in the session? Well, the first thing I ask parents to look at is to question, is it possible that your child is not the cause of what is happening here? And then the way that we get at this is, have you ever felt this way before? Have you ever noticed these physical signs in your body before? And if so, when did you feel that? What kind of circumstances were there? Some clients don't have the ability to access what's going on in their bodies as well. Or if we're kind of new to the conversation, they haven't learned to pay attention to it yet. And so the thought process is more accessible. And they can sort of think through, oh, yeah, well, I'm thinking of a specific client that I coached where the parent was having a really hard time because the kid would resist getting her teeth brushed in the morning and getting ready to get out the door. And it turned out that the client had a father who was an alcoholic, a mother who was working many, many, many hours to support multiple kids in the family. And it was this parent's job to get three other siblings ready and out the door in the morning. And so the narrative that's happening in the background subconsciously in this client's mind is, I got all of these siblings ready to get out the door in the morning and you can't even brush your own flippin' teeth. And so that's where the tension arises from, that through line from the client's experiences to the current situation that they're in. And many of them have had no realization that what happened in their childhood is showing up in these daily interactions with their kids. It's an absolute revelation. And so once we start to create that meaning out of it, right, this isn't coming out of nowhere. You're not a uniquely crappy parent that everybody else is not experiencing it. You're the only one. And there's a reason this is happening. And we can trace that through, create that meaning, and that alone can create some shift for some folks. Sometimes there's sort of more work to do around the processing, especially in community with other people, but just the meaning making itself can be really powerful.

Jeffrey Besecker: me as a key marker or a key point we can flag here, pointing back to Feldman Barrett and many others, how arousal doesn't arrive as a complete explanation. Basically making predictions and analyses on what we think based on our past experience, our context, how the child is presenting, and then all of these other sometimes subtle unconscious cues that make up that organization of how how we're responding. So under stress, the parent system may assign meaning quickly. Again, you know, we go back to those things. I'm a failure as a parent. I'm unsupported, which may be true. You know, there is a lot of times where we are under supported or under resourced. I'm losing control or I'm fixing this right now. as we try to move forward and go to the next interaction of the day. The clinical hinge in that moment is the parent's internal state becomes attributed to the child often as a cause. So when a parent starts to notice, I'm making my child the source of what I feel, how do you hold that moment without rushing to interpret for the parent themselves before we even engage how the parent might be interacting with the data underneath?

Jen Lumanlan: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think that comes through questioning, right? If we're putting our interpretation on the situation too early, well, yeah, clearly this is happening because you had these experiences. But if we're allowing the client to explore this for themselves and help them to create this through line themselves to make that meaning. And the key, I think, that we want to support them in not getting stuck in that experience, right? The danger here, I think, is that the parent thinks, well, because I had this experience, I can't help reacting in this way. They're my agency. I don't have any agency in that situation. There's just, I am a person who reacts because I had those experiences. And I think self-compassion can be really helpful with this. Again, sort of not over-identifying with the struggle, that yes, the struggle is there. And many other parents have this struggle too. I'm not unique in my inability to deal with this right now. And I can approach this with sort of a sense of, Yes, I'm here and I'm present in the discomfort that this is causing, but I'm not getting overly attached to it. I'm not over-identifying with it so that I can't find my way out of it, right? And I think another way that we can support them is to help them to identify situations where they were successful in not reacting, right? Classic therapy tool is where did this work well? so that we can help them to see this isn't always a one-to-one correlation. It's not you have this experience and therefore you always react in this way. But when you're well rested, when you're not hangry, when you've had movement in the last couple of days, you're better able to respond from a place that's aligned with your values. And so when they can identify what was different about those situations when I responded in alignment with my values, then we can start to create more of those situations. And this whole process is basically re-attributing, right? We're saying, okay, this is no longer about my child's behavior, which is what it seemed before, right? If my child would just stop doing this thing that I find so irritating, then I wouldn't have to react in this way. And, you know, newsflash, whatever, if your kid grows out of doing this thing, they're going to grow into doing something else that you probably find just as triggering.

