Roots & Regulation

A child sits on the floor, carefully lining up cars, one after another. Or blocks. Or dolls. You’ve seen it. Maybe your own child does it. And what’s the first thing people say? “That’s a red flag.”

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We’ve all been trained to gasp when a child lines things up. To see it as a warning sign, a deficit, something to be stopped. But here’s the truth: lining up toys isn’t “bad.” It’s not meaningless. It’s a child’s nervous system trying to find order in a world that feels overwhelming.

 

When kids line things up, they’re not avoiding play — they’re making sense of their environment. They’re bringing structure, predictability, and control to a body or a system that doesn’t yet feel safe enough to experiment. And if you look closely, you’ll see adults doing the same thing: stacking, sorting, organizing when life feels too big.

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I know this because I’ve lived it. For a long time, lining up was all I could do. My nervous system wasn’t in a state where I could imagine or create. I could only bring order. And that wasn’t failure — it was survival.

 

Play is a Mirror of the Nervous System

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Play shows us where the nervous system is. When a child lines up toys, they’re showing you exactly what they need: order before chaos, predictability before imagination.

 

Play evolves when safety expands. A child who can only line up cars today may, with more safety, start crashing them tomorrow. Later, they might invent a story with them, or decide the cars are friends on an adventure. The nervous system has to build up to ideation. Lining up is simply the ground floor.

 

The problem is, we’ve been taught to see that ground floor as a failure. Instead of asking, “What is my child telling me?” we rush to redirect, to correct, to shut it down. And in doing so, we miss the doorway into their actual developmental state.

 

Lining up isn’t the end of play. It’s a bridge. It’s the nervous system saying: “I need order before I can risk chaos. I need control before I can risk imagination.” When we respect that, and join them where they are instead of yanking them forward, we give them the safety they need to step into the next stage on their own.

 

From Childhood to Adulthood: The Same Patterns

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Kids don’t just “grow out” of these patterns. The nervous system doesn’t drop a survival strategy because we turn 18. It adapts.

 

As adults, we do the same thing. We straighten, sort, clean, or control when we feel overwhelmed. We stay busy to keep the nervous system from collapsing. It’s not frivolous. It’s not “rigid.” It’s a way of holding ourselves together when inside, things feel like they’re falling apart.

 

I know this in my bones. There were years when all I could do was grasp for order because chaos was everywhere. That craving wasn’t weakness. It was survival. And it kept me going — until it didn’t. Because eventually, the strategy stops working. You ride it until collapse.

 

When Sympathetic Dominance Runs the Show

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This is what happens when the body is stuck in sympathetic dominance — the go, go, go state. The whole system feeds on itself. You get little dopamine hits from controlling, organizing, staying busy. But the more you feed it, the further you get from rest and digest.

 

Over time, the gap widens. You’re running on stress hormones. Muscles hold more and more tension. The body becomes hypersensitive. Every little trigger jolts you back up the chain. And the cycle continues.

 

You go, go, go until you crash. The jagged peaks of frantic activity and collapse. And we call it bipolar. Or ADHD. Or anxiety. Or a personality disorder. But what if those aren’t fixed “disorders”? What if they’re entrenched nervous system patterns — the body’s best attempt to cope with chronic stress and lack of safety?

 

I thought I needed meds at times. I tried them. I went through years of mental health treatment. None of it touched the reality that it wasn’t just in my head — it was in my body. My whole system was orchestrated around a cascade of stress hormones. That’s why I couldn’t rest, couldn’t stop, couldn’t stabilize.

 

And here’s the thing: when we practice those patterns over time, they become entrenched. They feel like personality. They feel like diagnosis. But in my body, and in the kids I work with, I’ve seen this truth: they’re movable. Not easy. But not fixed.

 

Haven’t We Had Enough of Surviving?

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Because here’s the deeper question: haven’t we had enough of just surviving? What ever happened to thriving?

