Regulation Strategies for Kids with Jeanette Yoffe

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Today’s guest is so special to me, because she is the person who taught me how to become the parent I am today. She’s basically my Darlynn. I’m so excited to introduce you to Jeanette Yoffe, who is here to talk about regulation strategies for kids.

Jeanette is a licensed marriage and family therapist. She's an adoptee, and she focuses on kids who have experienced trauma, attachment disruption, been in the foster care system, or were adopted. In addition to her direct work with families, she has an amazing book out called The Traumatized and At Risk Youth Toolbox, which includes 160 different therapeutic exercises that anyone can do to help kids process their big feelings.

I first met Jeanette when Lincoln (my oldest son) was almost 5 years old. At that time, I was so desperate to be a good parent and not be a rageful mom and fuck up my kid.

I truly think of her as an angel that came into my life at exactly the right time. She was our family’s therapist, and she introduced me to an entirely new framework for parenting and relating to my kids. 

Meet Jeanette Yoffe

Jeanette loves all kids, but her heart is truly with foster children. She says that a lot of the work she does now comes from trying to be what she needed as a kid. 

Jeanette first went into therapy herself when she was a 13-year-old with suicidal ideation. For the first 15 months of her life, she lived with her birth family, but it was deemed unsafe for her to stay with her mother, who was struggling with mental illness. Then, she spent 6 ½ years in foster care in 3 different homes. Finally, she was placed in another home to be adopted at the age of 7 ½. 

She says, “Those frequent moves had a great impact on me and my nervous system and my ability to trust and feel secure in any relationship with any parent. Even when I was adopted, I kept asking my mother, ‘When are you going to give me away?’ Because that's all that I knew.”

When Jeanette was 13, she was living with her adoptive family, which included 2 adopted siblings and a foster child, who had visits with her birth mother. Jeanette started to wonder, “Where is my birth mother? Why is she not coming back for me?” The conclusion she came to was that she must really be unlovable and deficient in some way. 

When she watched that foster child be reunified with her mother, Jeanette started questioning her life and her existence. She experienced anxiety and depression. She didn’t know what to do with those feelings. Her self esteem plummeted.

Also around this time, Jeanette wrote a suicide note to her best friend and said, “Tonight I'm gonna do it.” Thankfully, her friend told her mother, and she started therapy. 

Compassion was the biggest piece of healing for Jeanette. She says, “Therapy really changed my life and helped me really make sense of what happened to me. Once I started having compassion for what I'd been through, I could start feeling a sense of relief.” This is now at the root of her work with kids and families.

The PACE Model

This model was created by Daniel Hughes. He teaches it as “PACE your child”. Jeanette teaches parents to “PACE yourself” first. Just as in the Calm Mama Process, you want to regulate yourself first so that you can be compassionate toward your child.

You can do these steps in any order. 

P: P3 - Be patient, present, and playful.

A: Acceptance - Always convey, “I accept you, I love you”.

C: Curiosity - What’s happening? This is all about your tone.

E: Empathy

Let’s dive a little deeper into some of the components of PACE and why they work.

Playfulness actually releases dopamine - a feel-good hormone that will help you stay regulated. 

Conveying your unconditional love and acceptance separates the child from the behavior. You may not love what they’re doing, but you love them. Your child is not their behavior. And their behavior is not a reflection or a rejection of you. It is a strategy they are using to cope with their feelings. 

Curiosity helps your child feel safe. It’s the tone that you really want to understand what’s going on with them (not the critical, “What is wrong with you?”). Your curiosity actually opens up executive functioning in their brain. 

Empathy and compassion help our kids make sense of themselves. In this way, we can help them build a massive amount of awareness of why they act the way they act and what to do about it.

Paying attention to your child’s facial expressions and nonverbal cues is also important and helpful as you practice PACE. Maybe they don’t want to be playful right now. Or maybe you’re showing up a little more aggressive than you want to, or the tone of your voice is pushing them away. It’s like a dance. Make adjustments as you go.

Regulation Strategies for Kids

Situations in our lives trigger stress. When we try to push that stress down and repress it, it compounds and creates anxiety. Jeanette explains that in the same way, compressing internalized anger becomes suicidal ideation.

