Transcript of “My Child Refuses Independent Play”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m going to be responding to a question that’s very similar to many that I get, and I do understand this issue because I can totally relate to the struggle of it. How do we encourage our child to play independently of us? How do we separate from them to free them up to play when our child seems to continually want our attention?

Here’s the email I received:

Hi, Janet-

Thanks so much for your podcast and advice. I hope it’s okay to ask you about a situation I’m having with my daughter. I’m a stay-at-home mom to a very bright, busy, extroverted four-year-old girl who loves having my complete attention.

She goes to school in the mornings, and in the afternoons we try to stay busy with classes, walks, and going to the park. I try to give her as much attention as I can, but I’m an introvert with ADHD and I get overstimulated and irritable from constant interaction. The only way I can get her to give me some space is if I hand her a screen, and I’m growing uncomfortable with how much I’ve been relying on screens to keep her occupied. And it doesn’t always work. Sometimes she wants me to sit down and watch the show alongside her, and I can only watch so much Peppa Pig.

I would love to help her learn to entertain herself with toys. It’s not just for me, I think it would be good for her to be comfortable being by herself. She seems to get anxious and takes it as a personal rejection when I tell her that mommy needs some time to herself. If I tell her I’m taking a break and she’s going to play by herself for 15 minutes, I have about five minutes before the bids for attention start coming: “I’m hungry.” “I need help with this.” “Come look at this.” If I tell her that I’m on a break and I’ll help her when I’m done, she’ll keep asking, “How many more minutes?” Completely defeats the purpose of a break. Last night, she got out a craft project and said, “Let’s do it together.” I said, “Go ahead. I’m going to eat a snack first and I’ll come join you when I’m ready.” She had a meltdown and then reached for her iPad.

I love that she wants to engage with me, but I worry that her constant need for my attention means that she feels insecure about her bond with me. How do I convey to her that it’s okay for us to do things separately sometimes?

A lot of interesting themes here in this parent’s note, in the issues that she’s having, this theme of a child being willing to be independent of us.

I’m going to start by offering some context for how that develops, children developing their independent play and other independent activities, what gets in the way of that, and what we can do to aid this natural process. From there, I’m going to talk about the specifics in this parent’s note.

The wish for autonomy and independence is something that naturally emerges in children. But interestingly, sometimes we can get in the way of that without meaning to, at all. This was the topic of a recent podcast I did with Hari Grebler. It was called Every Child, Even a Tiny Baby, Deserves Time On Their Own. One of the things we talked about is noticing when, even as a baby, our child is expressing their autonomy, just through an autonomous interest that they’re having. They’re looking at something, they’re doing something that isn’t directed at us. And most of us don’t know—I didn’t know until I had my education with Magda Gerber—to recognize that and honor it and make space for it with our child. Because they are showing signs of independence and separation from us, even as tiny infants. So we want to nurture those moments if possible.

Another one is a very controversial subject. People will say that it’s impossible for a baby to do anything towards self-soothing, but the experts that actually observe babies, like T. Berry Brazelton, Heidelise Als, Dr. Kevin Nugent, they notice that even preemies are attempting to settle themselves. Not because the parent or the nurse in NICU abandoned them and they have no choice. Self-soothing is a choice that a baby makes to try to find their thumb. And when we observe, we can see babies wanting to do these things. Sometimes. A lot of the time they need us to help calm them down. And even when they’re self-soothing, they need our help and support. To be emotionally there for them, to be physically there, encouraging them by letting them know that we’re there, we’ve got their back, and we’re not going to just leave them to do it on their own. We see them and we see that they’re in a process of trying to do something and we don’t want to interrupt that. That’s what healthy self-soothing is.

It’s a very tender process that happens bit by bit. And it’s something, again, like having those play moments where children are just paying attention to something else, that we can nurture by allowing them, by giving some space for that when we see it happening. And of course that starts with observation. Being sensitive observers whenever possible. That’s how we can see what our child’s interests are, what they’re working on, what skills they’re developing. We can’t when we’re always doing everything for them, assuming their needs a little bit more. So we want to try to see our child as a separate person as early as possible, that’s capable of doing some separate things.

And that sounds easy when I say it, but it’s not easy. In fact, here’s a quote from T. Berry Brazelton: “In my experience, learning to separate and to give the child critical independence may well be the most difficult job in parenting.” So this is challenging. It doesn’t feel natural to a lot of us, especially if we’re worriers, if we are sensitive and we’re fearful, maybe, sometimes, of not always being there immediately when our child needs us and doing everything that we worry they need us to do. This is one of the reasons I love Magda Gerber’s magic word: Wait. Just wait a moment to see what your child is actually doing. If they can do that themselves or get a little closer to doing that themselves. If they’re doing something, maybe, that’s really valuable, that is so easy for us to interrupt with our best intentions, but maybe we shouldn’t. Maybe it’s better if we wait a moment first and really observe. This is challenging, right?

And then the other part of being able to separate like this parent wants to and have her daughter be able to play independently. This part I think is even harder than noticing when our child is being autonomous and not interrupting that. This is even harder, because it means being independent of them ourselves. And this is also what Brazelton is talking about in that quote. Being independent of them so that we can be interdependent as two autonomous people. That’s what we’re going for, right? A relationship of interdependence where we rely on each other, but we are two separate people, we are autonomous. That means tuning into ourselves and being able to say, I don’t want to do that. This is what I’m going to do. Because what can happen is that we unintentionally give a message to our child that they need us to do what they want. That that’s a need instead of a want.

I think that is part of what’s happening in this note. I’m going to get to the details in a minute. This idea that our child seems to want us always next to them, so we go along with it. And then it’s like that idea I talk about a lot here about accommodating. By accommodating that, we’re giving our child the message that we agree that they need our attention all the time, that they can’t be okay without us, in this case, playing with them. We’re only trying to do the right thing, but we’re giving our child the impression that we don’t trust them to be able to be separate. That’s the kind of feedback loop that happens here that none of us want, right?

In RIE parent-infant and parent-toddler classes, we do this really helpful thing that comes from attachment theory. In attachment theory, Bowlby and Ainsworth talked about being a secure base. Because babies need—and as they’re developing, children continue to need—that secure base, us, that they can leave to be free explorers, coming back as needed. A secure base isn’t forcing you to be independent. The way that we play this out in the classrooms is we ask the parents to please find a spot on the floor, there’s these backjacks to sit on. And please stay in that spot as much as possible and let your child be the one to move away from you. So the children have a choice, always, of being with us in our spot or venturing out to engage with other children, to engage with some of the toys that are there.

The RIE center where I mostly have taught has indoor/outdoor choice. Usually the parents are sitting indoors and the babies one day start to crawl or scoot on their tummies and they’re able to move out into the outdoors. And maybe they’re moving around the corner where the parent can’t even see them from where that parent is sitting. The facilitator, which would be me or whoever the teacher is in the classroom, can see them and make sure that they’re okay. It is a safe space, so there aren’t many ways that they could get hurt. But we can keep an eye on them and maybe we’re the ones that move around.

And then if two children are coming together or maybe a child is starting to climb on something that we haven’t seen them handle before, then we go close and we’re able to demonstrate for the parents minimal interventions. Interventions that allow children to develop their sense of competence and autonomy and develop their motor abilities or their problem-solving abilities or their creative abilities with play. So we’re there as backup to make sure they’re safe, intervene as minimally as possible to give them the most encouragement and confidence in themselves.

We recommend the parents do this at home too, of course. When they’re enjoying playtime with their child, that they plant themselves, allowing their child to move away from them and explore in safe areas. Sometimes when parents come into the classes when their child is a toddler, they haven’t been there since their child was an infant, so they’re coming in with their child as a toddler. And oftentimes the toddlers will try to bring the parent with them around this room to look at things. Of course, we never insist parents do it a certain way, but we suggest, we recommend that the parent insists that they’re going to stay there. Very kindly and not intensely, but just confidently. “I’m going to stay here. I’d love you to stay with me. You could sit on my lap. You could sit next to me. Or you can go look at the toys.”

I’m not trying to coax you to leave me and be “independent.” I’m not uncomfortable if you’re staying with me that, Oh, there’s something wrong and I really don’t want you to be here, because children pick up that vibe from us. Do they ever! And that makes them want to cling even more, when they feel that we’re not comfortable with them staying there. What works best is to be totally welcoming of your child being there. Children don’t want to sit on our laps for their whole life. It’s somebody like me, with the grown-up kids: It’s nice to have children want to be with you. And so they have that option.

But then sometimes the parents will worry, Oh, my child is getting upset that I’m not coming around with them. And that’s where we may have given a child that impression, because we’ve just tried to go along with things and be a good parent, they’ve gotten the impression that they need us to be there. When in fact they just want us to be with them. But what we want is for them to be free to explore and engage with other children without a parent looming over them.

It’s this interesting model that we can all learn from and that really helps children’s play to thrive and their social skill and everything else, all of their skills. And what I recommend to parents is that they do this everywhere that they go with their child that’s really a place for their child to explore. If they’re just on a playdate, at a birthday party, going to the park, this parent said she’s doing classes. Plant yourself, this is what I recommend, plant yourself somewhere as the secure base. If your child wants to drag you around with them, kindly say, “No, but I’m here for you. Whenever you need me, just come. I’ll be here.”

In the classrooms we do that also, because sometimes the children will be getting very involved in things and then they turn around and they want to know where their parent is. And if the parent’s moving around, then that’s discomforting for the child. It distracts them, they can’t focus on what they’re doing. That’s another reason we recommend staying put and being that secure base. Stay put. Insist on it, kindly.

Your child will maybe get mad at you and resist the first few times and try to coax you and act like they can’t do it without you. And this is the hard thing about all of this—and again, I’m going to get into this parent’s specifics—but the hard thing here is that if you’re a person who’s easily guilted, like me, or you go into that place of worry, then children are amazing the way that—I believe this is them wanting to shape us up, unconsciously, I believe that’s what they’re doing. But on the outside, it looks like they’re just not going to survive if we don’t follow them into a playground where all the children are and hold them by the hand. If we dare to be somewhere separate, they can make it seem like we’re doing this awful, awful thing to them. And we can fall into guilt about that, Oh no! Just as with children, when we’re in that feeling brain, when we’re in that less reasonable brain, we lose reason. Just like children do.

When we can get out of the fear place and the guilt place and see this from a place of reason, we notice, Well wait a second, I’m right here. I’m staying in this spot, I haven’t left. And they have a choice to come be with me anytime. So why does this feel like I’m doing something so wrong and abandoning my child? Just because I’m setting this boundary that I’m going to stay here. Whenever they need me, I’m still there to give them my attention whenever they need me. Children can take us to these places where we lose reason. It’s happened to me a lot of times, so I do relate to this. But we’re not doing our child favors when we do that.

Another way to think of the word independence is freedom, right? So it’s not like we want our child to be independent because we don’t care and we need them to take care of themselves. We want them to be free to explore their way, to create play that comes from inside them, to be able to thrive in all these situations. That idea helped me a great deal to get over the hump to setting the boundaries that I needed to set, allowing myself to separate.

I’m not talking about necessarily physically separating in another room, but just separate as a person, holding my own. This is what I’m doing. You can want me to do something else, but this is what I’m doing. And it’s okay if we’re in conflict. It’s normal to be in conflict in life, and I can love you through conflict. We’ll survive it. That’s part of being in relationships, that’s part of life. It’s interesting where children can take us in our minds because we love them so much, really.

These are the two aspects to work on when we want to encourage our child’s independence to emerge and for them to be able to be separate. The two things are to notice it when it’s happening. Those little things our baby even does, those moments our child has where they do have an idea. And it’s really hard not to jump on that sometimes and say, “Oh yeah, you can do it this way or that way,” and put our own two cents in, I always want to do that with play. But to hold back on that, to wait, use that magic word, wait, and allow it to be. So there’s that aspect. And then the other aspect is the boundary aspect, where we’re taking care of our independent self.

Now I’m going to talk about that and how it works with the particulars this parent has shared with me. It’s interesting. She describes her daughter as a “bright, busy, extroverted girl,” and that doesn’t sound like a child that wouldn’t be very independent as well, right? That’s the interesting thing is oftentimes it’s these extroverted children that are wanting to lead us as well. But underneath it all, they’re hoping that they don’t have to, because they know they’re only four years old, and that’s a big burden on them. That doesn’t free them, it does the opposite. Instead of playing the way children can play, now I’ve got to keep seeing if she really means it. Is she going to stick by what she said or is she going to melt for me like she sometimes does? They go to that place. So it’s very often these strong personality, intense, dynamic children that are the ones that can seem the most clingy and needy. That’s interesting, right? And when we go to that reasonable brain that we have, it doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t add up.

This parent tries to give her as much attention as she can, but she’s an introvert with ADHD, and she gets overstimulated and irritable from constant interaction. I can totally understand that, and I think a lot of parents do, even when they don’t have ADHD, because that’s not a natural situation with two people in a relationship. It’s not natural for us to be interacting all the time, so it’s not going to feel right and it’s not going to feel comfortable.

She says, “she seems to get anxious and takes it as a personal rejection when I tell her that mommy needs some time to herself.” One thing I would do here, because it will help us to be that autonomous person with her and see her as an autonomous person. Start using first person with her, instead of saying, “Mommy needs time to herself.” That’s not very direct. Children like this, and most children, really need that exchange as two people. “I’m going to do this now. I want to be by myself. This is what I’m doing.” I believe it will help you, it helps me, to believe that I’m talking to a person when I’m not talking about myself as mommy. When I’m saying, This is me. I have wants. You have wants. Of course, I’m always going to be there to take care of your needs as best I can, but I’m not going to take care of everything you want because sometimes it’ll be in conflict with what I want. It’s so much easier to do that when we’re in the habit of being you and me, two people.

In terms of her daughter being anxious and taking it as a personal rejection, I think that might be a projection on this parent’s part. Because how could this child feel personally rejected when we give them plenty of attention and now we’re just asserting ourselves? She may be acting like she’s rejected, but in her heart, she knows she’s not being rejected. She knows you’re being a leader, and the leader that she needs. And anxious. I mean, that may be there. And it might be a reflection of this parent feeling anxious about standing up for herself. That’s how tightly we can get involved in these things emotionally with our child. It’s really easy to do, we all do it to some extent about some things. To try to extricate ourselves from, Okay, I’m kind of anxious. Now that’s going to make her more anxious. And when I see her anxious, that’s going to make me more anxious. It goes back and forth, back and forth like that. And it doesn’t help either of us. Of course, it doesn’t help our child, it doesn’t help us, and we can get caught up in it and it just keeps kind of building on itself.

