I don’t want you to relate to the word discipline as if it’s strict, rigid, military-style rule imposing. That’s not what I’m talking about in this blog post.

I’m talking about discipline in a way where we can gently, firmly—whatever is required—lovingly guide children into following rules, keep them safe, be in the fold of Islam, teach them proper etiquette, whatever you think the rules are as an adult.

For that, you also have to know a child’s hyper and hypo sensitivity. Otherwise it’s called a personal sensory profile. They have a lot of measures for it out there from experts in the field of pediatrics.

But I want you to just think of it as the senses.

1. Vision.
2. Hearing.
3. Touch.
4. Smell.
5. Taste.
6. Movement.
7. Interoception.

So, a total of seven of them. Not in any specific order. 

When you understand this, discipline changes.

The Nervous System Comes First

Imagine in front of you are three concentric circles: green in the middle, yellow on the outside, and red on the outermost.

Every human being goes through this all their lives, including neurodivergent children.

The middle circle, the green zone, is the safe zone.

The red zone is when you are dysregulated. When your highest, most wise mind goes offline.

This is when children behave in four major ways: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.

When the child is dysregulated, you can’t teach them. They won’t learn anything new. They’re just trying to survive this threat, but there is no actual threat.

During this state, they don’t respond to language as well because their language mind is offline. It’s literally an on-off switch. As adults, we’re very good at turning that switch on and off, but children are still learning. 

If you understand that their reasoning mind is offline, then you shift to body-based techniques: breathing, engaging in an activity, hugging something soft like their plushy toy, water. This is how you expand their window of tolerance. You’re teaching them that it is safe to feel this pain, to feel dysregulated. You’re showing them, “I’m here for you, and I’m going to teach you how to come back.” 

Mostly, what you’re working on is what your script looks like when the child is dysregulated and what your script looks like when the child is safe. When they are within their window of tolerance, you can use more language. You can teach them why the rule was in place and why something was unacceptable. That is when they are growing, receptive, able to listen. Because a dysregulated parent cannot raise an independent autistic adult. It is physically impossible…unless that child, later in adulthood, seeks out the resources and support to learn regulation for themselves.