Wondering if this helps at all? It's a post from the Occuplaynational therapist on Facebook.
I once had a very tired, very overwhelmed, very dysregulated child who was at that very moment being tucked into bed lovingly and connectedly, begin screaming, sobbing, and attacking me physically because their bedroom walls were white, not green.
Green was not this child’s favorite color and had never been mentioned before. No discussion of walls or paint had ever occurred, from me to them, or them to me. Yet here they were using it as their justification for why I obviously was NOT on their team, and attacking me for it.
This is the etymology of a phenomenon that I have come to refer to as Green Wall Problems.
There are a variety of reasons why little kids melt down for seemingly-nonsensical-on-the-outside reasons; not all of them are Green Wall Problems. For example, a child who’s really tired and sad already might ask for Mum to tuck him into bed instead of Dad, and begin sobbing if Mum isn’t available. That’s not a Green Wall Problem (although I don’t mean that it’s invalid or not something families have to deal with!) That’s just a preference. Children are humans, humans have preferences. That’s not what I’m talking about.
A Green Wall Problem is also not a longstanding desire or wish by the child. It’s not them asking “can we get a puppy” every day for two years and then one day on an extra-tired day they super duper melt down about the puppy. That didn’t come out of nowhere; that’s not what I’m talking about.
What I’m talking about is when a child seems to pick something that is out of nowhere and actually, truly, literally impossible in that moment and melt down about it as if it was wholly within your control. And I do mean Impossible with a capital I. I don’t mean inconvenient or tricky. And usually there’s a connotation of the kid knowing it, too—Mum may not be available for bedtime because she has to do a phone call but that’s not quite the same, it’s not truly outlandish or impossible to imagine a world in which Mum is there for bedtime, like it is to somehow magic the walls green.
Sometimes Green Wall Problems are the last in a long succession of meltdown “attempts”, for lack of a better word. What I mean by that is this: imagine a hypothetical scenario where the kid does want Mum for bedtime, and it’s possible to swap, so Mum and Dad do swap. So the meltdown switches targets and becomes sobbing over the toothpaste flavour. Mum realizes the kid is at their limit and says let’s skip toothbrushing for today. So the meltdown switches target again, and again, and Mum keeps finding ways to accommodate or support, until there’s no option left but a Green Wall Problem. Something the grownups couldn’t possibly, possibly help with in this moment.
In my experience, I see this happen when a child has a very literal, concrete brain—maybe due to age and stage, maybe due to neurotype, or both or something else—and there is no way that child can wrap their whole head around: I’m tired, it feels bad and gross and upsetting to be in my body right now, I’m deeply overwhelmed, maybe I’m sensorily uncomfortable, whatever it is, things are wrong here. Because that’s all very, very abstract.
So, their brain does what it does and it makes up a reason. Brains do that quite often (which is why asking a little kid “why did you do xyz?” is very often just asking them to make up a reason that sounds good.) I don’t mean in the sense of lying consciously. I mean that the brain runs a subconscious protocol to protect itself where it comes up with a reason why everything feels Like This and the reason it comes up with is…white walls. Or whatever else it decides on first.
Interoception can occur in both directions. We might notice a bodily sensation and assign it an emotional meaning. We might notice an emotion and trace it down to its bodily sensations. I have woken up countless times in my life with mild tummy problems from something I ate and, given a belly-flopping sensation paired with nighttime awakeness, my brain has gone, “We must be anxious, right? Let’s freewheel til we figure out what we’re anxious about,” and then picked a reason, assigned it, and been like “job well done.” Then later the tummy upset passes and nothing has changed about the supposedly anxiety-inducing situation and I realise it was 100% tummy.
Okay, so what do you do when you’ve encountered a Green Wall Problem? Sometimes you can wish. Sometimes you can plan. Sometimes you can sidestep.
Wishing and planning are very similar, they just differ in playfulness versus seriousness/groundedness. If you have a kid who prickles at humor then you probably don’t want to try wishing; if you have a kid who’s a goofball when regulated then planning might not work as well.
Wishing about a Green Wall Problem might sound anywhere from mild to fully outlandish, but the point is that you’re buying in to the scenario. You’re NOT trying to snap the kid out of it with logic about paint colors and rental rules. You’re not freaking out that tomorrow your child is going to demand you go to the hardware store. You’re getting through this dysregulated moment by meeting your child in their brain’s flailing for safety.
“I wish the walls were green too!” (Even if you’ve never once considered the thought.) “I wish I could hook up paint to a big sprinkler and turn it on and quick-spray all the walls in five seconds so it would be super green while you went to sleep! I wish I had a big giant paint dauber and I could boop it on the walls and paint it all green for you. Would you paint it light green or dark green? If only I had yellow and blue paint I’d mix them both together right now!”