We usually have to be the ones to get into our reasonable brain and see our way out of this. It usually can’t be our child first. It needs to be us. So consider the reasonableness of what you’re picking up, the impression that you’re getting. Think about all the time that you do give her and that she’s this extroverted girl. I mean, you can’t be an extroverted girl and be that anxious about rejection because that would not make you an extroverted girl. So it doesn’t really go together. And there are other things like that. I’m sure that when this parent reflects, she can consider whether this is the truth or a reflection of her fears of what might be going on. Feeling maybe guilty, that she doesn’t deserve to take care of herself and do what she wants, that she has to give her whole self up to her child. Take your time to yourself. Say it confidently. Know that you’re going to get pushback.

She says, “If I tell her I’m taking a break and she’s going to play by herself for 15 minutes, I have about five minutes before the bids for attention start coming.” So when you do this, because you know her very well, expect that you’re going to get every bid under the sun for attention. Every clever way, every dramatic way, every upset way, every guilt-inducing way. She’s going to have to go there. She has to, to make sure that she can really be free of you. I mean, that’s the way we have to look at it underneath this. And I believe that. It’s not just something we have to tell ourselves to make it work, it’s the truth. So expect “I’m hungry,” “I need help with this,” “Come look at this.” And just answer from that place of I’m independent, I’m confident, I deserve to separate. She will be free when I do. When she knows that I can, it will free her. There’s only positives here in what I’m doing.

So, “How many more minutes?” “You know, I’m not sure. Five or 10, I think.” “I need help with this.” “I’m sure you do, and I can’t wait to help you when I’m done. I will when I’m ready.” “Come look at this.” “You know what, I’m not going to right now.” And it’s okay, also, if these statements are coming at you like rapid fire. Just let a couple of them go, holding your own pace. Don’t get caught up in her pace. Her pace is going to be urgent and persistent. Your pace is slower. It’s centered. It’s not reflecting her energy. It’s holding your energy. With practice, this gets easier, but it’s really important.

When you respond, you don’t have to respond right away. “I’m hungry.” “Oh, okay!” “I’m hungry.” “Oh, you must be getting ready for dinner soon. We’re going to have it soon.” “I need help with this.” “Well, let’s put it on hold for a little while.” Then she says, “Come look at this.” Maybe you just let that one go for a minute, because she knows, she knows what she’s doing. She knows that this can get to you, so don’t let it get to you. See this as her path to freedom. It’s a bumpy, bumpy path, right? Let her have her path. You hold your own.

“If I tell her that I’m on a break and I’ll help her when I’m done, she’ll keep asking, ‘How many more minutes?'” So let her ask, let her ask, and then, “Oh, you asked how many more minutes? I think it’s about 10.” And then let her ask. You don’t have to answer every time, but this parent says that “completely defeats the purpose of a break.” Yeah, it does. But it’s a temporary situation, if you can commit to your role. Not to that you have to say certain words or certain speech. Just consider it an improvisation, where all you know is your role and your role is to be inside yourself, strong, this kind of hero for her. That can be separate, that can take care of yourself, giving her incredible positive messages. And again, freeing her to be able to entertain herself and play by herself.

And then she talks about the craft project and that the parent said, no, she wasn’t going to do it with her right then, and her daughter had a meltdown. Yeah, those meltdowns, those are releasing control, meltdowns, oftentimes. And if she’s having a meltdown over that, think about it, she needs to have a meltdown, right? If children are having a meltdown over these inconsequential things, that means it’s not really about that. It’s some release that she needs to have. So try to trust that. It’s the truth.

But then here’s the part I want to help this parent with. She says, “she had a meltdown and then reached for her iPad.” So when I’m talking about boundaries, the first boundary that I recommend for this parent—this is going to give her some practice for the next one. The first one is boundaries around the devices, because a lot of reasons. But studies show that giving children free access to tech devices, it interferes with, among other things, the development of self-regulation. And that’s a big part of what you’re working on here. So children aren’t able to process uncomfortable emotions as they need to to build resiliency, because every time they’re going there, there’s a distraction for them. There’s this very powerful and potentially addictive distraction for them that allows them to avoid all the natural, typical feelings that children need to have, that they need to experience, and learn, with our support, that these are normal. Frustration, disappointment, boredom, anger, sadness. Life gives children all of these natural opportunities for this. Like her mom saying, no, I’m not going to do a craft project. It’s important that she has a chance to experience that all the way. Experience that meltdown, experience all those feelings, and get to the other side of them, without having this very potent distraction to lose herself in.

And then just on a practical level, using devices as the consolation prize for our attention, that means that we’re setting up a situation where they’re going to be wanting to be on devices whenever we’re not paying attention to them. There’s no time in the day for her to be freed up to pass through that empty, often uncomfortable, space needed to be able to initiate her play, to have all the wonders and the freedom that we want to give her of the free exploration and the play. The devices are getting in the way with us being able to be a secure base and her being able to be the free explorer. Except in this case, she wants us to be the explorer with her and we’re saying no. But now she’s got this other thing that she’s going to go to that has nothing to do with all the places we want her to be able to go, which is to be comfortable and even enjoy being with herself. That’s such a lifelong gift, so valuable. And it’s not likely to happen when she has the option of either the parent’s entertainment or an entertaining device.

I think we can all relate to that, just what our devices do to us as adults, that we don’t have those moments of boredom. At least for most of us, we were able to develop our abilities to entertain ourselves. But children are in the development stage, this is much more important for them even than for us.

So that’s boundary number one that I would set. And I’d prepare myself for a lot of blasting about this, and all the questions. So be really clear, set out times: These are the times you’re going to do it and not the rest of the time. If you leave that as an open question, then you’re going to have to be setting a boundary all day long. Not now, not now, not now. So set it out ahead of time: these times every day, or these two times a week, or not at all, or whatever you decide. Set it up that way so you’re not constantly having to set this boundary, because it’ll be easier for her and easier for you if it’s established early and established clearly and solidly, with all the noise she’s going to make about it. Oh, this girl is intense. She’s got a lot of pushback that she’s going to give you, so get ready. Maybe she’ll be persuading, she’ll be pleading, she’ll be vulnerable. Let her go there. Remind yourself it’s safe, if you can hold your center, knowing that what you’re giving her is actually freedom.

After that boundary, then the boundary of you saying no. That’s the order I would work on these. Because maybe if you allow that process with that boundary and all the grief you’re going to get about it to work, then it will give you more confidence to set this other boundary. Which is, for a lot of us, it’s even harder, because, as this parent said, “I love that she wants to engage with me.” Yes, and we’re not going to taint that at all by putting parameters around when we’re going to engage with her.

She says, “I worry that her constant need for my attention means that she feels insecure about her bond with me.” I think that’s, again, a fear place that this parent is going to. Because she actually said it, “I love that she wants to engage with me.” Yes, she wants to engage. “But I worry that her constant need for my attention. . .” So that’s where we can get hooked in and guilted and worried, when we see it as a need for attention. She was correct, I believe, in the first part of the sentence: wants, she wants to engage. She wants constant attention, she doesn’t need constant attention. What she needs is a parent who can be honest with her, who can be a leader, who isn’t afraid of her feelings.

That’s such a gift we can give children, that they’re not going to thank us for right there, but it is huge. To show her, You know what? You can melt down and I’ll have all the empathy in the world, but I’m not trying to change your feeling. I’m not trying to fix it. I know you’re safe, I know it’s healthy, and I know on the other side of this is freedom. And that’s what you really need from me.

I know this is a difficult reframe, so many people have a hard time with it. And we do play a big part in this. And that’s good news, because that means we can make this shift. But we have to be committed, as with everything with children, we have to go with it and believe in it. So that’s the part to work on even first, before you work on the boundaries with the tech device or with your attention. Working on why. Why are you doing it? None of it is selfish. It’s far, far from it. It’s being heroic. It’s doing the hard things because we love our children so much and they deserve the very best that we can give them. They know it’s easier for us to say okay, they already know that. And they know that real love is the hard things.

I believe in this parent. I believe in all of us because if I could do this, I feel like anyone can. Thanks so much for listening. I really hope this helps.

And for everything about boundaries, I hope you’ll check out my No Bad Kids Master Course at nobadkidscourse.com. And also my books, that are going to be re-released now with a new publisher. They had been self-published for years, and now they’re going to be with Penguin Random House. Very exciting! They’re now on pre-order, but will be available at the end of this month.

We can do this.

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Transcript of “The Magic That Makes Kids Want to Cooperate”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Interestingly, lately my inbox seems to be flooded with questions about toothbrushing. So much so that I was even thinking about doing a podcast all about toothbrushing, helping kids to brush their teeth. But I kept thinking about it and it’s just not an interesting enough topic to me. I mean, it’s not interesting at all to me, to be honest. It’s this mundane part of my day, and I imagine also for kids, too. And probably—I mean, I could be wrong—but even dentists probably don’t find it a super-intriguing topic.

But then I received a question and a comment on Facebook on my post, This May Be Why You’re Yelling. The comment was not about toothbrushing, but it reminded me how all of these cooperative activities, these tasks that we need our kids to do, we want our kids to do, how they’re all related, and that there is a magical approach for helping our kids to do them.

This magic isn’t, unfortunately, a magic wand that we can just wave. And unfortunately it also isn’t saying some magic words or playing magical games, like what is sometimes offered on Instagram and TikTok for “getting” kids to do these things. This magic also isn’t about giving a child a certain period of attention, playing with a child, filling their cup. Even that, unfortunately, isn’t a formula for a child to be reliably willing to brush their teeth, help around the house, try new foods, clean up their toys. Yes, those do help to build intimacy and connection.

But the magic that works is when our relationship or connection is through and through. It’s through the happy times, it’s through the special times, it’s through the tough and disappointing times, it’s through when we’re setting limits, it’s through when our child is upset, when they’re having a tantrum. It’s staying on our child’s side, as I often say, partnering with them and, ideally, not being at odds with them with anything throughout the day. I know, this sounds probably superhuman, but I’m going to get to how we can do this.

When we do find ourselves at odds, we take responsibility for that. Because at least until kids are adult-age, it’s on us to be the more mature ones, to essentially be in charge of setting the tone for our two-person relationship. And when changes in our dynamic with our child need to be made, it almost always needs to come from us. Now, that’s good news and bad news, depending on how we look at it. It’s good news because it means we have the power to make changes at any time. We can do that, and our children will adapt readily. It’s bad news because we can’t count on our child to treat us a certain way, to be kinder to us when we’re asking for or demanding that they do something, just because they should respect us and do what’s right. If we aren’t setting the tone by modeling respect and honesty and kindness and forgiveness and helpfulness and taking responsibility for our behavior, we can’t expect our child to be the one to do those things.

The magic here, unfortunately, isn’t a magic bullet for gaining cooperation, but there is something that’s much clearer and simpler to understand and more effective and comprehensive than these bite-sized scripts and strategies that we hear about. Comprehensive in that it infuses everything, it works in all areas of our day with our child, with all kinds of behaviors. And it feels good, because it’s genuine. It’s not a strategy. And the positive effects it has are lasting and real. It’s relating to our child as—an imperfect, less mature than we are, much less mature—person. What a concept, right? Who we know intimately and we understand, or at least aim to, and we unconditionally adore.

That doesn’t mean we’re perfect. It’s this overall feeling that we have. Not every second of every day will we like the way our child’s behaving, what they’re doing, that we’re not annoyed with them. We are going to be. But we know that there’s something to understand there when we are. That there’s something in our expectation of them in that moment or something that, through their behavior, they’re sharing with us. Awkwardly, as it is with children a lot of the time. So we’re coming to that place eventually where we understand why they’re acting as they are. This is an overall job. It’s a relationship job. I know that probably sounded unclear and confusing. I’m sorry about that.

Now I’m going to explain via this exchange I had on social media with this parent who was responding to something I posted, a piece that I wrote a few years ago, This May Be Why You’re Yelling. This parent wrote:

I know I’m yelling because when I’ve asked five times, being calm, and nothing happened, I’m running out of patience. Sometimes it seems like when I talk nicely, nobody can hear me. I can’t be the only one, am I?

And I wrote back:

Can you give an example? I have a policy: never repeat yourself.

And then I link to a popular podcast of mine, Repeating Yourself Won’t Help (What to Do Instead).

This parent wrote back:

So I just read this article and I get what it says. [She read the transcript.] So here’s the latest example: Right now where I live, it’s Saturday morning, almost 8:00 AM. If my son’s behavior is induced by stress or tiredness, then he must be permanently worn out. My son, four-and-a-half years old, has a clock by his bed that indicates with a sleeping/playing bunny when he is allowed to get out of his room. He’s had it for more than a year now.

I had set this clock on 9:00 AM yesterday. I told him yesterday while putting him to bed, “Remember, you stay in your room until bunny is awake. You don’t come into our room. You let daddy sleep.” And he agreed. His dad is in an exhausting situation right now and needs all the sleep he can get.

Today at seven, our son came into our bedroom and started asking his dad a question about a new toy he got. I got up real quick, escorted him back to his room (right next to ours, and the wall is very thin, you can hear everything), and showed him his clock, whispering, “What did we agree on yesterday? You stay in your room, you are silent, you don’t wake us up.” I was upset, I admit. Plus he can’t for the life of him not talk. He talks all day long, from wake to sleep. He can’t keep his thoughts in his head.

And I don’t know how to follow your advice here in helping him to do what I ask him to do. There’s no lock on his door and he might need to go to the bathroom anyway, and I hate the thought of locking him in. And I can’t reasonably shut his mouth with duct tape to make him stop talking. Any thoughts?

And she put this distressed face emoji. And some other people commented before I was able to get back to her. Somebody said:

Lock dad in? Maybe after several times where he finds the bedroom door locked, he will just assume it’s not worth getting up to try it again. At first, maybe, with you on the outside but not really accessible to him—in the bathroom, for example—and go out if he becomes frustrated and help him work through it. But please, anybody correct me if you don’t think it’s appropriate.

