254 - Big Baffling Behaviors: What Your Kid’s Hardest Moments Are Really About w/ Robyn Gobbel254 - Big Baffling Behaviors: What Your Kid’s Hardest Moments Are Really About w/ Robyn Gobbel
Adult Child
Children’s trauma specialist Robyn Gobbel talks with Andrea Ashley about why kids’ most confusing behaviours are actually nervous-system driven survival strategies. The conversation links childhood attachment wounds, toxic shame, repair and parent capacity in a way that speaks to both struggling parents and adults healing from their past.
1:14:21•28 Oct 2026
Why Your Kid’s Worst Moments Make Nervous-System Sense
Episode Overview
- Children’s baffling behaviours are nervous-system survival strategies, even when they seem irrational or extreme.
- Disorganised attachment grows from a "no way to win" experience where safety and danger come from the same caregiver.
- Parents’ own implicit memories and fears can massively intensify their reactions to everyday behaviours like lying or tantrums.
- Consistent repair, even imperfect, is crucial for reshaping attachment expectations and supporting both parent and child.
- Shared family language about watchdog, possum and owl brains helps siblings and carers understand distress without blame.
“Behaviors that make no sense always make sense to the nervous system doing it.”
How do people find hope in the darkest times? This conversation between host Andrea Ashley and children's mental health expert Robyn Gobbel zooms in on what’s really going on beneath kids’ most confusing and explosive behaviours – and why it matters so much for adults healing from their own childhoods.
Robyn explains her core idea that *"behaviors that make no sense always make sense to the nervous system doing it"*, showing how things like lying, tantrums, bullying or even peeing in the HVAC system are desperate survival strategies, not moral failings. Drawing on years as a play therapist for traumatised children, she breaks down disorganised attachment, that "no way to win" dilemma where the person who’s meant to be safe is also the source of danger.
You’ll hear how kids who expect rejection often create situations where they’re rejected, not as manipulation but prediction, and how this same pattern shows up in adults as toxic shame, imposter feelings and the belief "simply by existing, I'm harming people." Robyn and Andrea keep things very real – from siblings caught in the crossfire of "big baffling behaviours" to parents stuck with partners who won’t or can’t do their own work.
Robyn talks about her guided journal for Raising Kids with Big, Baffling Behaviors, designed to help parents notice their own reactions, build self-compassion and see their child’s behaviour through a nervous-system lens.
She also shares her year-long training for professionals who want to stay with desperate families instead of giving up when "nothing is working." If you’re parenting a dysregulated child, working with kids and families, or trying to make sense of how your own childhood still lives in your body, this chat offers raw honesty, practical language and a lot of relief. Could understanding the nervous system be the missing piece in how you see both your kids and yourself?
Do you want to link to this podcast?
Get the buttons here!
More From This Show
The latest episodes from the same podcast.