Children are not soothed by what we say to them. They are soothed by how we are with them. Many parents come to me asking how to help their child calm down: how to stop the meltdowns, the defiance, the emotional storms that seem to arrive without warning. Parents want strategies, phrases, techniques.
What often surprises them is this: children do not learn calm through instruction. They learn it through resonance. This is known as the mirror effect.
From birth, children are biologically wired to attune to the nervous systems around them. Long before language develops, the child’s brain learns safety by reading facial expressions, tone of voice, breath, posture and emotional energy. A regulated adult nervous system sends a powerful, wordless message: you are safe. A dysregulated one sends the opposite, even when our words are kind.
This is why telling a child to “calm down” rarely works. Their nervous system cannot calm itself in isolation. It needs a regulated adult to borrow calm from.
When a child is overwhelmed, their brain shifts into survival mode. The thinking brain goes offline, and the emotional brain takes over. Logic, reasoning and consequences are inaccessible in these moments. What the child is scanning for instead is safety. Safety is not found in explanations. It is found in presence.
Parents often feel frustrated by this reality because they are already trying so hard. They may be exhausted, overstimulated, or carrying their own emotional load. When a child escalates, the parent’s nervous system often escalates too. Voices rise, bodies tense, patience thins. Not because the parent is failing, but because nervous systems speak to each other constantly. This is the mirror effect in action.
Children mirror our internal state far more accurately than our external behaviour. We can smile through gritted teeth and speak calmly while our body is tight with urgency or fear. Children feel that mismatch. They sense when calm is being performed rather than embodied. True calm cannot be forced. It must be felt.
When a parent slows their breath, softens their shoulders, and grounds themselves emotionally, the child’s nervous system begins to settle in response. This happens beneath conscious awareness. The child’s body receives the message that the threat has passed, even if the emotion has not yet fully moved through.
This does not mean parents must always be calm. That expectation is unrealistic and unfair. It means that when we prioritise our own regulation, we give our children the greatest gift possible: a safe emotional anchor.
Over time, children internalise this experience. A child who repeatedly feels soothed by a regulated adult learns how to soothe themselves. Their nervous system builds capacity. Their emotional storms shorten. Their trust deepens. Not because they were controlled, but because they were co-regulated.
The mirror effect also asks something deeper of parents. It invites us to look inward. If a child’s big emotions consistently dysregulate us, it often points to parts of ourselves that were never met with calm when we needed it. Parenting has a way of revealing our unfinished emotional stories, not to shame us, but to heal us.
When we learn to meet ourselves with compassion instead of criticism, our parenting naturally shifts. We respond rather than react. We stay present instead of escalating. We become the calm we once needed.
Children do not need perfect parents. They need regulated ones, adults who are willing to pause, repair and return to connection. Calm is not something we teach children to do. It is something we show them how to be. In that quiet, powerful exchange, healing moves forward: one nervous system at a time.
Hyesha Barrett
The writer is a Parent Coach and Master Life Coach
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