That was all the comment somebody made back. And the original commenter said:

There aren’t locks anywhere on our doors. And the whole thing is about not waking daddy up, so we need silence. Rattling on the door doesn’t do the trick. I tried several times on other occasions to give my son a timeout in his room with the door closed, to no avail. He opens the door immediately and refuses to keep it shut. If I hold the handle from the outside, he turns total havoc, including screaming and door-kicking. And the whole point of the timeout—allowing us both to calm down by getting ourselves together before discussing the issue—is ruined because I can’t calm down either when I have to hold his door shut and listen to his screaming. So I’m stuck here.

And then a different commenter wrote to her:

What time is he going to bed? Does he normally wake up at 9:00 AM or was this a weekend thing? My son does, but I know our routine is a bit abnormal. If I were you, I would get up and go out with him so that dad can get some extra sleep.

And she wrote back:

He sleeps a good night and doesn’t lack sleep. I don’t ask him to stay in bed, much less to stay asleep. Just to stay quietly in his room. Most weekends he does just that. But this morning was particularly frustrating because I insisted on it yesterday evening and he didn’t follow through.

So then I finally commented that I had some ideas for her and it was very long, though, and I realized that this might be a good topic for a podcast. So I was going to share them here, and that’s what I’m doing now.

What I wanted to say to her is that this is one of those situations where I believe in letting go for the win, the win being next time. Because we can’t control when our child wakes up and asking them to stay in their room and wait for a clock to tell them it’s time to leave is not easy for them. And that is always going to be a voluntary activity on their part, right? It’s not something we can force if we don’t want to lock doors, and most of us don’t. And with voluntary activities, it’s always going to be about the positive connection that they feel with us. Both in general and around that particular activity, around that ask that we have of them. We make it harder for our child, and therefore for ourselves, when we make a big deal out of it not working. We get upset or mad, or we try to force them to do it, etc.

So what this parent might do instead is go into this expecting it to be an imperfect process and maybe problem-solving with her child ahead of time. “Hmm, I know sometimes it’s hard to stay in bed and to wait for that clock. What could help? Would you like me to leave some fruit or a snack bar there for you? Some special books or puzzles here by the bed?” And whether or not there’s an answer that we could both of us together figure out, I wouldn’t expect my child to be able to stick with the plan, because young children are impulsive. And the more emotion we have around something, the more intensity we have around it, the harder it is for them to not be impulsive. Because they’re absorbing that and it’s uncomfortable for them. It’s like the more we want them to do something and they feel that coming from us, the more it ruffles their feathers and the harder it is for them to do. You would think it would be the opposite, right? But he has the best chance possible of cooperating in this manner if we approach it with this kind of connection and empathy.

And then, if it doesn’t work, if he does come in or he makes some noise anyway, let it go for the win. For the win next time, and for the bigger picture of more goodwill and cooperation all around. That’s what I mean about this not being a magic wand or a quick fix, but it is magical when we commit to being on this less mature, more impulsive person’s side and requesting things from that team relationship, that very open, honest, teamwork relationship. So when it doesn’t work, we might say, “Oops.” And then while we’re ushering him out of the room, I might say, “It was hard for you to wait this time. I know, it can be so hard. Daddy will answer your question when he wakes up, of course. What would you like to do in the meantime? Let’s figure something out. You can go back to your room or play quietly here in the family room,” or whatever. Safety, connection. This is how we will get what we want. We didn’t that time, but it’s too late. So let’s give ourselves a better chance of getting it the next time and the next time and the next time, in all the other requests that we have of our child during the day.

Now, how does this look in regard to toothbrushing, or helping us with housework, encouraging kids to try new foods, help them to get dressed, or to be quiet while the baby’s going to sleep, etc. etc. etc.? Here’s some points:

1. Expect that there might be resistance and that it might not work at all. Our expectations matter because they create certain feelings in us. When we’re putting an expectation out there that might not work, naturally, we’re going to get disappointed. And whether or not that’s a reasonable expectation, I don’t know. But it turns out it’s not reasonable for this child, at this time, at this age, in this situation.

I know that for me, we didn’t have those special clocks when my kids were little and I never once thought I had any control over when they got up and came in. I remember there was one point where I had tried to encourage my older child to stay in her room a little longer, and I did put a special snack there for her, because we explored it and one of the things she wanted was something to eat. So that did help for a little while. But mostly what helped was her feeling the safety in our connection and that she wanted to try to be helpful when she could, as much as she could. I wasn’t doing anything that might unwittingly put her into a zone of being at odds with me.

Our expectations are what can give us this light attitude and help us not set ourselves up for anger and disappointment that will end up hurting our chances the next time. Let’s use the example of hoping our child would try a new food. That light attitude, I’m not expecting they’re going to try it. Why would they? They don’t want to eat something strange that they might not like, right? So I just offer it, Oh, here’s something that you haven’t tried before. It’s quite an interesting taste. Let me know what you think. Do you want to try it? Instead of, “Here, can you please try this now?” And we don’t have to say all those words about it being an interesting taste or anything, just that idea of Would you like to try this? Instead of that kind of automatic demand mode that we get into as parents. Not even a demand, but that sort of request mode that we get into with young children where we’re telling them to do this and telling them to do that. And they don’t like it and they feel like there’s that distance between us.

This is true for all of these cooperative activities that we want our kids to do. Our expectation matters. So that’s number one: Expect that there might be resistance and that it might not work at all.

2. Request from a place of authenticity and openness, maybe even vulnerability. Let’s say, the example of helping with housework. Okay, I’m going to be honest here: I did not do this thing that I hear so much being written about now, the importance of kids doing chores from the time that they’re little. I didn’t put a big importance on that. Maybe because I remember as a child that my sisters and I would get all excited about, Oh, now you’re going to do this chore and I’m going to do that chore and we’ll make a little chart and we’ll cross it off! And we wanted to do these things and got very into it for about two days or maybe a week, and then we didn’t want to do it anymore. My mother—who certainly, like all of us, was an imperfect parent—she let it go. She wasn’t one to put herself in the position of nagging at us to do things that she sensed were voluntary. Using her power that way, in a way that’s often not very fruitful for us. And she just wasn’t that kind of person.

And actually, I’m not either. I don’t like, I mean, the least amount of limits I can give… I’m actually very strict with limits around certain things, but I don’t want to be telling other people what to do all day long. That’s not where I want to put my energy. And when it’s something like this, that there has to be a certain intrinsic enjoyment of for young children for them to want to do it consistently, I trust that.

At the same time, all the way through from the time they were little, whenever I needed my kids’ help or really wanted my kids’ help for something, they never said no. Maybe I’m just lucky that way, but I really believe it’s because of the way that I asked. Which wasn’t a demand or a nag. It was, “Oh, I could really use some help here. Would you mind?” Or, “Could you give me a hand?” And because this wasn’t a dynamic where we had distance between each other, they always did. They knew I wasn’t using that “ask” card all day long. And in the rare case that they didn’t, and I honestly don’t remember this happening very often at all, but on the rare case they didn’t, there was a reason. They were unhappy about something that actually they needed to talk to me about. And at some point I would figure that out and I said, “What’s up with you? It seems like you’re not feeling that good, or you’re mad at me. Is there something we can talk about?”

So yes, I would offer opportunities for young children to help in ways that they want to. And doing chores, it’s great for their confidence, right? To know that they can do these things and contribute to the household. But I wouldn’t hold them to that in a way that became another limit that I had to try to set every day or another coaxing I had to try to do. And although I didn’t probably use this on a daily basis, I bet it would work if you did. I bet you could say every day, “Oh, and today I actually need a little help. Could you help me, my love, clean up this stuff?” Or offer a very reasonable, logical consequence that’s just honest. “I don’t want to take out more stuff until we put this away. So can you please help me put this away if you want to take that thing out?”

But I didn’t expect that they were going to have tidy rooms or that the play area was going to be clean. And in fact, I liked them to have projects that were left out so that they could revisit them the next day. But I know that’s me, and not everybody feels that way. All I know is that this works and that my kids, whenever they go to somebody else’s house, they’re always the first ones to help. They are well-mannered kids who are cooperative and helpful. So that’s two: Request from a place of authenticity and openness, maybe even vulnerability.

3. Lean in to empathy and connection. Meaning, I understand all the reasons why you wouldn’t want to do this right now. Not that I have to get into them with you and make a whole list, but I’m coming from that place of getting it. Brushing teeth, it’s tedious, right? It’s this thing we have to do to clean our teeth, but please, let’s find a way we can do this so we can get it done and there’ll be time to do these other things. What can I do to make it easier? And again, I’m not talking about saying these exact words, but it’s that approach. Leaning in with empathy and connection. Connection, meaning, I’m wanting to help as much as possible for this to happen, and we’re making plans together. “How about you do this part and I’ll finish the rest?” Or, “Here, maybe you want to try one bite of this carrot and I’ll eat the rest.” Or again, going back to the comment on Facebook, “What can we do to help daddy get this time that he needs? He’s so worn out. I’d love any ideas that you have.” This is an issue we have going on in our family, and what can we do? Or, “What can we do? I know it’s so hard to not be exuberant right next to where the baby’s sleeping.”

So that’s three: Lean in to empathy and connection.

4. Don’t come at this with intensity or be pushy or try to force or insist on these voluntary activities. (This is the only don’t on the list!) Remember, these are in the category of voluntary activities. We need the lightest touch. When we try to force or even bribe or threaten or punish in these situations that we have no control over our child doing, we and our child both tend to lose. Because we end up disappointed and maybe angry, and they end up with this feeling of distance between us, and maybe shame, maybe guilt. They failed. And for us as adults, maybe that feeling of failing makes us do better the next time. For children, it doesn’t tend to. It depletes their self-confidence. It tends to make them doubt themselves.

And interestingly, I think that might be the main point that got in the way this time with this parent on Facebook. Because she said something interesting, not back to me, but to another commenter. She said back to this commenter, “He sleeps a good night and doesn’t lack sleep. I don’t ask him to stay in bed, much less to stay asleep. Just to stay quietly in his room. Most weekends he does just that. But this morning was particularly frustrating because I insisted on it yesterday evening and he didn’t follow through.” And she also talks about times when she tried timeout with him in his room.

Let’s just take the fact that she insisted on it and the vibe her son got from her. That bit of intensity, it goes into a child’s system, and it’s almost like that ends up churning up the exact response that we don’t want and they don’t really want. Which is, Now I just have this impulse to get up and do this because it was so insisted on! So I know that sounds totally unreasonable, which young children often are, and maybe doesn’t make sense to anybody out there, but the toddler in me gets how that was a setup for failure for me, that obviously my parent didn’t intend that way. That my parent became so insistent instead of using that light touch, what I said was number two, request from a place of authenticity and openness, maybe even vulnerability. “Here’s something we need to do for dad, and how can we do this?” instead of, “This is really important and we’ve got to do this because daddy’s so tired.” Where I’m not really including my child, they’re not feeling the comfort of that connection.

I have the inkling that that insistence, along with the past experiences of the timeout in his room where she said she was holding the handle from the outside and “he turns total havoc, including screaming and door-kicking. And the whole point of the timeout—allowing us both to calm down by getting ourselves together before discussing the issue—is ruined because I can’t calm down either when I have to hold his door shut and listen to his screaming.” And right there is the common misconception about timeout. It’s sold to us as this way that is going to help children calm down and be more reasonable. Because maybe that’s what it does for us when we take a break, maybe for us it calms us down. But when we’re directing a child that they have to do this, what they’re feeling is, I’m being told to do this. I’m being punished. It’s not their choice, I want to calm down, and therefore they don’t calm down. In this case, he was screaming, but sometimes children will seem very quiet and they’re screaming on the inside. The studies show that they’re still dysregulated. They’re not calming down. In fact, they’re getting more upset because of the distance and the emotions they feel from the parent. So this parent really encapsulated right there why timeout doesn’t work, why punishments don’t help us. Definitely not in the bigger picture, but even in the short term, it didn’t help her to get what she wanted, which was for him to follow this direction.

So four: Don’t come at this with intensity or be pushy, trying to force or insist on these voluntary activities.

5. If it doesn’t work or they turn us down if we’re requesting something, let go for the win. And that’s what I meant by this parent saying, “Uh-oh, that didn’t work. Let’s try again next time, and maybe we’ll make a plan.” And it helped that I didn’t have that expectation in the first place that it was going to work. Makes it so much easier to let go. And when we let go, our child gets all that comfort and safety from us that makes them desire, and also be capable of, cooperating the next time. They want to do that for us, because we’ve shown them that we understand them, that they’re not always going to be able to do it, and we don’t hold grudges. And yeah, sure, we’re disappointed maybe, but turning against our child right there—which none of us mean to do, but it can easily happen—is not going to be the answer. It’s not going to help.

So that’s five: If it doesn’t work or they turn us down, let go for the win. For the win next time and the next time and the next time. Without snarky comments, rise above, believing in the goodness of your child and the strength of your love for each other. From those beliefs, all the best things will come.

I hope some of this helps. And for much more detail and a very deep dive into all of this stuff, to really be able to internalize what it feels like to have strong boundaries from this relational perspective, please check out my No Bad Kids Master Course at nobadkidscourse.com, and consider if that might be for you. Also, all of the resources on my website, free for you to read, and the podcast, there’s 325 now, something like that. Every topic under the sun, all together. You’ll get this perspective, if it sounds good to you. It’s certainly saved me.

Thanks so much for listening. We can do this.

The post The Magic That Makes Kids Want to Cooperate appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “When Kids Hide Their Feelings and Reject Our Comfort”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m going to be talking about an issue that many of you have asked about over the years. It’s the natural concern that we have when our child seems to be pushing us away when they’re upset or they seem uncomfortable expressing their feelings, even when we make sure to let them know we’re very, very open to that. Maybe we’ve read or heard or listened to podcasts like mine, talking about how important it is for children to feel safe to share all their feelings with us. That we want to cultivate an environment for them where all feelings are allowed—not all behaviors, but all feelings—and how this is a path to their resiliency and emotional fluency and emotional health.

So it’s obviously worrisome when our child doesn’t seem to be following that pattern, that they’re rejecting us when we try to comfort them, they’re trying to hide their feelings. Maybe they’re saying, “I’m fine, I’m fine,” or running away from us. What does this mean? How can we unpack this and what can we do to make it better? That’s what I’m going to be talking about today.

This time I’ll start with a note that I received from a parent. Some of the specifics in this note you probably won’t relate to, but the dynamic between this parent and her daughter is a common one. This was a message I received on Instagram:

Hi, Janet-

My husband and I are separating. We still co-habit, but I go away when it’s his turn to have them 50% of the time. I’ve noticed when I come back, my three-year-old seems very mad at me. I understand this feeling, but what worries me is the way it plays out.

