What is Your Kid’s Nervous System Predicting? Part 3 of 3 {EP 270}

Robyn: We talked a lot about the brain as a prediction organ, and how it uses memory, especially implicit memory, the kind that doesn't feel like memory, it's just memory that feels true. The brain uses implicit memory to predict what's about to happen next, and when a child has learned through experiences that the world is unsafe, or adults can't be trusted, or they're going to be all alone when things get hard, those kind of predictions get encoded with what Dan Siegel calls inflexible neural glue, and because the neural glue is inflexible, the belief that emerges from those earliest experiences is really hard to change, and behaviors come from predictions that we're making about what's about to happen next, and when a prediction is sort of like locked into place in a neural network with this like really inflexible neural glue, it's just really hard to change that prediction, and the prediction just sort of keeps running the program, and then what happens next, which seems wildly unfair, but regardless, is still true, that the like normal human reaction we have to try to change these behaviors are unfortunately probably contributing to the neural glue staying super sticky, we've been calling it fix-it energy, or change it energy. Again, it's completely reasonable that we respond to these very baffling, sometimes extremely dangerous behaviors with energy of like this behavior needs to stop. I need to fix this. I need to change this, and unfortunately, again, wildly unfair that fix-it energy mimics the conditions that made the neural glue inflexible in the first place and leaves the neural network remaining really sticky, and it doesn't change, it doesn't update based on new experiences that your kid has had about how the world is safe, and they are a great kid, and they can trust people to take care of them, the sticky. Neural glue makes it really hard for the for a new learning to emerge, which then makes for new predictions. 

Robyn: Then, in part two, we looked at two things that actually do contribute to changing sticky behaviors, and the first thing is widening that window of stress tolerance, kind of strengthening or increasing capacity, and we do that through all the things you listen to here on this show, right, co-regulation, felt safety, connection, all of those things are really widening our kids' windows of tolerances, we're dropping more and more droplets into that like bucket of felt safety. The buckets of felt safety are giving the nervous system more room to navigate stress before it fully tips into protection mode, and those old predictions get activated, and but when those old predictions do get activated, they start to run the show. The second mechanism that changes sticky behaviors is what we could call a disconfirming experience, or a mismatched experience, or a juxtaposition, or an experience that wasn't expected. It was a surprise. So, when we have predictions running in the background, maybe things like I know I'm a bad kid, and when I'm overwhelmed I'm alone, I can't trust folks to take care of me and keep me safe and tolerate all of the big feelings that I have. If that's the prediction, then what helps to weaken the neural glue, so that the neural network can become more flexible and take in new information? The thing that helps that occur is that mismatched experience- the thing, the thing happening that is unexpected. So that might mean when a kid is dysregulated, the adult stays present, stays regulated. They're not frightened, they're not overwhelmed, they're not in the state of trying to fix it. And then that mismatch, the prediction error, starts to soften that neural glue over time, and then the brain can learn new things, therefore make new predictions, and that changes behavior. 

Robyn: Our behavior is emerging largely from what we're expecting to happen next. So, if we change those predictions, if we change those expectations, behavior will begin to shift as well. Now I know that you're listening, and you're thinking, well, my kid does get the expectation mismatched, right? My kid does get their dysregulation met with regulation. My kid does get their dysregulation met with presence, and I'm positive that that is true as often as you can do it, it would be impossible to do it all the time. That's not even the goal, and the there's just some unique circumstances that need to occur in order for that neural glue to really soften, and the new learning to potentially kind of take hold, and there's like a sweet spot, actually, of dysregulation and regulation, and it's just really hard to kind of find that sweet spot, and we also can't really predict what that sweet spot is, so as you continue to listen to this episode, if you're feeling like, oh my gosh, I already do this, awesome, that means you have great practice, and that means what you need to do is just kind of keep doing it. Now, it can be helpful, it is not necessary, but it can be helpful to have some curiosity towards, well, what actually is your specific child's nervous system predicting? There's a lot that we can do to support our kids, even if we can't figure out exactly what that prediction is, but it does help us to pause and get curious about it. If nothing else, it actually helps us stay more regulated, but if we are able to get some good idea about what that prediction might be, it helps us get clearer on what the experience is that we want to try to offer our kids when that expectation is online, so really, truly, even though we're going to talk about how. How we might get clearer on what the predictions are that our kids are holding in their minds and their bodies and their nervous system. It's also true that you don't have to figure it out perfectly. 

