We are each of us like a snowflake, beautiful and utterly unique, just as we are…
In my over 30 years of working with stressed-out and traumatized kids, I worked with many neurodivergent children. Maybe they were on the autism spectrum, or had a learning disability. Perhaps they had sensory processing challenges, where wearing clothes with tags or seams drove them into a frenzy. Or tasting certain textures resulted in massive meltdowns. Possibly, they couldn’t tolerate sitting still, or manage to multi-task. Or perhaps they were unable to stop multitasking and focus in the way that was expected of them. Perhaps they struggled to manage change or transitions… or had uncontrollable emotional storms. Or they may have been experiencing crushing levels of anxiety.
Perhaps they had executive functioning challenges, such as difficulties with planning ahead… time management… managing multi-stepped directions… displaying self-control (instead of having meltdowns)… managing delayed gratification while staying focused, even when there are distractions (among others). Maybe learning to start, organize, plan and complete tasks felt impossible for them (and for their caregivers, who were trying to help them).
Whatever their life challenges, strengths and difficulties were, of the many hundreds of neurodivergent children I worked with, there was not one of them who felt good about themselves. Not one who didn’t struggle with difficult emotions and negative messages/beliefs they had absorbed from others about themselves. Not one.
Surely we can all agree, there’s something really wrong with that picture.
What to Do?
So, what do you do when your child cannot seem to learn these critical life skills… who feels unsuccessful because of it and then terrible about themselves? This can be excruciatingly difficult for neurodivergent children – and for their ‘big people,’ who watch them struggling massively with tasks they just don’t seem to pick up the way other neurotypical children do.
It’s well known that executive functioning is not something innate that some people are born with. These skills require teaching and repetition.
So why do some kids struggle to learn them more than others? What prevents some kids from learning executive functioning… or social skills… or any of the other life skills that neurotypical children generally seem to acquire so easily?
In a word, I’m suggestion the answer may be: stress.
In the therapy work I did, we often ended up working on helping to develop emotional regulation skills in these children first, since they were so sensitive to any changes, and perceived their differences as meaning they were ‘bad’ or somehow defective. Understandably, they had many emotional difficulties as a result.
How Tapping Can Help
I have often wondered whether tapping might be useful for children who are not neurotypical. Not as a way of reinforcing that they’re somehow defective or bad for being the unique humans that they are. Not to help them ‘fit in’ and be like everyone else.
Rather, to just give them a break and help them feel successful – just as they are. To change their perception of themselves as ‘losers’ or ‘failures’ or ‘not-good-enough’ or ‘bad’ kids. None of these beliefs are helpful for anyone to carry around. And none of the stressed-out emotional reactivity that accompanies these self-defeating beliefs is helpful, either.
It’s a tough world for neurodivergent children to grow up in and to be able to hold on to feeling good about themselves, including their differences.
But every one deserves this. We are not meant to be the ‘same as’ everyone else (much as we all want to fit in). We all deserve to be celebrated for who we each are.
When adults model this for children, then children internalize healthy self-concepts, learning to see themselves as worthy of being celebrated, exactly as they are.
What About the Research?
While there has been a growing body of EFT research focused on the adult population, there has been less that focuses on children (although this is beginning to change).
Yet surely, if we want our next generations to grow up to feel empowered, confident, creative and passionate about their interests, their capacity to share their gifts with the world – what could be more important than healing modalities that promote good executive functioning, solid interpersonal and emotional regulation skills?
We know from the adult population of trauma survivors that ‘top down* talk’ therapy has significant limitations (see my Home page under trauma for more of the research on this) in healing or permanently clearing the emotional challenges of feeling emotionally overwhelmed and dysregulated by past trauma.
Not so with tapping – it works quickly and easily, effectively. And the results appear to be permanent.
Traditional therapeutic supports for children are often ineffective for neurodivergent children
And yet in many traditional therapy settings, working with children pre-supposes teaching them ‘top down’ best practices approaches (such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, CBT), which work directly with the thinking part of the brain.
But in a child with challenges or neurodivergent ways of managing in the ‘thinking’ part of the brain – how is this likely to be helpful or successful? Isn’t that like putting the cart before the horse?
Surely, a ‘bottom up’* approach like tapping, that focuses first on calming the limbic brain and settling down the amygdala’s fight, flight or freeze reactivity to stress, will be easier on the child and more successful.
After all, it is well known that we all learn more efficiently and more easily when our brains are calm. The obvious corollary to this is that a stressed brain struggles to learn new material… In neurodivergent children, you may see this at home, when there’s a last-minute change in routine… or during a transition from one subject to another in the classroom at school. You may also see this out in the community, while navigating the often complex and changeable social interactions with peers or adults.
