Once a child has the basics of regulation and starts bringing their own play ideas, a new tension shows up: when do you follow, and when do you teach? Cory brings a real, nagging clinical question about kids who get sticky the moment you add your idea to theirs, and Tracy and Michelle reframe the whole thing around attunement. The headline: pushing is rarely the answer, curiosity almost always is, and explicit social teaching only sticks once the child actually wants it.
Picking up from last episode’s work on regulation and engagement, we move into the social-emotional capacities. Cory names a tension she has been sitting with: kids who have moved past basic regulation and now have their own ideas, but who get overwhelmed and sticky when she tries to add hers. The stickiness, she notices, often starts as a social challenge and only then spills into dysregulation, which raises the therapist’s perennial question of how much to follow the child and how much to hold a line.
Tracy reframes it through the layers of development, the DIR functional emotional developmental capacities and the spiraling continuum from Gilfoyle, Grady and Moore, showing how agency and reciprocity emerge separately at each level and do not always gel at once. When reciprocity tips into a power struggle, that imbalance is read as a slide into dysregulation, and the linchpin becomes co-regulation and trust. The conversation lands on Dan Hughes’ PACE, the monster-game standoff, Michelle’s story of a teen who simply needed to finish his thought, and Tracy’s boy who asked her to stop talking over his thinking, all illustrating that explicit social strategies only take hold once the child is curious about their own problem. It sets up executive functions for next time.
Lightly edited for readability. Speaker labels and chapter markers match the published episode.
Michelle: Welcome to episode nine. Hello Cory, hi Trace, welcome back. Here we go. We are going to continue on from our last episode and dive into the social-emotional capacities. We started last episode looking at regulation and engagement, and keeping pace, matching the child we are working with. So today we stay in the same lane and expand on that idea through the social and emotional capacities.
Cory: Sounds good, let’s dive in.
Cory: Through the week I had this inkling I kept wanting to bring up, something I have noticed in sessions for a while, particularly around kiddos who get stuck when they start to develop play ideas. We have moved through that really basic regulation, they have got it to a point where they can interact and engage and stay in that space with me, and now we have moved out to, I actually have ideas and I want to play my ideas. But when you try to add your ideas to my ideas, it overwhelms me, and then it gets sticky and we hit edges and it loses its flow.
Michelle: Yeah.
Cory: And it is not fun, well, it can be fun if you just do everything I want you to do. If I simply follow them and go with them, it tends to go okay. But then my question as the therapist is, how do I find the just-right challenge in this dynamic where they are starting to get ideas? These are school-age kids, so how on earth are you playing and negotiating with peers if you are this sticky in here with me, when I am pretty attuned and flexible and always trying to avoid power struggles? Sometimes I feel like I need to hold a line and say, hey, you have had ten ideas and I really just want to add this one.
Michelle: And give them feedback, this is not fun for me when you do that.
Cory: Or if the game is for you to stand there and order me around to pick things up, I want to play too. So this is just something I want to refine. I know there are a ton of reasons kids get sticky and are not yet robustly solid in their regulation, but here the stickiness is not coming from dysregulation as the starting point. It is coming from the social challenge, and then having a hard time regulating. So what do you guys think, and how should we talk about that today?
Tracy: What is so interesting here is that when we think about children struggling in the unfolding of their social-emotional capacities, it can feel daunting when that early level of regulation and engagement is tricky. Then as children develop mastery and move forward, it feels like, finally we are at this place of more opportunity, we see ideas and engagement and sharing and exchanges, and chances for us to be partners in problem-solving. But our want for it to stay in that rich space runs into the fact that, in a therapeutic environment, kids have this deep wisdom of knowing this is the place where I get to work out all the kinks. And those tricky bits come in different layers for different kids, it is never just one thing. That is where pausing to do more clinical reasoning, to name what it is for this child, matters, because it might be quite different for another child. So it is important not to make assumptions about where the trickiness is coming from, but to analyse it, while still applying the principles of how we help a child feel grounded in their capacity and not so stretched that we pass the just-right challenge. Kids with complex processing issues, which is essentially all the children we consider every day, do the best they can where they can, and they will show you, this is what I am good at, or this is what I am working on. Sometimes that looks like, I need to boss you around because I am finding my agency, finding my voice. So the clinical decision is, am I going to let them find that power, and what does that look like, or am I working more on the turn-taking and the balance of the social flow, and then how do I wed those two things? For kids with complex issues we often have to disentangle them and allow them to assemble in bits and parts, because they do not always come together simultaneously. That can feel like a frustrating pause, and whenever I feel that way clinically, those are the moments that invite clinical reasoning, usually afterward rather than during the session.