SPEAKER_01: Changing the kid's behavior.

Jeffrey Besecker: It tends to be never ending, yeah. Even into adulthood as we transition and switch that role, you know, eventually we switch that role back to our parents and suddenly we become kind of the pivotal figure there again as we're moving into elderly care of It's not to parentify your parent in that regard, but there comes that role I'm watching and observing, not through my own interactions, but through sisters and brothers, in-laws, where now I'm having to take that role of central pivoter guide back and the model's just coming right back in return. So from a relational context, whether we're in the client container, the client room together, whether we're sharing an environment and whether we're sharing that same relationship with individuals, it's essential for me and my practice, when are we listening for tracking in their body? We're subtly slowing down and watching what their body language might suggest. you know, how rapidly or how we might slow that down, where we're seeking certainty or looking for our own sense of agency so we differentiate somewhat. Sometimes we have to take that step back and say, listen, I am overrunning this a little bit. So beneath the attribution, the parent system may be organizing around, or as an older meaning starts to come up again, am I supported? Am I failing? I'll be judged. Or am I losing control either of myself or the situation? The clinical task is not to assign the meaning from the outside, but to help the parent and practitioner test what that arousal has come to represent. So again, we're moving back into that support model. And rather than us hurrying them along, how do we help the parent ask, what did my system learn this state means? And without turning that inquiry into shame, over-analysis, or a predetermined trauma explanation or explanation before that pacing is there.

Jen Lumanlan: Yeah, I tend to find that enough exploration to be able to create the narrative, right, to create that through line, that meaning making story. is enough to create some kind of shift. For me, as a parent coach, I don't think it's my job to kind of plumb the depths of the trauma in what the person's experienced. That's obviously a licensed therapist's role to take in that situation. So I think that there can be some real benefit to doing that for many people. And also there can be a benefit to sort of just creating that through line and basically seeing underneath that, What needs was I trying to have met in that situation? And are those needs still popping up today? Because that's a framework that I bring to parent coaching that I think is not as often used in therapy, this idea that we are all people with needs. And your kid is a person with needs. You are a person with needs. I am. Right, we all are. And when we, in sort of colloquial English, it's very common for us to say something like, I need you to put your shoes on, right? We need to go. And if instead we see a need as, oh, I have a need for safety right now, right? It didn't feel safe to me when I was young and this situation happened. And I'm trying to feel safe by controlling my child's behavior right now. Is that where I want to be going with this? Or is there another way I can soothe myself and create safety for myself in this situation? And, oh, why is my child resisting putting their shoes on? Is it possible that they are looking for connection with me before we separate for the day? And yes, they're, I don't know, five, six, seven years old. And theoretically, they are able to put their shoes on by themselves. And also, they're seeing this as a way of getting real connection with us. And maybe they're resisting because they have a need for autonomy, right? They want to decide things that feel really meaningful to them. And so when we see needs as connection, play, autonomy, safety, the need to be seen, known and understood for who we really are, then when we're in this situation with our child, we can understand, why am I showing up in this way? Because I'm trying to get these needs met right now. Why is my kid showing up in this way? Because they're trying to get their needs met. And is there a strategy we can use here to meet both of our needs? And the answer to that question, in my experience, is 90% of the time we can. And that puts us in a fundamentally different kind of relationship with our child. Because when our needs are met, we're not triggered. We're not flooded. And when our kids' needs are met, they're not resisting us. And so that's sort of the approach that I bring to working with parents and with clinicians who work with parents to be able to understand what is actually happening today. Yes, some of this is linked to things that have happened in the past, but here today in this interaction, what need are you trying to meet and what need is your child trying to meet? And how can we meet both of those needs at the same time?

Jeffrey Besecker: You know, I feel so often it's essential to establish that anchor of just simply holding the frame and pausing, you know, doing that simple check-in. We modeled that in our earlier conversation. How does this land for you? So in that regard, how does that land for you, Jen? And how do we create those safe checkpoints or those checkpoints to simply log in and connect?

