Restraint Collapse & Transitions - Understanding & Managing in Children and Adults

Understanding and Managing Restraint Collapse and Transitions

In this solo episode, Sam discusses the concept of restraint collapse, where individuals release pent-up emotions and stress upon reaching a safe space or person. Although often linked to children, Sam explains that adults also experience restraint collapse. 

The episode also offers practical techniques for mitigating its effects and navigating transitions effectively. 

Tips include: 

• use of sensory tools
• deep oral input
• rhythmic movements
• time in nature
• implementation of visual schedules

Sam shares personal examples and provides detailed strategies for both adults and children to create a more regulated and balanced life.

Free Resources: 

Child's Week Visual Template (Canva)

Child's Bag Visual (Canva)

Adult Daily Schedule (Canva)

Regulation Tools for Overstimulated Mamas (pdf download)

00:00 Introduction and Podcast Update
00:25 Understanding Restraint Collapse
01:59 Personal Examples of Restraint Collapse
04:11 Strategies to Mitigate Restraint Collapse
05:31 The Importance of

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Transcript

 All right, my friends, welcome back.  I know I said I was going to be posting a pod every week, but If you follow me on socials, you will know that this week was our first week in quote unquote big kids school. So that meant last week was very much spent just prepping for that. Which leads me to the topic of today's podcast.

Handling restraint collapse and navigating transitions. Now,

I know these are topics that are very often talked about and related to as children topics, but I want to just jump right in and say that everyone, regardless of age, can experience restraint collapse and restraint. Everyone, regardless of age, can struggle with transitions. Yes, we do tend to see these things present more or at least more extreme in children, but that does not mean that adults don't experience them.

What it most likely means is that a lot of the times adults have learned to either appropriately deal with them or  deal with them in different ways.

Let's explore a little bit what restraint collapse even is. Sometimes I have seen it termed after school restraint collapse, but I feel like, again, that really pigeonholes it into being a topic that is only applicable for kids when adults experience it. Also, so restraint collapse is when a person regardless of age has been holding their emotions, their sometimes physical actions or want for physical actions in all day or for a long period of time.

And then they finally get to their safe person or their safe space and it all comes together. Now, you may have seen this. I will , give you an example that I have experienced with my daughter. When she very first went into daycare, once she was settled, like this is after the first couple of weeks when they're getting used to it, I would pick her up and she would, as soon as she looked at me,

this is at like just turned one years old as soon as I walked in the door I could see her through the window on the door. She would be happy playing. I walk in the door She sees me and she just starts bawling and I am like, what is going on?  Restraint collapse.  Her little body, even though yes, she may have had emotions while she was there  But her little body saw her safe person, me, and just let everything out from all the stuff she'd been feeling all day.

Let me give you another personal example of me as a full grown adult experiencing this.  I used to work a job that was very, very stressful.  I had extreme imposter syndrome all day every day because I very much did not have qualifications at all to be doing the job I was doing. I would get through work.

Everyone thought I was like acing it doing fine. I would get home, I would come to my partner, and I would just start screaming at like the littlest things that did not seem like things that I should be blowing up about, but that was me getting out. All of that emotion and that feeling that I had been suppressing and dealing with all day. 

That was my way to get it out. Was that healthy or acceptable or alright? No. But that's what happened. That is restraint collapse in real life.

So as I have said, with restraint collapse, it can happen. Coming from daycare. It can happen coming from school. It can happen coming from work. What we need to do is start to explore what's happening, and adjust our environments as much as we can, to one, make it to where we are actually able to express those things when we're feeling them, and

where we can also then create essentially these supports to help us regulate in these moments. So we can then try and mitigate as soon as your kid hits the front door, they drop their backpack and they start crying, or they start wailing, or they just,

Completely become this child that seems like a wreck of emotions for the first hour that you're home.   A couple of things that can help us with this transition, with going from a kind of underlying dysregulation, sometimes it's overt, but sometimes it's underlying, this underlying dysregulation, is we want to start to include regulating things, right? Of course. So that is going to look like some type of, and I feel like.

This term really needs to be renamed because  certain minds can take it a certain way. But you want deep oral input or deep oral stimulation. Either way certain minds can take that a certain way. But you want things like crunchy snacks, chewy snacks. Something where you're really having to like work your jaw.

