Feeling quick to anger or stuck in constant conflict with your child? It doesn’t have to be that way. In this episode, we’ll explore how leading with curiosity can help parents slow down, regulate emotions, and understand what’s really driving their complex kids’ behavior. Press play to learn how getting curious can restore calm, connection, and clarity to your home.

What to expect in this episode:

• Why leading with curiosity helps parents regulate their own emotions before reacting
• How slowing down to understand context can change problem-solving outcomes
• What “get curious, not furious” really means in day-to-day parenting moments
• The role emotional regulation plays in making tactical solutions more effective
• Ways curiosity strengthens compassion, connection, and long-term independence

Get Curious, Not Furious: A Better Way to Parent Complex Kids

 

Related Links:

• EP108: Why Kids Resist Help and How To Change It
• EP114: Curiosity & the Coach-Approach Transformed the Tone of Her Home
• EP150: Recognizing and Managing Stress Triggers as Parents
• EP200: Reduce Family Stress by Taking Aim

Connect with ImpactParents:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/impactparents
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ImpactParents
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/impactparents

Our Discussion

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
If you’ve learned the Action Model or you’ve worked with us in any of our programs, step two of the model, we used to call it collect information or get educated. We also called it kid get educated, and we realized it’s really about use curiosity. Understand the context of what’s going on before you start trying to solve a problem. And so often we find ourselves putting solutions in place and solving problems when we haven’t really gotten clear what the problem is in the first place. Right?

 

Diane Dempster
And then what happens is we’ve taught people this tool, and people are like, “OK, yeah, I gotta get curious.” But then there are all these little stumbling blocks and sticky spots with getting curious that come up. And so today, Elaine, I’d love to talk about the tool, what’s important about curiosity, and some of the sticky spots that come up when we’re talking about how to use the tool of curiosity as effectively as you can as a parent. Does that make sense?

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Yeah. I love that. Well, let’s start with what it is that we’re talking about.

 

Diane Dempster

Yeah.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

We were teaching Sanity School Live recently and having a similar conversation about getting curious. One of the things I noticed in the discussion in the chat was somebody talking about curiosity as an incredible access point to compassion. So if you pull back and say, “What’s our goal here?” whether we’re parents or professionals trying to support kids, complex kids, any kids, our goal is to be the presence in their life that helps them understand themselves well enough to learn to manage themselves, right? We’re trying to create an environment for them and be the person for them that helps them be their best self.

 

Diane Dempster

And that’s a long-run kind of thing. We don’t want to ignore the fact that you’re also there, too, living in their house, doing the things, helping them with the day-to-day, and all that other stuff. So this tool can apply to the longer term as well as the—

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

I guess I’m trying to pull back and set the context, right? If we decide that our goal here is to help prepare these young people to become adults, and to do that we have to really pay attention to how we’re fostering their sense of self, their self-esteem, their problem-solving capacity, and everything it takes for them to grow through their stages to become independent adults. All of that is improved if we think about how we’re being with them.

 

So I’m pulling really far back, because curiosity is one of these tools that, when you start using it, you can get curious really big and then keep narrowing in more and more and more, getting more and more specific. It gives us a way to get out of the freaking out, the worry, and all the other stuff, and to be really present to what’s happening here and now. Which is why this is a coaching tool, right?

 

Diane Dempster

So let’s put it in the context of the model. I love the big-picture concept. When we talk about where this fits in the model, we teach the concept called taking aim, which is about getting really clear on where your area of focus is right now. You were talking about the present moment. Where am I paying attention right now? And I think we can link to that on there.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

Yep.

 

Diane Dempster

Once we’ve decided either from a big-picture perspective or from a narrower perspective, and ideally we want to get down to a narrow perspective, we ask the question, “What is going on?” What we teach as the next step in the process is where curiosity lives.