Jen Lumanlan: Yeah, that question sparks two things for me. Firstly, connecting with self and then secondly, connecting with the other. Right, so for connecting with self, a practice that I've used is right after I wake up in the morning when it's quiet before I even get out of bed, right, is to kind of put my hand on my heart and feel the felt sense of being calm, right, of being relaxed. And to use that to remind myself I am here, I am safe, I'm okay. And starting from there, okay, what are the situations we're going to be in today? What challenges are we likely to face based on the fact that we've done many situations in the past. Right. It's a school day. We're going to be getting out the door. What's going to be hard there. What experiment have we decided to try. And I think this is this is really key to the way that you wanted to approach this conversation is we're not looking for the single strategy that's going to fix in heavy air quotes, this situation for everybody for all time. What we're looking at moving toward is, OK, I'm a person with this need and you're a person with this need. And I'm wondering if this strategy could meet both of our needs. Can we give that a try? And so when I'm lying in bed, I'm thinking, OK, we decided to give this a try. So I'm thinking when I walk down that hallway, I might notice my throat tightening. And if I do that, I'm going to divert into the bathroom. I'm going to pause, I'm going to put my hand back on my heart, which is going to remind me of this felt sense of safety that I'm experiencing right now, right? And then to reconnect with myself and say, okay, this is hard. This is, and this is something I learned from my therapist, right? This is not unsafe, but this is hard. And from there, okay, let me calm myself and enter that interaction with my kid from that perspective, right? So that's the connection with self-peace. And then with the connection with other peace, I think it's really about seeing what that kid's needs are, not just in that moment, right? Because I think it's very easy to, when we're working with a parent who's struggling with a kid's behaviors, well, they won't put on their shoes. That's the thing I have to fix, quotes again. And we know ourselves, right? We snap at our partner sometime and we're like, no, it's not about the thing you just did. It's about this morning and yesterday and last week. And we know we carry all this stuff through. But for our kids, we assume it's about the specific interaction. And very often it's not. So if the kid is resisting putting their shoes on because they want to connect with us, Are we getting enough connection at other points during the day so that they're not trying to wring connection out of every moment that they can at putting the shoes on time, at bedtime, right? These common separation points. And when we can approach it from that perspective, right, we're connecting with self, we're connecting with the other. And that's where this stuff is healed. Right. These ruptures occurred in relationship with others. And so they are ultimately healed by working on ourselves. Yes soothing ourselves. Yes. But also in relationship with others as we see we can get our needs met and the other person can get their needs met too which didn't happen for us when we were kids.

Jeffrey Besecker: I think that for me has become such a pivotal point to pause and such a pivotal tool to say, not what does this mean? We're so quick to rush to what does this mean? I've learned to put a new step in there now. West of what I can engage consciously, what is this pointing toward? has become the new, you know, I'll try to whenever I can bring that into my awareness and be conscious about it. When I'm not overloaded or more reactive, that happens. I am not a perfect person yet, and I never will be.

Jen Lumanlan: Working on it. Almost there.

Jeffrey Besecker: When an opportunity arises, rather than saying, I need to find out what it means, what might this be pointing toward? And not even what it might be pointing toward specifically for me, unless my agency is very much threatened, unless there is very much a potential for harm, whether that be relational harm, bodily harm, or whatever kind of harm. When I risk harming another in some way, when do I pause and say, what might this be pointing toward?

