237. The 5 F's Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn, Flop-What to Do?
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[00:00:00] If you're like me, you have students that downshift, in which you'll see fight, flight, freeze, fawn, or flap behaviors when they don't feel safe and secure. What we're gonna talk about today is we're gonna talk about five strategies that you should implement into your speech and language therapy, whether you're working in the classroom, whether you're working in therapy, whether you're doing home visits, and implementing these strategies will help children better deal with times in which they do not feel regulated.
What we're gonna do is this is going to help children feel regulated, help children feel related to, and help children with reasoning. I have five evidence-based strategies I'm gonna share with you today, and we're gonna look at those five downshift behaviors that we're going to see when children don't feel safe and secure, and we're gonna respond to those five behaviors, whether it's fight, flight, freeze, fawn, or flap, we're gonna respond to those behaviors differently.[00:01:00]
So let's start off with the first strategy of five strategies, and the first strategy I'm gonna look at is yourself. When one of these behaviors occurs and the child downshifts into the fight, flight, freeze, flap, or fawn response, what you wanna do is make sure that you are regulated. So it's important for you to take a nice big exhale yourself, drop your shoulders, give yourself time and space, because your calmness is contagious.
So if you can yourself be calm, that is going to be extremely helpful. So you're calming yourself, then what you want to do is you want to approach the child at the child's level. So you're going to want to go down instead of towering over the child, which can make the child feel even less safe if you're towering over them, of course, and you're [00:02:00] going to want to use a quieter voice that's a slower voice as well.
So you're going to wanna modulate that voice so you're speaking more slowly, you're speaking at a quieter volume, and you also wanna think about not speaking a lot, using as few words as possible. So the last thing we wanna do is add more stimulation to a child that is already hyper-stimulated and hypervigilant right now of the environment.
We wanna remove demands, not add to them. So thinking about yourself and what you're gonna do, you're gonna turn that dial down You're lowering the voice. You're lowering your rate of speech. You're lowering your body position to be not over the child, but at the child's level. So that is going to be strategy one, [00:03:00] co-regulation.
The second strategy that we're going to want to look at is we're gonna look at safety before we're able to teach. So this, when we have this acute stress right now, the child is downshifting in the brain. They're at the brain stem mode of fight, flight, freeze, fawn, flap reaction. This is not time for lectures.
This is not time for questions. Why are you so upset right now? Why are you hurting yourself by punching yourself in the head? That's not a good choice. So you're saying all of this, none of that is processing right now because the child is dysregulated. They're not in their prefrontal cortex at this moment, so reasoning is not the way to go.
What you're going to wanna do instead is reassure the child. You're gonna wanna reassure the child that the child is safe. So you can say two-word [00:04:00] utterances, such as, "I'm here. You're safe I've got you. You're okay. So you're going to want to cut down on the demands right now at the, the, the environmental demands.
You're going to not want to talk about the consequences of their behavior. This is like high-level reasoning. This isn't time to teach right now, if you do this, this is gonna happen, if you do this, this is gonna happen, what's your choice? Whoa, this is all prefrontal cortex, higher level cortex thinking stuff.
You're just giving them demands that they cannot handle. So right now, their capacity, when we look at the demands and capacity scale, the capacity side is way down already, and the demands are too heavy, and you, the last thing you want to do is add more demands to a capacity that's already diminished, so it's just going to be like this, you're just flipping the scale [00:05:00] even more.
So what you want to think about is, how can I lower the cognitive demands at this time? How can I lower the logic demands at this time? We're not going to have a lot of verbal expression at this time, okay? And you want to reassure, if you are talking, that it's like, that you're safe, I'm here, okay? So this is not a time to hurry the child along either and say, "Okay, it's time to go right now, it's time to go," and to rush the child.
The child is already feeling dysregulated. That's only going to add to their dysregulation. Strategy number three, we want to think about the emotional coaching after they are calm, right? So a, a lot of people confuse this right now, and this is something I've talked about in the past. When the child is having these big feelings, you don't want to be saying, "I can see right now [00:06:00] that you are very upset," and you're adding fire to the feelings.
" I see that you're yelling, and you're crying, and you're feeling angry right now." This is not the time. When the child quiets a little bit, when the child is regulated, when the child is feeling safe, secure, and related to, we can talk about, I can see that you were really upset.