 

“What is going on?” is not, “OK, I’ve gotta figure out exactly what’s going on, and I’ve gotta figure out how to fix it.” “What is going on?” is really an inquiry into what are all the things that could be going on, that I think are going on, that maybe are going on. That’s where this tool of curiosity can help us, not to get to the bottom of it, but to really explore and maybe even brainstorm.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

To understand it.

 

Diane Dempster

Yeah, to understand it as much as you can, because a lot of this stuff we don’t know for sure. We were talking about this on the call today. We have kids who have a lot of executive function challenges, and not just one. So if you have a kid who’s having a really hard time transitioning off screens when it’s time for dinner, there could be seven different executive functions that are impacted in order to help get them off the screen and into the dining room for dinner.

 

We don’t know for sure whether it’s about distractibility, whether it’s about hyperfocus, whether it’s about emotional regulation. There are all these different things that could be coming into play. But if we take a minute to say, “What are all the things that might be going on?” with some lightness, that’s the piece of curiosity we’re talking about. This is a light tool to heavy. It’s like, “Hmm, I wonder what all might be going on,” instead of, “Oh my gosh, I’ve gotta figure it out.”

That’s the self-management piece, approaching it not from a place of panic or fixing, but from a place of brainstorming and inquiring.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

Well, that’s the thing. It’s not about fixing, right? So when we identify that there’s something we want to change, whatever that is, then the invitation here is to slow it down, right? To pause, to get curious, to explore: What do I understand? What do I know? What do I think? What do I believe? What do I feel? What do they feel? What does the teacher feel like? Really getting curious about all of the things that might be influencing the dynamic. What’s at play here?

 

Diane Dempster

I love the way you listed everything. I think about just three pieces. What’s going on for them? What all might be going on for them? What all might be going on for me? And what might be going on from an executive function perspective? I pulled that out explicitly because we’re talking about kids with executive function challenges. And if we don’t ask what’s going on from an executive function perspective, a lot of times we may be missing some nuance that we haven’t thought through.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

And that includes remembering that emotionality is part of executive function. So it’s what’s going on logistically and tactically, but it’s also what’s going on emotionally. When we talk about creating systems and structures, when we teach about that, we always say we have to look at both what’s happening emotionally and what’s happening tactically. We have a tendency to go to the tactical and forget about the emotional, and the tactical is not going to happen if the emotions are out of whack.

 

Diane Dempster

It’s interesting. I told this story when we were recording Sanity School the other day. I was telling a story about a mom we were coaching around a trust issue between her and her kiddo. She said, “My kid doesn’t trust me. I’ve gotta figure out how to build trust.” She was really focused on the trust piece of it.

 

When we got down to what the evidence was that she had that her kid didn’t trust her, it was really that he was blaming her for a lot of stuff. “It’s your fault I don’t have a…” As an older kid, right? “It’s your fault I don’t have a job. If you would’ve only done this when I was in high school, if you would’ve done this, this is all your fault.”

And I said, “How likely is it that what’s going on here is that you’ve got a dysregulated kid?” She said, “Oh yeah. Oh, absolutely. He’s dysregulated.” So what are some of the emotions he might be feeling? Is he frustrated? Is he scared? Is he feeling shame, right?

 

Whenever we have those emotions playing in, part of what is going on is that a dysregulated brain is going to engage differently with a problem or a situation than a calm brain will. So we’ve got to look at what’s going on from an emotional perspective, from a brain and body perspective. As you said, that’s always going to be an important feature in the process.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

Right. So we’re asking people to really look at the context of what’s happening in any given dynamic, right? To look at us emotionally, look at them emotionally, and look at the executive function perspective. Sometimes it’s just coaching. I would say reading the space. It’s like, what else is happening? What else? What else?

 

That question can be a really powerful tool for curiosity. When a kid is really upset, it’s like, “What else? What else?” Because it may take a while to get to what’s really happening. It might be, “I’m upset that my friend isn’t talking to me anymore,” when what seems like it’s going on on the surface is something else. So the first part of getting curious is about really taking the time to slow down and try to understand what’s influencing any given dynamic.

