Inside the Brain of a Defiant Kid (Shocking Brain Map Reveal)

Defiance as Dysregulation 0:00

After thousands of brain maps, I can tell you this, defiance is simply what dysregulation looks like on the outside. Behaviors are breadcrumbs. They tell us what's going on and parents are often told their child is defiant, disrespectful, behavioral, has ADHD. But what if I told you defiance isn't a personality issue? It's not even a behavioral problem. When you see a child refusing, arguing, melting down or shutting down, I see your brain that's overwhelmed, a cup that is full and calling for help.

And today, we're going to walk through exactly what a brain looks like, a dysregulated brain that's often labeled defiant, anxious, obsessive. And I'm going show you the different kinds of patterns that we see in dysreglated brain. You're gonna understand why regulation must come before discipline. consequences, skills, connections. And by the end, you're going to think differently about defiance and it's going make a lot more sense to you. You're gonna break the shame blame confusion cycle because when we understand what's happening in the brain and even when I work with really little kids, help them to understand their brain.

It's so cool because so many of these little kid are fully grown adults now and they tell me When I talk to them about their brain,

Why Brain Maps Clarify Behavior 1:29

it shifted everything. We take away that shame. Say, hey, here's your brain. Here's what's working, what needs to improve, and how to do it. And we also don't live in a world where we pretend we're perfect. Because who wants to be perfect? When parents hear the word defiant, what happens? They think they won't listen, they wont cooperate, pushes back, argues, refuses, explosive, doesn't want to do it. But defiance is never the first problem. Defiance the result. of a dysregulated brain and a brain map makes that crystal clear.

And what is happening is that when we see kids acting like this, they're, getting those drops into their cup and things are overloaded. It's, you know, there are times when kids' behaviors change suddenly overnight. We better be super alarmed when they are happening. I'm thinking pan's pandas or an infection or a toxic trigger creates sudden behavioral changes overnight, trauma. Your child had a physical, emotional trauma of some kind. I'd be worried your child was being exposed to something, victimized in some way.

Maybe they had traumatic grief response. But behaviors just don't change overnight. They happen over time. We are going to look at what happens in a brain map. So a Brain Map, or QEG, is a way of measuring the electrical activity of the brain. You put a cap on, and you're measuring the surface electrical of the brain. With a QEG, we're putting in a database and it's measured against typically males and females around the same age. Some as a clinical database, meaning there are others with other issues, some as normative database where nobody has issues.

I'd like to know who they are. And it is a really simple process. You can do brain maps as young as three and a half all the way to elderly. And the reason why you can't do younger than three-and-a-half, there's nobody else in there in the database.

Common Brain Patterns Behind Defiance 3:34

But also it's not realistic to expect kids to sit. I am looking for what other practitioners who do Brain Maps are looking they are looking for patterns. And I'm going to show you patterns, which is so cool. But it shows you areas that are overactive and underactive. That's just the most simple, simple explanation of a brain map. So we take the guessing. We don't have to say like, oh, I wonder if this is ADHD. In fact, when they do these brain maps, what's a fascinating thing is half the time the person coming in thought it was something else.

and the brain map gives us clarity and what's so different about me than most practitioners is I bring 30 something years of experience to the table. And so my specialty is actually strategy on what to do with it. So interpreting it and then having the behavioral expertise, because a lot of people do these chiropractors, things like that. There's nothing wrong with that, but we're really talking about strategy and want to deal with. I will be for those of you that are practitioners, Stay tuned because I will be doing a comms certification, not just for parents, but practitioners as well as organizations, and I'll be training more practitioners because We need to change things for humanity.

How about that? A brain map. So it shows you under and over stimulation, how well parts of the brain are communicating, where regulation is breaking down. It's so cool. I just love them. it's like an emotional x-ray. Reveals what behavior is going on and what you can explain, which is why half the time people come to me thinking something else. What does a defiant brain look like? There are definitely patterns that we see. So what do I see in every defient, dysregulated kid? You typically see a chronically overactive limbic system, the emotional center, it's typically on fire.

And what does that mean in the real world? You're constantly scanning for threats, you're in a fight, flight or freeze response. I'm going to show you a brain that is literally in Constant activation. This is actually a brain map of somebody with autism and their whole brain is activated. the frontal lobes, the limbic system, they have occipital region, everywhere is activated and their brain is like danger, threat, danger threat. It's not uncommon in autism to see this. There's a lot of inflammation in this brain, but this is the highest level of activation, 99.9%. percentile and this part is your limbic system is the first part of your brain that interprets whether something is a threat or not.

So if it's overstimulated, what you're going to see is defiant, dysregulated behaviors, very reactive behaviors. The next pattern I see is an underactive prefrontal cortex. What is this responsible for? You know people. Executive functioning, impulse control, listening, planning, calm decision making. When this is chronically under active, They just can't access the skills adults expect.

Case Example: Rileyu2019s Brain Map 7:11

And so what does that look like? So when we are working with somebody that has this is somebody with very low frontal activity, lots of processing issues, really struggles with learning. This is actually somebody that goes to a very special education school with very small class sizes. Actually, majority of their work is done one-on-one and they just are sluggish in their processing and their attention. And you can see a lot of different things. So people will say like, well, they don't want to do it.

