"Mama, what's wrong?"

“Mama, what’s wrong?” I heard my son’s voice from behind me in the hotel hallway.

“Oh honey, Daddy and I are just trying to figure out who will sleep in which room!”  As I said it, I made sure to put some “sing song-y” into my voice, as well as turn my body towards Cooper to show him my facial movement, the crinkles around my eyes, and a genuine smile.

Last weekend was our first trip as a family of four in 3.5 years, and we drove three hours into Canada so the boys could experience a new country. We had rented two hotel rooms next to each other, without a door to link them, and had our service dog in tow.  

When Cooper asked me what was wrong my husband and I were simply focused for a moment on problem-solving, without any conflict or anger, on who would sleep where, but the seriousness of our tones signaled threat to the survival part of Cooper’s brain.

After I turned to him and he could see my face and my body language, I saw him soften. “Oh, ok.” He said and smiled. His face relaxed as he received my deliberate verbal and non-verbal message that all was safe.

Over the years, especially as my son’s cumulative nervous system activation came down to a place where he wasn’t in constant fight or flight, I started to notice how often his brain was interpreting threat even there was no “objective” threat there.

If I had a neutral face or was concentrating on something, he would ask “Are you mad?”

If I spoke in a more flat tone or used gentle sarcasm with his dad, “Are you fighting?’

If I spoke without softening my tone or adding some prosody (sing-song), he would often say “Why are you yelling?”

Cooper’s responses in these moments were a reflection of his sensitive neuroception that is characteristic of PDA children and teens, but also all neurodivergent individuals and those who have experienced trauma. 

Neuroception is the pre-perceptual awareness or “subconscious” detection of safety, threat or life threat (Porges 2009). Before our frontal lobe or rational awareness comes online, neuroception tells our body and nervous system whether to stay in “safe and social,” mobilize into fight/flight or move into shutdown.  

So how can we help a child, teen, or individual whose brain is often perceiving a baseline of threat?  The good news is, as mammals ourselves, we have a magical capacity to co-regulate and signal safety to another mammal to let them know – you are safe.

Last week I hosted a live (it's now on my YouTube channel) about the 7 signals of safety you can practice and experiment with over the next week with your PDA child or teen.

1. Get physically below your child or teen, or let them be above you (on the back of the couch, on top of a car, climbing at a park, etc.)
2. Reduce spoken communication and focus on the body
3. Pay attention to your face, especially the upper half, and allow your eyes to crinkle, and forehead to move, experiment with a genuine smile.
4. Allow for “prosody” in your voice – the inflection of a sing-song-y tone like a mother singing a lullaby to an infant. If you have a tween or teen, you can use this on the dog, or even to yourself, so that it is not too direct or “babyish” for the age.
5. Slow the pace of your sentences, elongate the words, pause between sentences.
6. Slow the movement of your body, especially your trunk and limbs. Imagine moving through molasses.
7. Keep the volume of your voice steady and don’t raise the volume too much (especially for deeper voices – hey dads, talking to you!).

I invite you to either pick one of the seven ideas and focus on that OR pick 20 minutes a day when your child or teen has a particularly hard time (waking up in the morning, transitioning to or from school, or even when you enter their space for the first time that day) and practice using multiple of the signals of safety above. 

And then observe...

What do you notice at the end of the week?

Was there more communication?

Was their face softer in the moment of interaction?

Did their body movements seem less tense?

Anything that doesn’t seem to resonate for you or your child (for example, if monitoring your tone of voice is hard because you are Autistic), you can simply drop and try another aspect of signaling safety.

And anything that you see working, you can expand upon - by deepening or bringing into other interactions and scenarios.