What’s Up With Rude & Disrespectful Behaviors? {EP 165}

Robyn: Today, we're going to talk about, kind of, low level behavior. But these chronic low level behaviors; rudeness, sassiness, disrespectfulness, these kinds of chronic low level behaviors can really, really zap any energy reserves that we have that we're we're trying so desperately to hold on to, in our very precarious and vulnerable own window of stress tolerance, right? So I'm not talking about verbal aggression. And I have a separate podcast all about how to have boundaries with verbal aggression, which doesn't mean how we change or control that behavior exactly. Because verbal aggression comes from a pretty high level of activation, right? It comes from like a 'Back Off' or 'Attack' Watchdog level. And we can't control behavior. In fact, I just re-aired an episode all about how we can influence behavior and not control it. And to be honest with you, I don't remember if I did that super intentionally- scheduled that right before this episode. I don't know, I probably didn't, because frankly, the fact that we can influence but not control behavior applies to everything. But we can't control someone else's behavior. We can only take steps to stay regulated ourselves and make offerings of regulation, connection, and felt safety, in an attempt to influence the felt safety in their nervous system. Right. And so again, we're not going to talk about those really high high high levels of dysregulation, activation arousal. There's other places we've talked about that, you can go to that podcast episode, I'll make sure the link gets in the show notes, 'boundaries with verbal aggression.' You can also of course, check out my book, Raising Kids With Big Baffling Behaviors.  

Robyn: Today, we're going to talk about low level activation and arousal that might come out through behavior that we would label rude, sassy, disrespectful. So again, remember, that behavior is just a cue or a clue, we're going to use the behavior to get curious about the level of arousal or activation underneath that behavior. Alright, so what clues does rude, sassy, disrespectful, just a negative tone of voice, right? What clues does that give us about what might be happening in that person's nervous system? Well, number one, it's letting us know that person is in protection mode. Right? They have shifted from safe to not safe. They have started to go down the protection mode pathway. If you need an overview of felt safety, you can go back to the felt safety series that I ran January- or again, you can go to Raising Kids With Big Baffling Behaviors. So we know we've flipped into protection mode, we can feel that in our bodies, right? There's a- there's a sensation that goes along with ourselves being in protection mode or being with someone in protection mode. And we know that rude, disrespectful, sassy behavior and language falls in protection mode, right? We've started to go down the protection pathway. Generally speaking, rude, sassy, disrespectful behavior, I would consider pretty low level behavior, that could be letting us know that we're about at the 'What's up?' level, Watchdog. That's not always true across the board. Right? Like, we can certainly have rude, sassy, disrespectful behavior that is much, much, much higher level of intensity. Generally speaking, even though that behavior is rude. Parents are using different kinds of language to describe that behavior if it's all the way to like, 'Back-Off' level Watchdog. I mean, again, they're saying more things like verbally aggressive or abusive, right? So we're talking today about lower-level, 'What's up?' level Watchdog, brain behavior.  

Robyn: So that's the first pure clue, protection mode, low level. Okay, now we can get more and more curious, what could be some of the reasons for this low level protection mode. So low levels of dysregulation, felt safety has shifted onto the protection pathway, connection to self and to others is starting to kind of get a little slippery, slip away. There's a lot of reasons why we could be moving on to this pathway. Here's the ones that I just brainstormed as I was prepping for this episode. It could just be simple dysregulation. So often, we experience rude, sassy, disrespectful language is like super personal, like this is about us. It's about my connection relationship is his child, and it might be, but it also is just a symptom of dysregulation, it could have nothing to do with you. I know there's plenty of times where I'm experiencing my kid is being rude or sassy or disrespectful. And when I'm in my most Owl brain, which certainly doesn't happen all or even most of the time, I can take a breath and stay curious. Like, yeah, this might have something to do with me or our relationship, he might be irritated with me. But it also might have absolutely nothing to do with me, think about the last time you were kind of rude or short tempered with someone and what was contributing to your nervous system being in that state had nothing even to do with that person. Right? I mean, most of us don't have to go back very far in our memory banks to to remember that moment, right. So one reason for a low level, Watchdog, rude behavior could be just plain old dysregulation, and that could be coming from all sorts of places hungry, tired, right? Nervous or worried about something, there could be just so many, so many things. Surely, rude behavior could be a sign or a symptom, that there is something that could stand to be strengthened in that relationship. And it could be in that moment, like maybe, in that moment that your child is irritated with you. Or maybe there could be a longer or a bigger picture, I guess, sort of indication of you needing to kind of put a little bit more energy back into focusing on that connection in that relationship. And you all that that's normal, like that's just how life goes. Right? There's lots of moments where we realize, Oh, I've been preoccupied with this, or I've been focused on this, or I've been stressed out with this. And that has left me not, you know, making as many deposits into this relational bank with my kid. And again, there's no shame, no blame there. It's just something to notice to pay attention to and maybe to kind of reorient back too. 