Tracy: Part of this is that the most adaptive thing right now for this child might be finding power, finding bossiness, finding control. That is actually an awesome skill. If it is deployed in a way that keeps you from being flexible, that is trickier, but we are all bossy sometimes. I can remember family stories about how bossy I was at five or seven years old.
Cory: I am laughing because I have the exact same story.
Tracy: Right, we all go through those real developmental bumps. So clinically we are trying to figure out, if I use that idea of attunement, really tuning in to what your eyes are looking at, what your gestures and facial expressions and direction of attention are telling me, how do I meet you right there and join you in what is interesting to you? If it is being bossy, let’s figure that out together. If it is being inflexible, why is that? If it is being resistant to problem-solving, I am curious about that. There is always this invitation to stay curious about where they are, instead of feeling we have to facilitate the very next thing, because sometimes that consolidation comes from the moment. Our intention can’t be to urge consolidation too far down the line. When kids are struggling, I often use this spiraling continuum graph that comes from Gilfoyle, Grady and Moore. I like that graph because when a child is at one of those moments, it is telling me they are right on the cusp of their window of optimal adaptation, either struggling at the top edge, so I need to reinforce what is just below it, or needing to cycle back to something a little lower to consolidate and pull things together. Sometimes I really need to allow that. We want children to work from their higher-level capacity, but it is never static, it is always dynamic and unfolding. Does that make sense?
Cory: Yeah, that’s awesome. My gut instinct is to help them regather and regroup, and then often I see spontaneous flexibility. Part of it is also helping parents see that it is okay to have some movement in that as the adult too, because parents worry about the same thing, how are they going to play with kids if they cannot have their way? So I am often managing that piece as well, that it is okay to let go and meet the child where they are at, and then suddenly I see spontaneous flexibility. The other day we were playing a board game, and the child I work with did not want to share being the monster, no one else can be the monster, only me. So I just said, oh, it is too hard to share right now, and they said yeah. I asked the sibling, do you want to play, they said yes, so we played, and at the end the child suddenly decided, okay, you can have a turn being the monster now. If I had forced that at the start, I do not think we would have played the game at all. But it is so hard to know, because sometimes it comes about and sometimes it does not. What you said about figuring out clinically why it is sticky is really helpful. Sometimes I can clearly see it is a language issue, I have suggested something and you do not actually understand the language, so you just say no. Sometimes it is, I am worried about anything new, so anything you suggest takes me time to come to. But when you were talking about agency versus the balance of turn-taking and fairness, where do those come in developmentally? Agency starts really early, doesn’t it?
Michelle: In the toddler years, typically?
Cory: Even in really basic reciprocity, I start to see that my actions have an impact on you, though that is a really low level of agency, I’m guessing. I have never really thought about those two things separated out, that you can work on them separately, and then how do I purposely pull them together? I am not sure how I would do that on purpose in treatment, so I would love to hear what you think.
Tracy: It is, again, a reflection of all the layers, and I want to be satisfying in addressing that without just saying it is a product of the layers.
Cory: Sorry, my questions are usually not the most straightforward, the layers of the questions.
Tracy: The layers of those levels of agency show up at each developmental level. We are talking here about the levels of social-emotional development conceptualised through the work that Stanley Greenspan, Serena Wieder and their colleagues put together in the DIR Floortime approach. In that framework there is a formal set of levels, sometimes referred to as the functional emotional developmental capacities. Those levels were not just invented by the DIR and Floortime people, they are deeply researched social-emotional capacities that do unfold, and you can read about them from lots of different perspectives. So sometimes we refer to them through that lens because it is a packaged lens, but you do not necessarily have to be trained in those particular approaches. Social engagement lets you move into reciprocal social exchange, and you have a level of agency in both of those arenas. Then you become more sophisticated, a social partner who can explore at a higher level, have deeper, longer exchanges and connections, and simultaneously the world starts to get more open, which means things happen and you have to become a problem-solver, and we problem-solve in a social context. Those are the first several DIR levels, and there is agency that happens in a different way at each one. It is not that you just have agency once you have accomplished the levels, you have an emerging sense of agency at each level, and that consolidation lets you deal more effectively with complexity.
