Meltdowns! Factors to Consider and Ways To Help
It has to be the most common enquiry we get when people are asking about flower essences blends for their kids....
"What can I give them to help with the melt downs?"
And while of course we can advise some flower essence blends (hello Calm Kids Pack!) I thought it also might be helpful to look at the most common causative factors of melt downs and some tips to help.
We can all have meltdowns though can't we? I mean, it's not just kids that can lose their sh!t...us adults can get pushed there if we haven't been looking after ourselves or haven't had our healthy boundaries in place.
But we know what leads to our adult sized tantrums and hopefully most of us can course correct when they happen...but for kids, they are still learning to regulate their emotions and need our understanding and support to maybe lessen the frequency, duration and severity of these melt downs.
So I hope these 6 tips help you out as a parent as you navigate, not only your own emotions, but your child's emotions as well.
Meltdown Causes
1. Environment
If our environment at home or at daycare or school is tense, then we will be tense. Where we spend most of our time is what will determine our energy field. If we are around loud and raised voices or bullying or fighting of any type, our body will be in flight or fight mode whether we are aware of it or not. This raises cortisol and adrenalin and takes away our ability to self regulate as we are using our primal brain rather than our rational and reasoning brain.
For kids, the frontal lobe is still forming (that's the rational and reasoning part of the brain) so they spend even less time there than we do...and we want to allow this part of the brain to develop as much as we can by keeping a calm and low stress environment around them. Of course there are going to be times when they are triggered into fight or flight mode but we want this to be a healthy, short time there....so the brain and it's neural pathways know how to handle stress...but not LIVE and stay there.
Meltdowns will be a constant and current occurrence if the mind and body is under low grade constant stress.
TIPS: ideally identifying and removing any environmental stresses, kids meditation or kids yoga classes, getting them into nature (this is so good for de-stressing) reading to them in a safe and cosy environment, anything you can do to make them feel safe and calm.
2. Diet
We can be quite unaware of dietary triggers causing meltdowns until we really look into things! Quite often there are food intolerances and food sensitivities playing a huge role in our emotional health. The most common ones that can spark meltdowns (due to the gut-brain relationship) are preservatives, colours and any artificial additives found in the majority of our packaged and processed foods.
Food intolerances to look into first are gluten, dairy, sugar and salicylates. This can all be a bit of an overwhelming minefield so I strongly recommend getting some help to navigate and diagnose any food intolerances and sensitivities from a naturopath or natural health practitioner if you suspect this could be the case. It's also worth keeping a food diary and writing down what your child has eaten that day and rate their behaviour and note down any melt-downs. Patterns will emerge!
TIPS: Getting your kids on as much of a wholefood diet as possible. The less packets the better so more fruit, nuts, veggie sticks, dips etc. and encouraging them to try new foods when you can. Again, I know this is all hard and overwhelming but just do your best each day with this in mind and even make one healthy food swap every month for example. Here is my recipes section if you want to try out any new snacks or meal recipes - they are all family friendly. And if help is needed with getting your child to try more new foods, please check out my Fussy Eaters blend.
3. Gut Health
This one is huge and needs to be a whole blog series of it's own (in fact I have that HERE!) but it really is important to touch on gut health because if the gut is inflamed, the whole body and brain is inflamed and meltdowns will be a definite daily occurrence. The gut (our second brain) is even more important when it comes to mood than our actual brain because that is where we make our serotonin (our happy hormone) and if our microbiome is unbalanced then we will not be able to regulate our emotions properly. And if the gut is inflamed we won't be absorbing the nutrients from our food properly so we might be deficient in all the amino acids, vitamins and minerals that we need for optimal functioning.
TIPS: Getting your child on as much of a wholefood diet as possible and pinpoint any food sensitivities or intolerances so you don't keep adding to the inflammation. Supplements like glutamine (for gut lining repair if there is any suspected leaky gut or inflammation) a daily probiotic, kids fish oil liquid or capsules and maybe a children's multi vitamin and mineral will all be a great help to any child's gut health and will lessen melt downs! Please chat to a naturopath in consultation or a healthfood instore naturopath about the best options.
4. Sleep
Lack of the proper amount of sleep can cause anyone to not be as in control of their emotions as they would like to be...so making sure your child is getting the proper amount of sleep per day and night is essential. There's a good sleep guide for all ages that can be referenced HERE
TIPS: Having a nap and nightly bedtime schedule is so important and I've also got tonnes Sleep Tips for all aged kids in my Sleep Blog. And for flower essence support, to get a better bedtime compliance and better quality of slumber, you can't go past our Wind Down Pack!
5. Bottling Things Up
A really big factor of meltdowns, is bottling things up or not being able to express concerns or feelings safely. And for very young kids, the inability to communicate feelings and concerns yet...which must be very frustrating and of course meltdowns will be more often due to this! Keeping everything inside or the lack of time or space to be able to process and communicate what is going on in our minds leads to a suppression of energy or e-motions that will build up and up until they can't be contained any more and queue tantrum or meltdown!
