Transcript of “As Our Kids Get Older – 5 Ways to Continue Building Lasting Emotional Bonds”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m going to be responding to a question, a couple of questions, actually, that I’m often asked—and by the way, I love any kinds of questions that you send me, so please keep them coming! The questions are around, What does your approach—respectful parenting or the RIE approach—look like as children get older? Does RIE end at two years old? What do you do then? What approach do you go to after that? Sometimes they’ll ask me, Who does what you do, but for older kids? And by “older” they might mean kids beyond three or four or five years old. So I thought I would take this opportunity to clarify some things about this approach I teach and my background.

What I’ve called “respectful parenting” is my interpretation of Magda Gerber’s Educaring Approach, commonly known as the RIE approach. And RIE is R-I-E, that’s the acronym for the nonprofit organization that Magda founded with pediatric neurologist Tom Forrest in 1978 called Resources for Infant Educarers, RIE. RIE was created for the first two years of life, and all the specific guidelines that Magda offered pertain to those first two years of life. In that sense, it does end at age two. But the whole purpose of this approach, and the whole reason it’s focused on zero to two, is that this is a foundational approach. It’s a way of understanding our children as babies and our relationship with them, a nurturing healthy relationship, how to navigate that in the first two years and give our child the foundation that they need, and our relationship the foundation it needs, to flourish for all the rest of the years. So this isn’t now we stop doing this and now we’re going to start spanking our child or molding them like clay. This approach lasts throughout children’s adulthood, and I can verify that as a parent of three adults.

Another question I’m often asked is, Is there a RIE person for older years? And there is not a RIE person for older years, because there isn’t a RIE approach for older years. What I’ve done is interpreted and also used my experiences—not only as a parent of three very different children with unique needs and temperaments and talents, but also the many families that I’ve consulted with over these past almost 30 years now, who have children up to age 10 or so. And some of these have been in-person consultations, some have been telephone conversations. And I’ve mainly learned that this approach is still totally valid and works for children of all ages. This same approach that is focused on the first two years of life continues to work. Personally, I’ve never needed anything else as a parent with my own children. Maybe because I’ve put so many years into studying and training, and then practicing and teaching this approach, that it’s foundational in me, in the way that I perceive everything.

I find it so interesting, too, that all these studies show that in the first three years of life, children are learning more, developing more than in the rest of our lives put together. And yet these early years are the ones we don’t remember, right? Magda focused on the first two years because it’s the beginning, and if we can set ourselves up in the beginning, then we’re giving our child something, and ourselves something, that will last.

One of the reasons is because of what science shows, that this is the most important time for children in terms of their self-confidence, their sense of self, even basic character traits, many of them that we’re modeling and they’re learning them that way. This is a precious time. We could say the most precious time in terms of learning and brain development and our relational development. So that was one reason.

Another reason is that while most believe—I don’t know if this is still true because there have been so many studies showing what amazing learners babies are, but yet still I would say we tend to discount these early years. We tend to see babies in this very limited way. Maybe because they’re not talking yet, they don’t seem like full people we can interact with. We maybe don’t understand that they might not want to be in somebody else’s arms, so we don’t bother to let them know or ask them and get a vibe from them whether that’s welcome or not. We maybe talk down to them. We don’t treat them as whole people so much. And yet what Magda believed, and studies confirm, this is actually a time we should want to be extra-careful, because they can’t express themselves. They can’t share nuances about what they’re feeling or their needs. So this is a time, in Magda’s view, and I’ve come to agree with this, to be more careful in what we’re doing with babies. How we’re engaging with them, how we’re treating them, because they can’t express themselves verbally. That’s why she was especially interested in all the things that are going on with babies in the first two years.

So, because it’s foundational and because they can’t tell us, we want to give them extra respect instead of less respect. And that’s why she talks about welcoming a baby as an honored guest when they’re born, not just a cute little thing that’s maybe a little empty-headed in the way that we see them. I mean, I definitely did that. Some people are naturally able to see into a baby and see the person there right away, but I was not able to in the beginning. Now that I do, I can’t stop seeing that with every baby. It’s like once you open this door, you never want to leave and maybe you can’t leave, if you wanted to.

That’s why there’s often this confusion around why this approach is focused on the first two years and what we’re supposed to do later. But I do understand that, just as everything looks different as our children grow, the way that we’re engaging with them looks different. And that’s why in this podcast, I do love to answer questions about children that are up to eight or nine years old. I don’t often go beyond that, because my basis of experience for those years is personal. But what I thought I would do in this podcast is share how I’ve continued to interpret Magda Gerber’s approach and how it has served me beautifully as a parent. I mean, I am not always beautiful as a parent, but this approach has served me that way.

Let’s talk about some of the major points that continue as our children get older and how they look. I mean, all of this continues as children get older, but how it looks.

First: keeping faith in our kids’ competency. One of the amazing lessons in this approach is that babies are born, yes, very dependent on us, and that’s good. It should be that way, right? That’s how we’re going to begin our attachment with them. And there’s so much that they can’t do. But even at birth, they have competencies. And the interesting thing about perceiving our children as competent right from the very beginning is not only is seeing believing, but believing is seeing in this case. So if we believe that our baby can learn how to communicate with us, we will see that this actually is true, because we will act on that belief, meaning we’ll try to include our baby in communication with us.

We realize that babies also have thoughts and interests that aren’t just about us. I remember years ago someone commenting on one of my posts saying, “Well, if a baby is away from you, if they’re out of your arms, they are just waiting to be in your arms again.” Basically, they’re putting life on hold. And first of all, it implies such a limited view of babies, that they couldn’t possibly have an independent thought or interest. Those of us that observe babies know that that’s not true. But if we don’t believe it, we probably won’t see it. We won’t see that the baby is actually quite content, sometimes, in their playpen or safe crib or on the floor as they get older. And they’ve got a lot to do, they’ve got a lot to see, they’ve got a lot to take in. When we see this limited view, we become very self-centered in the way that we’re considering babies, right? It’s all about us, adding so much more pressure to an already challenging job.

When we do begin this—and none of these things I’m going to say can’t be picked up on later in life. That’s the whole point of this podcast episode, is to show you how you can pick this up later in life if you want to, it doesn’t have to be when they’re babies. But when we start it when they’re babies, it becomes so much easier for us because we’re already into the seeing is believing, believing is seeing. We’ve believed and we’ve seen, and that just builds on itself. Wow, my baby can do this. They learned to roll over to their tummy all by themselves. We saw them trying, we saw them working on it, we saw them using their body freely, doing all these interesting intermediate positions. They can do that. And then from there, they can scoot, they can crawl, they can walk. They’re communicating with us. They’re practicing cognitive skills. They’re building higher learning skills like focus, attention, and critical thinking. Wow. Why would we get in the way of that if we saw it, right?

So this is never about abandoning a child or forcing independence. I mean, forcing independence is not possible anyway, right? Because independence isn’t a specific action someone else can teach you. It’s a feeling that you have. It’s something you want to taste, even as a baby. You want to have moments where you get to decide what to look at, what to touch. And the sense of agency that this builds is very powerful for children and carries them through adulthood. What we can do is honor independence, make room for it, notice it, and know that that’s such a positive aspect of our children’s development.

Also, it’s not only that children develop self-confidence and a sense of agency, this I can do it feeling deep within them. But this is also such a healthy relationship dynamic, right? That I trust you in all these areas. You know better than I do what you’re working on. You know better than I do what interests you. So why would I get in the way of that? And when we start opening ourselves up to that, we realize that children of all ages, not just the older ones but the little ones as well, they know what they’re doing. If we could stay out of their way in these areas of development and just create the environment that allows them to practice whatever they’re practicing. Not indicate to them, either overtly or subtly, that Really what you’re doing isn’t important, you need to be doing this right now. Because this is what I’m worried about you not getting, or this is what I was told you need to learn at this age or whatever.

And this can carry through with walking, talking, the way toys work, climbing, toilet learning, reading, homework. Eventually applying to college, choosing partners, choosing jobs, and navigating workplaces and relationships. Through all these autonomous struggles and accomplishments, our trust in our children’s abilities keeps growing, along with their self-confidence.

Alternatively, if we don’t truly believe that our kids are capable of handling their developmentally-appropriate tasks without our assistance—we’re not talking about putting children in a situation that’s traumatic, these are developmentally-appropriate tasks—I mean, if they ask for our assistance, we’re going to find a way to give it to them, right? Assistance, which doesn’t mean doing it for them. If they’re not asking, let them explore it. That’s the best possible thing they could do. But if we’re worried that they’re going to be crushed if they get too frustrated or if they make a mistake or get disappointed or, God forbid, they fail, then we can perpetuate this cycle of dependency. That, again, puts so much pressure on us and creates less security in our child, less self-confidence. The feeling that they need us for all these things that they really don’t, but we both got caught up in it that way.

If you do find yourself caught up in a situation where your child seems to need you to do all these tasks for them, then just try backing off. Not all the way maybe, but a little bit. If your child thinks they need you to sit there right with them while they’re doing their homework and show them how to do it, then just back off a little at first. I’m going to stay here with you the whole time, but instead of giving you the answers—and I’m not saying to say all this out loud, but this is the way to maybe approach it—instead of me giving you the answers, I’m going to ask more questions to help you find the answer.

I remember when my son was I think 10, and he had to make a book report and he had to draw a picture for the cover of the book report of this dog that was a big part of the story. And he said, “I don’t know how to draw a dog. I can’t do it.” And I thought, Uh-oh, yeah, that is a lot. That is kind of intimidating, for sure. But instead of starting to draw it for him—which believe me, I have that impulse. I have all the impulses everybody else has, but I’ve learned to kind of let them go and trust. So instead of taking that on for him, I just asked him questions, like “Is there a part of the dog’s body that you could draw first? What do you feel like you can draw?” And he said, “The nose.” So I said, “Okay, why don’t you try drawing the nose?” He drew the nose and then I said, “Okay, what next? What else could you draw?” “The ears. The eyes.” And it went like that, and he drew this really cool dog. I mean, it wasn’t a perfect dog, but it was perfect for him, at that time, to be able to do that.

I’ve learned, starting at the beginning with my kids as babies, that we want to help. But true help really means doing less, so that our child not only does the task, but learns that they can do it themselves. We want both of those types of learning to happen at the same time, ideally, as much as possible. Not only did you draw a dog, but you can draw. And he wouldn’t have had that part if I’d drawn the dog. He wouldn’t have had either one of those, actually. So this dynamic, keeping faith in our kids’ competency, continues.

There’s a really common thing that we can get caught up in with teenagers, which is we have to nag kids to do homework. And we can put an end to that cycle by stepping back, letting go, and having faith in our child to cope with these age-appropriate situations. And in the case of homework, encouraging our child, if they’re struggling with that, to bring that to their teacher. Because teachers love that too, right? Staying out of parts of parenting that are not really our job, that need to be our child’s job. Developing these skills is one of them.

Along with that is the second point I want to make: encouraging that inner-directedness, that process orientation, and the sense of self that that builds—the communion with self. When children are drawn to enrichment—if we are privileged to be able to give our child enrichment beyond school, in terms of hobbies or sports, if we can make that happen—what I’ve learned through this approach is to let that belong to our child. To let it be totally our child’s idea, if possible. Maybe they were exposed to it, they went to go watch their friend play a soccer game and now they want to do it. Never starting to lead that ourselves. Because once we put ourselves in the position of leading that, we can create a dynamic where our child feels like now they’re doing it for us. Maybe they’re now realizing they’re more interested in something else, but now they’re stuck with this because we feel like they need to finish everything they’ve started.

I don’t agree with that. If we have a child that keeps stopping things they’ve started, I would actually look at who’s really starting those activities and if it really is our child. Because oftentimes we think we’re suggesting things to our child, like, “Why don’t you do gymnastics?” And our countenance is telling them, My parent thinks I should want to do this. Really trying to prioritize letting our child lead these activities, because this is this precious bell inside them of their calling, of their interests, of all the things they’re going to end up doing in life as they get older. And doing with full commitment, because they’re their choice, right? It’s not going to be full commitment if it’s our choice or our suggestion, even. Wanting them to feel that full commitment. And trusting that some children don’t want to do anything after school, it’s exhausting. That’s perfectly okay too, and maybe there are things that they’re doing that are just as valid as going to take a class somewhere.

This looks, as children are older, like they’re choosing their subjects in high school, their electives that they want to take. I remember doubting when one of my kids said they didn’t want to continue with French and they’d done so well in French. I might’ve raised an eyebrow, but I let that go and I trusted and it was the best thing and perfectly fine for my child to do that. He’s a college graduate now and successful at a job already. They know better than we do. And even if we think they don’t know better than we do, allowing them to know better than we do will teach them so many more important things than that they should take French. That belief in: I can do my life, with my parent’s unconditional relationship and support.

And children benefit so much from downtime, what’s known as downtime, which is just they don’t want to do all those lessons that their friends are doing or the other parents are telling us we should do. They actually learn better because they have more time to digest and integrate and assimilate what they’ve been exposed to. And that’s the real brain-building part of experiences.

The other week I talked about praise and being careful not to overpraise, so that children can continue to be self-rewarded as much as possible. Yes, our communities and societies do give rewards, and that’s okay. It’s more important that our relationship with them is unconditional and trusting. They can get all those glossy things other places, but it’s not what our relationship is based on.

The third thing: accepting children’s feelings without judging or rushing them. What I talk about here all the time, because it is so integral to their emotional health, to being able to set boundaries—which I’m also going to talk about today—and really for them to flourish in life: Letting them express all those intense feelings. If they’re expressing them through behavior that might be aggressive behavior or unsafe behavior or even just annoying behavior to us, then all the more we want to encourage them to share those feelings another way. Not by saying, “Don’t do that, do this,” but saying, “It seems like you’re feeling this,” or “Is this what’s going on with you? Because you keep yelling at me.” Or, “Are you worried about something?” In that open, intimate way that we want to talk to our children. Not judgmental. Noticing the feelings beyond the behaviors.

Now, there are lots of ways that we can discourage feelings or diminish them that are far more subtle and loving, even. So we might want to keep our antenna up for those as children get older. Because of course, we never want to see our children hurt or upset in the least. We might say, “Look at all the things you have to be grateful for. It’s going to be fine.” Or, “Ah, they didn’t deserve you anyway.” There were so many times I wanted to say that about a problem with a friend or other relationship. “Oh, they just don’t get you.” No. Just allow the feelings. For me, it’s been about practicing zipping it. I mean, that sounds terrible, but just wait and let them keep going.

Because my urge to say something is often an urge to try to make them feel better or stop, and that doesn’t make them feel better or stop. What makes them feel better is to express it all, the whole way. Because it’s not our power to make our children feel a certain way, unfortunately, or anyone else for that matter.

And I will say that one of the reasons I talk about this so much in my podcast is that resisting the urge to calm feelings never really gets easier, at all. And our kids are going to get their feelings hurt a lot in life. They’re going to get rejected by friends, they’re not going to make the A-team, they’re going to lose the debate, they’re going to do poorly on the test, get their hearts broken. And all of this is life. As Magda always said, If we can learn to struggle, we can learn to live. And that learning to struggle is lifelong learning. And just acknowledging, “Ah, that was hurtful,” or that was whatever our child said it was. So children receive this healthiest message that whatever their moods, their darkest moods, their harshest feelings, even towards us, are safe for them to feel. Will be heard, accepted, hopefully understood by us, if possible.

This is really the biggest secret I know of to fostering a close lifelong bond with our kids. Not just accepting them and believing in them with skill development, but accepting and believing in them when they are at their absolute lowest.

And four, just in case you thought this was about letting kids do whatever they want: remember that the basis for all the healthy freedom that I’m talking about giving children is: boundaries. This could have been the very first point that I made, because none of the rest of this will flourish if children don’t feel safe in our confident, empathic leadership. Making those hard choices sometimes that are going to upset them, but we love them too much to not put ourselves on the line like that. We love them and ourselves too much to not confront it. I mean, I don’t want to confront things unless I absolutely have to, but I learned that this is real love. Real love isn’t just saying, “Okay, whatever, I don’t care.” That’s saying I don’t care. And we don’t mean it that way. We just mean, I can’t deal with another boundary right now. And I understand that, I’ve felt that many times. And maybe we can’t right then. But knowing that even though our children won’t tell us they love us so much when we state boundaries or hold boundaries for them, that’s how they feel.

What I’ve seen over the years is that the children know that. And the children that don’t have that, that seem like they’re so free to do whatever they want and the parent just accepts them, they will seek boundaries somewhere else usually, not necessarily in safe ways. Because it’s not a comfortable feeling when you’re a child—or a teenager, going through all the changes teenagers go through—that you’re in charge of your whole life. Yes, you want to be in charge of your skills and your learning and your free time, as long as it’s safe and reasonable, but not in charge of how you treat people or in charge of how you act on your moods or hurt yourself or hurt people. If we feel in charge of those things, we do not feel the slightest bit safe or loved or able to blossom.

Our boundaries are very often the dynamic that children need between us to be able to share their moods and feelings. So we want to keep practicing reasonable boundaries, sticking up for ourselves, while welcoming our children to disagree in whatever way that they do, as long as it’s not hurting us. And that’s the hardest part, right? Meaning they have a right to feel however they feel about our boundaries. It’s not, “You get what you get and you don’t get upset.” A parent shared with me that a teacher was saying that to her child. And no, that’s called stuffing our feelings. It’s that you’ve got a right to how you feel, and we’re reminding ourselves constantly, maybe, that them putting it out there is healthy and good. Much better for our child, and our relationship with them, than for them to hold it in.

As Susan David wisely shares—you know I always quote her here, I’m a big fan of her work, it’s very much in line with everything I believe. She says, “Research on emotional expression shows that when emotions are pushed aside or ignored, they get stronger. Psychologists call this amplification.” She also says, “When we push aside normal emotions to embrace false positivity, we lose our capacity to develop skills to deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.” And I believe she’s referring mostly to adults here, but all of this applies to children. Because we continue to have the same basic needs from birth until death: the need to have boundaries and know our place in the world, to express ourselves fully, the need to be in communion with ourselves, to be inner-directed, the need to feel capable that we can achieve things when we put the effort in, with lots of ups and downs in the process.

One more point, point five: connecting during caregiving. You hear me talk about that with babies and toddlers and maybe preschoolers, but this is a way to keep nurturing our connection with children throughout their life. And it does look a little different as children get older. Mealtimes is the obvious one, sitting down to a meal without having our devices out, having that time together. Sherry Turkle, who’s the author of Reclaiming Conversation and has done a lot of research on this topic of technology interfering with children’s development of empathy and our ability to connect with each other, she has some great ideas for helping us as a family to limit tech use at times like that. But she also said, I really love this, she said: you can have it be certain rooms, i.e., We’re never going to have tech devices in the kitchen or in the dining room. I didn’t do that with my family, but I thought it was a great idea.

So, mealtimes, bedtime rituals. One of my kids wanted me to lie there with them while they fell asleep, even up to the age of, I think it was 10. And you know what? I was available. We don’t have to do that, but I did it. Only one out of three wanted that. But I’m glad I did it, in retrospect. I’m not saying everyone should do that, but there are some things you can do. Read books, sing songs (until they begged me to stop), of course, we did that for years too. Have those goodnight rituals that are special between you.

Then so many things can be caregiving: Band-aids. Medicine. When kids ask for help with homework or studying for a test, I consider that caregiving, even though I know it’s also skill-building for them and everything. But when my children would ask for help studying for a test, I would leap on that, because I could. If I couldn’t, I wouldn’t. But as kids get older, there aren’t that many opportunities, like there are when they’re little, to connect in that way. And caregiving in all these realms is one of the main ways.

Seizing on those bedtime rituals, seizing on the mealtimes, help with studying for a test, and we used to laugh a lot. I’d be completely focused at those times, I would not have a tech device anywhere near me. Just with them. Shopping for clothes or whatever they need. You want me to go with you? I’m there. It’s an excuse to be with your child as you get older, as they get older and you get older. Helping them with combing and brushing their hair, hairstyles, detangling, make-up for the prom. Taking kids to the doctor or for a haircut. My kids are adults now and they want to go to the dentist with me. Yes! I’m there, I’m right there. And we’ll go get something to eat afterwards and mess our teeth up again. But it’s the best. It keeps that flame alive between us.

And then just simple things, like when my kids come into the house or I’m meeting them somewhere, I drop everything. I’m up, I’m going in for a hug, excited to see them. Those transitions, those transitional times, remain sensitive times for all of us. You’ve heard me talk a lot about how difficult transitional periods can be for young children or even just getting up and getting dressed and getting to school in the morning. Keep helping your child. Yes, they can dress themselves, but if they want a helping hand, they just want moral support while they’re doing it, we can try to be there. And if we can’t, not giving them a judgmental response, “You can do that yourself.” But just, “You wanted me there and I can’t. But next time.”

Because what children can do and what they want to do, what their real need is—which might be connection with us before they leave for the day—are two different things. So when we can, prioritize those activities. The same when I’m parting with my children, I try to jump up. And I mean, I always saw them off to school and everything, but my son’s living at home now, and I try to wake up and make sure I say goodbye to him before he goes off to work. And hello to him when he comes in the door. I stand up, I’m so excited. Basically, any excuse. That’s how it gets.

I know it feels overwhelming now, that you’re doing all this stuff and everybody needs you so much. And mommy, mommy or daddy, daddy, and you could barely take a free breath. Well, I’m not saying you should be happy because you’re not going to have that later and that you should feel bad about the times that you’ve missed. Absolutely not. However, just know that as you grow, you’re going to find these connection points still and find these areas to trust your child. And all of that is going to bring you so many surprises and delight, laughter and amazement, really, at how capable your children are.

And if you want to get on this track and you’re not quite there, you agree with some of it, you don’t agree with other parts of it—that’s okay. You can always step into trust, step into connection. Those are always available to us, and our children want those more than anything from us. So, it’s a win-win.

Now, for those of you who would still like to check out resources that are compatible with what I teach, but for older children, the first thing I usually ask people if I get a chance to respond to them is, what topics are you concerned about? Because that will help me to guide them. I do have a whole list of books that I recommend, that are in my books and recommendations section of my website, janetlansbury.com. There are books covering a variety of topics, and many of them pertain to older children. Also, many of these authors have been on this podcast. So, check out all my other podcasts, and I hope you find the help that you’re looking for.

And by the way, Mother’s Day is coming up, and I’ve got a great gift idea for you: my No Bad Kids Master Course. You can learn all about it at nobadkidscourse.com.

Thank you so much for listening. We can do this.

The post As Our Kids Get Older – 5 Ways to Continue Building Lasting Emotional Bonds appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “Raising Motivated, Self-Confident, Less Stressed Kids in an Age of Anxiety (with Dr. William Stixrud)”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m pleased to host Dr. William Stixrud. He has a wealth of experience and wisdom to share from his decades of working with families as a therapist for children with learning and mental health challenges. He often sees the same client from childhood through adolescence and adulthood, so he’s able to see the results of his practice.

He’s the co-author, with his associate Ned Johnson, of two popular books: The Self-Driven Child, which to me feels in many ways like the perfect counterpart to the ideas I share for caring for kids in early childhood and how they might translate to understanding our role as parents with grade school, middle, and high school age children. I love this book and I’m looking forward to reading their recently published follow-up offering, What Do You Say? How to Talk with Kids to Build Motivation, Stress Tolerance, and a Happy Home. I’m hoping Bill will share his secrets for encouraging our children’s healthy motivation and their and our sense of control, which, as he believes, is the key to mental health. I’m excited.

Hi, Bill. Welcome. Thank you so much for being here.

Dr. William Stixrud: Thanks for having me, Janet.

Janet Lansbury: Well, I just adored your book. It’s so compatible with the kinds of messages that I try to give to parents as well, so it was wonderful to experience how this looks and feels in your work with children who are mostly grade school and older. Right?

Dr. William Stixrud: I would say that, yeah. I test kids, I’m a neuropsychologist and I test kids for a living, and I test kids from four to about 40 or so. But mainly I see school-age, middle school, and high school kids.

Janet Lansbury: And you work with them and their parents as well?

Dr. William Stixrud: Yeah, I do evaluations and then I tell parents what I learned, I tell kids what I learned. And probably most of the kids I follow over time. So I’m seeing a lot of kids now that I tested initially 20 years ago.

Janet Lansbury: And did they come to you because they have issues or concerns?

Dr. William Stixrud: Yeah, I see kids primarily because they’re having learning problems or attention problems or emotional problems or social problems, and I try to figure out what they’re good at, what’s going right, and what’s going wrong and how to help them.

Janet Lansbury: And you’ve written this book, The Self-Driven Child, a bestseller, with Ned Johnson, who is, what is your connection with him?

Dr. William Stixrud: Well, we became friends probably 10 years ago, maybe 12 years ago. Somebody introduced us and said, “You guys think so much alike.” And we’re very different. I’m 20 years older, I’m a neuropsychologist. Ned is the Washington, D.C. area’s test prep guru. He has a big business helping kids do better on standardized tests. And he realized that the way he does it is very similar to the kind of things that I’ve been lecturing about for many, many years. And we started lecturing together about motivation and about how too much stress affects kids’ brain and their development.

And we realized as we worked together that we saw we had two major concerns, and one was this, what people are calling an epidemic of mental health problems in adolescents and young adults, but also in the last several years in kids from five to 11. And then also so many of the kids we see have what we considered to be unhealthy motivation in the sense that either they’re obsessively driven, they’ll sacrifice anything to get into the most elite college. Sacrifice their health, their friends, and their family. And other kids who do as little as possible, don’t seem to have any kind of internal drive.

And we realized that there’s something that connects these two things, that points to a cause and a solution. And what we concluded was that what connects these two things is a low sense of control, because a low sense of control is at the root of all the mental health problems. I mean, think about it. If you’re anxious, your thinking’s out of control. If you feel depressed, you’ve got no sense of control. If you have substance use problems, your life is chaotic. So we realized that that’s the key to mental health.

And also every place we looked, Janet, to try to understand how do kids, little kids, grow up to be self-motivated, all the arrows point in the direction of autonomy. They have to have a sense that this is their life, and they aren’t continually being forced to do things.

Janet Lansbury: And they don’t have these areas that are free and clear for them to be autonomous.

Dr. William Stixrud: Right.

Janet Lansbury: That downtime and self-directed play, it’s everything, right? It’s therapy for them. It’s how they learn, it’s how they practice taking on different roles.

Dr. William Stixrud: It’s so interesting. Two of my granddaughters, their mother was very strict about very limited technology, virtually none for the first few years. And all they did when they were five years old is play. They’re 10 and seven now, and whenever they have a minute, they play, they make up games. They go to the dentist, they come home and they play dentist. That’s the way that mammals have always learned to be adults. As you said, that’s the way they manage their feelings. That’s the way they try things out. That’s the way they learn how what they do affects other people.

