Lying, Stealing, Regression & Baby Talk {EP 222}

Robyn: Now, remember, we never really look at behaviors as standalone behaviors and think about lying. Oh, well, we know lying is always about X, Y, Z, and so we always address it in this way. Nope. Behaviors are just the cue or clue, right? They're kind of like the trail head. So there's a lot of things that can contribute to the behavior of lying, and a lot of things that can contribute to the behavior of stealing. In this episode, we're gonna look at Dr. Perry, Dr. Bruce Perry's theory of state dependent functioning, and we're gonna look at how that theory can help us understand a pretty wide variety of behaviors. Now there's other explanations and other things that sometimes is underneath lying and stealing. But today we're gonna look at state dependent functioning, to define state dependent functioning for you and just for the episode, so that we all have one definition that we're working from. Actually just pulled out Dr. Perry's book. What happened to you and y'all if you've seen me on Zoom lately, you know that I have this amazing library cart that sits behind me at my desk, and it makes me unbelievably happy. This library cart, it's like eggplant colored, and I can just wheel it around my office, and y'all have several, several book bookshelves and book towers, but this library cart means that I can take the books that are currently, you know that I'm currently accessing a lot, and just always have them at my fingertips, and I can move it around with me. Y'all, this is amazing.    

Robyn: So anyway, as I'm recording this podcast, I turned around, grabbed what happened to you by Dr. Perry and Oprah Winfrey. They co-authored this book together and on page, let's see what page am I on here, on page 90, figure six, state dependent functioning. It says, "All functioning of the brain depends on the state we're in. As we move from one internal state to another, there will be shifts in the parts of the brain that are in control. When you are in a state of calm, for example, you're able to use the smartest parts of your brain, the cortex, to reflect and create when you feel threatened, those cortical systems become less dominant, and more reactive, parts of your brain begin to take over. The continuum goes from calm to terror."Now I've stopped reading. Dr Perry's theory here state dependent functioning has these different states, calm, alert, alarm for your terror. Sure, and this has set the foundation for the Watchdog and the Possum. Right? There's fourWatchdogs and four Possums. Once we move on to the protective pathway, right, we there is a calm Watchdog and a calm Possum, but there is also then an alert, alarm, fear, terror, Watchdog and Possum, and this is to correspond with state dependent functioning.    

Robyn: As neuroception of fear increases we move through the continuum. So we move from alert, alarm to fear to terror as fear increases, as regulation decreases, as safety decreases, and we know that in a sensitized stress response system, smaller amounts of stressors make bigger shifts on the arousal or dissociation continuum. So smaller stressors, we could look at them objectively and say smaller stressors are going to create bigger shifts. So we're going to move from alert to alarm to fear to terror with even tiny stressors. So when we're regulated, connected and experiencing felt safety, we can access like the highest level cortical functioning. But as stress increases, as fear cues of danger increase, as dysregulation increases, as stress increases, we move down that continuum, and we shift from having access to our, you know, highest level cortical functioning, we shift lower and lower and lower in the brain. We kind of like drop down in the brain and in the part of the brain that we are functioning out of behavior is state dependent. It isn't skill dependent. It's skill dependent if we are in our Owl brain, if we are in a calm level of arousal and activation, per Dr. Perry and state dependent functioning. But once we shift down the arousal continuum, behavior is state dependent so that's what we're going to look at here and to look at how state dependent functioning can explain regression in baby talk, which I think are a little bit easier to make sense of once we understand state dependent functioning.    

