Battles, Burnout, and the Brain's Need for Control - Is Control Regulating?

Many of the kids I work with have a high need for control. I can't tell you how many parents come to me for help with power struggles and control battles! "He gets home from school, and every little thing is a fight!" Simple requests turn into tantrums or meltdowns. You give choices A and B, and your kid insists on x, y, AND z. But oh boy, if you concede to z, you can guarantee that your child has now found a reason to say no to that one as well!

I always tell parents, "Remember your ABC's. All Behavior is Communication!" 

If all behavior is communication, then what is this need for control telling us?

The answer I hear the most is, "He's doing it for attention!" I reframe that as a need for connection, because all kids need connection. But I don't think that's where the need for control is coming from because this kind of connection doesn't feel very good for either of you. Your child still absolutely needs connection, but the control battle itself isn't driven by that need. 

The other answer I hear just as often is, "She's just being mean or manipulative." There's this implication that the child is enjoying the battle for control and that it serves a selfish purpose. Despite what it looks like, the part of the brain responsible for that kind of calculated behavior is the prefrontal cortex, and it's still under construction well into your twenties. In those moments, kids don't really have the capacity to consciously plan, "If I do this, I'll get what I want."

So if it's not about bids for connection and it's not a form of manipulation, what is it? 

There are conversations in my field about how control is regulating, and I believe that to an extent. I know that when I'm in control, there's definitely a perceived sense of safety... and I know that the brain needs to feel safe in order to regulate. However, I'm starting to believe that when control becomes a go-to tool for regulation, it's signaling a chronically activated nervous system.

We've explored in previous blogs how the upstairs brain is the logical thinking brain, and the downstairs brain is the fight or flight headquarters. When kids become overwhelmed, the upstairs brain goes offline, and the amygdala takes over.

Regulation is the process of calming the amygdala so the upstairs brain can come back online. 

When we use tools that soothe the downstairs brain directly, we can turn off the alarm without taxing the nervous system. This is what I call restorative regulation.

• We use grounding, exercise, and our senses for soothing. These tools send direct signals to the nervous system that the body is safe, which helps calm the amygdala without requiring the child to think their way through it. They are cheap and easy for the brain because the tools do the heavy lifting. This is why calm-down kits, swings, and trampolines are so useful.
• We use the safety of our relationships to communicate to the amygdala that we're not in danger. Co-regulation is cheap for a child's nervous system because the adult's fully developed brain does the heavy lifting. The child doesn't have to generate calm on their own; they borrow it from us. This is the first way we learn to regulate.

Restorative regulation goes straight to the source of the alarm. It helps the nervous system settle and recover.

Some brains discover other ways to cope when they don't have enough restorative tools. Without effective tools, the brain compensates by leaning into whatever creates a sense of safety, and for many kids, that ends up being control. This is what I call compensatory regulation.

Compensatory regulation doesn't turn the alarm off. It just drowns it out, ignores it, or turns the volume down. 

Now think back to that after-school battle. Your child has been holding it together all day. By the time he gets home, his nervous system is frayed. He doesn't have much bandwidth for flexibility or frustration, so he reaches for what works. He tries to take control and insists on doing things his way because that's what will get him through this moment.

Compensatory regulation might work in the short-term, but it comes at a high cost. It doesn't calm or restore the nervous system directly. Instead, it helps the brain feel safer by changing the conditions around it. That takes an enormous amount of energy... monitoring, resisting, negotiating, controlling. All while the nervous system is already running on fumes. The alarm never actually turns off. The brain just works harder to manage around it. Over time, this can leave the nervous system depleted and more vulnerable to dysregulation, and this is where we start to see burnout creeping in.

Delight in This:

When we teach restorative regulation, we reduce the load on the nervous system. As the brain feels safer, the need to rely on control starts to decrease. Long-term change comes from recognizing unhelpful forms of regulation and building a restorative toolkit. In upcoming posts, we'll explore other forms of compensatory and restorative regulation that are just as relevant for parents as they are for their kids!

© 2026 Jackie Groves, MA, LMHC. All rights reserved. The concepts of restorative regulation and compensatory regulation as defined here are original work of the author.