Parenting With the Nervous System In Mind

In this episode, Amanda speaks with Dr. Megan Anna Neff, psychologist and co-host of the Neurodivergent Conversations podcast, to discuss how understanding the nervous system changes everything about parenting. They explore how stress responses affect both parents and children, the power of co-regulation, and why meltdowns are more than just big emotions. Dr. Neff shares insights on the autonomic nervous system, practical strategies for supporting neurodivergent kids, and the science of repair after ruptures. Tune in for a conversation on finding compassion and resilience, even in the most challenging parenting moments.

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Time Stamps:

00:34 Meet Megan Anna Neff

02:18 Understanding the Nervous System

04:29 Sympathetic and Parasympathetic Systems

06:50 Nervous System Responses to Stress

09:17 Interacting Nervous Systems in Parenting

10:31 The Science of Interpersonal Neurobiology

11:19 Understanding Mirror Neurons

12:42 The Pressure of Staying Regulated

14:58 The Importance of Repair in Parenting

15:43 Modeling Self-Regulation for Children

17:49 Honesty and Trust in Parenting

Additional Resources:

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Transcript:

Welcome to the Low Demand Parenting Podcast, where we drop the pressure, find the joy, and thrive, even when it feels like life is stuck on level 12 hard. I'm Amanda Diekmann, author, autistic adult, and mom of three. I'm not here as an expert, but a fellow traveler. Together, we're learning how to live more gently, authentically, and vibrantly in this wild parenting life.

In our episode today, I am talking with my friend Megan Anna Neff. Megan Anna is a psychologist, an autistic and ADHD adult, co host of the Neurodivergent Conversations podcast and author of Self Care for Autistic People. This conversation about the nervous system is so important to me as a parent and a parenting coach because I think it's essential information.

People come to me all the time asking, are we doing this right? Is my kid doing okay? Here's what's going on in our lives. Are they developmentally on track? We have so many questions and we're always looking around and comparing our kids to other kids, our kids to the normal, our kids to what it says in the book, because we want to answer one fundamental question, which is, are they okay?

And the complicated answer is, yes. The only measurement we've been given is in our own bodies. We've been given an internal barometer. It's the nervous system. The only way to know really whether or not something is a reasonable expectation or something you need to drop, whether it's aligned and it feels good or whether it's totally not the right approach, is inside of your body and inside of your child.

Learning to trust the information that we're getting from our bodies and learning to read someone else's nervous system is complex and important work. And the conversation that I had with Megan Anna really opened my eyes and helped me understand a lot more about the building blocks of parenting. So here's our conversation about the nervous system.

Can you help us understand What is the nervous system? Maybe a really quick overview of what we know about Amanda. You're asking an autistic person to give you a quick overview of a complex construct, but I will do my best because you're right. Parents probably don't want a science lesson. Um, but I, yeah, I do notice that.

Um, nervous system is floating around there more in pop psychology, which I love because it's so important when we think about the nervous system. But I also realize people often say that word without realizing what are we talking about? So broadly speaking, our nervous system is our brains, our spinal cord, and then all of the lovely messages and messengers that go out in our bodies that are sending signals up to our.

or brain, but the brain is really the center of the nervous system. When people are talking about regulation and nervous system, they're typically talking about a very specific branch of the nervous system. Um, the nervous system kind of branches out, but what we'd be talking about here is what's called the autonomic nervous system.

I find it easy to remember because autonomic sounds like automatic. And this is the part of our nervous system that's operating automatically, meaning we don't have control of it. So there are parts of our nervous system that we do have more control over. If I say, I want to pick up a glass of water, or you just picked up coffee, we're telling our bodies to move.

That's voluntary. When we're talking about nervous system regulation, we're talking about a system that's not voluntary, which is really important in understanding our kids and our responses, responses to stressors. So things like our heartbeat, our breathing, um, all of these things are part of the autonomic nervous system.

I'll stop there. I do want to explain parasympathetic branches, but I'll stop there just to see. So far, are you tracking? Yeah, I'm tracking. Let's try the other ones. I've heard people describe this and read many books and it still hasn't quite stuck. So I'm excited to see if I can sort it out for myself here with you also.

So tell me about these other types. Yeah. So within the autonomic nervous system, there's two branches. Again, the nervous system, we can think about like branches off like a tree. They're sympathetic and parasympathetic. You can think of the sympathetic, the easiest metaphors to think of that as the gas pedal and the parasympathetic, like the brake pedal.

And we need both of these. So for example, When I was getting ready to meet with you, my sympathetic nervous system started to mobilize, which I could tell, which was good. That's eight 30 here in Oregon. And to be able to be alert and talk with you and have words to say, I need some mobility in my body.

Now, if we get too much of that's when we're talking about fight, flight mode, stress response, panic symptoms. And. For externalizers. So one more thing about PDA ers who are externalizers, they're often dipping into their sympathetic mode when they're getting stressed, because what you're seeing is you're seeing their fight mode get activated.

Um, or sometimes their flight mode, which can look like stereotypical, like aggressive behaviors or lashing out, which is it's their nervous system getting into that sympathetic mode. The parasympathetic mode, this would be like the break. So when we fall asleep to digest our food, we need to be in our parasympathetic nervous system.