Robyn: But then we're going to look at lying and stealing as well. Dr Perry's work reminds us that the brain develops from the bottom up and the inside out. So the lower parts of the brain are developing first, and the higher parts of the brain, the more cognitive, the more logical the Owl brain, they dip, they develop later. So as stress increases, as dysregulation increases and state shifts from alert, to alarm, to fear, to terror, that's like the "What's up" Watchdog to the, "Ready for action" Watchdog to the, "Back off" Watchdog to the, "Attack" Watchdog and on the Possum continuum, that's the "La La Land" Possum to the, "Trickster" Possum to the, "Shutdown" Possum to the, "Collapse" possum. Okay, so that's the continuum we move through. As we shift down that continuum, we become younger and younger. We start moving through parts of the brain that are younger and younger and younger developmentally. So as state shifts, development shifts as well. As we get more stressed, we regress. We get younger and younger as we are operating out of lower and lower parts of the brain. So as our kids get more stressed, we see them acting younger and younger. We see them maybe having play preferences that we would associate with a much younger child. We get behavior like baby talk,  wewe see an increase in behaviors like tantruming, a decrease in the child's ability to have impulse control or frustration tolerance, right?    

Robyn: Our stressed kids, and some of our kids live in a state of chronic stress. So they don't so much like shift onto the arousal continuum and move into like alert or alarm, but they kind of live there so they have skills that are less mature than their same age peers, right? They have less impulse control, they have less frustration tolerance. They have less ability to learn from cause and effect. Similar to a toddler, right? So some of our kids live in a more regressed state because they live further down the arousal continuum. Their stress response system is so sensitized, they, in a way, kind of hang out in that state of mild or even moderate activation, whereas some of our kids certainly can shift into being safe and connected and regulated, and they have access to their Owl brain, but then they have such a sensitized stress response system, they can really quickly, easily shift onto their arousal continuum, really quickly, easily shift into protection mode. And from there, as they shift down the continuum, they get younger and younger and younger, and we see behaviors of much younger children, and yes, that includes baby talk. So from here, if we want to start looking at strategies, I'm just going to kind of refer us back to those Watchdog and Possum strategies when we are just slightly onto the Watchdog or Possum continuum, right? We can utilize some Owl brain strategies. We can use some logic, we can use language, we can use some compromising to help bring the brain state back to safe and calm. As we shift further down the continuum, we're going to keep our focus on regulation, connection and health safety. So instead of focusing on the behavior, right?    

Robyn: We're gonna focus on how do we help the nervous system shift back into connection mode so it can shift off the arousal continuum and come back into a state where it can access those highest cortical functioning I know that regressive behavior and baby talk can feel so frustrating, and if the child's level of arousal and activation is somewhat mild, and there may be only in that alarm state, I'm sorry, the alert state, you might be able to simply prompt, Oh, could you just ask again with your owl brain, right? If the baby talk is the signal that they've shifted onto the arousal continuum and started to get more and more stressed, if it's just mild, you might be able to just prompt like, hey, yeah, of course, we can have a snack. Could you ask trying? Could you try asking again with your Owl brain, and if the Owl is close enough, right, the Owl is still nearby, and there are enough cues of safety that the child's nervous system can notice and and lean into, then that might be all they need to reconnect to their Owl Brain. But if they're further down the continuum. Then the shift moves from, instead of, kind of like snagging or holding onto the Owl brain, what do we need to do to help the Watchdog or the Possum brain feel safe, connected and regulated? And so then our objective kind of shifts away from, how do we change this behavior, to, you know, co-regulation strategies, connection strategies, strategies of safety.    

Robyn: But I think even more than the strategies we might turn to, understanding state dependent functioning helps us make sense of why our kids are struggling when they're struggling, that we can have so much more compassion for regressive behavior if we understand that this is about brain state, and that that makes perfect sense for your child, given what's happening to them in this moment, as well as their history and the development of their brain. And then also, I think, reminds us of how much hope there is that as we continue to parent with regulation connection and felt safety, we're going to continue to build and strengthen those regulatory circuits, and we are going to help strengthen that stress response system so that eventually the child's stress response system can become a bit more resilient. They can experience stressors without so quickly shifting so far down the arousal continuum and then having behaviors like regressive behaviors, tantruming, demanding, all these things that feel like, quote-unquote, just bad behaviors, but what they really are is about being low enough in the brain that we've lost things like impulse control, frustration tolerance, those kinds of things impulse control and frustration tolerance allows us to like, not totally lose it when things don't go the way we want them to. And I have more impulse control and frustration tolerance than a toddler does, usually, but sometimes I don't, right. And so when our kids are struggling with things like frustration tolerance impulse control, we can see that through the lens of regression, even if it isn't accompanied by more obvious regressive behaviors, like, for example, baby talk.    

