Each issue holds two things: a story and an idea. Drawn from our own lives, our work, and what we're noticing in the world. Always anonymous. Today from Dr. Chloe Massey. 

My oldest was starting to lose it over something small — I honestly don't remember what…the chicken was touching the ketchup? Or maybe his water bottle didn’t have enough ice? Either way, I heard myself narrating it in my head before I'd even gone over to help him.

Dysregulation. Transition. He's tired, he's eight, this is developmentally normal. 

 All true. All correct. And none of it was what he needed, because he wasn't a client’s kid. He was my kid who needed his mom.

That's my autopilot. When I'm overwhelmed, I reach for the framework. I start explaining him to myself instead of being with him — and the explaining is real, it's just standing between us. For a lot of parents, the autopilot I’m describing sounds different. It sounds like their own mother. Same tone, same words, thirty years later, in a different kitchen. Parents describe that moment to me all the time, and it's a strange feeling — not guilt exactly, more like catching your reflection in a window you didn't know was there. A different script. Same problem. Something else is doing the talking.

That night with my son, there was something else underneath it too. He actually got over it in about two minutes. The full body meltdown didn’t happen. Before bed I asked myself why I'd braced that hard for two minutes of dysregulation. The answer was that I wasn't bracing for that moment at all. I was bracing for the version from when he was five — the floor-collapse, twenty-minute, full-body fit that would derail the entire night. But here’s the thing…he isn't five. He's eight. He hasn't done that in over a year. What I geared up for that afternoon was mostly a memory.

Here’s what I know. Kids change faster than our picture of them does. My five-year-old isn't the toddler he was eighteen months ago (though I still reach for his hand like he might bolt into the parking lot). My one-year-old will be someone new by fall. The anxious one becomes capable. The one who needs you constantly starts needing you differently, and if you're not paying attention you keep offering what worked last year.

So, going back to that moment with my son, there were more people in that room than the two of us that day. Him, me, the expert I fall back on when I'm overwhelmed, and a five-year-old who doesn't exist anymore.

This is what awareness looks like. It's not a breakthrough. It's not staying calm. It's a smaller, more annoying (and challenging!) thing: noticing, usually a beat too late, that the person you're reacting to isn't the person in front of you.

Sometimes it's your parent's voice. Sometimes it's your professional one. Sometimes it's your kid from a year ago. Usually it's some mix of all of it, and none of them are actually in the room.

Here’s the thing. You won't catch it every time. You won't catch it most times and that’s ok. That's not the point. The point is that when you do catch it, you get to choose. Not a technique or a better script, but rather a pause, and the chance to do something other than what you always do.

Here are a few questions to leave you with:

Glad you’re here,

Dr. Chloe

(with Jill & Dr. Meghan)

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