It's because the frontal lobe, that job manager is literally on a permanent coffee break. And so they don't have that ability to shift on. If you're listening to this on my podcast, please hop over to YouTube and watch the look at the video of this because it is great to actually see brain maps. What we see is low activity. frontally, and that's important. The third pattern I see in defiant, dysregulated kids is poor communication. And so we need our left and right hemisphere to sync, to talk to each other.

When you don't have good communication, you're going to see a lot of problems, problems with transitioning, rules, shifting, feeling overwhelmed. And so when I love to look at brain communication, and a very typical brain pattern is actually over activity in all regions, left to right, but in every single region, our frontal lobes. And in this case, what we're seeing is somebody that is, actually very stress activated. The first question I would probably ask them is Are you having intrusive thoughts when you're this activated?

Are having panic attacks? This is going to be somebody who's not sleeping. You know, when your not sleep, you are going be rude, nasty. The next pattern is excessive fast wave activity and this is also what you would see in excessive, fast-wave activity. So you'd see it in brain communication, over the structures. But you're seeing too much talking, too many activation, and this drives irritability, reactivity, impatience, quick explosion. And when we see slow wave patterning, just as we did before, what we can see with that is, you know, we say it frontally, but you can't see it anywhere.

I'm pulling up a frontal one again. You could see shutdown avoidance. I'm not doing this. And these are the common brain patterns that I see in kids that are labeled defiant. Also see kids having weak or overactive areas at the back of the head. So in this case, there's overactivity. There's a lot of irritation. This is a really important area for really almost like core emotional regulation. So I often see it overactive, but more typically I actually see an underactive. There's no gas back there.

And it's an important area for kids to find comfort, to regulate, not be bored. These are just the most common things that we see. When we define kids, it is not stubbornness, its neurological overwhelm.

Regulation Before Discipline 10:35

Their brain is showing us that they can't manage the data, the information, and the sensory experience, everything coming in. These are consistent patterns that can tell what's actually happening with a kid in their behavior the moment I see it. I just have to look at their brain map, I can see the pattern, then I start asking questions. Anybody knows that anytime I've ever done an intake with people, take little information and I actually start out right on the brain map. Then I come in with questions because the Brain Map tells us, and when certain areas are over or under working, there are only certain behaviors that we actually can see out of a child or an adult.

And for those of you that are interested in working with me, if at this time I'm still doing this, you can go to Dr. Roseanne forward slash help. No matter what, it's going to be a solution matcher. It's gonna match you to the right solution. So many times when I map somebody, just a fascinating process. I remember, gosh, I don't know how many years ago, probably 20 years, ago mapping a 10 year old named Riley. And he was one of the most extreme behavioral kids I have ever had. He's amazing. he's like 30 something years old now.

I love seeing my people around town or on Facebook or people message me. And, he just refused everything from food to the classroom. There was no delineation between his behavior from school to home. They wanted to outplace him. His parents were like the more chill people and they were And I put him in some special school. We're just not going to do that. Did we did neurofeedback? We did a lot of things. What do we see in his brain? from right to left everywhere in every region and he had a brain that was on fire.

He's very sensitive to things. I also recommended occupational therapy to get a sensory system online because he was resisting food and his brain was stuck and it was like, I'm going to protect myself at all costs. His behaviors to me were just screaming, ''I can't do this. Not going do do. And once we calmed everything down, And he got proper support at school at home. We made some tweaks to he really changed. He didn't need to be fixed. She needed to. Regulated and then he could absorb actually the good stuff he was learning at School and home, we just needed.

Tweaking in a way that his brain could hear it, but it had to regulate. Defiance really isn't a choice. It's a way of communicating and you may see the arguing and the slamming of the doors or just refusal to do certain things. What is underneath? What does that brain map show? It shows overwhelm, fear, activation, depletion, disconnection behavior. That's the language of a dysregulated child. So what does this mean for parents? So a brain match teaches us that child isn't giving you a hard time, having a harder time that you can't teach a skill to a dysregulated brain.

How many times can I say that? And behavior change is only going to happen after regulation. Never before. I mean, you could yell, scream, try to negotiate and it's not going happen. Your brain is calm, yours and theirs.

Next Steps and Resources 13:56

a lot of change can happen in such a good way. You got to see what I see in a brain map and hear or hear about it. And it's a pretty amazing thing to understand. Do you always need a Brain Map? No. Is it pretty cool? Yes. But regardless of a Brain Map or not, look at the behaviors. They are clues. they are screaming, I need to regulate. If you want to better understand what your child really needs, Take our solution masher go to doctor rosanne dot com for slash. Help because it's going to guide you into the right solutions plus you can get first you're going hear about my book.

Which is going be amazing and is gonna change the conversation about parenting cuz we're putting the nervous system first before we correct behavior for we connect before week each kids. And you also can get access to my newsletter right there. So go to drrosanne.com forward slash help. And I hope this was really got you thinking about a brain map. It's an amazing tool. I do them because I don't know what I would have done without doing brain maps. This blows it away, to be honest. Not that you shouldn't have neuropsych testing because that helps you get help in school, but understanding a dysregulated brain is step one.

Taking action to regulate the nervous system is the most important step and you and your child can do it. Want more insights and solutions? Well, subscribe to our dys-regulation insider and it will show up in your inbox every week.