Stealing {EP 138}

Today, we're going to talk about stealing, taking things without permission, taking things that don't belong to you, whatever you want to call it. And we're gonna talk about stealing because it is one of the most common questions that I get and I don't have a easy place to send people to about the behavior of stealing. So I want to be able to do that. I want to have one place I can send folks to explore in depth the behavior of stealing through this lens. And I also wanted to talk about stealing, because stealing is probably one of the best examples of why we have to, as parents, or professionals, or helpers, or whatever our role is why we have to use our x-ray vision goggles. Why we have to really stay focused on the fact that the behavior is just a cue or a clue to what's happening in the nervous system. We're going to use it as a trailhead that begins us down the path of discovering what is this behavior all about. And then we're going to tackle that. 

Now, I believe that about all behaviors, that we want to use behavior as a cue or clue, to give us some information about what's happening in the body, and in the brain, and in the nervous system. And then we want to address that. But stealing in particular is a excellent example of how we can't just make up behavioral strategies to address stealing without knowing what's underneath it. There are so many possibilities of what is contributing to kids taking things that don't belong to them, taking things without asking, stealing other people's belongings. 

I always am asking myself, is this behavior about regulation, connection, felt safety skills, or some combination of those? Meaning, does this child have the skills like have they been taught the appropriate behavior and with regards to stealing? The socially appropriate behavior is not to take things that don't belong with to you without asking permission, right? Without getting consent, without crossing other people's boundaries by taking their things. To have any idea if our kids have the skills that they need to demonstrate the behavior that we're hoping they will demonstrate, we have to know what the skills are that go into that behavior. So what are some of the skills that we all really take for granted that contribute to us, like me and you, not taking things that don't belong to us? 

One of the first skills that we have is that we have a concept of- an agreed upon concept, not just my own concept, but like a socially agreed upon concept of ownership. We have concepts about boundaries. Like what's mine, and what's yours. And for there to be a concept about belongingness with boundaries, like what's mine and what's yours, that has to sit on top of understanding of our own personal autonomy. Like I am me, and you are you, and we are separate. Kids with attachment trauma in their history sometimes actually are lagging on their sense of self, and their sense of self as an autonomous person, and a sense of self as an autonomous person separate from other people. 

Now, imagine this, I know this is so hard to imagine, if you don't have a felt sense of this, this is such a hard thing to imagine. But if I don't have a really solid connection to me as my own autonomous self who is separate from you, who is also your own autonomous self, how would I have any way to conceptualize belongingness or ownership, right? For something to be mine or for something to be yours, and for me to have to ask permission to have that thing that you consider yours, I have to have pretty solid, energetic boundaries that help me feel into I'm me and you're you. Now, again, that is commonly disrupted in kids who have early attachment trauma. Because the way that infants learn that they are their own separate, unique individual, and that they can be their own separate, unique individual while still being in relationship with somebody, the way that we develop our connection to those truths is in the co-regulated attachment relationship. 

So if you suspect you might have a kid who actually sort of struggles with mine versus yours, and those boundaries can feel really blurry, or can feel really rigid, like, it's hard to come together in a relational space. Then you are absolutely 100% in the right place. Because parenting and being in relationship in the way we talk about here on this podcast, with a focus on felt safety, connection, regulation, co-regulation, which is a like non negotiable part of the attachment cycle, we can't tease out attachment from co-regulation. So parenting in this way, even past the time period in which our kids are developing their sense of self in regards to attachment in relationship, which tends to be like 0 to 12, or 0 to 18 months. But continuing to parent in this way of have-  with a focus on co-regulation, connection and felt safety, that is creating the neural patterns that our kids need to begin to, essentially, like make a map of themselves as a separate, autonomous person who also is in relationship and therefore impacted by relationship and impacts others and their relationship with them. And if those ways of being like the way of embodying those truths are in any way developmentally delayed, then that is going to contribute, likely, to behaviors like stealing, or taking things that don't belong to you, or behaviors that are just emerged from having really poor boundaries because the child doesn't yet have really solid psychological boundaries. And again, you're in the right place because parenting with regulation, co-regulation, connection, and felt safety is exactly how we strengthen our kids' psychological boundaries, and their sense of self, their sense of autonomous self, as well as their sense of self in relationship. 

