Gryffin's Meltdown: CD in Three Minutes

Last night I got the opportunity to try my CD skills on my two year old son, Gryffin. Notice I said "opportunity." (I'm trying to keep a positive frame of mind). Anyway, Gryffin wanted to join me in my bed for "night-night." This is a tradition that Justin and I do with Gryffin every evening; we bring him into our bedroom and read to him, play games with him, and do some "I Love You Rituals" with him. Basically, its a time for the three of us to come together as a family without the distraction of television, computers, or household chores. Afterwards, we let him watch his television show "Go, Diego, Go!" and then its time for bed.

Last evening we had our traditional night-night, and Gryffin went to watch his television show. Usually he loves to watch Diego, and will calmly sit in the recliner until the show ends. However, last night he decided that he wanted to go back into our bedroom for more night-night.

Now, Justin was working on the computer and I was finishing some evening chores. Additional night-night time just wasn't an option. I told Gryffin no, and he began to scream. Enter melt-down stage.

My initial reaction was to immediately threaten Gryffin with a spanking or time-out, our typical discipline pattern. However, I remembered my vow to try and use Conscious Discipline, and so I took a deep breath and picked up my son.

By this time, Gryffin was obviously deep in his brain stem. He was screaming at the top of his lungs, his arms and legs flailing about in anger. I knew my first job would be to make eye contact with Gryffin so that I could bring him up from his brain stem to his limbic system (for those of you unfamiliar with this terminology, see earlier post entitled "Conscious Discipline Basics"). I picked him up and held him against my chest, facing me. I then began to calmly repeat "Your face is going like this. Your eyes are going like this. Your mouth is going like this." I said this over and over, for approximately one minute. When he still didn't make eye contact with me, I actually said, "Your voice is going like this: AAaaggghhh!" My semi-scream startled him enough to make him look at me. Bingo: I had eye contact. Time for phase two.

Although Gryffin continued to cry and squirm, he was now looking at me and I could tell he was listening. He had upshifted from his brain stem and was now in his limbic system. Since the limbic system is a highly emotional state, I needed to connect with him by recognizing and labeling his emotions. Once again, using my calm voice, I began to tell him "You wanted to go night-night and you couldn't. It's sad when we don't get to do the things we want. I understand how you feel, but it's going to be okay." I kept repeating this until, after another minute or so, Gryffin stopped crying. Eureka! Enter phase three.

Now that Gryffin had calmed down, I was able to offer him two choices. Offering choices moves a child from their limbic system into their prefrontal lobes....the ideal place to be. So I told Gryffin his choices: he could return to the living room to finish watching his show or he could go to bed (he knows this means his own room for sleep). I had to repeat the choices several times, but eventually he chose to go into the living room, sit in the recliner, and finish watching Diego.

I know it took a long time to tell this story, but it honestly only took about three minutes. Three minutes to bring a screaming, full-tantrum two-year old child into a state of calm compliance. I don't know about you, but I've spent more than three minutes listening to him scream while he's in time-out!

I hope you don't get the impression that I was a paragon of calm rationality throughout the situation, because that wasn't the case at all. In fact, the entire time I was trying to calm Gryffin, I was asking myself "Now what do I do? What's next?" This is where my little mnemonic memory device NERO really helped. Notice body movement ("your hands are going like this), Eye contact ("there you are!"), Recognize emotions ("it's sad when you don't get to do what you wanted"), and Offer choices ("you may sit in the chair or go to bed"). That helped me remember what I needed to do, so maybe that's something that might help you as well.


Wishing you well,

:)