Social worker and Newton-based author Carla Naumburg is known for relatable books for parents about chilling out and calming down: “You Are Not a Sh*tty Parent: How to Practice Self-Compassion and Give Yourself a Break” and “How to Stop Losing Your Sh*t With Your Kids.”
Her latest is an illustrated, hilarious, breezy book for kids themselves: “How to Stop Freaking Out: The Ultimate Guide to Keeping Cool When Life Feels Chaotic,” which was chosen as one of Zibby Owens’s Most Anticipated Books of 2024-2025.
Naumburg and I chatted about freakouts, FART (really), BURP (that too!) and other calm-down strategies.
You’re very relatable. Your voice is very accessible for parents. What inspired you to write this particular book for kids?
I’d been thinking about writing a middle-grade book targeted for readers ages 8 to 12 for a while, which came from my work as content officer for PJ Our Way, for older kids at PJ Library.
My agent suggested doing a middle-grade version of “How to Stop Losing Your Sh*t,” for kids. I wanted it to be in full color and illustrations. I’m not usually a person who goes to a publisher with a lot of requests, but I’ve spent enough time with middle-grade readers, including my own daughters, who are now both in high school, to know that kids don’t want to open a book and see a wall of words, as I call it. Fortunately, my publisher at Workman totally got it and agreed with what I was going for—and we ended up with this beautiful book.
Life is just plain hard sometimes. What’s a freakout?
One of the points I really try to make over and over again in the book is that when you freak out, because we will all freak out sometimes, there’s nothing wrong with you. That doesn’t mean that you’re somehow a bad person or not in control of yourself. It is a very normal human reaction. We are wired to freak out. Our brains evolved that way.
Having said that, when we freak out too intensely or too often, it can make life a lot harder, a lot less pleasant, and make it less likely that we’ll actually get what we want. I use the same acronym I use in my other books, which is very classy: FART. F is for feelings, because they’re driven by emotions. And we may or may not be aware of this emotional state, and the thing that is giving us all these feelings may have happened right now, in this moment, or it may have happened a week ago, festering. Behind most freakouts, there is some sort of overwhelming and generally unpleasant feeling.
The A and the R are for automatic and reactive. Even if we’ve been having strong, unpleasant, unexpected, unwanted emotions bubbling under the surface for a while now, often at the moment of the freakout, it feels very automatic, like a switch has just been flipped. It’s reactive, meaning it’s happening in reaction to something. We’re fine, and then something happens all of a sudden that just triggers us, or we’ve been simmering and something sends us over the edge. It doesn’t come out of nowhere. It’s not in response to nothing, even if we can’t identify the thing right away.
T stands for “too far,” which means our reaction went too far. Imagine you’re walking your toddler cousin down the sidewalk, and all of a sudden they bolt away from you. You’re scared they’re going to run out in the street, into traffic, and so maybe you yell their name in a really loud voice and you grab their arm a little bit hard. Maybe you’re feeling scared or anxious, and it was automatic and reactive, but I think it was an appropriate reaction for the moment. That isn’t a freakout. But if you then proceed to take off your backpack and hurl it across the sidewalk and start yelling at your cousin, and then your mom comes over and you scream at her, that’s a freakout. That’s the distinction—it went too far.
When you’re a kid, everything feels so important. How can kids tone it down a bit?
I use the same metaphor in this book as I did in my previous book, where I’m talking about our buttons. We have invisible buttons all over our bodies, and they are powered by our thoughts, our emotions and our physical sensations. Are we feeling pain, hunger? Do we have to go to the bathroom? Are we sore? Are we tired? But also, what are we thinking and what is happening with our feelings? I actually take kids through how to figure out the difference between a thought and a feeling. If it’s a feeling, you can say: I feel X, and you can answer that in that sentence with: I feel sad or happy or confused or angry or hungry. That’s a feeling. But if it’s: I feel like throwing the remote control at my sister, that’s actually a thought.
We have these buttons that are powered up by our thoughts and our feelings and what’s happening in our body, and the bigger and brighter they are, the more pushable they’re going to be. When our buttons get pushed, we freak out. And so in the book, I offer kids strategies for figuring out what pushes what or who pushes your buttons. Sometimes, you can get space from button-pushers: You can be asked not to be put in a project group with the kid who drives you crazy. Sometimes we get space from our button-pushers, but often we can’t, so our job is to do what we can to make our buttons small and dim and as dark as possible.
I have another mature adult acronym: BURP. This stands for “button reduction practices.” These are the things we do in our daily lives to take care of ourselves: Move our body. Breathing fresh air. Getting enough sleep. For my daughters, music is a really powerful button reduction practice.
What is a freakout?
I devote a chunk of the book to making sure kids know what freakouts look like. When we know what they look like, we can say, “I need to practice one of my BURPs.” Maybe, instead of freaking out, I need to take these really big deep breaths. I need to turn on my music. I need some time alone in my room.
When you’re freaking out, your amygdala is running the show, and that’s the part of your brain that was designed to freak out. It’s not the part of your brain that can notice and calm you down. So I give kids a three-step strategy for bringing their prefrontal cortex back: notice, breathe and BURP.
Notice literally anything around you. When my kids were little, if they were freaking out, I’d say: Can you tell me where the couch is? When we notice, we start to turn on this prefrontal cortex part of our brain. Can you count the fingers on your hand? Can you notice the blue sky? Can you notice the song that’s on or the smell in the room?
We take some deep breaths. Breathing is kind of like sending a text message to your immune system that you are safe. We notice, we breathe, and then we pick a BURP to practice. Some kids really like to get physical and move their bodies. Some kids need to be quiet and calm. Some kids want to recite a prayer or mantra or count to 10. Some kids want to pick up their violin and practice.
When is a freakout more than a freakout and a sign of trouble?
If their freakouts are getting in the way of their ability to be successful. And I don’t mean perfect in every situation. What I mean is: Can they get to school? Can they stay in school? Are they functioning well enough in school? Can they make friends? Are the freakouts making it such that they’re not being invited to social activities?
If you’re seeing a consistent pattern over time, and the freakouts appear to be inhibiting their ability to participate fully in the activities they want to participate in, that’s a sign. And the other thing I would say to parents is: Bear in mind that freakouts are going to be more common when their schedule is disrupted. A lot of kids will actually freak out a lot more before their birthdays or holidays; any time there’s any significant change like loss or divorce. But if parents are noticing a pattern over time, and if the behaviors are getting in the way of a kid’s ability to be successful, academically and socially, it’s important to seek help.
