Parents routinely intellectualize with two-year-olds whose prefrontal cortex isn’t online yet. “The kid is 100% responding to the emotional presence of their parent — they’re not responding to the words.” Joe watched this consistently: “You get wound up, they get wound up. You calm down, they calm down.”
His daughter Una would grab his face and make him look at her when he was not present, sometimes saying “I love you Daddy” — her way of restoring the co-regulated field. Children feel safe when there’s emotional connection with their parents; when they don’t feel it, they freak out and need to regulate through emotions.
Children who feel safe at home will “hold it all together” elsewhere and then release everything when they return — not because they’re out of control, but because they feel safe enough to regulate. “They’re releasing emotions so they can get back to connection.” If you sit in loving attention of their emotional experience, they will come back to connection every time. “They just know how to do it — the bigger problem is that we don’t.”
Kids are “full feeling machines in a dream state” until their intellect comes online around age eight. Parenting well requires living from their point of view, not projecting your adult framework onto them.
Related Concepts
- Connection is the core of parenting
- Attunement regulates both nervous systems
- Model emotions for children