Tracy: Take the monster-game situation. For one child the issue of monsters is appealing, it gives a sense of affective connection and drive, I like that monster thing and I am going to glom onto it because I feel awesome about it and it gives me a different sense of power. So it is much harder for me to share when I feel the shining coolness of monsters and I want to be the monster, I can’t quite get to the point of allowing the other child or adult to do that. With kids who are not struggling, we can set a limit and say, it seems like your brother wants to be the monster and you want to be the monster, I have an idea, let’s get curious together and figure out a plan. You can move into joint problem-solving, set up structure, and help them understand the other person also has a desire to participate. But for a child where that gets really sticky and turns into a power struggle, the power struggle usually comes from that child not quite knowing how to have balance in the connection, communication and conversation in a sustained, reciprocal way. When we lose that balance and imbalance is driving things, that is a cue to hold the space and hold the moment, and to understand that the imbalance is a sign of dysregulation, they have slid down to some level of not being able to hold on to the regulation function. So we use curiosity, empathy, structure and playfulness to explore how this is going to unfold and what would be the best anchor for that child’s regulation. And in the situation you described, the sibling sees that you are doing the repairing and holding the space, and they trust you.
Tracy: All of this comes down to, in our intervention, our connection, our co-regulation, and our ability to establish that base of trust. That is the linchpin, the thing that holds it together, because then you can offer curiosity, okay, monster is really your thing today, I totally get that, I want you to just be the monster, and let them feel that power. From that you reestablish balance, and balance is that tipping point within reciprocity that allows the exchange to expand.
Cory: That is so helpful, because lately I have had this push-pull between how much do I stand my ground. My gut instinct is to follow the child and meet them where they are at, but sometimes I feel the pressure of, am I pushing enough? So this is helpful, because it is, I do not need to push, I need to be curious, empathetic and playful, and that will allow for the more balanced exchange we are trying to get at. And this concept of who is going to lead and who is going to follow is a really helpful thought to have. Michelle, you were saying that if we do our job of being attuned, we see that as the primary goal, not pushing towards the next thing.
Michelle: I think it buys us some time. I have the same tension, wow, how many sessions am I going to be playing Pokemon for? But if we stay in it and really attuned, in the moment and also in our thinking before and after sessions, then it unfolds. We give them space, they take their time, and we allow it to become clearer to us and to them what capacities are developing and where they are bumping up. Are they playing with the idea of you following, how does it feel when they lead and you follow, so that maybe they then accept us leading and they are happy to follow. That was a lovely reminder, Trace, to stay attuned and fight our own urge to move things along in a hurry, or to have our theories that they are just bossing me and it does not feel positive.
Cory: Or to get too worried about, outside this session that is probably not serving you well in friendships. The goal is always, how do I help you not just in my session but outside it, to participate and engage, because you really want to do this with other people and with me, and I am here trying to do it with you so that skill can unfold a little more and you can do it more smoothly with others, and get that really yum feeling you have when you come in here, not just here.
Michelle: I think we cannot always know what they are getting from it, we can have our perception that they are practising being bossy, or practising agency. I had this kiddo, he has autism, around thirteen, I have been working with him a little while. We were in a space together, maybe three metres apart, chatty all the way to the clinic room, but once we got in there he separated a little. There was a trampoline he was bouncing on, and he stayed looking at me, really eye-gazing and positioned looking at me, but he started talking about all this sciencey stuff. It was at me, not with me, and I was nodding along. Eventually he paused, not necessarily looking for a response, though I felt he was a bit disoriented to me, in his own mind. So I said, do you want me to join in, are you wanting me to tell you some of the things I know about science, I wonder how you want me to be here. And he said, I am just learning about science and I want to talk about it. I said, oh, so you do not need me to join in? No, I am not finished yet. I said, okay, will I stay here, or do you want me to leave the room, because I felt a bit awkward that he was talking towards me and looking at me and I was witnessing what felt like him voicing his thoughts out loud. He said, yeah, yeah, I am just not finished yet. I said, okay, I will stay here, you let me know when you are finished. And then he came over when he was finished. What resonated for me, Tracy, when you mentioned that spiral of development, is that he has some togetherness, some back and forth, but what he wanted in that moment was to string his thoughts together on a new topic. I happened to be there with him, he did not want me to move away, but he was getting his thoughts together, a cognitive, language process for him, while my thinking was, I want this to be social and I think I need to teach you some social skills because you are on a roll.
Cory: You just gave a really good example of curiosity, by the exact questions you asked, do you want me to be here. You were not trying to shame him, you were just curious about what he needed from you right now.
Michelle: And that was all my stuff, because shame, I did not say that word and I do not know that it was even in his sphere.
Cory: But if you had approached it differently and said, oh man, you are talking on and on about this and it is getting really boring for me, that would not have created the same response. So you hit the nail on the head around being curious. That is partly how you found out, if you had never done that he would never have told you, this is just how I think and I need to finish my thought, and then I am ready to play. You would never have found that out if you had gone straight into, I am going to teach you social skills mode. And I can see why people would think to do that, because if someone keeps talking about something you are not interested in and you have done the faking-interest thing for a while, you are kind of ready to move on. So it is lovely that you were able to stay curious rather than forcibly shift it, because that is the tricky part sometimes.
