Looking beyond blame in children, teenagers and family relationships
- Taking Family Nervous-System Patterns to the Polyvagal Institute Gathering
- What Do I Mean by “Nervous Systems Collide”?
- Following One Family Cycle
- Behaviour Is Information, Not the Whole Story
- Power, Responsibility and Repair
- When a Child Moves Between Homes
- What Families Carry Across Generations
- Mapping the Cycle With What’s My State?®
- Bringing in the R.U.D Process®
- Moving From Blame Towards Shared Understanding
- Continue Exploring
Taking Family Nervous-System Patterns to the Polyvagal Institute Gathering
From 22–24 September 2026, I am presenting two research posters at the Polyvagal Institute International Gathering in Sitges, Barcelona.
The first presents the R.U.D Process®: Recognise, Unravel and Understand, Diffuse and Develop. The second presents What’s My State?®, a polyvagal-informed, somatic state-mapping resource created for children, teenagers and families.
In the first article in this series, Beyond “How Do You Feel?”, I explored why I created these resources and why spoken emotional language is not always an accessible starting point. Read the first article here.
This second article moves from the individual nervous system into the family relationship.
Children do not experience their states in isolation. They develop within relationships in which adults and children continually notice, interpret and respond to one another. One person’s protective response can activate another’s. A small interaction can gather speed until everybody feels misunderstood.
What if we could make that sequence visible before deciding who was to blame?
What Do I Mean by “Nervous Systems Collide At Home”?
A family involves more than different thoughts, personalities and intentions. It also involves nervous systems continually responding to tone, facial expression, movement, silence, uncertainty, noise, proximity and changes in routine.
One person may reach for closeness when they feel unsafe. Another may need distance before they can process what is happening.
One person may ask repeated questions because uncertainty feels unbearable. The other experiences those questions as pressure and becomes less able to answer.
A parent may become louder because they believe the child is not listening. The child’s nervous system may register the increased volume as danger and become unable to take in the words.
Each person may be trying to create safety or regain connection, while their strategy inadvertently activates protection in the other.
This is what I mean when I describe nervous systems colliding.
I previously explored this pattern between adults in When Nervous Systems Collide. Within families, however, we must also consider development, dependence and power. A child and an adult may both become activated, but they do not carry equal responsibility for making the relationship safe.
Following One Family Cycle
The research poster includes a short family sequence:
Parent stress → child tiredness → parent shouting → child shutdown → parent guilt → withdrawal
This is not intended as a complete account of every family interaction. It shows how quickly a cycle can develop when we focus on the sequence rather than isolating one behaviour.
The parent begins stressed
Perhaps they are late, worried about money, carrying difficulties from work, managing sensory overload or anticipating another disagreement. Their Window of Capacity may already be reduced before the child enters the room.
The child is tired
The child may have spent the day concentrating, masking, navigating demands or managing an environment that did not meet their sensory needs. At home, where they feel safer, their remaining capacity may be limited.
The behaviour is interpreted
A short answer, refusal or lack of movement may be interpreted as deliberate disrespect. The parent’s story becomes: “They are ignoring me.” The child may be experiencing: “I cannot do one more thing.”
The parent becomes louder
The increased volume may be an attempt to regain authority, movement or certainty. The child may experience it as threat.
The child shuts down
They may become silent, look away, leave, hide, stop processing language or appear indifferent. The shutdown is then interpreted as further defiance, even though the child may have become less able – not more unwilling – to respond.
Guilt and withdrawal follow
The parent may feel ashamed and withdraw because they do not know how to repair. The child experiences the withdrawal as continued disconnection. Both enter the next interaction carrying what remained unresolved.
The original issue may have been a coat left on the floor. The lasting issue becomes what happened between the nervous systems around it.
Behaviour Is Information, Not the Whole Story
Describing behaviour as communication does not mean that we can look at one behaviour and know exactly what it means.
The same visible behaviour can emerge from very different experiences.
Silence might reflect fear, processing, protest, exhaustion or not knowing what to say.
Leaving the room might be avoidance, self-protection or an attempt to prevent escalation.
Laughter might reflect enjoyment, embarrassment, anxiety or difficulty matching expression to the situation.
Refusal might reflect a boundary, a demand exceeding capacity, uncertainty or a need for greater autonomy.
Behaviour gives us a clue. It does not give us permission to impose an interpretation.
A more curious response may be:
“I noticed something changed. What might have happened just before it?”
The answer may not be immediately available. We can still create space for it to emerge through words, movement, drawing, AAC, objects or later reflection.
Power, Responsibility and Repair
A nervous-system lens must not create false equivalence between adults and children.
A child’s shutdown and an adult’s shouting may both arise during activation, but they do not carry the same power or impact. Children depend upon adults for physical safety, emotional care, access to resources and help making sense of what has happened.
Understanding that the adult was overwhelmed offers context. It does not make the child responsible for the adult’s behaviour.
Repair may begin when the adult can say:
“I shouted. That was frightening and it was not your responsibility. I was overwhelmed, but I am responsible for how I spoke to you. I am sorry. I want us to understand what happened and what I can do differently next time.”
Repair does not require the child to immediately reassure, forgive or explain. They may need time. The adult can remain available without demanding that the child make the adult feel better.
A steady relationship is not one in which rupture never occurs. It is one in which adults remain willing to recognise their impact, take responsibility and make repair possible.