 

Diane Dempster

This can be something you do with your kiddos, and we’ll talk about some of the sticky spots in doing it with your kiddos. It may be that you need to do it on your own. Again, we’re not trying to find the right answer. We’re not trying to find the only answer. Some of us have kids who are interested and able to brainstorm and engage in this sort of inquiry. Other kids, the minute you ask them, “What do you think is going on?” they’re like, “I don’t know.”

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

Or they’re going to shut down, or react, or whatever.

 

Diane Dempster

Right, right.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

You might know. You might be guessing, right? You might be collecting information. You might be observing. You might be collecting information from other people or other resources. There are a lot of ways you may be gathering data and insight, all of those pieces, to be able to assess the situation before you start trying to address it.

 

Diane Dempster

And the reminder is, if you notice yourself in this process going, “Well, is it this? Is it that? Is this… I’m trying to figure it out, trying to figure it out, trying to get the right answer,” that might be a great signal. You might be a little dysregulated, overwhelmed, frustrated, or emotional around the situation. Checking yourself and figuring out how to do this from a calm space is one of the most important invitations we bring into this tool of curiosity.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

So we’ve been talking about how to gather your thoughts and wits around you. Let’s take a quick break, and then we’ll come back and talk about some of the sticky points. Is that cool? Perfect.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

We’re talking about curiosity as a powerful tool for supporting kids with all kinds of complex issues. We often say, “Get curious, not furious.” But really, what we’re saying is get curious, not furious, frustrated, agitated, angry, upset, overwhelmed.

 

Diane Dempster

Whatever the thing.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

Right. It’s a substitute for all of those emotions that may not be helping. When we can redirect our attention to get curious, parents say all the time that it really helps us access compassion for what our kids are dealing with. It helps us down-regulate, stay calm, and be able to be present in a very different way.

 

Diane Dempster

My dog is growling down here. When I tell him to get curious, not furious. The thing we didn’t say before the break, Elaine, that I think might be important here, and why the curious-not-furious idea is important, is that it’s easy when we see a kid, a snarky kid, right? You’ve got a kid who’s sassy or disrespectful or unkind in their language, and it’s easy to go, “How dare you. You don’t want to talk to me like that. We don’t act that way in our house,” blah, blah, blah, right?

 

This sort of “you’ve gotta.” So this is a great example. You’ve got a kid who’s behaving poorly or behaving in a way that’s not in alignment with what your family agreements are, however you want to use language here. And so if I’m like, “How dare you?” or in this instance with this mom earlier, it’s like, “He’s blaming me for everything.” I want to explain to him why it’s not my fault he doesn’t have a job, right?

But if I go, “I can’t believe my kid is so rude,” or “I can’t believe my kid can’t take responsibility for himself.”

 

It’s like, it’s clear it’s his job to get a job. Why is it my fault that he doesn’t have a job yet? If I stay there, that’s going to make me angry, frustrated, scared, or something. But if I can go, “Wow, it’s really interesting.” Even though it’s his job, it’s his situation, and he’s in a place where he’s blaming everybody else for it. Isn’t it interesting that this is where the tool of curiosity can help as an intercept?

When we notice ourselves getting defensive, angry, blamey, or whatever our reactive patterns are, we can take that beat and go, “Hmm, it’s really interesting.”

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

As you said that, what occurred to me is one of the tools we teach a lot is what we call Q-tip. Quit taking it personally. The flip side of that is don’t take the bait. When our kids are baiting us because they’re emotionally dysregulated, if we choose not to take the bait, it can shift the whole dynamic. Curiosity is a powerful way to not take the bait.

 

If we get curious, then it’s not about me anymore. It’s about, “Wow, what’s going on over there?” He’s really struggling. She’s really having a hard time. They are freaking out. That is very different from, “You can’t talk to me that way,” because, in fact, they can, because they just did.

 

Diane Dempster

Yeah, they just did. They just did, right? So part of where this idea for talking about curiosity came from was a client who said, “OK, I get this is a great tool. I want to do it. And every time I get curious in front of somebody in my family, or with my kid,” this was another parent of a young adult, “they think it’s an interrogation.”