Jen Lumanlan: Yeah, I think that's really important. And I think the reason for that is what you're ultimately doing is getting out of this catastrophization that we see many parents doing, right? I have to fix this situation right now, both because I can't cope with it as it is. And also because if I don't fix the situation, my kid will never do well in school. They will never be able to go to a good college. They won't get a good job, right? They won't be able to have relationships with other people. And so this catastrophizing takes us out of the present moment means that we have way less capacity available to be able to deal with a child in their current situation and their current struggle. And we get caught up in this storytelling of you know what's going to happen 20 years into the future because I don't fix this thing right now. And I love the question or the reframing that you're doing there. And an additional way that I often find parents find helpful is the idea that, is there another explanation for what I'm seeing here? And a way that we can access that is to insert the words, right? To kind of think through, oh, this terrible thing is happening, and I'm a crappy parent, and my kid has to, you know, they're going to have a terrible life because I don't fix this. Okay. I'm thinking that this terrible thing is happening. I'm a crappy parent, that all these horrible outcomes are going to happen. And that phrase, I'm thinking that, opens up the possibility, right? Creates distance between us and our thoughts. It allows us to see, yeah, this is a thought in my mind, which is ultimately electrical signals in my brain, and not really reality. And that there may be another explanation for my kid is being annoying, or they will never learn, or whatever our explanation is. there is another explanation there that has to do with the child meeting their needs. And when we can decouple from that tightly held attribution of, it's my child's fault, I have to fix this, or horrible things will happen, and instead approach it with a sense of lightness and curiosity, then we move towards healing for ourselves and healing a relationship.

Jeffrey Besecker: I want to pause a moment and let that settle for me because, A, thank you for sharing such a brilliant insight. As I sit with that, it feels meaningful ultimately because it does offer choices and points toward our ability to hold agency, whether we're holding agency for ourself or offering agency to a child, another, or throughout our relationships. So thank you, thank you for sharing that with us.

Jen Lumanlan: Agency, I think, is really key, particularly in our Eurocentric culture. I'm not sure it's the case necessarily in all cultures, but in a Eurocentric culture, the ability to be able to affect the outcome of your own life is really a powerful thing.

Jeffrey Besecker: there again that moves us into another key relational or environmental systemic point to look at and hold with care you know when might our own assumptions or expectations overstep that in those moments when we do feel that challenge the child may detect that their autonomy is being performed while compliance is still required. They're basically falling in line because mom and dad said fall in line. We're starting to coerce. So how do clinicians track when a parent notices when they may be offering a choice that preserves the appearance of autonomy, as we talked about in a pre-call, while still requiring their predetermined outcome rather than offering children their chance for autonomy?

Jen Lumanlan: I always struggle with this idea of giving someone autonomy.

Jeffrey Besecker: It's even in our framing.

Jen Lumanlan: Let me acknowledge that if I have your consent to hold that.

Jeffrey Besecker: There's a cue. To me, that's signaling to me. I'm not giving it to them. How do we recognize when we're unconsciously slipping that way gradually becomes essential to me? How do we simply pause and allow space for another human to show up in the room or in the environment or in the container?

Jen Lumanlan: In their autonomy. Yes. Yeah.

Jeffrey Besecker: Yeah, exactly.

Jen Lumanlan: Yeah. I think it's, you know, even in the framing of your initial question, right, it's so hard to see because parental authority is just baked into our culture to such a huge extent. that even when we start to move out of that frame, we still talk about giving autonomy, which implies that we're the ones who do the giving and only when it's appropriate and only when it suits us, right? And so when, especially when our child has a high need for autonomy, right? which can show up in, for example, right, pathological demand avoidance in heavy air quotes, pervasive demand for autonomy, and also can show up in many other situations as well, right, because we're all people and in this culture, we want autonomy over our lives. Anytime that we are restricting that autonomy, the other person is likely to push back. And that resistance is a real cue, right? The resistance does not mean that automatically the child's autonomy is resisted. There could be other needs, it could be connection, it could be sensory issues, right? There could be other things at play, but autonomy is a big one. Once your kid gets to the age where they can say no. And so some things that we can look out for in the way that we are framing this, right? And I think the idea of giving choices has gotten a lot of traction in the parenting world in the last 10, 15 years or so, particularly in the gentle parenting world. And what that means is the parent is supposed to offer two choices that they have already decided is appropriate, right? Do you want to wear the blue socks or do you want to wear the red socks? I don't care which socks you wear. Those are your choices. And on the surface, it seems like, yeah, we're offering some agency here. But actually, what if the kid finds both pairs of socks incredibly uncomfortable? It's not meeting their sensory need. And they don't want either of those socks. They want the pink socks or no socks, right? When we give choices, air quotes, we are not actually offering, we're not providing a framework in which autonomy can exist. We are just constraining their choices and making it seem as though they have this artificial sense of autonomy. So that's sort of thing one. Thing two is when we have decided in advance what the outcome is going to be, and we are just trying to, you know, goose the thing along a little bit and make it seem as though the child has some choice. And as long as we end up where we have decided is the place we're going to end up. then that's a good thing, right? We're not truly open to any possible resolution to the struggle we're having that can meet my needs and that also meets your needs as well. So that's the second key to look out for. And then I sort of already alluded to the third one, which is just looking at that resistance as a signal that it can potentially indicate other needs to be met. But the resistance is a real, real sort of red flag for a need for autonomy not being met.