Robyn: I think it could also be helpful to notice when we're more likely to see some of these frustrating behaviors, right? Maybe during times of transition, maybe during times of disconnection or reconnecting after disconnection, right? Like if we pause, we would notice shoot these behaviors that are frankly annoying, regression, baby talk. I get it, it's annoying, but it's not about the child being like manipulative or controlling those kinds of things. It's about a shift in their state, and it's information about what's happening in their nervous system, right? And some kids have regressive behaviors, you know, like it could just be transitioning home from school, and we see a decrease in frustration tolerance, maybe an increase in irritability, an increase in some baby talk, just in like that half-hour or hour after school as they're experiencing that stressful transition and and easing into the evening, whereas sometimes. We see regressive behavior, maybe a little bit longer, right? It's not just this afternoon or this hour, it's a little bit longer after there's been some family stressors. Like, you know, it's very common to see regressive behavior in kids when they have a new baby sibling, right? Or for those of you parenting kids with histories of complex trauma, sometimes when some of those trauma experiences get reawakened, maybe visits with family that have caused harm, you know, some of that trauma and that stress gets reawakened or reactivated, and we see regressive behaviors. So yeah, we can also take the theory of state dependent functioning and apply it to behaviors that aren't so overtly regressive, like lying and stealing.    

Robyn: One of the things that happens as state shifts, sense of time shifts. And so when we're in our Owl brain and where our owl pathway is activated and nice and strong, and we're in that calm level of arousal and activation. We're in connection mode. We're neuro receiving safety lots of different ways to describe the state right. Our sense of time allows us to appreciate, understand, make meaning out of it and having it be relevant. How something we do now could impact us in the future. It also helps us have some delayed gratification. It helps us understand that the things we're doing now are laying the foundation for something good to happen in the future. So for example, it helps a high school student understand that working hard now in ninth grade could have an impact on what happens post secondary education. There's a capacity to think into the future and to have a sense of time and also to think abstractly. As states shifts, and we get lower and lower and lower, and we move from alert, alarm to fear to terror, that sense of time really collapses, and we lose our capacity to consider how what's happening now could impact us in the future. We're really only concerned with what's impacting us now. This I have seen, has a direct impact on behaviors like lying and stealing, because I think stealing is actually a little bit more obvious, right? Sometimes what's underneath the behavior of stealing, not always. The behavior of stealing is quite complex, and there can be a lot of different things that are contributing to that behavior. Have a whole podcast episode that explores this all more in depth, but one of the things could be this collapse of time and the sense and the nervous system that there's no possibility of waiting, right? Right? I can't wait half an hour for dinner. I have to eat now. I can't wait to get this toy. I have to have it now.    

Robyn: The other thing that happens with state dependent functioning is as we are younger and younger in our brain, right, as we've moved on the continuum we're operating on. Of younger and younger places. Y'all infants and toddlers, they don't have a differentiation between wants and needs. So the more stress, the more dysregulated, the lower and lower we are in our brain, the more things that we would objectively call wants when we're in our cortical brains, our Owl brains are in charge, feel like needs, and it's why I want this matchbox car when you're at the grocery store could turn into a huge tantrum, right? Because as we're lower and lower and lower in the brain. We're regressing. We're acting younger. Tantruming. Also wants become needs. And when something is a need and somebody prevents you from getting it, that is a big stressor, right? So maybe you're seeing how lying could kind of fit into this too, right? If I am so dysregulated in my nervous system that wants have become needs, then it makes so much sense that lying could be a behavior I would use to get that thing that feels like a need, just like stealing, right? It also makes a lot of sense that if I am operating out of a pretty low part of my brain, I can't think into the future for what I know is going to be the consequence of lying. So sometimes parents will say to me things like when they I don't understand why he lies, because he knows that if he would just tell the truth, the consequence would be much less right, but if he lies, the consequence just gets bigger and bigger.    