Now, let's also look at the behavior of stealing through my idea of how regulated, connected kids who feel safe do well or behave well. And let's break down the behavior of sealing through each of those: felt safety, connection, and regulation. To have the impulse control to not take something that doesn't belong to me but that I want, I need to have some felt safety on board. I need to have some sense of safety. My nervous system needs to be in what we call here, connection mode versus protection mode. When children's sense of felt safety is a little, let's just say like a little woogity, a little tenuous, a little vulnerable. Those kids have a hard time trusting some of the core truths that underlie not taking things that don't belong to you. Things like, I trust that my needs will get met in the future. I trust that other people will meet my needs. I trust that other people see my needs, care about those needs, and will meet those needs. I trust that I don't have to take matters into my own hands to meet my needs. Felt safety also contributes to the trust that maybe I'm not going to get what I want right now or get my needs met right now, but that doesn't mean I won't ever get my needs met. Kids with histories of felt safety with connection to themselves and to a secure attachment relationship know that sometimes we don't always get what we need or what we want, and that's okay. Because the uncomfortable feelings that go along with not getting what we want, those will end. It isn't going to annihilate us, those feelings won’t annihilate us. And the feeling of satisfaction of getting what I need or want in the future will come again. Those are core beliefs, generally speaking, of kids with secure attachment. Kids with more insecure attachment, especially moving into more like disorganized attachment, they don't have the experiences in their past to allow them to have mental models or implicit memory of “I'm going to get my needs met and if I don't get my needs met, sometime, I'm going to be okay. And it doesn't mean I will ever get my needs met ever again”. 

So if I'm someone who is worried about getting my needs met, or who believes the only way I can get my needs met is by taking matters into my own hands, or if I have the felt sense of the discomfort that comes along with not getting my needs met, if I have the felt sense that that is going to last forever, and it will never change, then yeah, I am probably going to take things that don't belong to me, take things I want, that don't belong to me. Now I know it can sound kind of wild to think that some folks can get the felt sense of their nervous system, that this feeling I have right now of not getting what I need or what I want, it's going to last forever, it will never go away. I know that can seem like just sort of bananas to think about. And let me just say that that is a real experience of somebody who has a lot of experiences in their past of not having their needs met, having their co-regulation needs met. Not necessarily those same- those are the only circumstances that can lead to that felt sense in the nervous system. It is the circumstances that I am most familiar with because of my history working primarily with folks and having expertise with kids with histories of significant, you know, attachment and developmental trauma, and relational toxic stress. That's just what I know the most about. 

So a lot of times stealing or taking things that don't belong to you are, at their core, about a lack of felt safety. Now, once I've shifted into protection mode and I am no longer feeling safe, I can move up and down on that continuum of feeling not safe. Dr. Perry talks about that as a state dependent functioning in his arousal continuum. That you can feel a little bit not safe, or you can feel a lot not safe. And as the lack of safety increases- or maybe it's better to say as safety decreases, the brain shifts in that state dependent functioning and along the arousal continuum. Now, you might not know what I'm talking about, I'll put some resources in the show notes to bring you back to some episodes that are all about the stress response system. But if you are familiar in any way with like my watchdog and possum model, right, that like a little bit of stress, brings your kid into the what’s up watchdog. A lot of stress is going to bring them further down the watchdog pathway to like the Ready for Action watchdog, or the Back Off watchdog, or the Attack watchdog. 

Now, the reason I'm bringing this up right now is the further we go down that continuum, right, the further we go from ready to action, to back off, to attack, and there is a decrease in felt safety, a decrease in regulation, an increase and dysregulation. There is a shorter and shorter and shorter ability to be with the future. So some more unsafe the nervous system is, the more dysregulated the nervous system is, the less we're able to have a delayed response or delayed gratification, or trust that this thing that I want now, I'll be able to get later. There is a sense, the- again, the more unsafe I'm feeling, the more dysregulated I'm feeling, that time kind of collapses and there's this sense of I must have it right now. Now, that's not about being selfish. That's not about poor character. That's about level of arousal in the stress response system, and it is an adaptive and appropriate response. So if you have a kid who is kind of chronically high on the watchdog continuum, then they have a very limited ability to basically just wait. And if they can't wait, they're gonna take what they want now. So that's another reason that could be contributing to stealing. 