Janet Lansbury: And I think on the parents’ end, it can be hard. I mean, there’s all this peer pressure to have your children in classes from the time they’re infants and have these schedules during the week where you have these scheduled events and you can’t really have that kind of play that you’re talking about and that I promote also, which is about good periods of time each day where there’s really nothing that children have to do. And I think if children aren’t used to that, then it can be tough for them to kind of wind down into that space. So that can be tough for parents sometimes, but it’s really everything.

Dr. William Stixrud: It’s huge. I agree.

Janet Lansbury: It’s interesting what you said before, how you saw the two different ways that this manifested, this feeling of lack of control. That it manifested in obsessively wanting to try to keep control, in terms of, I’ve got to keep achieving, I’ve got to keep doing, I’ve got to keep holding this all together and keep on this track, or I can’t handle what happens if I feel like it’s falling apart, and then the other end of it where they kind of give up and say, What’s the point? I can’t control anything, and so I don’t want to do anything.

Dr. William Stixrud: Yeah, yeah. The more I’ve been thinking about and lecturing about and writing about this sense of control for, I guess about six or seven years now, it’s a really, really powerful construct. The research on anxiety problems, it looks like they’re all rooted in low sense of control. Same thing with depression. And the research is looking at cognitive behavioral therapy, which is probably the most effective approach for treating children’s anxiety and mood problems. The reason it works is it increases their sense of control. And again, every place that we looked to try to understand how do kids develop that healthy self-motivation, that drive to develop themselves, and as they get older to realize, I need to develop myself to provide useful service to this world. That’s the kind of way that I think about developing kids’ motivation, is that healthy self-drive to develop themselves to have something useful to offer this world.

Janet Lansbury: And that starts with them getting a chance to connect with themselves and see who they are, which goes back to the play thing. From the time that they’re babies, they can feel a sense of agency about, Do I want to reach for this ball or do I want to suck my fingers, or do I want to look over here at this corner of the room where I see a shadow that’s interesting? Allowing them to have those kinds of options gives them this sense of, This is what I like to do.

Dr. William Stixrud: Yes, yes. It’s so interesting that some years ago I was reading the work of this guy named Reed Larson who studies adolescent development, and at one point in his career, he was looking at how do young children turn into self-motivated adolescents and adults? And he said, it’s not through dutifully doing their homework every night. It’s through what he called the passionate pursuit of pastimes. He described that flow experience, that experience of flow where you’re actively engaged in something that you’re interested in or that’s fun for you, or trying to solve a hard problem where it’s not so easy to be boring and it’s not so hard that it’s wildly stressful, but it’s kind of in your sweet spot and you’re working hard to figure it out, to solve something, or to beat somebody for competing.

And so the idea is if a three-year-old is building a little fort out of Lincoln Logs or playing with Legos and building something, they’re really concentrating on it, they’re really focused on trying to make it right. That experience shapes the brain in a way that develops that intrinsic motivation, that self-drive. And so it wasn’t through somehow doing what’s expected of me, what other people are telling me to do. It was through that passionate pursuit of pastimes. And we can start, as you said, by respecting that they may have different tastes and they may like some things and they may see something differently than I do. And respecting that individuality I think is really healthy, at the same time that we’re helping them be part of a family and part of a community.

Janet Lansbury: You made a really good point in your book, and it’s a question that I’m asked often about, “Well, if you’re allowing children to play as they wish and you’re not trying to engage them in focusing on certain kinds of learning that you think they should be working on, in the early years especially, then what happens when they get to school and they can’t focus?” And you made this great point that my mentor, Magda Gerber, used to also make, you say: “The best way to motivate him for the things you think he should focus on is to let him spend time on the things he wants to focus on.”

Dr. William Stixrud: Right. And for my co-author and me, our north star in thinking about motivation is self-determination theory, which is one of the best supported theories in psychology, developed about 30 years ago. And the main idea is that to develop that intrinsic motivation, the drive is coming from you, you have to have three needs met: one’s for a sense of competence, and one’s for a sense of relatedness, and a sense of autonomy. And I think that when we respect autonomy, that kids feel respected and it really helps our relationship with them, and those two things. And as we foster competence and we point out, “Gosh, look what you just did. Six months ago or three months ago, you couldn’t do this.” You foster that sense of competence, that they can develop skill. These are the most important ways that I know of for us to build that kind of healthy self-motivation in kids.

Janet Lansbury: Well, that reminds me of another quote that I wrote down from your book. You talked about competence: “It’s an internal rather than external barometer of accomplishment (growth mindset—you’re getting better). Remember that you can’t develop competence for them, and any attempt to do so will just undermine their own motivation.”

Dr. William Stixrud: Makes sense to me.

Janet Lansbury: Me too. But it’s very powerful actually, because I think that a lot of times as parents, we’ve put that on our job description that we’ve got to help them achieve this and help them achieve that, and it really can create a lot more anxiety in us and isn’t helping.

Dr. William Stixrud: Right. It’s so interesting because anytime a kid tries to do something, whether they’re two years old, they try to do something or they’re three or four, and they can’t do it, and they try again and they figure it out, it changes the brain, it develops the circuits in their brain to when something hard happens, to cope and to feel confident they can cope. Because when you’re dealing with something hard, even something that’s stressful, what happens —unless you’re just overwhelmed— what happens initially is that your prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain that can think logically and put things into perspective and calm yourself down when you’re stressed, your prefrontal cortex activates and leaps into action. And when the prefrontal cortex activates, it dampens down the stress response.

So we want kids, ideally even when they’re little, as much as possible, with our support, to solve their own problems, to deal with the stressful things they handle, but also just when they’re playing— the kid is trying to get a Lego construction together and it’s frustrating for him and he eventually figures it out, that’s what builds competence. And if we pointed out to him, “Man, you just stuck with that incredibly. A lot of kids would’ve given up.” You made those just kind of off-hand comments, in my experience, those are the things that really structure in a kid’s brain: I’m a competent person. I can learn, I can get better.

Janet Lansbury: And when they do need help doing the smallest thing, if they say, “I can’t do this, I can’t do this.” “Hmm, well, what are you trying to do? Where are you trying to put that one?” Asking questions, but keep bouncing the ball back to them, just being an emotionally supportive person. And it’s hard to do. It’s kind of like an art, to be able to give that minimal intervention.

Dr. William Stixrud: It’s true. One of the things I used to do, Janet, when my kids were little, if they get frustrated, “Daddy help me with this,” I’d say, “Well, I’m going to look at my watch here, and if you try for a minute and a half to figure out on your own and you still can’t do it, then I’m going to help you, but I want to give you a chance to figure it out.”

Janet Lansbury: Oh, that’s a good idea.

Dr. William Stixrud: And then if they still couldn’t get it, I said, “Well, I wonder what would happen if you tried it this way.” That kind of suggested way as opposed to telling them what to do.

Janet Lansbury: Yeah, you can always break something down into steps and just give them the first step. I remember my son had to draw a picture for a book report, and he had to draw a picture of this wolf and he said, “I can’t possibly draw this picture.” I think he was maybe in third grade. And I said, “Yeah, I mean it is hard to draw pictures. What do you want to draw first? Which part of it do you want to draw first?” And he said, “The nose.” And I said, “Okay, what shape would the nose be? How would you like to draw that?” And it was amazing. He made this pretty cool picture. I was so proud of myself, because it was an experiment on my end. But to see how that worked with an older child.

I work a lot with the younger children, I’m used to doing it with them, and it’s amazing. And they don’t naturally have this feeling like being stuck is a bad thing. That’s something that we can unfortunately influence them to feel more when we’re worried they’re not going to finish it or get it, or that we’re starting to feel for them, Oh gosh, maybe they can’t do it and I’ve got to help. I’ve got to rescue. And then they start to pick up from us that anxiousness and receive that same sense of urgency from us and see that, Oh gosh, this isn’t a safe place to be, just in the middle where I’m not getting it.

Dr. William Stixrud: Right. And as you said, it’s hard because we’re mammals. We evolved to soothe and protect our young. And in our second book, we talk about this research of a person by the name of Jessie Borelli. She studies what she calls parental overcontrol. And she has a study where these kids are in a room with some kind of computerized puzzle and they’re trying to put it together and the moms are in the room and the moms are only given one instruction: Don’t help. And they’re measuring the kid’s heart rate and the mother’s heart rate. And so the kid starts to solve this puzzle and it looks easy, but it’s much harder than it really is. As he starts to get frustrated, the kid’s heart rate goes up. Mother intervenes and says, “Honey, try it this way or this way.” Mother’s heart rate goes down when she is doing something that gives her a sense of control, but the kid gets more stressed as the mom gets involved.

Janet Lansbury: Wow.

Dr. William Stixrud: Yeah. So I think it’s not that we don’t want to be supportive. It’s not that we don’t want to help our kids. It’s just that we don’t want to jump in. I did this exercise, I did it with a parent educator some years ago, where we thought about, Well, let’s say your second-grade girl comes home and she’s crying because everybody in her friend group got invited to a birthday party and she isn’t invited. And what we asked the parents to do was to ask themselves, Whose problem is it? Because the way that we’re wired, it’s so hard to do that. It’s hard to resist wanting to start soothing or, That’s okay, I’ll call the mom. And just remind them that we can listen, we can try and understand, but if we jump in and solve it for them, we deprive them of that opportunity to solve it themselves and to shape that brain, this experience of going into coping mode.

Janet Lansbury: And it makes it harder for them the next time because they feel dependent on us for making them feel better.

Dr. William Stixrud: Yeah, that’s exactly right.

Janet Lansbury: You talk also in your book about the concept of the non-anxious presence. What are some of the keys to being able to be that for our children?

Dr. William Stixrud: Well, can I just mention how I got to this idea?

Janet Lansbury: Please.

Dr. William Stixrud: When my daughter was just turning two, her language was coming along really well, but she stuttered and she started to stutter really badly, and she went for a couple days where she didn’t talk. And I’ve never been more panicked in my life, Janet. I’m thinking, Oh God, if she doesn’t talk, she’ll never get better. She’ll be teased the rest of her life. And a couple days later, basically her mouth caught up with her brain and she just stopped stuttering. And I realized that all of our fear as parents, it’s about the future. It’s about, They’re going to get stuck in some ways and never get better. So that was a really formative thing for me was realizing that all our worry, all our fear, it’s about the future. That kids are going to get stuck.

And my experience is, if we as parents don’t get highly anxious and too involved, kids, they go through stuff and they grow out of it. The other thing was when I used to do therapy, I’d sit with parents and one of the parents would start to cry and they’d say, “I just want him to feel good about himself.” It struck me many years ago, I said, “Well, I think it would be easier for us to help him feel good about himself if we weren’t worried sick.” And then somebody introduced me some years ago to this idea of a non-anxious presence. I love the idea. I love the term, and I didn’t make it up unfortunately, but I was introduced to it. And somebody at an independent school in Washington, D.C. asked me to do a program with parents on how to become a non-anxious presence.

And I never quite thought about it in terms of parenting that exact way. But then I realized if you’ve got an infant who’s crying and wailing, it’s a lot easier to soothe them if you stay calm. If you’ve got a two-year-old who’s having a tantrum in a store, it’s a lot easier to handle if you stay calm. If you’ve got a 16-year-old who’s coming home and his girlfriend just dumped him, if you can stay calm, you can be much more helpful. And we know that kids are certainly much more stressed now, much more fearful. It is like the message that young kids get is, Be very afraid. As they get older, it seems to be be very afraid, given how many kids are so anxious and fearful.

Janet Lansbury: And you’ve really seen that rise in time?

Dr. William Stixrud: Oh, yeah. I see it in my own practice, but the statistics on it are just mind-boggling. The surgeon general now calls the status of mental health in adolescents the defining public health crisis of our lifetime. And I think for parents of young children, there’s so much we can do to strengthen them. And I think in part by, if we move in the direction of being a non-anxious presence, we help kids in just dozens of ways. For example, if a little kid falls in the playground and we go, “Oh, oh, are you okay?” Kids learn to react to things that happen to them in part by watching how their parents react. And so, many kids, they fall on the playground and they look to see, Should I cry? Am I okay? If we stay calm, it’s different than if we’re, “Oh, honey, are you okay?”

And I’m not saying if something’s really bad, we shouldn’t be nurturing. We want to be nurturing to our kids. I think in our first book, we quote this book, it’s something with a magical character, and he says to this group of kids, “I’m sorry I couldn’t keep you safe.” And the kids say, “You did something much more important. You helped us feel brave.”

And part of the way I think about this non-anxious presence is not being overly emotionally reactive and not being burdened by excessive anxiety or worry and being able to communicate that courageous attitude as opposed to a fearful one. There’s a lot of things that you could worry about in this world, and I’m not saying we should never worry. Worry helps us stay safe in many ways, but ideally if what we communicate is, Yeah, that makes me anxious too, but I know I can handle it and you can too, it’s a very powerful way to help kids develop confidence that they can handle stuff and also to communicate that courage.

I’d love any thoughts about what I just said, and then I’ll tell you some of the ways that we think about encouraging parents to move in that direction of being a non-anxious presence.

Janet Lansbury: For me, when you said courageous, that really hits home for me because I started to imagine —and this was when I had to take my upset first toddler out of a grocery store or someplace or when I had to do anything— I would see myself, and I’ve talked about this, the parents that listen here probably have heard me say it, but I would put on a superhero suit in my mind to be confident for you. Because I’m very sensitive, I tend to take on everybody else’s mood. So if my child’s afraid, that affects me too, and then I’m sure I affect them back.

And I would imagine, if you were a fireperson coming in here to help somebody that had to jump out of a building, you would be very confident for them. You would know that this is the most important thing, that you weren’t panicking and that you weren’t afraid, and that you believed that they could fall into that net and they’d be okay. So I take it to that level. I really needed a lot of work. And what I found is it’s easier for me to be courageous for my child than for myself.

Dr. William Stixrud: And my co-author, in our second book, his twin brother is an EMT, and what he does, he goes into situations, an emergency situation in a family, and he says, “I think we’re under control here. You don’t have to panic. Should I let you know if it’s time to worry?” Just model it. Because when we wrote our first book, The Self-Driven Child, one of the things we emphasize is the research on what’s called stress contagion. The idea that stress is contagious. I mean, if you’re around a really stressful person, your brain picks it up and it increases your stress level. As we were researching our second book, I learned that one of the mantras of the Navy Seals is “Calm is Contagious,” and it’s contagious because all emotions are contagious. And that’s part of the reason why I encourage parents to move in that direction of being a non-anxious presence in your family, because then what you do is you communicate, you infuse calmness into your family and your kids feel it.

Janet Lansbury: Yeah. And so how else can parents do that when there are so many concerns, especially as parents? There’s a lot of concerns in the world, and then there’s concerns as parents, which magnify everything.

Dr. William Stixrud: One of the things we talk about, I think in the introduction to The Self-Driven Child, is that most human beings are living in the safest time, in the safest place in human history. And many of our fears as parents are related to this 24/7 news cycle and the fear that parents have of young children, like, being abducted. It’s all based on that, we get these alerts. And it turns out that the rates of child abduction are extremely low, except for if parents are divorced, one parent will take a kid without the other parent knowing it. But the perception of danger is much greater than it really is. So that’s one thing.

What I ask parents to do is to take a long view, in the sense that most kids turn out fine. And because I test kids who are having problems and I’ve followed kids for 40 years, I know that in the vast majority of kids, even the ones I see that are having problems, they turn out fine. In fact, I got a Christmas card two years ago, Janet, on the outside it said, “You were right.” And I opened it up and it’s a picture of these three young adults with their spouses, and their parents had written, “They all turned out great.” These are kids who I evaluated at various points starting in probably the mid-1990s through the early 2000s, and I hadn’t seen any of them in 10 years. And I just got an email from a mom who I saw, whose kid I saw when she was eight, who’s now like 38, and she had autism. And mom’s just saying, “She’s so great and doing so great.”

So just take a long view and remember that all our worry about our kids, it’s about, Something’s happening now, oh my God, this is not going to get better. And it’s because a low sense of control is the most stressful thing you can experience in the whole world, that if a kid has a problem and we don’t know how to solve it, it’s very stressful. So we kind of work on ourselves as you did, Janet, to experience more of that kind of inner calm so that we can radiate that calm to our family. We train ourselves to remember that if I don’t get stuck, my kid’s not going to get stuck, that we can take steps to solve these problems. And that usually they turn out really good.

Janet Lansbury: So if our children aren’t going to feel that sense of control unless we feel that sense of control, we can maybe derive our sense of control from that visualization or belief, that trust, that my child probably will be just fine and get through these things. And you know what? Our job as parents is not as complicated as I think we can make it. Just like with the news cycles, there’s so much parenting advice out for people now, and it’s overwhelming and it can sound like this is such an intricate thing. Something that we’re putting out there to try to help —the various parenting advisors, like me— it can make it appear as if, Oh, there’s so many details we have to get right. And really those are just supposed to help you if you’re stuck, maybe. But it’s not that complicated.

Dr. William Stixrud: It’s really not.

Janet Lansbury: And you and I, that have adult children, can acknowledge that. I have three adult children also.

Dr. William Stixrud: Yeah. I remember my son had tics and learning disabilities, and I worried about the tics and about being teased and that. I realized that the most important thing that I can do to help myself is to work on my own fear, my own anxiety, and realizing that my fear was all about as he got older, if his tics were terrible, that that might affect him negatively somehow. And he’s a PhD psychologist, he’s a very successful, wonderful human being, beautiful wife, beautiful children. And yeah, I had a lot of worry, but I realized that I was more upset than he was, and I just worked at it.

What I realized is that if I see kids are going through a hard patch, that if I see it as, This is part of their path and I’m going to help them through it, as opposed to thinking, This is a disaster! That perspective of accepting where kids are. If we think about the idea of unconditional love and unconditional acceptance, arguably the most important thing we can do for our kid is to let them know we love them immeasurably, no matter what they do or how hard they try or how they behave. This is one of the ways that we do it.

Janet Lansbury: And if we look back on our own lives, how many rough spots have we all had? And how positive were those for us?

Dr. William Stixrud: Right. Before we started recording this, you mentioned this experience I talk about in The Self-Driven Child where, when I was in first grade, I cried the whole first week. I’d never been in a situation where I didn’t know anybody, none of my friends from kindergarten were in my first grade class, and I was kind of a little bit on the anxious side anyway. And one day the girl sitting next to me said, “Ms. Ward, Billy’s crying.” And she said, “He’s going to be fine.” And I realized, she’s just modeling this non-anxious presence and communicating confidence that I could handle it.

Janet Lansbury: I love that teacher, she should get an award of some kind. And how simple that is: She believed in you. She believed in you, and that feels good.

Dr. William Stixrud: I know. And there’s this new program, this brilliant program out of Yale, for helping kids with anxiety. The acronym is SPACE. It’s Supported Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions. And one of the main things that parents are taught to do is to express empathy. “I know this is really scary for you.” And then, “But I’m a hundred percent confident that you can handle it.”

Because what we do, because we’re mammals, what we do when kids find something stressful, we try to protect them from it. If a little kid is afraid to go into the bathroom by himself, we go in there with him, that kind of thing. And it turns out that when we make that kind of accommodation to a kid’s anxiety, it just makes them more anxious. And so what we’re taught to do is to eventually not make those accommodations. But the first step is you express empathy. “I know that going into the bathroom by yourself makes you anxious, but I’m also a hundred percent confident that you can handle it.” Which requires us to manage our own anxiety and then to communicate confidence that you can handle it so that we communicate that brave, courageous attitude.

Janet Lansbury: That’s so important, I think. But again, it all stems from the trust that we have in, I guess in ourselves as parents, and therefore towards our children. You said it well in your book: “It takes courage to trust a child to make decisions, to trust in a child’s brain development, to ignore the pressures that cause us to protect our kids from themselves, or to be overly involved in their lives. It takes courage to face our fears about the future. It also takes humility to accept that we don’t often know what’s in our kids’ best interest. It takes a change in mindset to focus on ourselves—our own emotions and attitudes—as an extremely important element of our child-rearing.”

Dr. William Stixrud: Yeah, I like that. Five years later, I still like it.

Janet Lansbury: I like it too. But then you also say: “As hard as all of this is, the harder route by far is trying to control what we really can’t.”

Dr. William Stixrud: Yeah. In the book we talk about some postulates of motivation, and one of them is that you can’t make a kid do something against their will. And I think that knowing that, knowing you really can’t make another human, even a little kid, you can’t make a little kid do something. Your kid, you need to get in the car to go see grandma, and they’re refusing. You can pick them up and put them in the car, but then they aren’t getting in the car, you’re putting them in the car. You really can’t make somebody do something. And when you make peace with that, that if theoretically I really couldn’t make him do something, you make peace with that, you realize, Well, that’s not my rule. It couldn’t be my responsibility to always make him do the right thing. And for me, the older I get and the more I see that something that looks like a disaster leads to something really good, I get more humble about knowing what’s in a kid’s best interest. And inclined to take that attitude that this is your life and you get to figure it out and I’m going to help you.

We talk about the idea as parents being a consultant of their kid rather than their boss or their manager, their homework police, who’s always running their lives. Because our goal is for kids to be able to run their own lives before they leave home. And that’s what I’ve suggested to parents of young children, is think about, you aren’t going to start turning over the keys to your five-year-old, but the idea is, let’s move in that direction. For myself, I’m going to move in the direction of a non-anxious presence who can support my kid in making wise decisions, practice making decisions for themselves, learning from their feedback, who can trust my kids. I can say, “I have confidence you can solve these problems.” That’s my role. And the kid’s role eventually is to figure out who they want to be and be able to run their own life.

And I say that because I was giving a lecture about The Self-Driven Child in Houston before the pandemic, and I happened to mention the most elite high school in Washington, D.C. and a woman came up to me afterwards. She said, “I’m a therapist at The Menninger Clinic here in Houston,” this really good mental health clinic in Houston. And she said, “We know this school in D.C. really well, because so many of the graduates get into the top colleges in the country, but as soon as they get a B, or as soon as they realize that everybody there is as smart as they are, or as soon as they ask a girl out and she dumps them, they can’t handle it. So they take a medical leave of absence and they come here for treatment.” And she said, “To the one, they just don’t have enough experience making their own decisions, solving their own problems, running their own life.”

And I gave a lecture recently and this guy came up to me and said, “I just finished my doctoral dissertation on promoting autonomy in two-year-olds by, ‘Do you want to do it this way or this way?’ Start out by giving them a limited number of choices.” So you’re coming back to that treating them respectfully that you mentioned earlier.

Janet Lansbury: So for the parents that listen here regularly and know my work, they know that a lot of what this podcast ends up being about is how to actually set limits with children and have those boundaries for them and all of those things, which are to me in a different category than what you’re talking about, but not completely. We still give children choices with things that we have to help them do, like getting into the car seat, for example. “Do you want to be the one to go in by yourself?” But we do have to take charge of them, because if we don’t that creates the kind of stress that doesn’t help them to function either.

Dr. William Stixrud: As we say in The Self-Driven Child, this idea of being a consultant, it doesn’t mean that the kid’s the boss of the family. We see this as squarely in the tradition of what’s called authoritative parenting, as opposed to authoritarian or laissez-faire. And in authoritative parenting, we’re the guides of the family. We’re the leaders of the family, and we work out limits with kids. And ideally, when our kid’s, say, three or four, we sit down and talk about limits so that they’re kind of agreed-upon and everybody knows and they feel fair. We want to minimize the extent to which we’re forcing limits when we’re mad, go to your room kind of thing. But if little kids have too much freedom, as you said, it just makes them anxious. They can’t have that. Kids with laissez-faire parenting, where there’s very few limits, very few family rules that are enforced, it makes them really anxious because young people, they need to feel that my parents are in charge.

And ultimately, from that position, we treat them respectfully and know that the way kids become good decision-makers is by practicing making decisions. And the way kids learn to treat other people respectfully is by being treated respectfully. And so we can give kids choices, we can give them freedom, but we don’t let them walk all over us. They aren’t the boss of the family. They can’t do anything they want. It’s a delicate balance, but it’s doable if we realize that kids need limits and it’s really good to treat your kid respectfully. Like he or she is a human being who has a mind of her own. And it’s also true that when we treat kids respectfully that they’re more likely to go along with us. When they feel loved and appreciated and enjoyed, they’re just more likely to just go along with us and not fight us.

Janet Lansbury: Because we’re on the same team. And they know that, they feel that. The way I see it and teach it, again from infancy, so there’s sort of two areas. Even though we want to give children choice when they can handle it, sometimes they can’t in the boundary-type situations or situations in their care where they really need us to take the lead. But then there’s this whole other area of play, learning, that’s theirs, that belongs to them. And the more we support that while staying in our lane and not trying to micromanage it and decide what it should be, the better.

Dr. William Stixrud: I love that. It makes complete sense to me.

Janet Lansbury: That’s how I learned this, and it just felt really clear. I’m a person that needs things to be very, very clear in my mind to be able to even try to do them.

Dr. William Stixrud: And I really feel like my major mission, and certainly one of the reasons that I wanted to write The Self-Driven Child, is to help parents feel that it’s safe. It’s safe not to worry about your kid all the time, it’s safe to feel that you can trust your kids a lot of the time. It’s safe to feel that you aren’t supposed to know who they’re supposed to be and what they’re supposed to be like or what’s always right for them. You couldn’t know because when something happens to a kid, do you judge whether it was good or bad the next day or five years later or 10 years later? Certainly one of the most important experiences of my entire life was the first time I went to graduate school, in English literature. I went for 20 straight weeks and I didn’t turn in a single assignment because I was just so anxious and insecure. I work with a lot of underachievers and I say, “Twenty weeks, I turned in nothing. Top that.”

Janet Lansbury: I have nightmares about that.

Dr. William Stixrud: But my point is, so after the second quarter, I hadn’t turned anything in, so I flunked out. And I felt like my whole life had gone up in smoke. And it took me about a month to realize it was the best possible thing that could have happened to me. No way should I have been an English professor. I always felt like an imposter, I felt out of my league, and I wanted to do something with children. Most of my professors gave me incompletes. This one flunked me, so I couldn’t go back. And I prayed that I’d meet him and be able to thank him. But honest to God, Janet, two years later, I’m walking on the campus of the University of Washington where I’m taking some classes in education, and I see this guy and I go up to him and I say, “You probably don’t remember me.” He didn’t remember me, but I said, “You flunked me two years ago and it was the best possible thing that could have happened to me. Thank you.” It was a very satisfying experience.

But the point is that if we see what kids are going through as part of their path to figure their lives out, and our job is to support them and help them and, as you said, to provide structure and direction as necessary, it’s just a lot easier.

Janet Lansbury: Yeah. It works better for us, it’s easier, it’s less stressful when we stay in our lane and let them do their work and we do ours and trust everybody to do their job.

