Parenting stress often stems from the interplay between a child’s temperament and our ability to manage behavior. Understanding this connection can make a huge difference in how we approach positive parenting. When we talk about temperament, we’re looking at how children take in information, process their surroundings, and regulate themselves—all of which impact their behavior. If these areas feel challenging, it’s easy for stress to build.
Takeaways
- Shift your perspective on challenging behaviors by understanding they are signals of distress, not personal attacks, and respond with compassion.
- Focus on regulating your child’s emotional states to help them develop self-regulation skills over time.
- Recognize the influence of your own stress responses on parenting and take steps to model calm and supportive behavior.
- Learn to identify and adapt to your child’s unique temperament traits to create a more harmonious parent-child relationship.
- Learn how to turn stressful parenting moments into opportunities for connection by understanding your child’s unique temperament with Be Kind Coaching
Understanding the nine temperament traits and how they influence a child’s behavior. Traits like energy levels, adaptability, and sensitivity all shape how kids navigate the world and how parents respond. When a child struggles to regulate themselves, their behavior can feel overwhelming, especially if we’re unsure how to support them. This can lead to parenting stress, making it harder to connect and guide them calmly. Recognizing the role of temperament helps us shift from reacting to connecting, which is key to reducing stress and fostering a positive environment.
Understanding Temperament and Parenting Stress
Parenting stress often intensifies when we label our child’s temperament based on our own experience. There are three core categories of temperament:
- Easy
- Slow-to-Warm
- Difficult.
Instead of viewing a child’s temperament through the lens of how hard or easy it is for us, it’s important to refocus on the child’s experience. Temperament reflects a child’s ability to regulate themselves. For instance, a child with an easy temperament may be naturally flexible, quick to calm, and generally cheerful because their nervous system easily manages regulation.
“These behaviors aren’t about ‘giving you a hard time’; they’re signals that the child is having a hard time”
In contrast, children with a difficult temperament may have more intense moods, explosive outbursts, or struggle to manage big emotions. These behaviors aren’t about “giving you a hard time”; they’re signals that the child is having a hard time. Difficult behaviors often stem from challenges in processing information, regulating emotions, and responding to their environment. By understanding temperament as an inborn trait rather than a choice, we can shift our perspective. A child exhibiting challenging behaviors is likely struggling to feel safe or regulated, which calls for compassion and support, not punishment.
The Role of the Nervous System in Parenting Stress
Our nervous system is the body’s command center, connecting the brain and body to process and respond to the world around us. It has two main parts: the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) and the peripheral nervous system. The peripheral system includes the voluntary (somatic) and involuntary (autonomic) systems. Within the autonomic system, the sympathetic nervous system activates our “threat response” (fight, flight, or freeze), while the parasympathetic system promotes our “rest response” (calm and connection). Together, these systems communicate messages of either safety or threat, shaping how we react to our environment.
“Are you acting as a stressor or as a source of support?”
For parents, this understanding is essential in reducing parenting stress. When a child is struggling, how you respond can either increase their sense of threat or provide a sense of safety. The question becomes: are you acting as a stressor or as a source of support? In high-stress moments, it’s important to pause and assess whether your reactions are escalating the tension or creating space for connection. Shifting into a supportive role not only helps your child feel safer but also strengthens the parent-child relationship.
Voluntary and Involuntary Communication in the Nervous System
Our nervous system communicates with the body in two main ways: voluntary and involuntary actions. Voluntary actions are those we consciously control, like raising your hand, walking, dancing, or giving a high-five. These movements happen when the brain processes information and signals the body to act. However, most of the communication in our nervous system is involuntary, meaning it happens automatically without conscious control. For example, processes like breathing, heartbeats, and digestion are managed by the autonomic nervous system, which keeps our body functioning without us thinking about it.
The autonomic system also governs our stress responses, working to maintain balance in the body. This balance, or homeostasis, is key to how we regulate behavior and emotions. Factors like temperament can influence how easily our nervous system maintains this balance. Neurotransmitters—biochemicals like dopamine and serotonin—play a critical role in this communication. Dopamine is linked to feelings of reward and pleasure, while serotonin helps regulate mood, sleep, and appetite. Understanding this intricate system can help parents better support their children during moments of stress or emotional regulation challenges and working through parenting stress.
Understanding Neurotransmitters and Stress Responses
Neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin play key roles in how our bodies regulate stress and balance. Dopamine, often called the “motivation molecule,” is tied to feelings of pleasure and reward, giving us energy and focus. Serotonin, on the other hand, helps stabilize mood, appetite, and sleep cycles. During darker, colder months, like November, serotonin levels can drop, leading to seasonal affective disorder (SAD). These neurotransmitters act like a thermostat for the nervous system, helping us stay balanced by kicking in when we need energy (like turning up the heat) or calming us down for rest and restoration (like turning on the AC).
