THE FUSE

As parents, we have all been there when a child yells, storms upstairs, and slams the door. When parents and kids unpack these tense situations in my office, I hear all the details of these heated conflicts. Eventually, we get to the part of the story where the house goes quiet again. That is, in many ways, where the emotion dysregulation part of the story truly stops, or maybe that is right before round two starts. For many parents, that blissful quiet period feels like a nice opening. They think, usually erroneously, "Now is when we should deal with what just happened, before it gets forgotten."