Dr. William Stixrud: It’s safe to do it. And I have great confidence in this as you do, because I walk this walk with my own kids, and I have two wonderful adult children who grew up with no academic pressure at all, and both have PhDs. And this approach of really fostering a sense of control, as they get older playing more that consultant role to help them figure out who they want to be. The three questions that I ask to think about my relationship with the kids is, Whose life is it?, Whose responsibility is it?, and Whose problem is it? And I want to remember that I don’t know who they want to be, it’s their life. I want to remember that I don’t want to take responsibility for something that’s really a kid’s responsibility, like doing their homework, for example. And also that I don’t want to solve problems that they’re capable of solving themselves.

Janet Lansbury: And you share so many incredible case studies. And you have a whole chapter on navigating learning disabilities, ADHD, and autism spectrum disorders and how your approach can work with children that have those challenges.

The other thing that you said is the enjoyment factor. So not only is it easy for us when we’re not trying to do jobs that aren’t going to work for us because they’re not our job, we’re not as able to enjoy the unfolding of the person because we’re so busy worrying about if they’re measuring up in this way or that way. And you offer these points around being a non-anxious presence: “Make enjoying your kids your top parenting priority. Don’t fear the future.” Maybe easier said than done, but we’ve got to put trust out there, right?

Dr. William Stixrud: Yes, yes. The enjoyment piece. When I used to do therapy, starting about 35 years ago, I did a lot of therapy with parents. And what came to me is that, let’s set our highest parenting priority as simply enjoying your child. Because when you enjoy your child, she experiences herself as a joy-producing organism as opposed to an anxiety-producing or an anger-producing or a frustration-producing organism. And it’s not that we have to enjoy every second, but the idea of just being spontaneously enjoyed, that’s how people have a sense of, “I’m likable.” And so what I’d do with parents is we’d work backwards: Let’s make that our goal. What’s keeping you from enjoying your kid most of the time? And it may be some behavioral thing, it may be something in the marriage, maybe some pressures at work, maybe insomnia and said, let’s work on these things, with the goal being to enjoy your kid, so your kid starts to see himself as a joy-producing organism.

Janet Lansbury: Yes. And it also can be because we’re trying to do right by our child, putting them on the team or whatever, and now we’re dragging them to practice because they don’t want to go. And it’s impossible to enjoy your child that way. But what I remember is when I could observe my children playing —which they allowed me to do about to the age of five, and then they didn’t want me to anymore— but their ideas. And I just remember one time my daughter, she was waiting for me, I was teaching actually, and she had to come that day. And I see her over there, she was using paper clips, something that was there, and she was making people out of paperclips and they were talking to each other, without even bending them or destroying them or anything. She made up this whole story with paperclips. And it’s just that kind of stuff that children do that’s so cool. And we can really see who they are and their imagination and interests and all of these things. It’s so much more interesting.

But anyway, I’m going to finish your list here: “Don’t fear the future. Commit to your own stress management. Make peace with your worst fears. Adopt an attitude of nonjudgmental acceptance.” What is that, nonjudgmental acceptance?

Dr. William Stixrud: Well, I think most parents buy the idea that it helps kids to feel that they’re loved unconditionally. And I think what that means is kind of warts and all. That it means that we accept them and we love them and we approve of them, even if they’re having a hard time, even if they’re trying to figure stuff out. And so this nonjudgmental acceptance just means that, if they’re acting badly, we’ll intervene in some ways. But we take the attitude that we aren’t judgmental, we don’t give them the idea, You’re a bad kid, or This is unacceptable to me, kind of thing. That we deal with them respectfully and say, “This isn’t working.” Or, “I don’t let people talk to me that way, I’ll see you in five minutes.” And find ways of dealing that’s respectful to the kid and gives the kid the message, I can handle your strong feelings. I can handle your bad behavior.

Janet Lansbury: Because we know there’s a reason they’re acting like that.

Dr. William Stixrud: Exactly.

Janet Lansbury: It’s usually about what’s going on inside them. It’s hardly ever really about us. So we don’t need to take offense.

Dr. William Stixrud: Right. Part of the goal of becoming a non-anxious presence is that when we’re calm, we’re much better listeners, we’re much better able to convey empathy, to express empathy for kids. We’re less controlling.

Janet Lansbury: And we’re much more able to solve the problem or figure out the issue because we’re not under stress, yeah.

Dr. William Stixrud: That’s exactly right. Just recognizing that once you’re stressed or your kid is stressed, you can’t think clearly. Don’t bother trying to teach a lesson, or don’t try to tell your kid something that you really need to get their attention. If you’re stressed and they’re stressed, they really can’t hear it, because we evolved to respond instinctively. So the prefrontal cortex that can think logically and rationally, basically it gets shut down, because the last thing you want to do if you’re being attacked by a wooly mammoth is to stop and think about it. So, recognizing that when we start to feel stressed is not the right time to lecture our kid or to try to teach him something, we say, “I want to talk about this. I want to help you with this. But I’m a little stressed right now. I’m going to take a walk or I’m going to go into my room for a few minutes. But I’m going to come back and let’s work this out.” This non-anxious presence is a powerful idea. And it’s a goal.

Janet Lansbury: And it’s a goal moment-to-moment, I feel like. It’s not like, Oh, I got it. I’m the non-anxious presence forever. It’s something that we are constantly just trying to keep in our mind the importance of. And we see when we do it that it really, really helps. It helps calm that person down. It helps them pass through it. It helps them figure things out and not get stuck in our stuff.

I could talk to you all day long, gosh. I’m fascinated by all these topics that you’re an expert on and I would love to have you come back another time and we’ll go over one of these other topics. For now, I want to thank you so much for speaking with me today, sharing all your knowledge. As you say, “We think of chronic stress in children and teenagers as the societal equivalent of climate change—a problem that has been building over generations and will take considerable effort and a change of habits to overcome.” And that’s what you say in your book and wow, that’s scary. But we can all be taking steps in that direction.

Dr. William Stixrud: The idea is if we want a calmer world, a more peaceful world, then we work on that in ourselves. There’s so many things that we can do to make lives better for ourselves and our kids, and we can model for our kids really taking good care of ourselves when we work on our own stress management. Whether that’s with exercise or meditation or yoga. We model for our kids that I take care of myself so I can be at the top of my game. And I think, what more can we do?

Janet Lansbury: Not much, but try to enjoy our kids. Even as they get older too. I am having just as much fun, if not more, with my adult children as I did with my little ones. And I love working with little ones. That’s why I do it.

Dr. William Stixrud: It’s true. And I love being a parent at every age. I loved raising teenagers and having young adults is just fabulous. It’s a great role.

Janet Lansbury: Same. Alright. Thank you so much.

Dr. William Stixrud: My pleasure, Janet.

Janet Lansbury: Alright, you take care.

Dr. William Stixrud: Okay, you too. Bye.

Janet Lansbury: Okay, bye-bye.

Dr. Stixrud is the founder of The Stixrud Group, a member of the teaching faculty at Children’s National Medical Center, and an assistant professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the George Washington University School of Medicine and co-author with Ned Johnson of The Self-Driven Child and What Do You Say? How to Talk with Kids to Build Motivation, Stress Tolerance, and a Happy Home.

Please check out some of the other podcasts on my website, janetlansbury.com. They’re all indexed by subject and category, so you should be able to find whatever topic you might be interested in. And my books, No Bad Kids: Toddler Discipline Without Shame, and Elevating Child Care: A Guide to Respectful Parenting, you can get them in paperback at Amazon and In ebook at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and apple.com.

Thanks so much for listening. We can do this.

The post Raising Motivated, Self-Confident, Less Stressed Kids in an Age of Anxiety (with Dr. William Stixrud) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “Our Fears as Parents – Real and Imagined (with Dr. Tina Payne Bryson)”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today it’s my great pleasure to host psychotherapist and brain researcher Dr. Tina Payne Bryson. Tina has written a whole series of bestselling books with psychiatrist and educator Dr. Dan Siegel. I’m sure you’ll recognize some of these titles: The Whole-Brain Child, No-Drama Discipline, The Power of Showing Up, and The Yes Brain. All classics. Tina and Dan’s perspective has informed and inspired a whole generation of parents, and it appears more generations to come, as parent coaches these days frequently reflect Tina’s and Dan’s work in their advice. Unfortunately, not always crediting them as their sources and as the true groundbreakers, which is a disturbing trend I’m hoping will shift soon. But that’s another story.

Today, Tina and I will be discussing how to navigate our fears as parents. I’m excited for her to share some of her thoughts and wisdom with us.

Hi, Tina. Welcome back to the podcast.

Dr. Tina Payne Bryson: Thank you so much for having me. You’re one of my favorites, so I’m always so honored to come and chat with you. It’s like, I don’t even know if anyone’s going to listen, I’m just here to talk to you. I’m so excited!

Janet Lansbury: Aww, well I hope some people listen because I don’t want them to waste this opportunity to listen to you. There’s about a million different things that I would love to hear from you on and talk to you about. Your work has been life-changing for a lot of people, including me, so it’s really hard to narrow it down. But I heard you, actually it was on your Instagram, I saw a reel that you did where you described so amazingly —I’ve never heard it sort of broken down this way— you described a thought process that we can use as parents for something that almost every parent I know has, and that’s fear. Fear about our children taking steps towards independence in different ways. Fear about them taking risks.

I guess a few months ago there was an article in The Atlantic by Erika Christakis about sleepovers and how this is something that a lot of parents are avoiding these days and the reasons why, but also the reasons why there were benefits to allowing children to do this. So that’s kind of where you started off, and I think that’s probably one of the more complicated risks for parents to consider for a lot of reasons. But you offered this wonderful thought process to figure out what are the benefits, what are the drawbacks? So how do we navigate all these kinds of risks?

Dr. Tina Payne Bryson: I think the first thing to think about is why do we feel fear as parents? There are studies that show that when we become parents, our brain changes in many ways. And one of the ways that it changes is that it makes us more hyper-alert to danger. It makes us more sort of scanning the environment to watch for any potential threats. And so biologically we can become more sort of savvy or sensitive to fears. And this is really a good thing. This allows us to be protective of our young, to help them survive and do all of these things. So fear itself is an emotion and emotions are important. Emotions tell us things like, Pay attention to this. Something is relevant here or something is worth paying attention to.

But fears often can be irrational. I mean, any kind of emotion can be irrational. And so they definitely should have a voice. Our emotions, and particularly our fears, should have a voice. We don’t want to vilify them. They’re important. However, they should not be the decision-maker.

So when we think about our children taking risks and we feel fear about those risks, and obviously that changes so much over our child’s development. When they’re really little, you worry about bumps and bruises or choking or water safety, those kinds of things. And as they get older, we have fears about their social relationships and we worry about sexual abuse. As they get older, we worry about them driving or being in other people’s cars and we worry about alcohol. And I’ll tell you, my oldest is now 23 and he’s an adult, and I have another adult who’s 20, and still a 16-year-old. And the fears don’t stop, you know, even when they’re adults.

So I think what’s really important for us to think about is we want autonomy to be the end result, we want to raise our children to be able to leave us and to be able to navigate the world. But yet our fears often make us, as parents, fight against supporting our child’s autonomy. And it’s not that we do it intentionally. It’s like, Oh, I don’t know, I think that seems too risky. Or, I don’t know, I’m too anxious about that. Or, That just seems like a bad idea. And so we often stop them from taking steps towards autonomy. And sometimes that’s the right call, but other times it’s really our fear that’s in the driver’s seat. So that’s sort of the background around the role that fear is playing.

Now, how do we navigate it? Well, one other thing to keep in mind is that when we feel fearful, we’re worried about a risk our child is taking or that they’re being in a position where there’s something that’s outside of our control. It’s a really uncomfortable feeling as a parent to know that we can’t control a hundred percent of our child’s safety all the time, and that’s true for the rest of our lives, even when they’re parents themselves. But when we become fearful about something, it makes us, I think the word is myopic, I don’t know. But it really makes us focus in on that fear. And what happens is that we often lose sight of context, or in this case other things that we should be paying attention to. So our fears or our emotions make us really hyper-focus sometimes.

When we take away opportunities for our kids to take risks or to problem-solve or to experiment with failure or having to be uncomfortable in a situation, when we become so hyper-focused on preventing a risk or something dangerous or tricky or uncomfortable from happening, we lose sight of something else that’s a risk. And that is that they are not getting the opportunity to move toward autonomy and confidence. You know, I always say the resilience formula is a challenge plus support equals resilience. A challenge without any support leads to fragility. But that’s only for big-time challenges and adversities. What I would say is that the way we become resilient is by practicing dealing with difficult things.

For example, I remember the first time I sent my son off to sleepaway camp and I was terrified. I was worried about so many things. I mean, I was worried about everything from ticks to sexual abuse to homesickness to bullying. I mean, I was worried about everything. And I remember that moment and walking him through the airport and knowing that he was feeling uncomfortable, he was leaving us for a long period of time, like two weeks, the longest he’d ever been away from us. And then I remember going, You know what? I don’t know why I’m acting like my child being uncomfortable is a bad thing. Because I know that a little bit of feeling of anxiety, or What if I get homesick?, or What if something happens and I don’t have my parents there?, that sitting in that discomfort —knowing that there are people around him to take care of him and he’s in a safe-enough environment— that that discomfort is actually one of the best things for him.

Janet Lansbury: Right. And then how did you know, like in that instance, what gave you the confidence that he was even ready for that challenge in the first place?

Dr. Tina Payne Bryson: Yeah, I mean obviously every kid is different. So we need to really know our kids, tune into them. And I won’t get into all the fancy terminology and child development, but I think that the idea’s sort of the Goldilocks. You want experiences to be a challenge where it’s not so much that it’s going to be traumatic or overwhelm them where they go, Oh, that was such a huge step. That was so terrible, I’m not taking any chances. Right? Because that’s counterproductive. But if something’s easy, then they may not gain as much from it. So we really want the just-right challenge, where we trust that our kid is going to be able to navigate through it.

And for some kids they can go headfirst into something they’ve never done and they do great. Other kids, like my firstborn, he really needed scaffolding. When he was really little and he didn’t want to walk up to a group of kids at soccer practice, he did better getting there first and then greeting kids as they came. But over time, as he had practice sitting in uncomfortable situations, he had the ability to know, Oh, I can handle this. Right?

Janet Lansbury: Right. But I just want to point out, so what you didn’t do, you didn’t walk in with him and say, Oh, here’s all the kids, and Everybody, can you say hi to him? And you didn’t scaffold that way, that would’ve been too much, right?

Dr. Tina Payne Bryson: That’s right. And I think that the thing too is— let’s say it this way, the brain is an association machine. So when we have repeated experiences, or reps, that are positive, we want to do more of it. If it’s negative, we often want to stay away from it, we avoid it. And so what happens is we want to give our kids these experiences, say going to soccer practice, where it’s positive enough. So he felt really tentative walking into a group of kids. So I’m like, Okay, well let’s take a couple steps closer. Or we got there early enough that he wasn’t just having to walk into a whole crowd. And this is when he’s like five, he’s really little. And then he’s like, Oh, I kind of like these kids, or This is fun and I want to go back. And then he’s like, I could handle walking up to bigger and bigger groups. So we want to think about these repeated experiences we give our kids, knowing that the reps that they’re getting are really wiring their brains.

Janet Lansbury: Yeah, for sure. Just going back to the question I asked you about, how did you know he was ready? So I don’t know if this is naive on my part or I’ve just been lucky with my three kids. My oldest is 30 by the way, and then I have a 26-year-old and a 21-year-old. Because I had sort of trusted them all along to make choices, even as infants, I trusted if they expressed a desire to go to sleepaway camp —and they did, and my oldest one did way younger than I really thought she would— that was a sign to me that she’s ready, she wanted to do it. I didn’t have to talk her into it or try to make it sound fun for her or make it happen. She wanted to go. And I was able to listen to that and it was a sign to me that she was ready.

And I think your son being on that team, I’m sure he wanted to do it. That’s the biggest hurdle, that your child is sensing that they are ready. And then from there, you were able to have the presence of mind to realize you could get him there early and that would ease the social part of it and everything else. But yeah, I trust that it comes from them.

You know, when I was listening to your talk about navigating the fears, I was thinking, okay, dialing it all the way back, the population I work with often is babies. I do parent-infant classes and people bring their children and we just watch them play. And the floor is wood and the babies are moving and they’re rolling. And oftentimes, and I remember this myself as a parent, it’s scary when your baby’s rolling and they’re going to bonk their head on the wood floor. It’s hard for parents to let that happen. But what happens is, you know, you were talking about the autonomy and the autonomy comes from what they’re learning, right? So yeah, they do bump their head a little bit, but then you see the next time they do it, or maybe they decide to bump it one more time a little bit more softly. But then you see the next time, and we can point this out to parents in the classes, they’re lifting their head a little and they’ve already learned how to navigate that.

Dr. Tina Payne Bryson: Yeah.

Janet Lansbury: But if we never gave them the opportunity, they wouldn’t learn that. And then the first time they went down, maybe older, now they’re on their knees, they’d hit their head much harder because they didn’t have that opportunity to learn those things. We didn’t let them have that opportunity because we were too scared.

Dr. Tina Payne Bryson: And we know that children learn best —we have decades of research— by doing it themselves. Of course they learn from what’s modeled and what they observe. They’re incredibly perceptive, even our babies and toddlers are incredibly perceptive. But what’s so fascinating when you really tune in and do the kind of amazing work that you do and you watch it and you can really observe at a place of curiosity, and you see those micro-moments of learning unfolding in front of you. It’s not just the lifting of the head in your example that they’re learning, but there’s also so much implicit messaging that goes on in how we parent.

And one of the ways I talk about that is that we’re meaning-makers for our children. So let’s say the baby rolls over and bonks their head and the parent gasps, Aaah!, and runs over and is like, Are you okay? And brings all kinds of big anxiety emotions to that. The child has learned in that moment, Oh, that must have been terrible. That caused a huge reaction in my parent that is frightening. And so we create meaning around that. Whereas otherwise, if we say, Oh, you bumped your head, you know, you hit it there, and we are not overreacting and maybe we help them make sense of that moment. Or we don’t even narrate at all.

Janet Lansbury: If they’re fine, yeah, if they’re fine, we don’t have to. If they have a reaction, then yeah, I would for sure say something. Yeah.

Dr. Tina Payne Bryson: Yes. They really are genius, even in their early, early months, in how perceptive they are about their own bodies and about what’s happening in the world around them. That idea of allowing them to take risks is what allows them to learn.

You know, I’m thinking about, there’s this amazing book called Wildhood, it’s about adolescent animals in the wild, by Natterson and I think it’s Barnett. But they talk about how there’s shark-infested waters in northern California that all the animals know not to go in there, except some of the teenage seals and otters go into these shark-infested waters. And what happens is the ones that survive are actually far safer than the ones who never ventured into that, because now they’re more predator-savvy. So what that tells me is, as our kids have bumps and make mistakes and have moments of failure, and as they have trial and error, it makes them safer and allows them to be more savvy about everything in the world.

And so I think this takes us back to what we know is so important about what we are bringing in our own state, our own nervous systems, to these moments, right? We’re watching, Is my child ready? And sometimes kids have their own fears driving it and they’re not saying, I’m ready to go, or I want to go. And we really sometimes have to tune into, What is the right thing for my child in this moment? We want to be child-led as much as possible, but if you have a child who’s anxious and who may not want to take risks. In The Yes Brain, Dan Siegel and I talk about pushing and cushion, that sometimes we have to encourage our children to take a step toward or to try something or something like that. And then other times they need a little bit more nurture, although we want to be nurturing in all of it, but they might need a little bit more comfort or a connection in order to do those things.

Our own internal states are so influential in these moments. So here’s one of the things, Janet, that I try to hold onto as I’m trying to decide, Is my child ready for this? Or, Is this a risk that is worth taking, is this safe enough? Is this okay for me to have them do this? And the question I often have to ask myself, and it takes a lot of self-reflection, is to say, Am I wanting to say no to this risk for my child’s best interest, like truly for their safety? Or am I saying no to this risk or this decision because it makes me feel less anxious?

And if I’m honest with myself, oftentimes I’m saying no or I’m blocking a movement toward autonomy or letting them fail or take a risk or do things by trial and error instead of stepping in and just doing it “right” because I don’t want to sit in the discomfort of my own anxieties or fears. So sometimes we have to sit in discomfort for our child’s best interest. And what’s often in their best interest is to allow them to make mistakes, to try things on their own without our interference.

Janet Lansbury: Right, because our discomfort that we have to sit in often is the discomfort of their frustration, or their upset that they didn’t get the result they wanted. You know, that’s another discomfort that’s really, really hard for most of us when our child is expressing it.

Dr. Tina Payne Bryson: Yeah. I mean, I think about when I was a kid and we would ride our bikes around the neighborhood for hours and we didn’t have cell phones. My mom didn’t know where I was. I mean, I was supposed to stay in the neighborhood and probably most of the time I did. But by the time I had my driver’s license and could leave, she had practiced herself sitting in the discomfort of not having eyes on me every second and not knowing exactly where I was and trusting that I could handle what came up. And I think a lot of times as parents, we don’t have a lot of good practice sitting in the discomfort of allowing our children to move toward autonomy. And a lot of that is because we’re uncomfortable with our children’s discomfort. But we all have to get comfortable with the whole range of human emotions, which includes discomfort.

So, is this really for my child’s best interest or is this really more about me not feeling uncomfortable or my child not feeling uncomfortable? I think that’s such an important thing because, back to what I was saying a minute ago and I don’t think I actually fully made the point, is that there’s this implicit messaging behind everything we do as parents. So if I’m like, Hey honey, it’s chilly outside, grab a coat. And he’s like, No, I’m fine. I remember having this battle with my kid when he was like six, my oldest, and I’d be like, No, it really is cold. You’re going to really need a jacket. And he’d be like, Mom, I’m fine. And it took me a few times to finally realize, you know what, first of all, we live in Southern California. If he’s chilly, he’s not going to be harmed, right? He’s not going to have frostbite. And what I was saying in insisting that he take a coat was, first of all, because I get chilly and kids run a lot warmer and I wasn’t really honoring what his system needed. But I also didn’t want him to feel cold. And that would’ve been totally fine. And then that would’ve taught him the lesson far better than me constantly being on him.

But here’s what was really happening. He was getting the message from me that, I don’t trust that you know what you need. I don’t trust that you can handle when things aren’t perfectly bubble-wrapped for you. So I was sending all of these implicit messages, that he couldn’t trust his body, that he couldn’t trust that he could handle whatever challenge came from him not taking the jacket. Now obviously I’m being dramatic around this, but I think the babies are learning much more than, Oh, I’m going to turn my head a little bit so I don’t bump it. They’re also learning that, My grown-up trusts that I can handle my body.

Janet Lansbury: I can figure things out, I can learn myself, I’m able, I’m competent, I can problem solve.Dr. Tina Payne Bryson: Yeah. And I actually think it’s a huge contributor, that very point that you just made, it’s a huge contributor, in my opinion as a licensed mental health person, to some of the really very frightening statistics we’re seeing right now about anxiety in kids. And I think part of that is parents treating our children like they are fragile and basically bubble-wrapping them so much that they don’t develop a sense of competency or confidence that they can solve problems, that they can navigate whatever comes their way.

You know, the pandemic was very difficult for everyone, and part of that was because of the unpredictability of the way life was. And unpredictability our brain reads as potential threat. So we really love predictability. Which is one of the reasons I love your podcast title, Unruffled. Because to me that’s such a goal, to be that grounded, connected. You can have big emotions, you can fall apart, and I’ve got you. And it’s not going to ruffle me because I feel confident that you can navigate this challenging situation or these big feelings and I’m here to help you and be there with you and be present with you while you figure it out.

Janet Lansbury: Some people mistake it as, we just act that way. But the whole point is that it’s not pretending, it’s not acting. It’s that trust that we build step-by-step, from the baby rolling over to letting the baby crawl away from us in a safe play area without following them. Being the secure base, literally, and allowing them to come back and forth as the free explorer. Letting them go down the slide. We can spot them as they’re climbing up and we can spot them as they’re coming down. But all those little risks that we take and each time now we’re trusting our child a little bit more. That’s the model that has helped me, that I am trying to teach other parents or help other parents with. These little steps are important because they build on each other and they color the way that you see your child.

You start to perceive your child as capable, they start to feel capable. And then it’s a little bit easier to be unruffled. And also know that they’re going to… You’re such an expert in what happens with the brain when we’re dysregulated and all that— and definitely knowing that that’s a big reason. When children are not at their best, it’s because they can’t be. They’re literally doing the best that they can. So knowing that, too, helps us be unruffled. But anyway, it’s not something to wear, it’s something to feel from the inside out.

Dr. Tina Payne Bryson: It’s a way of being, really. You know, I mentioned my son going away to sleepaway camp. He was nine at the time when he did that. We did our due diligence, we checked out the camp, we listened to our fears, we mitigated risks, we prepared him. You know, those are the things I say in the video, Pay attention to your fear, listen to it, but don’t let it decide. Do your due diligence. Check out, make sure it’s a safe-enough environment. If it’s a play date, you might want to ask about the family’s rules around things or whatever you feel worried about. And then we want to empower our children so that they can know that they can solve problems and protect themselves in lots of ways.

And I just have to share that the first couple of letters that came from my son when he left were like —and he’s like this athletic kid who’s very private, not really gushy with emotions— but his letters were like Emily Bronte had written them, you know. It was like, I’ve never been more homesick in my life. I’m so sad. And he would, like, he circled a tear on his letter. He’s like, This is my tears, I’m falling asleep. It just destroyed me, right? I didn’t feel unruffled. But he came home after the two weeks and I said, Oh sweetie, your letters, you sounded like you were having such a hard time. And he said, Mom, that was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I really missed you guys. And then he just got this little smile on his face, this little, like, smirk. And I said, What? And he said, And I did it. And there was a confidence that came from him overcoming that and walking through that. And I’m feeling emotional even as I’m saying it, because it allowed me to see him in a different light. It’s like you were saying, that builds that trust and that movement toward autonomy.

Janet Lansbury: Oh, sorry. I just want to say, wow. The fact that he was able to express those vulnerable feelings to you, that’s what allowed him to move through them and manage being there. And if he wasn’t able to express to you, at least sitting in his own feelings at night, maybe, when he was alone, I’m so homesick. You know, I encouraged my children when they went to college, Let yourself cry. Of course this is hard. Of course you’re homesick. And the fact that your son did that is such a sign of how you raised him to feel safe, even though he wasn’t that type of guy, quote unquote, he felt safe to be that side of himself. I mean, that’s a risk too. But that balance was I’m sure what allowed him to thrive in the camp.

Dr. Tina Payne Bryson: And it’s a reminder to us, our children internalize the relationship we have with them. Even though he couldn’t see us, he had something felt inside of him of, I know that they’re there and I’m going to see them. This is some of the thing around separation anxiety is that, as development unfolds, they begin to internalize and remember that we’re still there and all of that.

