What My 9-Year-Old Taught Me About Self-Leadership

I want to start with a confession: what I'm about to describe wasn't a happy accident. My first response that afternoon made things worse. The only reason I was eventually able to show up differently was because I'd spent years practicing the skills I'm about to share with you. Which is exactly why practice matters.

My son decided he wanted to organize his room. He's nine. He went downstairs full of energy and genuine intention. And within minutes, he was in a spiral.

He wanted to put his viola in the closet. But the closet had his clothes in it. So he decided he needed to move his clothes. But to move his clothes he'd have to move something else first. And that something else would require moving something else again. The room that he had set out to organize was becoming less organized by the minute. The energy that started as motivation had lost its grounding. It was spinning, faster and faster, without a steady hand to guide it.

So he came upstairs to find me.

My First Response Made It Worse

He came to me activated. Overwhelmed. Looking for a leader. And I met him with resistance.

I told him he could not empty his closet to find a home for his viola. That wasn't the solution. That would make things worse. I was right, technically. But I wasn't present. I was managing the situation instead of meeting him in it. And the message he received — even though I didn't intend it — was: Your overwhelm is not welcome here. Let's skip past what you're feeling and get to the solution.

His spiral got worse. Because now he didn't just have overwhelm. He had overwhelm, and no steady leader in sight.

I want to pause on this for a moment. Because I think most of us know this move intimately — not just as parents, but as the people we are to ourselves. How often, when something difficult arises inside you, is your first response resistance? Why am I reacting like this? I shouldn't be so sensitive. This is not a big deal — get it together. We meet our own inner experience the way I met my son in that moment: with correction, with impatience, with a solution before there's been any real connection. And just like him, the overwhelm doesn't settle. It intensifies. Because what's underneath it hasn't been met.

The Turning Point

A little while later, I went back downstairs. My son was on his bed, room in chaos around him, tears on his face. And when I walked in, he looked at me and said: My room is never going to be clean.

If you've ever been in a spiral of overwhelm — and I think most of us have — you know that voice. The one that takes a temporary problem and turns it into a permanent truth. This is never going to get better. I'm never going to figure this out. It's always going to be like this. That's not reality. That's what overwhelm says. And it sounds completely convincing from the inside.

What SPACES Looks Like in Real Life

So I sat down with him. And without naming it as such, I walked us both through every step of what I call the SPACES practice.

The first thing I did was create space. I didn't rush to fix the room. I didn't revisit the closet conversation. I just paused. One breath. A moment of stepping back from the momentum of the spiral. And I acknowledged my own resistance quietly, internally, which allowed it to relax — so I could be fully present with him instead of managing him from a distance.

Then I offered permission. Not permission to leave the room messy. Permission for the overwhelm to be there. I didn't tell him he shouldn't feel that way. I didn't minimize it. I let it exist. I named it out loud: You're overwhelmed. Two words. And something in him visibly softened. Because he'd been seen. Not fixed. Seen.

Then we got curious about the overwhelm together. I told him: those things overwhelm says — it will never get better, it's hopeless — those are the kinds of things overwhelm says. That's its voice. That's not the truth of the situation. I also told him something else: when you're overwhelmed, the wisest thing you can do is pause and seek support. Which is exactly what he had done when he came upstairs to find me. Even in his spiral, some part of him knew what he needed.

Then we engaged gently with what was there. I told him: it's okay to feel this way. I'm here with you. I'm not overwhelmed even though you are. I can hold this with you. That's the thing about a steady presence — it doesn't require the other person to stop feeling what they're feeling. It's steady enough not to be swept away by it. It stays rooted. Regulated. Present. And that steadiness becomes something the overwhelmed part can borrow.

And then — only then — we took one wise step forward. Not a plan. Not a system. Not a reorganization of the entire room. One thing. Pick up one item. Find its home. Put it there. Then the next. Thirty minutes later, the room was clean.

That night, as I was putting him to bed, he looked up at me and said: Mom, I love you. Thank you for helping me organize my room. Not thank you for fixing it. Thank you for helping me. Because what he remembered wasn't the system we used or the order we put things in. He remembered that he hadn't been alone in it.

What This Has to Do With You

When I met my son's overwhelm with resistance earlier that afternoon — when I skipped past what he was feeling and went straight to the solution — he left that interaction feeling more alone than when he arrived. More disconnected. More overwhelmed. Because the message underneath my resistance, however unintentional, was: What you're feeling is inconvenient. Let's move past it.

Here's what I need you to hear. When we resist our own inner experience — when we meet the overwhelm, the anxiety, the urge, the shutdown with why am I like this, I shouldn't feel this way, get it together — we are doing to ourselves exactly what I did to my son in that first moment. We are leaving ourselves more alone. More disconnected. More overwhelmed.

And the parts of us that are spinning — that are reaching for food, or scrolling, or overworking, or shutting down — they respond exactly the way he did. They don't settle. They intensify. Because what's underneath hasn't been met.

But when we show up the way I eventually showed up in that room — with steadiness, with presence, with genuine curiosity about what's actually happening — something shifts. Trust builds. Connection deepens. And the part that was spinning begins to settle — not because it was controlled, but because it finally felt safe enough to.

The six steps — Space, Permission, Acknowledge, Curiosity, Engage Gently, Step Forward — are not a technique for managing yourself under pressure. They are a practice for coming home to yourself. And what grows in the space of that practice — over days, over weeks, over the quiet accumulation of showing up for yourself consistently — is something that cannot be rushed or forced. Self-trust. Self-connection. The steady, embodied knowledge that when things get hard — when the spiral starts, when the overwhelm peaks, when the voice says it will never get better — you will not abandon yourself there.

That is not a small thing. That is everything.