It seems when she is upset or angry, she is afraid or ashamed of her emotions. She runs and hides, refuses any comfort, tells me to go away and shouts, “Mummy, I want Daddy back!” Today she shut herself in the bathroom and told me to go away if I opened the door. I sat outside, acknowledged her feelings, and let her know I was there and ready to help her when she needs me. The more I spoke, the more angry she was. She eventually just snapped out of it after 20 minutes. She denied hunger and had had a nap, so I don’t think she was tired.

Do you have any advice for helping her to be more comfortable with feeling sad or angry?

Okay, so one thing I appreciate is that this parent really pegs the issue in her last sentence here, that’s a question: “Do you have any advice for helping her to be more comfortable with feeling sad or angry?”

There aren’t that many issues in parenting that we can say, It always means this across the board, and You should do this or that. Because every child is a unique individual, every parent is an individual, our dynamic with each child is unique. That’s why I’m not a fan of categorizing children. I know it’s very popular these days to say that this is this type of child or that type of child. Dr. Mona Delahooke—who I miss so much in these spaces. She had a severe brain injury and she’s still recovering and healing, but she will be back. She agrees with me on this. I appreciate that so much because she is an expert in children that are neurodivergent. And she says as well, let’s approach each child as an individual. Yes, there are some issues children have that are measurably different, but mostly, everybody is a range of things, right? And we can miss so much when we try to adhere to advice that categorizes.

That said, I love that we can say across the board that when children are behaving in ways that are concerning, as in this case, any kind of what we might call “misbehavior,” there’s one thing we can say for sure, and that is that our child is uncomfortable. They’re uncomfortable in some way. It can be very minor discomfort, that, Hmm, they’re not quite giving me a clear answer on this. My parent seems a little uncomfortable, they’re unsure of themselves. So that very minor type of discomfort, ranging all the way to intense fear, trauma, stress, that kind of discomfort.

So when we want to understand and know how to help a child and how to make a difference, like this parent wants to make, what are they uncomfortable about? And why? In this case, she’s uncomfortable expressing her feelings with her parent. And maybe with both of her parents, I don’t know that, but we know she’s uncomfortable expressing it with this parent. And it doesn’t necessarily mean something that the parent did, it could mean the way other people besides this parent have responded to her. But something has made her uncomfortable with being in these emotional states.

Now I’m going to talk about some of the things that it could be, and then I’ll share what I think might be going on in this case with this child, because there’s some clues in this message. But let’s talk about generally what’s going on when children are uncomfortable around their emotions and around us witnessing their emotions.

First, some children are more introverted and more likely to internalize feelings. So, that tendency is there.

Two is the very obvious and severe ways that we make children uncomfortable around their feelings: punishing, shaming children for their feelings, reacting violently or in scary, threatening ways to our child. That makes sense to us, right? When children experience those responses, they’re going to learn very early on that they’re not safe to share their feelings. They need to hide them or stuff them. So I absolutely don’t believe that’s what’s going on in this message, but that’s one of the most obvious ways.

Similarly, if we’re judging, mocking, laughing at our children. There’s been trends that have come and gone where people are sharing that on social media, unfortunately. And no, the child doesn’t know the parent’s sharing it on social media and laughing at them, but they know the parent’s taking a video of them. So that’s obviously not going to encourage them to be open about their feelings.

Then it can be when we’re perceiving these as problematic situations that children need us to address and help them through. And this is where I’m not a fan of the advice to get children to take deep breaths and using calm down jars or other methods to try to help children to calm down. By doing that actively, with all this power that we have as parents—remember, there’s a power differential here. We are so powerful in the way that we respond to our child. In their eyes, we are god-like, especially in the early years. If we’re addressing, with the best of intentions, our child’s feelings with this perception that this is something we need to help them get through and do something about, that can create fear in them in regard to feelings they have that are already uncomfortable. So they’re having the uncomfortable feeling and now my parent’s reacting as if this isn’t a safe place for me to be in myself, that I need to feel better. Well, that can make me feel scared or just uncomfortable with the idea that I’m feeling this. My parent is teaching me that it needs to go away. It’s a problem and I need to do something about it to make it better.

So yes, while it can help children to have a quiet, call it a calm-down place or whatever, but a quiet, unthreatening place to be. Let’s say we’re in a group situation, there’s a calm-down area for a child. We want to approach that not as we’re secluding that child or we’re banishing that child or forcing them to be alone or that now you go in there and you’ve got to feel better. We don’t want to approach it that way, as a problem, but as just a safe place that we trust you to be in while the feelings run their course. In other words, we want this to be a choice that’s helpful to our child, but doesn’t give the message that there’s something wrong here that we need to make better.

Another one, I guess this is number four, when children get into the habit of pacifiers or even thumb-sucking as a comfort tool that they go to as soon as they’re upset. Now, a child’s need to suck can help them to center themselves as babies and toddlers. Thumb-sucking especially is, I believe, a fine and healthy choice. But as children are passing age two or three, we just want to take notice of how they’re using those tools. And I wouldn’t try to change everything overnight or rip those away from them at a certain age. Maybe dentists are going to tell you to do that, but I’m not. When children are used to something, we want them to actually be ready to let go of that, and then we can work together with them to change that.

But in the interim, what I recommend—and actually I’ve never had a chance to say this on a podcast before—is to notice when your child is going there, to that thumb or wants that pacifier, and giving it a moment. Where we, not in a worrisome way, but we just gently reflect: “You’re wanting to suck your thumb right now,” or “You’re wanting your pacifier right now because you’re sad, it seems like.” Whatever we know happened: “This happened and you seem sad or you seem mad about it. You can always tell me those things. I want to know.” So we’re just opening that door. We’re not trying to force or push that our child has to share with us. Because that’s going to do the opposite, right? That’s going to make our child feel pressured and even more uncomfortable. But just opening that up, I see you and I’m here and I’m not going to judge you or make a big deal out of it. I mean, that part we wouldn’t say, but just show. You can always share with me. I see how you’re using that right now. So just that very light, opening the door for them to share a little bit or share a little bit more. But not stressing ourselves out about it, because that’s the other thing, with all our power, that makes children uncomfortable.

That’s why co-regulation, when we hear that term, it really describes this beautifully. Because co-regulation is both of us together. That means I’m not calming you down, I’m calming myself down so that you can calm down, in your time. Oftentimes it helps in these situations for us to actually take the focus off our child and put it on ourselves. Telling ourselves, I’m safe. I can be calm. This will pass. This is actually the best thing my child could be doing right now, expressing what they’re feeling.

Number five, we can make children feel uncomfortable or pressured when we make An Event out of any hurt or other unhappy feeling. So this is related to the problematic situation, right? But in this situation, maybe it’s not about us actively saying, “deep breaths, deep breaths,” but we’re putting a focus on the situation. And I know this is an impression I think maybe I give sometimes about feelings. Because I often get asked, or parents often comment, that they’re going through a hard time with their child and they have other children and they just can’t work their child through all these big meltdowns that they’re having. And how do they manage? Because it’s just too much.

I think this idea that every feeling our child has is a big event may be why some in the press are doing these articles that are mocking gentle parenting or suggesting that it’s damaging. Now, I still don’t know what “gentle parenting” means because nobody seems to define it. I do know that bashing it seems to be sort of clickbait lately, people love to pile on in comments on articles that are about all the awful things that parents are doing. I don’t think that helps anyone. But I do think that at least part of the reason for that is this misunderstanding that parenting advisors like me think that fostering emotional health means we’re giving this big, drawn-out attention to every feeling a child has, indulging them in that way, putting everything aside while we wait this out. And parents complain, understandably, that this is way too much work on top of everything else that they have to do.

And I couldn’t agree more! Doing work around children’s emotions is not a job I recommend taking on because it’s not possible for us. It’s impossible. And it doesn’t help our children, because making a big event out of an every-day, perhaps multiple-times-a-day, life experience that children have—younger children especially—that’s just going to wear us out. We’re not going to survive that. What I recommend is a letting go. That’s why I say letting feelings be. Let go, let feelings be. Focus on acceptance, anchoring and calming ourselves while the rough waves pass us by. We’re not trying to do anything with them or about them. We’re not trying to stop them. We know they need to flow, so we’re just going to accept them and let them be.

Being an anchor doesn’t mean we have to stand there watching either. It’s an attitude, it’s a conviction in this idea of acceptance. And I can accept from across the room, I can accept if I have to leave the room, I can accept if I need to help carry you into the car or out of the car while you’re having a hard time. Acceptance is an attitude, it doesn’t take work. It does take practicing a perspective on feelings that I’ve shared about umpteen times in this podcast, but I know it’s never enough, because it’s never enough for me to not forget: that feelings are safe, feelings are normal, feelings are okay. When we do make an event, then children can feel everything ranging from pressured to embarrassed. It’s too much focus on them in a vulnerable time, and that can cause them to want to push us away, hide.

That can happen when a child falls down or bumps themself and a parent gets really upset about that or so sympathetic, and we’re running towards our child as if it’s an emergency. That’s an impulse a lot of us have, and it’s a good one to try to get perspective on. Because our tone is always going to set the tone. And children don’t want a big fuss made over them, especially when they’re upset. A good default is to observe, listen, receive your child’s energy first, and maybe all the way through if they’re having a feeling, instead of trying to talk or do something about it. So even if our child falls from across the room, we look first. Maybe we start to approach, but slowly, not running over. “You fell.” And then we see that our child is crying, or maybe they’re not crying, but let’s say they’re crying first. “Oh no, did that hurt? Ouch. You didn’t like that.” With a very small child, we might just go over with them what happened, but in this very reflective way. We’re not trying to talk about it, we’re not trying to say words. We’re just noticing: “I think you tripped on this, right? On this toy. Yeah, ouch.” And then we let it go. And if we’re reading that our child seems to want to hug, then we hug. Mostly we’re just receiving, allowing, and accepting.

Of course, if there’s something we could do physically to help our child feel better, we will. Ideally not in panic mode, making a big event out of it. Because then children feel that too, that it’s too much. It’s too uncomfortable, it’s too much pressure, it’s too embarrassing. They’re the center of attention. And sometimes they can sort of feel like it’s their role to help us feel better, because they sense that we’re feeling as uncomfortable as they are. And it’s hard not to as parents, because we do love our kids and we never want to see them hurt or sad or anything besides happy. But I guess that’s where being brave for our child really can be a positive thing. And just being receivers.

Getting back to this parent’s note, she knows, as she says, that these feelings her child has make a lot of sense. She says, “When I come back, my three-year-old seems very mad at me. I understand this feeling, but what worries me is the way it plays out.” So this parent is sharing, and this is why she shared the note with me, that she’s worried. One thing I can know is that her child is feeling the parent’s worry in these moments. And even that can add to a child’s discomfort and make it harder for them to want to share. Maybe one or two times we noticed they didn’t seem to want to talk about it, so now we’re worried. And our child is feeling that. They just want to have their feeling. They don’t consciously think like this, but Just let me have my feeling! I think we can all relate to that. Sometimes when a partner or a friend or a relative or someone is trying to make us feel better and, Just let me have my feeling! If you’re worried about me, now I have to worry about you and I can’t just feel how I feel myself. So that’s something to look at, possibly.

Then this parent says, “It seems when she is upset or angry, she is afraid or ashamed of her emotions.” Again, this parent, very perceptive, insightful. She’s sensing her child is afraid or ashamed about her emotions. That’s the discomfort that her child feels. Now, why would she be afraid? Maybe because her parent is worried. Maybe because she feels a little bit too much attention around this and that’s why she’s ashamed. Maybe she’s ashamed because she feels the parent is too concerned about this, putting too much attention on it. I’m just throwing these things out here, I obviously don’t know for sure. And I don’t blame this parent for anything she’s feeling. She’s going through it, it’s a tough situation all around.

The parent says, “She runs and hides, refuses any comfort, tells me to go away and shouts, ‘Mummy, I want Daddy back!'” The running and hiding—yes, it could be that it’s too hard to try to contain that parent’s feelings while I have mine, as a child. So I need to just get some privacy with this.

“Refuses any comfort.” I wonder if the dear mother, out of her worry, is wanting to comfort her child, but in a way might be wanting to comfort herself that this is going to be okay. I don’t know that, but I mean, I can feel that as a parent. I can feel, I want you to feel better so I can feel better. That’s often where our wish to actively comfort comes from. And I don’t know what this comfort looks like when she says her daughter refuses it. Comfort in this case will come when the parent lets go a little bit more, lets go of worrying. Because, as she says, she understands the feeling. And the feeling makes sense to me. So it’s safe for her child to have this feeling all the way through, and that’s what she needs to do to get to the other side of it.

She says that her daughter tells her to go away and shouts, “Mummy, I want Daddy back!” That is her expressing her feeling. She’s expressing her anger and her upset feeling there and her sadness, maybe. I want Daddy back! I have to make this transition. Go away! I’m not ready to transition from Daddy to you yet. I need to have this passage of feelings first. So let me have them. Don’t get in my way. Even though the parent is trying so hard to do the right thing, right?

She says, “Today she shut herself in the bathroom and told me to go away if I opened the door. I sat outside, acknowledged her feelings, and let her know I was there and ready to help her when she needs me. The more I spoke, the more angry she was.” Yes. So when our acknowledging and our words make our child angrier or more upset, it’s often because, and I think that’s true in this case, maybe our intention in saying these words, maybe it’s coming out of our worry. Our wanting to work her through this, that this is a problem, that we’ve got to say these things and let her know that we’re there. When our child just needs to not be thinking about us and just to be in herself and her feelings.

And then of course, you’ve got to love this: “She eventually just snapped out of it after 20 minutes.” Snapped out of it. That’s what children do, especially at this age. They do snap out of it, when they’re ready to.

So, in answer to this question, “Do you have any advice for helping her to be more comfortable when feeling sad or angry?” Yes. I would calm myself. Not try to talk, not try to comfort. Know that your child feels your presence, they feel your worry or they feel your acceptance. If we can let go of worry and let ourselves drop into acceptance, let the feelings be, just keeping the focus on ourselves, then our child will feel that safe space to express her feelings. And when we’ve done this a few times around all her feelings, especially these ones that are so triggering for us, right? Because I’m sure this parent has her own feelings she’s processing and navigating about this situation. It’s so hard. But trying to keep that separate and just focus on herself, and let her child have it her way, the way that she does it. Which may be shutting herself away for a while, that’s okay. Trust that it’s a process.