You used the term “secure base” earlier and then what you said just a minute ago is more of a reflection of that. That comes from the attachment literature, I know you know. But the idea of a secure base, I think that secure base is misinterpreted as constantly providing your child with security. But what the attachment literature shows us, and this is 70-plus years of cross-cultural research, it shows us that a secure base where our child knows they can come to us and that we are going to be there for them is also a launching pad.

So when our kids are really little, they may crawl away from us and then look back and make sure we’re still sitting there. Or they may come over and put a hand on our leg and kind of have a little touchpoint, and then they go out and explore a little further and then a little further. And as they get older and more confident and all of that, they know that we are there. And so it’s not supposed to be smothering or holding them close to us to give them security. That’s actually intrusive. Because true security in a relationship between a parent and a child is definitely a launching pad that allows them to feel safe enough that they can go out and explore the world. And so we should not be getting in their way, right?

We want to be communicating to them, with our unruffledness, that, I trust that you can handle this. And when we’re talking about our kids being taken care of by other caregivers or in other families’ homes, that we want to give the sense of, I trust that other people will take care of you, too. It’s not all on us. And when we don’t do that and we get in the way of their autonomy or we freak out about risks or we don’t allow them to problem-solve, what we’re implicitly communicating is, People can’t be trusted. The world is a dangerous place. You know? And so we’re giving so many messages underneath our actions and the words that we say.

Janet Lansbury: Right, that are disempowering and actually get in the way of what we want to teach them, which is that they are safe, they are secure, that they can believe in themselves. One of the most fascinating things to me about parenting is how we’re teaching all the time and often not what we’re trying to teach.

Dr. Tina Payne Bryson: Yes. And you know what? That’s good too, right? Again, it’s back to the idea that sometimes the struggles are our best lessons. And as parents, we’re going to mess up at times. But we know that once we make the repair with our children, it’s actually better for the relationship that we’ve walked through the messiness of those moments.

When I’m trying to make a decision about whether or not I’m going to let my kid do something or I’m going to give them the space to wrestle with something or problem-solve or take a risk in some way. So what I walked through in that Instagram video, one is listen to your feelings, but don’t let them decide. Do your due diligence, make sure that you’ve checked out the actual dangers. And then prepare your child, and then feel confident that they are problem-solvers. So I guess another piece I would add that I didn’t say in the Instagram video is to trust your child and trust your child’s development.

But then even when I walk through those steps, sometimes I stay afraid. And so here’s one other thing that really helps me. Often the stuff that I worry about is like, my kid keeps messing up in this way, or they keep having this problem, or they keep having this behavior. And I feel like I’ve already taught them this, why does this keep happening? Will they never learn? And is there something wrong with them? If I will pause and reflect, and let’s say it’s my child is having difficulty being gentle with other kids or something like that, younger kids. That they’re being aggressive on play dates or things like that. If I will say, Okay, let me think back to three months ago or four months ago. And I think back to a good chunk of time, not a day ago, not a week ago, not a month ago, but maybe a few months ago. And I ask myself the question, Is my child having less of this struggle or this challenge or this behavior than they were a few months ago? And usually when I do that I go, Oh, okay, we’re moving in the right direction. I can trust development.

But that’s not an always. I have to say, you know, I think one of the biggest challenges for the work that we do —and I know that you have got to experience this, we might have even talked about this before— development is not linear. For example, when kids are in the four- to six-year-old range, particularly around age five, it’s really common for them to have another burst of separation anxiety. And it seems like a regression, it seems like, oh no, they were having separation anxiety, then they weren’t for a while, now they are again. And we start really worrying. Are they being bullied at school? Are they sick? We start worrying about all these things. But it’s actually not a regression, it’s a progression, because development’s not linear.

It’s not symmetrical either. Meaning they might have a big burst of cognitive development without the emotional development that goes with it quite yet, right? That piece may be lagging in terms of their development and maturity. So what happens for kids in the four- to six-year-old window is they have this amazing cognitive burst where they are now able to imagine scarier things. They have scarier monsters that they can imagine, or they might even be able to start comprehending things like, Well what happens if something happens to my mom or dad? or whatever. So they can start imagining, because of their cognitive burst, more difficult things, but they don’t yet have the emotional development to handle that kind of information or to navigate it well or to be regulated around it. So I think it’s really important to say we should trust development and we hope our kids are moving in the right direction. And usually that’s the case, but sometimes it looks different. So we sometimes have to have an even wider view because development is full of surprises and it’s not always what we expect.

Janet Lansbury: Right, and it makes sense that every step towards more knowledge and more autonomy is also scary, you know, for a child on some level. When a baby is learning how to crawl, then all of a sudden they’re waking up in the night again. Or learning how to walk suddenly, you know, they go through that classic separation anxiety period, Wow, I can get away. I am able to do all these things. I am a separate person. Yikes. That means that I might lose this other person and they might be separate from me. It’s that maturation that creates the fear and it’s par for the course. We don’t have to be afraid of that, but understand it and be sensitive to it of course. But not be ruled by it, like, Okay, I’m going to strap you to me every second because it’s hard for you to be away from me. Maybe I’ll just be away from you shorter periods or I’ll, you know, whatever it is. So yeah, I mean it does make sense. I think that the more they develop, the more there’s a part of them that wants to run back. I mean, I feel that myself as an adult.

Dr. Tina Payne Bryson: I mean, that’s an attachment need. It really is. When something is a big emotion, whether that’s positive or negative or something’s challenging or something ruffles us or we’re stuck on something, I need my attachment figures. You know, I want to go back to the secure base with my husband or my mom or my best friend or whatever. And that’s an attachment need. In the book The Power of Showing Up, Dan Siegel and I talk about the four S’s, helping kids feel safe and seen. Where they feel understood, soothed, like I’m here to comfort you. I’m going to show up for you. And then over time, when they feel enough safe, seen, and soothed, they develop a security in knowing that even at their worst we’re going to, and I’m going to use your terminology now, we’re going to be unruffled, we’re going to really be there. And that they can count on our presence.

And knowing too that when we’re ruffled or when we become the storm instead of the eye of the storm, those are again opportunities to go and reconnect. I really wanted to teach my boys that they’re responsible for their own behavior no matter what anybody else did, which meant that my apologies couldn’t blame them. And I noticed that I was doing that. I would get really mad and I would yell and then I would say, If you guys had listened and stopped fighting with each other, this wouldn’t have happened. And then I was like, Oh my gosh, I’m just totally blaming my behavior on them. And not only is that manipulative and damaging, but it’s also not what I want to model. So then I had to really be careful and pause before I would apologize. To say something like, I got really angry. I didn’t handle that very well and I didn’t handle that the way I wanted to. Will you forgive me? And I could even state the fact like, You guys were fighting. I felt really angry and I didn’t handle it well.

And even that moment is kind of a moment of sort of messy emotion, right? They have the experience of, Wow, that doesn’t feel really good right now. My mom’s angry or she’s reactive and that doesn’t feel great. Because over and over and over I’ve made repair, they also sit in the security of knowing, Oh, she’s going to come make it right with me. So it actually creates resilience. So anytime we allow them to do things on their own, walk through struggle in an appropriate way, what’s age-appropriate and developmentally appropriate, those are beneficial moments. But I know our instincts are like, Oh, I don’t want you to be uncomfortable.

Janet Lansbury: Right.

Dr. Tina Payne Bryson: My husband is so much better at stepping back and allowing, allowing them to find their way. And I really have to work against my nature to decide every day to choose to not be what is, honestly, intrusive, to step into their story. I’m part of their story, I’m foundational to the story that they’re building. But it’s their story. It’s hard. I mean, I really have to be intentional all the time.

Janet Lansbury: And finding that healthy separation between us where we’re not taking on responsibilities for feelings of theirs that don’t belong to us and then not asking them to do that on the other end. I was thinking, I recommend everybody follows, if you’re not already following, Tina Payne Bryson on Instagram, you absolutely should and watch this video and all of her videos. She does this wonderful, what is it, Monday Mistakes?

Dr. Tina Payne Bryson: Yes. Mistake Monday.

Janet Lansbury: Mistake Monday. She’s just a wealth of wisdom. I wanted to say though that in regard to the one about the sleepovers and fears, and we didn’t really talk about sleepovers in this podcast. You can listen to what she has to say there. And you got a lot of pushback, which I was expecting because people have had bad experiences or they’ve heard of horrific things happening on sleepovers and it’s just not worth it to them. And I just want to say, as devil’s advocate in a way, that the important thing is the awareness that you talk about: Is this my fear of my own discomfort? Or is this really a fear of the actual risks? Is this just too uncomfortable for me?

And I think sometimes, to be devil’s advocate, we might make the choice, You know what? This is about me and forget it, I’m too afraid, I’m not going to do this. I think that’s an okay choice to make as long as we know that it’s about us so that we can consider, Well maybe this other risk, this one I’m going to allow because I know that I had to do that other one for me and I’m going to allow this one to be my child’s, you know, my child’s education, to build their confidence. I think it’s just the knowing. It’s not that we won’t always give into our fear, but it’s what you said, which is the understanding, the awareness. I feel like a lot of the times as parents, that’s everything, that we’re aware.

Dr. Tina Payne Bryson: Totally agree with you. I mean, I couldn’t agree more. You know, sometimes we may look and go, You know what, I can’t tell if this is in my child’s best interest or not, but my instinct is telling me this isn’t a good idea. We should absolutely listen to that. Sometimes we’re going to decide it’s too big of a risk or it’s not safe enough or I don’t have enough information to know if it’s safe and I’m going to err on the side of caution.

Janet Lansbury: Right. Or, I don’t have the bandwidth to handle being this afraid right now for my child. I mean, that’s valid.

Dr. Tina Payne Bryson: Yeah. And to say, I’m too anxious. And we matter too. Every decision we make is not in a vacuum. If I make the decision to let my kid go, because I’m like, Oh, this is my fear, but I’m so afraid that I’m not sleeping all night and then I’m an angry, reactive parent for the next two days to all my other kids. We have to think about all these things. I think we absolutely can make decisions for ourselves, and you’re exactly right.

I think the key is to do it with intention. We’re making a decision as opposed to just letting our fears decide. And we can let our fears be the call, even, at times. But we have to be intentional. We have to really choose. And I think it’s so hard when so much of the time it feels like we’re just surviving because life is so full and we have such big mental loads. And I want to give all of us permission to not give an answer right away. And I often tell parents that in the discipline moments too, I want to give you permission to say to your child if they’re old enough, I want to think about how I want to handle this. Take a pause and to really go let yourself sit in it.

Janet Lansbury: That’s great modeling. But what about changing your mind? I mean, we kind of did that with our daughter going to parties in high school. The first one, we said no because we knew there was going to be alcohol there, we were afraid. But then as I thought about it, I realized, Okay, so this is high school, like we’re going to keep her home? I mean, what’s the option here? Is that really going to work? And we realized we had to educate her as much as we could and trust her. And it was tough.

Dr. Tina Payne Bryson: I love that you talked about changing your mind because you know, the sort of less-informed, kind of old ways of doing things was like, If you lay down the law, you can’t change your mind or they’re going to know you’re not in control. Well I have a problem with that whole sentence. Because if you’re going to use threat and power and control to control your child, you’re eventually going to lose.

There’s a huge difference between giving in and changing your mind. Lots of times my children have had great arguments and things that I hadn’t thought about. Well, did you know that the parents are going to be in the house and we’re just going to be in the backyard? Okay, well I didn’t know parents were going to be there, right? That’s more information, I can change my mind. And I’ve often said to my kids, You know what? I’m changing my mind. I’ve thought about it some more and I think this is something that you can handle.

I often would say to my boys too, I know you know what I’m about to ask you, so why don’t you do the mental legwork for me? Because they’d say, Can I go here? And I’d say, Well, who’s taking you and what time does it start? And so I stopped doing that and I started saying, I bet you can imagine all the information I’m going to need in order to make a decision. So why don’t you go do that thinking and then come back?

Or if I started to lecture about something they didn’t do the way that they were supposed to, instead of me lecturing, if I could say, I bet you know everything I’m about to say to you. So why don’t we reverse roles? Why don’t you tell me what you think I would say? And what was amazing about that is they almost always would say everything I was going to say anyway. And I felt a sense of peace inside because I was like, They’ve really been listening, they’ve really been internalizing. And as they say it, they’re internalizing it even more. And it gave me confidence that they really can handle a lot more than I think they can. You know? And they really do have wise minds. And they’re going to make mistakes and the mistakes can be valuable.

And so again, it’s back to that idea of trusting. Trusting ourselves to sit in discomfort as needed. Trusting our child to navigate the world even as it has its challenges. Trusting that other people will show up for our kids too. Trusting development. I guess in a way it’s kind of an optimism about development and about who our children are becoming. I often think about times where I was worried about something with one of my kids and when I think back about it now I’m like, that was a lot of misspent emotional energy. I really believe we can trust development. Regardless, even if we have kids who are neurodivergent. I really believe development is amazing. And if kids are given opportunities to learn and grow, try things and problem-solve, that their brain does so much amazing work and they become amazing people.

Janet Lansbury: I love that. I love that story about your son. That’s wonderful.

Well, thank you so much Tina, and once again, so much encouragement, so much wisdom. You’re very comforting to listen to. I want to agree that unruffled is flexible. It’s not rigid, it’s a model that’s very flexible. We can be free to be ourselves in this relationship, figuring it out with our child.

Dr. Tina Payne Bryson: Yeah. White-knuckling something isn’t really being unruffled, no. I think an underlying current to everything we talked about is ongoing reflection as a parent. The way we become unruffled or move toward unruffledness is to tune into ourselves, to reflect, to make sense of the times we’re not practicing to be the parent we want to be. To say, What was that about for me? And how can I be the parent I want to be in the next moment? I think it’s such an important part of that flexibility and that freedom to really enjoy our relationships with our kids, trusting them, trusting ourselves, and continuing to reflect and grow.

Janet Lansbury: 100%. Thank you so much, Tina.

Dr. Tina Payne Bryson: Thanks for having me.

Janet Lansbury: Thanks for all that you do for parents.

Dr. Tina Payne Bryson: You too, Janet. Thank you so much.

Learn more about the resources Dr. Tina Payne Bryson offers at TinaPayneBryson.com and on her Instagram page: TinaPayneBryson 

Please check out some of my other podcasts on my website, janetlansbury.com. They’re all indexed by subject and category, so you should be able to find whatever topic you might be interested in. And both of my books are available in paperback at Amazon, No Bad Kids: Toddler Discipline Without Shame, and Elevating Child Care: A Guide To Respectful Parenting. You can get them an ebook at Amazon, Apple, Google Play, or barnesandnoble.com and in audio at audible.com. And you can even get a free audio copy of either book at Audible by following the link in the liner notes of this podcast.

Thanks so much for listening. We can do this.

The post Our Fears as Parents – Real and Imagined (with Dr. Tina Payne Bryson) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “How We Invalidate Our Kids Without Meaning To (And What to Do Instead)”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m going to be talking about invalidating our children’s feelings, their point of view, their experience. I’m not talking about extreme gaslighting-type invalidations that I doubt any of you listening would do. What I want to discuss today are these subtle moments of pushing back on what our child is expressing and how, by doing this, we don’t get the results that we’re hoping for, which is for our child to feel better, for our child to know that their feelings are okay, for them to have that self-worth. Because when children act out of that self-worth, they behave better, right? Just like all of us. So I’m going to bring up some specific examples, but please know that all of these specifics represent lots and lots of different situations parents have shared with me, situations I’ve experienced myself, where we have this tendency to invalidate, and it gets in our way.

Okay, so here’s a note I want to start out with. It was a brief little message exchange that I had somewhere on social media, I can’t remember where now, where this parent shared:

My son melts when he loses a game, starts talking negatively about himself. I tell him it’s okay to be sad, but that it bothers me that he talks about someone I love that way. This literally happened tonight. I’m so worried I did the wrong thing. My husband chose to tell him it’s not okay to be a sore loser. I just want to do the right thing.

Now, here’s how I briefly responded:

The dad’s response may be where those feelings of shame are coming from. It’s great that you don’t share that same approach. I would encourage your little guy to express all those feelings rather than doing the normal thing for most of us, which is saying that it bothers you and he shouldn’t say what he’s feeling. So maybe next time, Ah, you’re feeling like you’re a terrible player, like you can’t do anything right. Whatever he expresses, let those feelings have a life. That’s how children move through them. This is very challenging, so please be patient with yourself.

I thought this situation is interesting because there’s actually two different kinds of invalidations that are happening. First, it sounds like the dad wants to correct the feelings his son is expressing about losing a game. The dad is doing what so many of us do: we see the problem, and instead of being curious and wanting to know about why this was such an upsetting experience for our child, we see the problem. We see the Uh-oh, my child’s going to be a bad loser, and I’ve got to correct that. Now all these things, please note, we do them out of love. So, again, this is not about some terrible, tragic things that parents are doing with their children. It’s not that at all. These are nuances that, again, get in our way.

So, what happens when we tell our child they should be okay with losing the game? They shouldn’t have this strong reaction to that. They shouldn’t feel sad. It doesn’t make our child feel, Oh, okay, I can handle this now. I can lose gracefully because that’s what I’m supposed to do. What it does is it invalidates their actual feeling. And so that feeling becomes something that feels wrong about that child to them: I feel this way and I’m not supposed to feel this way. What’s wrong with me? And what that does is it makes it really, really hard for him to be a good loser when it’s not going his way. Because now his self-esteem, his sense of self-worth, has taken a hit. Which means now he is going to invest even more in feeling validated from the outside. I’ve got to win. If I don’t win, that just reminds me of what a loser I am. When we have a strong sense of self-worth, we can be magnanimous. We still feel disappointed, but it doesn’t affect us so deeply.

Now with young children in this situation particularly, if there’s other criticisms coming at them in their life, like maybe they have a younger sibling and they don’t always feel so nice to that sibling and they feel the parents kind of turning away from them for that reason, or there are other behaviors that they’ve struggled to control that they feel judged for, this idea of winning or losing a game, even a little game, they can have this strong, cathartic reaction that is maybe loaded with other hurts that they’ve been feeling. And so they do tend to overreact. Young children do. They’re much more in tune with their feelings and they’re much more likely to express them all the way. So it’s very common that children up to the age of six or seven are “sore losers.”

And how do we help them to be “better” losers? We accept where they are in this journey and we’re interested in, even, How much you wanted to win that. That meant a lot to you. Yeah, you tried really hard and, ah, that’s so disappointing. If we could validate that, we will help our child to feel, Yeah, that’s what I felt. And I’m not even sure why, but it was a big deal to me. And now my parent is assuring me that it’s okay to feel that way. That’s how children build resilience. Those are those building blocks of self-worth that we are not completely responsible for as parents, but we do have a strong effect on. So helping our child to become a better loser or a more graceful anything or a less emotional, more tempered human being, the process is different than what we might think. It’s not this direct, Well, if I just tell them they should, they will! But again, I’m not singling out this family or anything. This way of going at things is so pervasive in our culture. We think we’re teaching when in fact we’re undermining the lessons that we hope to teach.

And so then this boy, it sounds like he has some shame and he’s sharing about his loss that way with his mother. She says he starts talking negatively about himself. And I can understand how heartbreaking it is, this negative self-talk. It does hurt us. And so it’s extremely challenging to be able to accept and validate those kinds of feelings, right?

And also to us as adults, we tend to see things as set. We tend to see in a more fixed manner. So, if our child’s saying these things about themselves, this is a done deal. This is how they feel. Instead of, this is a feeling passing through them, this is what’s going on with them in their psyche right now. What a gift that he’s sharing this with me instead of just saying it to himself, so that I can help him with this. I can help him to know that all of these things he’s feeling are normal and fine to feel.

And this mom says, “I’m so worried I did the wrong thing. I just want to do the right thing.”

Gosh, I feel that every minute as a parent. And it’s not like she’s doing something that’s wrong in a way that’s harmful to her son. It’s just this little adjustment that will help his process with loss and help everything go more smoothly. When we open those channels, This is how you feel, instead of shutting them down, children move through them. They don’t get stuck there. They might go on for a week or two or three, but it’s still a process that’s in motion.

So if we could right away see all feelings and all expressions as a gift for us and something to accept and validate, parenting would still be scary. I mean, very scary, right? When we open up to that, You don’t like yourself right now, you feel like you’re this or that. It feels like we’re going to make it all worse, that we’re saying it too, that we’re putting it out there in the open with him. So it’s this brave thing that we try to do, but it makes everything so much easier and we see the effect that it has on our child.

And here are some of the ideas that get in our way. This parent says that she told her son, “I tell him it’s okay to be sad, but that it bothers me that he talks about someone I love that way.” What a loving, beautiful thing to say. And maybe to an adult that could be taken very positively, but for this little boy who’s still trying to figure it all out and he’s still in the feeling, to feel like it’s bothering his parent… and we do this about a lot of things, we kind of make it about us: I’m not comfortable when you’re upset, so I’m acknowledging your feeling, but I’m really uncomfortable, and I’m actually only acknowledging your feeling because I want you to feel better [so I’m saying words, tension is] I want you to help me feel better.

Boy, do I understand this as a parent, and I’m telling you with three adult children, it continues. As my mother-in-law says, we’re only as happy as our least happy child. And we’ll never want our children to feel anything that’s not entirely positive. We’re never going to want that. So, this is what we’re up against. And I think it’s just important to acknowledge that. There’s nothing wrong with us for not winning that battle with this incredible love and vulnerability we have about our children.

Another thing we do is going at the problem before really opening up to and understanding where it’s coming from. So we’re going to, Oh, he’s being a sore loser, or, Oh, he’s thinking bad things about himself. Seeing it as a problem, we want to correct it. We don’t want to let our kid go off and be a sore loser with their friends. That’s a positive goal, right? But again, it just doesn’t work that way, that we can make those things happen. Everything for our child has to come from the inside out, making peace with their feelings, processing them through being able to behave “better” because they feel better. They feel safe in who they are, totally accepted. They have that trust in us, and therefore themselves. Staying in tune with those feelings that they’re having. How important is that as a life skill, and how often do we tend to kind of lose our way with that as we get older? I know I have. Not trusting my perspective on a situation, not trusting that it’s okay to feel what I feel.

We can help our children have a lot of these tools that we didn’t get, with just this one, very challenging idea: Let it in. Keep those channels wide open. Be curious. Open up that space.

Okay, here’s another specific example:

Dear Janet,

I have two boys, nearly six and nearly two, and my question is about the older one. Of course, we have our struggles with cooperation and boundaries once in a while, but for the most part that is manageable. My question is actually about how to encourage him to take decisions about things. He’s generally unwilling to put his opinion on things out there. It’s like he’s afraid to be wrong. We really don’t know where this is coming from, as we’ve tried since he was a toddler to welcome his feelings and encourage his curiosity. But it seems to me that he has a bit of a perfectionist streak and is worried about taking the wrong choice.

This shows itself in many ways, from being disinterested in what he wants to wear to often answering “both” when asked to choose between two items. Even choosing a birthday gift for a friend, he just freezes. We also have a practice every day before bed of sharing the best part of our day. And he opts out most nights by saying, “Everything. Everything was the best part.” If you ask him point-blank to share a preference, you will get nothing out of him 90% of the time. Now, it’s not that he doesn’t have opinions, he exerts them regularly when he refuses to do things or chooses what to play with or to read. He attends a Montessori kindergarten, so he does this daily, as well as at home. But it’s the ability to make a choice and take a stand on something when asked directly that has me concerned.

He will be starting traditional first grade in the fall, and I’m worried that the pressure of the classroom setting might freeze him right up. He’s a really sensitive guy, easy to cry, very empathic. And so the idea of him being called on in class and not being able or willing to share his opinion makes me very worried. I’m also quite tired of having to choose things for him as he is old enough now to to take his own decisions on certain things. Is there something here that I’m missing? Do you have any guidance that can help us to help him feel more comfortable sharing his preferences when asked directly?

I should also note that when he really wants something —the radio station change, five more minutes to read before bed— when those desires are not met with a yes, he can erupt quite loudly and dramatically. He does have preferences, but just seems to hate being put on the spot. Any insights or guidance you can provide would be immensely appreciated.

Another example of perfectionist tendency is that he doesn’t like to try new things in front of others. When he got a yo-yo or a hula hoop, regardless if myself or my husband were there with him with our own toys trying to practice together, he wants to go in his room and try it alone before doing it with anyone else.

First of all, I don’t know about the hula hoop part, but the rest of it, this could be me. This guy could be me. If you ask me, What’s your favorite this? or What’s the best thing that happened today? my mind goes totally blank. Yes, I freeze. A gift for a friend or anybody, oh my gosh, I agonize over those kinds of decisions.

And what’s interesting that sort of comes out at the end of this note, this parent says that they’ve made a concerted effort to accept all feelings. And I believe that’s true. But there’s always these ones that we kind of miss, that get away from us as parents, all of us. I’ve never met somebody that was perfect at this. We overlook things because we’re in our own heads, we’re in our own perspective. And it’s helpful to me when she says at the end that when he does want something and he doesn’t get it, he has a strong reaction. I wonder if he feels some disapproval about the way that he has those overblown reactions. It would be hard not to show some disapproval as a parent to that. So he’s taking that in: when he doesn’t get what he wants and he’s got strong feelings about that, and that’s not totally welcome and acceptable.

And so, sort of similar to the boy who didn’t like losing the game, I have a feeling that might be part of this. That he’s been judged for expressing himself so strongly and maybe has a little bit of shame or disappointment in himself about that, making him less sure. Even a simple decision can sometimes be harder.

So it seems that there’s something, maybe it’s this parent’s own experience or something, that’s making her really focus on this idea that her son should be able to make these decisions. When in fact, he may not even care that much about some of these things, like what he wears. As she points out, he doesn’t like being on the spot. I don’t like being on the spot either. My mind goes blank, and I’m a lot older than this boy. So, I don’t know, that seems normal to me.

And the thing about the hula hoops and not wanting to make a mistake in front of people, I think that’s related more to his overall feeling of, Is he really accepted as he is, with all his idiosyncrasies, with his strong feelings when he doesn’t get his way, when he’s not sure about a decision? Can all of that be okay? Something that you welcome, This is just him. This is where he’s at right now. Removing all that judgment of where he should be and what he should be able to do, getting all of that out of the picture. And just freeing him in his process to figure some of this out.

Sometimes as parents, we get into the fear so easily, we get into that uh-oh so fast. And it’s like we’re getting on that train and it’s taking us past all these things that would really help us to get where we want to be with our child. So in terms of guidance, I would work on her expectation of what he should be doing right now, and open up to what he is doing. Why some decisions are harder than others, why he chooses not to make a decision a lot of the time, even what he’s afraid of. When we can go to those open spaces with our children, those curious places where we’re not letting our own agenda get in the way or our own feelings, we can learn a lot. And that’s how we build trust.