When my child began to cry and scream that it wasn’t fair that it never snows at our house, I leaned into wishing and imagining all the cool snow things we would build and do. I didn’t negate them or remind them of the 11-day snowed-in experience we had the last time we lived somewhere snowy, of which they played outside for like 30mins 🙃 I just wished and dreamed together. They felt heard. It was the middle of summer; they probably felt hot and kind of gross and it came out as a pseudo-Green Wall Problem.
Planning about a Green Wall Problem sounds like what logical reasoning would sound like, if you had wholly bought in to the premise of the problem. If for some reason aliens from outer space with big space lasers and a penchant for green had showed up right this second and demanded you paint this room for real, what logistics would your brain have begun figuring out? Do that out loud. You’re NOT panicking that your planning will have to be carried out tomorrow morning. Remember, this came out of nowhere; their brain just made it up, just now, to look for an explanation about why they feel this way. They won’t feel this way later.
“Oh wow! A green room, huh? That sounds really important to you! Okay, so we’ll need some paint. I’ll have to [go to the hardware store/look up the rules of our rental/talk to the guy who owns our house]. So what I’ll do right now is, [write down a reminder in my phone so I don’t forget/look up the prices of paint and paintbrushes/Google search shades of green and look at them with you to understand more about what you’re thinking.]” If you can physically write something or note something down in some way, this is usually very helpful in feeling taken seriously.
When I had a kid begin to get agitated in my OT room because I had “nothing interesting at all”, and we had already tried going to the store room and we had “nothing interesting in the whole building”, and the only thing that qualified as interesting was some $700 ghost-hunting equipment…I leaned into planning. I wrote down all the equipment the child was interested in and they infodumped to me about brand names and types. We got my laptop and looked things up online and circled specific equipment. They left feeling heard, I set up a creative play invitation for the next time centered on ghosts, and they came in and said breezily “oh I’m not into that anymore”. It wasn’t a real reason, it was a Green Wall Problem.
Sidestepping a Green Wall Problem is extra tricky and usually best for older or more developmentally advanced kids. It still does not involve negating it or trying to argue with them that they’re being nonsensical. Sidestepping is also hardest (in my opinion) when you suspect the underlying cause is exhaustion that will be solved by sleep, as opposed to sensory discomfort, hunger, thirst, being socially tapped out, etc. When you sidestep, you verbally play along while you try to address the underlying discomfort.
“Oooh, green walls would be fancy. Tell me all about it while I peel you an orange. What type of green are you thinking? Let’s put a comfy blanket around you and get you cozy on the couch. Okay, how about I go look up the hardware store hours and do some research for now and you have your snack and a break from all the ‘peopleing’ you had to do at school…” (And then, you know, take awhile.)
Of course these might get combined or not neatly separated into boxes just like this: maybe you start off sidestepping and lean into planning, or maybe your child steers a plan into a wish. Also, if their desire sticks around for days and days, then it’s probably a real thing and not a Green Wall Problem, and you’re not in the middle of an active crisis anymore, so you can actually begin to problem-solve. Do the research you said you’d do, or find out what steps you could start to take. What money would have to be saved? What different way of doing it could occur? If the Green Wall Problem is literally impossible forever (not just impossible in a moment of crisis) (like “I want to become a real dinosaur with magic” type stuff), then in the conversations you’re having about it, find out more about what it means to your child and what elements of that you could possibly pursue or bring to life. A lot of Green Wall Problems aren’t literally, completely impossible forever though; they’re just impossible at 8:52pm in a moment of heightened dysregulation, which is why they don’t even represent a real desire, just an artifact of dysregulation trying to explain itself.
Depending on the child’s age and stage, sometimes you can point out a Green Wall Problem later, after the fact, after the dysregulation has passed. You could directly name it, or just allude to it. “Do you remember when you were so sad after school? I wonder if your brain was exhausted. I know you work so hard all day. I thought maybe a snack and a break would be nice…I like snacks and breaks when I work hard, too.” Or, more directly, “I wonder if your brain was trying to guess what was wrong, and it thought maybe it was the walls? I didn’t think the walls were probably what was really so hard for you. I thought maybe you were SO hungry that even the walls seemed wrong!”
Lastly, being aware of your own Green Wall-ish Problems (because yours might be a little more grownup-reasonable or a little less outlandish) and describing out loud how you’re supporting yourself can be helpful. “You know what…I’m feeling so low-energy that even the tiniest thing feels like it’s going to squish me right now. I need to drink some tea and take five deep breaths before I can play with you, would you like to have some warm milk and sit beside me while I do?”
You’re modeling that kids aren’t the only ones who feel big overwhelm. That the screaming alarm bells inside your head that go off when you’re hungry and tired and sad and overwhelmed aren’t telling the whole story. That taking care of your human needs sometimes makes the tidal waves of emotion a little less prone to knocking you down. That there’s nothing wrong with feeling irrationally upset and there’s nothing wrong with caring for yourself gently when you do feel that way, until the moment has passed, and the walls feel like they’re going to be okay again.