And if we can show, not tell her, that we’re there for her and ready to help when she needs us. Even that—obviously this parent doesn’t mean it that way, but it can be pressurizing. Alright, I’m waiting. Let me know if you need me. It feels, as the child, like we’re getting rushed, like we’re supposed to feel better because our mom is doing all this stuff to try to help us feel better, saying the right things, doing the right things. We just want to feel how we feel. Just leave me alone! It can make sense when we put ourselves in our child’s shoes. And if we can trust more and accept more, she will feel safer to have them in our presence. But I wouldn’t have that be your goal. I would just have your goal be to let her do her thing the way that she does it, and trust that she’s going to come out the other side and feel better, probably snap out of it the way children do.

And that’s our job, we’ve done it. Accepting the feelings and also accepting the way our child is expressing them. Even if it doesn’t look the way that we imagine or the way it is in the movies or the way that looks like this wonderful parent and we have this moment together where we hug. That’s just not the vibe of these feelings right now. Giving into that and just letting go of it is the way.

Just a couple details about separations. Understanding more, again, how much sense these feelings make. This is a big transition for this child, or any child, to let go of one parent and be with another. Even if they’re staying in the same house and the parents are moving back and forth, or if they’re the ones that are moving from house to house. All transitions tend to be challenging for children, just getting up and going from here to there. And now here’s one that’s especially challenging, separating from one attachment figure and embracing another.

This can be easier for children when they feel like their attachment figures are aligned, not separate. But that’s not always the way our lives as parents work out, right? So no guilt there. But it’s something to realize, just to help us even more to normalize what she’s going through. Realizing that this is a natural time for her to express the strongest feelings, and the best thing she can do is to vent them out. And it can help kids if we’re able to give our partner who we’re separated from or divorced from grace, so children can still experience as much as possible a harmonious unit between parents. But that’s not always possible, I know.

Here’s some general suggestions for any parent going through something like this, where their child isn’t allowing them to comfort them or showing them their feelings the way the parent wishes them to. Allow. Allow children to express their feelings in their own immature way. Yelling at us may be a part of that. It’s not personal. Allow children to find their way to calm in their own way and time. So we’re not trying to dictate that for them or affect it in any way. That can be a tough one for us, right? And lastly, allow children to hide or not talk about it or stuff it with their thumb or their pacifier, after we’ve opened up that door for them to share with us very briefly. Don’t impose any pressure at all on what they’re doing, that they have to do it differently for us because we want them to. This is easier when we let go of feelings as some kind of agenda for us, and we’re just available. Within reason, I mean, we’re not going to let ourselves be screamed at in the face or pummeled or otherwise abused. We’re just being available, trusting. We’re calming ourselves, and that is the best way to comfort them or co-regulate, if we want to call it that. Calming ourselves, letting the feelings be. So simple, yet so not easy.

I share a whole section on meltdowns and tantrums and other feelings that children have, whining, and how we can handle that, how we can approach it, how to feel about it, in my No Bad Kids Master Course. You can check it out at nobadkidscourse.com.

Thank you so much for listening. I hope some of this helps. We can do this.

The post When Kids Hide Their Feelings and Reject Our Comfort appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “Praise That Encourages Intrinsic Motivation”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m going to be talking about praise. It’s an interesting topic. It can be confusing because there’s a lot of different advice out there. A lot of it is these really strict do’s and don’ts: don’t say these certain words, don’t do it this certain way. And a lot of those don’ts are actually against our instincts, so that makes it doubly hard to navigate. One thing my mentor Magda Gerber always said is, children don’t need big hooplas. And she recommended that we acknowledge, rather than praise. One thing I loved about Magda was she was all about clarity and simplicity, she didn’t use complicated terms. But she was very exacting in the words she used to communicate; maybe that’s because her original degree was in linguistics.

If we think about it, acknowledge, that’s something that we do that’s really about noticing what our child is doing, noticing what they’re accomplishing. So they have ownership, and we’re just the ones noticing. With praise, we’re more subjective. It’s more about us imbuing what we see—our child’s accomplishment, their activity—with certain qualities. We are giving it a certain value. So it’s more about us than just acknowledging is. Which isn’t to say that we should only ever acknowledge and never, ever praise. Children need a little of both, I think. They want to know what we think sometimes. And one way to be able to discern that for ourselves is to wait for them to ask us what we think, look up at us for that acknowledgement.

But I can understand why Magda emphasized acknowledging over praising. Because she put such a high value—and so do I, I’ve learned the value of it and that it’s really possible for us to nurture it—on intrinsic motivation. And it’s kind of a delicate thing, intrinsic motivation. We can, without meaning to, sort of take that away from our child and make it more about them pleasing others, like us. So we just want to be a little more careful with praise, that’s all. That we’re encouraging our child to still have ownership and not subtly taking that away from them.

Hari Grebler, my friend and associate and my first RIE teacher, she was a recent guest on this podcast in an episode called Every Child, Even a Tiny Baby, Needs Time On Their Own. She has an Instagram page that I love, Hari’s RIE Studio. And she did a post recently, it was just a little video clip, and this was the message on it: It’s okay to be quiet while children are creating. Wow, that’s something kind of surprising to a lot of us. That frees us, right? We don’t have to say something to encourage them. We can just be quiet and honor what they’re doing.

And then she said: When they show you one of their creations, you could ask how they thought to do that. So when they’re asking for feedback, when they’re showing something to us and sharing it with us, then we’re interested in where that came from in them. What made you want to make that? We’re still encouraging the intrinsic desire to make that, instead of labeling it with some kind of praise or qualification of our own. And what that also does is encourages our child to stay in touch with that creative part of them. We’re showing that we value that by asking about it, we’re interested.

Hari also notes: They can get hooked on our oohs and ahs. And why do we ooh and ah sometimes? Because we feel like we’re supposed to, we’re supposed to say something! They’re going to feel discouraged if we don’t talk about what they’re doing, right? That’s a fear that a lot of us have, but it’s not the truth.

The next thing she says: Don’t interrupt them. When children are creating something, just the way that we create or focus on an activity, focus on a skill, we’re in it. And we want to encourage children to be in that flow of what they’re doing. So when we go, Ooh, ah, we’re interrupting that, which makes it a little harder for them to have that longer attention span. They can become accustomed to being interrupted. One of my most popular early posts I wrote is called Baby, Interrupted, and it’s all about that.

Then she says: Never (and I don’t hear a lot of “nevers” coming from her!) never ask them what it is. So, why wouldn’t we want to ask a child what it is? We do want to ask them what it is sometimes, right? Because we’re seeing from this product mentality that we tend to have as adults: You must have been trying to make a thing here. But children, they’re in the process and they’re interested in what it feels like to be painting on this piece of paper, what the brush is doing, what the colors are doing, or whatever they’re working on. They’re interested in what’s going on moment to moment and—especially very young children—they’re not trying to make a finished product. They’re not trying to make something, they’re just making. And they’re into the making of it, openly exploring. All qualities that we want to encourage, right? So it can be counterintuitive for us, but it’s so much more encouraging to not try to get them to zero in on, You have to make a thing here. You have to make something that looks like something, that you can call something, that represents something. You can’t just explore what’s inside you. Big difference, right?

Of course, this is specifically about creative projects, but it really holds true with all kinds of skill development that our children are doing. They’re figuring out a process, and they’re learning. As Magda Gerber said, they’re learning how to learn every time they get the opportunity to do this.

And then Hari says: You could ask them to tell you about their drawing, but that’s even over the top sometimes. Because that’s putting pressure on them. Maybe they don’t have words to describe their drawing, right? Adults that create things can’t always talk about what they’re doing, or they don’t want to.

Finally she says: When I did art with kids at preschool, I would just play with color, abstract, so as not to distract them from their own work. Mostly, let kids work. No need to put up all their work, wait until they think of it. Some children don’t care at all about the piece itself after they’re done. It’s truly the process for them. Hari shares all kinds of jewels like this on her Instagram page.

Most of us have heard that it’s not a great thing to say “good job” or to use terms that represent fixed traits, like, “You’re so smart,” “You’re so pretty,” or “You’re so great at this!” Carol Dweck did the famous study on this where children who were told that they were smart, they would perform far worse on the test afterwards than those who were praised for their effort, who were told, “You’re working so hard to get this.” But being told that they’re smart, it imposes pressure. It’s almost like, I can only go down from here. And they would fall apart and not be able to do their best. Fascinating study.

But before we start doubting ourselves too much, I recommend considering what really matters. And, as with everything to do with our relationships with children, what matters is authenticity between us. When we’re talking about what they’re doing, it’s coming from us truly paying attention, noticing and appreciating what our child does. In other words, it’s all about our intention. Because we could say the perfect words or the words that aren’t recommended. We could say, “Wow, you’re a stupendous artist!” or, “Look at all the colors you’re using!” And either way, if we’re doing this purely to try to encourage our kids, because we feel we need to say something, not because we really mean it, children will sense the difference. And this is how they can get hooked into needing that kind of empty validation. It’s empty because we’re doing it because we’re just trying to come up with something to say that’s going to make them feel good. 

That doesn’t work with other people, right? When we’re just trying to say something to make them feel good rather than really meaning it. When the people that are always authentic with us, when they acknowledge something, that feels amazing, right? Because we know that they really mean it. We want to be that person for our children if possible, and try to prevent them from falling into that trap of people-pleasing and being outer-directed.

Here’s some guidelines that I put together that have helped me in terms of praise:

First, don’t praise to deliberately encourage, acknowledge what you genuinely think, like I was just saying. And, as Hari Grebler said, it’s okay to be silent. Children can feel when we’re genuinely interested and attentive, they have a sixth sense for this. Try to trust your child.

Next, be careful about overdoing it. Big hooplas, as Magda called them, tend to make it more about us than about our child. Big hooplas for going on the potty or for eating that certain food. Those will reveal our agendas to our kids and very possibly get in the way of our child going on the potty and eating that certain food. Because now, instead of doing this for themselves because they wanted to and it felt good to make that autonomous choice, they now realize they’re doing it for us. And young children don’t like being told what to do, neither do teenagers, neither do most children. Yes, if this is truly something rare and extraordinary that you’ve seen them struggle with, they’ve worked so hard on it, you both know that—yes, make a big hoopla then, if that’s how you really feel. But save those for those momentous occasions.

Finally, don’t use praise with the intention of gaining cooperation. I see it as misusing praise. So instead of saying, “Oh, good job, good job, good job,” I would say, “Thank you.” “Thank you for helping me do that, that really helps.” Or, “You’re able to do that now with me, and that’s much more fun for me to do it with you. Thanks for your help.”

But even with good job, there are ways we can say that authentically. It’s when we’re looking into our child’s eyes with that twinkle, we’re sharing something we’re both excited about, and we’re saying, I see you and you did it. Good job. When it really means something. That feels so much better than this sort of automatic stamp of approval that “good job” can often be. Good job, good job, I want you to keep going, keep doing this for me. Children don’t need that, and it can get in the way and have the opposite result from what we’re hoping for.

And then getting back into that intention part of this again. This can be our north star: intention. It just sort of clears everything away. What is my intention and how can I achieve it? I think in most of these examples, it seems like mostly our intention is to encourage. We don’t have bad intentions here, it’s very positive. We want to encourage our kids, we want them to feel good about themselves, to have self-confidence, to know they can do things. That’s what we want, right? So here are some ways that are quite related to what I’ve been talking about, about praise, but these are surprising ways to encourage our kids.

First, don’t try; instead, trust. Encouraging kids is not this active process, as I once thought it was. It’s about facilitating rather than doing. Since, as I was saying before, children feel our presence and they sense our emotions and our intentions, trusting in them as capable, unique, evolving individuals is the most valuable support we can give them. And, as Hari Grebler said, it can be silent.

Second, don’t cheerlead. You can do it! Good job, good job, good girl, good boy! Or coax. Come on, just give it a try! Give it a try. Instead, calm yourself and reflect what you see. There’s that acknowledging. “You’re working hard on that. It’s really difficult. Ah, it’s frustrating at times, right? To try to figure that out.” Or, “You did it.” And now I just have to say, my impulse when I first became a parent was to cheerlead, for sure. It’s what I grew up with. The way my family did things is to go over the top, and I still kind of love that in a way. But I see how it interferes and how with me, it interfered with me being outer-directed, looking outside of myself for validation, not feeling self-confident. I don’t think that was the only reason, but that was part of it.

Kids don’t need as much reassurance as we think, especially if they’re not asking for it. I try not to assume that my kids need to be reassured and reassured that I’m in their corner, that I’m rooting them on. They feel if we are or we aren’t, because they’re so magnificently aware. So they feel more genuinely supported when we’re not trying to push it or sell it on them. I mean, then they can feel like they’re letting us down too, right? When they don’t achieve whatever it is.

I’ve also realized that my impulse to actively demonstrate support for my kids mostly stems from my own discomfort with the possibility that they might become frustrated or fail. In other words, it’s not my child needing this feedback as much as it’s my need to want to give it to her. And so that was a big aha! for me. Calming myself is the best way for me to keep the air clear of the pressure and the urgency that can make it seem way more important than it is to my child. And that’s going to create pressure.

Point three, don’t direct or fix. Instead, be patient, fully attentive (if we’re available to be), providing the most minimal direction needed for children to be able to accomplish self-chosen tasks themselves.

Four, don’t over-sympathize or attempt to actively comfort frustration. Instead, allow it, accept it, empathize, acknowledge feelings. Doing all those things normalizes the experience of frustration. Because it is a life experience, and if we can feel it, allow it to be, it passes, we get through it, and we become used to those walls that go up. It doesn’t feel good, but we know it’s going to pass. Or maybe we need to take a break and come back, or maybe we need to give up on it altogether that time and come to it another day or later when we’re more ready. If we offer too much sympathy and comfort, we can teach our children, without meaning to, that this is a really negative situation, a problematic situation that you need my help with, that you can’t handle, that I need you to feel better.

Five, don’t project your own agenda or your urge to get it done and done “right.” Instead, let go and enjoy the journey. Enjoy the surprises. If it doesn’t work, the child learns from that too. If we can be okay with it, they can be okay with it.