Robyn: Another reason I see kids sometimes having some rude, sassy disrespectful behavior is for a wide variety of reasons in that moment, or overall, their empathy is, let's just say kind of delayed. Maybe it's not what we would expect from a child their age. And this is an important one right? Like we have to be able to understand somebody else's experience. And we have to care about that person's experience in order to be thoughtful and deliberate about the way that we're interacting with them, right? That if I don't really care about that, I'm much less likely to take the steps to be deliberate about communicating or connecting with that person in a way that's going to invite increased closeness, right? And sometimes, that even is just related to having a little bit of lack of awareness. Self-reflective capacity, being aware of our own experience, our own nervous system, being aware of our own behaviors and then, of course, being aware of how they might be impacting other people, all of that- those are all Owl brain skills. And so somebody who's kind of chronically in protection mode is going to have poorer self reflection, be less aware of what's happening for them, and also less aware of the impact that they're having on other people. And we know that there's lots of reasons for a developmental delay in the Owl brain- that Owl brain is still working on hatching, right? There's so many reasons for that. And it can start to feel overwhelming, like, oh, my gosh, how am I supposed to support all these aspects of my child and their development so that they can, you know, their nervous system can feel better, and they can enjoy the kinds of relationships that are meaningful to them. Right? That can feel really overwhelming until we just take a breath and pause, like that's the sign we're going down the Watchdog pathway- that overwhelm, we can take a breath and pause and kind of come back to, there's lots of different specifics, of course, but overall, the foundation here is we grow the Owl brain, we strengthen the Owl brain, by offering regulation, connection, felt safety, and sometimes of course, by really working on skills, right? So the reasons I gave that could come along with- or could be underneath rude, sassy, disrespectful behavior, simply just plain old dysregulation, it could be an indication of some connection that needs strengthening in the relationship, it could be an indication that empathy and awareness of self and others are just maybe a little delayed. And again, this could be kind of like delayed overall, I'm sure many of you listening are noticing that your parenting a child whose maybe empathy or sense of awareness seems to be more in line with that of a much younger child. That's very, very normal for folks with vulnerable nervous systems. But it also could just be an indication of what's happening in the moment, like as we increase in our dysregulation, whether that means we're going further down the Watchdog or further down the a Possum pathway, we decrease in connection to ourselves and others, right? 1 Empathy decreases, awareness decreases, all of these things decrease simply because we are getting more activated going further down their protection pathway.  

Robyn: So again, it could be an indication of just what's happening in the moment could be an indication of overall, right, like lots of our kids need their Owl brain, over all, strengthened, right? So if we think about these things through the lens of the, 'What's up?' Watchdog. Remember, there's four levels of activation on both the Watchdog and the Possum pathway, right like, we're turning to Dr. Perry's state dependent functioning, arousal continuum, there is four levels and on the Watchdog pathway, the first level is, 'What's up?' There is a sense of, hey, what's going on here, I think something might be stressful or might be dangerous, or I might have to do something here. And an important thing to remember about the 'What's up?' Watchdog is that the Owl brain is still probably nearby, the Owl brain could still be kind of proverbially caught, although we don't want to act like we're trying to catch the Owl brain because that doesn't make the Owl brain want to return, by any means. Nobody likes to be caught, right? Think about it like that. But, I do think it's helpful to remember that in the 'What's up?' level activation, the Owl brain is probably still nearby, we might be able to kind of appeal to the Owl brain to bring some safety, connection, and regulation back. It's also important to remember that if you're past that level of activation, and the Owl brain has totally flown away, you don't want to rely on Owl brain strategies to try to bring the Owl brain back. That means we don't want to rely on language or logic or reasoning or even kind of threatening consequences, because it requires a lot of reasoning for that kind of stuff. Right? Okay, but anyway, so the Owl brain is real close, right? We want to think about, first of all, always using connection and cues of safety as ways to snag the Owl brain. Best way we can do that, when our kid is in the low level activation, they're in Watchdog, or 'What's up?' Watchdog state, the best way to send cues that were cues of safety and connection is that our Owl brain is still in charge. So we can't join them on the protection pathway. So as much as- as much as our child, you know, shiftinh down the Watchdog pathway invites our Watchdog to come out, which we talked about in episode three, a bit of the felt safety series as a couple weeks ago, we want to try really hard to keep our Owl brain in charge, right?  

