QTIP - Quit Taking It Personally
The best advice I received as a classroom teacher
Back when I was teaching, I attended a training about trauma informed practices. The focus of the training was on managing difficult behaviors in the classroom with especially reactive students. The biggest takeaway from the training was this advice: QTIP-Quit Taking It Personally.
This simple advice completely changed the way I was able to show up for students in my classroom and now how I am able to show up for my daughter. As a teacher, it was hard not to take a children’s behavior personally, especially when you would have a 5 year old hitting, throwing, kicking, yelling, and cursing at you. (It was a particularly difficult year.)
In the midst of my students’ outbursts, often found myself feeling personally attacked. I noticed that my heart rate would elevate, my face would get hot, my hands would get shaky, and I had a really hard time staying regulated myself. I felt like they were pushing my buttons on purpose. It felt as though my worth as a teacher was being challenged.
The thing is, when you feel attacked or threatened by your child’s behaviors, your lower brain comes online and takes charge. It’s time to fight, flight, freeze (or fawn). While the lower parts of your brain are very important in emergencies to help keep you safe, they aren’t very good for logic, reasoning, or regulation. So the issue with your lower brain taking charge when your child has big emotions is that your child’s feelings are not an emergency. Responding as if they are will only escalate the situation further.
And that is exactly what was happening in my classroom. I would feel attacked, react as if there was an emergency, get my hackles up, and escalate the situation in a spiral that what not helpful. Learning about the QTIP strategy helped to change all of that!
When you remind yourself to QTIP (quit taking it personally), it helps you to stay in your upper brain, the part responsible for logic, reason, and empathy. By not taking children’s behaviors as a personal attack, you will find that you are a lot less offended by the things they do and say. You will be able to get curious instead of getting blinded by frustration. You will more more easily be able to empathize with them. By responding instead of reacting and remaining in your upper brain, you will be able to help them build the skills they are lacking, or make the necessary changes to slowly help them build more resilience.
It can be helpful to remember:
Children don’t tantrum to get back at you. They don’t get pleasure from being dysregulated. They aren’t losing their cool because it’s fun. They don’t do these things TO you or to spite you. They are simply having a hard time and are communicating in the way that they can at that moment, through their behaviors.
So don’t take their behaviors personally. Try to remind yourself that these behaviors are happening in front of you, not to you. Remember that behavior is communication, and try to get curious about what they are communicating. What is the motivation behind their behavior? What tools do you have to stay regulated in order to remain a strong coregulator for them?
