Hi everyone.
Thanks so much for tuning in and joining me as we talk today about how to support the caregivers we work with to become external regulators. That’s what we’re going to be discussing on today’s podcast. This is such a big topic because we find ourselves as play therapists, working with parents and caregivers.
And this is often one of the fundamental questions that we are having to really sit with and think about how do we support them in becoming external regulators for their child, particularly if they really struggle in even being able to do so. So let’s define external regulator. What is it? I really like to think of external regulator as an individual who in the moment has the capacity to expand their own internal window of tolerance or their own internal capacity large enough to be able to support the dysregulation of another individual.
So in Synergetic Play Therapy, the metaphor that I often use or talk about is that of an attuned caregiver rocking an infant. And that’s really the essence of becoming an external regulator where when an individual is Dysregulated, they are able to come to another individual who, in that moment has the capacity to connect within themselves and ground within themselves in the midst of the Dysregulation so that they can regulate, modulate, help integrate the Dysregulated state of the individual that is seeking them out. I really love this idea that we borrow each other’s nervous systems in times of stress.
And I often find myself saying when a child is Dysregulated and they’re acting out or they’re screaming or they’re shutting down, what they’re really saying in those moments is they’re screaming out, saying who has a nervous system that I can borrow? And the essence of that is they’re looking for an external regulator. They’re looking for someone that they can tap into their regulatory capacity as they work to integrate or stay steady in the midst of their own activation. The catch with everything that I just said, everyone though, is that when we’re born, we’re not able to do this well.
So becoming an external regulator is something that takes practice and it’s something where we need another individual to help us get the template, if you will, in order for us to be able to turn around and offer it to someone else. That doesn’t mean that when we’re born that there isn’t an attempt at regulation. Of course there is.
We know that the infants regulate but the ability to be able to self regulate and the ability to really connect in first requires another. It requires someone to co regulate with us. It requires an external regulator to help us organize what’s going on inside and ultimately to give us an imprint or a template of what that feels like to be able to connect in the midst of activation.
It’s also in these moments of connection or in these moments of borrowing someone else’s regulatory capacity that the neural wiring also has the ability to shift deep within us and we are able to have a new experience embedded within our own physiology for possibility. So that’s a big concept and it’s something that we work towards cultivating in the playroom with our clients. But then back to the question how do we support the parents and caregivers when this very thing that I’m talking about right now, maybe they don’t have a template for it, maybe they don’t know how to do it well.
Maybe their own internal disorganization actually activates the child’s disorganization and dysregulation even more. The place that I want you to begin to start or to consider in this conversation is this piece that I’m talking about which is that we need a template. How that translates when we are working with parents and caregivers is this oftentimes we ask parents and caregivers to do things that they have no template for.
So for example, we might ask them to practice talking about and describing their emotions over the week. Well, if there’s no template for that or they’re not sure what that looks like or sounds like or feels like, that’s going to be really hard for that parent or caregiver to pull that off, we might say, okay, so we would really love for you to have some real attuned connected time with your child. So again, we know what that means as clinicians.
But a parent and caregiver, unless they have a template for it, we’re really setting them up to not be able to follow through and to not be able to be able to do the thing that we would love for them to do. So I want you to lead with this question how do I provide the parent or the caregiver the template? What do I need to do so that they have a felt sense of what I’m asking them to do with their child? What does that look like? What does that feel like in the play therapy experience? That could look like modeling. It’s one of the reasons why I think it’s so important that if it’s possible to meet with parents regularly to really involve them in the process, partly because we want them to have information about what’s going on with their child, but partly because we’re offering them new templates.
So as we speak with them, as we engage with them, their body is registering. What does it feel like to be in relationship with us? I like to keep the mantra in my mind treat the parent and caregiver how I would love the parent or caregiver to treat their child. What’s the template? How do I offer them a breath when they need a breath? How do I offer them a moment of reflection? If they need a moment of reflection, how do I offer them a sense of empathy if they’re not able to cultivate a sense of empathy for themselves or for their child? Modeling is huge.
Maybe there’s also a place for role playing. So maybe we role play what it’s like to rock a baby. Maybe we role play different ways of how they can respond with their child when their child is distressed and therefore symbolically, the baby is crying.
Maybe we practice it. Maybe we have discussion about it and then find a way to embody it in some way. Maybe I’m working with them on their own internal attunement, so helping them connect with their own body.
Maybe that’s where I need to start with them, where I’m spending a lot of my time supporting them in their own inner reflection, their own inner noticing about the activation inside of them, what helps their activation, what supports their ability to stay connected to themselves. This could be a completely foreign landscape for a lot of the parents and caregivers that you work with. I think it’s also really helpful to just provide some education about the nervous system.
I do believe that everyone has a right to know about their own nervous system. We all have one. It gets activated, it’s supposed to get activated.
But so many people carry so much guilt and shame simply because they don’t know what’s normal and what’s not normal. So I spent a lot of time educating parents and caregivers on that. Again, to help them become more aware of what’s going on inside.
