Use the ‘Sigh, See, Start’ Method to Teach Your Kids (and You) Self-Regulation

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Small parenting challenges come up every day, from whining about leaving the playground, to a disagreement with a sibling, or clashes with friends at school. You want to handle every emotional upset in the best, healthiest way for your child, but how do you know what response is good enough? In her new book, Sigh, See, Start: How to Be the Parent Your Child Needs in a World That Won’t Stop Pushing―A Science-Based Method in Three Simple Steps, pediatrician Alison Escalante says parents today are just learning how to regulate our own emotions rather than suppressing them. “Sigh, see, start” is an easy method for checking in with yourself, observing your child’s emotional state, and proceeding to address the upset when there’s friction.

How to use the “Sigh, See, Start” method of self-regulation

Try this method in any parenting situation when you feel confused or overwhelmed. If you encounter a problem and are immediately anxious about what you “should” do, this is a good place to start.

Sigh

If it seems like deep breathing is a panacea for all emotional hiccups, that’s because it kind of is. And you can’t really do it too much. Take a big, deep breath. Let it out slowly, imagining it’s a big sigh of relief.

“Sighs help you stop going down whatever negative path you may be on and center yourself, allowing you the opportunity not to be bullied by the ‘should’ in your head,” Escalante writes.

See 

Look at your child. Do you see signs of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, or confusion? Take a moment to take in what’s going on.

“You are not yet at the start phase, so you are not analyzing; you are not planning or assessing,” Escalante writes. “You are observing and collecting information that may be useful. When we skip this stage, we often see only what we expect to see and not all that is truly there—or not there.”

Start

Before you might have started with “start”—automatically scanning the parenting files in your brain for the right action to take to fix it all. According to Escalante, sighing and seeing gives you some quiet and context before you start. 

“Then (and only then) start thinking about what may be appropriate in that very moment. Could a hug help? Could they use some space? Do they need a minute to accept a limit you just set? Do they need to figure it out for themselves?” Escalante writes. “Start by trying something different, or even just pausing and doing nothing. What you do may or may not work, but the most important part is to start; that is how you will learn more about your child.” 

If you make a mistake and feel shame coming up, start the sigh, see, start process again, Escalante writes. Mistakes are part of the process.

“Kids don’t need perfect parents; they need to be raised by real humans who model how to deal with mistakes,” she writes.

“Start” with an action that feels natural to you, something you feel confident about. What are your interpersonal strengths? Showing physical affection, being silly, asking questions, or validating feelings? Start with your special skills.

“Understand and use your strengths as a parent, rather than trying to fix your weaknesses,” Escalante writes.

Here are a few tips if you still don’t know how to “start”: 

Ask your kid for ideas.

Engage their imagination.

Adjust your involvement by stepping back or moving closer.

How does Sigh, See, Start work within your brain? 

Sighing stimulates your vagus nerve (part of your parasympathetic nervous system) and signals to your brain to chill out.

“It can help us move out of stress and upset into a calmer state. In doing so, the vagus nerve brings our higher-level thinking back online, which in turn can communicate to our ancient animal brain to chill; we are safe,” Escalante writes.

“Seeing” allows you to catch signals that you might normally miss. You are constantly taking in information through your senses, but much of it is filtered out as not critical at the moment.

“We are blissfully unaware of all the information we don’t notice. Cognitive scientists now believe that the key function of the human brain is ‘meaning-making.’ Our brains take in extraordinary amounts of information, both from within our own bodies and from our own external environments, each microsecond; the brain then sorts which information is important and which is not. The input that makes the cut is either handled unconsciously by our brain, or it is forwarded up to our consciousness,” Escalante writes.

When you “start,” you may feel that old pressure to act in the perfectly appropriate way. What matters more than being perfect is that you act out of love and signal to your child’s nervous system that you are a partner in co-regulating with them.

“The most important factor for a child’s future is whether they experience their parents as warm and loving,” Escalante writes.

How to share this method with your kids

When you use sigh, see, start, narrate for your child what you are doing:

“I’m going to take a deep breath and sigh it out.”

“Now I want to observe what is happening here. I see you are crying, you must be upset.”

“Now I’m going to see if you are physically hurt. If not, let’s try a hug and see if that helps.”

In the book Sigh, See, Start, Escalante includes questions to help you explore each stage of the process. Try going through some of these questions with your child as you help them address a problem with the sigh, see, start method.

Sigh

How do you feel about this?

How much time and energy do you have to deal with this?

See

Who is involved?

What have they told you or what have their behaviors told you?

Start

Take stock of what you have observed and your resources to address the issue.

How important is this problem right now?

Is there another issue that takes priority?

Be sure to remind your kid (and yourself) that you won’t always solve problems the first time around, but you gather information that influences your next choice.

“Using sigh, see, start is a personalized version of the scientific method. By clarifying our assumptions, testing our ideas, and then adapting to the results of our experiments, our wisdom as parents grows rapidly,” Escalante writes.