Jeffrey Besecker: Jen, I want to pause here a moment and hold something together. If I may present an idea to you. Yeah. And this is coming in from a frame. We kind of discussed this earlier in our pre-call. I'm setting it up here. Looking at how a child's experience or agency doesn't look the same at 2 versus age 4, age 7, or age 12. Now let me hold that with a caveat. So for instance, my two-year-old granddaughter might have a situation where she's walking around the room and about to put something in a receptacle or outlet versus the frame of my 12-year-old niece who is now making agentic, hopefully conscious choices about going out into the world, where she goes, who she relates with, how she holds her own responsibility. Am I directionally aligned with you on that and how those are key differences and core concern in how we model that?

Jen Lumanlan: Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, both of those can be demands for autonomy, demands for agency in our lives. And what I'm not saying is here, yeah, of course you should allow the two-year-old to stick whatever they want in. in the electrical outlet, right? We have a fundamental duty as parents to keep our kids safe and we can do that by setting up the environment. We can put the plastic cover things over the outlets and so that we don't have to then follow them around the house saying, don't touch that, don't touch that, don't touch that. And also, I think that the number of situations that we find ourselves in where safety is truly the issue at play is a lot smaller than we tend to think it is. So we might say, oh, I don't want my kid to jump on the couch because it's not safe, when actually we're having a hard time with the noise, or we're worried the couch is going to get broken, or there's a bunch of other potential explanations for why we don't want the kid to jump on the couch that really aren't anything to do with safety. We could put the cushions on the floor and if they fell they would probably be fine. It's not very high. So really sort of decoupling the sort of go to explanation of oh it's not safe to say OK is this actually a safety issue. If it is yes that is clearly my responsibility and I'm going to take over the decision making there. And the more that we can practice that decoupling and allow the child, and again, I'm slipping myself into allowing the child agency to provide an environment where the child has agency to show up in this environment. And I'm thinking of an example with my kid where we were staying at a house where there was a deck and she was using the different colored planks on the deck to mark how far she could jump. And she was setting up, or actually initially she was jumping towards some stairs, right? And I had a real safety concern. I didn't want to fall down the stairs. And so I said, I'm feeling worried that you might fall down the stairs. And she said, okay, I can jump this way then. And she started using rocks to mark where she was jumping. Well, now I'm feeling worried that you might hurt yourself and trip on the rocks. Okay, well then let me move the rocks over to the side. And so then my need for safety is met, right? And the key here is that I did not have a need for quiet, for mental space, for anything else that could have meant, okay, actually, maybe you doing this further away from me is the answer here. I had accurately identified my needs and was thus able to You sort of turn the frame back to her and say, this is what I'm worried about. Is there a way we can set this up so that I am not worried about your safety? And then she comes up with ideas, right? And we iterate on that. We make an experiment. We use the rocks. Oh, now I'm worried you might turn your ankle. We do another experiment. OK, yeah, I'm not feeling worried anymore. And you get to get your need for competence, for joy, for fun, for play in your jumping. And so the more that we do that, right, when we start at age two, and we get practice at doing this in so many situations, yes, experiments, not all of them, quote unquote, work, sometimes our needs don't get met, we come back, we revisit, we iterate. By the time your kid gets to the teen tween years, they have had a decade of practice in understanding, hey, my parent is a person with needs, and I'm a person with needs, and my parent, under the vast majority of circumstances, is going to try and understand what my needs are. and help me find ways to meet both of our needs. And when you get to a teen who has been raised in that way, they're not going to hide things from you. They're not going to sneak out. They're not going to, you know, you're not going to even end up grounding them. There's nothing to ground them for. It's just, hey, I'm feeling worried that you might not be safe for that party you're thinking about going to. How can we make sure that, you know, here are the things I'm worried about. How can we make sure they don't happen? Okay, well, yeah, I've got a plan to I'll be with this friend and I'm going to be home at this time. Does that work for you? And then right. And so this is what we have been doing our whole lives. And that, in my mind, is what helps us to raise kids who know their own needs. and who also know other people have needs and who treat other people's needs as just as important as their own. And we haven't even really gotten into the sort of social issues that are really important to me and ground my work. But when we raise kids who truly hold the idea that other people's needs are as important as their own, I think we do much broader healing than within ourselves and our own families. I think we start to really heal further out into the world. And that's why I do this work.