When a Child Moves Between Homes
Within blended families, a child may move between different nervous-system environments.
Each home may have different routines, sensory demands, relationships and expectations around respect, independence, affection and emotional expression.
The child may:
- mask in one household and release distress in another;
- need recovery time after changing homes;
- feel loyalty towards one parent when connecting with a stepparent;
- experience different rules as confusing rather than deliberately challenge them;
- struggle to explain why one environment feels easier or more demanding;
- become the messenger between adults who are not communicating directly.
A change in behaviour following contact does not automatically tell us what happened in the other home.
Adults should be cautious about recruiting the child into competing interpretations.
Instead, we might ask:
- What does transition ask of this child?
- What helps them arrive without immediately facing more demands?
- Can both homes offer a familiar object, phrase or routine?
- Can adults communicate without making the child responsible for carrying information?
- Can the child enjoy relationships in both homes without being asked to prove their loyalty?
What Families Carry Across Generations
Parents do not enter family life as blank slates.
We may carry ways of responding that developed within our own childhoods. This might include shouting when we feel powerless, withdrawing after conflict, minimising emotion, expecting children to become independent early or finding apology difficult because nobody repaired with us.
Intergenerational trauma does not mean a family is damaged or destined to repeat the past. Research into intergenerational patterns identifies both risk and protective factors; transmission is not inevitable.
Relationships, reflection, support and new experiences can interrupt a cycle. (Read the scoping review.)
Families also transmit strength:
- humour and creativity;
- faith and cultural memory;
- collective care;
- language and family stories;
- adaptability and resistance;
- ways of surviving and beginning again.
The purpose of noticing an intergenerational pattern is not to blame the generation before us. It is to recognise what we inherited, what protected people then, what causes harm now and what we want to carry forward differently.
“This may be where our family often gets stuck. What might help us create a different micro-moment?”
Mapping the Cycle With What’s My State?®
The What’s My State?® Board and Cards offer a way to move the family pattern out of an argument and place it where everybody can look at it together.
Family members can choose figures, buttons, stones or meaningful objects to represent themselves. They can place them on the board and physically move them as the interaction unfolds.
The family might explore:
- Where did each person begin? What was already happening before the visible conflict?
- What changed? Was there a demand, tone, sound, transition, memory or misunderstanding?
- Where did each person move? Did they become mobilised, immobilised, more connected or less able to communicate?
- What kept the cycle moving? What did each person believe the other’s behaviour meant?
- Where was there an opportunity for support? What might have offered more capacity?
The board is not a test with one correct position. The same event may be experienced differently by each person.
A child should not be corrected because an adult believes they have chosen the “wrong” state. The value lies in exploring what the position means to them.
The tools can support communication, but they should not be used to pressure a child into disclosure or make them responsible for managing the whole family.
Bringing in the R.U.D Process®
What’s My State?® can make the interaction visible. The R.U.D Process® offers a structure for exploring what has been noticed.
R – Recognise
Begin with the Four S’s:
Situation: What actually happened?
State: What nervous-system state might each person have been experiencing?
Story: What meaning did each person make about the other’s behaviour?
Sensation: What did each person notice in their body?
At this stage, we are gathering information rather than trying to solve the experience.
U – Unravel and Understand
- What got each person there?
- What kept the pattern moving?
- What helped—or could have helped – each person move from there?
- Was anybody being asked for more than they could access at that moment
- What belonged to the present interaction, and what might have touched an earlier experience?
D – Diffuse and Develop
The family can then identify one small response to practise:
- reducing language when somebody is overwhelmed;
- agreeing on a pause and a time to return;
- offering sensory or movement support;
- making a direct request rather than expecting mind-reading;
- repairing without demanding immediate reassurance;
- changing something in the environment rather than locating the whole problem inside the child.
Moving From Blame Towards Shared Understanding
When a family is caught in a repeating cycle, each person may believe that the other needs to change first.
The parent may think:
“If they would listen, I would not need to shout.”
The child may think:
“If they would stop shouting, I might be able to listen.”
Mapping the cycle does not erase what happened. It allows the family to see where protection, interpretation and power shaped the interaction.
The question moves from:
“Who is the difficult person? ”
towards:
“What happened between us, what does each person need now, and who holds responsibility for making repair possible?”
Sometimes change begins with one very small moment: the adult noticing their voice rising, the child being allowed more processing time, a demand being made clearer, or somebody saying,
“We are getting stuck. Let’s pause and come back.”
We are not trying to create a family that never experiences conflict. We are developing greater awareness of the cycle and more possibilities for responding when conflict arrives.
Continue Exploring
This is the second article in my What’s My State?®: The Nervous Systems We Bring Into Family Life series.
The first article, Beyond “How Do You Feel?”, explores why I created the R.U.D Process® and What’s My State?® and why emotional understanding does not always begin with spoken language. Read Article One.
The next article, Before We Call It Behaviour, will explore children of colour, mixed-heritage identity and whose nervous-system state is more likely to be misunderstood.
You can:
- explore the What’s My State?® Toolbag;
- download the free R.U.D Process® resource: [ADD LINK];
- bookmark my conference updates page: [ADD LINK];
- join the mailing list so you do not miss the next article: [ADD LINK].
This article offers psychoeducation and reflection. It is not a substitute for individual medical, psychological or safeguarding advice.