Support from a pre-eminent child psychiatrist
But, here’s a post by Dr. Bruce Perry (child psychiatrist who has worked with exceptionally traumatized children – such as those who survived the Waco Texas disaster). He has done brain scans of highly traumatized children, to develop a model of treatment that is neuro-developmental. It looks at the age and developmental stage the child was at, during the trauma. And then looks at treatment which factors in the areas of the brain impacted, that were developing during the trauma.
The last time I spoke with him many years ago, it was before many of the clinical trials about EFT had happened. So at that point, he was not looking at using tapping as part of his treatment protocol.
However, I think his treatment model aligns well with tapping. Both point us in the same direction – away from top-down’* talk therapy… and towards ‘bottom up’ techniques like tapping. Specifically, tapping calms down the emotional reactivity centre in the brain. And that means, calmer brain = better learning.
In the following article***, here’s what Dr. Perry describes for teachers (and is equally helpful for parents):
- What happens in the body in response to stress
- The needs of children who have experienced chronic stress
- The impact that it can have on their behaviour and learning
- How to intervene using the 3 R’s – Regulate, Relate, Reason
To me, this is a basic, beginning point for understanding what neurodivergent children with stressed-out brains require.
Of course, in addition to Dr. Perry’s 3 R’s, I would definitively add a fourth: try tapping to reduce your child’s stress level.
The central importance of first calming down the brain
As Dr. Perry points out, when the brain meets stress with fight-flight-or-freeze, it means the survival part of the brain has been activated. Nothing is (obviously) more important than survival, so trying to learn new information when the survival brain is activated is useless. Survival trumps everything!
Thus, when the survival centre in the brain is activated, other parts of the brain shut down. Tapping helps Regulate (one of the 3 Rs) the emotional brain, returning the brain to a state of calm rest more quickly and efficiently.
Until the survival reactivity can be calmed down, and the parasympathetic aspect of the nervous system (which is responsible for rest and digest; integration and recovery) can kick in, learning new tasks will be impossible. And yet, this is what we continue to push kids with stressed-out brains to do.
How does this do anything except increase their stress level? Instead of supporting them, this creates a vicious cycle for them, of not feeling good about learning. And it reinforces their beliefs that they’re different – in ways in which no one wants to be different. It seems to be a stalemate for these kids.
Why I encourage tapping in pediatric populations
At the risk of repeating myself – there is no other technique that I have found in over 30 years of searching, that more efficiently and effectively shifts the human brain out of stress. No matter what the age or the brain’s individual neurodivergence may be, tapping can help shift the brain from emotional over-reactivity to stress, back into a state of calm.
Although there is not much research backing this up yet for pediatric populations, why wait for scientists to catch up? We already know tapping is clinically effective with other age groups. Research shows that tapping works faster than Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. And the results are durable over time. Plus, there are already plenty of anecdotal reports about tapping working with pediatric populations.
Honestly, what could be more important than raising our next generations into healthy, resilient adults? Our world needs young people who can face the challenges they will encounter in the world as adults. They will need calm brains, self-assurance, creativity and resilience. Tapping will help them with this.
Are you parenting a child who is struggling with a stressed out brain?
**Understanding ‘Top down’ or ‘bottom up’…
- ‘Bottom up’ refers to neurodevelopmental growth and strategies that predate more advanced stages of neurological development. The human brain is built from the ‘bottom up.’
- ‘Top down’ refers to strategies which, like adding the roof on a house last, rely on more developed cognitive processing. These approaches, and ‘talk therapy’ is a good example, presume that earlier developmental tasks have all been adequately accomplished. And with neurodivergent children (and often adults) this simply isn’t accurate.
- Both these terms are based on how the brain actually grows in humans – from the ‘bottom’ centres which are focused on survival (which first begin to develop in the womb and includes autonomic functions like breathing, blood pressure and blood pressure – stuff we don’t need to think about because our bodies automatically take care of them for us)… to the mid-regions in the centre of the brain (including the limbic area which is responsibility for emotions and emotional regulation)… to the frontal areas of the human brain, the neocortex (which doesn’t even begin to develop until adolescence) which is responsible for executive functioning.
- If you think about the analogy of the human brain’s development as being like building a house – you’ve got to address vulnerabilities in the basement or foundation, before expecting that you can create a strongly built house – and all of that, long before you consider putting on a roof! For the life of me, I cannot understand why this seems so obvious in building a house – but not with building a strong human being, no matter how our brains are different. We all need to feel good about ourselves, about our unique gifts and talents.