Robyn: You don't need to know exactly what happened to cause this belief, or when, or why we're not writing diagnostic reports, or not trying to get into our kids' head and extract a like precise belief statement, and in fact, if we start to sort of tip in that direction with that energy, we've now tipped back towards fix-it energy, and if that starts to happen, we just want to take a breath and notice and bring our nervous system back into connection mode, where curiosity lives. All we want to do here is develop a working theory, like a rough map. If we landed in certainty, we would be back in fix-it mode. So we actually don't want to find ourselves feeling 100% certain. We want to feel like we are just having a working theory. Okay, so with that in mind, what are we actually looking for when we're trying to understand what our kids' nervous system is predicting? Predictions are always, and truly I mean, always about safety, connection, or both, and they are always about safety or connection from what's happening relationally, what's happening in our environment, and what's happening inside ourselves.

Robyn: So, it's, it's a curiosity about, am I safe with you? Are you going to show up for me? Am I safe in the world? Is the world a safe place to be? Is it predictable for the most part, or something like, am I a good kid, and can I believe in my own goodness? Okay, this, there's some sort of prediction about safety, connection from that has to do with ourselves internally, the environment, the world around us, or relationships in the world. This is somewhat easy to remember, because this is this - those are the same, like, three buckets of felt safety: right inside, outside, between. Now our kids aren't walking around consciously thinking things like, I believe adults will abandon me when I am at my very worst. They don't have access to that belief as a belief, and this is actually true about us as well. Like, we are running on predictions all the time, and they just feel true. We don't even know that we have those expectations or have those beliefs. I mean, we can do work to uncover them, but generally speaking, these like run in the background, and we don't even realize they're happening. That's totally true of our kids as well. Implicit memory doesn't feel like memory; it just feels like reality, and it's really hard to articulate that. So predictions that are underneath some of these stickiest behaviors might sound something like: Adults aren't safe, adults aren't available. I can't trust it. Anyone will show up for me. Something is wrong with me. I'm bad when I need something. Nobody comes. I'm all alone when things get really hard. I have to control what's happening around me, or something bad will happen, or I have to take care of myself, because no one else will. 

Robyn: Now, again, your child isn't almost certainly consciously thinking these things, consciously aware of having these thoughts, but their nervous system is acting as if, and it's responding as if, and it's having behaviors as if those things are true. I say this repeatedly as this show continues on, that this is not a time where we're really focusing on what I or someone else did to contribute to the development of this belief in my child. Sometimes kids have had really, really hard things that we would call traumatic or experiences of toxic stress that have led to these beliefs. Sometimes an experience happens that on the outside looking in, we would never label traumatic or toxic stress. We wouldn't even label it as, like, particularly noteworthy, and something about that experience, and exactly what was happening at that moment could contribute to the encoding of this belief that then stays really, really, really sticky, and sometimes just because of the way our brains and our nervous systems are, and a lot of our kids have brains and nervous systems that are unique in the world that they're living in isn't exactly constructed to meet the needs of their. Unique brain and their unique nervous system, and when that happens, it's very common. It's developmentally appropriate, even for kids to make meaning out of those things, as though something was wrong with them, or something was wrong with the caregiver, or something was wrong with the environment. Kids aren't having these experiences of, like, wow, my brain and my nervous system is so unique and so special, and this adult is working really hard to try to figure me out. They're just really, really struggling at that, and it's nobody's fault. It's just because we're two humans coming together and sort of like bumbling through the world. It would be great if kids had that thought, but for other developmental and attachment reasons, development of self, and all sorts of other kind of child development reasons, kids aren't having those kinds of thoughts. They're essentially, they are generally speaking, making meaning out of those experiences that are labeling themselves wrong, or the environment unsafe or their caregiver wrong or unsafe; it doesn't mean that that learning was accurate, but it does mean that that learning got stuck and is now like kind of really running the show. So, how do we figure out which prediction is kind of like running the program for your kid?

Robyn: We're going to walk through three detective questions, and you have to promise me you're going to hear these questions, and you're not going to approach them like a formula. They are invitations; they are offerings for us to move forward with some curiosity to start to see what the nervous system will reveal to us about what it's been organizing around, so detective question number one, what does this behavior seem to be protecting against? Behavior is protective, and I know that you know this, if you've been listening for a while, but I really want to be clear about that. Behavior is protective when your child is kind of stuck in one of these stickiest behaviors: lying, stealing, aggression, shutting down, controlling, you know, whatever it is for your unique child. It's not about their watchdog or their possum brain misbehaving or doing something wrong, it's doing exactly what their nervous system is designed to do. It is protecting against something that it has learned to expect. Our watchdogs and our possums are working so hard to take care of us, and oftentimes what we discover is that they're working overdrive, and they are working based on information that is outdated. We want to try to update it, but in order to update it, we have to kind of loosen up that really sticky neural glue, so that those memory networks can take in new information. So, instead of asking, Why does my kid keep doing this thing, we're gonna see if sometimes, occasionally, we could ask ourselves, what would happen if they didn't do this thing. 

