Sensory processing: the magic sentence

“I believe you.”

As a highly-empathic former elementary teacher, ed-psych major, I thought I had all the tools I needed to raise my kids well. When my son was two years old, I heated up some oil on a pan, threw a whole fish on there, and there was a sudden, pretty loud sizzle. My son was standing a few feet from me, and in an instant, he went into fight/flight mode — crying uncontrollably, so scared, almost as if he was in serious pain. The first thing I did was scoop him up and tell him, “You’re okay! You’re okay!” But he was obviously not okay.

After that, he suddenly started to cry with other loud sounds: lawnmowers, vacuums, loud music, other kids’ crying. Bath times were super difficult because he hated water anywhere near his face, the weather was always too cold, too windy, too hot.

And my response was always, “You’re okay, you’re okay!” If we dissect this response, I was basically invalidating his experience, that these loud sounds or sensations were actually just fine! no problem! despite his very extreme reactions. It took us way too long to finally get noise-canceling headphones, which shows you how long 1) I didn’t think this was a real thing, 2) that he wasn’t really in pain, but he was just overreacting or 3) that he needs to get over it.

What really drove me crazy was that these sensory overloads then escalated, and he would ask for things that didn’t make sense. He’ll be crying, absolutely dysregulated, and ask me for more sizzling sounds, telling me to do it again, telling me he wants to be in the kitchen forever, that he’s not crying but he’s laughing. What?

I started following Dr. Becky on Instagram during the pandemic thanks to a good friend who recommended her. One of the hallmarks of Dr. Becky’s approach to parenting is allowing and validating all emotions, and putting a boundary on some behaviors. I did believe in validating all emotions, but what about the ones that seemed totally irrational or completely unreasonable? I was definitely not validating those. But I decided to do an experiment: for one whole week, I would validate every single emotion he had, no matter how irrational.

The script I used was also Dr. Becky’s: “Something about x feels so hard for you. I believe you.”

Something about your sister’s crying is so hard for you. I believe you.

Something about the sound of those tools is really hard for you. I believe you.

Something about my cooking sounds is really hard for you. I believe you.

I think maybe this could have helped my son? But what I’m absolutely sure of is that it helped me. It helped me to see the world from his perspective. I became less impatient with his sensory sensitivities, less frustrated. I saw him as a good kid struggling with something really, really hard.

And although we can never know for sure the reason for a behavior change in our kids, I’d like to think that the infrequency in escalation that started happening after I instituted this had something to do with this new approach.