Just to continue on this idea that it’s really not about the words, it’s about our intention, and that that can be our north star in helping us to give children praise or acknowledgements in ways that are genuinely connected. I received a note. It’s not the first one I’ve received with this issue, so I thought it would be interesting to respond to regarding this topic of praise.

Hi, Janet-

I can’t thank you enough for your work. It’s been life-changing to our family, and I wish we would’ve found it sooner. We have two daughters, a four-year-old and a one-year-old. We regrettably didn’t start following your methods until our oldest was about three, but she has a great attention span and plays well by herself.

Lately, however, she’s been a constant look at me, look what I’m doing, watch this, Mom, you’re not looking!, Mom, say good job! (Which we haven’t said to her in years and do not say to her sister.) I know this has everything to do with her younger sister, who is now able to do so many things. But I find myself getting exhausted and not wanting to watch every little thing she does. I also don’t want her to feel ignored. I tell her “not right now,” but that doesn’t seem to stop the constant requests. I’ve tried, “Ah, I hear you want me to watch you, but I’m a bit busy,” but the constantly responding to her requests is just exhausting. I find myself more and more withdrawn and lost in my own mind and needing space the more she requests my attention. Other people in her life say things like, “Good job!” or, “Wow, look at you!” And I just don’t feel like it’s authentic. I cannot control how other people speak to her, but she seems more and more bothered that I don’t speak to her that way.

Any encouragement or recommendations would be so greatly appreciated.

This parent gets that certain kinds of common ways we praise children aren’t authentic. The thing is, though, they are still going to get that input. Either from us, before we started considering the way we use those words, or from someone else—relatives, teachers. And what children do when they hear or observe or otherwise experience things, the healthy thing they do is that they process these experiences out. And often they do that with us, their trusted leaders. They’re exploring it. Wow, people are getting all excited with this praise thing. They’re not articulating it this way in their mind, but, Whoa, there’s this energy around this and I’m going to explore that. What does my mother think about it?

Then, if children come up against some resistance with us around something that they’re processing, we’re either shocked or we’re angry or, in this case, we’re just kind of annoyed because we don’t want her to be hooked into that stuff. And then also, Ugh, she wants me to give her this validation that doesn’t seem authentic. And I don’t want to do it and I don’t have time. But it could have just been that very first time we could have just been like, Oh, uh-oh, she wants me to say good job. Or, She’s all into needing validation. What have I done wrong? Or, This isn’t a good sign. So there’s that little bit of hesitation on our part, that little bit of maybe disappointment or worry. They feel that resistance from us. They’re coming up against some resistance, and that can be curious. So they want to explore it further. What if I ask this every second? Why is she getting more and more annoyed? And that can become a stuck place for them.

I believe that could be what’s happening here. She’s getting this subtle pushback when she requests this kind of empty praise, so she’s getting stuck. That means she’s struggling to get that need to just process this out filled. So what I would do in this case, especially because she’s asking for it, I would give her what she’s asking for without hesitation or reservation. Which we can still do authentically, I’m going to try to demonstrate. And I’m also sure that this parent is spot on in that her child is craving that extra attention and validation because of the rivalry with her sibling. So she’s a little more vulnerable, and then now she’s getting this feeling from her mother that what she’s asking for is this kind of annoying big deal. So then she’s getting stuck there doing it again and again and again, not wanting to be this more annoying child, but that’s where it’s going.

I want to try to assure this parent that she can give that validation while still holding onto her personal boundaries. And the way to do that is we’re giving it with an attitude that’s open, welcoming, encouraging. Generous, if you will, instead of stingy. Like, Sigh, alright, I’ll say good job. “You want a good job? Sure! That’s a great job! You’re doing a great job, I’m sure of it! I didn’t see what that was, but great job!”

So just to go over this, the parent says, “Lately, however, she’s been a constant look at me, look what I’m doing, watch this.” “Look at you? You know what? I want to look at you! I have to do this for now, but I can’t wait to come look at what you’re doing. Can you hold onto that? Just let me do this first.” I didn’t stop everything I was doing to go look at her, but I had an open, welcoming attitude about it, while still having my boundary. Which helps free her from that stuck place. I’m not annoyed, I just can’t do it right now, but I’m excited to do it when I can. She says, “Watch this!” “I wish I could! I can’t wait to see you do it after I do this thing.” “Mom, you’re not looking!” “Oh, I know, I know, but I will be!”

And then, you know what? We don’t have to keep talking every time she talks. We can let it go too, but just not with that tension that I’m guessing this parent is feeling. I mean, I understand why she’s feeling that because what her child is asking for is a bothersome thing, and then she won’t let up. But she will let up, I believe, as soon as this parent lets down her guard about it and lets it be. And when she says, “Mom, say good job!” And the mom says, “Which we haven’t said to her in years and do not say to her sister.” “You want me to say good job? Good job! I’m sure you’re doing a great job.” Or if we do see it, let’s say: “Good job, that is a good job actually!” We’re still not using it the way that we don’t want to use it. We’re using it in response to her wanting us to say it. And there’s no harm in that for her.

This parent says, “I tell her, ‘not right now.’ Or I’ve tried, ‘Ah, I hear you want me to watch you, but I’m a bit busy.'” Even saying those things could be fine, but the way she’s saying them, if she’s saying them with, Oh, not right now, but I will! Can’t wait to! Or, You want me to watch you and I wish I could, and I’m sure you’re doing something amazing. I’m a bit busy now, but I’ll be with you. It’s just a different attitude. It’s an unruffled attitude, it’s a there’s nothing to fear here attitude. Me saying those words to her is not going to harm her. It’s only going to help her move through this and see that there’s no pushback coming her way, there’s no odd resistance here. Nothing is a big deal. And it’s that daily diet of the way that we respond that matters. It’s not the once-in-a-while and the aunts and uncles doing it or whoever else is doing it.

I wanted to share this because I feel like it’s a good example of us getting tripped up in words, with all our wonderful intentions, to say the right words. There’s so much focus on words in our environment around parenting. But we’ll find much more clarity and freedom when we let go of those words, so we’re able to see beyond them to what really matters. And I would love to encourage this parent and every parent listening to believe in themselves and know that, in this case, this parent, she could free herself to do both. She can respond lovingly and exuberantly and affectionately with that empty validation her daughter wants right now, while still holding her boundaries and believing in what she believes in: being authentic. I mean, that’s a great value right there, in my opinion. I’m all about authentic. That’s one of the most important things to me, and I feel like it’s underrated these days, but that’s another story.

Let’s not get ourselves hamstrung worrying about words. We can trust ourselves more if we can also trust our child. Trust their intrinsic motivation, that they don’t need us to babble on about what they’re doing. It’s not up to us to mold certain outcomes for them. We provide the environment and the relationship of authenticity and trust, and these qualities we want to mold for our child will bloom on their own. That’s what I’ve seen with my children, the families I’ve worked with. I believe in that 100%: that trying to mold the outcome will only get in our way. It’s not our role at all. Instead, when it comes to our child’s abilities, be an interested spectator. The most interested spectator. Not judgmental, just interested.

Overall, we can stay on track as parents by considering: What do we want? Not just for now, but for the years to come. What do we want? Most of us want honest, authentically and mutually appreciative relationships with our kids. And we hope that they’ll know from the inside out that they are capable, that they are valuable, that they are worthy. Not because we say so, but because we both know so.

I know that we can do this.

The post Praise That Encourages Intrinsic Motivation appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “Should We Resort to Using Force?”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m going to be doing something a little different, thanks to a couple who graciously agreed to consult with me here. One of them reached out via email with concerns about her four-year-old’s unwillingness to cooperate with the steps leading up to bedtime and also during morning transitions. The parents wondered if there was a point when following through with limits around bathtime, toothbrushing, dressing should mean using force. And as a couple, they have differing views about this issue. They’ve tried sticker charts, taking away storytime if she doesn’t get ready in time, working with her to help develop a bedtime routine. But none of those strategies have worked out. So they asked if I could share any thoughts that I have.

As is often the case, when I read their note, I had way more questions than I did answers. So I very much appreciate them being willing to share with us here.

Hello, and thank you so much for being here and being willing to share with me and listeners about your issues. I imagine there’s other parents going through similar things, so I really appreciate you being willing to be on with me. I would like to start with your note that you sent me a couple of weeks ago, and here it is:

Thank you so much for all your lessons on parenting and developing respectful connections with my two daughters while holding boundaries and ensuring that my needs matter too. My current challenge is with my almost-four-year-old, who often engages in testing behavior at bedtime. She stalls, refuses, or delays putting on her pajamas, brushing her teeth, getting in bed, and staying in bed. For a few weeks we used a sticker chart and that helped motivate and then that behavior stuck for a while when we discontinued the chart, but now we are back to the same testing behavior. This behavior also happens when getting ready for preschool in the morning.

So my question to you is, how to enforce boundaries that seem like they would require physical intervention within the respectful parenting framework? When she won’t put on her pajamas, do we hold her body down to do so? If she will not go into the bathtub, do we pick her up and put her in, then keep putting her back in each time she climbs out? Do we brush her teeth for her while she tries to keep her mouth shut?

This has been a major area of conflict with my husband, who believes that these actions are part of following through after providing clear limits and acknowledging feelings, while I see them as overly controlling. To me it is really hard not to see it as too physical, and triggers my own history of being held down by my older brother when I didn’t do what he wanted me to do. I don’t want to be so physical, putting on her pajamas while my daughter fights it with her body and screams. But other options we have tried, like taking away storytime if she doesn’t get ready in time, using sticker charts, working with her to help develop a bedtime routine, haven’t worked.

Any thoughts you have would be so helpful. Thank you for your help.

As I mentioned in the note that I sent back to you, one of the reasons I wanted you to come on and talk to me here is that I have a lot of questions for you about what’s going on here. If you don’t mind, I’d like to start with that. Why do you think she’s struggling this way? What do you think could be going on there that makes her want to stall and resist and refuse?

Parent 1: Well, one piece that we’ve noticed just this last week is that we’ve moved up bedtime a bit. And realizing that some of it had to do with her just being overtired, and that’s helped some. It had gotten to the point where she was kicking and spitting when we were trying to help her get to bed, and that’s not typical behavior for her. And so recognizing that she, I mean she’s often going to be tired in the evening, but she was really overtired and that was making it even more challenging. That’s one thought that comes to mind.

Another is that she has an older sister who maybe she wants to be playing with and sometimes the older sister gets to stay up a little later.

And I think another part of it is just the testing part. She can see that I’m tentative, perhaps, in terms of I’ll say, “It’s time to put on pajamas,” and she just won’t answer and she’ll walk away and I kind of don’t know what to do. And I know from reading and listening to your podcast that sometimes that confidence is needed that can help them see that I’m her strong leader. And so perhaps that also plays a role.

Those are some of the thoughts that I’ve had. I don’t know if you have any others.

Parent 2: Well, you nailed the two big ones, which are that she’s probably been overtired and moving up the bedtime over the last week I think has made a big difference. I think a lot of it is sibling-related, dealing with her big sister is a big part of it. I think that her older sister, of course, is further along developmentally and more capable and more verbal. Even though our younger daughter is quite verbal and communicative, she’s not as communicative as our older daughter. So I think it often feels hard for her to get attention, get a word in edgewise, and she’s often using behaviors that are maybe more intense to try to get some of the attention that she’s looking for. And then I think part of it is the boundaries that you were just talking about. I think sometimes the boundaries aren’t totally clear to her.

One thing that I’ll add on to that is that you and I just do things a little bit differently as parents. Like when my back was hurting and it was really hard for me to reach to the far side of the bathtub to do her bathtime, that’s one place where I put in a boundary that I don’t think you have, which is that, “I can’t wash you if you’re on the far side of the bathtub. I need you to be on the near side of the bathtub.” And so she’d learned that that’s a boundary where she can try to test it and see what happens with me. So that’s one place where, to finish a bath with her, I would pick her up and take her out of the bath. But for you, that’s not something that you like doing and it’s not a boundary that you have in your mind. So there’s a difference between the two of us there. Does that make sense?

Parent 1: Yeah, yeah, that definitely makes sense. I think that we do have differences in some of the boundaries. I think she learns some of them really well and then other times I can see that might be confusing to her, to know where the boundary is between the two of us.

Janet Lansbury: Well, I’m hearing a lot of insightfulness here on both of your parts, so that definitely works in your favor as parents and in figuring this out, figuring out what’s going on and what we can do to help. I love that you both nailed the tiredness thing. It’s so all-consuming for young children and they aren’t able to see it coming in the way that we might as adults, where we’re like, Ah, I’m getting tired. And a lot of children have the temperament where they go right into this hyperactive, really unreasonable, dysregulated place. So that’s great that you’re both noticing that element, that you can help her there by starting earlier. I also wonder how old is the older one, your older child?

Parent 2: She’s six. They’re two-and-a-half years apart.

Janet Lansbury: And do they have time together at the end of the day?

Parent 2: Yeah, they do have time together at the end of the day. They often play together really nicely in the evenings for half-an-hour or an hour before dinner, after dinner, before bathtime, before bedtime.

Janet Lansbury: Wonderful.

Parent 1: And they also share a room, they have bunk beds, so they kind of are in the same space at night too.

Parent 2: They also do have conflict between each other and they work on resolving that. There’s lots of the older sister trying to keep things away from the younger sister and the younger sister trying to destroy the things that the older sister is working on. I mean, something along those lines probably happens every day, but they often are able to resolve it on their own, and then of the times that they’re not, they’re often able to resolve it with a tiny bit of observation from one of us.

Janet Lansbury: Yes, that I would say is par for the course, that they have conflicts. And that’s actually the benefit of having a sibling, is that you learn how to work through conflicts with other children and with peers and in all relationships in your life. It’s an incredible gift that they have this kind of relationship. It sounds ideal.

Why is it that you believe, though, that this is getting in the way with bedtime? Because it sounds like, well, your younger one has to go into the bunk bed before her sister does and be alone in there, and then her sister comes in later after she’s asleep. Is that how it works?

Parent 1: There was a period where we separated them because the younger daughter would just kind of scream, not letting the older one sleep. So we tried this for a year and we would just bring our older daughter into our room to sleep until the younger one stopped screaming and then we’d carry her back into the other room when our younger daughter was asleep. It was just a long time of really wanting them to share a room that wasn’t working, in the sense that I think that our younger daughter was getting some attention. I don’t know, I’m guessing that it’s attention, just doing a lot of screaming and yelling, not letting the older daughter sleep.