Robyn: What does this behavior seem to be preventing? What is it working to protect against? So let me give you a couple real examples. A child who chronically lies, especially when it seems like they've done something really small, something you'd like kind of logically look at and think why would you even lie about that. The behavior is often protecting against the predicted experience of maybe rejection or punishment or loss of something like your love or approval or the relationship the nervous system has possibly learned in the past, and that doesn't mean that this actually happened to your kid in the past because nervous systems learn based on all sorts of reasons, but the nervous system may have learned in the past something like when I mess up, something really bad happens between me and the people that I really need, so it lies before that can happen, it's not about lying in the way we would traditionally or typically look at that, and actually we talked about that in my most recent webinar, where we looked at brain-based strategies for lying manipulation and verbal aggression, right? The lie happens, the behavioral impulse happens based on a prediction before the thing that they're predicting even happens. This is all just very protective behavior, and it's why we work so hard here on the Baffling Behavior Show, and in the work that I do in the club, and raising kids with big baffling behaviors, and the immersion program for professionals. 

Robyn: That's why we work so hard. Hard to just use information as info, just use the behavior as information, because we actually need to start trying to make change in the nervous system before the behavioral impulse even fires. A child who hoards food or has to control every detail about what's happening in the environment that behavior may be protecting against a predicted experience of not enough, like my needs won't be met, I have to take care of this myself, because no one else will, so the hoarding or the controlling could be the nervous system's very logical solution to a very old and very painful prediction. Now, also, it is possible that these predictions are because of something really bad or hard that happened to your kid, maybe they did have experiences of trauma and toxic stress in their past, but also sometimes the nervous system learned things that aren't necessarily based on what's actually happening. It can be kind of tricky like that. Think about a kid who becomes aggressive, maybe even specifically when connection is offered, when you try to get close, when a moment of warmth, like, happens, or maybe seems like on the cusp of happening, and then suddenly the behavior escalates, right?

Robyn: The one that that one behavior that can feel so painful, so confusing, but what that behavior is often protecting against is the prediction that maybe closeness leads to pain. Maybe it's possible that in the past connection was followed by an intensity of rupture or abandonment or harm. And again, sometimes kids have these experiences because of trauma and toxic stress, and sometimes kids have these experiences because of just regular normal childhood experiences, but when they happened, the circumstances were just kind of perfect for this learning to take place, and then get really stuck, so do you see how kind of on the surface these can all look like really different behaviors, but they're really just all about protection, and so that's the first question is about getting really curious about what the behavior is protecting against the second detective question is when does the behavior get better or disappear. This one's a clue, because when a child's window of tolerance is wider, when their nervous system has more capacity, those old predictions still exist, but they get triggered less often and with less intensity, so if you can notice the conditions under which your child is like more okay, you're getting information about what their nervous system really needs, and and what we can be really deliberate and intentional about offering to fill up those felt safety buckets, so think about it. Is your child more regulated in the morning before the demands of the day pile up? Are they more regulated after some time with you, specifically maybe after some one-on-one time with really low expectations? 

Robyn: Are they more regulated after physical movement in smaller environments with less sensory input, after calm, predictable weekends, when a specific person is or isn't around, now none of these things are the answer, but they are indeed clues, and if your child is noticeably more okay after, like, one on one, low demand time with you, then that's a clue that felt safety in the relationship with you is what their nervous system might be like most hungry for which could give you some information about what prediction might be running, if your child is noticeably more okay in smaller, quieter environments. That's a clue that sensory overwhelm is collapsing that window of tolerance really fast, and addressing that is part of the capacity building work, so you're looking for patterns. We're not necessarily drawing conclusions; we are just collecting data. And y'all, parenting is actually a lot like the work I used to do in the therapy office. We're always collecting data. A really great therapist is always in assessment mode. A really great therapist is always holding a lot of space for curiosity and a lot of space for being wrong and balancing both, like developing a treatment plan and having some ideas about what to do to help a client and staying really open to being co. Completely wrong about that. That's a pretty hard skill, and parenting can feel very similar, like getting to really know our kids a lot and have some ideas about what they need and what will be helpful to them, while also staying open that we might be completely wrong, and like holding those two things together is really crucial, I think. In, you know, good treatment planning in general, right? From a professional perspective, or good parenting in general, right? Like holding what we know, and then holding the possibility that we actually know nothing, right? That that's a great kind of place to straddle, and we want to be thinking all that, especially with regards to these really sticky behaviors. Okay. Detective question number three: in that activated moment, what does your child's nervous system seem to be expecting from you? Not what they say they want, not what they're asking for, but what does the nervous system seem to brace for?