TIPS: For kids that are old enough to communicate properly, set aside some time at the end of each day to create a feelings or sharing space with you. This can simply be 5-10 minutes of conversation time with you in a safe space (like their bedroom or fave part of the home) where you just check in and ask if anything happened in their day that they need to talk about. Try and use open ended questions so you don't just get 'yes' and 'no' answers. Ask how they are feeling, get them to rate their day between 1-10 and just try to check in on any concerns or questions they may have that are going unsaid. The power of checking in and creating time for our kids to process and chat is enormous. It's like letting pressure out of the valve daily so less tension can build.
For older tweens or teens that don't want to communicate directly with you, encourage them to journal at the end of each day and let them know that you are always there to talk to when they need to. You can even start a communication book where you pass it back and forth and write to each other in it. This is great for kids who get embarrassed or still learning to communicate face to face comfortably.
6. Overstimulated and Overscheduled
And some kids are just so overstimulated from their day at school or daycare that they need to release the energy they have absorbed all day from everyone around them...and that might be in the form of a meltdown when they get somewhere safe and quiet again. They are simply just letting the energies (or e-motions) out that they have collected in their energy field during the day. This can also happen when a child has too much on their plate. Whether that be a party after school or too many extra curricular activities scheduled during the week and they haven't had enough space or downtime to process everything they have felt.
TIPS: Your child might be an introvert or empath (or both!) so determining that will help you manage their schedule to be more in line with what they can handle and what can be tolerated before the tipping point! For more info on this type of person and ways to protect their energy, please have a read of my blog All About Empaths
And if I could send every household in Australia our Calm Kids Pack I would!
It's the best emotional support tool to always have on hand to help both parents and kids do life and cope with and without the meltdowns! Our 4 blends that make up this pack are Tantrum Tamer, Sweet Dreams, Slow Down and Help and so no matter what is going on, there is a blend to help and you can read more about this pack here.
And remember the meltdown is never about what has happened in the moments beforehand...it's about many, many things that have built up in the energy system and that last thing was just what tipped it all out....so just be there for cuddles when they are ready and allow them to safely let out all that stored up emotion as that energy needs to go somewhere.
Letting them know it's ok and that they are completely seen and understood will help them so much. You've got this!
Yours in Health,
Alisha x
Meltdowns! Factors to Consider and Ways To Help
It has to be the most common enquiry we get when people are asking about flower essences blends for their kids....
"What can I give them to help with the melt downs?"
And while of course we can advise some flower essence blends (hello Calm Kids Pack!) I thought it also might be helpful to look at the most common causative factors of melt downs and some tips to help.
We can all have meltdowns though can't we? I mean, it's not just kids that can lose their sh!t...us adults can get pushed there if we haven't been looking after ourselves or haven't had our healthy boundaries in place.
But we know what leads to our adult sized tantrums and hopefully most of us can course correct when they happen...but for kids, they are still learning to regulate their emotions and need our understanding and support to maybe lessen the frequency, duration and severity of these melt downs.
So I hope these 6 tips help you out as a parent as you navigate, not only your own emotions, but your child's emotions as well.
Meltdown Causes
1. Environment
If our environment at home or at daycare or school is tense, then we will be tense. Where we spend most of our time is what will determine our energy field. If we are around loud and raised voices or bullying or fighting of any type, our body will be in flight or fight mode whether we are aware of it or not. This raises cortisol and adrenalin and takes away our ability to self regulate as we are using our primal brain rather than our rational and reasoning brain.
For kids, the frontal lobe is still forming (that's the rational and reasoning part of the brain) so they spend even less time there than we do...and we want to allow this part of the brain to develop as much as we can by keeping a calm and low stress environment around them. Of course there are going to be times when they are triggered into fight or flight mode but we want this to be a healthy, short time there....so the brain and it's neural pathways know how to handle stress...but not LIVE and stay there.
Meltdowns will be a constant and current occurrence if the mind and body is under low grade constant stress.
TIPS: ideally identifying and removing any environmental stresses, kids meditation or kids yoga classes, getting them into nature (this is so good for de-stressing) reading to them in a safe and cosy environment, anything you can do to make them feel safe and calm.
2. Diet
We can be quite unaware of dietary triggers causing meltdowns until we really look into things! Quite often there are food intolerances and food sensitivities playing a huge role in our emotional health. The most common ones that can spark meltdowns (due to the gut-brain relationship) are preservatives, colours and any artificial additives found in the majority of our packaged and processed foods.
Food intolerances to look into first are gluten, dairy, sugar and salicylates. This can all be a bit of an overwhelming minefield so I strongly recommend getting some help to navigate and diagnose any food intolerances and sensitivities from a naturopath or natural health practitioner if you suspect this could be the case. It's also worth keeping a food diary and writing down what your child has eaten that day and rate their behaviour and note down any melt-downs. Patterns will emerge!
