 Summer is around the corner - two of my kids are done with school for the year, and the other two will be done in just a few days. Maybe you’re on top of everything and have each day planned down to the minute, or maybe you’ve got your head in the sand hoping that the school will keep your kids for another month or two! Wherever you find yourself, there’s no better time than right now to think about how you want your summer to feel and what you want it to look like.
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 I’m sure we can all picture a time when something happened that caused our bodies to go straight into Fight or Flight. Maybe it was seeing a snake slither across the hiking path right in front of you, another car cutting you off in traffic, or a sound in your house at night that puts you on high alert. I would also venture to guess that you can recall a time (or two!) when your child went into Fight or Flight, as well. Maybe screen time ended and your child hit you when you put the iPad away; or maybe he was playing outside, saw a bee and ran straight inside and slammed the door. Different situations can cause different responses in us as parents and in our children.
Intermittent reinforcement is some powerful stuff! It makes our brain release a hit of dopamine (a "feel good" chemical messenger) when we get what we want, and even in anticipation that we might get what we want!
So what is intermittent reinforcement?  Have you ever found yourself in a season of increased conflict with your child or teenager? Are there times when it just feels like your butting heads about lots of seemingly small things, or maybe butting heads repeatedly over the same old issue that keeps coming up?
I certainly have been there! A variety of reasons can contribute to finding ourselves in these cycles of increased conflict with our child/teen including their growing desire for independence. Sometimes it just really feels like the young person is “looking for a fight” or “trying to be difficult.” When we start to see the situation through the lens that our child is being “defiant” or “manipulative” we feel the need to act! Often, at this point, parents tend to increase their control over the situations and the child. It makes sense! We are trying to restore order, instill a respect for authority and sometimes maybe make it clear who’s the boss. Maybe you’re struggling with a child that refuses to come and eat dinner at dinner time, or a child that “stirs the pot” by creating some drama when she’s bored. Maybe it’s a teenager that is missing curfew or not getting done the agreed upon chores. Increasing our attempts to “control” our child or teenager is a losing game. We can’t really make that independently minded young person do anything. So what’s a parent to do? Time to move into coaching, not controlling. Put on your “coaches hat” and let’s get started! You’re not alone. Every parent has moments that we look back on and wonder why we lost our cool like that. Maybe it's an afternoon where you’re feeling extra irritable or “ triggered” by your kids' normal behaviors. Maybe it's a single episode of exploding at your kid when they make a mistake and then regretting it. Sometimes we find ourselves in a longer season of coming across as the “mad mom” or “explosive dad”.
I personally have an ongoing frustration with my oldest child who is now technically an adult, as he just celebrated his 18th birthday. For as long as he has been going to school, he has struggled with being ready to leave on time. I know he's capable of getting up and leaving on time because this fall when his football coach made it clear that arriving on time for school was a requirement for being eligible to play in the Friday night game, he did whatever it took to hot-foot it out of the house in time. But now, the football season is done and that external motivator isn't there. We are back to frustrating mornings of poor time management. I've tried many approaches to help him succeed. The most recent approach has been letting him choose to be late for school and explain it to the teachers himself. The end result was that he was late for school everyday for a week! I'm not seeing him learning from his mistakes quite yet 🫤 Today he was late again, and I became a “mad mom.” Can you think of your last angry parent moment? What led up to it? Usually it's a combination of factors. Something in our kids' behaviors, what they do or don't do, what they say or don't say, gets under our skin. But how resilient we are to these frustrations and our ability, in the moment, to pause and think of the response we want to have rather than reacting on our first impulse has a lot to do with how well our own basic needs are being met. When we have unmet needs we are going to feel more irritable, frustrated, impatient and inflexible, just like our kids feel when they have unmet needs. So the next time you find yourself feeling like the “mad mom” or “explosive dad”, consider these possible unmet needs and how you can meet them to help you stay more balanced and regulated. |
AuthorDana Parisi Archives
February 2026
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