I have another question here. This parent says:

My girls are aged eight, six, and 18 months. The main problem is my eight-year-old being mean to my six-year-old’s best friend.

The three girls used to play together beautifully. Last year the friend moved around the corner. As we saw each other more, my eight-year-old became hostile. Not wanting the friend to come for playdates, not wanting to walk to and from school together. It’s an awkward situation, as we walk the same way. Sometimes we split up. Sometimes I try, futilely, to distract, calm her. Lately I just avoid the situation by driving. Once I offered her $2 to be kind. She ignored my pleas to stop anyway. Not good parenting, but desperate.

I think my eight-year-old feels jealous and insecure about her sister’s friend. I’ve tried talking about her feelings— jealousy, loneliness, left out, sad. She kind of agrees, although not to jealousy, but insists the friend is mean and excludes her. When I ask how she’s mean, she says “she hurts my ears,” meaning she’s loud.

I’m trying to stop her behavior with rules like, Treat others as you’d like to be treated. Don’t talk about other people when they’re not there. If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything. Last night, the friend’s mom, who I consider a friend, said her daughter thinks my eight-year-old hates her. I apologized again and discussed her behavior and how I’m trying to deal with it. When I told my daughter that the friend thinks she doesn’t like her, she simply said, “I don’t.” I’m not sure what to say: It’s okay that you don’t like her, but you have to be nice? I also worry that focusing too much attention on the situation will further entrench her feelings. I know I can’t change how my daughter feels. I guess I need a way to stop the behavior. I’m not even sure if her behavior is normal, age-appropriate.

So, I feel like this is another example of a very loving, well-intentioned parent getting caught up in the problem and, by doing so, putting on blinders to understanding and really accepting her daughter’s point of view. She says that she talked to her about the feelings, but that she suggested all these ideas, that it could be jealousy, it could be this or that. And what I would encourage is, instead of talking, really openly listening. Openly listening, without judgment. What is it that you really don’t like about her? Oh, she hurts your ears. Does she talk loudly? She really gets under your skin, right? She really bothers you. And then, space, allowing for. We have to be careful because as soon as we indicate some kind of judgment back, Well, you can’t do this, but you can do that, or whatever it is, we’re shutting the door. Our child does not feel safe to tell us. Like in the last example, he doesn’t feel safe to have an opinion when he feels like his opinions and his feelings about not getting his choices aren’t welcome.

So, it’s all welcome. I really want to know, and I’m not impatient about it, I’m not going to judge you. I’m like a friend, being just curious and wanting to explore this. Because there’s got to be a reason. She may not totally even understand the reason herself. But if she feels safe to share how much she really doesn’t like this girl and how awful it is for her to walk with her, and we can welcome that as much as she needs to share it, she will process this through. And she will feel better about the girl, because it’s always true. When we’re able to share these feelings with someone and we feel that trust, It’s deeply okay to feel what we feel, there’s nothing wrong with us for that, then we start to open our hearts to being okay. We feel better. We can be better losers. We can make more decisions because we feel better about ourselves. We feel acceptable. That’s all any of us want, and it’s what we want for our children, too.

Here’s what I said back to this parent:

Could it be okay for your eight-year-old to not like this girl? It sounds like you’re pushing back on her behavior and judging it (all understandable on your part), rather than welcoming her opinion and sincerely wanting to understand. The problem with that is that it creates distance between you, and that distance makes your child feel judged, and then even more inclined to dislike this person. I’m sure she has her reasons and they’re amplified by the fact that this girl is bringing about judgment and a rift between your daughter and you. In other words, I’d come from a place of more acceptance and curiosity, staying on your child’s side and really wanting to understand where she’s coming from.

So, I hope some of this helps and makes sense to you all.

Thank you so much for listening. We can do this.

The post How We Invalidate Our Kids Without Meaning To (And What to Do Instead) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “Weird, Worrying Behaviors That Our Child Keeps Repeating”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today is an interesting one for me. I have three different messages I received from parents with issues that, on the surface, seem totally different from each other. But there’s actually a running theme in them. And many of the challenges that we face as parents come under these headings. Our children’s behavior makes us uncomfortable, confused, or at least a little unsure or uncertain. And that little rise that children pick up coming from us, it could just be the slightest raised eyebrow with some more sensitive children, it has this way of captivating children, holding their curiosity. And it can become a sticky place that they, on some level, need to keep exploring with us: Why do I have this power to throw this parent, who is god-like to me, off balance? And I actually receive many questions from parents that come under these categories, but I’ve chosen just a few that came in recently. And I really hope that these themes I bring up can help parents with all kinds of different specific issues that stem from this sense that children get of getting a rise out of us and how they need to explore that.

Okay, this first question came in an Instagram message:

I’m the mother of a wonderfully smart, curious, high-energy five-year-old boy. He often asks us questions he clearly already knows the answer to. Would love your wisdom on why he asks those questions. I thought perhaps it’s because he wanted to get our attention more or connect with us more. But he does it all the time, no matter the situation. For example, we could have spent the whole day together and he’ll still ask how old he is. It can be frustrating and tiring as a parent, and I’m wondering how to help the situation. Many thanks.

So that’s weird, right? Why would a child be doing this? With what this parent’s given me, well, the hint is “it can be frustrating and tiring as a parent.” So maybe she’s worried that she isn’t connecting with him enough or giving him enough attention, and that’s coming into this. But for some reason, understandably, she’s feeling like, This is annoying. There’s something wrong, and I don’t know what it is, and it’s really winding me up. That’s understandable, right? But it’s because she’s getting wound up that he’s stuck doing it.

So what I would recommend to this parent is, whenever he asks, just right away answer, without any attitude: Well, I think it’s ____. Another thing, sometimes we want our child to have the answers, and maybe we think, I shouldn’t be giving him the answers because I want him to discover these himself. Which might be true in some instances but in this case, because it’s become a thing for him, I would just give him that answer right away. Ah, you know, as a matter of fact, you’re five years old, last I counted. And with no attitude, just totally willing. That willingness will erase the curiosity that he has around this because he’ll be satisfied with that really comfortable, unruffled response he’s getting.

This happens to all of us, by the way, with certain things. Sometimes it’s about a personal fear. Like, When I was a child, I was shy, and I don’t want my child to have to go through that too. So whenever they’re behaving in a manner that makes it seem like maybe they’re shy, it makes me uncomfortable and want to help them out of that feeling into being less shy. That’s a loving parent thing that we can feel. But from the child’s point of view, that feels like, Wow, now they’re uncomfortable. Well, that makes me feel more uncomfortable and more shy in this situation. So it can be that feedback loop. It can also be things that we’re maybe beating ourselves up about as parents, which is obviously never a good idea. Like, Uh-oh, I’m not giving him enough attention, uh-oh, I’m not allowing him to problem-solve enough. Those kinds of uh-ohs.

So I have a couple more questions from parents that will echo some of these ideas. But this next one, the next two actually, have sort of a subcategory where I’m going to talk a little about the difference between accepting and encouraging feelings versus accommodating or honoring them. There’s an important difference there. So this next one came as a comment on one of my posts, I can’t even remember which one at this point. But this parent says:

My three-year-old struggles with confidence a lot, but in a slightly different way. She will say, “I can’t do this!” all the time, when I know she can. Like something very ridiculous, like grabbing a toy in front of her. I ask, “What seems to be the issue?” To that, she proceeds with, “I just can’t do it because I am Emma. Emma can’t do things.” She needs me to pick her up and carry her to another room because she says she can’t. And if I don’t do it, she will say I don’t love her and don’t help her and many other very similar examples. It’s truly breaking my heart. And I know I overdid it with entertaining her and helping her between ages one to two-and-a-half years old. However, I never said she can’t do something as a way of being critical. I don’t know how to turn it around anymore. I never pressure her, really, but she becomes so distressed when I lovingly place a boundary and tell her to do it herself, “Pick that toy,” for example, that she regresses even further into her behavior. I feel like I’ve messed up my child forever, as she believes she can’t do anything herself.

Wow. So yeah, this parent, they’re really bagging on themselves hard, it sounds like. And I would love to try to help relieve some of this pressure this parent’s putting on herself, because that’s exactly what’s creating the issue. I can see that because when she says, It’s breaking my heart, I know I overdid something, her child is sensing that brokenhearted, “these are such bad signs that I’m getting from this child” parent. And that is what’s drawing this child in to getting stuck doing this kind of on the surface silly stuff, right?

I know it’s hard not to as parents, but I would try not to rush to judgment with a child, deciding she’s struggling with confidence. Because I’m not seeing that at all in the rest of this comment. I’m seeing a child who’s exploring her parent with a lot of confidence and almost kind of controlling her by making these requests that play into the parent’s vulnerabilities. I mean, we could call this kind of bossy here.

What I would suggest to this parent is, first of all, try to step out of this story that she’s created around this, about herself and her failings, and that her child is struggling with confidence. Try to put that all aside because I think that’s clouding this parent’s perceptions so much. And from my perspective, I don’t believe really any of that is true or as severe as this parent is worried that it is. It’s definitely not as fixed as this parent says it is, because at the end she says, “I feel like I’ve messed up my child forever as she believes she can’t do anything herself.” So wow, this parent’s decided she’s already done something and it’s unchangeable. That’s really hurtful, right, for us? And, again, I would love for this parent to just stop believing this and to lighten up on herself. Because all this stuff this child is doing, as perplexing and as kind of odd as it is, it’s not unfamiliar to me. At all. And again, I’ll say, it comes from a place of strength, from what I’ve seen. So if this parent could put those fears aside, at least try putting those aside for a bit, absolving herself, absolving her child. Nothing is fixed with children or relationships or any of us throughout life, right? We’re always evolving, changing, growing, learning.

How can this parent change the messaging here that her child may be getting? If her child says “I can’t do this” and it’s something right in front of her, saying, Oh my gosh, you feel like you can’t do that right now. But if it’s easy for me, I’ll just do it, I’ll pick it up. Okay, here you go. Kind of like what I was saying about the boy: This is nothing. This is no big deal. This isn’t making me doubt myself, blame myself, and have all this fear around it. I’ll just do it. She’s kind of pulling my leg here, really. Like, Oh really? Are you going to fall for this one? And because I’m a loving parent who wants the best for my child and is maybe not as secure as I could be in my abilities as a parent, I’m getting kind of crushed by this instead of seeing that this girl is being so tricky and silly with me with this little test.

So the way I don’t fall for that is to not take it so seriously. This parent says she responds, “What seems to be an issue?”

So that sounds to me quite serious and coming from her own uncomfortable place. Understandable. But I wouldn’t let this little girl mess with me like that. Oh, you can’t do it. Okay, here you go. And then when this parent got serious with her, she said, “I just can’t do it because I’m Emma and Emma can’t do things.” And I can feel that going to the parent’s heart: Oh no, she’s got this terrible feeling about herself from me. But I believe this is a place that this child has caught on is vulnerable for the parent, and she’s just throwing it out there. I don’t believe in her heart that she feels that Emma can’t do things. I mean, Emma’s doing a lot. She’s got this adult jumping to help her. That’s not, I can’t do things. That’s, I’m controlling adults in my life. So don’t buy it. You don’t have to call her on it. I would just say, Okay here, or, Oh, you feel like Emma can’t do things. That’s a feeling you have about yourself, that you can’t do things. That’s accepting the feelings versus accommodating them.

But when the little girl says, Pick me up and carry me to another room, because I can’t, I can’t, I can’t possibly do this myself! If I don’t need her to go to that other room and I don’t feel like carrying her, I’ll just say, You want me to carry you, but I don’t feel like carrying you right now. I’m going to go in there and you come in when you’re ready. Or maybe I would just say, Okay, I love carrying my little girl. But I would be decisive from that place of confidence in myself that this little child and all children really need from us. They need to feel that we can do our job as leaders. So make a decision: I’m either going to carry her happily or I’m not, and she can be upset and that’s okay. Decide what would help you. Would it help you to get her there? Is this bedtime? Do you need to get her in the room? Or she wants to get from here to there and it doesn’t matter to you whether she moves there or not? That’s how I would make my decision. 

And then if I said no, and then she throws all this stuff at me, Then you don’t love me! and, You won’t help me, you’ve never in your whole life helped me! Children will go to these extreme places when they’re exploring on this unconscious level our vulnerabilities and kind of, I truly believe, hoping that we’ll get it together and see through their three-year-old behavior and demands and attempts to control that aren’t healthy for them. Doesn’t mean there’s anything terrible wrong here. It’s just a dynamic that’s getting perpetuated, that this parent can stop at any time when she sees beyond all these fears that she has, all these mistakes she feels she might have made. Even if she’s made any mistakes, they’re totally fixable and reversible. All we have to do with children this young, especially, is switch gears.

It helped me to see this with a very strong two- and three-year-old, my oldest daughter. It helped me to see this as: If I let her carry on like this with me, I’m kind of leaving her high and dry as a leader. I’m just falling into all of her machinations and stuff. I can do this job. I can be what she needs. All I have to do is see that she’s three years old. She’s saying a lot of stuff that she doesn’t necessarily mean, that aren’t deep, dark feelings in her. She’s learned that these get a rise out of me and she’s doing what young children do, which is learning, learning, learning, exploring those reactions.

So this is not a threatening situation or a damaging situation at all. It’s an interesting little puzzle that can be so easy for us as parents to get caught up in, because we care, because we love our children and we think they’re marvelous. And gosh, if we did anything to somehow weaken them or make them feel less capable or not give them the attention they need, as in the other case, that feels terrible. We can feel guilty about that. But nothing is permanent. These are little tiny neophytes that have a lot of growing and developing to do, as our relationship has a lot of growing and developing to do. And we are just going to keep learning.

So this parent says, “I don’t know how to turn it around anymore.” So that’s how to turn it around, really step back and take a look at what’s going on here: She can’t pick stuff up that’s right in front of her. Is this for real? It doesn’t make sense to me. Trust your common sense.

So, accommodating the feelings would be worrying that she can’t get the toy, so I’m going to grab it. And this parent says she needs her to pick her up. Well, she’s saying she needs that, but that doesn’t necessarily reflect an actual need because children don’t have a need to be picked up and carried around the house at this age. It’s a want, it’s not a need. But if I believe that this is a need and this is just a deep feeling that she’s having, then I’m going to get stuck catering to that, right? And that’s going to keep the cycle going because then my child wonders how she has so much power to create doubt in me and make me jump to do these things for her.

Here’s another one that came in an email:

My daughter’s having a fourth birthday party in a couple of weeks. She’s been as involved with the planning process as she’s wanted to be. We discussed inviting family, which is usually all we do for her birthday given her age. This year, she expressed she’d like to invite two girls from her class. I said that sounded good, and we moved about our day. When it came time to fill out invitations, she mentioned the two girls from her class again. Again, I acknowledged and made sure to make them invitations. When I let her know that they’d RSVP’d yes over dinner, she was excited.

Tonight she’s been unsettled and unable to sleep. She’s called me into her room multiple times. She asked me if I could talk. (Internally jumping, “Yes! Always!”) So I laid in bed with her as she told me she no longer wanted the two girls to be invited to her party, that she wanted me to contact their parents and uninvite them. I just listened calmly as she told me in various ways that she’d like to take back the invitation. Every once in a while when it felt appropriate, I’d say something along the lines of, You don’t want them at your party, or Sometimes our bodies can feel certain ways when big things come up. She continued to repeat herself and wanted my confirmation that I would talk to their mothers about uninviting them.

I know that she’s probably nervous and that this party is totally foreign to her. It’s probably scary anticipating something she doesn’t know anything about. No matter how much we plan, who can really prepare a four-year-old on what to expect? And now it’ll be overwhelming, with grandparents and family wanting to love on her. I understand her energy towards this and do not feel threatened by her request or surprised. My question is, what do I do? Do I honor her feelings? How do I answer her when she’s asking me to confirm I’ve canceled their invite? I’m asking not only in this situation, but for future inevitable occasions where she will want to cancel a playdate last minute or not want to see certain people. As parents, do we carry on with our lives or do we honor our child’s feelings and look at these as a warning before they are put in a situation they don’t want to be in or can’t handle? Thanks for your help.

Okay, so it feels like this parent is at least 85% in the direction that she knows makes sense, which is allowing for a child’s feelings but not accommodating them, not doing something that would be unkind to others. But what happened, I guess, is that she went along with what her child said in the moment, which is, I want to invite these friends. And then this parent doubted herself. She doubted whether her child was really ready to make those decisions and should the parent have let her? So that’s where the uncertainty started to come in for this parent, I think. And then she starts wondering, Oh gosh, this is going to be so much for her and she didn’t know what to expect when she did this.

And so one thing we can do is, at the outset of these kinds of decisions, we can make the adult decision. Is my child ready to invite friends or not? In this case, my thought would be it does sound like she was ready to invite friends. The fact that she immediately said she wanted to, she was excited about that. But then, yeah, she started to doubt, have mixed feelings like children do, in all the excitement of her upcoming birthday. And making all these plans herself is something I also recommend, helping her be a part of the party as much as possible, keeping it child-centered. But that also can add to our child’s excitement about it too. It adds to their being able to prepare themselves for what’s going to happen at the party. But it also kind of adds to, Now I’ve invested all these thoughts into this and I’m into this. So it can be a mixed bag there. And yeah, that does bring up uncomfortable feelings and sounds like this girl had regrets, changed her mind, Is this the right thing? The parent said she realized that her child would probably want the children there in the end, but she’s doubting herself. So this is how just a little bit of self-questioning can get in our child’s way. And it’s always so well-intentioned, right? We want to do the right thing.

Here’s what I wrote back to this parent. I actually was in a place, I was able to write back to her. I said:

The key is to welcome your daughter’s understandably wound-up feelings but not accommodate them, because that gives an unintended message: When you feel uncomfortable or in conflict, you need me to fix that for you. I don’t feel safe when you are upset and demanding. When in truth, these mixed feelings she’s having are a normal part of life. If she disinvites friends, she will likely regret that too.

So the answer I recommend is to hold the boundaries while welcoming the feelings, however she shares them. Something like, Ah, unfortunately, disinviting people isn’t an option because that would be hurtful and unkind. I hear you, though. It’s normal to change your mind or have second thoughts about a decision. You wish you could disinvite them. You really wish they weren’t coming. And leaving it there, just reflecting back what she’s actually saying, not adding on.

The more solid you feel about this decision/boundary, and the more confident you feel about allowing her to blast you about it, the sooner this will blow over. I can almost guarantee you she’ll be glad she had her friends there. But if you’re uncertain or go at this hoping to please her in the moment, this can become more about the two of you and something she needs to keep pushing and testing, even at the party. I hope that makes sense.

So this parent did write me back saying that did make sense to her and thank you. I didn’t hear what happened at the party. But yeah, honoring her feelings, that would be being rude to these other children, right? And I think her actual feelings were feeling torn, not that she’d really changed her mind from a reasonable place. But just, as this parent seemed to really understand, was going through it. She was in the, Oh, what am I doing? This is scary. What’s this going to be like? Relatable, right?

So how can we avoid getting caught up in these sorts of tornadoes with our children?

1) We can remind ourselves that feelings are passing and they are not facts and they often don’t come from a reasonable place in our child at their immature stage of life.

2) We can trust our common sense and the decisions that kids need us to make from our adult maturity and experience. They can’t make all the decisions.

3) And, I guess most of all, to believe in ourselves, believe in ourselves as leaders, and to keep stepping back to get perspective on the situation. And if we have a partner, getting their perspective. Because if you’re like me, I get very caught up in my head and my own stuff, and I lose perspective all the time. So, to have somebody else that you trust, a friend or a partner or an advisor, to help you see your way clear.

I really hope some of this helps.

And I’m super excited because the No Bad Kids Master Course is live, and I can’t wait to hear what you think about it. Please go check it out and, if you decide to go for it, I would love your feedback. Please go to nobadkidscourse.com, or you can also find the information through my website, janetlansbury.com.

Thank you so much for listening. We can do this.

The post Weird, Worrying Behaviors That Our Child Keeps Repeating appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury, welcome to Unruffled. Today, I’m going to be talking about a topic that’s very intriguing to me because it’s so counterintuitive for most of us. And those kinds of challenges really interest me. This topic is helping children feel more self-confident and more positive. How can we do that? The advice I give in this podcast may be a little bit surprising.

Parents often reach out to me on a topic that was really important to me as well as a parent, it’s about encouraging our children’s self-confidence. How do we do that? Well, simplifying this, we can look at the Oxford Dictionary definition of self-confidence, which is “a feeling of trust in one’s abilities, qualities, and judgment.”

So how do we encourage children to trust themselves and their abilities? Well, we trust them and their abilities because we are these powerful influencers in our child’s life. It’s just like if we want our children to feel that they deserve respect, then we have to respect them to show them that. It’s the same with self-confidence. And this is why Magda Gerber’s first principle of her approach is “basic trust in the infant as an initiator, an explorer, and a self-learner.” Children have the goods to be learners, they know what they’re doing in this department. They don’t need us to decide what they should learn when in these early years, or maybe ever.

So we want to trust in them, meaning we are trusting the way that they explore, the way that they process, and the way they learn from their experiences. To do that, we actually want to lean into what they’re feeling and what they’re exploring, and what they’re interested in, in their time, rather than taking it upon ourselves, or maybe following the normal urge that many of us have, I have it, to try to work them through what they’re learning, their issues, work them through situations, work them through feelings, to fix them, to try to make it better.

If you would’ve asked me years ago, before I studied with Magda, how to help a child feel more self-confident, I would probably have answered, “You build them up. You tell them how wonderful they are and how great they are, and how capable they are and that they can do things.” That’s not really trusting. And that doesn’t build self-confidence as much as when we actually lean into taking interest in and encouraging our child’s process.

The easiest way for me to explain this is through questions that parents have shared with me, so that’s what I’m going to do. I have three here. The first one is in the comments section of my website on a post for one of the podcasts I did with Australian parenting expert Maggie Dent, called “Boys Do Cry and They Need To.” So here’s what the parent asked, she said:

Being a mom of two boys, one rooster, age four, and one lamb, age 8, this is very helpful, but it is so challenging. Switching from the rooster to the lamb is exhausting. My lamb has recently started saying things like, ‘I’m stupid,’ ‘I hate myself,’ ‘I don’t deserve anything,’ ‘I’m not good at anything.’ How do I address this? I’ve tried saying it might feel that way because of the situation, and it’s okay to be frustrated, disappointed, et cetera, but it doesn’t seem to change things. He’s very hard on himself. And it is hard for me to let him feel all these negative feelings, especially when directed towards himself. When I was younger, I suffered because of a lack of self-confidence and a negative self-image, so it is a very difficult thing for me to address with him. My instinct is to tell him, ‘You shouldn’t hate yourself, you can hate the situation,’ or to try to get him to journal about the things that make him feel that way. We try to discuss things like the things he likes about himself or what he feels good about. It seems hopeless at times. He has no problem sharing his negative, sad feelings, but cannot seem to find positivity.

So just to explain what this parent was saying about the rooster and the lamb, those are Maggie Dent’s terms for two different types of personalities. The rooster is the more assertive, maybe stronger-willed child, and the lamb is the maybe more sensitive, quieter child, less dominating.

The first thing that stuck out to me in this note, as just an aside, is that she said this switching from the rooster to the lamb is exhausting. So right there, that gives me a clue that maybe this mom has taken things upon herself, seeing things as her role that actually she could let go of and trust more. Because ideally, it really shouldn’t feel exhausting for us, and it shouldn’t drain us to engage with children that have opposite types of temperaments or personalities. The reason it does usually is that we are trying to help lift this one up, we’re trying to help put this other one in their place because maybe they come very strongly. And really, it’s our job to give boundaries and be the leader to these children, but not make up for or, in some way, fill in for their strengths or their weaknesses. In other words, I think this parent may be taking on too much in her role.

Now, then this parent says some other things that, to me, they ring so true as common ways that I would want to react, and I know a lot of other parents do too, to a child saying these kinds of things, which are alarming. We don’t want to hear our children saying those things about themselves.

She says, “I’ve tried saying it might feel that way because of the situation, and it’s okay to be frustrated, disappointed, et cetera.” So right there, she’s doing a common thing, which is she’s analyzing for him what’s going on. And what I want to encourage her and other parents to do is instead of analyzing, to really connect. And to connect with a child, we have to meet them right where they are and hear what they’re saying, and allow those feelings to be valid and have a life. And I would say straight off too, that everything children say is not a fact or heartfelt deep way of thinking about themselves. It’s a feeling. Feelings come and go, they’re like waves passing through.

So we have to be careful as adults not to take everything that children say as something that our child believes as a fact. It’s not a fact when they say to us, “I like my other parent better,” it’s not a fact when they say, in this case, “I’m stupid, I hate myself. I don’t deserve anything.” These are feelings that he’s having. So it’s really safe for us to allow those feelings and encourage children to have those feelings.

Getting back to encouraging self-confidence, what is that doing when we lean into where a child’s actually feeling, and connect with them there? It’s trusting. It’s trusting that child to feel what they feel, be who they are, know themselves best in that moment, and be able to process situations.

Then she says something wonderfully revealing, she says, “I suffered because of a lack of self-confidence and negative self-image, so it’s a very difficult thing for me to address with him.” This is a common theme that comes up for us as well, as parents, that the things that we’re sensitive about are places where we can get stuck. And those places are much harder places for us to trust, to trust that our child is different than us, a different person, and needs to be in their process, whatever they’re feeling needs to be okay, really okay.

Again, I think it will help if we realize that feelings aren’t facts etched in stone that our child’s going to believe forever, or even more than for a few moments. These feelings, he can hold onto them longer if he doesn’t feel that they’re being really heard and accepted all the way. If he feels this kind of uncomfortable, pushing back, not really allowing and accepting, not trusting that it’s safe and okay for him to feel those things.

So she brings up such great examples of human impulses that we have, especially if we’re parents. We don’t want to see our children suffering and we want to help them come out of that. But all of that gets in the way of our ultimate goal, which is that we want him to feel self-confident, which means trust in himself and his abilities and his process.

She says, “My instinct is to tell him, ‘You shouldn’t hate yourself, you can hate the situation.'” And right there, that’s another common thing that every great parent I know has probably felt at some point, which is, we just want to say, “You shouldn’t feel that way, I don’t want you to feel that way. Don’t feel the way you’re feeling.” She says that’s her instinct, so I don’t know that she’s actually telling him those things. But that’s the message that children get. “You shouldn’t feel depressed, look at all the things you have in life that are so positive.” Have we ever heard that? Or have we ever said that to someone? “Well, yes, this sad thing happened, but look at all the good things that you have going on in your life. It could be worse.”

We’re denying feelings when we do that. We’re denying the other person’s feelings, we may be denying our own feelings, and it doesn’t help us process through the feelings, learn from them, and move through them, leave them behind. Somebody else can’t do that for us, we have to do it for ourselves, and children have to do it for themselves, in their own unique way and time.