Jeffrey Besecker: That lands so relevant to me as I'm watching and comparing where I am at as a grandparent, watching kind of globally sometimes how my kids are handling things. I'm like, you're doing all right. And I don't know that I'm fully responsible for that. I can't claim that, but you're doing all right, you know, and I'm able to keep my hands off the reins. So how's that working for you, you know, and give me your information on this rather than being the parent that says, Oh, you should do this. You know, I would change this. There's been a time or two where I've slipped. We all, I think, again, we go back into those condition models, just like you and I going back into that allowing agency, because that was what we were somewhat instructed toward. Well, I'm allowing you to do this and you're going to say, I know from my perspective, sometimes was the context. So it's always curious for me now to go back as I get into study and digging through and rereading research on developmental phases and where kids actually are, where parents sometimes develop that expectancy bias or that confirmation bias and say, well, you should be doing this because who's serving here, you know? And I think that might be an interesting piece to maybe share as a supplement to this episode.

Jen Lumanlan: Yeah, I've actually done a podcast episode on, I don't know if you're familiar with the series of books, Your Black Sea Year Old Child, right? Your two-year-old, your three-year-old, your four-year-old child.

Jeffrey Besecker: Yeah, vaguely.

Jen Lumanlan: Yeah, and they're Bates Ames, I forget the first name, but Bates Ames is the last name. And it's grounded in Giselle's work at, I want to say, Yale. And they observed children very closely. They observed middle-class white children who were available at noon on Tuesday very closely. And they basically said, okay, these are the way the optimal ways that children develop. And it was fascinating to really dig into, you know, I read all of the original research papers that they published in the books. And to see their the decisions they made in that research, right, they're propping up a six month old in a chair and saying, if the six month old holds their posture in the chair, then this is an indicator of a certain status. Well, The decision to prop a six-month-old up in a chair affects the research outcome. And I think that that's something that is not often considered enough when we're evaluating how research shows up in this. I certainly learned in school, research is objective. And when I wrote a research report, the beaker was put on top of the tripod. The Bunsen burner was lit under the beaker. I have no role in this. It was a completely neutral process. And especially in social science research, but in all research, the researchers framing shows up in that and we just kind of forget that it's there. And so I think the caution that I have with looking to the developmental research is to make sure that we're considering In what cultural frame did that research happen? Because, you know, what white kids were doing in the 1960s in a laboratory setting that was nothing like their home environment may not actually be an amazing indicator of what the majority of kids can do. So that's kind of how I approach research through 300 episodes in the Your Parenting Mojo podcast.

Jeffrey Besecker: I agree. It tends to be in my natural learning model, my natural basic computational model throughout life is back to the tool I shared. What is this pointing toward? But that's usually not an end gap for me. And even in that regard to study and research, what might else be becomes the next step for me kind of automatically by default now, even when I'm comparing research. Well, is there an automatic conflict with this where I can go and say, what is the counter argument here? what else might there be?

