“Mommy! Mommy! MOMMY! MAMA!!!”

The pre-dawn, blood-curdling screams of urgency coming from my daughter jolt my nervous system awake faster than a shot of Italian espresso. I shift into problem-solving mode before my eyes are fully open.

Is she bleeding? Did she set the curtains on fire? Is the house sliding into a sinkhole? WHAT IS THE CRISIS?!

“Are you okay?!” I gasp, stumbling into her room, heart hammering against my ribs.

“I love you! Can I watch Arthur?”

…That was it? I think to myself, standing there in the dark. That was the reason I launched myself out of bed ready to fight a home intruder with nothing but a lukewarm curling iron and some truly impressive bedhead?

“I love you, too. Yes, go watch the talking aardvark.”

I crawl back into bed for a few minutes while my heart rate slowly descends from marathon sprint to functioning human. There is something fundamentally jarring about a child’s scream for attention. It is a visceral, biological alarm — a flashing neon sign screaming DANGER, Will Robinson, DANGER. In that moment, my body does not care if she is actually hemorrhaging or if she just cannot find a specific, slightly-sticky stuffed animal; my nervous system registers both as a Level 5 Emergency.

It has taken a lot of therapy — and even more caffeine — to adjust my response in those ungodly morning hours. Sometimes I catch myself lecturing her like she is a hungover college freshman: “Listen, the optics of this communication style are poor! You know it scares me when you do that!” Later in the day, while I am trying to survive the barrage of emails in my inbox, that same siren song of names repeats on a loop until I finally make eye contact.

When a child feels disconnected — whether we are distracted by our phones, in a bad mood, or lingering from an argument with our partner — they “protest” that loss of connection. Some do it with anger, some with withdrawal, and mine does it with the volume of a jet engine preparing for DEFCON 1.

Biology is a bit of a prankster like that. Just as we need food and water, we have a biological imperative for emotional proximity. But as a parent, no one hands you a manual for your own nervous system. Nobody teaches you how to distinguish between the cry of “I’m thirsty” and the cry of “Are you still there for me?” We hear them all as demands — loud, relentless, soul-crushing demands. We rarely realize that underneath the noise, our children are actually just trying to find us.

The Emotional Regulator

Attachment Theory tells us that these early childhood bonds are basically the blueprints for our adult relationships. The way I respond to these pre-dawn antics informs how my kids will show up in their own relationships thirty years from now. No pressure, right?

When I snap back with “Stop yelling! Give me five freaking minutes!” I am essentially asking my child to soothe my nervous system. She is loud, my body hates it, and I want her to shut down so I can feel peace.

The reality? Children (and even teens, despite their “I hate you” aesthetics) cannot always self-soothe. The prefrontal cortex — the part of the brain that handles things like logic, impulse control, and not screaming for cartoons at 5:00 AM — is not fully cooked until our mid-20s. Before a child can learn self-regulation, they have to borrow ours. This is what is referred to as co-regulation.

Parents and caregivers are the external hard drive for emotional stability. Children monitor our faces and tone like tiny, highly trained detectives, looking for cues to see if the world is safe or if Mom is about to blow a gasket. If I react, they escalate. If I can somehow channel my inner Zen master and stay regulated, they will eventually meet me there.

A.R.E. You Kidding Me?

From an attachment lens, our kids are constantly firing off three “pings” to see if the server is still up:

  • Are you Accessible? Can I reach you, are you emotionally “available” to me or distracted by doomscrolling?
  • Are you Responsive? Will you respond to my emotional needs and “big feelings,” or will you push them back at me because you are over-stimulated?
  • Are you Engaged? Do I actually matter in your world, or am I just a loud miniature roommate with a laundry list of demands?

The next time the screaming starts, the question is not “Why is she like this?” but rather, “What is she trying to tell me underneath this chaotic behavior, and how can I fix the connection first?”

Rethinking Discipline: From “Go Away” to “Come Here.”

Traditional discipline loves a good isolation tactic. You yelled at me, so go sit in a corner and “think” about why you yelled at me. Spoiler: they are not thinking about their behavior; they are thinking about how much they resent you.

In the EFT world, empathy leads. Validating the emotion (“I get it, you’re super pissed that I’m making you put on pants”) before setting the limit (“…but we are leaving in two minutes”) keeps the connection intact. The boundary does not change, but the emotional environment does.

Just as in couples therapy, Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) views the parent-child relationship as a dance. When a child pushes, a parent might pull away; when a parent demands, a child might shut down. By recognizing these negative cycles, parents can step back and say, “We’re stuck in that cycle where I yell and you hide. Let’s try to find each other again.” By focusing on the “we” (the relationship) rather than just the “you” (the behavior), the bond becomes more resilient.

Nobody’s Perfect

Look, no one is “attuned” 100% of the time. If you were, you would be a saint or a robot, and both are boring. The magic is not in being perfect; it is in the repair. Coming back after you have lost your cool, apologizing for being a “cranky Mommy,” and reconnecting is what actually builds a secure bond. It teaches them that relationships can bend without breaking.

So remember: behind every annoying thing your child does is a mountain of stuff they do not have the vocabulary to say yet. We can either react to the surface noise or tend to the root.

Be right back — the “MAMA” siren just went off again. Wish me luck.