She says, “We try to discuss things like things he likes about himself, or what he does feel good about.” So discussing things that he likes about himself is trying to insert positivity, trying to get a child to feel better and think positively, which is understandable because this is a soft spot for her, this is a tender place for her, the self-confidence. She doesn’t want to think of him having a bad self-image. And honestly, I don’t think that he does, but again, seeing everything as a process, this is something he’s wanting to express to her, to share with her. It’s the healthiest thing. How great that he’s saying these things, instead of just thinking them to himself! And the fact that he’s sharing them means that she can receive them.

That’s what I would do, I would lean into, “Wow. You’re saying that makes you feel stupid. What makes you feel stupid about this? Because you couldn’t do it the first time. Ugh, that makes you feel like you can’t do things, huh?”

Or, “I hate myself.”

“Ooh, you’re really getting down on yourself, huh? You don’t like yourself right now. What’s going on with that?”

“I don’t deserve anything.”

“Wow, it feels like you don’t deserve anything. That’s some pain inside. I want to know about that, I want to hear more about that.”

So I realize that leaning into the feelings always takes this leap of faith. For me, I think I’ve said this before here, I feel like I’ve actually left the water running in the bathtub and it’s just going to overflow if I really allow this. But this is the key. This is what helps him to feel trusted in his process and trust in himself. We can trust in ourselves when it’s okay to go to all those dark places in ourselves.

When we can share those, just that act of sharing them and being accepted and acknowledged for what we’re sharing, sometimes that can be all we need to start to let go of them and move through them.

But this is not our process, it belongs to our child. So we have to trust him to do it his way, and staying connected is the best thing that we can do. Show him that support. Obviously, you’re not agreeing that he can’t do anything, or that he doesn’t deserve anything, but you’re really interested in what he’s feeling, where he’s getting these things, and what’s the feeling within those feelings? It sounds like he’s hurt, and that’s the part we want to help him get to if possible.

This parent did all of these intuitive things, normal things, and what I’m suggesting is not intuitive at all, I realize that. And when things aren’t intuitive, that means, for most of us, we will never reflexively be able to do these things. And so we may need to take that pause to reenter ourselves because reflexively, we’re going to do all of these wonderful, loving things that this parent is doing.

Okay, here’s another question. This parent says:

Applying your principles of respectful parenting has helped equip us for raising a wonderful, empathetic, and curious five-year-old girl. But lately, we’ve been struggling with a high sensitivity to embarrassment. We’ve been traveling and visiting friends and family of different ages. It started when we were spending time with one of my adult friends and I was teasing my friend, and we all had a good laugh. But my daughter thought the laughs were directed at her and was very sad and shut down. She repeatedly said throughout the day, ‘I didn’t like it when you all laughed at me.’ And I assured her that we were all laughing at my friend and not her. We’ve already talked about the concept with her friends at preschool, that it’s okay to laugh with each other, but not at each other.

While this incident happened a couple of weeks ago, she still struggles with the feeling that everyone is laughing at her. It’s gotten to the point where when she’s trying to make us laugh, being silly, and making jokes, she’ll immediately regret it and get that self-conscious and defensive reaction. I hate to think that something we are doing or not doing is causing my daughter to shut down and downplay her awesome sense of humor, spontaneous fun, and self-confidence. Please offer any experience, advice, or perspective you have.

Okay, so this event happened where the daughter got confused, and it brought up feelings for her that were really uncomfortable. This mother is handling it in very normal, loving ways. She says, “I assured her that we were all laughing at my friend and not her.” That was a good thing to clear up for her. But the truth is, that just as with the previous child’s feelings about, “I’m stupid, I hate myself. I don’t deserve anything,” this child felt upset that maybe there was this attention on her, that she was being laughed at. This is a feeling that she’s processing.

As I said, it was good that the mother clarified that it wasn’t about her. But then I would still go from there straight to what my child is feeling, leaning into that. “Wow, it felt like they were laughing at you. And how did that feel?” Asking your child, engaging with your child around this, with that openness, letting that feeling be — that she felt like she was being laughed at. “And how did that feel?” That didn’t feel good to her.

The reason that children get stuck where they seem like they can’t get beyond it is because they don’t feel trusted and encouraged to process the situation the way children do so brilliantly. There again is that self-learning ability that children have. It’s phenomenal. And the way this girl’s doing it is she’s feeling the feeling, and the parent says she’s still struggling with the feeling that everyone is laughing at her. So now it feels like she’s imagining this happening with other people too.

There’s something really interesting that this little girl is processing in herself. So obviously, I don’t know exactly what’s going on in this little girl’s mind, but she’s clearly in a process that, ideally, if we want her to come out of this, as soon as possible, and with it encouraging her confidence, then we’ve got to trust her.

Children process situations so wonderfully — things that disturb them, things that bother them, situations that touch things off in them, things that are maybe scary that happened, or someone talked a certain way on the streets, and it could be someone they don’t know, or maybe it is an exchange that they’ve had with the parent, or a sibling, or another caregiver. What they do is they bring it up and they bring it up and they bring it up. It’s like they’re turning it in every direction, they’re imagining it, experiencing it, letting it happen to them again and again.

It’s really this thorough, very therapeutic learning process that they have to making peace with it. And this process can’t be rushed, can’t be taken on as ours to manage. It really has to be trusted in our children to give them this self-confidence that children are born with, these seeds of self-confidence. It’s not like we have to build it for them, they already have the seeds there, they just need to be nurtured. And nurturing it is, back to that word again, trust. Trusting them so that they have more and more trust for themselves.

The really cool thing that this little girl is doing is actually recreating the situation again and again, for herself to explore it more fully and deeply, and also explore her parents’ reaction to it. She’s, obviously because children do, she’s getting the feeling that her parent is not comfortable with this, and wants to resolve it for her. And what that does is cause a child to have more interest in: Wow, why is this so disturbing for my parent too? So she’s got that to explore, so that’s why our responses that aren’t as trusting can actually make the issue go on longer, which is obviously the opposite of what we hope for. That’s the part that we can play in this without meaning to, with all of our best intentions.

So I think that may be happening here, and in the previous note as well. In this case, the parent says, “I hate to think that something we’re doing or not doing is causing my daughter to shut down and downplay her awesome sense of humor, her spontaneous fun, and self-confidence.”

Yeah, so that’s a disturbing worry that this parent has. And this is such normal adult thinking that we think of things as kind of done. And for children, we see things as a result, that: oh no, this is done, and she feels this way now, and what’s happened here? Instead of realizing that children, their minds and their imaginations, and their emotions are all in motion, they’re always in that process. We’d be so healthy to be more like them.

But of course, as parents, what do we do first? (I’m raising my hand.) We worry. So it makes sense. But what I would do is, again, lean into this and trust her process. “Wow, now you’re being silly. And then you are feeling that feeling of what it’s like to be laughed at. That felt upsetting to you or disturbing.” Or, “how did it feel?” is even better. Not deciding how she should feel, but really curious.

“How does that feel when it feels like people are laughing at you? And even when you’re making us laugh, that is uncomfortable. What is that in you?”

None of these specific words matter, what matters is that we’re open to and we’re receiving and allowing the feelings to live and breathe, trusting that these are all in motion, they’re passing through, and she’s learning from them, she’s learning about the situation. She’ll be a master at this idea of being laughed at versus laughing with by the end of this if we can trust her.

All right, here’s one more:

Recently, my four-year-old daughter has been experiencing anxiety with me on the scene but does well when I’m away. She was taken out of her gymnastics class because of compulsory masking, and eight months later, we rejoined, but she cried when I left her side and kept running to me. I tried rewards and empathy, but she ultimately did not want to stay in the class.

If I’m helping her at school, she wants to be near me. She cries when I drop her off in an unfamiliar setting, but then does fine after a couple of minutes. How can I teach her to be confident right away? I admit I am not this way, but I want her to be.

I love this parent admitting her soft spot. Oftentimes, again, it’s about us and that we struggled with something, and so we’re extra uncomfortable with our child struggling with it.

And again, with this type of process of getting comfortable… The girl was away from the class for eight months, and maybe the other children were all still in it so now she has to start all over again. And it’s even a bit more challenging than that because the other children may have been continuing. Now she has to come into this situation where other children are more comfortable and in the groove of it, and she’s not. So that’s challenging. She has anxiety and she’s doing things that I would expect.

So what I would do is understand that this is a really typical process for a child. Even with a separation to a class — the other thing that she brings up at school — that she has a hard time with that. Yeah, these are times that bring up emotions, but that’s okay. We can trust that that’s part of the process of saying goodbye to someone or to stepping up to be back in this class again. It’s going to take some push-pull on her part.

So I would, number one, as in all these cases, trust her process. Maybe you can make a decision that this isn’t the right class for her now, that’s a fine decision to make. But I would first trust her process. And what I would do instead of me leaving her side is that I would sit in one place, and let her stay with me and branch out as she’s ready. This is assuming that the teachers will let me stay in the class, but I don’t know why they wouldn’t with a four-year-old child taking gymnastics. She’s very young to be in a structured class.

So I would be there, so calm and so expecting her to take her time to get comfortable and not be confident right away. No child is always confident right away. That wouldn’t be a thoughtful, engaged human child, especially after all this absence. Eight months is a really long time for a four-year-old.

I think the expectation is maybe a little bit unreasonable, that she’s going to be confident right away. There’s no weakness, there’s no problem with taking your time, and having some anxiety around it. This is appropriate anxiety. But if the child feels her parent not trusting her in this process and that the parent is uncomfortable because the parent wants her to be able to do these things a bit more readily, then that’s going to breed a little more doubt and a little more anxiety. Oh, I should be doing something that I don’t feel I can do yet. But I feel this expectation. Nothing gets by children, and that’s why they’re such incredible learners.

So in this case, as I said, I would sit in one place, let her stay with me as long as she needed to, let her run out and come back, and take it in her time. As long as she’s not disrupting the class, I would be fine with that. I would try to totally trust that this girl knows what she’s doing and she’s doing it her way, as all of these children, it sounds like, are.

They’re pretty inspiring. They are accepting of being in these discomforts. It’s just harder for us to let them.

Then if she cries when the parent drops her off in an unfamiliar setting… So as the parent, I would try to take your time with that. If it’s unfamiliar, maybe she needs a little more time with the parent there to get familiar.

I also was struck that the parent said it right in the beginning, “The child has anxiety with me on the scene, but does well when I’m away.” So it really feels like this might be something about the relationship, and the daughter wanting more trust from her parent and needing to maybe explore her parents’ impatience with her process.

These are all wonderful examples of children being able to immerse themselves in learning. And I totally understand, boy do I understand, how hard it is as a parent to trust these processes. But if we take those leaps of faith, we will get the results that we’re hoping for, which is a confident child, a child who trusts themselves and their abilities, their feelings, and their instincts.

So I hope that perspective helps a little bit.

And by the way, if my podcasts are helpful to you, you can help the podcast continue by giving it a positive review on iTunes. So grateful to all of you for listening. Also, please check out some of the other podcasts on my website, janetlansbury.com. They’re all indexed by subject and category, so you should be able to find whatever topic you might be interested in. And both of my books are available on audio, No Bad Kids, Toddler Discipline Without Shame, and Elevating Child Care, A Guide To Respectful Parenting.  You can get them for free from Audible by following the link in the liner notes of this podcast. You can also get them in paperback at Amazon and in eBook at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and apple.com.

Thanks for listening. We can do this.

The post Boosting Your Child’s Self-Confidence appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Hi. This is Janet Lansbury, welcome to Unruffled. Today, I’m going to be talking about potty learning and I want to preface the perspective I share as… a perspective. Obviously not the only way, or maybe even for some people the best way, to go about helping our children learn to use the potty. There are a lot of different methods parents choose and they all seem to result, eventually at least, in people who are toilet trained, because adults that we know are mostly toilet trained. Please know, this is just a singular perspective that I know for sure works and I want to share all about it today.

As you may have gathered from the title of this episode, the approach I believe in is to allow our children to lead, direct and navigate this process with our support. First I want to explain why I believe this is the best way…

Because they can. Children are able to do this. They can own this accomplishment. And that may seem like an unimportant aspect to some people. But with the approach that I teach, with Magda Gerber‘s approach, we value tremendously the self-motivation and the inner directedness of our children from birth. And that means, as much as possible, we want to nurture that. We want to allow them to do the things that they’re able to do right from the beginning. We want to try to hold space for that, encourage that so children can continue to believe in themselves and know that they are capable, that they can accomplish. Not just the things that we want them to but the things that they innately want to do. Learning to go on the potty is one of them. Because they know that other people do this and they see that we do this, their parents and adult caregivers. They will naturally want to achieve this on their own.

Accomplishments build on themselves. When we allow our baby to be the one to decide to reach for and eventually grasp a toy rather than putting it into their hands one day, maybe they don’t do it in the manner that we would wish or maybe they don’t pick up the toy that we think they should pick up, they pick up another one, but eventually, they do this. And every one of those experiences builds self-confidence, encourages them to trust their innate competence. And encourages us to as well because we see that our children can do things, because we’ve held space for that and not done everything for them ourselves. We will see again and again: oh wow, my child can do that too.

Another reason I believe in child-led is that it helps us to avoid a complication that often happens. Well, I hear about it a lot because the parents reaching out to me, a lot of them have experienced this issue where they try to help their child make potty training happen and their child resisted. Sometimes parents don’t even realize that their agenda is being felt by their child. Maybe they aren’t talking about it a lot but the child is sensing that they want them to potty train. Or sometimes they’ve overtly tried to make potty training happen and the child resists. And I know this because parents will say to me sometimes, “Well, I did let my child lead mostly but they refuse to even go on the potty.” When somebody uses the word “refuse,” it connotes that a child has been asked to do something or feels the parent wants them to do something, otherwise they couldn’t refuse.

What happens is that children, as they’re becoming toddlers, and some get this even earlier in the infant months, they’re beginning to individuate as separate people from us. That is part of their healthy development as people: to want to be more independent, want to do it themselves, want to see where their power is. And so when we’re trying to help a child potty train in those toddler years, which is when it’s commonly done, then our child has this natural urge to resist us. That’s why toddlers are famous for saying, “No,” acting in ways that we don’t want them to, not doing what we ask them to do, not quote, “listening,” making their own decisions about whatever the rules are if they’re going to follow them or not. It’s healthy for them to be that way.

And when we’re trying to potty train, we’re playing right into that without meaning to, that need for a child to resist. Now they’re resisting us not because they don’t actually want to potty learn but for the sake of resisting us.

As a toddler, I want to be my own person. If you tell me or I sense you want me to do something, I want to do the opposite. It’s the healthy developmental impulse in me. Toilet training can bring that on in a way that frustrates us as parents. But if we allow a child to completely own and lead this process, then they’re not going to resist us there. They’re going to resist us in other ways but not in this one. That won’t get in the way. There won’t be emotional power struggle issues that impede the process.

The third reason why I believe in child-led potty learning is that in my experience, it’s much easier, and I’m all for easy. I’m all for effortless. We have too many things to do as parents as it is. The toddler years are exhausting, emotionally exhausting, physically exhausting for us. It’s all happening. There’s a lot going on. And as I said to a parent I was consulting with, if we can “take the poop off of our plate,” that’s one less thing that we have to deal with, how our child is potty learning.

But what it does require of us is a different kind of challenge. We’re not challenged to try to figure out how to get our child to do this and get our child to do that and how to make it happen but we’re challenged in an emotional way to let go and trust.

I talk about this a lot on a lot of different topics around children because it’s not easy. I talk about it a lot because it’s difficult. I know it’s difficult. It feels like we’re letting go. How can we really trust this person to do something when they’re that little? And what if they don’t? And it’s challenging. But that is the challenge that I recommend around toilet learning, to not just say to ourselves that we’re not going to push it but to really believe in our child. They will do it, just the way they grasp that toy that they chose to grasp when they were ready to, just as they walked, just as they started talking, they can do this.

Those are the three reasons: 1) because they can and it’s so healthy for them to achieve autonomously. Two, 2) because we don’t want to lay into toddler resistance if we can help it. And three, 3) because it’s less work for us, less confusing for us to try to figure it out.

Now I want to move on to how. How do we do this? Because trusting our children and them being able to accomplish something does not happen in a vacuum. And that is very true with toilet learning.

What our job is, is to nurture the environment that encourages children to not only achieve for themselves but to feel comfortable about their bodily functions and understand them. The best most organic way to do that is the way that we diaper change with a baby. Do we slow down instead of distracting them? Do we invite them to pay attention to what’s happening with their body parts, using the real names for body parts, being careful not to teach children that there’s something gross or awful or smelly or disgusting about their bodily functions? Even if we think that’s true, imagine how that feels to a child when now they’re expected to go in the potty. They can have shame around their feces and their urine. They can feel fear around letting this go, letting this out because people have reacted to it in a way that was negative.

I would take care in the words that you choose in your attitude. In a way, we have to be kind of professional about this aspect of caring for a child, the way a nurse caring for a very elderly incontinent adult would treat that. They wouldn’t say, “Oh, this is so gross and smelly.” It’s really important with children if we want them to have a healthy relationship with their body and their bodily functions. We don’t want shame and fear to get in the way. Normalizing. And that’s something that we cultivate beginning with our newborn. We narrate the diaper change so that our child knows what’s happening, understands the self-care aspects, doesn’t feel self-conscious or shame or fear.

And then communication is a big part of this process all the way through. Again, starting with your baby and then also noticing signs of readiness, which doesn’t mean that we jump on it and say, “Okay, now I’m going to train you. You’re ready.” (It doesn’t mean that with this perspective, anyway. It’s for our own information.)

Magda Gerber used to say, “There are three ways that children need to be ready:” 1) physically. They need to be able to hold in their bodily functions until they can get to a potty. That has to happen. Then, 2) cognitively. They understand what the potty is and what to do. And then, 3) emotionally. And that’s the one, again, where it can backfire with parents if the child is emotionally in that period of resistance and the parent is nudging or pushing them in a direction.

Also emotionally, it can be tougher if there have been emotions created around these experiences of diaper changes and things like that. That one gets in the way most often.

But just understanding that those all have to be in place and that we can’t rush developments and that this, like many developments, is not a linear process. For many children, there will be times they want to go in the potty and then maybe there are stressors or challenges in their life, feelings that they hold back again and they need to be in diapers again for a while — they’ve moved houses or there’s a new baby or something. It’s common for children to have this not be a direct linear process. If we can understand that as parents then we’ll worry less and our expectations will be in line with what’s actually going on.

I would at some point with your child, when they’re probably around one and a half or at least on their feet walking, I would get a small potty and have it in your bathroom. I wouldn’t have it out in the playroom and have it be a toy that children do whatever they want with like the other toys that we in their play area. It has a specific purpose. It’s in the bathroom. It’s just there. We don’t bring focus to it. We don’t put pressure around it, that here’s this thing and “now we want you to do this.” We don’t have an agenda. It’s just there so that when our child wants to experiment, they can.

And then I would say to my child at some point, especially if they’re starting to show signs that they’re telling me ahead of time that they are moving their bowels or have to urinate, then I would say, “It looks like you’re telling me you have to pee,” or, “It looks like you have to pee, the potty’s there. If you ever want to try, I’ll take you there.” Or we might even say, “Do you want to try the potty?” But this has to be the most open-ended, I totally trust you and I really don’t care, subtext. Because again, there are children that are very, very sensitive to our tone, our agendas and we don’t want that to get in the way. But I would make it clear at some point that you’re available to help anytime your child wants to try. And I would do that probably even before two years old, as soon as I got the potty, maybe I would say, “If you ever want to use the potty and you want help, let me know.” And then I would drop it, not just with my child but with myself.

And what will happen is our child will want to try it one time, and maybe run off on their own and do it or we’re there, but there’ll be a time that they do it, that they pee in the potty. I know some advisors recommend doing a big hoopla around that and a big celebration. I wouldn’t. Because again, that can read to a child, I’m so happy. This is about me. I’m relieved, I’m excited!  And it can be distracting for a child. It can take them into resistance mode, maybe, and also it kind of takes ownership of the experience from them and becomes more about us and how excited we are. We can be excited, but I wouldn’t have a big to-do. I would say something more like, “Wow, you went on the potty this time. How did that feel?” Or, “That’s pretty cool.” Whatever words you would use but just a mellow, authentic, connected response. More interested in what our child’s thinking than how excited we are.

Then I wouldn’t, again, see that this is now done and my child’s going to do this every time. I would know that might just be an anomaly for now and we’ll see. Keep letting it go. Not bringing it up every day, not bringing it up even every week. At the most offering it when your child seems to be needing to go. Then you could say, “Oh, do you want to go in the potty?” Or, “If you ever want me to help you with your diaper,” or if your child is in Pull-Up at this point maybe, “Let me know and I will give you a hand.” But I would use that very sparingly.

Then there’s a point when your child is doing this regularly. That’s the point where I would say, “It seems like you’re going on the potty now. Do you want to wear underwear instead of diapers?” And they would probably say yes to that.

What can happen sometimes with the parents that I hear from is that they bring up the idea of underwear, and then our child senses our excitement about that so they want to wear the underwear, but they’re actually not ready to wear the underwear. And the parent feels understandably like: oh gosh, I don’t want to discourage this underwear thing. But at the same time, they’re having accidents all over the house. But I don’t want to say no to underwear if my child’s asking for it.

That right there is where a boundary needs to be, in my opinion. Where we say, not because it’s a punishment and you’ve stepped back and now you have to go back into diapers, but “it’s my job as your parent to help you stay comfortable, so we’re going to keep the diapers on you so you don’t have to worry. I don’t want you to have to worry about going on the potty. When you’re ready, I know you’ll do it. I believe in you.” A very honest caring boundary.

And again, if we stay in letting go mode, then we won’t find ourselves in these little traps where now we’re excited. It can also happen that our child says, “I want to sit on the potty.” And we say, “Okay.” And now they’re sitting there and sitting there and sitting there and want us to read them books or do all these things. And we’re feeling like: oh my gosh, I don’t want to discourage this so I’ve got to do this. I’ve got to hang out with my child for half an hour in the bathroom when they want me to or before bed or whatever it is.

The reason we get stuck there is that we’re so afraid that this is a delicate process, which it really isn’t. It’s only delicate in the emotional areas. But when our child wants to do this, they’ll do it. No reasonable boundary that we have will get in the way of the process.

So we don’t have to worry that if I do something reasonable, like say, “Okay, let’s go to the potty for a few minutes and let’s see.” And then we say, “You know what? I think you can try again another time, just let me know.”

No pressure, but being reasonable, not feeling hamstrung that we’ve got to make this happen our child’s way however they want it to. That’s where the boundaries have to come in. Because if we look at why we’re getting stuck there, it’s because we’re afraid, or that we really want this to happen so badly that we’re willing to do anything. And our child will feel those exact things coming from us and it won’t be helpful.

Another thing that can get in the way sometimes is if we generally struggle with boundaries. I definitely did in the beginning with my daughter but some people kind of set me straight early on, so I was getting it. And one of those people was Magda. So I can understand how it happens, especially with the approach I teach that is “follow the child, let the child lead.”

And the parent lets the child lead everything and doesn’t understand that the child leading is in a context of boundaries, predictable, solid boundaries that the parent has. If those boundaries aren’t in place, that actually holds them back in developments like potty training. It’s harder if they feel like they don’t have that security of those rules and boundaries around them. Sometimes that’s why delays are caused.

Other times I would check out physical reasons. Dr. Steven Hodges was on my podcast and he talks all about some surprising physical things that can be going on with a child who’s very delayed toilet learning or having accidents. I would check that out (HERE).

Let’s cover some of the other issues that come up…  School, I want my child to go to this preschool and they have to be potty trained. What do I do? I’ve got to make it happen.

Well, early childhood educators who understand child development, which they all should, know that there isn’t a hard line between children who can and can’t go on the potty. It’s a process. Again, not a linear process either. I have found that most schools are a little more open than they may present themselves to be. But if this school or care situation absolutely isn’t and you really need your child to go there, I would consider a couple of things.

One, I would consider if you could do fewer hours. Because oftentimes even a child’s who is potty trained will hold. Especially if they didn’t come to potty training of their own volition completely, they will hold while they’re at school. While that may be okay for a few hours, we don’t want that to be for the full day ideally.

If you’re really concerned and you need to make a deadline in terms of your child being potty trained, I would still, instead of trying to make it happen or coax it to happen or use rewards and bribes and all of that stuff, pitting yourself against your child —  we accidentally do that when we use those kind of tactics. It’s a kind way of doing it but we’re still saying: Okay, I want you to do something for me so I’m going to do something for you. And it becomes about us. But what we can do is still work with our child on the situation by being very honest and open. And then we still have to let go and trust.

I’ve seen this happen with so many families who were, first of all, projecting six months ahead and that interfered with them being able to trust. And then because of that, they got in the way of something that probably could have happened with trust: their child doing this of their own volition. I would partner with my child on this and say:

“There’s this playschool that we want you to go to.” And maybe our child gets to go see it. “We think you’d have so much fun, that you’d really love it. The only thing about it is the children there, they go on the potty. So we would love to try to help you go on the potty so that you can go there. Please let us know if there’s anything we can do that would help make it easier for you.”

At that point, I would still let go. I know it’s going to be very, very scary to let go but that’s the best chance that we have, I believe, of getting what we want and still allowing our child to reap the benefits.

Now let’s say that we have been leading toilet training… I hear from a lot of parents who are having difficulties and it’s not working and their child seems to be resisting. What can they do to turn this around? And really it’s simple. Let go, trust your child, let them know honestly that you realize that you’ve been trying to get them going with potty training but you realize that they are totally capable of doing this. You know they will when they’re ready. “Just please let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.” And that’s it. But really letting go, not just saying the words, really trusting.

I think I could do a whole series on this topic because there’s a lot to say but I’ll just leave it there for today. Again, this isn’t the only way. It’s the way that I believe in 100%. Thank you so much for listening.

For more, please check out the posts and all the podcasts on my website. They’re all categorized by topic and you should be able to find whatever you’re looking for. There are many of them there.

I have a piece called Three Reasons Kids Don’t Need Potty Training, and that will fill in some things that I talked about today.

Also, if you’re not aware of my books, please check them out. They’re bestsellers on Amazon: No Bad Kids, Toddler Discipline Without Shame and Elevating Child Care, A Guide To Respectful Parenting.  They’re available on audio at audible.com and you can get one for free by using a link in the liner notes of this podcast. You can also get them in paperback at Amazon and in ebook at Amazon, Google Play, Barnes and Noble, and apple.com. And if you find this podcast helpful, you can help it to continue by giving it a positive review on iTunes and by supporting my sponsors.

Thank you again. We can do this.