I can see that you were yelling, and I can see that you were running away, and I can see that you were feeling very scared, or you were feeling very disappointed. All of those feelings we're gonna talk about. Your body was telling me that you were not happy. You were yelling very loudly, and that tells me that you were not happy at that time, that you were very disappointed because you did not want to go, go inside," or whatever it is.
You're talking about it at this time. You're saying, "This is what your [00:07:00] body was telling me." You're giving them those gray emotions and building that emotion vocabulary so that they can logically name it to tame it when they do have these feelings, and not... i've known children that only know the word angry, and everything makes them angry.
It's the, the smallest infraction makes them angry. But if they have different words such as, "I'm disappointed, I'm frustrated," so all of those nice gradation words, "I can see that you're frustrated because you wanted to have a really straight line, and the line is a little crooked. And I make crooked lines, too, and that can be a little bit frustrating, but that's okay."
Just really talking about how that they're, how they're feeling and how I could see that because you tore the paper because you were so frustrated. And then, and I could see that made you very upset, and you threw the paper down. So wait until the child is in a reasoning state of mind [00:08:00] when we start talking about the emotions and different behaviors associated with those emotions and then and what that tells us about what kind of feelings they were having.
So that is gonna be number, strategy number three, which is to really give them those gradations of emotions and to talk about what their body was doing, and you might even want to go in a mirror and talk about their body and saying, "You were doing that," afterwards, when we do that, that tells us that we felt this way.
Not that there's any such thing as bad emotions and good emotions, but this is a good time to talk it out, and this is why we were feeling that way. After that, we're going to get, sorry, into the next strategy, which is strategy number four. And strategy number four is that we want to match our response to the child's state.
Okay? So for instance, if the child is feeling a fight-flight response, [00:09:00] and it's very high energy, the goal is going to be safety and to find a way to release that energy. So the child might have to go for a walk and move their body to calm their body. The child may have to do wall pushes to calm their body.
Looking at the different state they're in, it's going to be a different need that they need to manifest. So the child might need, for instance, some squeezes. They might feel that they need some squeezes in some body and some input in their body if they're starting to show crashing behaviors.
Looking at their their body state and what physical need they might need to meet that state. So if the child, for instance, is in a freeze or flop state, perhaps they're shut down, they might need you to lower the lights. They might need you to lower the sound. The environment might be overwhelming for them so that they're literally shutting the environment off, and they're shutting the environment off by turning theirselves [00:10:00] off because it's sensory overload.
So thinking about the state that they're showing us, maybe if it's the fight-flight state If it's that state, maybe they need to move. Maybe this is a child that needs deep pressure. Maybe this is a child that needs to do some jumping on a trampoline. They need to get some of that that energy that is pent up out.
If the child is overstimulated and the child is shutting down, and they look as if they're in the flop state they're limp, they're lying on the ground, they're overwhelmed, it seems as if they're overwhelmed. If they're looking in a freeze state where they're looking out the window and they have no idea what's going on around them, they're just o- overwhelmed by the environment, we're gonna think about how we can lessen all of the stimulation in the environment so that they can handle all of the, those, the, all of those sensory experiences that's coming at them.
So if the child's in a fawn state, for instance, so a fawn state is where the child is maybe a little bit [00:11:00] perfectionistic or hypervigilant about apologizing. "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry that I did that." The last thing we wanna do is say, " You're a good boy. This is great that you're sorry.
I really appreciate that you know that you did wrong and now that you're sorry." We want them to let them know that, "There is no reason for you to be sorry. You didn't do anything wrong. It's okay." So we're always gonna respond to these different survival states in a different manner, depending on what need what they're showing, what need, what they need in order to self-regulate.
And we want to show them a healthy way to self-regulate. This last strategy number five is, how are we going to build this skill set, this toolbox, so that they can pull this toolbox out by themselves when they need that time? So a colleague of mine, she has a really good way of making it [00:12:00] very simple, "I do, we do, you do."
So this idea that learning is something that you're going to observe first, then you're gonna practice with someone else simultaneously, and then the child's going to be able to do on its own. This is something that requires explicit instruction. So we're gonna talk about explicit instruction of calming techniques that we can teach the child that they can later on pull out independently in their toolbox because it's been practiced many times when they're in a calm state.