In a similar vein, the more dysregulated you are, the further down the arousal continuum are, the less likely you have to think about what's going to happen in the future. Meaning, what's going to happen if I take this thing that doesn't belong to me, right? The more dysregulated we are, we're only concerned with what's happening right now, which is I want this thing, I'm going to take this thing. We aren’t thinking about the consequence, and I really mean consequence, not punishment, right? We're not thinking about the impact of taking this thing that doesn't belong to me, because I'm too far down the arousal continuum to have the ability. Literally, to have the ability, the brain functioning, to think about and certainly to care about what's going to happen in the future. So that sense of like, why don't they ever learn from the consequence? Which you probably mean punishment there, that's why. So if I'm going to have the impulse control not to take something that doesn't belong to me, probably part of what's factoring into that is I'm aware of the longer term impact of that behavior. And also, I care about the longer term impact of that behavior. So that could be the impact of the behavior on the relationship, that could be the impact of the behavior on law enforcement, right? There's all sorts of things that factor into this that help me comply with the social rules of don't take things that don't belong to you. 

Now, let's talk briefly about connection. Because for me to not take something that doesn't belong to me and happens to belong to someone else, in addition to me having a sense of me and you, right? I also have to care about the impact that that's going to have on the relationship. And I absolutely know a lot of folks who are willing to sacrifice the impact that that bear- that behavior is going to have on the their relationship, because what they want is more important. So what that sometimes means is we have to really work on strengthening the relationship, really growing the neural circuitry that's involved in empathy. Because empathy is what allows us to kind of like make like a mental map of the other person, you know, what is their experience. And then we have to care about that mental map enough to not do what we want to do, right? So when I am working with kids, and it seems like a large portion of why we're struggling with this behavior of stealing, taking these don't belong to us, is that they just really don't care about the impact that it has on the other person. That lets me know we need to really strengthen that connection in that relationship and think about how that child is experiencing or maybe not experiencing the goodness of being in connection. Some kids experience connection as terrifying and dangerous. And so part of their behavior could be about keeping folks out of connection with them. 

So I’m thinking we're starting to conceptualize how this one behavior can have a lot of underlying causes: felt safety, regulation, connection. All of those things contribute to kids not taking things that don't belong to them. And we can also just go back to just regular, straight up impulse control. Like impulse control, and the ability to pause, and the ability to wait, very much higher level brain skill, and often needs a ton of scaffolding. That could also be about felt safety, but it could just be like a straight up executive functioning challenge in the child's brain that we really need to help them kind of grow that space between, like, want, or thought, and action, right? They need a bigger pause. Now, again, if that describes your child, excellent, you're in the right place, because you know what grows the pause? What grows the pause is experiences of co-regulation, experiences of felt safety, experiences of connection. All of those experiences are quite literally wiring up the brain to be able to have a bigger, longer pause. And then inside that bigger and longer pause, can be the thought of, “oh, if I take this thing without asking, what's going to happen? What- how is that going to impact the relationship? How does that impact my friend, or my teacher, or the police, right?” Inside that pause is where all those, kind of, cortical thinking skills can come in. 

Stealing is also a behavior that is often coupled with a big old dump of dopamine. Like feel good pleasure neurochemicals, and hormones in the brain for a couple of different reasons. One, because we got what we wanted. And when we get what we want, or even anticipate and get what we want, that produces an experience in our nervous system that is pleasurable. And we are more likely, then, to do things that our body, and our brain, our nervous system experiences as pleasurable. Now, also getting away with it can feel pleasurable. Now for some folks, getting away with it feel- that's when like the guilt and the not pleasurable feelings can emerge. But for some folks, and again, I don't really think this has to do anything with character. I think this has to do more with just like, basic inborn temperament. For some folks, there's like a thrill of getting away with something that maybe they weren't supposed to do. Like these kids maybe have higher risk tolerance, they enjoy risky behavior more, they're doing more thrill seeking because there is something pleasurable about that ‘getting away with it’ sensation. Now, again, if you think this applies to your kid, please refrain from making characterological assessments based on that. It's really about dumping happy brain chemicals and we all have kinds of different things that dump those pleasure chemicals. So for some kids, taking things, whatever that specific thing is, and then getting away with it, is really lighting up those pleasure and reward centers. 

Okay, so thus far, I have tried to make a case for why behaviors are just a cue or a clue, and we want to use them as a jumping off point for being curious about what's really going on here. If we don't really know what's going on, and we kind of tackle the wrong problem. Like let's say, we're trying to tackle this as an impulsivity problem, but it's really a connection problem, or, actually, the opposite is more likely to happen where we are taking the ceiling very, very, very personally. And assuming that this is a connection problem, when what it really is, is a maybe sense of self problem due to those early attachment disruptions, or it's just a straight up, impulsivity problem. And almost always, none of these things like exist in silos, right? Like there's some combination of all of these things. But really, we can't make a plan about how to address stealing if we don't have some idea about what's underneath it. 