Michelle: It was just lovely, and it resonated with what Tracy spoke about, that he had enough language and regulation to frankly say, this is what I need, I just need to finish this thought, and no, you do not need to go anywhere. Just because I am eye-gazing at you, Michelle, does not mean I actually want to engage with you right now.
Tracy: That’s awesome. I am sitting in my office in Denver and I have a little quote board of favourite things kids and people I have treated have said over the years. One kiddo I worked with for a very long time said to me one day, please stop, you are talking over my thinking. I love that, and I was so grateful he said it, just like this guy said to you, Michelle, I just need to finish thinking, I need to work this through. It reminds me, if I have had a particularly exciting or hard thing happen at work and I go home, my co-regulation, my husband, I will start chatting and just slam him with the whole thing, and then realise twenty minutes have gone by, and I will say, oh, honey, thank you for listening, I think I really needed that. If in that moment he had said, I am going to get a turn-taking board, honey, you talk and then I talk, that might not have worked very well.
Michelle: I’ll show you what you can do with that board.
Tracy: So these kids can feel really safe with us, and sometimes they are just working on the developmental level they are working on, and we are tuning in deeply to see, are you in a space right now where what you need is for me to really listen for and support your voice and understand where you are coming from. We work so often with kids who have had language delays, we work so hard to foster their ability to communicate expressively, and then they start to, and then everybody wants them to stop.
Cory: It is so funny. The whole curiosity thing, and I know it is more than just curiosity and there are many strategies we can use to support things, but when I reflect on sessions where things got sticky and I then went, I am just going to let go and go with where they are at and see what happens, it always seems to be a better choice than if I had stayed stuck. Usually it is, oh, I think I have just lost you, I went too high and too far, so I am going to let go of that because it did not work, and I am not going to take it personally. You get a gut feeling of that change, because in those sticky moments you feel the tension and you can feel the child trying really hard to stay in it too. If you can shift and get curious about why I am getting stickiness right now, and make a different choice towards where it is a little less sticky, often I see things unfold that I was looking for anyway.
Tracy: That is exactly right, and honestly that is the best formula. Dan Hughes has formalised the approach we are pulling from, playfulness, acceptance, curiosity and empathy. PACE is a powerful acronym to keep in mind, because when you run into that edge, you do not want to ignore your discomfort, you want to notice that an imbalance is present, in the communication, the connection, the reciprocity, and that imbalance may be a slide down to a little level of dysregulation. So you notice it and start to identify clinically how you are going to name it and what needs to happen. Michelle, you did such a beautiful job just asking the question, with somebody verbal enough to handle it, how do you need me to be with you right now, and the child can let you know. If you cannot ask that question, you get curious about what they are showing you about their experience, and then what you need to do to help achieve a different level of balance in the reciprocity and the circles of exchange. It is not that there is a formula. I notice in myself that I use a lot of visual supports and other things when I treat, but I have learned to pause when I feel the need to pull out a strategy and ask, is this for me and my discomfort, how else could I be curious and interested in this rather than needing to control it. Sometimes you do need to set a limit and say, this is the edge here, but usually it is not about controlling it, it is more about, why did we slide into an imbalance in the reciprocity here?
Michelle: And can I just say, sometimes it is me. Sometimes the child is actually regulated and fine, but I get bored, I had some agendas when I came into the room, I know we want to get into vestibular work, so it is, just get on the swing and tell me the story while you are on the swing. There is this ugh in me, and I am the one dysregulating, I disconnect and pull away, and the imbalance is me flipping it, not necessarily them.
Cory: Or that expectation of, am I doing enough to move you forward. If I readjust what my role is, instead of doing, it is, am I being with enough in this moment, or am I looking for something and pushing for it. I do not tend to do that, but lately I have been almost self-doubting about whether I am pushing enough, so it is nice to know that is not the way to go about it anyway. Instead of forcing something, it is, how can I purposely reason out strategies to deploy to allow it, how do I refine my ability to use curiosity, how do I refine the empathy space. With younger kids who cannot verbalise, well, you are not matching me, lady, I will often pick that up, it might take me a little while. If the idea is to throw something into the Lycra and they are little and tipping their head back to look up and throw it in is too hard, they try a few times and then their behaviour starts to unravel, and in that moment I think, oh, is this game too hard, let me name that and let go of the idea. How is that game important anyway, just because it was my idea does not mean we need to do it. Sometimes that helps reassure parents too, because they think their kid is just being naughty or disobedient or not listening. I hear that a lot, they are not listening, and I reflect back, that idea I had, they were willing to go with it, but it was too hard, so there was no point pushing it, and that is when the behaviours came out. Better that I just shift and follow in that moment. Maybe that is more about this lead-follow dynamic we have been talking about.