The solution is to externalize those feelings. To bring them outside of ourselves. Jeanette’s book has a lot of great strategies for doing this. There are tons of creative, even playful, ways of taking what’s inside and putting it outside in a way that you can see, experience, manipulate, or touch. 

Jeanette encourages parents to practice these strategies on themselves first, then teach them to their kids. Here are some to try.

The Shamewich

This also comes from Daniel Hughes. Jeanette explains that kids with trauma have a lot of shame. One example of this is a kid that is struggling with a homework assignment and ends up repeating to themself, “I’m stupid.” We want to help them separate themselves from that feeling of shame, bring that feeling out, externalize it.  The kid is not the problem. The assignment is the problem.

Jeanette explains the shamewich like this: 

• Bread - The bread of the shamewich is on the bottom. The bread is a loving, kind voice that tells you, “You’re a good person. You’re doing the best you can”. 
• Fillings - The insides of the shamewich (turkey, lettuce, pickles, tomato…whatever you like) are all the things you’re doing wrong or the mistakes you’re making. Pile them on there.
• Bread - Then, you add the top piece of bread, which is another serving of compassion. “You’re doing the best you can. You’re figuring things out”, whatever a best friend would say to you to lift you up.

This helps to separate your true self from your thoughts, behaviors, and circumstances. You are the bread, not all the stuff in between.

Storytelling is also a great addition to the shamewich. Tell your kid about a time when you were young and made a similar mistake. Let them know that you learned from it, too. 

The Stress Bag

A core part of Jeanette’s work involves creating tangible toolkits that kids can use to work through emotions. For example, a stress bag, anger bag, or sad bag. 

She explains that feelings don’t have a structure. They can get really big and take over. So she uses these bags to help kids contain and cope with their feelings.

If you’re creating a stress bag, inside are index cards with stress busters and stress relief tools. One example Jeanette shared is the stress ball bubble wrap. She tells the child to think about all the cells in their body and that cortisol is a stress cell. Then, they twist the bubble wrap while they imagine all the stress they’re holding in their body and pop it one by one. 

Another example of a stress buster is name it to tame it. The child tells you about something they’re stressed about. They voice the stressor and release it. Or, have them yell into a poster tube and put the cap on - trapping their stress inside.

Other items that are great for a stress bag include play doh, bubbles, and drawing paper.

You can even have fun choosing items and making stress bags together. One for mom, one for the kid. Keep the bag visual and clearly labeled in the child’s room. At times when you aren’t stressed, practice the exercises together.

Of course, not every activity will work for everybody, so try things and see what works for you and your kid. 

Here are some more simple stress busters:

• Stretch like a cat
• Fall on the bed backward 5 times
• Pretend to be a statue in a museum
• Stand on your tippy toes and walk around
• Smile really big in the mirror
• Take 5 big, deep belly breaths
• Tighten your body and release it
• Go up to someone in your house and make a funny face

The Anger Bag

Jeanette says, “Anger is the easiest emotion to have. It protects us from feeling grief, sadness, and shame.” So an anger bag is a great place to start. Creating this bag with your kid normalizes feeling angry and brings in some playfulness and modeling. 

It’s hard to know exactly what to do with a big feeling. But emotions are like the weather. They change frequently. Sometimes all you need to do is sit in it, witness it, and the brain and body will shift on their own.

I want to leave you with a few final words. Jeanette shared a recent story of sitting in discomfort with her own son. Here are some of the phrases she used with him that you can borrow for yourself:

• I’m here for you,
• I hear you.
• I get it.
• This is really hard.
• We’re going to get through this together.

This week, I hope you’ll practice some of these phrases on yourself and with your kids. Try out a few stress busters and let me know how it goes!

You’ll Learn:

• How to use the PACE Model to support yourself and your child
• Some of Jeanette’s favorite phrases for connecting with your kid and their behavior (and a few to avoid)
• 7 nonverbal cues to pay attention to
• 12+ strategies to help regulate the nervous system 

Resources:

• Episode 200: My Infertility & Adoption Story
• Daniel Hughes & the PACE Model

Connect with Jeanette Yoffe:

• Get the book: The Traumatized and At Risk Youth Toolbox
• Learn more about Jeanette’s work on her website: https://www.jeanetteyoffe.com/
• Follow her on Instagram @jeanetteyoffe
• Watch her YouTube channel