Robyn: Do they seem to expect you to leave, to escalate, to be frightened of them, or to be disgusted by them, to give up, to disapprove, to try to talk them out of what they're feeling to fix it or to shut down whatever your child seems most braced for in those moments that's likely echoing the original prediction that's the old expectation running the program waiting to be confirmed expecting to be confirmed and something that's really super fascinating about the human condition is that we tend to behave in ways that make it more likely we are going to get our expectations confirmed, so what that means for us as parents is that if we could be really, really brave, we could examine our own reactions, because very, very often our reaction to our child's stickiest behaviors is confirming their expectation. So, again, we have to be very, very brave to do this, but ask ourselves, like, what? What do I tend to do? Do I get critical? Do I get scared? Do I get overwhelmed? Whatever it is that you do, to be clear, this doesn't make it your fault. I mean, just asking ourselves these questions is very brave, but if you know that you tend to get critical or you tend to get punitive or harsh, or even feel like some disgust in your body, and I want to really normalize that. I've probably almost every parent I've ever worked with at times acknowledges feeling disgust in their body towards their child. If we can look at what our expect, what we are likely to do, then we are possibly getting closer to understanding what our child is expecting us to do, and y'all, that kind of gives us our job description, because the unexpected experience, the mismatch, the thing that starts to really soften that neural glue over enough repetitions is being the exact opposite of what the nervous system is bracing for so, if your child's nervous system is bracing for you to leave, then the job is to stay, and not necessarily physically stay, stay energetically, stay regulated, stay present. 

Robyn: If your child's nervous system is braced for you to escalate, then again, the job is for you to remain actually regulated. If your child's nervous system is braced for you to be frightened of them, then our job is to be sturdy, to have this sense of I'm not scared of this, I can hold this, I've got us now. I'm going to pause again and say what this detective work is not, because I know you're already going to some hard places in your minds. This is not about figuring out, like, who hurt your child, assigning blame to their past, or to you, or to anyone else. Blame is unhelpful when it comes to making inflexible neural glue more flexible. Blame is not helpful, and that's my only interest, is supporting more flexibility in that neural glue, so that a new learning can be taken in by that neural network, and then change the program, right, because it changes the prediction. This isn't something your child needs to figure out or talk about or articulate. So, don't turn off this podcast and go ask them. They're probably not going to be able to answer, and I would say it's actually not really their job to answer. Okay, this is actually. Their map, and we are getting curious about it, but they are not obligated to give us the answer, and of course, then this is not something that you can get exactly right or need to get exactly right. We're working with rough hypotheses here, and we are going to be wrong sometimes, maybe even most of the time, and that's okay, because being wrong just means we get to refine our theory. It's not a verdict on you as a parent or on your child as a person. Being open to being wrong is a really important part of staying out of fix-it energy. Okay, so let's bring this all back to the thing I really want you to leave this episode with, once you have a rough working theory, even just a sense of, oh, I think my kids' nervous system is predicting that they're alone when things get hard, or, oh, I think they're predicting that adults can't be trusted when it really matters.

Robyn: When you can get even a rough sense of that, something will shift, not in your child, at least not at first. The shift first happens in you, because when behavior makes sense, it's harder to take personally. And when you stop taking it personally, something in your own nervous system relaxes, and when something in your nervous system relaxes, that fix it energy softens, not because you decided to release it, but because your neuroception changed. You're no longer reading your child as defiant or manipulative or refusing to trust. You're reading them as a nervous system working so hard to protect against something very painful that it learned a very long time ago, and your child's nervous system reads that shift in you, that's the thing neuroception doesn't miss it, it will read it, and here's the thing, I really, really, really want you to hear again. You don't need a precise map to offer the thing that is the unexpected, because the mismatched experience, the response that doesn't match the prediction, the thing that starts to soften that neural glue over enough repetitions, it's almost always going to be some version of the same thing, genuine regulation, genuine presence,  not performing okayness while activated on the inside, because neuroception again does really know the difference, but actually genuinely being in your body in this moment with this kid, we want to offer our kids the truth of I see you. I'm not frightened by this. I'm not going anywhere. I'm sturdy enough to be with you in your hardest place exactly as you are right now, I've got us, and that's it, y'all. That's the mismatched experience. That's what the nervous system didn't predict, and hasn't encoded yet, and needs enough repetitions to start believing that. And I know that you have done that a lot. 