Robyn: That way, in all sorts of nonverbal ways, with our tone, with our prosody of our voice, with the words that we're choosing. But also even with things we don't have a ton of control over; the look in our eyes, and our facial expressions and all these things, the Owl brain is in charge of what's happening in our face, that Owl brain is in charge of our eyes and the muscles around our mouths, and prosody, and you know, our larynx, and pharynx, and all this kind of stuff. So if we stay in connection mode ourselves, we're gonna be able to communicate non verbally, safety and connection to our kids, right? So as hard as it is, if your child is low level, disrespectful, you know, getting huffy and puffy on the Watchdog pathway- the watchdog pathway ourselves, and we're responding with something like, you can't talk to me like that! Is valid! And believe me, I respond like that more often than not too. And we know what happens when two Watchdogs come to a party together, and they just get tustled up together, right? We want to try really hard to not take the disrespect, personally, which means we don't need to respond personally in a way that's like, you can't talk to me like that, because it's not personal, we just know that this is dysregulation so we're gonna respond with connection and co-regulation, and we want to find ways to clearly clearly communicate to the Owl brain, hey, everything's okay here, hey, Owl brain, you can stick around! And sometimes we can say that super overtly. You know, like our kids disrespect, or our kid sassiness is sometimes is letting us know, oooh, they're anticipating trouble here. And we may even say like, Oh, hey, there's no trouble here. Like, everything's cool. We're just having a chat about something, or I just need something, or let's just try this again, or whatever, you know, whatever it is happening. I get lots and lots of scripts for a low level dysregulation, sassiness in Raising Kids With Big Baffling Behaviors. So if you need some help, more specifically, with some real specific scripts, or knowing exactly how to respond, that's a great place to start. And then of course, if you need an even more support, you can come and join us over in the club. 

Robyn: So let's go back to remembering what could be contributing to this a low level dysregulation, right? And if we go back to just our kind of constant regulation, connection, and felt safety, and then we can also remember that there can be different things happening here. That connection could be its own kind of standalone, quote-unquote, issue we want to, you know, address. Empathy, could be its own separate thing we want to work on, awareness of self could be its own separate thing we want to work on, right? That your child might need some help with, for example, interoception, like knowing what's happening in their own bodies, they might need some help with understanding cues of other folks and what those things mean. And also why it matters, right? Like somebody's frustration or irritation or tone of voice that might be communicated in these different nuanced ways. And also, we have to help our kids understand like, why they should, if they should, even care about those things, some of these things need to be actually taught, some of these things, we just need to trust that as the Owl brain grows and strengthens, these, I guess you call them skills, will naturally grow. Interoception- it can be overtly taught, interoception is also something that tends to improve with safety, with being in relationship with folks who are offering regulation, and connection, and felt safety. If we look at what interoception is, and the parts of the brain that are supporting interoception, and why interoception might get blocked. Interception, being able to notice, make sense of the sensations that are happening in our body. Folks with weaker Owl brains, or more active watchdog brains, or who are in kind of chronic protection mode often have poorer interoception. So it makes sense. It's not the only way we want to approach improving interoception. But it makes sense that one of the ways we approach it is by offering more regulation, connection, and felt safety.  

Robyn: Sometimes, our kids just need help finding the words that they need to express themselves more articulately. We talked about that for the whole month of January in the club. And we looked at behaviors like lying. And again, rudeness, sassiness, like verbal- verbal behavior. We looked at shutdown behavior, right? We just with- the behaviors just a cue or the clue that helps us get curious what's happening underneath. And for a lot of those behaviors, what's underneath is, our kids don't have the words to actually know what's happening for them, and ask for the help that they need or express themselves in ways that actually match their experience. So your kid could be screaming, I hate you! But what they really are experiencing is, the sensations in my body are so intense and I have no other words to describe the intensity of that. Beyond the word hate. I know hate is a big word, I'm actually going to address this specific challenge. Words like, I hate you, really, really big words like that in a separate podcast episode, later this month! I can't remember if it's next week or the week after, later this month.  