Okay, so now let's talk about what do we do about stealing? While, again, I can't really give you a specific flowchart of how to handle stealing, because it really depends on a lot of factors we just talked about. So let's kind of just ground back into what we know to be true about parenting with connection, and co-regulation, and felt safety. And that the very first thing we do is notice our own experience. And try to stay regulated, though not necessarily calm. Stealing is a huge boundary violation. Whether it's intended to be a boundary violation or not is, meaning whether it's deliberate or not, is something we can explore. But whether it's deliberate or not, it feels like a huge boundary violation. If you want to be able to address this stealing from your owl brain, which you do want to because you want the behaviors to get better. And so if you want the behavior to get better, we actually address behaviors as much as possible with regulation, with our own owl brains, because that's how our kids' brains will change. Okay, so we want to be noticing what's coming up for us, what's being triggered in us, and we want to notice that with curiosity, and without any shame or judgment towards ourselves, even if you feel like you are an expert in understanding nervous system behavior, and you know, what's driving behavior, and you really understand trauma informed parenting. Even if all those things are true, it's still possible that you're going to be triggered by stealing. That's normal, that makes you human. So don't shame yourself for that. We want to notice our experience, how are we responding implicitly? Like what is being awoken in us? What sensations, what feelings, what thoughts are in our head? And we want to notice those, and we want to ask ourselves, are those things true? Is my child growing up to be a thief and a liar, and is inevitably going to end up in jail? Does my child have absolutely no regard for other people and their boundaries? And if that is true, is it because they have a character deficit, or because they don't have the neural circuitry to be able to make maps of other people in their minds and then have that map make a meaning for them, and then impact their behavior or their choices that they make? Okay? So we want to get really, really curious about what meaning we're making out of our children's behavior. And, again, we want to go back to it’s just a cue or a clue. Do I need to support my child's regulation? Do I need to support their connection? Do I need to support their felt safety? And in the meantime, because none of those things are quick fixes, in the meantime, we're going to ask ourselves the question, what do I need to do so that my child's success, not stealing, would be inevitable? Now, I'm not even saying that you're in control of that, or that it would even be good to do that. But asking that question sure does give a lot of information. What Does my child need for success to be inevitable? They would need to have absolutely no access to taking things that don't belong to them. They would need 100% supervision. I mean, I don't know what the answer is, I'm just suggesting what some possibilities are. 

Now, for one, that helps us stay focused on what our child needs as opposed to their negative behavior, right? Even if we can't meet that need, right? Even if we can't give our child 100% supervision, if we know that what they need for their success to be inevitable would be 100% supervision, then we can hold into context much better, and therefore get less dysregulated. ourselves when our child isn't successful at not stealing. Now, again, needing constant supervision in order to not do the wrong thing isn't about trust. It's not a character deficit. It's about the level of co-regulation that they need. It's about their inability to keep that co-regulation internalized, and felt in their nervous system when you're not there. When you're there and you're supervising, there's the co-regulation that's needed for the owl brain to be in charge, and not do things they’re not supposed to do. And then when they lose that co-regulation, because the inevitable like you have to go to the bathroom, or, you know, they're going to school, and they're not underneath constant adult supervision. When that co-regulation dips below what their co-regulation needs are, then it makes a lot of sense that they're not able to use higher level brain functioning. Like impulse control, like thinking about the long term consequence, like thinking and caring about the impact on other people. It makes a lot of sense that those pieces kind of like, fall off the wagon, right? So sometimes what our kids need in order to be successful at not stealing is more co-regulation, more supervision, less distance between themselves, and a regulated adult that they feel connected to and is offering up felt safety. 

Here's what I want to remind you: we all want what we want, when we want it. The reason that I don't take what I want, when I want it, if it doesn't belong to me, is because I have the felt safety, that I'll be okay without it. I have impulse control. I have regulatory skills to get me through the feeling of disappointment, like we talked about last week. I have a felt sense that those feelings of disappointment will end, that I'll be okay. There are so many things that go into me not just taking what I want, when I want it because I want it. The truth is, we all want what we want, when we want it. And as we- we develop the skills and the regulatory capacity to not just take what we want simply because we want it. 

