The Summertime Scaries: How and why structure is important and what to do about screen time.

Summertime can be a magical time of reduced expectations, breaks from schedules, and slower mornings. However, with all the freedom and magic, it can often bring with it increased anxiety, behavioral dysregulation, and the dreaded “b” word, BOREDOM. Kids with complex developmental trauma, those that have had transitional care, or even biological kids with neurodiversity are much more likely to experience increased dysregulation in the summer. It is important to understand why, to help us build empathy for these difficult behaviors, and to have some tricks and tools to help provide more support to our summertime strugglers.

The why comes back to the brain. When kids have early developmental trauma, meaning a traumatic event(s) that occurs during key stages of development, it changes the way the brain is wired.  These traumatic events can be anything from an infant domestic adoption placement to transitional care with various/inconsistent caregivers, abuse and /or neglect, etc. Developmental trauma shifts a child’s sense of safety. Regardless of their physical safety, their feeling of safety, or felt safety, has changed and become more vulnerable. This ultimately causes a child to frequently and easily shift into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Our kiddos with early trauma can quickly go into one of these places and they show us through their behavior. They may become more impulsive, escalate emotions very quickly, show aggression, become very lazy and unmotivated, become easily upset, and generally struggle to appear and feel regulated. In the same token, neurodivergent kids’ brains are also wired differently, their neural networks operate atypically and can create impulsivity, anxious behavior, and dysregulation.  We tend to see these things show up more frequently and with greater intensity in the summertime because kids are often losing the structure and consistency that is provided every day at school. A consistent routine, knowing what to expect, and knowing when their needs will be met provides a great sense of regulation and security. For example, children in school know when their snacks will be, when their meals will occur, when they will get to move their body, when they will get to rest, and when they need to engage their brain. And they know how long they will have in each of these areas. When that schedule is removed, we often see an increase in anxiety and dysregulation, because they are unsure when these needs will be met. Often our kids are not yet mature enough to identify or say exactly what they need, but they will show us through their behavior that a need is being unmet.

So, as parents and caregivers, what do we do? How do we embrace the freedom of the summer but create structure to meet needs and reduce anxiety? This will look differently for every family, because every family has different resources available to them. However, there are two key elements that every family can utilize and those are: attunement and consistency. Attunement is what a parent utilizes to know what their kid needs more or less of. For example, some kids need a lot of activity and engagement while other kids need more downtime. Parents take what they have learned of their child’s needs through attunement, (and sometimes we guess until we figure it out, because kids are hard), and create a schedule that they can maintain consistently for their child. The best schedules provide consistency around meal and snack times, movement, rest, brain engagement, and socialization.

Additionally, summertime always brings about big asks for the beloved screentime. Kids who struggle with dysregulation, whether that is from neurodiversity or trauma, can experience exacerbated behaviors with the use of a lot screentime. Sometimes even though our child asks for it, they are not yet developmentally mature enough to handle the level of sensory input and engagement that comes from screentime. However, if it is unavoidable, and/or if your child is able to enjoy screentime without a total system failure, there are some things that parents can do to help screentime go more successfully. This is another area where structure will help big time. Go ahead and set a consistent structure around when, under what circumstances, and for how long your child can use screentime, and then hold that structure consistently. This will help with frequent asks and help your child manage their own expectations around when screentime will happen. Create a good system for titrating your child away from screentime. Provide a verbal warning as screen time is nearing its end, this may require having your child give you eye contact or repeating back what you said so that you can confirm they heard you. Then move towards gently helping your child transition out of what they’re doing. Sit down with them, provide gentle touch to help bring them back to their reality, like a hand on their back or knee, enter into their world by asking a couple of questions, provide another verbal reminder and then as they turn off their device have a good activity to transition to afterwards, like a snack or game with you, whatever your time will allow.

If you have more questions about how to make the summer work more smoothly for your family, please reach out to one of our team members. We would love to help you address the individual needs of your family.