Tracy: It absolutely is. There is also an opportunity to practise, really on purpose, being free with the structure we impose that is maybe not that important, like the game of tossing the ball. What is important is the connection, the communication, and the building of the richness of the exchange. I had this vision come of working with a set of parents and a young child struggling with social communication. In their play the dad is really comfortable with structure, like read a book together, so for him the task is, let’s read the book, he sits down, turns the page, let me read you the story. What the child is doing is noticing the contrast in the pictures, there looks like a face, then space, a face, then space. So we help the parent attune to what the child is interested in here. Your structure of wanting to help him learn to read this book is beautiful, but let’s meet him where he is at and look at what he is interested in on that page. As the parent attunes to, oh, he is interested in this, then what comment could you make about it, let’s let go of the words written on the page and let go of that structure, we do not need to be rigid. When we allow ourselves to meet the child where they are at, we see this unfolding, suddenly the child is like, yes, you got it, I was looking at that, and now the child is looking at the book, looking at the finger point, looking at the dad’s face, and back at the book, and this moment of reciprocity turns into a richness that was never available before. It is about what is of interest in this moment, how can we share it, and can I be flexible enough to meet you where you are at instead of expecting you to meet me where I am at?
Michelle: Trace, that begs the question then, who is rigid? That is what I am thinking about, particularly with that monster example and the dad’s preference for structure and books. Who is getting sticky here? The monster, I do not really care what token I take in games, but I know that is a thing for other people. I like my floor swept, so I get sticky about the floor, and you can get sticky about the monster, and that is only going to be misattuned if you like a messy floor and I like a clean one, or I like the red monster and so do you. So it is about that attunement and matching and knowing of self, knowing that it works better for me if it is a little quieter and more structured, and I see it feels more flowy for you with more movement and noise, and can I lean into that enough where I do not start getting rigid myself, working harder to regulate when you get noisier or more chaotic. Fascinating. It is about who is going to attune in, because maybe sometimes it is us.
Cory: We are always working on ourselves, aren’t we?
Tracy: Yeah. I also wanted to say, that same boy with the quote about talking over my thinking, a year or so later he was in early middle school, and in a session I was being curious with him about how it was sometimes hard for him to find a pause to let me share the moment with him. We talked about sharing the moment and how good that feels, and he could really anchor on that because it was real and juicy for him. Then I tried to help him get curious about when that happens at school, instead of me trying to teach him the lesson. He said, yeah, the kids always walk away, the teachers are always irritated with me. So I said, I am wondering if you want to work on that with me, and as soon as he said yes I do, then I could teach him the strategy, you get to say three things and then you have to ask them a question, could we practise that. A rule like that became a lifeline to him that he was willing to deploy, because he was curious about it. If I had come in the other way and just tried to teach him a social rule, he would have been able to tell me the rule but not authentically use it. That implicit-to-explicit ability to use a skill is something we all struggle with, and an important thing to remember, we have to match it to the capacity and not just push it on.
Cory: That is so interesting, because you used an explicit strategy, but not until the motivation and drive came from him. That is exactly what we have been talking about, when do we do the explicit teaching, because there is a place for it, you really want to make friends, so let’s figure that out. Whereas if you are not curious about that, it is hard for me to force it into your sphere of thinking. And that nicely links, if we are looking at the Spirit model, to that higher affective route, the motivational drive that helps organise the system and pulls us into the executive functioning piece we want to talk about as well. A great way to wrap up today. We will definitely talk more about the social-emotional piece because there is so much to it, but next time we are hoping to delve into how our executive functions help us in this social realm, and tie that together.
Tracy: Perfect, love it.
Cory: See you guys next time. Thanks, Trace.
Tracy: See you next time, you guys.
And that’s a wrap on today’s episode of Spirited Conversations. We hope this sparks something for you, whether it’s a new clinical idea, a fresh perspective, or just the reminder that you are definitely not alone in this work. If this conversation resonated, we would love for you to share it with anyone on their own learning journey. You can find information about the podcast on our website, and you can join us in the courses and communities the Developmental FX team have put together at developmentalfx.org. And if you’re enjoying listening, please subscribe or leave a review, it genuinely helps more people find us. Until next time, keep the conversations spirited!