So we want to keep thinking about that. What are the lagging skills? How can I help my kid increase their regulation, increase their connection, increase their felt safety, increase their sense of self? And how do I structure the environment, or shift the amount of scaffolding or co-regulation that they're getting in the meantime in order to help them be successful until they grow in these lagging skills that they have. And that's my job as the adult! My job as the adult is to, as much as possible, stay in my own owl brain so that I can really support the growth of my child's owl brain. Because people with big strong owl brains, they have impulse control, they understand cause and effect, they understand all the impacts this behavior has on relationship and they care about it. Okay? So it all comes back to regulation, connection, felt safety. Really staying focused on growing that owl brain and providing the environmental structures and support to help that child be successful in the meantime. 

Now I know I've very likely did not touch on the specifics of what's happening in your home, or in your family, or with the clients that you're working with. That's going on with regards to stealing or taking things that don't belong with them. But my hope is that understanding a little bit more about the neurobiology of this behavior can really help you create your own plan that is specific to your child or the child that you work with, and the unique complexities of them and the relationship. That's always my hope that I'm really empowering you to feel like you're the child's expert. Not me, I'm not your child's expert. I want you to feel empowered to become your child's expert. And really, that's only secondary to your child, because they're their expert. Of course, we're always staying open and curious to them, and what's going on from them, and learning from them, and hearing what they're telling us about themselves and their needs. 

If you do need help teasing out some of the intricacies or some of the specifics to your family, your situation, your child, you might consider coming to join us over in The Club. That's partially what we do in The Club is we have the opportunity like in the forum, or in our Ask Anything sessions, to really kind of dive a little bit deeper into your specific situations. So we can kind of workshop it all together and not just me helping you, but like everybody in the group helping. So if it feels like you could really use that kind of support in taking a lot of these concepts and applying them to your unique situation, that's an option for you. The other piece that we're doing in The Club is that we, the grownups, are getting a lot of connection and co-regulation, so that we have stronger owl brains. And then we can use our owl brains to, like make better decisions and choices about how to help our very unique child. Because again, you are your child's expert, you know your child. I just happen to know a lot about the neuroscience of behavior. I tried to give you all of that, so that you can take that and use it to help make choices in your family. 

Also, if you didn't know, I always post a summary of every podcast over on my website. And I always put the- the URL, a clickable link, in the show notes of the podcast. So in your podcast app, you can go and look at the show notes, and there should be a clickable link, or you can go directly to my website, read a summary of the episode, as well as grab the full transcript. So if you want to remember things, write things down, or refer back to things more easily, that might be a really great resource for you. So, yeah, just look at the show notes, you can click right through to my website, we have the transcripts up for most podcasts. I know like some of the older podcasts we're still working on playing catch up with but we've been transcribing podcasts for a long time. So, you have to go pretty far back in the archives to find an episode that doesn't have a transcription yet, and we're always working on them. 

Alright, y'all, I think that's it for today. It's been wonderful, as always, to be here with you. There’s these moments, you know, and I sit down in front of the mic and yeah, I'm alone in my office. But even when I'm alone, when I sit down, and I move that microphone over to be in front of me and I hit record, I get this sense in my nervous system of being with you. And I hope that you also get that when you hit play. Because that's what really matters is the sense of connection, the sense of being with, and it is my absolute most favorite thing about podcasting is all the doors that it opens up, all the people that it allows me to be with, and all you have to do is press play. And it feels good for me too, to know the- the connection that I send out into the world. And I receive it back from so many of you. So thank you, thank you, thank you for being here, for pressing play, for wanting to show up for the kids in your life in a little bit different way, whether that be the kids in your family or the kids in your practice, it really matters. I really believe that the work that we're doing in our families matters, of course, to our kids and to our family, but it matters beyond that. It matters on a global scale. I mean, can you imagine what it would be different, if we could see all behaviors through this lens of regulation, connection, and felt safety and of course, still set boundaries, really solid boundaries. Some behaviors really bad, and it needs- it is hurtful. And it needs a really solid boundary set, of course. And when I just imagine like how things can be different, not just for our kids, right? If everybody you know, was being with our kids in this way, but- but for everybody, including ourselves. 

So you're a huge part of this movement. I'm so, so grateful for you. I’d be so honored if you would share the podcast with whoever could benefit from thinking about behavior through this relational neuroscience lens. And another way that you can help the podcast get shared with others is to just very quickly, inside your podcast app, go and rate or review the show. That helps the show get recommended to more folks, and that's good for our kids. Alright, y'all, it's been wonderful to be with you today and I will see you back here next week!