Jen Lumanlan: Right, yeah. And then you're no longer tightly attached, right? And I think this idea comes, that I use from Buddhism, that when we get tightly attached to a single explanation, to a single outcome happening, when that doesn't happen, we find ourselves in a whole world of hurt. When my child has to perform in a certain way for me to have evidence that I'm a good parent. That is often when it comes out in parenting. And then my child doesn't do that or can't do that. They're not developmentally ready or they have ADHD and they're never going to be able to perform in the way that I want. If all of my competence as a parent is linked up with them performing in that way, then I'm not going to be able to get that need met. Whereas if I can decouple those things and say, yeah, my kid might be able to organize themselves and get themselves out the house in the morning, or they might not. And either way, I'm a competent parent. Those two things are not necessarily connected. Then when we hold it with that sense of looseness, of equanimity, of either way it will be okay, then we find we can approach parenting with a much lighter sense and truly seeing the child in front of us, not what the child should be able to do, not what I want them to be able to do, but what can this child sitting in front of me actually do? And how can I support them in doing that? That's a really different framing of how we approach situations with children.

Jeffrey Besecker: I'm holding that with some nuance and I'm going to pause here if I may. So I'm moving along. I've got a few frames here and I think we've answered pretty much where those went. Looking forward now, this is kind of a check in with you and me. How well do you think we've covered the gaps in the core direction we outlined early on and where we went finally?

Jen Lumanlan: I think pretty well. I was following through the Q&As that we developed, and as far as I see, we're pretty much at the end.

Jeffrey Besecker: So as we close today, are there any key tips or resources you want to leave parents with to be aware of when they're being flooded or triggered by their child's behavior?

Jen Lumanlan: Yeah, I think to sort of summarize where we've been, is the idea that we often come into these interactions, assuming that the child's behavior is the problem. And if the child would just change their behavior, then there wouldn't be a problem anymore. And then I wouldn't have to react in this way. And I wouldn't have to feel as uncomfortable as I do, and as scared and as overwhelmed as I do when I am triggered or flooded. And if we can see that, yeah, the child's behavior is touching something in us for sure, that it is a touch. It's not that the child's behavior is igniting this thing. And that what's actually happening is if we're flooded, you know, maybe there's something that's happened in the recent past that we are feeling overwhelmed by. We haven't eaten recently. We haven't moved our bodies a lot. haven't slept enough, those can absolutely reduce our kind of window of tolerance in the short term. And longer term, can we draw some sort of through line from the experiences that we've had in the past too? Why is this touching something so heavily in me, right? What meaning making can I do to create some sense out of the things that I've experienced? And at the same time, hold that with a sense of lightness. And so that we're not getting overly identified with, I had these experiences and therefore I cannot help reacting in the way that I do. And moving instead toward a sort of mindful presence in the relationship. And you asked specifically about tools. I actually have a Calm Parent Toolkit for clinicians and for parents, right? Parents can get those clinicians can actually get it for free. and you can download a set of resources that you can share with parents and so that they can actually look back at them in between sessions and be reminded of what mindful presence is and how to practice that, right, of reparenting, of how do I give myself the love and the care that I really needed when I was little and I didn't get so that I can show up for my kids in these difficult moments. So all these sort of concepts and ideas that you might be introducing clients to, even the difference between being triggered and flooded, so that they don't have to hold it in their head and you don't have to spend the whole hour in the session explaining it. So I think that having them be able to practice this in between sessions, right? Clinicians know that the vast majority of growth doesn't happen in the session itself. The session sparks something and then the client takes what they learn, takes that experience and builds on it and uses it in their life and iterates and finds what works and what doesn't, comes back to the next session and says, okay, where do we go from here? And so to make that, the time in between sessions so much more productive and useful so that they can do these little mini experiments of, okay, what do I think my needs are in this situation? And what are my kids' needs? And can I find a strategy here that meets both of our needs? And, oh, yeah, that didn't work. Still feeling resistance here in my body. That means I have a need that I haven't identified yet. What could that be? Now bringing that into the frame as well. So, yeah, so I think it's this sort of this fundamental reframing of understanding where the arousal comes from. It's not from our child and holding that with a new sense that allows us to approach our relationship with our child very differently than we had before.