Robyn: Well, when the brain is stressed out enough to lie, part of what's also happening is an inability to think through the long term impact of that behavior. It's only about what could possibly, quote-unquote, get me out of trouble right now, and maybe it could be lying like if I could say, I didn't just eat that cookie, right, even though it's pretty obvious that my caregiver is gonna realize that I did. That's a future problem, even if the future is just five minutes, half an hour, you know, whatever. It's still a future problem, but the now problem is, I did not eat that cookie. And so the lie emerges from that very collapsed sense of time. So it can all get kind of complicated, right? Like wants becomes needs. There's this very collapsed sense of time. The regressed nervous system loses the capacity to have frustration tolerance, delayed gratification, all of these things that are higher level cortical skills as the brain shifts into different states. Time collapses, right? The brain can no longer really think about future consequences, like, am I getting to get in trouble for this later? It just wants to solve the problem right now, which is maybe hopefully avoiding punishment, or, in the very least, kind of reducing the distress that's happening in this moment, or simply even just getting what they want, a behavior that's driven by I just want. What I want isn't about a bratty, spoiled kid. It's about a child whose state dependent functioning is so low on the developmental kind of trajectory that they have no tolerance for not getting what they want when they want. It just like a toddler. Lying it becomes about avoiding immediate discomfort, right? Stealing becomes about getting what we, quote, need/want right now, and a reminder, this isn't the only thing that contributes to behaviors like lying and stealing. They are complex behaviors, right?    

Robyn: We're looking at regulation, connection and felt safety, but when we're thinking about state dependent functioning and a child operating out of a lower part of their brain. What we're really talking about here is dysregulation. It might not always look dysregulated, but we kind of consider those things similar, right? That operating out of a lower and lower part of your brain than what your chronological age is and what we would be expecting is due to dysregulation. We've been talking about state dependent functioning and how that impacts some of these more frustrating behaviors over in the club for a really long time, and I finally had my graphic designer put together some graphics that really help illustrate all of these concepts, even more, the sense of time thing, the developmental piece that happens as state shifts. So we've put together some really awesome graphics that I think help make some of these more baffling behaviors make a little bit more sense, and then y'all the answer to the question, well, what do we do about it gets just slightly more clear, because we can remind ourselves, oh, I actually don't need a new set of tools to address this behavior, I can just go back to the basics. If this behavior is about a lack of regulation, a lack of connection, lack of felt safety, then we stay focused on regulation, connection and felt safety. And sometimes that means in the moment, sometimes in the moment, we have to pause what we're doing and shift our focus to how do I help this child feel safe, connected and regulated? Sometimes we have to stay a little bit bigger picture than that. Some of y'all listening have kids who live in chronic states of protection mode and in the moment, right, they might have a behavior like lying or stealing, and it can feel kind of tricky to you, like, What do you mean? How am I supposed to co regulate through this behavior? I mean, this is like the state that they're always in. Yeah, I get that.    

Robyn: So in those moments, we need to use our Owl brain to remind ourselves this is not a characterological defect in our kid. This is a behavior that makes perfect sense given the level of arousal and activation where they live basically all the time. And so we need to stay the course with growing that Owl brain strengthening that stress response system, and thinking about scaffolding things like decreasing the distance so our kids have more opportunity to be with a co-regulating adult. I mean, there's a lot again, I wish this was a way of parenting where I could give you a flow chart and like, if this happened, then do this, and then this, and then this. I wish it just doesn't work that way, but I think state dependent functioning adds in one more really important kind of piece of the puzzle for why our kids are struggling with some of the behaviors that they're struggling with, and then it's a good reminder of what we can do about it. Sometimes I know I can start to feel like, oh my gosh, I'm not addressing this behavior in the way that society tells me I should be addressing it with a punishment or something like that. So I take a breath recognize actually, that's about me shifting onto my own arousal continuum and starting to panic and get that my own sense of time collapses. I have this sense of like, oh my gosh, I have to fix this now. So if I take a breath, invite my own Owl brain back, I can remind myself to stay the course that there isn't a quick fix, if there was, you would have found it by now. So we're going to stay the course. We're going to keep strengthening that stress response system, right? We're going to keep growing that Owl brain.    