Robyn: Anyway, our kids might need help, just knowing how- knowing what they're feeling, and then- and knowing how to express it. And we have to make sure that we really have created an environment where they can express those things. Can they tell us things they don't like about us? Or about what's happening in their life? Or about simple things like dinner? Or what their- what clothes they have available to them to wear, or their teacher? Right? Like how often do we want to kind of squash our kids complaints about their teacher? For all sorts of reasons. It can feel disrespectful, it can feel like a slippery slope, it can feel like our kids need to learn how to tolerate people that they don't like, all sorts of things. And so we end up really squashing they're very valid, like venting and criticizing, and I mean how often do I vent about folks who are frustrating me. And if every time I tried to vent, I just got feedback from people, that I should be kinder, I should learn how to tolerate them, or I need to have thicker skin or whatever, whatever, whatever. Like that's gonna leave me feeling really, really unheard. And so we do I think, as parents have to really look at what are ways that we've, in unintentionally- of course, unintentionally, but kind of created this environment or sent this message of, you can't say those things, or if you say those things I'm not listening to you. And then so often is kids up the ante. Right? So we want to help our kids express their honest true feelings and not liking a teacher, for example, is an honest, true feeling. How can we help them express it in a way that their experience is really seen and known? It doesn't get escalated. And it also gets, what we would call integrated, so that one, our kids learn how to be respectful even to people they don't really like or two, they learn how to use their voice or their power to stand up for themselves, which sometimes actually is what needs to happen. Even with a teacher.  

Robyn: Sometimes our kids, 'What's up? Watchdog brain behavior is warranted, right? Like, I'd like to think it never is. But sometimes it is, like sometimes I've- I'm interacting with my child, in my own Watchdog brain. And that's, of course, going to cause a Watchdog brain reaction. Sometimes, somebody asks me to do something that feels unreasonable or unfair, it's just a not very thoughtful way that they've made that request, or I frankly, just don't really want to do it right now, because I'm doing something else. And I want to have that agency over myself and what I'm doing and so, I might respond to that person with my own Watchdog, with my own 'What's up? Watchdog? Well, of course, I will, because the whole point of the 'What's up? Watchdog is to put up a boundary, to put up a boundary that says, I don't really like what you're doing right now. And I'm going to do something to protect myself from it. Now, if I respond to someone like that, do I need to be corrected? Right, maybe? Or does that person need to have approached me kind of differently if they wanted a different reaction? Maybe, right? I mean, there's all sorts of things that we could look at here. And also, y'all, don't forget that sometimes we just got to chalk up, you know, some, like relational tussles or some 'What's up? Watchdog behavior to just normal, human moments, in relationship. Sometimes we're cranky, right? Humans are cranky, humans are annoying. And frankly, humans are kind of difficult. And if we attempted to address every single moment of protection mode behavior, I mean, we would just be so in the weeds with constantly addressing behavior, and we would end up in this vicious protection mode feedback loop, honestly. So we got to make sure that we're not doing that too, that we're not like over responding. I think there's places where we can be self reflective ourselves and ask ourselves, did I just ask my child to do something respectfully? Meaning, did I say, stop what you're doing right now and come to this thing I want you to do instead, whether that be dinner or a chore, or leaving the house or even something that we think is fun, right? Like, did we really intrude on our kids experience? Did we really intrude on their autonomy? Did we intrude on like the normal human need to take something all the way to completion? 

Robyn: I have in my notes to also talk about equalizing behavior. But as I look at how long I've been talking, and think about how much I could say about equalizing behavior, I'm realizing that's a separate episode, y'all. So I'll just tell you a quick definition of equalizing behavior. And then I'm gonna go make a note to record a totally separate episode about equalizing behavior but equalizing behavior again, first of all, perfectly normal, it's human, we all do this. Okay. That's an important thing to notice. But equalizing behavior is behavior that we would tend to describe as coming from protection mode. And its intention is to meet a need, like autonomy, confidence, feeling powerful, are in charge. Right? So equalizing behavior will come out as controlling behavior, in charge behavior, bossy behavior, and it is an attempt to return to safety after having felt something like powerlessness, being out of control, loss of autonomy, loss of confidence, something like that, again, we all do this and our kids, who are especially sensitive to those things, you know, feeling powerless, loss of control. You know, our kids, who maybe have a Pathological Demand Avoidance profile or our kids who have histories that make a loss of power and control, or feeling like somebody else's making a demand on them, especially risky, especially vulnerable. So they're especially like fine tuned to that as a trigger, that pulls them into protection mode, right? I talked about that in episode one of my felt safety episode, which was aired in mid January, just a few episodes before- ago, not before, just a few episodes ago! So equalizing behavior can come out as rudeness, sassiness, disrespectfulness. But again, I'm realizing that's a whole separate episode. So I'm going to tag that, and we're going to come back to that we'll talk about that. It deserves- it deserves, I think, a lot of time and I don't want to- I don't want to feel rushed here.  