Jeffrey Besecker: I want to thank you wholeheartedly for sharing that perspective and that knowledge with us. Before we close here today, speaking to your needs and also honoring this collaboration and community we've created throughout this relationship, where can our listeners go to reach out to you and connect with you as a parenting resource?

Jen Lumanlan: Yeah, so I have close to 300 podcast episodes at YourParentingMojo.com, often interviews with experts who are at the top of their fields and going into a lot of depth. in the conversations. And so, yeah, so all of those are available as a resource. And there is the Calm Parent Toolkit that I mentioned that's available at yourparentingmojo.com forward slash calmparent. And yeah, therapists can download it and print it and share it with clients, print out a whole set and give the whole set to their clients so that they can actually take this learning out of the session and continue it in between sessions as well. And then I run a program called Taming Your Triggers twice a year in spring and fall. And that sort of has two goals. Firstly, to be able to draw this through line that I've been talking about throughout the conversation today and do that meaning making work and also understand today in this interaction with my child, what needs do I have and what needs do they have and sort of doing that work in parallel so that you're not having to do weeks and weeks and weeks of digging into hard stuff before you get to tools. that you're learning the tools in parallel, that you're doing some of the healing. And I mean, a lot of therapists take the program, I have to say. A therapist I talked to about it, you can see that conversation on the information page says, my clinical practice tends to be about a decade ahead of my actual embodied practice with my child. And so if therapists are realizing that's the case for you, then you're certainly welcome in Taming Your Triggers, and also it may be a resource for your clients as well.

Jeffrey Besecker: I want to thank you for sharing that spirit of kindness and nurturing throughout our interactions and our support together. I truly have gained so much from this interaction, and I think that's so essential in how we guide, nurture, support, and care for the children throughout our lives. So thank you, thank you for sharing this conversation with us.

Jen Lumanlan: You're so welcome. It was a lot of fun and a real privilege. Thanks, Jeffrey.

Jeffrey Besecker: I'd love to do it again soon. I feel like there's so many different nuanced levels and directions we could go. And I truly value that depth of insight and exploration and research model that you've put behind your practice and your care. So namaste Jen, the light in me acknowledges the light in you. Thank you so much.

Jen Lumanlan: You're so welcome. Thanks, Jeffrey.

Jeffrey Besecker: As we close today, Jen and I shared how arousal is data, not proof. A parent's urgency, shame, tightening, or overwhelm may be touched by the child's behavior without making the child the full cause. The clinical hinge is attribution. When parents can ask, what is this pointing toward? They regain space to separate their own needs, history, and body state from the child's present signal. The work is not building better scripts, but deeper contact.

Clinicians can help parents preserve agency, test meaning, and move toward small lived experiments that support both parent and child. And finally, when we slow the moment down between activation and explanation, activation becomes less about blame and more about understanding behavior and context. 

Tip of the Day Use this cue card inside the client container to slow early closure, preserve consent, and track what a client's arousal may be pointing toward before moving into formulation. 

Question 1. As we touch this moment, what do you notice first in your body, your thoughts, or your impulse to act?

Question 2. Would it feel useful to slow this down together, or would stepping back help you stay more connected with the moment?

And finally, before we decide what this means, can we gently ask what this arousal may be pointing toward? One final insight we can take from this conversation. 

Arousal misattribution often begins when the body detects a familiar relational pattern. before the mind has fully sampled the present moment, which gives clinicians a meaningful place to pause, track the parent's earliest body cues, and ask what prior learning, unmet need, role pressure, or developmental prediction may be shaping the response, before the child becomes organized as the cue. If you found value and meaning in this episode, please share it with a friend or associate. And as always, we're grateful for you, our valued community of therapeutic professionals. 

This has been The Light Inside. I'm Jeffrey Besecker.