Now, the first calming strategy, I would say, is always to focus on connection. So I talked about this in the last episode, and I said you really want to front load the relationship, and you really want to fill that bucket as much as possible with positive objective learning experiences, like encouragement.
We're not talking about praise here. So [00:13:00] you want to spend as much one-on-one time as possible as you can with the child, and building connections with the child, and following the child's lead, and using those responsive strategies such as linguistic mapping, imitating what the child's doing, imitating what the child's saying, and expanding upon what they're saying.
You want to do recasting in which you're taking what the child says, and you're putting it in a different syntactical form. So you really just, you want to bring out toys that are great interest in the child, and explore what the child is interested in, and join them with the, with what they're interested in.
So you really want to build as much connection as possible with the child. So we want to think not about time away, what are we gonna do when the child is misbehaving or when the child downshifts? We want to think about time in. We want to think about how can we have as much positive [00:14:00] time in experiences as possible so that the child does feel safe and secure, that they feel related to, that they feel cared for, that they feel loved.
So we want to put as much in their bucket as possible. We want to invest in that. So that's gonna be the number one important strategy. We're talking 99.99% prevention of the child downshifting and being in that fight, flight, freeze, flap, fawn, survival mode.
We want the child to feel safe, secure, and related to. That's gonna be the first strategy. That's the most important strategy, I'd say, by far. The second strategy is we want to teach the child to self-regulate through breathing. So what we've been doing a lot this year in my play and stay group, and we're also doing it in our social groups or speech and...
I'm sorry, in my speech and language group and in my social groups, is I make up this song, and it says, "If you're..." [00:15:00] So if we say, "If you have big feelings and you know it," and then we go ahead and do a breath, and we talk about the type of breath that we're going to use, and you can be very creative with that.
So for instance, you can smell the bubbles in a bubble bath, and then you can blow the bubbles. And what you're doing when you're doing that is you're using the imagination. You're using the prefrontal cortex besides using that breathing technique, so it's really good for the brain. It's really good for the body.
And really practicing it on a regular basis, all of these breathing techniques we can pull out in which the child can self-regulate through breath and through imagination and thinking about positive thoughts and going into that imagination play, which is the opposite of the brain stem fight, flight, freeze amygdala brain.
The brain works like a light switch. You cannot be in that creative mind, calm mindset at the very same time as you are in that [00:16:00] survival brain mode. So it's a very nice thing to do, not only to do the breathing, but to attach it with some sort of imaginary activity that, that makes it nice and sticky.
So for instance, if they have a chocolate cake and they're blowing out the candles, smell the chocolate cake. And then after that, you can blow out the candles, so you get that inhale and that exhale So the breathing strategy is one of them, and we use the same tune over and over again.
If you have big feelings and you know it, sing to the happy happy... if you're happy and you know it tune. So that is another strategy you could use. A third strategy you could use is you could always have a calming corner so that the child can always say, "Okay, I'm feeling, dysregulated.
I'm feeling, like I wanna run or wanna push things. I wanna knock chairs down. I need to calm my body. I need some time and space." So when the child needs time and space, they can go to the calming corner, and in the calming corner [00:17:00] you can have. A chair where you can pull down the front. I mean where you can close it down like a tent, and you can just have your own space and shut the world off for a while and have some time to yourself. You can have books, puzzles in that calming space. Those, I don't know how to count it, where you take the beans and you move them around in the maze like a rollercoaster.
I don't know what they're called, but I think they're called an abacus. Those are really popular with the kids. Those are nice for calming them. So having that calming corner in which the children can learn to say, "I need a break," and they can go to a break. Whether they say I need a break or not, or they can just go to that calming space when things get too hyper-stimulating for them or when they're feeling upset themselves and they can't handle their big emotions.
It gives them that time and space to handle their emotions and to take a, a, a step, a break So that is another strategy. Another strategy that I use is I practice this problem-solving [00:18:00] strategy explicitly, and I do this in my SIS membership activities, the obstacle courses that are literacy and movement-based.
