Today I'm going to talk to you guys about something called the “Safe Place.”
So the safe place is actually something that I get the most negative comments about. In fact, it's the topic that I get the ONLY negative comments about. I seriously don't get very many negative comments about the stuff that I teach, except for this so on Instagram, Facebook, and on my blog I've gotten comments before and I'll share some of those as the episode goes on.
I am going to tell you about the strategy, how it works, and why it's actually one of the best things you can teach your child contrary to the misinformed commenters.
First and foremost, we do NOT do timeouts in our home. So timeouts typically go like this: you either have a Time Out Chair, time-out Corner, or they have to sit in a certain place for a certain amount of time. The expectation is that as soon as they come out of a timeout, they should be behaving well. Timeouts that aren't effective usually result in Slammed doors, yelling frustrated parents doing whatever they can to get the results that they want, and not knowing any other possible way. It's just so common to do at timeouts.
So what we do might look like a time out to your natural eye, but I'm going to explain how it's different.
Philosophy Behind the Safe Place
Before I tell you about the safe place, I want to tell you two quotes that I live by when it comes to discipline and behavior in my home. The first is from Dr. Becky Bailey. She teaches conscious discipline and her quote is "Discipline is not something we do to children. It's something we develop within them."
So we don't just do things to the children hoping that they'll learn from it. But instead, we help them learn the impact of their choices and help them develop discipline within themselves off.
The second quote is "Children aren't giving you a hard time. They are having a hard time." So if we can look at kids with these mindsets that we're not trying to control them and they are not trying to give us a hard time, but really they're having a hard time and we need to help them develop some discipline in order to function and get through life with happiness. I mean, that's the ultimate goal. We want them to be happy.
So I'm going to tell you what we do. We use a safe place and the safe place is a game-changer in my home and it will be in your home too, especially if you deal with tantrums or strong emotions.
The Safe Place
It is a place that your child can go to choose to calm down to feel every emotion to have tools or reminders that help them regulate their body. So books, puzzles, pictures, or breathing reminders.
Anytime I take Charlie to his safe place. I calmly tell him "It's okay to cry. It's okay to feel upset. I feel upset when I have to eat food I don't like too, but at the dinner table, we don't scream and cry. So you can take a minute in your safe place and you can come back when your body's feeling ready."
Every single time we do this within a few minutes, he's back and ready to come to the dinner table or sit nicely and he's not suddenly changed, "Oh, I'm super happy" but he's calm his body is calm down. He's in a place where he's in control of his emotions.
When you have arguments with your kids are in the middle of fits, or if you're in a fight with your teenager have them go to their safe place because all the emotions are high.
This is not the teaching moment think back to the Green Arrow moment blog where I talk about the red arrow moment when emotions are escalated and the amygdala has taken over -- they're in this fight or flight mode. That is what's happening when we encourage our children to go to their safe place.
So, everyone takes a minute calms down, and then when everyone's calm you can all respond from The logical parts of your brain.
Everybody in my house has a safe place when doodle he's our mini Golden doodle goes to his bed. That's his safe place when we're upstairs, Doodle goes under the couch. We all know this is where doodle goes to feel safe. So if he is under the couch and Maelie starts to put her hand on his couch I say doodle is in a safe place. We need to let him have his space away from us. He's telling us that he wants a break and he needs this time and when he comes out, then he's ready to be with us again.
I really appreciate that my dog knows when he's done with the kiddos, he needs to go to his safe place where no one can get him. But also he can't get anybody else. So Charlie has a safe place too and if he's starting to have a major meltdown or chooses to continue an unsafe choice with his body, he goes to a safe place.
So if he's provoking his sister, or not sharing or something like that -- if he's making unsafe choices with his body then -- it's NOT a timeout and it's NOT a punishment. It's a choice. And it's a choice, he knows he's making when he has a fit or a tantrum.
He's allowed to be mad. He can cry, he can carry on, but he does it in his safe place and when he does calm down he can resume his activity or make a new choice. Instead of choosing to have a power struggle, or over-explain all of his choices every time... when he makes an unsafe choice with his body -- we go to the safe place. Sometimes I leave him in there to regulate on his own and sometimes I stay with him and hold him, but he knows that this is a space where he can calm down.
The Process
First of all, when I bring Charlie into his room I say "it's okay to cry."
I want to further explain this.
You may be thinking -- why would you say that?! Stop crying child! It's driving me nuts! Stop crying in the car! Stop crying at the park! Just stop crying because it irks us. This is so frustrating for us. There's a lot of noise. I can't handle this.
Okay, crying stimulates endorphins, our feel-good hormone. And so if we bottle up those emotions by forcing our children to repress them and to not cry, it's going to turn into bigger stronger tantrums.
So a few tears here and there all day long or a volcanic eruption at the dinner table-- it's your choice, but it is actually okay for your child to cry. So try to get out of the habit of saying "don't cry" or "don't be sad."
There's an appropriate way to take that break to cry all of your feelings out without screaming and crying the dinner table though.
Instead, try "It's okay to let it all out. You can take a break and cry when you're ready to come back and join us.
In my house, I don't actually call it a safe place. I called a safe place when I'm teaching about it, but we usually say, oh does your body need a break -- your choices are telling me your body needs to take a break.
When I need a break I say, "Okay Dad, mom needs to take a minute." So then I'll go take a bath or I'll go sit on my bed or something.
