You’ve seen it before (and done it before yourself!) – the sudden outburst when a child or teen yells, slams a door, or bursts into tears over something small.  One minute they are calm; the next their brain has gone rogue.  What’s happening?
It’s not necessarily defiance or disrespect.  It’s the brain doing what it’s wired to do:  protect.

The science

Inside every brain lives two powerful team mates:  The Guard Dog Brain (the amygdala or limbic system) – it’s fast, emotional and protective, and  The Wise Handler Brain (pre-frontal cortex) – it takes its time, is logical and reflective.

When the Guard Dog senses danger (real or imagined), it barks!  It might make a child fight, flee, freeze or try to appease.  That’s normal – it’s Guard Dog Brain doing its job.  The Wise Handler’s job is to step in and take control of the situation.  But sometimes the Guard Dog barks too loudly and drowns out the Wise Handler, making it hard to think clearly in the moment.  

Learning to calm the Guard Dog helps kids – and adults – stay wise, kind, and in control.

Our job as the big humans

We are the wise handlers of the wise handlers!  When their Guard Dog barks, ours must stay calm.  This is the moment to model emotional regulation – not just to manage behaviour but to teach the skill of self-management. 

Managing the Guard Dog

Here’s what that looks like:

Stay steady. Even if their reaction feels personal, it probably isn’t. Their Guard Dog is protecting them, not attacking you.

Create safety first. Step aside, lower your tone, soften your body language. Show, through your calm, that the ‘danger’ is over.

Name what’s happening. “It looks like your Guard Dog is barking right now.  Let’s give it a chance to settle.”  Or ” It looks like you are upset.  Let’s take a moment to breathe.”

Reflect when calm returns. Once they’ve reconnected with their Wise Handler, that’s when learning can happen.

Model recovery. If you lose your own cool, own it. Apologise. Repair. Show that big humans make mistakes too — and we can fix them.

Every time we do this, we teach children that feelings aren’t dangerous, and that calm is a skill that can be practised and learned.

Tips for educators, parents and carers

• Introduce and use the Guard Dog metaphor to normalise emotional moments or use age-appropriate language.  It removes shame and creates a shared language to talk things through productively.
• Model co-regulation (helping them calm through your calm) “My Guard Dog’s a bit noisy now, so I’m taking a breath before I speak.”
• Give time after incidents – reasoning can only happen once calm returns.
• Stay calm, as difficult as that can sometimes be, during outbursts – your calm is the least that lets their Guard Dog settle.
• Afterward, talk about what their brain was trying to do, not just what the did.
• Avoid escalating by matching their volume or energy – go lower and slower.
• Use consistent, predictable routines that reduce social threat.
• Recognise small steps in emotional control:  “You caught yourself sooner that time – that’s progress!”

You know those days when you ask a little human, “Why did you do that?” — and they shrug and say, “I don’t know”?  Well… they’re not lying. Their brain actually doesn’t know — at least not yet. The truth is, being human is hard work. Even for us big humans, our brains are constantly trying to keep us safe, not smart, and as a result are prone to doing ‘not so smart’ things.

The science

We are undoubtedly an advanced species that has achieved incredible sophistication –  technology, infrastructure, Artificial Intelligence – but our brains are still wired according to our primitive past.

The brain’s real job

Our brain’s number one job is to keep us alive and safe. That means it’s always scanning for threat, predicting what might go wrong, and triggering protective reactions before we’ve had time to think.  In primitive times the threats were more physical – saber-toothed tigers, spear-wielding enemies from neighbouring tribes, famine, drought.  Today our threats are social:  fear of rejection or humiliation, uncertainty, loss of control over our environment.

However, our brains respond to both social and physical threats in the same protective way (lashing out, going quiet, rejecting sensible ideas, avoiding) and the part of the brain that helps with self-control, planning, reasoning and empathy is de-activated during those moments of perceived threat – focusing only on ‘survival’.

This is particularly true for children and teens whose pre-frontal cortex (that bit that is sensible) is not fully formed until around the age of 25.

So when our kids (or us for that matter), lose it and engage in non-useful behaviour, it’s a normal human reaction to the threat they perceive.  And let’s stop calling it ‘bad’ behaviour.  That’s not useful either.

THIS IS YOUR MOMENT to step in and support them to learn how to self-manage in those challenging moments.  THIS IS YOUR MOMENT to be the adult.

Our job as the big humans

It’s important for we Big Humans to understand that Little Humans don’t have the same brain capability that we do when controlling their emotional responses. Outbursts are ‘coachable moments’ that should be taken advantage of – even when we feel triggered or offended or frustrated ourselves. If we can’t control our own emotional responses, how can we expect them to!

Tips for educators, parents and carers

• Be the calm in the chaotic moment.  Even if you have been called a name or consider the reaction inappropriate.  Don’t make it about you – it’s probably not, and that can be addressed (and should be) later in the calm moment.  Nothing you say in this moment will stick, so don’t bother.

• Acknowledge the moment — “I can see you are very upset, let’s take a moment to stop and cool down”.  This may mean moving the child to a different place – bedroom, out of the classroom.

• Talk about the brain openly — it depersonalises behaviour and helps students separate who they are from what their brain is doing, enabling time and space to take back control and understand their feelings and behaviour.

• Share your own process — “When I feel l like lashing out in those moments of frustration…what I do is…”

• Talk about next time — “When this happens again, what will you try to do” – noting that the next time may not be any different, and that’s ok – their brain will learn over time.

• Celebrate self-awareness moments — every “I noticed…” is a neural win. Celebrate the effort to self-control, not just the success.  “I can see you are trying hard to get control of your brain – that’s great!”