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We can’t do both at once. When we’re stuck in sympathetic dominance, we will memorize, we will rehearse, we will go through the motions. But that’s not learning. That’s not development. That’s survival.

 

And survival is at odds with connection. A body locked in “go” mode doesn’t have access to relationship, doesn’t have access to new ideas, doesn’t have access to real growth. Learning and memorization are opposites here — memorization belongs to survival, while learning belongs to safety, presence, and balance.

 

In survival, all you get is rote repetition, nervous system spikes, and eventual collapse. And society applauds it — because the child looks busy, the adult looks productive. But busy is not thriving. Thriving means having access to connection, creativity, problem-solving, and authentic development.

 

Thriving only becomes possible when the nervous system can move between sympathetic activation and parasympathetic rest — when fight/flight and rest/digest are in balance. That’s the state where we actually grow. Without that balance, everything feels harder than it needs to.

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Family Systems and Ancestral Loops

 

These patterns don’t live in isolation. They ripple through families. They ripple through generations.

 

And that means this: when you choose to meet your child differently — when you respect their need for order, when you stop pathologizing survival, when you create safety instead of shame — you’re not just helping them. You’re breaking ancestral patterns. You’re saying: it stops here.

 

That is brutally hard. Everyone around you will tell you it’s ridiculous, or that it doesn’t matter. And at first, it will look like nothing is happening, because nervous systems shift slowly. But small changes now create new trajectories. For your child. For their children. For how your whole family line moves forward.

 

The alternative? You don’t break it. You keep going the way it’s always been. People survive that way. But this is how disease starts. This is how disconnection hardens into sociopathy. This is how families fracture and stay fractured.

 

The nervous system keeps score. And when you choose differently — when you choose to slow down, to listen, to meet survival with safety — you’re changing more than today’s behavior. You’re changing a lineage.

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Try This: Meeting a Child Who Lines Up Toys

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1. Sit Beside Them

• Instead of interrupting or trying to steer play, simply come close and share the space. Your quiet presence says, “You’re safe. I’m with you, and I’m not going to take over.” 

• This is the foundation of co-regulation: before a child can invite you into their world, they need to know you can respect where they already are.

2. Join in Parallel

• Pick up your own toys and line them up too. Match their rhythm without pushing in.

• This parallel play is developmentally important — it shows your child that you can enter their orbit without demanding eye contact or interaction right away. For many kids, especially those whose nervous systems are already overwhelmed, this is the first step toward shared attention.

3. Mirror without Taking Over

• Show your child: “I see what you’re doing, and I can do it too — in my own space.” 

• By keeping your play separate-but-similar, you’re building safety and connection without collapsing their sense of control. This parallel rhythm tells their nervous system it’s okay to share space while still holding onto their autonomy.

4. Follow Their Lead

• Let them decide if they want to watch you, share toys, or stay in their own line. Each choice affirms their sense of self.

• This is how children build confidence: by being trusted to set the pace. When you allow them to guide, you show that their instincts matter — which lays the groundwork for later problem-solving, communication, and self-advocacy.

5. Notice the Shift

• Over time, you may see them start to follow you, add new variations, or invite you into their play.

• That shift is development unfolding — not because you forced it, but because safety gave their nervous system permission to expand. Celebrate these moments, not as milestones to check off, but as signs of genuine growth emerging in its own time.

 

Why This Matters

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Traditional therapy often skips this step, forcing the child to follow the adult’s agenda. That might look like progress, but it bypasses the nervous system. It breaks will instead of building self.

 

The long-term result? Adults who don’t know what they want, who can’t make decisions without spiraling into anxiety or guilt. And guilt is huge here — because when you’ve been entrained to believe that not following someone else’s will makes you “bad,” that guilt becomes the cage that keeps you stuck.

 

But when you meet a child where they are — with respect, safety, and presence — you’re giving them the foundation to grow into adults who actually know themselves. Adults who can make choices without collapse, without guilt, and without betraying their own sense of self.