When Your Kid Explodes, Stepping In Makes It Worse — He Can't Hear You in That State
A child's rage isn't an attack on you; it's a loss of control while the prefrontal cortex is still under construction — in that state he can't hear any reasoning. The adult rushing to soothe and explain is really managing his own discomfort; what helps is staying nearby and letting the child ride it out himself.
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Not every piece of parenting advice applies
Loryn's daughter dysregulated extremely easily; they read every book and saw psychologists and all kinds of experts. The turning point was advice from one expert — that was when they realized not all the advice they were handed applied to their child, that they had to respond to the child they actually had, trust their instincts, and tailor things to her. The specific situation was refusing to stay in her own bed at night, known professionally as Jack in the Box Syndrome, and it happened to coincide with a newborn brother crying all night, leaving both adults unable to sleep.
— Loryn BrantzPDA: asked to do something, the system shorts out
PDA is pathological demand avoidance. You tell your child to put on shoes, and it isn't just the power struggle every kid has — it's his nervous system shorting out. He may feel he can't do it, or be anxious about the thing itself. Kids don't explode for no reason: when they're little it's usually an unmet need (tired, hungry), and when they're older it's because they genuinely can't do it, and you have to meet them where they are. So they reshaped their lives around their daughter: she couldn't stand washing her hands, which was a sensory issue, so they switched to wet wipes. As a result she actually developed faster and more calmly.
— Loryn BrantzThe anger is actually coming from shame
Loryn says people don't realize how much kids want to succeed, how much they want to please their parents, and that the moment they feel they've failed they're flooded with shame — but they won't say the shame out loud, they just explode. Knowing this emotion comes from embarrassment and shame rather than hostility aimed at the parent changes how you handle it entirely. Janet adds another layer: a child's brain and body are developing at enormous speed, permanently in a state of imbalance, and self-regulation hasn't grown in yet, so they live inside their emotions and have never once stood outside them — something adults can do and they can't.
— Loryn BrantzDon't treat your child as an equal opponent
Loryn's reminder to parents is: your child is not on the same starting line as you, they're a sweet little spicy nugget, the prefrontal cortex isn't developed yet, they're still learning and growing. Janet calls this the key to understanding everything — if what you see in front of you is an angry adult, that may summon someone from your own life who was perhaps even abusive, and so your reaction can't possibly help the tiny person in front of you who is nothing like that. So train yourself to see this, and then to see each child's particular sensitivities.
— Janet LansburyShe uses meditation to watch her emotions from the side
Loryn has severe OCD and anxiety. What she needs isn't to bottle herself up like a soda bottle but real inner calm, because her daughter can tell whether she's genuinely calm. She read a stack of books, among them Michael Singer's The Untethered Soul, which she calls her best parenting book, teaching her to be an observer of her own thoughts and feelings rather than being swept away by them. In practice, that means meditating 10 minutes every morning after dropping the kids off, or using Gabby Bernstein's app for a guided meditation before bed.
— Loryn BrantzIntervening usually makes it worse
Writing the book made one thing clearer to her: adults stepping in tends to worsen the situation, and doing less is better. In the book the adult doesn't try to help the little spicy nugget calm down — she calms down on her own, because they always do calm down. That's when you debrief, and then try again next time. Janet puts it more bluntly: our urge to speak, to take action, is essentially our own discomfort and our wish for this to stop, and that's why it doesn't work.
— Loryn BrantzHumor has to beat the explosion to the punch
The tactic that works best at home is imaginative play and humor, provided you get there before the explosion. Heading out, she'd open the door and pretend an invisible animal had run out, shouting ‘Are you going to race the cheetah? The elephant's coming’, and the kids would bolt out the door; bedtime ran on the conga, and once the parents started dancing the kids couldn't help joining in. The phrase ‘spicy nugget’ itself came from this: when her daughter started to heat up, she'd say ‘Are you about to turn into a spicy nugget? I'm going to dunk you in cold milk to cool you down’, then pick her up and dip her gently up and down on the couch a few times, and they'd both laugh and the temperature would drop.
— Loryn BrantzThey don't even remember why they got angry
At the end of the book, the little girl says ‘Wait, what was I even mad about?’ — and Loryn thinks that's the key to the whole book: the child has no idea what happened or how they got there, they weren't in their own body at the time, and they weren't in the relationship with you either. So how do you blame them, how do you punish them? So don't burn your energy inside the storm, don't hurt yourself trying to help your child, because by the time they've long since moved on and gone off to play, you're too exhausted to keep them company. Questions and reasoning are useless — they can't hear you. Don't go surfing; sit on the beach, or be an anchor — I'm here, I'm not going anywhere.
— Loryn BrantzIn their own words · checked verbatim
I think people don't realize how badly our children want to be. They want to please us. And they feel so like ashamed when they think they're not. And they don't express that. They just, they just freak out.
Loryn Brantz6:07
your kid is not on equal footing with you. They are sweet little spicy nuggets with underdeveloped prefrontal cortexes that are still learning and growing.
Loryn Brantz7:12
then you're going to react in a way that's not going to help your child who isn't anything like that, who is a tiny person that's deserving of respect like other people, but very underdeveloped in certain ways
Janet Lansbury8:13
I'm pretty sure I can't control anything. And that includes my daughter's feelings. You know, I'm not there to control her feelings or change her, of course. I'm just there to make sure that she's safe and loved as she learns and grows.
Loryn Brantz11:25
intervention usually makes things worse. Doing less is more. So the grownup doesn't help, you know, the nugget calm down. She eventually calms down herself because they always do.
Loryn Brantz13:34
she took out her whiteboard and she drew like a graph. They do this at school. There's like happy, calm, sad, angry in the grid, and then put a big dot under sad. And we were like, oh, we know she doesn't want to hurt anybody. She just loses control.
Loryn Brantz19:45
Don't hurt yourself trying to help your kid. It's not going to help them. And then you're going to be so exhausted after that. You won't be able to play and have fun when they've totally moved on.
Loryn Brantz22:51
Don't ride the waves. Sit on the beach. Or I like being the anchor. So I'm underwater. I'm just here. I'm not going anywhere.
Loryn Brantz23:51
Figures
| Daily meditation time | 10 minutes in the morning | 12:30 |
Glossary
- spicy nugget
- Comparing a child mid-tantrum to a crispy-outside, tender-inside spicy nugget — a self-deprecating way to cool things down.
- PDA (pathological demand avoidance)
- When being asked to do something shorts out the nervous system, rather than being an ordinary parent-child power struggle.
- Jack in the Box Syndrome
- You put the child to bed and he pops up again and again all night like a jack-in-the-box.
- radical acceptance
- Fully accepting what you can't control, including your child's emotions and your own situation.
How to listen
Parents of toddlers and preschoolers who are emotionally intense and easily dysregulated — especially those who are anxious themselves and tend to lose their footing in the middle of a conflict.
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