The following article expands on highlights and insights from one of our Expert Series events, which are exclusive for Young Scholars and their parents.
Authored by: Eileen Devine, LCSW
Summary
Many parents find themselves in a familiar cycle – stepping in to prevent or reduce their child’s frustration, only to feel drained and disheartened when it happens again, over the smallest issues. For children with complex profiles, including PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance) and 2e (Twice-Exceptional), these moments can be especially intense. Traditional “tough love” approaches rarely work, yet doing everything for their child feels misaligned with a parent’s desire to help their child grow the ability to handle life’s frustrations.
In the Expert Series on this topic, we explored what it means to develop your child’s growing frustration tolerance through a Brain First lens – an approach that supports safety, connection, and understanding of how the brain learns best when under stress. Participants will leave this workshop with practical tools on how to reduce the daily power struggles and meltdowns, foster resilience, and strengthen their relationship with their child.
Whether your child struggles with big emotions, over-the-top reactions to minor challenges, or avoidance of seemingly small and insignificant tasks, this session will help you find the balance of stepping in and stepping back, so your child can gradually build resilience, manage frustration, and grow more confident over time.
Tips
- Think Brain First: when faced with a challenging, confusing, relentless or exhausting behavior from your child or teen, pause to ask yourself what their brain has to do with their response to the situation, expectation or demand at hand.
- Think Skill vs Will: The ability to manage frustration (or have strong frustration tolerance) is a cognitive skill involving both the brain and nervous system and is not about a person’s character. When met with this challenging behavior (low frustration tolerance) think “skill” to help you respond from a place of skill building vs punishment.
- Building your own resilience as a parent is an absolute necessity when parenting a child with low frustration tolerance so that you have the capacity to support their fragile nervous system which strengthens their self-regulation abilities.
Resources
Brain First Parenting Podcast with Eileen Devine
Your Lens Matters (free downloadable infographic): go.eileendevine.com/yourlensmatters
Free Resources for Parents of Neurodivergent kids and teens: go.eileendevine.com/freeresources
Speaker Bio:
Eileen Devine is a licensed clinical social worker and founder of Brain First Parenting and the Think Brain First Training Program for professionals. She has over 20 years of clinical experience and is an internationally known expert in supporting families who have kids with neurobehavioral conditions as well as providing clinical guidance and support to the professionals who work with them. In addition to her clinical work with parents, she facilitates dozens of workshops and trainings across the globe each year for parents, teachers, mental health professionals and agency leadership teams. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and two teenage children, one of whom lives with a serious brain-based condition.
Permission Statement
This article is provided as a service of the Davidson Institute for Talent Development, a 501(c)3 nonprofit dedicated to supporting profoundly gifted young people 18 and under. To learn more about the Davidson Institute’s programs, please visit www.DavidsonGifted.org.
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