Regulate Relate Reason for Caregivers

The Power of Regulate, Relate, Reason

When your child is dys-regulated it can be tempting to try and get them to calm down, solve the problem for them, or rush to discipline. Your child’s dys-regulation can also be really dys-regulating to your nervous system, thanks to mirror neurons. Dr. Bruce Perry (Perry, B., Winfrey, O., 2021, What Happened To You?) introduced the concept of the 3 R’s - regulate, relate, reason, to give us an easy way to engage our child’s (and all people’s!) brains from the bottom-up.

To help understand why regulate, relate, reason works, we can use the triune brain model to focus on three main structures of the brain. The brainstem and midbrain are responsible for safety, regulation, sensory input, and survival. The limbic system oversees emotions and relational connections. And the cortex houses logic, reasoning, learning, and problem-solving.

One of the frustrations that I hear most from caregivers is some version of, my child was having a meltdown over a minor problem that was totally solvable! I tried to reason with them and offer solutions and they got more upset! Let’s break this down:

• For kids, many things are a brand new experience for them and their brains are still developing in major ways, particularly their cortex, which is where things like logic, reasoning, problem solving, long-term planning, and judgment reside. We also have to take into consideration the emotional and nervous system landscape of each individual. Factors like neurodivergence, sensory differences, and trauma history can have profound influences on how someone experiences the world around them.
• When someone is dys-regulated, the lower regions of their brain (safety-seeking, fight, flight) become more active and the higher regions of their brain (thinking, connecting) become less active. This means that our ability to take in information, connect with others, learn, solve problems, and process language becomes more difficult. 
• Caregivers spend a significant amount of time operating from their cortex - which makes sense because they have a fully developed brain! Adults can often be more comfortable working to ‘fix’ a child’s problem, rather than helping a child regulate through and be with a difficult feeling. Children do not have a fully developed cortex and spend a lot of time in lower regions of their brain. When caregivers jump straight to problem-solving for their children, we can inadvertently dys-regulate them more because we did not spend the necessary time to meet them where they are at in their brain, and did not give them an opportunity to feel seen and understood. We also can rob them of the chance to learn to tolerate difficult emotions and build templates in their brain for returning to regulation. Often, when we spend time regulating and relating with children, we will find that they can do the reason step all on their own. Kids are brilliantly creative and don’t always need a solution from us - sometimes they just need us to regulate and relate with them so they can access their cortex and come up with their own solutions!

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Regulate

When our child becomes dys-regulated, we start at the bottom of the brain in the brainstem and midbrain to facilitate regulation. But what does regulation really mean? “From a Synergectic Play Therapy perspective, regulated means I’m mindful and aware of myself. In a moment of regulation, I can think clearly, I can make a conscious choice, I’m able to notice my breath, I’m able to feel grounded, I can speak clearly, and I have an experience of being in my body. I’m connected to myself (Dion, L., 2018, Aggression in Play Therapy, p. 48).” Regulated doesn’t necessarily mean calm. In a regulated state, one can experience a wide array of emotions. 

The first step in ‘regulation’ is to regulate yourself. If it feels comfortable to you, narrate the following steps out loud for your child - this normalizes feeling dys-regulated and models how to regulate. The following three steps can be helpful to bring ourselves back to regulation:

1. Become mindfully aware by noticing and naming your experience.
2. Connect with your breath - you can slow it down or deepen it if that feels good.
3. Release the tension by adding movement, getting something to eat or drink, or making a change in the environment like lowering the lights or turning the volume down (or any combination of these!).

Next, offer co-regulation to your child through physical proximity that communicates safety by: 

• Staying congruent - keep noticing your experience and regulating through it - you do not have to feel calm.
• Staying in close proximity. Some kids don’t want you to be too close, or will even tell you that they want to be alone. In that case, get as close as they will let you (that may mean sitting on the other side of their closed door) and communicate that you will be there as long as they need.
• Getting below the eye level of the child if possible.
• Using as few words as possible - this is not the time to offer explanations, teach a lesson, or give a consequence - only set a limit if needed.
• If they are regulated enough to take in information, you can make an offer, but remember they don’t have to take it! Be willing to do whatever you are offering with your child. Some suggestions from Robyn Gobel (Gobel, R., 2023, Raising Kids with Big, Baffling Behaviors) include:

1. a crunchy snack (chewy, crunchy, sour, sucking)
2. a drink (hot, cold, thick, sweet)
3. water (bath/shower, sprinkler, swimming, drink)
4. movement (run, jump, wiggle, hug, deep pressure, upside down, dance)

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Signs to watch for to notice that your child is returning to regulation include relaxed eyes and muscles around the mouth; relaxed rather than collapsed shoulders, neck, and head; even paced breathing that is appropriate for the situation; asking for help; or taking responsibility (Gobel, R., 2023,  Raising Kids with Big Baffling Behaviors). As you begin to put this sequence into practice, you will start to get good at noticing your individual child’s cues that they are returning to regulation and safety. 