They think I’m trying to nail them to find the right answer. They think that I’m trying to… And so how we get curious, particularly when we’re doing it with somebody else, becomes an important feature. Because if they think, “Oh my gosh, every time Mom asks me 7 million questions.” I happen to be a human who likes to ask a lot of questions. It’s the way my brain works. I’m genuinely curious, and I want to know how things work.

 

Diane Dempster

I want to know how people work. That’s how I roll. And if I’m with somebody who’s feeling a little stressed or stressful about whatever, and I start asking a million questions, the natural reaction is going to be defensiveness, or like, “Oh my gosh, I can’t handle this,” or overwhelm, or whatever it is.

 

So part of this is figuring out how we engage another human in our curious process. Are they ready for it? Are they available for it? Can I invite them in a way that’s not going to make them feel threatened, unsafe, or like I’m trying to put them on the spot? There’s this energy of invitation and hold. Again, we were saying earlier, you’ve got to hold this lightly, but the other person has to trust that you’re holding it lightly. If I were to ask my partner, “Why is it that every time I ask you to pick up X, Y, Z at the grocery store, you forget?” he’s going to be like, “You’re attacking me.”

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

Right, right. Because you used that Y word. “Why” is a terrible trigger word.

 

Diane Dempster

Yeah.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

And what’s coming up as you’re saying this is, if it can’t be an interrogation, and it shouldn’t be an interrogation, then what is it?

 

Diane Dempster

It’s an inquiry, right?

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

It’s an inquiry. But I think we have to figure out what not to say before we figure out what to say, right? We don’t want to be forcing them to tell us. We don’t want to be putting them on the defensive. “Why didn’t you?” or “Why don’t you?” We don’t want to force them to have a solution before they even understand the problem. “What are you going to do about that?” “What’s your plan?” We’re not drilling for information here. We’re trying to understand what’s going on and elevate their understanding of what’s going on.

 

Part of our work here is to elevate their emotional intelligence and their emotional self-awareness. We can’t do that if they’re not feeling safe, and they’re not going to feel safe if they’re feeling triggered because we’re forcing them to share something they don’t yet understand themselves, don’t know how to get to, or aren’t ready to share yet. Right?

Diane Dempster

And even that word drill. If we notice that we’re drilling, or we notice that the other person thinks we’re drilling—

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

Right.

 

Diane Dempster

—that’s a great indication that we might be doing this from a place of dysregulation and “I’ve got to figure this out,” and not from holding this lightly. So if you’re asking a million questions, the curiosity step becomes, “How emotional am I about this situation?” Ideal curiosity is almost like a robot or a computer.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

I wouldn’t say robot. I would say matter-of-fact.

 

Diane Dempster

Matter-of-fact, right? It’s this sense of, “What is going on?” not “What is going on?” It’s very matter-of-fact. No judgment. As little emotion as possible. That kind of thing.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

As I’m thinking about this, I’m thinking about a member of my family where every conversation feels like an interrogation. I know that person is genuinely curious, and I also think they’re navigating their own anxiety. They’re trying to get as much detail as possible so they feel safe.

 

Diane Dempster

Right. Because then they’ll feel safe.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

That makes them feel safe because they’re anxious if they don’t know everything that’s going to happen. I happen to be a person who, when things get too detailed, that stresses me out. I don’t know yet. I’ll figure it out as it comes along. You and I dance with this a lot together because we have different ways of navigating certainty and uncertainty. So part of this dynamic with getting curious is beginning to understand what our family members’ tolerance is for detail. Sometimes, if we’re planners and we like details and want everything laid out, knowing what’s going to happen and when soothes our nervous system. But we have kids who don’t think that way.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

Our need for that level of detail can actually stress them out. If we can allow them to figure things out one step at a time and slow it down, we can avoid some of the triggering that happens when we’re trying to calm ourselves by knowing everything that’s going to happen.