So this might look like carrot sticks. Or potato chips. It might look like, um, fruit leathers, or chewing gum, toffee even, taffy even. All of these different things that really require a lot of chewing. That is super regulating for us. On that deep oral input we also want to think about drinking from a vessel that has restraint.

 . Think of anything you're drinking out of a straw. So drinking out of a water bottle with a straw bonus. If it's even some type of liquid that has a thicker viscosity, like a smoothie or a milkshake or a yogurt pouch.  Two things here, it's giving you deep oral input as well as a sucking motion.

And that man, this like, really, if someone snippets this, I can get in like a whole host of convoluted and misconstruing what I'm saying. But,  You want those things that are going to give you the deep oral input, the sucking motion. Our body finds those things incredibly regulating. It is often why, and this is not exclusive to or a broad generalization, but you very often see young neurodivergent children having pacifiers, dummies, passies, whatever you want to call them.

beyond an age that a lot of their peers have them. Because that activity is incredibly regulating.  On that note, having a sucker, like an actual lollipop,  is also really, don't chew it. I mean, you can because that kind of falls under, but if you can actually manage to just have the lollipop as you normally would eat it, fantastic.

One of my daughter's favorite things also that she uses as kind of like an oral stim are Chew necklaces. So we have like a handful of them that are different pendants.  They have different firmnesses They have different designs, which means different textures. She has one that's like, um, it looks more like a quote unquote Regular necklace because it's just colored marble sized balls that go along the necklace.

Other ones we have that are, , like a rainbow or whatever, not an ad at all. I just think they're a really fantastic product

because they offer a lot of options in line of true necklaces and sensory products is jelly stone designs. If you're in Australia, they might be available elsewhere, but I'm in Australia. I know they're an Australian company. Like I said, not an ad. It's just those are the ones that I keep going back to.

And we have bought now probably the majority of their true necklace designs because my daughter loves them and she actually uses them.

Some other things that are going to help something that is really, really cold or as hot as you can stand it. Both of those things kind of  snap your body and act as like a little reset, like a little Etch A Sketch shake up to bring you back into a more regulated place. One of my favorite things, because it's absolutely free and any and all of us can access it pretty much at any time,  is time in nature.

Now I'm not saying you have to go full blown on a bushwalk, I am saying literally stand outside, feel the sun, if it's daytime,  breathe fresh air, take a couple of big breaths,  go for a walk, and that walk literally might just be like, 10 meters down the road, turn around, come back, 10 meters down the road, turn around, come back, 10 meters down, you know what I'm saying?

Like, you don't have to go for a five hour hike. Just a few moments, you will instantly start to feel better. And coupling that with, if you do decide to go beyond your driveway, walking on a familiar route. This is not the time to do the brain games of, I want to be more mindful as I am driving. So I am going to take a route that I am not as familiar with because

It is going to make my brain work better and be all those brain games. No, this is the time that you go, I know exactly where I am going. I can get there essentially on autopilot and you let your body. Just have this moment to physically move, to process, to get everything out and you're not giving yourself the extra cognitive load to think about the next steps.

For me, this would be something like walking around my block. I have done that walk 5, 000 times. I could probably do it with my eyes closed and my body just inherently knows the number of steps to take before I need to turn right to start to go around the block.

If going outside, if walking isn't something or let me just add to you can do all the things on this list. Or, you can just pick one or two. This is the beauty of it. Pick and choose.  consider how dysregulated you or your little person or your partner is and how many of these things they want to stack. If it's just like, Hey, this is becoming a little routine that we do when we get home to make sure that we're like copacetic and we're good.

It might only be one or two of them. But if you're noticing that Transitioning away from daycare, childcare, school, work, whatever it is, is like a mega event. You might be stacking on a couple of these things, maybe all of them. So, in addition to that time and nature, we were talking about moving, we were talking about walking.

If you could move your body in a rhythmic way, think of what walking is. One foot after another, it's very rhythmic. If you don't want to do actual walking, it might be sitting and swaying. It might be bouncing. It might be jumping on the trampoline. Something where it is going to be the same motion over and over and over and over again.