*A few reminders:

•  Your child is having a stress response at this moment. The most important things to do are work to regulate yourself and enhance the felt safety for your child. 
• Regulation is a deeply personal experience, start to notice what works for your system and pay attention to what works for your child.
• Regulation is not a punishment, nor is it something the child should be sent off to do alone. Co-regulation is a key component of success in these moments.

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Relate

Once you and your child are regulated enough, it is time to move on to relate and the limbic system. This is the phase where you can help your child to feel seen, heard, and understood in the context of a safe and attuned relationship with you. Some strategies to help you attune and relate to your child include:

• Mentalize. Mentalization can be understood as “...the ability to see thoughts, feelings, intentions and the internal experiences beneath the external behaviors of ourselves and others, or ‘having one’s mind in mind’ (Wisen-Vincent, G., Payne Bryson, T., 2025, The Way of Play, pg. 45).” Keeping your child’s mind in mind can help you understand their point of view and the resulting feelings and behaviors. Put on your ‘kid glasses’ and see the world through their eyes. They do not have the benefit of all of the years of life experience that you do, the wisdom you have gained, nor a fully functioning pre-frontal cortex. What feels like a mole hill to you may feel like a mountain to them - be willing to see it from their perspective. 
• Listen. Listen to your child with curiosity and compassion. Listen to understand, not to fix. 
• Reflect. Reflect what you hear your child saying (they didn’t include you in their game); reflect what they are feeling (that really hurt your feelings); reflect what their body is communicating (your voice got really quiet when you were telling me that). If my child is having a meltdown because they want the blue bowl their brother has instead of the red bowl, won’t reflecting their disappointment just reinforce that they should have a meltdown every time they don’t get what they want? The short answer is no; we can reflect and validate something without agreeing with it. “...for a child, it’s an immense gift when a parent helps them connect language with an awareness of their thoughts, feelings and actions (Wisen-Vincent, G., Payne Bryson, T., 2025, The Way of Play, pg. 45).” Play around with different types of reflections - if reflecting your child’s feelings seems to be too much for their system, try reflecting what you notice their body communicating instead. 

*Reminder: if your child comes to you and is telling you about how they feel, they are likely in the ‘relate’ part of their brain. They are not looking for you to solve the problem, tell them it’s not a big deal, or minimize their experience. They are asking you to attune and relate to what they are sharing. We are not trying to take the feeling away, we are trying to help them feel just a little bit bigger than the feeling.

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Reason

When you have successfully navigated regulate and relate, you are ready to move up to the cortex and engage in reason! As mentioned previously, you may notice that after you have completed the first two steps and your child now has full access to their cortex, they may not need your help to solve a problem - they may be able to creatively come up with their own solutions. If your child needs you to support them in finding a solution, here are some things to keep in mind:

• Appeal to their upstairs brain by asking questions, offering alternatives, negotiating, and getting their input in the problem-solving process (Siegel, D.,  2012, The Whole Brain Child).
• Scaffold to help make success inevitable. Sometimes dys-regulation occurs because your expectation was not in line with the developmental capacity of your child. Check to make sure that you are looking at the developmental age of your child, rather than the chronological age, and watch for comparing your child’s abilities to their siblings or peers. Scaffolding to make success inevitable may look like:
  
  • Doing things alongside your child (even if you think they should be able to do it alone).
  • Breaking things down into smaller pieces.
  • Being more explicit with your instructions.
  • Adjusting or eliminating the ask if you realize that your expectation was too high and instead teaching the missing skill (more on that on the next bullet point).
• Think about the skill that is missing in order for your child to be able to navigate this situation successfully in the future and find a way to teach them the needed skill. Just like when we are teaching a child to read, if they keep stumbling on a certain letter, sound, or word, we know that we need to spend more time teaching that skill. If your child is consistently having difficulty with transitions, homework, playing with their sibling, getting ready for school, etc. they are showing you that they need help to develop that skill set. Finding a way to teach the skill in a playful way is an added bonus!
• Offer opportunities for your child to repair if needed and involve them in the process. If they hurt their sibling, yelled at you, or broke a toy, ask for their input on how they can make things right. This is also your opportunity to repair with your child if you did not show up the way that you wanted to when you were dys-regulated. Model for them what reconnection can look like when there is a rupture in the relationship.

*Reminder: don’t rush through the problem solving process. Involve your child and get their input so that you can help them flex that muscle and build their confidence and competence for the future. 

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Putting this into Practice

As you begin to put these steps into practice, you will stumble along the way; that is ok! It isn’t about getting it perfectly right, it’s about being with ourselves and our child in a moment of dys-regulation and helping them navigate through the moment using co-regulation, attunement, and connection. There is no set time for how long each step will take - sometimes the whole process may take just a few minutes, sometimes it may take much longer. You may even find that you are able to work through regulate and relate, but need to return to reason at a later time (because it’s time to go to bed, you are headed to another activity, or you need time to think through options you are ok with). Be patient with yourself, your child, and their brain as you all try out this new way of navigating dys-regulation!