Ideally, the break and the gas are working together in harmony. So again, to use this morning as an example, when I was getting ready to come talk to you, it's okay. My parasympathetic system could come online to be like, okay, you've got enough arousal here. Now we don't want to be so stressed out about being on video with Amanda that we're going to keep you in a regulated window.

Um, And this, when our body's able to do this, when these systems are able to work together, we're in what's called the window of tolerance, which means we can take in incoming stressors and adapt and respond. Now, our nervous systems need some flexibility to be able to do that because the flexibility of these two branches working together harmoniously.

It's not that one branch is good and one branch is bad. Sometimes it gets talked about that way, but it's how flexibly are these systems working together so that you can adapt to your environment? One other thing I'll say, and then I'll stop and dump in on the nervous system is when we, so the window of tolerance, when we enter a stress States, we tend to go one of two places.

So I already mentioned sympathetic dominance, fight flight, but autistic people particularly We're equally prone to go parasympathetic or dorsal vague shutdown dominance, which looks like a retreat, withdrawal, like low key disassociation symptoms or not low key. And this is where the person's slowed down.

So that can also be a response to stress. But it doesn't look as obvious. So for example, PDA or two internalize might be going parasympathetic dominant and going more into that dorsal shutdown area. So that was a lot of information. Are there any parts you want me to unpack more? That's a landscape of the nervous system.

That was so helpful. Thank you for giving such a, an introduction that allows I can already be thinking about my own body systems and how that happens. And one follow up question. So these this the speeding up in the slowing down the gas and the brakes is. Not at the level of conscious thought. It's not, Ooh, it's time for me to take a deep breath here or like, I better hurry so that I'm not late.

It's not like that. It's like our body systems react. Right. It's automatic. It's my favorite metaphor I've heard is it's like a sneeze. So when you enter the stress response in the same way that you can't necessarily control a sneeze, it's your nervous system having a response. So whether it's your child or you, this isn't something to.

Feel guilt or anger around because it's your body. And we all have different windows of tolerance, meaning for some of us, it is an ice thin window, which means we very easily get flipped into a stress state and there's research showing neurodivergent people have more sensitive nervous systems, meaning less flexible.

So we can't do that symmetry. As well. So we often are flipping into stress states. Doesn't mean you're a bad person. It means your nervous system is having a automatic reaction. I'm glad that the research is backing up what people have known. Yeah. So it's when research does that. Yeah, exactly. Some people have a razor thin window of tolerance.

We know this. So tell me about how nervous systems interact with each other because we're here talking about how parents calm their activated nervous system, but often we are activated because someone is screaming at us or because there are too many asks happening over and over, and those are symptoms of another person's stress response.

Yeah, so how did the use. Work off of each other. I love that question. So I run an autistic moms group, which is one of my favorite parts of my month. And there just needs to be more spaces for people with sensitive nervous systems, parenting, or divergent kids, because this, what you're describing is, I would say, From my personal experience, one of the hardest parts of being a neurodivergent parent is I have a sensitive nervous system.

My kids have sensitive nervous systems. Those things are going to be interacting with each other and it's hard. I know you also have a philosophical background a bit, and I have really loved learning from other cultures when it comes to how we think about self. And realizing this idea of having a buffered self contained self is relatively new and also a very white Anglo concept.

So most cultures have known this for a long time. Again, that idea of it's nice when science tells us what we already know. Most cultures have known this throughout all of existence and most cultures still know this, but for those of us who like the science to back it up, it will end. Need that extra layer.

There has been a lot of science around interpersonal neurobiology that's come out in the last I don't know, 20, 30 years. I'm not exactly positive on the timeframe, but Daniel Siegel is one person who's really been at the forefront of that. I love a concept that he uses. He talks about how we need to move away from me and we, and talk about the meaning that we are interconnected, like nervous system wise, we're interconnected.

Um, one of the, Pieces of research often cited here is mirror neurons. You've probably heard about mirror neurons. So mirror neurons are essentially the idea that when we watch someone do something, the same Brain circuits get activated in us. So they first discovered this in a lab. I believe it was either monkeys or apes.

What they noticed was that when the caretaker of the monkey was opening a banana or drinking water, the same brain circuits were active in the monkey. And that's what started this research around mirror neurons. That's one reason that our nervous systems are interconnected is simple mirror neurons.

Okay. So when someone around us is getting dysregulated, we might be having a similar reaction, especially if we're, if we have a sensitive nervous system. But then the other piece is a bit more functional. Like you're saying, if a child is dysregulated and it has a lot of requests, those are all demands coming in.

Or if they're crying and if the parent has a sensitive nervous system. Sensory profile that sound coming in. So there's also the sensory aspect of being around someone who's dysregulated that is going to kick up a fight or flight or freeze response for a lot of caregivers. So mirror neurons and then the functional aspect of just the environment, I would say, are two ways that.

Our nervous systems are connected. So the pressure to stay emotionally regulated is something that I hear about from a lot of parents and they may have picked it up through learning about the idea of remaining calm from maybe a more gentle parenting practice that it's crucial that the parent stay calm, or maybe they've recognized like, wow, you're right.