TIPS: Getting your kids on as much of a wholefood diet as possible. The less packets the better so more fruit, nuts, veggie sticks, dips etc. and encouraging them to try new foods when you can. Again, I know this is all hard and overwhelming but just do your best each day with this in mind and even make one healthy food swap every month for example. Here is my recipes section if you want to try out any new snacks or meal recipes - they are all family friendly. And if help is needed with getting your child to try more new foods, please check out my Fussy Eaters blend.
3. Gut Health
This one is huge and needs to be a whole blog series of it's own (in fact I have that HERE!) but it really is important to touch on gut health because if the gut is inflamed, the whole body and brain is inflamed and meltdowns will be a definite daily occurrence. The gut (our second brain) is even more important when it comes to mood than our actual brain because that is where we make our serotonin (our happy hormone) and if our microbiome is unbalanced then we will not be able to regulate our emotions properly. And if the gut is inflamed we won't be absorbing the nutrients from our food properly so we might be deficient in all the amino acids, vitamins and minerals that we need for optimal functioning.
TIPS: Getting your child on as much of a wholefood diet as possible and pinpoint any food sensitivities or intolerances so you don't keep adding to the inflammation. Supplements like glutamine (for gut lining repair if there is any suspected leaky gut or inflammation) a daily probiotic, kids fish oil liquid or capsules and maybe a children's multi vitamin and mineral will all be a great help to any child's gut health and will lessen melt downs! Please chat to a naturopath in consultation or a healthfood instore naturopath about the best options.
4. Sleep
Lack of the proper amount of sleep can cause anyone to not be as in control of their emotions as they would like to be...so making sure your child is getting the proper amount of sleep per day and night is essential. There's a good sleep guide for all ages that can be referenced HERE
TIPS: Having a nap and nightly bedtime schedule is so important and I've also got tonnes Sleep Tips for all aged kids in my Sleep Blog. And for flower essence support, to get a better bedtime compliance and better quality of slumber, you can't go past our Wind Down Pack!
5. Bottling Things Up
A really big factor of meltdowns, is bottling things up or not being able to express concerns or feelings safely. And for very young kids, the inability to communicate feelings and concerns yet...which must be very frustrating and of course meltdowns will be more often due to this! Keeping everything inside or the lack of time or space to be able to process and communicate what is going on in our minds leads to a suppression of energy or e-motions that will build up and up until they can't be contained any more and queue tantrum or meltdown!
TIPS: For kids that are old enough to communicate properly, set aside some time at the end of each day to create a feelings or sharing space with you. This can simply be 5-10 minutes of conversation time with you in a safe space (like their bedroom or fave part of the home) where you just check in and ask if anything happened in their day that they need to talk about. Try and use open ended questions so you don't just get 'yes' and 'no' answers. Ask how they are feeling, get them to rate their day between 1-10 and just try to check in on any concerns or questions they may have that are going unsaid. The power of checking in and creating time for our kids to process and chat is enormous. It's like letting pressure out of the valve daily so less tension can build.
For older tweens or teens that don't want to communicate directly with you, encourage them to journal at the end of each day and let them know that you are always there to talk to when they need to. You can even start a communication book where you pass it back and forth and write to each other in it. This is great for kids who get embarrassed or still learning to communicate face to face comfortably.
6. Overstimulated and Overscheduled
And some kids are just so overstimulated from their day at school or daycare that they need to release the energy they have absorbed all day from everyone around them...and that might be in the form of a meltdown when they get somewhere safe and quiet again. They are simply just letting the energies (or e-motions) out that they have collected in their energy field during the day. This can also happen when a child has too much on their plate. Whether that be a party after school or too many extra curricular activities scheduled during the week and they haven't had enough space or downtime to process everything they have felt.
TIPS: Your child might be an introvert or empath (or both!) so determining that will help you manage their schedule to be more in line with what they can handle and what can be tolerated before the tipping point! For more info on this type of person and ways to protect their energy, please have a read of my blog All About Empaths
And if I could send every household in Australia our Calm Kids Pack I would!
It's the best emotional support tool to always have on hand to help both parents and kids do life and cope with and without the meltdowns! Our 4 blends that make up this pack are Tantrum Tamer, Sweet Dreams, Slow Down and Help and so no matter what is going on, there is a blend to help and you can read more about this pack here.
And remember the meltdown is never about what has happened in the moments beforehand...it's about many, many things that have built up in the energy system and that last thing was just what tipped it all out....so just be there for cuddles when they are ready and allow them to safely let out all that stored up emotion as that energy needs to go somewhere.
Letting them know it's ok and that they are completely seen and understood will help them so much. You've got this!
Yours in Health,
Alisha x