I’m going to stress this again. A parent or caregiver cannot offer something to their child if they don’t have the template for it. Sometimes when we’re working with them, we jump right to how do we help them with their child.
But for parents where what I’m talking about is really hard, we actually have to start with what do we need to do to help them get to know themselves? How do we help them develop their own awareness of their own inner world? How do we provide them templates? How do we role model, how do we role play? How do we help them get a sense of what emotions they are experiencing inside? I’m just giving a bunch of different ideas here. More than anything, I want you just to be getting the overall gist of what I’m sharing for consideration. One of the handouts that I offer is a handout explaining and describing the nervous system.
Many of you might be really familiar with it. It’s probably my most widely distributed handout. There is a page two of this particular handout and on this handout it is just a list of activities that support regulation.
It’s actually some of the most common ways that children regulate. I’m offering this up to you as a resource because in a minute I’m going to share with you how you can use this for what we’re talking about. If you go to Synergeticplaytherapy.com,
you’ll see that there is a free resources tab and in the free resources you’ll see another tab called Handouts and Ebooks. This is one of the handouts that is in there along with so many other free resources for you. So just in general, I encourage you to take advantage of that and get all the different free resources.
But this sheet is quite helpful in developing some strategies for the parent or caregiver and then also for the parent and caregiver to do with their child, particularly if the ability to become an external regulator is really challenging. So there are things on this handout like singing a song, eating something crunchy, doing yoga, running fast in place, doing jumping jacks, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, a bunch of different ideas. A great place to start is to have that list or a similar list and to provide it to the parent to get curious about what do they naturally do to help them regulate.
Just again, another beautiful way of creating some personal reflection inquiry. I also have them really look at and consider what is it that their child naturally does to be able to regulate. There’s also things, by the way, on there like jumping on the bed or hanging upside down off of furniture.
And I often find that parents and caregivers have AHA, like gosh, I didn’t even know that that was actually a regulatory activity. I thought that was just my child being annoying or something like that. And we know that that’s a regulation activity.
In fact, all behaviors are designed to support our regulation. As I get curious about the natural ways that the parent and the child regulate, it opens up the possibility for me to find something that they already naturally do that they have in common. Sometimes as play therapists, we get all caught up in thinking we have to discover something new or find that perfect intervention and we forget that maybe what we need to do is just highlight what’s already there, what’s already happening.
And in the context of being an external regulator, if we’re taking something that the child is doing to support their own regulation and it happens to be similar or match something that the parent naturally does, then what we can do is we can ask them to do that activity together and that automatically supports that parent being able to have a higher probability of being an external regulator because we’re already pointing them towards something that feels meaningful for their own system. A couple other things regarding parents becoming external regulators. As you are thinking about teaching or helping the parent learn how to regulate and become more curious about what’s going on inside of them, I don’t want you also to leave off the importance of helping parents figure out what they love to do.
Because when a parent or caregiver does what they love or whenever, I’m just going to say this to all of us. When we are doing what we love, we actually increase our capacity to be an external regulator in that experience. It’s where we have the most order and organization in our physiology.
It’s where we have access to our prefrontal cortex the most. So the combination of providing templates, giving them an experience of what you would like them to do, syncing them up around things that they love to do, and then helping them get curious about how do they already regulate? Those four things can help point your direction towards what do we do when a parent does not know how to become an external regulator? Very well. What happens when they really are struggling in this department? The last thing that I will say is that sometimes the parent or caregiver’s early traumas or the challenges that they are experiencing are so great that there’s so much disorganization in the system that it’s too much for you.
As the child’s therapist, it might be too much. And if that’s the case or the parent is not willing, does not want to, has no interest in learning about themselves in this way or developing this skill in this way, then there’s a time and a place to be able to say okay, got it. And to really just primarily focus on supporting the child so at least the child is getting the experience of being regulated by you so that you’re at least providing the child with the template.
There are amazing resources out there as well. There are books, there are different ideas, different programs. You might also, if you recognize this is too much for me, you might also consider finding other resources or asking the parent to do their own work, just focusing on this piece so that they can increase the ability to show up and become an external regulator.
So hopefully something in this conversation was useful to you. More than anything, I want you just to keep in mind this idea that we so often set parents up to fail inadvertently because we expect them to do something that they don’t know how to do or they have no template for. So more than anything, if we want to help them become external regulators, how do we become their external regulators? How do we embody that for ourselves? So they have a felt sense of what it feels like to be regulated, to be connected with to be seen? What does it feel like in their own system to have someone, through their presence, be able to organize that felt sense of chaos that they’re carrying inside of everything that I have just said in this podcast? That’s the most important part of all of it.
Okay, everyone, let’s take a breath together. Thank you so much for tuning in. Appreciate you out in the world doing what you are doing.
Until next time, take care of yourselves. You’re the most important toy in that playroom. For more information on our courses and our classes, please go to our website at synergy playtherapy.com
and check out what we have available to you. And as always, remember that you’re the most important toy in that playroom.