And what we do is we say, "What was the problem?" You're also gonna see this in my book. So we identify what the problem is. So for instance, this is firefighter week, and the problem is there's a fire, and our plan is to put out the fire. And then we're gonna say what actions we're gonna take. We're gonna go in the fire truck, and we're gonna shoot the fire hose.
And then how are we gonna check it to completion? We're gonna check our checklist. So we go through that four-step process every single week with the different activities that we're using in our task-oriented movement activities. What is the problem? And these are the gestures we use. What is the plan?
What actions are we gonna take? And how are we gonna check it to completion? So I always use gestures when we do this four-step process, so then we can stop talking. So if [00:19:00] you see me on YouTube, you see me doing the gestures. When it comes to the problem, I hit my fingers together, problem, and of course, I do it with the syllables.
We do our plan. We have this touchdown goal, plan. We have our action. I roll our hands forward, say action, and then we do our check, and I make a check mark with my hands. How do we check this to completion? Now, this is an executive function action. This is something where you know so many children that don't identify the problem.
Their room is a mess. They don't even realize that the room is a mess. They don't see that there's a problem. They don't know how to make a plan, so they don't know how to get the room clean, and they don't know how to take action. So even if they knew the plan, they say, "Okay, the plan is we're gonna get this room clean," they don't know what actions you take to get the room clean.
And then check, they're not gonna finish it. So we want to build that four-step process in place and explicitly teach [00:20:00] it at an early age. How it's gonna work here when children are downshifting is the children are going to say, "Okay, I have a problem." "Oh, you have a problem? What's gonna be our plan?" So instead of I have a problem, and then they fall to the floor, or they run away, or they hide, or they hide under the desk, any of those fight, flight, flop, fawn, freeze reactions, they're going to go into the high-level brain and think, "What's my plan?"
This is a problem. What's our plan? So we really want to explicitly teach that pro-social behavior of when you have a problem, you make a plan, you take action, and you see it through to the end. You take it to completion. So teaching that when the child is calm and teaching that on a routine basis in which the child, you start off with maximum level of cueing, and then after that, the child is identifying those four steps.
And then after that, the child is telling you, "This is what the problem is. [00:21:00] This is what the plan is. This is what action I'm gonna take, and this is how I'm gonna check to make sure I finish it." So the child's going to take more of that responsibility over time, which the child is independently telling you, "This is the problem, this is the plan, these are the actions, and this is how I'm gonna check it to completion."
So it's going to start with something where you're giving a maximum level of cueing, and then after that, it's gonna go to moderate, where you stop talking, you're giving gestures. Then after that, the child's going to go through it all by themselves. So of course, this is gonna take repetition within meaningful activities and on a regular basis.
But this is gonna help the child when they do come across challenges to not fold when they come across challenges, and instead to think, "How can I solve this problem?" So that is another strategy that's more reason-based, it's more higher level, but this is something that we wanna embed into our [00:22:00] routine, embed into the task-oriented movement activities that we do, obstacle courses that you do on a regular basis, because it's going to pay off throughout the child's entire life, is whenever there's a problem, they're gonna say, "I know how to go through the steps to find a solution, to take action, and to make sure I can finish it."
So this is a great strategy to teach, and it's gonna help not only when it comes to academics, not only when it comes to vocation, but also when it comes to social and emotional issues. So this is just, you're gonna get a lot of bang for your buck if you work on what is the problem, what's our plan, what actions are we gonna take, and how are we gonna check it to completion?
So those are the strategies that I'm presenting today, and as I said before, when we look at these five behaviors, we have a couple of new behaviors. We're talking about fawning, which isn't talked about a lot, where children are over-apologizing and being perfectionistic about their behavior, [00:23:00] being too hard on themselves. We're gonna respond differently to that. If that's the behavior, then we wanna let the children, have reassurance, that you're not in trouble. They look to adults to see as a scope how should I see this world?
How should I see myself?" They're not in trouble that, that's okay, that we all make mistakes and that there's nothing wrong with that. There's no need to apologize. When we see a child that is flopping, when I say flopping, this is a child that is lying on the ground, like lying limply, unable to get up.
A lot of times we think this child is being lazy. They don't wanna do any work, or this child's being stubborn." But that could not at all be the case. The child really could not be able to initiate action because they're paralyzed by the environment and by how overwhelming it is. So they are really like, "I can't partake in this.