The post Potty Learning – How and Why to Let Children Lead the Way appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “It Had to Be You – The Struggles and Joys of Raising a Child with Disabilities (with Loryn Brantz)”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury, welcome to Unruffled. Today I have a very special guest joining me, her name is Loryn Brantz. She’s a bestselling board book author and illustrator for children, including her latest which is It Had to Be You. She writes for a popular online website and she creates comics. She also shares uniquely uplifting posts on social media about her journey as a mom of a daughter with disabilities. I’m so touched by the beautiful faith that she has in her daughter. She embodies everything that I admire and aspire to as a parent and a person, and I know you’ll be inspired by her too.

Hi Loryn, thank you so much for being here.

Loryn Brantz:  Thanks for having me.

Janet Lansbury:  Well, as you know, I discovered you through the interview that you did with Humans of New York, which was so inspiring, and it felt like something that every parent should read and be aware of because of the attitude that you’ve developed about being a parent, and your child, and your relationship with her. So I was hoping that maybe you could start with sharing some of your story, and whatever feels important to share with another parent that might be experiencing something similar.

Loryn Brantz:  Yeah. I like to preface anything I say with, I think a lot of parents with children with disabilities will relate to this, the way I feel all the time, my life is so chaotic, you know when you wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and you’re just a little like you could fall over at any moment, I feel like that all the time, so please excuse anything I say that’s a little off because I’m just almost in survival mode.

Janet Lansbury:  Well, that’s hard in itself.

Loryn Brantz:  It is, it’s a lot, but it has its benefits too. So a little bit about Dalia and how she came to be, I think I said in the interview with Humans of New York that I knew something wasn’t right, right away. I looked down and I was like, “I think my daughter has some kind of syndrome.” And everyone thought I was crazy, they were just like, “Oh, she was born a little early, so that’s what preemies look like,” and yada yada, and the pediatricians said, “She looks fine to us.”

But at the hospital, she couldn’t latch on, and I had so many ideas about what parenthood would be like and what kind of parent I would be. I was hellbent on breastfeeding, I was going to breastfeed, my baby’s going to have breast milk, that’s the plan.

And even at the hospital, there’s a point where they said, “Oh, you’re not making that much yet, we usually give the baby a little formula,” and I said, “Oh, okay, I guess that’s okay.” And then fast forward a few months later, she wouldn’t drink anything, and I was trying to, I put maple syrup in formula, because I was like, I will do anything for you to get some sort of nutrition in your body. It’s amazing the stories we tell ourselves of how things are going to be, and then how things can actually be when you experience them.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah, and I mean, there is grief in all of those things. Even if we don’t have the kind of birth we want to have, there’s a sense of loss in those experiences.

Loryn Brantz:  Yeah, there’s an expectation, and then there’s a reality. So we got home, and a couple of days later, she was having trouble feeding and I thought, oh, I’m going to feed her in the middle of the night by myself. My husband had been helping, I had been pumping, and she choked on the milk and turned blue, actually choked on it. And then I felt like I knew something was really wrong.

But we were also in that newborn phase, and I had never had a child before so I was like, I know it’s supposed to be hard, maybe it’s just really hard. And so we started asking the pediatrician, then having breastfeeding consultants come over, and the whole thing, and as time progressed, noticing that she wasn’t really holding her head up, or this or that.

And a lot of this… I didn’t know exactly what to expect. I hadn’t even really held a baby until I had my daughter. I thought she felt floppy, but I brought her to a pediatrician and I said, “I think she feels floppy, but I haven’t really held many babies,” and he was like, “Oh, she’s just premature.” So a lot of it was chalked up to her being premature at first.

Eventually, our newborn phase was so difficult because she really couldn’t drink, and I was buying every bottle and thing on the market to try to get her to have anything, and eventually, I figured out I could get her to eat a little bit if she was half asleep in my arms. So I was rocking her 24/7, drip-feeding one ounce an hour, and there wasn’t a lot of time in between to figure out what was actually going on.

My husband was really on the hunt for what was happening, and we were hiring women to help at night because we were so tired and delirious, and this night nurse said, “This isn’t parenthood, this is torture.” And I was like, “Excuse me?” And it broke my heart into a million pieces, I really started to realize something was definitely wrong.

There was another night nurse that was so nice and she said, “You need to take your daughter to the hospital right now, just tell them she’s having seizures, and then they’ll take you in.” Because otherwise if you go in, “We think something’s wrong, but I don’t know,” you always end up with no answers. So she was like, “Just tell them she had a seizure so that they actually look at her,” and I said, “Oh, okay, I guess we really need to do this.”

So we did go to a specialist’s and they ended up sending us around town to different doctors, and we ended up at a geneticist. Stop me at any time, I feel like I’m just talking on and on, it’s a really long story.

Janet Lansbury:  No, no, no, not at all, please, just let go of that thought, this is absolutely important and helpful for parents to hear.

Loryn Brantz:  Yeah, so I think she was three and a half months when we went to the geneticist, and before this even happened we already had started early intervention because the feeding and everything was so hard, and the specialist came and was like, “Oh yeah, there’s definitely something very wrong,” and we were like, “Okay, thanks, what do we do?”

So the geneticist very quickly discovered she has trisomy 14 mosaicism, and this is something that there are only 50 cases of in the world. There aren’t really any answers.

I’ll never forget my husband, he left work early and he was crying, he said, “I have to talk to you, we just found out Dalia has trisomy 14 mosaicism,” and I was like, “Oh my gosh, is it fatal? You’re crying.” And he said, “Not that I know of.” And I was like, “Is she in immediate danger?” And he said, “No.”

And I said, “Okay, we’ll figure it out. Everything’s okay, she just has this diagnosis and we have to look into it.”

And it’s kind of mysterious. The thing about when your child is diagnosed is something that no one’s ever really seen much of before, there’s really no roadmap for it. So we went on these deep dives, my husband especially went crazy finding every person ever diagnosed on the planet, and he actually even, he got a friend’s doctor credentials to get into medical journals so he could read real medical journals about it, and everything, so he got really deep in all of that.

Meanwhile, I was just trying to keep our head above water, keep Dalia alive, do all her therapies with her. And I do attribute a lot of my blase reaction to everything… my dad has Tourette syndrome and he’s a surgeon, he’s a doctor, he’s one of only two surgeons ever to have Tourette syndrome. So in my house, big diagnoses and syndromes and stuff were never really… it’s like, oh yeah, he has Tourette’s syndrome, but I never really thought of it as a bad thing, and I figured, well, a diagnosis is a diagnosis, you just have to see how the kid actually is, and I was just eternally optimistic.

We were very lucky in that Dalia was an early smiler, so even though she didn’t crawl or lift her head or clap or talk, or this or that, she was smiling. And I just felt like, I don’t really care if she meets these milestones as long as she’s happy, and she seems happy to me.

Eventually, she started eating. I think a lot of parents with kids with disabilities would also understand that she took so long to do anything at all, like be able to lift her arms, so that when she was able to it’s so exciting, it just makes all those moments so much more thrilling. She picks up a fork and I start to cry because she’s had to work so hard to do all these things — because of the hypotonia and the muscle weakness. It’s just a really amazing thing to watch.

So anyway, she’s almost a year old and suddenly she starts growing really fast, off the charts, and something about trisomy 14 is that you’re generally small, the people that have had it are very, very small. So we’re like, what is happening? Are we missing something?

And we actually pushed the geneticist to do further testing because we felt like there was more to it, and we were right. She had Soto syndrome, and again we almost went through the whole process of discovering it and acceptance again. I was actually kind of relieved because I felt like there’s so many more people with Sotos, even though it is very rare. I immediately joined this Facebook group for Soto syndrome, and all these kids kind of look like Dalia, and it was just so nice to have a community and see the potential of how she could be and just know more about it. There’s a very wide spectrum of outcomes, you can be anywhere from just really tall and kind of odd and not great at coordination and this or that, to not able to feed or anything. So I’m just so grateful every day to have her be able to do anything.

We have a toy set where she plays with groceries and I’m like, she can bag groceries right now and she’s only two and a half! So I feel good about her future. I’ve never been the kind of person to measure success in life by the typical: money, power, whatever, so I’m happy if she’s happy and is able to enjoy life. And she seems happy and can enjoy life, so we’re just doing our thing.

Janet Lansbury:  You’ve got something that is what my mentor Magda Gerber used to recommend to every parent, which is to enjoy what your child is doing, enjoy what they’re doing right now, instead of focusing on trying to get them to do more or different. Embrace the child you have, because the messages that you give your child by doing that, and it sounds like you do it naturally, are just so healing and empowering and confidence building. It actually helps for them to do more because they don’t feel that stress coming from you around it. They don’t feel that pressure coming from us as parents.

Loryn Brantz:  That’s definitely how I was raised. I come from a family of people with delays. I walked late, I talked late, and my parents just weren’t worried, they were like, “Oh, she’s observing.” And I walk now, and I came around, so I had high hopes to not be really fixated on those sort of things when my daughter was born. Of course, after we joined early intervention I have three specialists to date coming in every day to tell me what she should be doing at any given moment, so the pressure is always on, but I try to take it in stride because I know that people can be capable of so many things, even if they get a slow start or have crazy diagnoses or syndromes.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah, it sounds like you’re compartmentalizing that they’re just doing their job, which is to say “this is what we want to happen,” but that doesn’t mean that you have to embrace that attitude.

Loryn Brantz:  Yeah, we try to do everything we possibly can to help her reach her potential, so therapy is all day every day, I do them with her almost always, I’ve been really lucky my employer is flexible with my time, and just going with her and celebrating the little milestones that she makes.

Janet Lansbury:  Well, what you’re sharing in every way is so amazing. I told you also that I love your Instagram series on children bonding with different objects, holding onto certain random objects, and some of them are so fun, and you got submissions from all these people, right?

Loryn Brantz:  Yeah, people have just been responding with their own stories, and they’re all so cute and funny. I’m just saving them all up and going to keep sharing them. Dalia, if you give her a new object, like I remember the first time she got a kiwi, she had this huge smile on her face. She was so excited and carried it around for a day. Kids are funny.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah, I mean, they see the beauty in things. They see the specialness in things that we just don’t. And the way that you were able to find humor and help people find humor in a way that’s so delighting in children, the fondness for them that comes through that.  Instead of that really common way to laugh about children that’s not respectful, that’s laughing at them for having strong feelings about things that we wouldn’t have strong feelings about and being upset, or laughing because we’re doing silly things to them to get a reaction. People that know me know I’m very against that stuff and I’m told I have no sense of humor when I say that that’s not okay. But what you’re doing is, to me, the opposite, it’s delighting in children. It’s seeing ourselves in them. And I think anything that helps us to relate and see the humor and that adoring laughter around them is-

Loryn Brantz:  Yeah, it’s so important to laugh with your child and not at them. I have a really clear memory from when I was a little kid. We were at the nursery at the hospital, because my dad was working there, and one of the nurses was showing me the baby, and I thought she was offering me the baby to hold, so I put my arms out, and she laughed so hard and I was so embarrassed. I remember feeling humiliated. And in retrospect, she probably just thought it was really cute and was laughing, but I think about that and I try to make sure that when I laugh at what Dalia’s doing it’s more with her and appreciating her. And I tell her that. So I’m not making fun of her, because they really, they get it, they’ll understand if you tell them.

Janet Lansbury:  They feel what you’re seeing in them. It sounds like all along you have seen her as a capable person with these disabilities. Everything I’ve seen you post shows that you see her that way. So that’s what she feels, that’s what she feels about herself, that she is a person who’s capable and can do things, and she’s just going to keep trying, and not that you’re pitying her or feeling like she can’t do it anything and you’ve got to do it all for her. That outlook is just invaluable.

Loryn Brantz:  Totally, I’ve always felt like she’s a little person and I respect her, and I talk to her the way I would talk to a friend that I respect. It’s so important to treat her kids with respect, and then they become little respectable humans.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah, and you always hold the space for her to show you that, that she can do things, and that she’s… I don’t know, it’s hard for me to explain in words what comes across from you in the way that you see her and your relationship with her, but that’s really what I was so struck with that made me want to have you here to share with us, or just for me to spend time with you, to be honest.

Loryn Brantz:  Thank you. When I talked to Humans of New York I did not expect the huge reaction that it got at all, I was just telling our story, and I was so happy to share it. So many parents with kids with disabilities reached out to me to say it’s hard for them to put into words why people shouldn’t feel sorry for them, or this or that, and they felt like I expressed it, and it’s something they can point to. It was just so meaningful. I didn’t realize that it would be so helpful, so I’m really glad. I’m just really glad it all worked out like that.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah, it absolutely is helpful. And this part where you said, “Everything in my life just makes it seem like I meant for this child,” that acceptance that you have of her, that’s where everything stems from for a child, that we want the child we have, we accept the child we have, and it’s not easy for most of us. Maybe it’s easier for you, but parents struggle with that. No matter what the issues are with their child. They could be a very typically developing child that just has personality issues that the parent is not happy with, maybe because it’s showing them something about themselves.

Loryn Brantz:  True, yeah. I think people have a natural level of optimism and acceptance, and I’ve been lucky to be that way. At my wedding my dad was talking about how I could take care of a pet rock. I love people and things, and I knew I would love whatever my child is like, but then meeting her in person really drove it home how everything… it just makes sense.

Janet Lansbury:  And that is the formula for happiness as a parent, that you accept and actually genuinely enjoy your child for who they are. And that we feel that way about ourselves too, which maybe has to come first, I don’t know. Or maybe it can go the other way, that our child inspires us to accept ourselves more.

Loryn Brantz:  Yeah. We’ve just been talking on my Instagram page about body positivity and how we show that to our kids, and then they can take it in to themselves. I know a lot of moms have been commenting that they accepted themselves more after having a child because you see yourself through their eyes, and my daughter doesn’t think that my pants are making me look bad, or this or that, she just wants to hug me, and I’m her squishy, warm mom. All the body stuff can get very minimized in the process of becoming a mom.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah, I think you’re talking about what children teach us: that things that we thought maybe mattered don’t matter at all.

And then you’ve got this book! You had another book before this newest one?

Loryn Brantz:  Yes, I have a couple of baby books. Feminist Baby, my first baby board book, it’s about a feminist baby.

Janet Lansbury:  Was that before you became a mom?

Loryn Brantz:  It is, and I can tell you how I thought of it because it was a very specific moment in time also. I was looking for a baby shower present for my friend, and I went to Barnes & Noble and I asked, “Oh where’s the feminism for baby section?” And they were like, “That’s not a thing,” and I was like, oh my God. So I literally ran home and drew it and wrote it within a few hours, I was so excited.

Janet Lansbury:  Oh cool, I want to see that.

Loryn Brantz:  Yeah, and other than A is for Activist (which is an amazing book), it’s the first feminist-focused baby book ever, which I’m really proud of. And a lot of other people were looking for that, because it did pretty well.

Janet Lansbury:  And then you’ve got this book called It Had to Be You, and it’s about your experience with your daughter, right?

Loryn Brantz:  Yeah, it’s so many things, not just the journey of meeting her and how unique she is and how it felt like it had to be her, but even the process to getting pregnant. We had infertility issues. I had a miscarriage. And it’s just such a long journey to parenthood sometimes, and the way you meet your child, getting to know them, and realizing that it’s so meant to be, is what inspired it. I actually wrote it shortly after she started taking a few steps, and I was just feeling really inspired and amazed. We worked so hard to get her to be able to do that.

Janet Lansbury:  Because you were told she might not, right?

Loryn Brantz:  Oh yeah. I love her therapists. I genuinely think of them as angels sent to earth to help her, they’ve just been helping us all through the way.  But when she was really little and we were trying to get her to crawl, we were very worried parents, we’d ask, “Do you think she’ll walk?” They’d be like, “Well, I’ve seen miracles happen, so it’s possible.” That is not what I wanted to hear, but I guess it’s better than having too high expectations. But yeah, we didn’t know.

Janet Lansbury:  So then you were surprised when she actually did it on her own?

Loryn Brantz:  Yeah, the process to getting her to crawl was excruciating in a lot of ways. Therapy, it’s really hard work for the babies, and she’d be crying, and we’re really just holding her in positions, they’re not painful positions, it’s just a position she doesn’t want to be in, her arms don’t really go that direction, but just holding her arm gently in a position where she’d be screaming, and we kept having to do it until it got more comfortable.

Janet Lansbury:  So just in small doses.

Loryn Brantz:  Yeah, small doses every day. Of course, once she’s able to start doing things she’s so much happier, but the process is so exhausting. I didn’t know if she was going to crawl, it was really hard to get her even into that doggy position, but little by little. I see my friends, they post on Instagram, “Woke up and my kids crawling today,” or, “Looked over and my kids standing up,” and I’m like, wow, what does that feel like? A lot of the getting Dalia to crawl and walk was with snacks. I’d have a fanny pack with Cheerios in it and I’d be like, “If you can get to me, here’s a Cheerio,” which is not something I ever wanted to do as a parent, and it to me seemed like maybe some food issues would come up, but it was the best thing to get her moving. And she doesn’t seem to have food issues now, but she was really little, a lot littler when this happened.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah, I think if you’re just using it for that kind of thing, you’re not bribing her to be nice to you, or anything.

Loryn Brantz:  Yeah, no, it was a very different experience.

Janet Lansbury:  Very different. But yeah, we also see our children struggling to gain those motor skills, but it’s like nothing compared to the struggle that Dalia’s had to endure. Children, it’s not that they want to be uncomfortable, but they want to push through, and sometimes there is struggle involved, but also they don’t expect life to be easy. They come in expecting whatever happens, and then that teaches them what to expect, and they can really inspire us that way, that they keep going and keep trying.

Loryn Brantz:  And her therapists were so helpful with that, we were so lucky. Her physical therapist is a very strong person. It was really hard for me as a mom to see her struggle, hear her crying, and she would just be like, “This is good for her, I promise, this is normal, this is what happens when we do physical therapy,” and a lot of times I would just hide during the sessions because I just couldn’t handle seeing her struggle.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah, you adore her, it’s clear, you’re totally smitten with her.

Loryn Brantz:  And it’s funny, she’s done so much physical therapy and all this stuff growing up that she loves working out now, and anytime she sees anyone working out anywhere she goes over and tries to mimic what they’re doing. She loves little classes and exercises. It’s just a part of her nature because she’s so used to having to work out a bunch of times a day.

Janet Lansbury:  What’s most challenging right now?

Loryn Brantz:  Most challenging…  we just got through a bunch of health scares that were different than what we were used to, which is more neurological, motor skills, and this sort of stuff. She had TEC, which is she wasn’t making hemoglobin on her own. I did find those health scares and struggles a lot more difficult to deal with than what we’ve dealt with before. We’re always worried something’s going to come up because she has such unusual genetic makeup, and we don’t really know what to expect.

But other than that she’s doing great, she’s making oxygen again herself, so we’re really happy, and I think the health stuff is so much scarier. Even if she wasn’t able to walk, as long as it seems like she’s feeling good, that would be fine, but health danger is really scary.

Janet Lansbury:  Of course, yeah.

Loryn Brantz:  You know, this good with this bad… I think a good microcosm I could relate it to (I was just thinking about this), is like when you get a cold. I always forget what a cold feels like until I have one and then I feel like: oh my gosh, this is the worst, I should really appreciate it more when I’m feeling healthy. Parenting a child with disabilities or health problems, it’s like that. When she’s feeling good, those days are so much more meaningful and happy and exciting. I’m just over the moon just to walk with her, smiling, it just amplifies everything.

Janet Lansbury:  The gratitude.

Loryn Brantz:  Yeah, the gratitude is huge.

Janet Lansbury:  Well, I’ll be thinking good thoughts for you, and I hope we do keep in touch. I’m reminded of… I think my favorite part of your book…  you say at the end, “For every one of our wishes, for every bump along the way, now that you’re here, we’ve known all along, it had to be you.” I love that you acknowledge that it’s not easy, and there are bumps, and it’s not just all this perfect, magical-

Loryn Brantz:  Yeah. It had to be this, whatever this is, it had to be this, had to be you.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah, and it had to be the bumps, those were part of it, not something to forget or put away or see as something we should feel bad about, you know?

Loryn Brantz:  Exactly. You know, my dad is one of my heroes, and I always thought of his Tourette’s as almost a good thing, I just think it’s amazing, I know it’s really hard on him in a lot of ways, and it’s hard in society, like people give him looks and stuff when we’re walking, but just everything he’s overcome, and the way he is, it’s kind of how I see Dalia. I see her disabilities and her uniqueness as part of what makes her so amazing and special, and anything she does is going to be even more amazing because of everything she’s had to go through to get there.

Janet Lansbury:  Wow. All right, you’re going to leave me in tears of gratitude for you, and yeah, just the beauty of you. So you take care of your beautiful family, I know you will, and it sounds like you’re all really blessed to have each other. Thank you so much for being here to talk to me today.

Loryn Brantz:  Thank you so much for having me.

Loryn’s wonderful new children’s book, It Had to Be You is available HERE. You can learn more about her at her website lorynbrantz.com. I also recommend following Loryn on Instagram and Facebook!

And please check out some of the other podcasts on my website, janetlansbury.com. There are many of them, and they’re all indexed by subject and category so you should be able to find whatever topic you might be interested in. Both of my books are available in paperback at Amazon: No Bad Kids, Toddler Discipline Without Shame and Elevating Child Care, A Guide To Respectful Parenting.  You can get them in eBook at Amazon, Apple, Google Play or barnesandnoble.com, and in audio at Audible.com. Actually, you can get a free audio copy of either book at Audible by following the link in the liner notes of this podcast.

Thank you so much for listening and all your kind support. We can do this.

The post It Had to Be You – The Struggles and Joys of Raising a Child with Disabilities (with Loryn Brantz) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “How to Stop Feeling Frustrated by Your Child’s Behavior – A Family Success Story”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today, I’m excited to share a success story that a parent submitted to me. And honestly, it seems like a gold mine. I think a lot of people will relate to this and benefit from it. This mother discusses what she calls a very frustrating and triggering behavior by her three-and-a-half-year-old child that kept continuing, no matter what the parents did, they got very stern in their responses and it didn’t help. And then it got to the point where when they confronted their boy about it, he lied, which was even more concerning. This parent shares how they were finally able to understand and reframe the situation and turn it into a success for all concerned, including their son who was able to own and celebrate his own successful part in it. \

Okay. So, here is this letter that I’m looking forward to sharing with you:

Hi, Janet. I’m writing to share a recent success story that came out of your teaching and approach to working with small children. This was just one little win but it’s part of the bigger success that our family is having since we’ve started trying to model our parenting after the approach you teach.

My three-and-a-half-year-old son recently started a new, very frustrating, and triggering to us, behavior. He is fully potty trained but still uses a portable potty that is in a corner of the living room because the bathroom is on a different level of the home. After he uses the potty, he knows to go into the kitchen to wash his hands and we help him with this. About two weeks ago, he started a new thing where he will run as fast as he can to get into the kitchen ahead of us. And then he touches beverages, cans of seltzer, and protein shakes that are on a shelf a few feet away from the sink with his dirty hands. He especially does it if he has just pooped.

Both my husband and I reacted strongly to this the first couple of times he did it, out of instinct. It’s gross. And it seems to have inadvertently reinforced the behavior. Since then, my husband especially has gotten very stern with him about it, raising his voice at times and repeating, “Do not touch the drinks with dirty hands,” et cetera, many times. And the problem continued.

Dad tends to take the majority of the evening poops. So, I was kind of letting him handle it but was thinking perhaps it was time to move the drinks off the shelf to remove the temptation altogether. Not thinking I could necessarily stop or fix the behavior until it had run its course.

Then the other night, this drama played out again, while I listened from the living room with our five-month-old. This time, my son had already touched the drinks when my husband arrived. He asked, “Did you touch the drinks,” knowing full well that he had. And my son said, “No.”

My husband got sterner and angrier, “Why are you lying to me?” My son said, “I’m not,” et cetera, and it spiraled with both of them getting more and more upset.

We both had felt frustrated but unconcerned about the initial behavior. It seemed obviously something he was doing, almost compulsively because it pushed our buttons. But this was the first time our son had ever directly lied to one of us. And my husband seemed concerned and hurt.

After bedtime, I Googled, “Janet Lansbury Lying,” and immediately found a blog post and a podcast. The first paragraph of the blog post hit me like a ton of bricks: “As the leader in our parent-child relationship, I would take it upon myself to discern how I had made the truth feel unsafe or uncomfortable for my child.”

It was immediately so clear that our reactions and, in particular, my husband’s escalating sternness about the behavior was making my son feel unsafe and uncomfortable and probably increasing his compulsive urge to do the behavior again. When called out about it, he felt scared so he lied.

I shared this with my husband, reading him excerpts. He got it right away too. We had a really productive conversation.

The next day after my son used the potty, my husband completely changed tactics. He said, “Hey buddy, when we’re done here, it will be time to go wash your hands. I know you sometimes touch the cans with your dirty hands and maybe you don’t know why but I’m going to help you not to touch the cans.” And they went in together and then, amazingly, my son was suddenly incredibly proud of himself. “Mama. I washed my hands and I didn’t touch the cans.'”

The next day he, again, didn’t touch the cans and he brought it up spontaneously later that evening. And even the next day, “I didn’t touch the cans!”

We often talk about our favorite part of the day during dinner and one night his favorite part was, “I washed my hands and didn’t touch the cans!”

He and his dad also had a conversation about lying but I think we all feel clear now that lying was really not the issue here. My kid got caught in a loop that he did not want to be in. And when we reacted un-thoughtfully, we made it so much worse. By stepping back and hitting reset on our understanding of the behavior and approach to it, we got dramatic and immediate improvement in both the problem behavior and we’ve honestly had a little boost in our kiddos overall cooperativeness and mood over the subsequent days. While this was a small thing, it gives me confidence that we can figure things out in general.

Thanks also for the help you provided during this spring when my second son was born. My oldest had a very, very hard time. He never expressed anger or negativity toward the baby, just aloofness. And he seemed very, very sad and was very, very difficult to handle for about two months. Daily, enormous explosive tantrums, extreme defiance, and a generally sour mood all day and night.

Initially, we were tired and frustrated by him and I think I was distracted by worries that he was a sad kid. Daycare and some family members started viewing and describing him as having behavioral problems, tantrum problems, et cetera. Basically, being a troubled kid. And I honestly started to wonder also. But then thank goodness, I got back on the Unruffled wagon and it helped reset my approach. I reflected on all he’d been through over the past year.

Besides his new brother, he had lived with his grandparents for two months in spring 2020 during the pandemic because my husband and I were on the COVID front lines. Then those same grandparents had moved across the country and he didn’t see them for over a year. Then I got pregnant and didn’t feel well for several months.

When it hit me how hard his year had been, I literally wept for him. A bunch of times. We are so lucky to have been safe and secure and we have a lot of privilege and good things in our lives but I realized that from his tiny perspective, that didn’t mean life was easy. I couldn’t believe how blind to his burdens I’d been. Reflecting on his tiny grief, created so much compassion for him inside of me. Again, I shared and discussed it with my partner.