But that sort of got fixed in the last few months, so we had them in the same room going down at the same time, but half the nights there’s a lot of this testing behavior. And then in the last week, really, after I sent the message, we were like, Let’s put her down earlier! And that’s seemed to have helped some in terms of the intensity of the behavior.

Janet Lansbury: So now she has her own bedtime that’s earlier and she’s going to bed without the sister there?

Parent 1: Correct, yes.

Parent 2: Right.

Janet Lansbury: And that’s working better. That’s interesting. Yeah, the children can sort of play off each other, which does make it harder for them to let go. What all of us want at the end of the day when we’re going to sleep is to be able to kind of let go. Let go of the excitement in life, let go of the dramas that might be happening, let go of how we might be winding our parents up. She sounds like a very intense person, this younger one. I love that kind of child, but it does have challenges. It can be so much harder for them to let go.

Anyway, it sounds like you’ve gotten over one hurdle by figuring this out that she got too tired, which makes everything much harder for her and harder for you. The other part here that I wanted to talk about is, since you sort of know why she’s struggling, stalling, and resisting, so we want to be able to do what you’ve done by acknowledging the overtiredness. Which is kind of fixing this from the inside out by understanding what elements are making it not work, what she’s expressing here that she might need. And then from there, partnering with her. Because even sticker charts, while totally harmless, they’re kind of pitting you against her. That’s how children feel: Here, you get to do this fun thing if you comply with what we want. Whether that’s a sticker chart or storytime, it makes children feel a distance between them and us that can kind of make these matters worse. It just looks and feels a lot different to a child than when we’re partnering with her.

Another part of this, I don’t know if it’s the way that you expressed it in the letter, but it sounds like—and you can correct me if I’m wrong—that you are kind of asking her to do these things, in terms of getting ready for bed or in the morning, and she’s not doing them. Is that sort of the way it’s going?

Parent 1: Yes, I would say that’s correct. “It’s time to get dressed.” And she won’t get dressed.

Janet Lansbury: Right. So what she’s showing is that this is a time when she needs more of a helping her through these transitions. Especially the night transition is the hardest one of all because children are tired, but all transitions tend to be challenging. And getting up in the morning and getting out the door—I mean, I can totally relate to the stalling and the procrastinating and all of that stuff because I do that myself. At this age, though, children often need that parent helping them, guiding them through the channel. That feeling that we’re totally willing to do that. And actually we want to do that, because this is a way that we get to really separate from you when you go to school in a way that feels like there’s a lot of relationship that’s a part of it. And it feels better to us, too, than getting in a battle with her in the morning or at night before she goes to bed, certainly. It can feel better to us to hold on to that I worked with her and I helped her from the beginning.

Yes, she’s four years old and can do a lot of this herself, but there are often periods that children go through with transitions where it’s like they revert back to being a one-and-a-half-year-old, where they really need us to walk them through. And she sounds like she’s either going through that or she’s that kind of person right now. It doesn’t mean you’re going to be doing this forever until she’s a teenager. But for now, I would consider both these periods—the morning and the night—as this is time that you’re going to be connected with her, that you’re going to do caregiving. It’s like baby caregiving with her, to help her get from point A to point B.

Again, it’s that feeling of distance that she has where we’re over here and she’s over there. I want you to do this and you’re not doing it. But what she’s feeling is, There’s a part of me that’s still in independent-mode. Just because you tell me to do something, I can’t do it sometimes. And just be on my side and help me through. I mean, she can’t obviously say that, but that’s often what children are needing. That we are like, okay, it’s bedtime. And you said something about that you developed a routine, so here’s a routine that she hopefully had input on: What do you need at bedtime? What do you need from me? How do you want this to go? And then knowing that no, we’re not going to be able to make a deal that she’s always going to be able to shake on and follow through with. She still needs the backup of, We’re there, we’re taking you through.

That’s how I would approach it, so that right from the beginning, you’re, “Okay, now it’s time to get your clothes on. Here we go. And now we’re going to do this, and then we’re going to do that.” And I’m not saying that it’ll all be perfect and smooth then, but that’s the way I would look at this for yourselves. And you two could take turns or whoever’s available, to give her that 100% nurturing through that time. Okay, so now she’s saying, “No, I don’t want to do that!” The thing is, children often don’t, or they do it a lot less, when we’re in there with this positive, helpful, we’re doing this together, here we go, my love vibe, instead of the it’s time for you to do this attitude. So sometimes that will actually just override. They might still go, “No, I don’t want to. I don’t want to!” But they give in much easier because they’re getting that nurturing that they’re unconsciously asking for.

Parent 2: I think that is great advice. And just speaking for myself, I’ve heard you give that advice on other podcasts and we’ve been doing that and I think it has really helped. It has been great, for me at least, to switch my mindset from I need my daughter to do these things! to, Oh wow, my daughter really needs my help right now. And I remember you saying on a podcast about hard pickups from preschool or daycare, about kids running away: “Just don’t let your kid run away from you. Get there and give them a hug and then stay by their side for the whole time and then your kid can’t run away. And then there’s no conflict there anymore.” Or with these sorts of routines, to switch from saying, Wow, I just need my daughter to do her bedtime routine, to, Oh, my daughter is really tired and she’s only three, so she doesn’t know how to do this on her own and she needs my help. And I think that has made a big difference.

Even doing that, when we go into it and we let her know that the transition is coming: it’s going to be bedtime in 10 minutes, it’s going to be bedtime in five minutes, it’s going to be bedtime in one more minute, take one more moment to do one more thing. Then when it’s bedtime, I say, “Okay, it’s time to head up for bedtime. Do you want to walk or do you want me to carry you?” I will carry her or I’ll hold her hand. And I’ve had a lot of success doing that. Even so, she might start screaming that she can’t walk, and I’ll say, “Oh yeah, you are too tired to walk. I understand, that makes sense. I’ll carry you. I’m happy to carry you.” Sometimes that works.

Or sometimes she screams, “No, I want mama to carry me!” I mean, sometimes we look at each other and maybe mama is free and can pick her up and carry her, but I think this is where I start wondering about boundaries. Because if I’ve told her, “It’s time to go up for bedtime, I’m happy to carry you, I’m here,” is that a place where I ought to be saying, You really had these perfectly good options in front of you and you said no to walking and I’m here and I’m taking the lead in this bedtime, so I’m just going to pick you up. Even though mama’s on the other side of the house and she’s fully capable of taking you upstairs, right now I’m the one who’s doing it. But then that will often become a point of conflict between my daughter and me where she’ll just be screaming for the entire bedtime that she wants mama to do whatever. Does that make sense?

Janet Lansbury: It does, it does. And it’s great to hear these details of what’s going on. So the other thing I would say is, knowing that transitions are very challenging and a time of dysregulation, especially the nighttime one for young children. She’s still totally in that category at age four, four can be a challenging age. Six does get a lot easier by then, but four is still ripe for falling apart when it’s time to do these things. So knowing that going in, I would give her the most minimal choices, if any, and I wouldn’t give her that kind of countdown. Because putting my toddler hat on or my four-year-old hat on, I’m getting wound up by that. One more minute, here we go . . . For a child with this kind of sensitivity, it can be unraveling to feel that warning vibe. I know you don’t mean it that way, you mean it very lovingly, but it can come off as, Alright, here we go . . . and like, I have a feeling there might be trouble here. That’s the way you said it in your voice saying it to me. Maybe you’re not saying it that way to her, but that trepidation feeling.

Instead I’d say, “You know what? In a few minutes it’s going to be time to go upstairs and I can’t wait to do bedtime with you.” That’s the only warning part. And saying it very positively like that and then going up to her, “Okay, come on, let’s go.” Taking her hand, putting your arm around her. You see her starting to stall, “You know what, I’m going to pick up my little baby bear” or whatever, and, “I’m so glad I can still do this!” And now she’s screaming, Mommy, mommy! “Oh no, you want mommy.”

And maybe she can’t hear you from then out, but if she goes there—which again, there’s so much more chance of it when we’re leaving open those choices and all those things that she can’t handle. It’s like, I can’t handle this, I can’t handle that, I can’t handle that. And it’s like one on top of the other and, Now, I’m done. She’s gone off into that dysregulation place. And so if she gets like that anyway, even if you do kind of come in early with this, I call it the “confident momentum” of not giving her those choices and all those pauses and all those places of making decisions that are really, really hard for most young children. Or all of us when we’re in tense periods in our life, and young children still are in their development, there’s so much going on.

Even with all that, if she’s now screaming for mommy, I would see it as, You know what? She’s venting her day right now. I would perceive it that way. And, I’m going to be the hero that doesn’t get flustered by that, doesn’t try to call in mommy.

I would not do that, even if mom’s right there. I would not try to fix it that way because it will help her if she can just let go and be gone at that point. I would just take her up. If she’s screaming, cover your ears or if she’s trying to hurt you or something, say, “You know what? I can’t.” Or don’t even say it. Just put her down and just somehow get her along that way.

When you talk about force, you could call it force, but it’s not the kind that you two are both worried about where you have to hold her down. It’s that papa bear/mama bear momentum that I guess could be called force, but it’s really more when you can’t do it yourself, I’m going to carry you through attitude. And not all these words to her. I wouldn’t try to talk to her about it, especially if she’s at that point.

Then with details like the bath, I mean the bath is optional, really. Bathing is a nice luxury, I think. I mean for me at least! But for her it’s like you could wash her, you could washcloth her back a little if she’s been playing in mud or something like that or wash her hands. And I would do that with confident momentum. “You know what, we’re going to put these hands in here and we got to do this,” and, “Oh, you don’t want to and you want mommy and this is just not going your way!” If you’re going to say anything, just be understanding that she’s falling apart and coming from that place. But a bath should really be a voluntary thing because we want to present it positively. And like I said, I think it is positive.

It’s not make or break that if she doesn’t have a bath—unless she’s been working in a construction site or something—that there’s going to be something wrong with that. It’s just that we want this routine to go, and also maybe she said she wanted to do that. And then you might say, “It looks like it’s going to be too hard for you to be in the bath, so we’re going to skip it this time.” Not mad at her, not, Well, you said!, not going up against her in that way. But really on her side, as somebody that you see is almost like a basket case at this point. This is especially true if she was overtired.

Brushing the teeth, you do the best you can. The pajamas, I mean, if she has to sleep without pajamas, it’s not the end of the world. But I think you’ll find it’s easier—I mean, you say you’re already finding it easier that she’s not overtired, but I think you’ll find it easier when you approach it as, Okay, I got to get you dressed. That’s my job, and I got to do this. And we’re not annoyed with her, because we know she’s not in her best mind right now and she just needs help. She just needs us to get her from point A to point B as best we can. It’s not purposeful behavior that she’s doing. And then I think you’ll find there’s less of it.

I wanted to talk to your partner here about her feeling tentative because that is, as you both realize, that is also getting in the way. And understandably. I’m so sorry you had that experience as a child. A lot of parents that I work with have trouble with being physical in the way that I was just describing. Having that confidence to start early with momentum, to see your job as heroic, and there are physical aspects of that. If we’re tentative, then we’re leaving open all those spaces, we’re going to keep giving her those kinds of choices. Oh, you don’t want me? Okay, daddy, and, Okay, are you ready for me to do this? Instead of, You know what, I’m going to do this. I know I’m doing the right thing, I know I’m caring for you, that you’re showing me you need my help, and I’m happy to do it. It’s not the same as going up against you. I’m overriding some of the difficulty that you’re having, is really the way it is.

Parent 1: Yeah, that’s helpful. I think it’s some of what you described as putting pajamas on, the bathtub, those sorts of things, being voluntary, I think sort of trying to better understand that piece. Because I think there are times where we can come in with that more positive attitude and catching it earlier and it works. And other times where she just hides under the bed or hides behind furniture. I think she can kind of feel her power in terms of the pajamas, getting the pajamas on. And so I guess I wonder if in that situation when she’s—I’m using the word fighting, but that’s not what I mean—where she’s just really having a hard time or testing in those moments, would that make sense to let that go? Or would you say that’s important to get her pajamas on?

Janet Lansbury: That’s interesting. I don’t disagree with you saying fighting. But what you said is so key, about the power. So yes, she’s unconsciously trying to understand also, besides feeling not her best self and kind of a mess, she’s trying to understand and reckon with, in a way, the power that this has with her parents. That when she hides, now you’re frustrated or however you’re being or mad or trying to get her out of there. So what we want to do with that is not give it power.

That’s what I meant about cutting our losses sometimes and letting go of certain things. I mean, it’s not like I can give you a set plan. It’s a feeling that you have with her of she’s trying to get you wound up by something—again, I believe on an unconscious level—and you’re not going to do it. You’re not going to take the bait because you see beyond. Going under the bed, it’s so silly. So am I going to get annoyed with that? If I have this agenda, I’ve got to do this and she’s got to have the pajamas and she’s got to have the bath, that’s going to set me up to be annoyed when it’s not going my way. But if I’m just like, I’m going to do the best I can to help my little girl, and I’m not afraid of touching her and picking her up and doing all those things. Because it is loving, especially if I’m acknowledging.

If she’s screaming for mommy and daddy’s taking her and if you’re like, “You want your mom, you don’t want me,” knowing it’s not personal, then it’s so compassionate. It’s so loving. There’s nothing even remotely abusive or wrong there for her. She’s feeling that hero come in and take care of her.

But yeah, when she’s doing that kind of silly stuff, I would say maybe, “Okay, I’m going to go file my nails and let me know when you’re ready for the book because I’m happy to read it for a few more minutes.” Very positive, very you’re not going to get me with this stuff. And that will give you confidence when you realize you’re the one that actually has all the power, not her. She doesn’t want to have the power to annoy you with these antics, and she doesn’t have to if you don’t give it to her.

Parent 1: That feels really powerful. I could just feel myself, I have to get these nine things done to get her in bed! I think that’s where she gets the power. You’re absolutely right that I am like, Okay, now how do I convince her to put on her pajamas? And now how do I convince her to brush her teeth? And if she doesn’t, I have to make her do it. So then I’m trying all the tricks. We can’t read a book, or you’re not going to get to say goodnight to your sister, all the things. I’m pulling them out because she has to get the pajamas on. But if she doesn’t have to get the pajamas on, then okay. If she doesn’t have to brush her teeth. I mean, hopefully she doesn’t not want to brush her teeth every night, it doesn’t get to that. But I don’t think it does. The other day that came up and we were like, “Oh, okay, you don’t have to brush your teeth to go to school today.” She’s like, “Oh, I want to. I don’t want cavities.” And so she still did. I think that’s just really powerful to take the air out of it all by recognizing none of it has to get done.