Why do you think so many sensory seeking kids love walking? Being on a swing set because their body is ticking so many boxes When they are sitting there 

and then one of the last items that I would recommend Kind of having on this list and yes, I will put them all as a list in the show notes I'll probably also create some type of freebie that you can download because that's how my brain works is deep pressure so if your person  Is okay with touch. It might be as soon as you see them, you go and give them a big ol bear hug.

You don't have to say anything. It's literally just, you wrap your arms, you give them a good squeeze, and you hold that for like 20 seconds. You know, whatever both of you are willing to tolerate. But that deep pressure is so  regulating. I've recently had a realization, and maybe this will like,

connects and dots for some other people who also have a sensory seeking child. My daughter, she's only just about to turn four, so she's obviously still in a car seat when we're in the car. She loves it to be pulled quite tight. Like, I always pull it tight, obviously. That's safe. I'm a safe parent. But there are certain times where , she will say it's not tight enough.

And she wants us to pull it. A little bit tighter and through observation and reflection, I realized that more often than not, the times that she's saying that it's not tight enough are times where I am  thinking that she's a little bit overstimulated. And so that little bit of extra pressure down, like through her shoulders and collarbones and the top of her chest, like where her harness sits  probably feels really, really good to her body.

Deep pressure might also look like using a little lap pad,

and it could be,  an actual weighted lap blanket or a weighted blanket. It might even just be something like holding their backpack on their lap or, , if you have an animal, maybe sitting with the animal on your lap, there are a lot of different ways that we can get deep pressure.

And just a little side note also with restraint collapse, especially for younger children like the example I gave with my daughter, you will most likely see the frequency of restraint collapse lessen as they develop secure attachments and bonds with their carers. If you are a parent who has recently put their child into daycare and you are noticing that every single day you pick them up and they cry and they are dysregulated and you're just thinking, what have I done?

Have I made the You If you've made a mistake, have I done something wrong? Have I made a wrong choice? Just know that the longer they're there and the more they are developing secure attachments with these carers in those spaces, you will see those frequencies of restraint collapse reduce. 

And now going hand in hand with restraint collapse is transitions. So what I'm going to say can be fairly general, but it also can really, really help if. You're like me. You are somewhere in the Southern hemisphere where it is now your back to school time. I know in the Northern hemisphere where I grew up,  you're smack in the middle of your school year, but in Australia the kids go back to school at the beginning of February.

So we're all like in the thick of everything that back to school or like for us starting big kids school involves. Transitions and assisting your kids through transitions, or again, this could be applicable to yourself, are going to help create more regulation, which then means, hopefully, seeing less restraint collapse and other signs of dysregulation that come with this new experience.

A couple of things that you might decide to do is having a visual or written schedule, obviously dependent if your child can actually read. My child cannot yet, so all of our schedules are visuals. Um, side note, this is one of the things that's included in the Life Admin Template Library.  So if you want to check that out, you get a seven day free trial and

you can have a look through the membership, see all of the amazing resources that are there as well as the awesome community and don't have to pay a cent. If you decide it's not for you, cancel before the seven days. No hard feelings. But with your visual or your written schedules, you are going to break it down.

 For us, we have a weekly visual schedule. This is, Monday to Sunday. I've got icons for every single thing.

I've decided to do it in a way where everything is laminated, as much as I don't love the plastic involved in that, but it means that it is much more durable and reusable. So I just use like white tack, blue tack, reusable adhesive, the generic name is called. Um, I've created icons for basically absolutely everything.

For  school, for birthday party, for everything you can think of. We have a little icon for it. And here is another like side note tip.  Give your child as much autonomy as possible, but especially in times of transition when they feel like their world is so out of their control, give them as much autonomy as you can with the caveat of not being overwhelming with it.

So that autonomy might look like Giving them choice where the end result doesn't really matter to you, right? So, oh, hey child, for breakfast, do you want to have yogurt and fruit? Or do you want to have cereal? You give them two choices. They feel like they have that little bit of control they can assert.

And to you, it doesn't matter. 

If you don't have these visual or written schedules, that might be another place where you can give them some autonomy. I have sat down with my daughter and she has picked out every icon that we use. . I don't care what the icon for swimming is, but she went through Canva with me and was able to pick out the one that she liked and the one that she, you know, thought best represented swimming.  Dovetailing  On from a visual or written schedule or a calendar is a routine or a rhythm chart. Again, you want to break this down.  Where the visual or the written schedule is going to be a weekly thing, or some people do monthly, that might work better for your child. The routine or the rhythm is going to be a snapshot of a day.

