By Alita Blanchard, Counsellor and Nervous System–Informed Parent Educator
Some of us are raising children – especially sensitive, intense, or easily fearful ones – who get stuck in big feelings and defended behaviours.
These children can’t easily move through frustration into sadness, nor can they express disappointment safely. Instead, they stay hard, rigid, explosive – or perhaps numb and distant. Being “stuck” doesn’t mean they’re bad, naughty, or defiant. It means their emotional development has stalled, and their brain is protecting them from vulnerability. The work isn’t to fix these kids – it’s to create the conditions where softness, safety, and emotion can flow again.
Signs your child might be “stuck”
- Even with connection, play, and patience, they stay aggressive, rigid, or shut down.
- Their “mad” never moves to “sad.”
- Tears don’t come – they can’t access sadness, embarrassment, guilt, or disappointment.
- They are highly sensitive, easily alarmed, or emotionally reactive.
- They show strong counterwill – pushing back against demands or saying “no” to everything.
- You feel constantly braced – walking on eggshells around them.
This rigidity and pushback often signals an alarmed nervous system – an emotion that sits underneath anxiety.
You are your child’s answer
“The best chance for change comes from inner change” — Dr Gordon Neufeld
Stuck kids don’t need more discipline, structure, or strategies. They need a more connected, empathic parent, not a harder one.
Mindset shifts to hold onto:
- You are your child’s best bet.
- No program or expert replaces your relationship.
- Don’t fight their defences; work around them with warmth. This takes time – see it as an ongoing emotional project.
- Focus less on fixing behaviour and more on melting the defences beneath it.
- Meet your child where they are developmentally, not where you wish they were.
- Children need to feel the full range of emotions – sadness, frustration, joy, and playfulness. Without access to their feelings, growth gets stuck.
Create emotional safety
Warmth, safety, and rest allow tears to return over time – and with tears comes growth. (This applies to you too. We all need to find our own softness, play, and permission to feel.)
Ways to soften the environment:
- Lead with warm eyes and a warm voice – safety is signalled through tone and expression before words.
- Slow down daily life – fewer activities, more rest.
- Prioritise creativity and unstructured play – art, music, movement, nature.
- Reduce sensory overload – notice how noise, clutter, and screens impact regulation.
- Create predictable rhythms and rituals to lower alarm.
- Be the “regulated enough” anchor in their storms – This is hard if regulation wasn’t modelled for you but it can be learnt with awareness, support and practice.
What Stuck Children Need Most
These children need one loving parent who keeps showing up – despite how hard it can be. They need consistent love, nurturing, co–regulation, and play. At times, their intensity may trigger your own stuck parts – anxiety, rage, frustration, or overwhelm. You may want to shut them down or punish them to regain control. But fear and punishment backfire. They increase alarm and deepen anxiety, shut down, or aggression. Stuck kids can’t be punished, feared, or shamed into
better behaviour. They can only be loved and softened out of it. (You may also need to explore root causes such
as neurodivergence, gut health or mineral imbalances.)
Connection Before Correction
Nothing grows without attachment. When the relationship feels strong, the child’s brain can relax its defences and feel again.
How to engage attachment instincts:
- Warm greetings and goodbyes –
- Mini connections throughout the day.
- Surprise with warmth and playfulness: woo them into relationship.
- Touch and proximity: stay close; they often need you near all day.
- Be their compass point: dependence is not regression, it’s repair.
- Solicit good intentions (“I know you want to be kind”): Don’t demand follow through yet – just keep believing in them.
When attachment strengthens, vulnerability safely returns.
Helping the Tears Return
Growth happens when frustration meets futility and sadness can be felt. But stuck kids are defended against sadness. Their brain says, “Feelings are too dangerous.” Our role is to gently help the tears come back.
How:
- Reflect what they feel, but soften slightly: “That didn’t go how you hoped,” instead of “You’re angry.”
- Touch the feeling lightly – don’t demand expression.
- Let futility sink in gently: “I know you really wanted that, and it’s not possible.”
- When tears come, don’t stop them. This is healing.
“Crying is the release valve for futility. Tears are how we grow.” – Dr Gordon Neufeld
Change the Environment, Not the Child
Direct behavioural demands make things worse. Instead, change the structures around them to support safety and flow.
- Reduce transitions and time pressure – slowing down is regulating.
- Simplify tasks – offer help, step in together.
- Provide sensory breaks, outdoor time, and rest.
- Avoid reasoning or consequences in the heat of the moment.
- Use gentle resets – movement, a snack, bubbles, a pet, laughter and fresh air.
The environment can either harden defences or soften them. Choose softness.
Why Children Get Stuck
A stuck child may be struggling with:
- High alarm and chronic fight–flight activation.
- Exhaustion and ongoing stress at home or school.
- Gut–brain imbalances or nutrient deficiencies (zinc, magnesium, B vitamins).
- Neuroimmune issues or inflammation.
- A neurodivergent brain – more sensitive, easily overstimulated, needing longer recovery time.
These are not behavioural problems. They are body–based stress responses.
Do Your Own Emotional Work
Many of us are also stuck living in hypervigilance, control, or shut down. We weren’t shown how to feel safely. Until we re–parent ourselves, we’ll keep repeating what we learned.
Start with your own nervous system.
- Daily self–regulation tools:
- Orienting, look around, notice safety.
- Physiological sigh, two short inhales, one slow exhale.
- Self–soothing touch, hand on heart or face.
- Gentle movement, sound or crying to release energy.
- Talking, writing or journaling to process emotions.
Presence means feeling and feeling is the way through.
Signs of Becoming “Unstuck”
You’ll know softening is happening when:
- Tears start to flow again.
- Aggression lessens in frequency or intensity.
- Your child seeks comfort after conflict.
- You both feel more warmth and connection.
- Play and imagination return.
These are signs the natural adaptive process is awakening again.
Your job isn’t to fix behaviour, it’s to create the emotional and relational space where nature can restore flow. When we slow down, soften, and reconnect, our children’s hearts, and ours, begin to unfreeze.
Alita Blanchard, The Aware Mama: Based on the NSW Central Coast, Alita is a mother of 4 boys, Counsellor, Nervous system informed Parent Educator and Emotional Release practitioner. You can access 1;1 Counselling, Parenting Support plus group programs and workshops.
@alitablanchard_ | hello@theawaremama.com.au | theawaremama.com.au