Jun 13, 2025 Parenting

My Playful Process with DBT for Kids

My path from drowning in emotional tsunamis into presence as a parent, with help from DBT, NVC, and a little evidence-based faith.

Katsushika Hokusai

How This Journey Began

I didn’t come across DBT-C in a training course or professional setting. What first opened the door wasn’t about children at all. It was a story in DBT Made Simple.

A therapist was working with someone who had just attempted suicide. The client asked for an extra weekly session. The therapist had originally said no. But now what?

They knew that offering a session after a suicide attempt—even from compassion—could unintentionally reinforce the behavior. And yet denying it could also be harmful.

Instead, the therapist followed DBT’s hierarchy of treatment targets:

Behaviors that interfere with life (safety first)
Behaviors that interfere with therapy or learning (what prevents growth)
Behaviors that interfere with quality of life (everything else)

So they said something like:

“I’m not doing this because of the suicide attempt, but because I hadn’t realized how much distress you were in.”

And then they added a boundary:

“If there’s another attempt, we’ll go back to one session a week.”

That felt tough. And clear. And kind.
And just what I needed in my parenting.

A Therapeutic Model for Meltdowns

I kept returning to that page. It wasn’t just therapy—it was a model for how to show up to crisis with a child.

No threats.
No overcompensating.
No collapsing into guilt or control.

Just presence, clarity, and a structure that holds both of us.

That led me to DBT-C, Dialectical Behavior Therapy adapted for emotionally sensitive kids—what Dr. Francheska Perepletchikova calls supersensers. And honestly, most three-year-olds fit the description.

The Surprising Parallel: Threenagers, Teens, and BPD Traits

The more I learned, the more I saw something no one had told me before:

Many of the emotional traits that show up in young children—and again in teenagers—mirror some of the same dysregulation patterns seen in adults with BPD.

Extreme language: “I’ll cry forever!”
Splitting: “You NEVER help me!”
Despair spirals: “Nobody cares about me!”
Fear of abandonment, need for control, identity confusion

That doesn’t mean our kids have BPD (i.e. Borderline Personality Disorder, or the main diagnosis DBT is designed to address). But it does mean that a treatment model developed for emotional dysregulation—with decades of evidence behind it—might be exactly what we need in the messy, real-time moments of parenting.

If DBT has shown it can help people regulate that level of intensity, then maybe it could help me… and my child. And maybe, without even realizing it, this journey is part of why I’m becoming a therapist myself, in addition to parenting.

Three DBT Principles That Have Been Guiding My Parenting

1. Spotting Maladaptive Patterns Early

Maladaptive behaviors provide short-term relief with no long-term benefits—like drug use or self-harm in adults. In kids, this looks like tantrums that get immediate attention, dramatic declarations that control the room, or meltdowns that avoid difficult tasks. The behavior "works" in the moment but teaches unhelpful patterns for life.

This helps me not treat every tantrum like a crisis. Sometimes the priority isn’t intervention—it’s presence. If I react instead of regulate, I just reinforce the same circular pattern we’re both trying to outgrow.

My daughter knows that she can come to me for a hug or support anytime, but she needs to come to me. And I will repeat this over and over again. This maintains connection while preventing manipulation patterns.

2. Life is Dialectical

My child isn’t “good” or “bad.” They just are. Some behaviors are helpful, others aren’t. That’s it.

This distinction—between who they are and what they do—is the difference between guilt (which can lead to growth) and shame (which usually leads to shutdown). I can say, “It is ok to feel sad. I understand that. But it is not ok to scream in a restaurant, and we must leave.” That invalidates the behavior and not the child or the emotion. It does not cause the level of dissociation and disembodiment that happens when we invalidate emotions.

It’s not always easy. But it’s essential and maybe even simple.

3. Change Requires Acceptance

The paradox at the heart of DBT is simple and real:

You can’t change what you haven’t first accepted. And acceptance comes from mindfulness.

DBT is basically Cognitive Behavioral Therapy + mindfulness. As Donald Robertson shared with Sam Harris, CBT represents 'the closest western adaptation to Buddhism' with deep 'parallels between Stoicism and Buddhism.' But I like how DBT's founder Marsha Linehan weaved in mindfulness in a more direct approach, being a Zen Master and having to deal with BPD symptoms herself.

Mindfulness helps me notice when I’m resisting what’s happening. Sometimes I have to stop trying to fix it, and just say to myself: “Yes. This is what’s happening. It’s big for her. She’s not doing this to me. She’s in it.” That pause—just accepting what is—often opens space for something new.

As a friend of mine who is a mother of 4 and grandmother of 3 sometimes says: "Dealing with children is like dealing with a drunken friend. You cannot expect them to be rational".

What Mindfulness Means

In PlayfulProcess terms, there are two ways of responding to something: from the place of form or the place of being. From the place of form, we get trapped in reactivity patterns if we do not anchor ourselves in being. So, whenever I feel the familiar constriction of reactivity, I try to pause.

That might look like:

Saying nothing and just breathing with her, even if she does not want to engage
Waiting until we’re both calm before trying to teach anything; like that, even though she says "I will never calm down," there is no history of anyone who could stay in an emotional state forever
Softening my tone without softening the boundary

When I hold presence, she finds her way back faster. When I don’t, we spiral together. It’s not perfect. But it’s more real. And it’s teaching me, too.

How I’m Blending DBT with Other Tools

DBT-C gives me structure. NVC (Nonviolent Communication) helps me lead with empathy. And "The Whole-Brain Child" reminds me that her “upstairs brain”—the part that regulates—is still under construction..

I don’t use NVC as a script—I use it as a quiet checklist in my head when things are hard:

What is she observing?
What is she feeling?
What need isn’t being met?
What request could support her or the situation?

These questions shift me out of control mode and back into connection.
Sometimes that means journaling. Sometimes it means rewriting the story together. Sometimes, it means writing actual stories that I can read to my kid.