 Think a morning routine or an evening routine. , at my daughter's school, they have visuals of what their whole day because each day is exactly the same in that they have the same rhythm all day long. They understand how regulating and Calming that is for the child. So every day they have the same rhythm.

Yes. The times are variable, so it's not like at exactly 12:00 PM we sit down and have lunch. But in their coat room on the wall, they have their routine, their rhythm of the day. So you  get dropped off. We are outside and playing, and then we have morning snack, and then the, the thing goes. But it's there as.

visuals for them to be able to see as they're still learning about this new space and new routine.  Like I said, the routine or the rhythm is going to be a snapshot of a day, breaking it down as big or as small as you feel is appropriate for you or your child

on the vein of giving them autonomy. Let's also try and remove as much of the unexpected as possible.  This might be something like prepping them, showing them. I'm just going to give you the example again of going to a new school. If you're applying this as an adult, it might be starting a new job. You are going to be looking at the route that you're going to take to get there.

You're going to be looking at what does this.  What does the building look like? What does the inside of the building look like? How are we going to be going about certain things? It is removing as much of the unexpected as possible. You will very often see this laid out in the form of a social story. I love social stories.

I think they're fantastic.  Side note, if you are someone who uses AI like ChatGPT or similar, you can have it create a social story for you. You can give it as much or as little information as you want. You can do this on the free version. , I did this

to create a social story about going to the dentist for the first time. For my daughter, obviously. I've gone a few times in my life. , if you're also someone who's like super low capacity and you just feel like you do not have the mental bandwidth to do that,

outsource it.  Outsource it to the school if you need to. I know this might be controversial and not everyone is going to agree with me, but I firmly think that every school should have social stories as just like a ready to go thing that they provide parents. I wish we didn't have to actually ask for it.

I wish it was something of like, hey, welcome to the school. Here's your little intro pack and included in that. is a social story. Whether or not you choose to use that with your person is absolutely up to you. I wish more schools offered that. 

And if we can broaden that out even more, I wish more places offered that. Side note, a lot of places actually do. So sometimes it's just worth asking, especially when it comes to, let's say like a school and if your child's new there. Simply just send an email asking them, Hey, do you guys have a social story about blah, blah room and see how they respond.

It'll also give you a really good insight into how neuro affirming or how neuro aware they are. 

And my last little tip with helping with transitions is again,  leaning on the technology. I can't tell you how much I do this. So we have a Google Nest, Google Home. I'm not the techie person. I don't know. I just know how to set up automations. But, for a long time, we have had Google helping us with our evening rhythm.

 At a certain time, it says, you know, my daughter's name, it's time to start packing up, and then it'll say, come and get your gummies because she takes gummy vitamins every night. , then it'll say time to brush teeth and it just goes through in that way. Going into this week of our first week of big kid school, I asked my daughter again that autonomy, Hey, do you think that we should also have Google help us in the morning so that we're on time?

Because yes, at not even four years old, my daughter already knows that we are always late. 

I wish she didn't, but she does.  But she was like, yeah, that'd be good. So I have set up Google automations on our big kid school days where it sends us little reminders. And the key with this is on days where we don't have school. We still follow this rhythm, but it's a lot more lax, it's a lot more spread out, it's not get up, get ready, go, go, go.

It's get up, still do these certain things in this certain order, you know the rhythm, you know the pace. And it allows her to have that continuity of I know what's coming next, I know what's expected, but not have the same rush that we have on mornings where we need to be out of the house by 8am. Some of you will understand the struggle that that is, others may not, and I am really jealous if you do not understand the struggle of getting out of the house before 8am.

 With that. I hope I have given you a better understanding of what restraint collapse is,  how you can help with it, whether that's for you, your child, your partner, whoever, because again, it does not discriminate on age, even though we so often see it , talked about with children.

And then also some tips to help with transitions in general, but especially if you were going through some big transitions. 

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until next time. If you want more on this topic, you can see some of the content I've created on both Instagram and Tik TOK, at Sam Attempts Motherhood, and if you want to learn more about the membership, head to attemptingmotherhood.  com slash membership. Of course, that's in the show notes.

And as always, I for listening.