Robyn: In June in the club, I'm going to do an entire master class all about how we can turn to state dependent functioning to make meaning out of our kids behaviors, and then how we can use that to give us some ideas about how can we best support our kids. And I have these beautiful graphics that have been made for us that I just cannot wait to offer up and introduce to all the club members added into our very robust resource library. But this is such a robust resource, I'm not just plunking it into the resource library. We're going to do a master class about the resource, how to use the resource, and how to allow a concept like state dependent functioning to help us make meaning out of the most baffling behaviors in our kids, but frankly, also in ourselves. So if you're listening as a Club member, that master class is coming up soon in June, and at that time, that's when all of those graphics and the resource is going to get released as well if you are not currently in the club and you would like to dive a little bit deeper into this idea of state dependent functioning. And how can we use this to make meaning out of our kids behaviors, which then means we get better ideas about how to help them. Then we would love to invite you to come and join us over in the club. If you're listening to this episode the week that this episode airs, the club is open. We're opening on the 20th, May 20, and we're staying open till the 23rd.     

Robyn: If you are listening to this episode at a different time, that's May 20 through May 23 if you're listening to this episode at a different time, just come check the website, because The Club might be open. We are taking a slightly different approach to the club in 2025 and seeing how we like it. We're going to open more frequently for shorter durations of time. We're thinking that might help kind of regulate the amount of new members we take in at one time, and I think that that will be a better experience for both our new members and our current members. But who knows, right? We're just experimenting. I mean, there's so much about the way The Club works that we can use as kind of a mirror for the way our parenting works, like we're just trying something. It's a way I'm actually kind of being in a serve and return relationship with The Club. Let's try something, see how it works. Does it work the way we like it? If not, let's tweak it a little. I mean, that's about being in attunement with The Club and with the members in the club. And I just love noticing all these places where there's this kind of constant, ongoing, parallel process.    

Robyn: So here's what I want you to walk away from this episode with. It's the curiosity to shift out of judgment with a question that's kind of like, what does this behavior tell me about my child's nervous system right now? Now y'all that doesn't mean you like the behavior. It doesn't mean we let it go. It doesn't mean we don't address it immediately. It doesn't mean any of those things. But if we can shift out of judgment, we can shift out of our own protection mode. We can shift back into that curious place of I wonder that's going to be us, our state of mind, where we're going to be regulated enough be thoughtful, enough have enough Owl brain that we can make a choice about what we're going to do next. What interventions, what strategies, what tools are we going to use next that are going to actually work towards solving the real problem? And that's not just changing the behavior, that's changing the state of the nervous system. So again, if you would like to dive even further into this, in all of these conversations about the nervous system, regulation, connection, felt safety, the Owl, Watchdog and the Possum. We'd love to have you join us over in the club, if you'd like to have some more support, but the club doesn't feel like what you or your family needs right now. Remember, I've got oodles of free resources on my website. I have, you know, over 220 episodes now on the podcast, you can go search through the podcast for what you're looking for. You can grab yourself a copy of Raising Kids With Big, Baffling Behaviors. As always thank you. Thank you for everything that you do for kids, if you're here listening as a helper. Thank you for everything you do to support those kids and their grown ups. I'm so grateful for you. I'm grateful for everyone listening and really believe that we are coming together, even if we never meet each other. All of us listening are coming together in a way that we're contributing to a shift, and how we see people, how we see behaviors, and this is ultimately going to contribute to a collective shift that is going to make this a safer, more regulated, more connected place to exist. Alrighty. Y'all, I'll be back with you again next week!