These mirror neurons are happening when I start to feel Like my head's going to explode is a better chance that my child is going to ramp up as well. My child is leaning on me, but I also know from personal experience that the pressure to stay regulated all the time actually makes me more dysregulated and it can either ramp.

It's either gas. It makes my whole system accelerate or it pushes me to dissociate. It's better if I'm just not even present to what I'm feeling then. feel it because it would, you know, be too dysregulating. So how, how do you think about that from a scientific perspective of what's happening inside the parent's body as they feel this pressure to stay regulated?

First, just that comment about dissociation, like If it's not a thing, people should be talking about that disassociative parenting. I think that probably that's happening a lot. What I call, uh, faux regulation. When we're in that dissociative state, it can look like we're regulated, but we're not, we're actually in a really stressed state and that's not Healthy for us or for family systems either as a psychologist.

This is something I spend a lot of time with people thinking through is what are the narratives you're telling yourself in any given moment? And so I love how you name it. So while they're partly because of what we're reading and absorbing and our Ideals of what a good parent looks like. And I think particularly moms have a lot of cultural scripts around what does a good mom look like?

What is a co regulated mom look like? I need a co regulate for my kid all of the time. There's so many scripts. And when those scripts are playing in our head, that absolutely is adding pressure to this. Pressure cooker moment, this idea of, I need to handle this perfectly. One of my favorite things to educate on is around what we know about attachment that ruptures are going to happen.

What's really important is repair. Are we circling back to the repair process? And that actually has perhaps more implications than the avoidance of rupture is, are you able to do that report? pair process with your child. For me, when I learned the science of that was one of those narratives that helped me in those moments of, I'm not going to do this perfectly and that's okay.

I don't have to do it perfectly. Every time I'm going to go back to my child when I don't do it perfectly. And we're going to talk about it and we're going to pair. So I think one, just releasing the pressure and the narratives around doing it perfectly. I also, I would love to see more parents model what it looks like to regulate themselves.

And I realize this is dependent on age. My kids are older now, but being able to say, I love you. And I want to support you. I'm going to go take a minute to calm my body down. And then I'm going to come back that I'm going to come back. Part's really important, but it's okay to model that. We also. Need to take space to regulate our bodies so that we can come back, lend our prefrontal cortex to our child and actually be a co regulating presence.

Yeah, this came up for me yesterday in a small way. We were in the car. My child had watched a YouTube video about a really elaborate costume and he started talking about costumes and how I could make this costume. I could feel my, I can get this right. My, my nervous system was getting activated. The gas going, my heart started beating faster.

I was gripping the steering wheel. And my brain was spinning because costumes are stressful for me because we have been through rounds and rounds around costumes, not looking right, not feeling right. Anybody who has a sensitive sensory sensitive kidness I'm talking about. And he said, mom, are you mad at me?

And I just show at tuned to say, no, I'm fine because of this pressure. Like, I need to, right. Give off her regulated. But what that would tell him is either you are sensing something that's not right, you can't trust yourself, or this is too big. I'm actually really mad and I'm, I'm not even gonna tell you because that, it's like, Mm-Hmm, , it's too big.

So instead I said. Yeah. I think I feel stressed about costumes and I need a little bit more time. Maybe I could watch the video with you and then we could talk it through. And he was able to say to himself, okay, yeah, I felt something from her that the mirror neurons that then turned into that was right.

But I could see another parenting approach saying either, or don't put this on him. Don't open up. Don't let him. Don't put your emotions on him. Yeah, totally. Totally. Totally. Whereas, and this is where especially it with autistic kids, especially, we need to be rethinking some of those conventional parenting strategies.

Being autistic, we're often second guessing our gauge of the other. So if we then are doing the check in and our parent is essentially yet denying our reality, It is eroding self trust and kids need to learn that they can trust what they're picking up, being honest and in an appropriate way, not of, Oh my gosh, yes, you're stressing me out so much stuff about costumes.

Yeah, you're right. I'm stressed in this moment. And here's some things we could do about it. That's helping him to develop that sense of trust, which is important for all kids, but particularly for autistic kids said really important that. We be honest about what's happening. And I see that a lot too, from my autistic child.

There's a lot of self check ins of, are you mad at me? Cause when they're picking up the emotional tone of the room, they're trying to figure out what that is about. And it's so important that we be responsive in those moments. Thank you for all of your time and wisdom today. I so appreciate it.

Absolutely. It was good to be with you. If this podcast is speaking to your soul, you can subscribe through wherever you get your own podcasts. Even better, if you feel the nudge, head on over to Apple Podcasts in particular and leave us a review. It's such a helpful way for new people to also get to experience what this podcast wants to bring into their lives.

I'm Amanda. Remember, it takes great strength to let things go. I'll see you next week.

The Low Demand Parenting Podcast is your space to let go of the pressure and embrace a more joyful, authentic approach to parenting. We hope you enjoyed this episode and would be honored if you left us a review which helps us reach more parents just like you!

Parenting With the Nervous System In Mind

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