This is too hard." It's not like a, a freeze, it's more of a flop. It's when you're so overwhelmed you can't get out of [00:24:00] bed. This is what we're saying, "I'm so overwhelmed I can't even get up." So for you to be like, "No, come on, you gotta get up right now," and not giving them that time and space to adjust to the environment, that's what...
That's not gonna help. So we have to think with these children that are flopping, that are really not able to initiate action, how can we lower the demands of the environment? And make them and help them feel stronger so that they can initiate action, which is the hardest part. And then we're looking at children that are freezing.
So what are we gonna do when the child is freezing and they they lock down, and it's this child's not moving. They're stuck, right? So we have to think being demanding is not gonna help them freeze. "All right. You need to listen to me. I'm gonna be firm. I'm gonna double down now, and you need to come because I said so," right?
Instead, we have to think, all right, we need to lower the demands. We need to give this child time and space. We need to, once again, as I was [00:25:00] saying before, we need to dial down our voice. We need to speak at a slower voice. We need to let the child know that they are safe and secure, that they're okay And then when the child feels comfortable, the child's going to be able to move.
When the child feels that this is a safe, secure environment, they're related to, they're connected to, they just need to take some breaths, practice breathing with them. You can also do the countdown to calm where you're counting to 10 with them. So anything of that nature to get them slowly realizing that they're gonna be okay, that they can accomplish this task.
You might be like, "Hey, do you wanna give me a high five? All right, we are ready to go." And then we're looking at that flight reaction when the children are running away, they're hiding under the table. And what we wanna think about is how can we give them the space, right? We don't wanna chase them. We can give them the space so that they feel safe and secure so [00:26:00] that they can calmly reenter into the therapy setting or the classroom setting or whatever it is the activity is.
And then we're gonna look at the fight. We have to think about if they have in a fight response, are they safe? Are they safe? Are the other children safe? And they need that time and space to calm their body. And also, what are ways that the child can get this extra maybe physical these physical sensations that their body's feeling out?
Would it be helpful to do some stomping? Would it be helpful to do some wall pushing? Would it be helpful to do some jumping? So thinking about different ways that this, this child's physical needs can be met to self-regulate. So we wanna think about those five different downshifts and how we're gonna respond differently to them.
But when we talk about all of these downshifts and all of these strategies, you want [00:27:00] 99.99% of your energy to be in prevention of the child downshifting. So that means, as we're going back to the last episode and we talked about, we want this child to feel related, we want this child to feel cared for, we want this child to feel safe.
secure with their predictable routines. We want this child to feel, to learn these reason strategies, these logic strategies, these words such as what are these different words we use for our emotions, these ideas for how do we solve our problems, these ideas for different breathing techniques and the ways we can use imagination when it comes to breath, which is really gonna stimulate that prefrontal cortex area of the brain and higher level thinking, and also this deep breathing, which is really gonna regulate the body, and methods such as counting, which is going to help also get the child in that prefrontal cortex.
Another thing that I [00:28:00] do with children when they get dysregulated is maybe we will look at different colors, and we will just go around, 'cause they're interested in colors, and we'll say the colors blue, red, yellow, or we'd say the letters on the walls or the numbers on the walls, and it just stabilizes them and puts them back in that logic brain, especially if the child has an obsession for letters, numbers, or colors.
It draws them back in an engaging manner into the environment around them. So just thinking about the unique child and also what helps bring them back into this world in a connected, related to manner. So that's what we have today. So if you're like me and you have kiddos on your caseload that downshift in the face of conflict or when they're frustrated or when challenges are presented in front of them, don't despair.
What we're going to do is we're gonna take 99.99% of our energy, [00:29:00] and we're going to help that child through our predictable routines. We're gonna help that child through strategies and practicing strategies when the child is calm. We're gonna help that child through building their emotional vocabulary and understanding their bodies and what feelings they're having.
We're gonna help that child by helping them see when I have a problem, I can make a plan, and I can take action, and we can do something about it and make it better through positive, proactive action. So we're going to explicitly teach all of these strategies when the child is calm and regulated. This is just going to be part of our routine.
So I want you to do what you do best, which is to roll up your sleeves and make the world a better place, one child at a time. You will always be first.