 

Diane Dempster

No, it’s a great awareness. And the other thing that came up for me as you were saying that is that we have to be really clear about what the other person’s relationship is to the situation. Again, we’re talking about situations where we’re engaging someone else in the curiosity process, right?

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

Yeah.

 

Diane Dempster

We have to be clear about what their relationship is to the situation, the problem, the thing that we’re getting curious about, right? So if it’s something that’s really important to me and the other person doesn’t yet care about it, or will never care about it, the ability and interest in engaging in an exercise of curiosity is going to be very different.

 

If I’m trying to figure out why you can’t get your homework done on Sundays before school, before 10:00 at night, because you’re up all night long, but you don’t care if you’re up all night trying to do your homework, I’m going to engage in curiosity in a very different way than if, “Wow, I’m having a hard time with it, you’re having a hard time with it, and we’re really trying to partner together to solve a challenge.” So there’s this important piece. Are they in denial of the problem? Do they have buy-in to the problem? Do they get that there’s a problem but think there’s absolutely no way to solve it because it’s just the way they’re wired? Do they think it’s your fault? Do they think… all of that stuff.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

Right. When we’re teaching this in Sanity School, one of the comments in the chat that I remember was, “Curiosity, whenever I get curious, I realize that what I’m dealing with is my agenda, not theirs.” So it can really help you tap into the question of whose agenda it is. Are we forcing something, or are we supporting something to support our kids?

 

Diane Dempster

Because one of the answers to the curiosity question, like, “Why isn’t my kid partnering with me to work on this problem?” is because it may not be important to them. We need to make sure that part of the inquiry is asking, how important is this situation to my kiddo, my co-parent, or whoever I’m trying to problem-solve with?

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

So we want to wrap this up. We’ve talked about what we don’t want to do. We don’t want to force them. We don’t want to drill. We don’t want to interrogate. We want to avoid asking “why,” or questions that put them on the spot. What we do want to do, I’ve heard us say, is we want to be matter-of-fact. We want to be clear whose agenda it is. We want to hold it lightly. We want to make sure there’s something in it for them to engage in the process with us, if we’re looking for them to be part of it. Otherwise, we might want to do it on our own for a while.

 

Diane Dempster

We want to make sure that whoever’s involved in the process sounds regulated and relaxed. That will help us hold it more lightly.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

A place of calm.

 

Diane Dempster

And the other piece that just popped in is that we talk about experimenter’s mind, right? Part of this, and this is a big part of the coach-approach, is that we’re not trying to get it right. We’re trying to figure out what we want to try next, right? So part of curiosity is getting enough information, not so you know the right thing to do, but so you can figure out, “OK, what do I want to try next?” so you can learn from what you’ve tried and build on that. Because when you’ve got a complex kid, the thing that worked yesterday may not work tomorrow. It probably won’t work with another kid. It may work for a while, and then it won’t. Part of the challenge of this whole thing is that we have to stay in a place of curiosity, not just to find an endpoint, but because this is an ongoing experiment and a process.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

What I would say, and this is the coach in me, is you don’t have to, but we’re inviting you to. There you go. So beautiful. I love this conversation. Thanks, Diane.

To those of you listening, take a minute and ask yourself, what’s my insight from this conversation? What are you aware of now that you might not have been aware of 20 minutes ago? Can you see applying this in your life? Maybe what relationship would it help to be more curious with? What are you aware of? We always ask the final four questions in our group coaching. What were you focusing on? What’s your insight? Here, we typically ask, “What’s your insight? What are you aware of?” But in this case, I want to ask the next question, which is, how do you want to apply this in your life right now? What’s one thing you might want to do with this tool, and how do you want to set yourself up for success with that commitment?

 

Diane Dempster

Yeah. And if it feels lighter to say, “What’s the next thing you want to try around you?” Beautiful. I love that. And thanks for everything that you do for yourself and for your kids. At the end of the day, you really do make a difference. Take care.