Distress Tolerance: The Most Important Skill for Being the Parent You Want to Be (and that your child needs you to be)

positive parentingBuilding ResilienceEmotional Regulation

May 11

In a recent blog, I honed in on what I have identified as the #1 obstacle to being the loving, supportive, effective parent you want to be: Trying to control your child. This blog addresses what I have identified as the #1 skill or asset that enables parents to be the mom or dad they want to be, especially when they have a big reactor:

Distress tolerance, which means:

Staying calm in the moment of stress—not fixing the problem, but surviving it without making it worse by:

Pausing instead of reacting immediately.
Accepting that discomfort is part of life. That it’s not harmful to your child. That working through it is what builds: grit, resilience, flexibility, and strong coping skills.

I know this isn’t news. You read all the time about the importance of staying calm and co-regulating. But in my daily consults with parents, when we analyze the challenging encounters with their kids, often a key obstacle to a productive, healthy outcome and growth for the child is the parents’ difficulty tolerating their distress. It’s so triggering when kids:

“Slaughterhouse scream”—as one dad described it.
Sound desperate, like they can’t survive whatever limit you have set, or when you can’t give them the attention they demand 24/7.
Are super anxious about facing a new challenge, like starting a new activity, learning a new skill, or going to a drop-off birthday party.

In these situations, parents often find themselves caving on important limits or enabling the child’s avoidance of whatever is causing them discomfort because their distress is so hard to tolerate.

But as it turns out, when you learn to tolerate your child’s distress, your child learns to tolerate distress, and here’s what can happen.

The Case

Wendy sought consultation to address how she could help her daughter, Maggie (5), feel comfortable separating from her in social situations, such as visiting a friend’s home for a meal, or going to the park or a birthday party. Maggie clings to Wendy and won’t engage with the kids. Wendy has come to dread these situations. She sees all the other children happily playing together, having a great time, while Maggie sticks to her like Velcro. This is very agitating and frustrating for Wendy. She tries to coax, cajole, bribe and sometimes even threaten, for example, that Maggie won’t have any screen time when they’re back home if she just sits in mom’s lap at the park; or, she can’t have any birthday cake if she doesn’t join in the activities at the party. These tactics always backfire. They just make Maggie more stressed and resistant. They both end up feeling awful.

During our consults, we focus on how Wendy can scaffold opportunities for Maggie to feel more comfortable not being so dependent on Wendy to be her constant companion and buffer. With a little help from a friend, this leads to the following not-so-tiny victory.

The Intervention

Wendy takes Maggie to the birthday party of one of her closest friends. It’s a drop-off event, but, as expected, Maggie clings to Wendy and won’t let her leave. She insists on sitting on mom’s lap. She won’t join in on the festivities. Wendy is frustrated and embarrassed, but she knows that acting on those feelings will not help. She tells Maggie that it’s okay to need time to observe before she’s ready to join in and that’s what they do.

After 15 minutes, Maggie shows no signs of movement. Wendy can feel herself getting increasingly agitated. Every bone in her body wants to leave to end the discomfort for them both, but she remains calm and gives it a little more time. When she is about to break, the mother of the birthday boy approaches and suggests that Wendy leave and have Maggie stay. Wendy is dubious. She is also worried that Maggie might experience this as abandonment and that it will be harmful to her relationship with Maggie, eroding Maggie’s trust in her. At a cellular level, it also feels mean to leave Maggie when she’s in distress.

At the same time, Wendy knows that if she stays, she’s sending the message that she doesn’t think Maggie can handle it and that she’s only safe if Wendy is present. This will substantially limit Maggie’s experiences in the world and be a missed opportunity to learn that she is capable and safe on her own. This is something Wendy wants very badly for her daughter and is a primary focus in our consults.

With the support of this other mom, Wendy decides that she needs to take what feels like a very big risk and give Maggie this opportunity to work through the discomfort—to see that she can survive the seemingly unsurvivable. Accordingly, Wendy acknowledges Maggie’s fear and hesitance, validates that learning to be at a party without her feels uncomfortable because it’s a new experience for her, and, faking it till she makes it, communicates that she has total confidence in Maggie’s ability to manage it. Then she leaves, even as Maggie is clinging to her and begging her not to go.

The Outcome

When Wendy returns 90 minutes later, Maggie is all smiles and begs to stay.

And then there is this recent case:

Freddie (7) had become fearful of being alone in any room in the house. His parents had no clue why—it seemed to happen out of nowhere, but it was very concerning to them. He was so distressed, his anxiety seemed so intense, that they were accommodating his demand for someone to always be with him, even though they instinctively felt this wasn’t good for him. It was also causing a lot of stress and disruption in the family.

If you follow my work, you know that when I am helping a parent solve a vexing challenge, we always start by seeking to understand the root cause of the behavior so we can address the underlying issues at play. But sometimes we don’t have a lot of clues, as was the case with Freddie. Outside the home he had no issues separating, and his parents couldn’t identify any recent changes or triggers that might explain this new fear. Regardless, we had to figure out how to support Freddie in working this through, so here’s what we came up with.

The Plan

They acknowledged Freddie’s fear and stopped trying to talk him out of it or offering rewards to get him to overcome his fear—neither of which had worked. In fact, these strategies often seemed to increase his distress and double-down on his demand for constant company.

They taught him about the “worry brain,” (see additional resources below to learn about this tool) and how sometimes it can take over and trick you into thinking there is something to fear. They shared stories of times their own worry brains had taken control and how they got their “thinking/problem-solving brain” on board to show “worry brain” that the fear was unfounded. They also recalled times Freddie’s “worry brain” had led to a fear that he ultimately overcame, like taking off the floaties he had become dependent on long after he was capable of swimming independently.
They got walkie-talkies for Freddie to take with him when he needed to go into a room without another person. (In my work with families, the key to success is almost always setting a limit that scaffolds adaptation, along with tools for coping.) This way he could stay connected to mom or dad when he was alone, which made him feel safe.

They started with one room at a time, setting the limit that they would not be going in to the playroom with him at a time when they needed to focus on another important task, like making dinner.

The Outcome

Freddie was very receptive to the concept of the “worry” and the “thinking brain.” But when it came time to venture to the playroom on his own, he still descended into distress. Despite his parents’ insight that accommodating this fear was not loving or supportive, and their commitment to showing Freddie they believed in him, in the heat of the moment emotions prevailed, as they are wont to do. It felt mean to refuse to escort him when he seemed so stressed. They worried they were abandoning him in his time of need. And, in the face of his anguish, they started to question: maybe expecting him to cope with being alone in another room in the house was too stressful for him to work through.

But they stayed the course, they tolerated both his and their own distress. They acknowledged that he felt unable to do it, that worry brain was in full gear. They resisted coaxing or cheerleading. They reiterated that his two great choices were to stay with them in the kitchen where they needed to be to make dinner, or choose to take the walkie-talkie and test out that plan.

To change the mood, as much for Freddie as for themselves, dad got silly and took his walkie-talkie into another room and talked to mom through it, providing color-commentary on how he was changing into more comfortable clothes and would be back shortly to keep helping with dinner prep.

When Freddie saw his parents were holding the boundary, plus the added element of humorous diversion that dad had inserted, Freddie ultimately went into the playroom and provided his own color-commentary, via the walkie-talkie, about what he was doing there.

With this win, his parents extended the plan to other rooms in the house which went pretty quickly and successfully. Present problem-solved, not to mention with the added benefit of Freddie having more lived experience that he could overcome fears. What a gift that will surely keep on giving.