This regulation is controlled by our nervous system’s two branches: the sympathetic (stress response) and parasympathetic (rest response). When we perceive a threat, the sympathetic system activates, increasing heart rate, dilating pupils, and shutting down digestion to focus on survival. When we’re safe, the parasympathetic system restores balance, promoting digestion, nutrient absorption, and immune function. However, unresolved trauma can cause us to misinterpret non-threats—like a teddy bear—as real dangers, keeping us stuck in fight-or-flight mode. This disconnect between perception and reality shows why healing and coping skills are essential for both adults and children in managing stress effectively.
Balancing Stress and Coping Skills
Our behavior reflects the balance—or imbalance—between our stress levels, coping skills, and the duration of challenges we face. For example, when we’re well-rested, well-fed, and feel supported, we can handle high-stress moments, like being stuck in traffic while late for an appointment. In those moments, our coping skills are accessible, allowing us to manage frustration without losing control.
However, if we’re tired, hungry, and overwhelmed by other stressors, even small challenges, like traffic, can feel unbearable. This imbalance leaves us reactive—snippy, sarcastic, or overwhelmed—not by choice but because our capacity to cope is maxed out. Children experience similar struggles. What adults often label as “misbehavior” can signal a child’s difficulty coping with stress. Punishments in these moments only increase their stress, creating more resistance and frustration. By shifting away from fear-based punishments and toward connection, we can reduce stress for both children and caregivers, making tough moments more manageable—not easy, but a little more compassionate.
Stress and Survival Mode
When we’re highly stressed, our brain defaults to survival mode, activating the fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response. This is controlled by the lower part of our brain, often referred to as the “Red Zone,” which focuses on physical safety, and the “Yellow Zone,” which assesses emotional safety. In these states, our brain’s ability to think clearly or problem-solve is limited because it prioritizes survival over everything else.
Understanding this can help us see difficult behaviors—whether in ourselves or children—not as personal attacks, but as signals of distress. For caregivers, this opens the opportunity to step in as a calming presence, soothing the situation rather than escalating it. By addressing the stress rather than reacting to the behavior, we create space for connection and growth, shifting the dynamic in a positive direction.
BOOK EXCERPT:
Our relationship with our child is an environment in which we both change and grow. This is fundamental to the scientific study of child development today. Neu-roimaging and sophisticated psychophysiological technologies, together with realtime studies of babies and their parents interacting, have dramatically advanced our understanding of the unique power of this relationship. Most important for self-regulation, we now know this to be a core truth: It is by being regulated a child develops the ability to self-regulate. Regulating a child is not at all the same thing as controlling a child. Rather, it is concerned with managing the child’s arousal states until such time as the child can do this on her own. That’s what you’re doing when you gently rock your baby to calm her, sing to her to help her fall asleep, or playfully engage when it’s time for her to be up and about.
I once gave a public lecture about this topic and a member of the audience, a car mechanic, came up to me afterward and said: “So it’s kind of like seeing your child’s behaviors as indicators of how his engine is running.” I loved this metaphor and have used it ever since in my work with parents, teachers, and kids themselves.
Everybody gets it. It helps us get to see our child’s challenging behaviors as signs of an engine that, for one reason or another, is overheating. A chronically irritable infant, a child who can’t calm down, a constantly anxious teen: All are indicators of an engine working too hard. Other indicators include issues with attention or poor study habits, overemotional reactions, anger, aggression, or weak social skills. But given the individual variability that is a defining feature of our species, we first need to learn how to recognize the indicators of how a particular child’s engine is running in order to be able to assess what to do; whether this practice is effective for this child at this time.
So how does that engine run?
Centering the Child’s Experience
Parenting isn’t just about what happens—it’s about how we respond to it. A big part of my work with parents, through parenting classes, is helping them recognize the signals of stress, not just in their children but in themselves. By tuning into these cues, parents can better understand their child’s experience and create a foundation for support rather than stress.
This process starts with the adult doing their own work: assessing behaviors, growing their toolbox, and learning new ways to respond. Using a parenting coach can support parents take steps to expand their coping skills, they shift from being stress amplifiers to stress soothers.
Understanding Your Engine and Your Child’s
How well do you know your own “engine”? Are you aware of when your nervous system is revving up, with the gas pedal pushed to the floor, or when the brakes—or even the emergency brake—are on? These moments impact how you show up throughout the day. Now, think about your child’s engine. Can you recognize when they’re running on high or when they’ve hit a standstill?
When parents tune into these signals for both themselves and their children, they can start to adjust and find balance. It’s about becoming a complementary match—meeting each other where you are to create an environment where your child can truly thrive. Reflect on moments where you’ve noticed the energy running high or low and consider how those dynamics have shaped your interactions.
