The Overloaded Kid
Your child isn't choosing this. Their tide is already rising.
You might recognize your child in a story about a girl who looked — from the outside — like she was choosing to withdraw, shut down, fall apart over things that shouldn't matter. But the story takes us inside her head and shows us what nobody around her could see: her entire internal system was already overwhelmed. She wasn't choosing her behavior. She was wading through water nobody else could see, just trying to survive with what she had left.
Your child is carrying a full load before the hard moment even starts. By the time you're asking them to do something — even something small, even something reasonable — the tide is already covering them.
You didn't raise it. You just arrived when it was already waist-deep. And once you can see that, everything about how you respond changes.
Check your inbox — I go deeper on what's actually driving this, and the one episode I'd start every Overloaded Kid parent with.
Dr. Kristi Clarke is a psychologist, behavior analyst, and mom to a kid who changed everything she thought she knew about parenting. [Learn_more_→]
Your Kid Isn’t Broken. Your Parenting Isn’t Broken
Sometimes, we’re just asking our fish to climb trees.