And PJ will take over like whatever the kids are doing and just kind of help me out to take a break.
PJ never vocalizes that he needs a break, but when he needs a break, he usually goes outside with dogs or just goes downstairs to his office.
We all have like the space to take a break and some people call it the Cozy Corner or they say, okay time to have some quiet time, some people call it the safe place and some people call it time-in.
Instead of saying, "Do you need a time-out?" Putting off the blame on a child to figure it out and go take a break or "I'll put you in time out myself."
You have this different phrase that says do you need help calming down and if they say "yeah, I need help calming down." "Okay, let's go take a break."
Why is that different?
It looks exactly the same but it feels so much different instead of saying do you need a time-out put them in the room and then in 30 minutes you let him come out. You're saying do you need help calming down with the intention of using the safe space as a tool to help them calm down.
Instead of saying I'm going to put you on timeout, you say, I'm sorry. This is hard. Let's take a break."
You take a break they calm down their body and then you returned back to the seeing that you were having them do that set them off in the first place. But instead this time, they have regulated their emotions and you're able to teach them in a Green arrow moment.
So instead of a time-out with the goal to wallow in your feelings, try the safe space where the goal is to develop emotional self-regulation.
Concerns?
Okay. So let me just clear this up for you in case you're like worried if my child hits his sister and has a tantrum. He doesn't haul his booty up to his room and say I'm going to take a break. He still needs my support to know when it's time to calm down. He hasn't quite learned it in all situations yet.
Is he going to his room every time that he's mad or frustrated or having a tantrum? Absolutely not, but often he actually is going to take a break independently. When he's frustrated with his sister or if he accidentally hurts himself, I'll look at him and I'll validate his emotions. I'll say something like, "are you feeling hurt? I'm so sorry. Do you want to go take a break?" and he will quietly say, "yeah," and he'll just go take a break. He'll shut the door to his room and he'll go take a break.
Sometimes if I can't find Charlie for a minute, he'll just be taking a break on his own in his room with the door shut. I'll just start looking around the house and I'll see his door shut and I'll just know that he's in there taking a break by himself, calming down his emotions and sometimes nothing terrible happens at all.
He just chooses to go take a break when he's over-stimulated. Like when cousins come over, or a friend making all of the decisions for their play and he's started feeling flustered. He'll actually fake a nap or go lay down underneath his climber and be like "I'm taking a nap." He's totally not taking a nap, but it's his way of saying my body needs a break. I'm going to come over here and calm down.
I love that “taking a break” transfers into life situations. He's not getting himself in trouble when he's over-stimulated. He's listening to his body and saying, I know what my body needs to calm down.
This IS developmentally appropriate.
One day, I got a comment on one of my Facebook posts that said, "There are no saved as when your adult no one is going to give you hot cocoa and puppies sadly. This is a big fat lie."
FALSE NEWS. There are safe places when you're adult an adult. And it is so much more developmentally appropriate when you're in a work situation. Imagine you're in a corporate office and your boss is just being a jerk and you lose it, "you know what? I hate you" and your boss says, "go take a timeout."
Okay, is that developmentally appropriate? No, that's what a lot of us are currently doing now. Let's look at it with the safe place option.
Respectively, you get in an argument with your boss and he's being a big jerk. And you say, "you know what, let's talk about this in 20 minutes. I'm going to go take a break and work on this and then I'll come back and talk to you about that after."
That is a hundred and fifty percent more developmentally appropriate, productive, and efficient than any sort of Time-Out behavior that we do to children.
A lot of adults have this myth in their heads where they think that you have to do something to a child for them to learn something. But if you help a child learn how to do this for themselves, that is so much more effective and it's going to serve them for a lifetime.
Start a Safe Place
Pick a special spot and create a safe place together with your child that's step one, and then use the green arrow moment to practice using the safe pace. Practice calming down in neutral moments throughout the day.
Don't wait for them to erupt to teach the safe space, practice using the safe space to calm down in all times of the day. So when you wake up in the morning say, hey, let's just take a break in our safe space for a minute and just breathe and we can just lay down close their eyes. Listen to a song on the Alexa. Whatever.
The most important thingis to create positive associations with the safe space. Every single memory they have in their safe space is going to help them when they're in there trying to calm down their body if they're safe space is just a place to continually have time outs. Then they're going to have a negative association with that place. So I create positive associations in there. All you need to do is spend time and love in this space, read a story, practice breathing, and practice calming down. There are so many things you can do to practice emotional regulation skills together.
Then they'll be motivated to calm their body down to feel better and to relax with these things that empower them to make different choices the next time.
How do you do the “safe place” with young children?
I started the safe place when Charlie was just under two, I had him just come sit with me in my lap or I would sit next to him. I didn't talk to him. I would just put my hand on him. I would turn on a song or read his story and when his body seemed so calm then he would start to look into the story.
Also if your child is having a really hard time travel say, oh your body is not making a safe choice. Let's go to your safe space don't expect them to automatically know how to calm down their body. You can choose to stay with them or you can put them in the room knowing that they might throw things at the wall.
They might kick the door. They might scream that's all part of feeling all of those feelings and getting those emotions out because if you don't feel the emotions, you can't process them.
Remember the safe place rules. Number one, you can feel all of the feels. Number two, you can choose to go! number three. You can choose to come out when your body is ready. Number four, it's a place to help you.