Robyn: You have been able to stay present. You have been able to say, I see you. I'm not frightened by this, and I know that probably the circumstances just weren't quite what they needed to be in order for that prediction error to really be noticed by your child and that neural glue to be softened, and so now that we have an idea of what the circumstances are that we're looking for, we might be able to notice them, we might be able to be even more intentional about them, so we might be able to give our kids even more of these experiences than we already have, and we can hope for those things, while also not getting too connected to fix-it energy. The detective work is actually about loosening our own fix-it energy, because it helps us see our kids more clearly. It helps us understand what's happening instead of just reacting to it, and you don't have to wait until you've perfectly solved the puzzle to show up in this way, and in fact, you absolutely can't wait for that, because you will never perfectly solve the puzzle. It's actually not your job. Your job is to stay very, very. Curious to get some ideas, but also stay open to being completely wrong about them. Regulation, presence, sturdiness, the sense of I've got you. 

Robyn: Those are the things that are the antidote to the overwhelm and the aloneness that is almost certainly holding that neural network together with so much stickiness, and not because you've done something wrong, it's just because that's how it works, and also humans aren't perfect, we have all parented our kids in ways that we, you know, deeply regret or wish that we hadn't. That's just about being human. And when those things happen, what our kids are experiencing is a sense of being overwhelmed or alone. And so, if we can give them the antidote to that, right, we will start to give experiences, we will continue to give experiences, but maybe with more intentionality and more strategic ways. That doesn't mean having an agenda, right? Give some more experiences that will be the opposite of the prediction that's running their program, do all right, y'all. That's it. That's my three-part series on sticky behaviors. We will return back to this a lot, because memory, memory reconsolidation, and how we loosen up that really sticky neural glue, so that our kids can take in new learnings, and then change their predictions, is really at the core of all the work that we're doing together here.

Robyn: That's the current understanding of the neuroscience of how the brain changes, so we're going to keep coming back to it. I mean, we've been doing it for 270 episodes; we're just going to keep coming back to it, and keep coming back to it. And sometimes we'll articulate the science, like we did in these three episodes, and sometimes the science will just render underneath what we're talking about, while we talk about more practical things to actually do, and while we talk about how we do things practically without being driven by that fix-it energy, y'all understanding that mechanism matters. It matters so much because it changes how we see the behavior, and how you see the behavior changes how you show up, and how you show up is the mechanism, so learning the theory and being able to hold on to it when we are most dysregulated. That's the challenge; that's the important thing. So we're going to keep practicing right, because the theory shifts our nervous system, and if I can hold onto the theory when my child is the most dysregulated, which is exceptionally hard. 

Robyn: I'm saying that like this is no big deal, it's exceptionally hard, but when we can do that more often, we are giving more opportunities for the brain to take in a new learning and then start to develop new predictions. I'm going to invite you to just keep coming back, keep coming back to The Baffling Behavior Show. If you haven't already, hit subscribe in your podcast app, hit subscribe now, come back next week. If you're new around here, head back to the beginning. I've got a lot of episodes for you to check out. You can also go to RobynGobbel.com/podcast and use the search bar to find an episode that is about the specific thing that you're looking for. Now, of course, of course, of course, if you need more support, if you need help going beyond the theory and really practicing the implementation and really practicing and developing, strengthening our own stress response system, so that we can stay more regulated in response to our kids' significant dysregulation. Then I'm inviting you to come and join us in the club the next time the club is open, and if you're a professional and you want to be able to do this work with families, the families that you work with, then you want to go to RobynGobbel.com/immersion and get on the waiting list for the 2027 cohort of The Baffling Behavior Training Institute's Professional Immersion Program. All right, y'all, so you have a lot of options about where to go next. Where I am very hopeful you will go next is just right back here next week when another episode of The Baffling Behavior Show comes out. I will see you then.