Robyn: With rudeness, with sassiness, with disrespectful behavior, we are going to be tempted to address the behavior immediately, with words like, don't talk to me like that, right? And even that's coming from a Watchdog place. It's an example of trying to really overly rely on logic, reasoning, behavioral control, right? Like, if I just tell them to stop, they should be able to stop. An implicit in that idea is that this person still has enough connection to their Owl brain that they could control this behavior. And that's very, almost- I mean, almost always, that's not true that we really- even in the 'What's up? level Watchdog, we still need to be paying attention to their autonomic nervous system, to their regulation, connection, and felt safety. Because regulation, connection, and felt safety is actually what's going to shift them, like shift them into connection mode, that behavior then is more likely to change. Once the Owl brain has returned, right? So you're gonna focus on regulation, connection, and felt safety- once the Owl brain has returned, and your back in connection with your child, then that's when you can start thinking about what does your child need in the future to make these moments less likely to happen? Do they really need to know it's not okay to talk to people like that? Maybe. But most kids know that. Most kids know that. I know I shouldn't talk to people rude and disrespectfully. And yet, still, sometimes I do. So it's not about the not-knowing. Right? Is it about regulation? Is it about protection mode? Is it about needing to understand somebody else's experience, right? That when I talk with a certain tone, or with certain language, this person I'm in relationship with experiences that a certain way, and y'all, let's make sure that we're applying that to ourselves. We need to pay attention to that too. And know that when we talk to our kids in a certain way, they experience it in their unique way. And if we want them to make adjustments, we've got to be prepared to make adjustments too.  

Robyn: I know that there's been times where you've been about to be rude, about to be disrespectful, about to respond in a way that you just knew you were going to regret later. Right. And so you took a breath. And you've reframed what you were gonna say in a more respectful way, right? I know that that's happened to you. And yes, that's amazing. That's an example of how your 'What's up? Watchdog and your Owl brain could have worked together. Right, that 'What's up? Watchdog peeked up- popped up and was like, Oh, wait, so I might be going on here, a little bit of protection, mode energy. And then the Owl whole brain came back and said, Wait, I think we need more information here. Let's take a breath. Stay in connection mode, and see what happens next. That's your O0wl brain and your Watchdog brain working together because the Owl brains activation- I'm sorry, the Watchdog brain's activation was low. That's what we're aiming for in our kids. And we do that by growing the Owl brain. Sometimes it's as simple as saying, "Of course we can have an extra 10 minutes to play video games before we shift into homework. Of course we can, I would love it if next time you let me know that you still need 10 more minutes to finish your video game with your Owl brain instead of with your Watchdog brain. And you know what, buddy, I'm also going to work on next time, I'm going to come to you with my Owl brain. And that might sound like hey, how many more minutes do you need? Okay, so let's both work hard next time to bring our Owl brains to one another."  

Robyn: Okay, it could look as simple as that. And again, for more examples, come check out Raising Kids With Big Baffling Behaviors, which is also now on audiobook. And for even more examples, you can come join us in the club, because we'll talk about all this, we give lots of support and examples to one another in the forum. And then there's, you know, I don't know, something like 90 videos stored in the video library at this at this point as well. Alright, y'all, as soon as I stop recording, I'm going to go make a note to prep for an episode all about equalizing behavior. I'm not promising when that's going to come out or how soon but I'll go. And I'll start working on that because I bet a lot of you really had your ears sort of perk up, like, what's that? That might be what's happening in my family! And until then, keep tuning in. Every week, in the month of February, I'm releasing a new episode on Tuesdays, just like always, since the dawn of the Baffling Behavior Show we've released episodes on Tuesdays. And I'm going to be re-airing some episodes that I think, really are worth re-airing, re-listening to by y'all and we'll be doing that on Fridays. We'll see how that goes. We'll see if you like that, if you like having a new episode and a re-aired episode every week. Do let me know about that. Of course, of course, if you need more support, there's so many ways to connect with me. You can get on my email list. I'll send you emails, you can keep listening to the podcast, you can head to my website and download one of the millions of free resources I have over on my free resources tab. And if you need even more support, again, of course you can come and join us in the club. When the club is open for new members again, we would absolutely love to have you. Alright y'all. I will see you back here next week with another new episode. Thank you!