Instead of trying to minimize, avoid or shorten his tantrums, we started letting him rage and storm, letting the tantrums explode and last as long as they needed. And suddenly we found that often it would end with a huge squeezy hug initiated by him. It was definitely not as instantaneous as the other story I shared but we eventually got through it. And I think he learned that we’ll always be there for him.

Things aren’t perfect by any means but it was so, so, so hard for a while. And now, we’re all okay. And really, truly, it’s because of you and your podcast. I am one million times a better parent than I would be without this approach. So, thank you. Thank you.

Wow. So, these parents blow me away because of their openness and because of how quickly they were able to shift. That’s not typical. Everything they were going through I can relate to and I’m sure a lot of parents will — the way they were perceiving their son and his feelings and his behavior. It is par for the course for almost every parent I’ve worked with including myself.

And sometimes I feel like I am kind of a broken record with talking about this transition of becoming a sibling. But honestly, I think we can’t hear enough times how difficult that transition is for a child. I’ve heard of children that have to put their emotions underground for a while or feel they have to because they feel wrong for having them. So they suppress them. But I’ve never heard of a child who just went smoothly through this. And it doesn’t make sense that they would, right? Because they’re human and it’s a huge change and it’s a scary one. Somebody else taking my parents’ love, being adorable and sweet and vulnerable when I don’t always feel that way as a three-and-a-half-year-old. It’s very scary and throws a child off balance.

And so, there are two common ways that children express these feelings or show us they have these feelings. And this parent is describing both of those.

The first is these strong, overwhelming feelings that can seem to come out of nowhere. And the second is: I’m just a little out of myself and I’m doing these kooky things. I’m off balance. I can’t control my impulses. I’m thrown off.

And his parents say there have been other changes in his life too. So yeah, it makes sense. And I guess the reason I keep emphasizing that is that it’s so common. So many of the parents that reach out to me, this issue is behind it — some kind of major transition and often it is the transition to a new baby in the house.

This little toddler at three-and-a-half is still kind of a baby himself in terms of his ability to understand what’s going on with him and definitely to have that self-control and emotional self-regulation. It’s almost impossible in a time like this for a child this age to behave calmly and the way we want him to all the time.

So the first thing I want to talk about… Well, first, again, I laud these parents. They’re very insightful. They’re obviously open-minded, willing to self-reflect, consider. All of that flexibility and openness and really the self-compassion it takes to let ourselves go there is really important and can be challenging for a lot of us. So, all of that is what made it possible for the parents to make these changes so quickly or even in the time that they did.

And let’s talk first about the behavior with the dirty hands. So, yes, the parents were seeing this as most of us would as this annoying thing. Why does he keep doing this? But even then, she said that they realized that they were probably making it worse because they had these very normal instinctive reactions to what he was doing. Then their child is feeling that… what she calls “frustrating and triggering to us,” which is making him more uncomfortable and making it harder for him to control this impulse.

He doesn’t want to keep going there but he keeps going there, right?

So, it sounds like this little boy’s dad… Yeah, he’s doing normal things like getting more and more stern, right? What’s the matter with this guy? It’s not like we’re asking him to do something difficult.

But right now at this moment, it is difficult. It’s impossible, in fact. He’s showing that it’s almost impossible for him to stop this.

So, then the whole situation got amplified when the dad asked, “Did you touch the drinks,” knowing full well that he had. And she says, “My son said, ‘No.’ My husband got sterner and angrier. Now, our child is lying to us.”

That feels really scary and bad because we’re seeing it that way and we’re trying to approach the situation with reason. But behaviors in young children, those kinds of concerning behaviors very seldom have anything to do with our child being in a reasonable place. In a reasonable place, he wouldn’t do that. There’s no joy in it. There’s no fun in it. Children don’t want to annoy us and feel like we’re against them. That’s really scary. What they do want is to be seen and helped in their awkwardness and their impulsivity and their overwhelm. And that’s what these parents came to, ultimately.

Then this mother nails it here. She said, “Our reactions were making my son feel unsafe and uncomfortable and probably increasing his compulsive urge to do the behavior again. When called out about it, he felt scared. So, he lied.”

The fact that these parents are both working as a team here is also incredible that they are discussing and uniting in what they’re doing and not every parent has a partner like that, I realize. So, this is an incredibly positive gift that they do have that.

If a parent doesn’t, then they can still be that parent that does see the child, even if the other parent doesn’t. To have one parent that sees you and wants to help is enough.

And so, that was the big transition that these parents made. They went from seeing this as something reasonable: He was just defying them and needed to be talked to about it again and again. They’ve reframed this as Oh, he needs help. Behavior like this is a call for help.

So the parents realized: Oh, he’s not in control of this in any way. There’s too much energy around this. There’s too much discomfort around this behavior and he can’t stop. It’s like uncomfortable power in it that he needs to keep tapping into, but he doesn’t want to be that guy. No child does.

So when they reframe this as help, then the dad does this amazing, amazing thing. And it actually makes me want to cry.

“Hey buddy, when we’re done here, it will be time to go wash your hands. I know you sometimes touch the cans with your dirty hands and maybe you don’t know why but I’m going to help you not to touch the cans.”

So, right there, instead of being against me as a child, I feel this enormous sense of relief. Oh, my dad sees me. He’s on my side. He wants to help. We’re on the same team. The relief in that.

Sometimes you can see it in a child. In a way, they did see it in him with all his pride in himself and how he immediately was able to see this whole situation differently, because now he has the people he needs most on his side. He’s not being talked to as a bad kid.

I know these parents would never use that word, but it feels confusing and scary when you’re doing something you don’t want to be doing. I don’t know if any parents can relate… Even as adults sometimes when we find ourselves doing that thing that we said: I don’t want to do that anymore. And here I am doing it again. It’s a very scary feeling that we don’t have control of ourselves and that we’re pushing the people we need most away from us and turning them against us.

So in the description of what this dad says… I can feel myself as the child going Phew. Letting go of that fear is what helps a child to be in the part of their brain that can be reasonable because we feel that safety in the relationship with our parents, we feel that connection. And yeah, then being able to celebrate with them, “I didn’t touch the cans!” It’s like the team at the end of the game, celebrating that they won. That’s how it felt for him. We’re a team.

And then the mother, again, nails it when she says, “My kid got caught in a loop that he did not want to be in. And when we reacted un-thoughtfully, we made it so much worse. By stepping back and hitting reset on our understanding of the behavior and approach to it we got dramatic and immediate improvement in both the problem behavior” and their child’s overall cooperativeness and mood. Yep. There’s that relief.

Then this parent says, “While this was a small thing, it gives me confidence that we can figure things out in general.”

Yes. Put that on your refrigerator. Put that in your mind and your heart because I believe that too. These parents turned a big corner here. It wasn’t just about the dirty hands. Now they have the process for every behavior their children will have from here on out and what our children need from it: Help, safety, and connection. We’re on the same team.

So, just talking a bit about this other part that she shared about the emotions. Yeah. So, again, I totally relate to this parent feeling tired and frustrated by her son because he had this aloofness, he seemed so sad and that just cuts us up, right? We’ve had this other baby and now our older child is sad. I had that every time. And every parent I know feels that, because our child has feelings that are very valid, that all children have, as I was saying before. They have some version of this. But we want them to not have those feelings.

If we could reframe that for ourselves into: Here’s this challenging passage in our lives, as a family. Instead of feeling guilt or worry about my child’s process and his feelings here, I’m going to hold space for them because we’re in this passage and there are a lot of feelings in this passage. I’m going to see them as normal. Not just normal, actually as the healthiest thing that could happen and that my child expresses these. If it comes up through behavior, I’m going to help them with the behavior but at the same time, hope that I’m giving the message as much as possible that, yeah, this is what we feel. And giving it to myself too. Because when we’re feeling guilty or worried about our child’s feelings, then every time those feelings show up in some way, it is more triggering. It is scarier for us and harder for us to stay in that safe zone and that trusting letting-the-feelings-be zone.

So, we all have to approach it this way, ideally, as a time of ups and downs and everything in between. And then it gets better.

This parent said he was having behavioral problems at school. People were describing him that way and she started to wonder and worry and was feeling nervous about it, feeling upset about it. And then she reset. She turned that fear into empathy and compassion for her child. “Instead of trying to minimize, avoid or shorten his tantrums, we started letting him rage and storm.”

Yeah. He has a right and a need to express that. Children are better at expressing these things than we are, but we often feel them too.

And they saw that the tantrums would often end with a huge hug and that hug was relief, feeling better. And that gave this parent more confidence in trusting them.

So again, huge kudos to these parents. Thank you so much for letting me share your story. And I hope the story helps other parents in their process as well.

Please check out some of the other podcasts on my website, janetlansbury.com. There are many of them, and they’re all indexed by subject and category so you should be able to find whatever topic you might be interested in. Both of my books are available in paperback at Amazon: No Bad Kids, Toddler Discipline Without Shame and Elevating Child Care, A Guide To Respectful Parenting.  You can get them in eBook at Amazon, Apple, Google Play, or barnesandnoble.com, and in audio at Audible.com. Actually, you can get a free audio copy of either book at Audible by following the link in the liner notes of this podcast.

Thank you so much for listening and for all your kind support. We can do this.

The post How to Stop Feeling Frustrated by Your Child’s Behavior – A Family Success Story appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “Helping Toddlers Get Their Social Mojo Back”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today, I had the idea to try something a little different, going through my inbox and pulling out some of the questions that are in the same vein so that I could do one podcast incorporating several questions. One thing I discovered is that I’m actually really good at making a connection between disparate things, which reminds me of the difficulty I used to have with multiple-choice tests, where I just wanted to say “all of the above” because I could figure out a way to connect all of them. But anyway, I settled on a few questions that I received that are all about transitioning to a new normal, now that, hopefully, the pandemic is mostly behind us and children are starting to socialize again. We’re all starting to socialize again, and there’s some difficulty children are having in the transition.

Okay. So, I’m going to start by reading one of the emails I received. So, here we go:

Hi, Janet. Thank you for all of your work. I’ve read your books and learned so much from your podcast. My question has to do with having a COVID baby. My son was just six weeks old when our region went into the first complete lockdown. We’ve worked hard to keep him safe. I was planning to go back to work part time when he was 12 weeks old, but was able to stay home with him full-time in response to the pandemic. We have seen close friends out of doors and at a distance periodically and regularly FaceTimed with family, both for our own sanity and to share him with the people we love in a way that felt safe. Now that all adults in our sphere are fully vaccinated, we are moving towards ‘normal socializing.’

I took him to see my family for the first time, since he was two weeks old. And what became clear is that while he is very social and outgoing from a distance, he seems deeply distressed by another adult touching or holding him. He’s 16 months old and I know that separation anxiety is normal for a child his age, and that it is likely exacerbated by his experience of isolation due to the pandemic. My question has to do with how to best think about supporting him. It seems to me that the situation calls for a nexus of two positions from your work. One, asking a child and respecting their response when a relative or other person wants to hold them and politely declining if your child indicates no. And two, having a boundary and allowing for and welcoming the feelings your child has about that boundary, without changing said boundary.

My family and my mental health need for me to go back to work part time. What does it look like to introduce a babysitter or daycare to a child who is frightened of being touched by another adult? What kind of balance should I strive for between respecting his consent, regarding being touched by another adult, and considering having another caretaker as a need of our family and therefore, a boundary?

On our visit to my family, I really tried to stay very calm, warmly encouraging, and empathetic when he was freaking out about being touched to avoid giving him the message that he was correct and needed me to swoop in and rescue him. By the end of the four day visit, he actually reached his arms up once to my mom and once to my sister, requesting to be picked up when he realized that I wasn’t in the room with him and got scared. It seemed like he realized they would help him by bringing him to me.

They did. I was very encouraged by this. I’m sure I’m not the only parent who has versions of this question. Thank you again for all you do.

Okay. So, one of the things I appreciated about this note and actually all the notes that I’m going to be sharing today is how much these parents get it, at least they get what I’m trying to communicate. Yeah, she nailed it with the nexus of the two positions, respecting our child, and also sometimes having to be the adult that sees beyond what our child wants in that moment and has to have a boundary like, “I need to leave you with this person now.” Children are able to transition into new experiences, but most of them will have some kind of emotional process around that. There are the rare few children that, sure they’ll do something new and not have any uncomfortable feelings about that.

I was not one of those children. I’m still kind of like that. They had a report card in my kindergarten. I remember it was not about letter grades, but there were like three check boxes if you’re able to do something or you’re still struggling to do something, or you are quite capable of doing something. And the one I struggled in was “meets new situations with confidence.” That was something that my teacher noticed was difficult for me. I think I even had that two years running with two different teachers. And that makes sense to me where I am now. I remember being very fearful. I remember having a difficult process around starting a new class. And from what I know about the way I was raised, I was pitied for those feelings and talked out of them somewhat. I didn’t feel empowered in expressing them, that it was normal to have them.

And it really, really is. It’s very normal and expected for even children that might not be considered highly sensitive… life contains so many transitions for them internally, in their family life, and this is another big one that a lot of children are facing. Going back to school, back to play with friends, transitioning to a new caregiver, being around a lot of other people again.

So, I just want to frame this, that, yes, this is absolutely normal and expected for him to be having a transition. And at 16 months old, he’s also at the end of the classic months for separation anxiety. So, there’s that as well.

One thing I zeroed in on is she said, “He seems deeply distressed by another adult touching or holding him.” And I don’t know that I would assume that he’s deeply distressed. Sometimes children, because they do express things so fully, they put it so out there, it does seem like it’s stronger and deeper than it maybe is.

I mean, I’m not saying I know what this boy is feeling, but the way I would perceive it to help him is that he’s just saying, “Hey, I don’t know these people. I don’t want these people to touch me. This is weird. No, I want to stay with you, that you’re the person I’ve been hanging out with all these months.” Oftentimes, children in a transition are seeing those kinds of things and they’re not saying this is such a deeply distressing, scary thing. And why does it matter how we perceive? Because the way we perceive will decide how we feel about it ourselves. If we feel anxious or that he should be okay with all this and what’s wrong with him, if we feel like, “Oh my goodness, he’s deeply distressed and disturbed by this,” then it’s going to be harder for us to do what this parent is actually doing, which is trusting his process.

And that’s what children need from us most, to trust that child’s individual process around this individual situation, and this unique transition. As she said, this is exacerbated by his experience of isolation due to the pandemic. Exactly. So, how do we balance our wish to respect him with also not accommodating, and as she said so well, not giving him the message that he’s correct? That this is a very scary situation that his parent agrees with it by swooping in and rescuing him?

So, finding that balance where we’re being respectful to his wishes, but we’re also not afraid of his feelings, and he has a right to them. Expressing those feelings is exactly how he will get from point A to point B. If he can feel comfortable in that discomfort period, he will transition successfully into this next phase.

The way that would look, she says, “On our visit to my family, I really tried to stay very calm, warmly encouraging, and empathetic when he was freaking out about being touched.”

So, yes, this parent sounds like she’s handling it all brilliantly, empathizing, not in a way that pities, “Oh gosh, you don’t want to be touched,” but, “Wow, yeah, that’s different. She’s touching you, you didn’t like that. Maybe that seemed too soon for you, we’ll give you a little more time.” So, giving him that time, but responding and reflecting his feelings in a way that shows that you expect them, that you welcome them, and you’re interested in them, and you’re not afraid of them. I would know in your heart, he’s going to be able to do this.

She says, “By the end of the four day visit, he actually reached his arms up once to my mom and once to my sister, requesting to be picked up when he realized that I wasn’t in the room with him and got scared. It seemed like he realized they would help him by bringing him to me. They did.”

So, yes, that’s very exciting. That’s just proof he’s on his way and he’s just in the middle right now.

It sounds like this parent really is respecting him and also respecting his process and not approaching it with her own fear and concern that he’s not capable or that it’s never going to happen. So, it will happen. He’s doing it in his small way. And then, yeah, if she needs to leave while she’s with them and go to the bathroom or do something, she should absolutely leave and let him decide whether he wants to go on someone else’s arms. And now that they’ve done this thing where they brought him to her, it’s also fine for them to not bring him to the parent, if she’s busy, especially, but allow him to maybe share his feelings in their arms.

And that’s what I would do if I was a caregiver that was coming in to take care of someone else’s child and the child was left with me. I would want to encourage, rather than discourage the child to feel their feelings. And it can be the hardest thing to do to let them grieve that loss of that person for a few minutes. Yes, it’s their choice to be physically attached to us 24/7 maybe, but that’s not as healthy for us or for them in the relationship. Relationships are about: sometimes we’re together and we’re very together, other times we’re apart. We can be all right that way too. A and he will be, but again, not without a process.

It sounds like it’s going really, really well. So, it’s not something we have to train children to, it’s not something we have to force or try to make happen. I’m not leaving you with them just to test it, I’m leaving because I need to go do something and I’m trusting that you’re with safe people who you do know a little bit. I’m not doing it. As soon as I get there, I’m waiting a little bit for you to get to know them. And I’m being clear, I’m being honest with you.

All of that is part of the respectful piece in this. And I’m letting you decide whether you go close to them or not. That’s where the consent part comes in. So, it should be an organic process. It’s not about training a child or doing something artificial, it’s about living our life with the child.

And when introducing a new caregiver or a childcare, you want to do this very gradually, ideally taking a few days where you were there with the caregiver. It’s even a little more important that this is done carefully with a childcare situation, because that is even more of a transition for a child who now has to go to a different place, be with different people.

If they’re in their home, I would have the person come while you’re there, and they’re following you around, being with you while you care for your child, doing all the things that they would do. This could just be for a part of a day or a few hours.

And then the second day you would maybe leave for a few minutes periodically to do the things you need to do and come back, check on how it’s going, and have the caregiver allow your child to feel however he feels and encourage him to share that, and just be there, allowing the adjustment to go gradually this way.

So, here’s another similar question:

Hello, Janet. My question is about my daughter’s socialization. She is a bright and active child. She started to crawl and walk very early and she was always very curious of other people, then the pandemic happened. We almost completely stopped meeting people and having play dates. After seven months in the pandemic, we started to see a couple of friends for outdoor social distancing play dates, and it all went well. She was 14 months at that time.

In the spring of this year, my husband and I got vaccinated and we started to have a babysitter come over a few hours a few times per week. My daughter adapted quickly and had fun playing with her. Since then, she had a few sitters and other than some separation anxiety at first, it all went well.

However, when we resumed to go to the playground, she started to act frozen and didn’t want to leave my lap for the time we were there. The change in the behavior happened with our baby friend too. She would have a frozen look and would not want to interact for a long time.

A few months ago, we met a new friend with two boys and the first couple of times my daughter just took a long time to be her normal self. But at the last play date, she refused to leave her stroller for the whole time. I felt like she didn’t have any fun. She looked uneasy and almost anxious if the boys would approach.

Whenever we are in an uncomfortable for her social situation, I try to just stay connected to her and do not push her to do anything, offering her activities, snacks, toys, just as I normally would. She’s almost 23 months now and I’m a little worried whether it’s a normal developmental stage or she didn’t have enough social exposure for the past year and developed some anxiety of kids. Should I keep arranging play dates or is it better to avoid the uncomfortable situations? I don’t want to give her anxiety and I’m just wondering if there’s a way to help her enjoy playing with the other children.

Okay. Now I’m going to read one more along those lines:

I have noticed recently that my daughter, 19 months, will freeze up when another child approaches her on the playground. At first, I thought it was due to overstimulation, but it happened this morning when it was only her and one other child. She will freeze and a few minutes later, will break down and sob. Have you seen this before? How can we support her? She’s a pandemic baby, so she hasn’t been around a lot of children, but I don’t see other children behave this way.

Okay. So, both of these are children’s individual transitional processes. And straight out, both I would say sound normal and expected.

So, the first one, all very promising that she got accustomed to the new carers, the new babysitter, had fun with her. So, that’s all a really good sign. This parent says she always had social instincts, always very curious about other people, and she’s still showing that. But then the parent says when they resumed to go to the playground, she started to act frozen. So, that is a child overwhelmed, but overwhelmed in a way that they are still functioning, still taking the situation in.

And one of the differences between an adult who’s a babysitter and a toddler with peers is that peers are very unpredictable. Adults, they’re sensitive to you, their behavior is predictable, it’s calm. When you’re with other children at this age, these children are very surprising. They’re all over the place. They’re not as easy to feel a sense of control around.

So, yeah, it’s a lot to take in and it sounds like that’s what she’s doing when she looks frozen. She’s watching, trying to understand how this goes, how other children behave, and what you can expect from them, and where you fit in with them, and all of those things. So, that is a healthy process.

Lots of children that I’ve worked with in my classes, they take longer. And it doesn’t even mean that they’re “shy” or introverted. Oftentimes, there’re very strong personalities that want to come in to the situation knowing what to do, taking their time, and that’s just smart.

I mean, compared to adults, young children could seem like wild animals to another child. You really don’t know what they’re going to do or where you fit with them right away. So, it makes sense that this maybe will take a little longer for a girl like this who does have social instincts and probably wants to come into the situation with aplomb.

So if she wanted to stay on the parent’s lap, I would have her on my lap and be very comfortable about that. What we want to do again is encourage that process. So, instead of feeling doubt and wanting her to get in there and play or trying to make it happen somehow, better to trust, better to believe in our child, that she’s doing it her way, which is the best way for any child, and let her do it. It sounds like this parent is doing that because she says, “Whenever we are in an uncomfortable for her social situation, I try to just stay connected to her and do not push her to do anything.”

But then she does say she offers her activities, snacks, toys, just as she normally would, and that’s the only part that stuck out for me a little. I love this parent’s attitude about not pushing her to do anything. That’s absolutely the best trusting, most confidence-building attitude we can have with children about just about anything. But I’m not sure why she’s offering her activities and toys when she’s in a situation with other children. Personally, I wouldn’t. I would trust that she’s in a very entertaining, engaging situation, just being in the presence of other children, and that she doesn’t need to be entertained on the side or by me as her parent. So, she can have the choice of: she’s with me, watching, or she’s deciding to step in.  And I think that might actually be a very natural way of encouraging her to step in. If we’re making it fun for her to just stay with us, she has less reason to. And also, it can be distracting her from this work she’s doing.

One of the things I say to parents when their child is the one that’s sitting on their lap and watching, is that child’s learning the most in this situation right now. That child is studying all these other children, learning about them, the kind of learning that will help her to get comfortable and want to take a chance and go join somebody and play.

So that’s a little adjustment I would suggest to this parent that I think will aid in this transition, which is otherwise going very well.

And the fact that she said she played with the boys, and then the last time she refused to leave her stroller. So, yeah, I would just say she chose to stay and that could be a lot of things:

It could be that something happened the last time with those boys that threw her a little off balance and she wants to get a grip on it and learn more and just watch for a bit.

Or it could be that she’s reading something in their energy in that particular day that’s a little different or a little intense. She’s not sure about it.

Or it could be that now, maybe there’s something going on with her and the parent. It’s possible that if the parent is helping entertain her at these times, that she’s reluctant now to let go of the parent and the control that she feels around that.

But again, all of these come from strength, not weakness, not a problem.

The parent said, “I felt like she didn’t have any fun and she looked uneasy and almost anxious if boys would approach.” So, yeah. Fun for young children doesn’t always mean that they’re smiling and laughing and playing. They can have fun learning and watching and studying.

And if she looked anxious if the boys would approach, I would be there for her, just be ready in case they reached out and touched her and she didn’t want that.

This parent’s ultimate concern is, she said, “She’s almost 23 months now and I’m a little worried whether it’s a normal developmental stage or she didn’t have enough social exposure for the past year and developed some anxiety of kids.” So, I wouldn’t guess she has anxiety of kids, unless it’s just like the normal… yeah, it’s a little scary, throws her off balance a little.

She says, “Should I keep arranging play dates?” Yes, I absolutely would. If it’s fun for you, if it’s comfortable for you. But again, not if you feel like you have to make it work for her, if you have to bring toys and entertain her. Just being there, present for her is enough, and is actually the best thing. And trusting her to do what she’s able to do that day.

She says, “I don’t want to give her anxiety and I’m just wondering if there’s a way to help her enjoy.” So, yeah, the way to help her enjoy and not give her anxiety is that big T word again: Trust. And she will surprise you when you let go of this.

Then this other parent is echoing that situation. Her toddler’s 19 months and when another child approaches her, will freeze, and a few minutes later, will break down and sob. So, this is overwhelmed that’s got a little more emotion behind it, it sounds like. Releasing the tension by crying.

What we want to do here is we don’t want to add our own pressure. That’s all. We want to just care for our own fears around this, our own anxiety.

This parent says, “I don’t see other children behave this way.” Well, you just heard about other children, older children, behaving that way as well. So, yes, they absolutely do. It makes perfect sense since she hasn’t been around other children. You can absolutely trust this.

The freedom in this is the trust, and that we know we don’t have to do anything to make this happen. Just believe in our child and keep showing up without expectation that they’re going to do this, that, or the other. Then, what will happen is you will be surprised because they do and it will happen in a way that you didn’t expect.

And the way I would acknowledge her, the way I would handle her sobbing is to be available, not grab her and pick her up, just be there, getting down at her level, eye contact. “Wow, that seems really close for you.” Or, “This is new. This is a new person.  You don’t know this person and he’s coming really close. I hear you, you have feelings about that and that made you cry.”

So, we can say just what we see. We don’t have to try to figure out: Is she scared? Is she tentative? Is she surprised? We can just say what we see, which is, “Wow, he came close and you cried.” But not from a place of pity or that we’re worried that this is a terrible sign, that she’s not going to be able to be with other children. They haven’t been around a lot of children and it’s a new thing. They will adapt. What we want to do is not add our own tension to the situation, because children will absorb that as well. And then it makes it harder for them. The pressure gets really intense. Because children will feel that we wish she would do this, or we wish he would do that. That we want this so much. Or we’re so afraid.

And we’re not going to be able to erase that completely, of course, but it’s just something to be aware of — that our own worries and wishes and hopes in the moment can just make it even take a little longer for what we want.

So staying behind them in that way, being interested in their process and their feelings, not wishing they were doing anything differently, to observe with interest. And if we observe our child in these situations where they seem frozen, we will see the wheels turning. We will see how much they’re taking in and absorbing and understanding.

I really hope some of that helps.

Please check out some of the other podcasts on my website, janetlansbury.com. There are many of them, and they’re all indexed by subject and category so you should be able to find whatever topic you might be interested in. Both of my books are available in paperback at Amazon: No Bad Kids, Toddler Discipline Without Shame and Elevating Child Care, A Guide To Respectful Parenting.  You can get them in eBook at Amazon, Apple, Google Play or barnesandnoble.com, and an audio at Audible.com. Actually, you can get a free audio copy of either book at Audible by following the link in the liner notes of this podcast.

Thank you so much for listening and all your kind support. We can do this.

The post Helping Toddlers Get Their Social Mojo Back appeared first on Janet Lansbury.