Calm Down Spot

Hi! I have a question related to the calm down spot. We haven't fully implemented TSG yet, but based on your YouTube videos we've already transitioned to using 'timeouts' as only an opportunity to calm down, not as a consequence in and of itself. Our issue is that our kids, 5 and 7, both seem to have an extraordinarily difficult time with regulation. There may be some trauma involved, and some diagnosable mental or processing disorders (we don't fully know yet) but they both go to 'back brain' very quickly in a number of scenarios, and this has caused some drawn out episodes.

You mentioned that if a child is in full 'back brain' that it may take them 15 or 20 minutes to fully calm, instead of the normal 5. We have found it necessary to sometimes even restrain them in their calm down areas (currently their rooms) when they are fully dysregulated like this. Their rooms are currently designed to be calming places they like to be, and we allow them any activity they'd like to help them switch out of fight or flight. If I can't get any books or art or board game activities to coax them out of their full tantrum, I'll offer to read a book to them or play a short game with them. Once they have started to calm down, I can often leave the room and they can reset more fully on their own. However, there have been times when it is very difficult to get them to calm down even a little, and when they do, sometimes it starts all over when I tell them I will be going back out into the other room for a little while (even though our house is small and they can leave the door a bit open). But it's hard to have their calm down spot nearer because typically the reason we went to the calm down area was because they were having out of control behaviors, many of them in front of our 15 month old, whom we are trying to protect.

Do you have any insights on this kind of situation? Thank you!!