You got another note from the teacher today.
Your son, the same kid who builds elaborate Lego cities and remembers every dinosaur fact you’ve ever told him, is being labeled aggressive. He pushed someone at recess. He can’t sit still during math. He melted down over a pencil that broke, and now you’re getting emails about “concerning behavior.”
And here’s the part nobody talks about: when you read that email, your heart started racing. Your jaw clenched. Maybe you snapped at him before you even meant to. Maybe you’re sitting in your car right now, trying not to cry because you don’t know how to help him and you’re exhausted from feeling like you’re failing.
What’s Happening in Your Body
When your son slams his bedroom door or has a meltdown over homework, your body doesn’t see a struggling kid. Your nervous system sees threat. Your heart rate spikes. Your breathing gets shallow. Blood flow moves away from the thinking part of your brain and floods your muscles. You’re not choosing to react this way. Your body is doing what it was designed to do when it perceives danger.
What’s Happening in His Body
Your son’s nervous system is developing. His hormones are starting to shift. And he’s navigating a world that doesn’t always make space for big feelings in small bodies. When he can’t regulate, his body goes into that same stress response. That shows up as explosive behavior, inability to sit still, meltdowns that seem too big for the situation. But it also shows up physically: headaches, stomach aches before school, trouble falling asleep. These aren’t separate issues. They’re all connected to a nervous system that can’t get out of stress mode.
The Nervous System Truth
Here’s what makes this harder: you’re not starting from calm. You’re already running on a nervous system that’s been in overdrive for months, maybe years. The emails from school, the worry about whether he’ll have friends, the constant vigilance about his mood. Your body has been in low-grade stress for so long that it doesn’t take much to tip you over the edge.
When his dysregulated nervous system meets your already stressed nervous system, it’s like throwing gasoline on a fire.
What You Can Do
When you feel that surge rising up, your first job is not to fix your son. Your first job is to interrupt your own stress response.
Walk away. Not in anger. As an act of care for both of you.
Tell him, “I need a minute. I’ll be back.” Then leave the room. Move your body. Walk around the block. Shake out your arms. You’ve got about five minutes before your nervous system can start to come back online.
When you come back, if he’s not ready to talk, sit quietly. Don’t ask a bunch of questions. Sometimes that triggers him to spiral again. Your calm presence is enough.
Later, when things are settled, that’s when you address what happened. “Throwing is not okay. It’s okay to be frustrated. It’s not okay to throw things at people.” Boundaries matter. But he can’t hear them when his body is still in fight or flight.
And if you lost it too? Clean it up later. Apologize. Tell him you’re learning too. That while his behavior wasn’t okay, your reaction wasn’t either, and you’ll do better next time.
How Chiropractic Helps
In our practice, we work with boys this age and their moms. We’re working directly with the nervous system, helping bodies get out of chronic stress response and remember what regulation feels like. For your son, that might mean fewer explosive reactions, better focus, easier bedtimes. For you, it might mean you don’t go from zero to furious in three seconds flat.
You’re not failing. Your son isn’t broken. You’re both just stuck in a cycle, and we can help you get unstuck.