Janet Lansbury: Right. I love that you had that experience where she wanted to brush her teeth! What does that tell you? I mean, everything, right there. This is about your dynamic with her. That’s all. And so what she’s feeling when you’re putting this really intense agenda on yourself. I mean, look what you’re doing to yourself. You’re kind of making it impossible for you to be a confident parent right there. No. Own your power.

You don’t have to tell her and talk her into things. Say, “Okay, here’s your clothes. I’m going to put this on.” You really can’t do it? Don’t do it, then. Maybe there’s ways that you can practice with her during times when she’s not having difficulty like this, where you come in very positively with physical touch. I mean, I’m sure you do have this. You just put your arm around her right away, you’re not tentative about touching her, that you have to ask her permission for everything or whatever. I mean, I know that that’s out there. You’re not one of these people that anybody should worry about making a child do things and breaking their boundaries physically. You’re the other direction. But children read that as, She can’t be the leader. I don’t want to be the leader, but I’m kind of stuck here trying to get her to be the leader. It’s not a comfortable feeling for her.

Parent 1: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. There’s definitely a place for picking her up and helping her and coming to it from that perspective as her leader and helping her through things. And letting go when it starts to feel like a power struggle. That feeling that I have in my body is a cue that, Huh, maybe this thing isn’t necessary. Maybe she doesn’t have to eat a banana before she goes to school. Let that go. If she doesn’t want to eat breakfast, then she doesn’t want to eat breakfast. I can let go of all those things.

Janet Lansbury: And you can take it in the car and, instead of that disappointment in her, say, “You know what? We’ll bring it in the car. Tell me if you change your mind.” If you don’t mind her eating in your car, but if you do, don’t do it.

You’re not willing to engage in a power struggle. You’re just not. Not because you’re afraid of it, but you’re just too big for it. You’re way too big for it, both of you. You’re not going to stoop to that with a four-year-old. And that’s what will give her heart so much relief. That she’s not in charge of these things, that she doesn’t have to make all these decisions, that her little antics don’t throw you off your game, you two. That’s the main thing that she’s looking for here, I think.

Parent 1: Yeah. I feel like I have a new approach that’s going to really help the evenings feel. I think you’re right, there’s a sense that, Here comes the bedtime routine . . . How is it going to go tonight? So hopefully I can shift that mindset, because I’m sure she feels that too.

Janet Lansbury: Yeah. And if you’re feeling that, this girl’s feeling it for sure. It’s like seeping out of you, that trepidation. And it’s a really typical thing, you’re not unusual, that we go into these things where our child, maybe we’ve had difficulty before and now, “Alright, five more minutes until your bedtime. Okay, it’s time.” Like we’re almost asking for trouble, right?

Parent 1: Right.

Janet Lansbury: Yeah. Even though of course we don’t really want it, but that’s how it can feel.

I think it’s also wonderful that you also have the connection now that you’ve made between your childhood experience and the tentativeness that you feel. Keep exploring that, maybe writing about it from a place of that feeling, of how it felt. So you’re not writing a story about what happened from this kind of objective, distant place, but you sit down with that feeling of how that felt when your brother was doing that, and you just write from that. Ah, I’m scared, whatever comes from that. That can be a helpful way that I learned from Elisabeth Corey, by the way, who I’ve had on my show. Do you go to therapy or anything like that?

Parent 1: I have at times. I’m not in therapy right this minute, though. Yeah.

Janet Lansbury: Well, just keep in mind that that may need more healing for you to be able to put it in its place and not let it interfere with this important role that you’re taking on.

Parent 1: I think the challenge is actually sometimes more just like when my husband has to help her put her clothes on. I kind of trust myself in those moments, but I think the conflict comes when I’m watching him put her pajamas on. That’s more of when the conflict arises within me, is kind of watching that and probably putting a lens on it that’s more related to what happened to me when I was a kid. He’s just trying to get her pajamas on, and in my mind, I often intervene in those moments. And not just in my mind, I intervene and I tell him to stop because that’s what comes up for me. And so I think figuring out how to allow him to parent in those moments. I mean, I certainly think it impacts me. I think in terms of how it impacts our parenting overall. It’s more in just my intervening in those moments when he’s having to be the confident leader and take those steps that it ends up being a challenge for us.

Janet Lansbury: Well, I would just keep your sense of humor about it if you can. What both of you are doing here, exploring this, is the way that I would recommend. Because it’s like, let’s say you’re building a wooden box and you have this lid and the lid’s not going on. We wouldn’t try to force it, force it, force it on. We would look and see what’s going on here that’s making this not go on. So that’s what we want to do with children, even though obviously they’re not wooden boxes, much more complex than that. But that’s the way we want to be as parents. We want to go from the inside out, helping our child with the issue that they’re having.

In this case, I think overtiredness, way too much power, getting people wound up, and maybe too much of a strict agenda on things that, really, we don’t have the power to force that easily. Like to make someone sit in a bath and enjoy it or to make someone get their clothes on or brush their teeth when they’re holding their mouth shut. So where we don’t have power, we really want to lean into mama/papa bear, loving, loving, loving relationship. And way above her struggles and tests and all the things that happen when she’s not at her best self.

Parent 1: That’s super-helpful. Thank you so much. I feel kind of relieved that I have a plan that feels a lot more doable than I had before. Yeah.

Janet Lansbury: Good. And if she starts screaming for one of you when the other one’s having their time with her, don’t other person come bail her out. Because then that can be that accommodating thing of, I really can’t do this, and you really do need daddy or you really do need mommy right now. It’s better then to just kind of face the music and carry on, knowing that you’re being a hero.

Parent 2: Can I ask a couple follow-up questions?

Janet Lansbury: Yes.

Parent 2: Since we’ve got you on the line, and normally I just have to listen to your podcast and then guess how it applies to our particular circumstance.

Janet Lansbury: Of course.

Parent 2: So yeah, I hear what you’re saying about if she is screaming at my wife that she actually wants me to do bedtime—it happens in both directions—that that’s not her decision to make, and we’re both capable parents and either one of us can do it. We don’t need to acquiesce to that. What about this morning when she was screaming at me that I was sitting in her seat at breakfast and she wanted me to move? I mean, am I acquiescing to some unreasonable demand? I mean, I can go sit somewhere else.

Janet Lansbury: But why would you?

Parent 2: Is that me being flexible? Or am I being too stubborn if I say, “No, I was sitting here already, I’m just going to sit here,” knowing that she is going to scream a lot right next to me as I’m sitting there eating breakfast if I don’t get up and move. I mean, she ended up screaming a lot about other nonsense this morning.

Janet Lansbury: There you go, that’s your answer. She needed to scream about something. I’m really glad you brought this up, because that’s a sign that there are some places where you’re kind of letting her have power that she cannot be comfortable with, and then it’s bleeding over into these difficult situations like bedtime as well. Because when there are things going on in one area, it always makes everything harder, especially the transitional times, which are already the hardest.

It’s an unconscious power play on her part. Yeah, of course you could get up, but for what? Of course you could get her a different color cup that’s right there, but you already brought that one with the water in it. The way that you respond matters, no matter what you do. So you could sit there still and say, “No, I’m going to sit here. You can’t tell me what to do.” Or you could be like, “Well, that’s really interesting. You’re giving us the seating arrangements. I’m pretty comfortable here. This is where I’m going to stay.” With that comfortable, confident attitude, instead of responding as if she’s making a serious request. And then she will scream anyway. And I love that you noticed that in a way. I mean, I’m sorry you noticed that!

Parent 2: It’s hard not to notice.

Janet Lansbury: I know. I’m sorry that happened, I guess I should say. But that tells you right there, she was going to find something to scream about. And by me doing this totally reasonable thing, which is staying where I’m sitting and not jumping up for the four-year-old pointing their finger at me, she gets a chance to.

And she also gets this incredible message that her parents are just not going to fall for that stuff. We’re just not going to take the bait. And she doesn’t have to worry that we’re going to take the bait. Because underneath what she seems like she wants is her wanting us not to do that, her wanting us to not give her all that power, that she can be the boss of all these adults. Because she’s only four and she knows that’s trouble if she’s the boss. Who’s going to take care of her?

Parent 2: Can I ask another follow-up, though?

Janet Lansbury: Yeah. I hope it’s along the same lines, because I love it.

Parent 2: It’s along the same lines. I know I’ve heard you give people advice that when your kid is screaming, if they’re actually screaming in a way that is bothering you, you can tell them that. So part of what I was thinking at breakfast this morning is that of course I can stay in my seat, but I know she’s going to start screaming. And then if she starts screaming at me, I can tolerate that for like a minute or two, but then I’m not going to like it anymore and I’m going to want to leave. And I’ll tell her like, “Oh wow, that noise that you’re making, that’s really loud. That’s actually bothering me, so I’m going to go somewhere else.” And then it’s like she’s gotten the thing that she wanted anyway. So she does have a lot of power, you know? She can scream and I can’t stop her from screaming. And I can white-knuckle it and tolerate it for as long as I can, but I’m still a limited human being. I can only take so much of my kid screaming in my ear before I want to go sit in a quieter room to eat my oatmeal. You know what I mean?

Janet Lansbury: Yeah. So putting your hand over your ear doesn’t help enough, it sounds like.

Parent 2: I guess I could do that in between bites.

Janet Lansbury: As much as possible, we want to try to do the most minimal thing, because that shows that we’re not bothered. And ideally we see this as a kind of ridiculous thing that’s going on here and that we’re not going to play into it. But if that’s really hurting your ears and you can’t take it anymore, I would say, “You know what? I feel like going over here.”

And then, no, she hasn’t gotten what she wants there. Or she has actually, but it’s not what we think she wants. So we think she wants us to get off that chair. But what she wants is to know her leaders are unruffled, she wants to know her leaders can totally handle anything she throws at them. So you not sitting there is not her getting what she wants. But your attitude about eventually moving or not moving is going to give her what she wants, which is an answer: You know what? You can try all these things and you’re not going to blow me off this chair. I may choose to get up, but you don’t have the power to force me. It’s that little subtle adjustment of you owning your power and seeing the ridiculousness of this and the need that’s really behind it, which is, Dad, don’t play into this with me. Don’t let me be this kind of boss-child instead of the little tiny girl that I am. So it’s the way that you do it. Does that make sense?

Parent 2: That does make sense. That makes a lot of sense. And I think that’s really helpful. Thank you.

Janet Lansbury: So making it your idea. “Oh, you know what? I’m going to go over here. I’m going to bring this in the kitchen because I have some things to do,” or whatever. I mean, I guess maybe it’s acting a little bit. But have there ever been other people in your life, like when you were a kid or something, that just were trying so hard to annoy you and bug you and get a rise out of you, and you finally realized, if I just kind of not ignore them, but ignore the bothersomeness of this, they stop.

So ignoring them is different because that’s actually a kind of aggressive response of, I’m just going to ignore you for doing that.

This is, Oh gosh, here she goes. Oh well, I’m just not going to give this thing power. It’s so silly. I’m going to get up because I want to.

Parent 2: Sounds really helpful, and I hear what you’re saying about it kind of being acting, but also just saying the line of dialogue out loud kind of forces you to go along with the scene. So that is good.

Janet Lansbury: It’s acting yourself into believing it, or it’s even better when you just really believe it. When you really see this as not this tremendously annoying child this moment, but this silly, tiny person that is not really asking for you to get off the chair, but asking for you to not be wound up by her.

Parent 2: Yeah, I think that’s really helpful advice. I’ve been using your advice along those lines during bedtimes when she’s just totally overwhelmed, overtired, completely fallen apart, saying out loud, “Oh wow, you’re having a really hard time. I love you. I’m here to help you.” That has really changed my attitude about what’s going on in those moments. And I think sometimes she’s so deep into her tantrum that I don’t know if she’s hearing me at all or, if she’s hearing me, I don’t know if she’s actively processing it at all. But it still helps me.

Janet Lansbury: Good.

Parent 2: And my wife can correct me if I’m wrong, but I think I’ve seen a change in her over time as I’ve shifted that attitude and the words that I’m saying to her in those moments.

Janet Lansbury: Yeah. Another one you could say to yourself is, This too shall pass. It’s all good. My son always says it’s all good to everything, but she’s venting away. It’s all good.

Parent 1: I don’t think we realized how much of our power we were letting her take. I think this is just really useful for getting a bigger picture outside of my own brain of what’s actually going on, than how I was seeing it. Super helpful. Thanks again.

Janet Lansbury: It’s my pleasure. And that’s the key: that zooming out, having somebody else to talk to about it so you can see the bigger picture. And then when you step away from her, you can see how tiny this person is. Do you ever go out on the street and think, How did she get so small? We thought she was huge in our minds!

You two are doing an incredible job. Kudos to you. All of this self-reflection and self-awareness that you have is really going to continue to inform your relationships with these two people that you’re raising.

Parent 1: We’re lucky that we ran into your materials.

Parent 2: We really are.

Parent 1: I don’t even know. I sometimes think, what would I be doing if I hadn’t run into your stuff online? Who knows! But we are just really grateful that you are around and you’re so good at explaining it in a way that makes it clear and understandable. And providing the language at times. Sometimes “I won’t let you do that” is so helpful. Just those little things, that you just have a gift of putting things succinctly in helpful ways. So thanks for putting that out into the world.

Janet Lansbury: It’s my pleasure. And thank you so much for your kindness and again, for your generosity in being here and sharing with all of us. Bye.

Parent 1: Bye.

Janet Lansbury: And thank you all so much for listening and for your kind support. We can do this.

The post Should We Resort to Using Force? appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “Tantrums, Meltdowns, and Other Intense Outbursts: My #1 Secret for Staying Calm”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

This podcast is called Unruffled, and you’ve heard me share many different perspectives on how to be an unruffled parent, how to stay calm in all different situations. But I haven’t really zeroed in and talked just about my own personal favorite mindset. The secret I’ve used for myself to be able to manage the incredibly uncomfortable, challenging task of facing my children’s intense emotions.

Before I ended up sharing this little secret, back in 2010 I think it was, on my website, and it’s also in my No Bad Kids book, I was worried it was too silly. It felt embarrassing, and that maybe I’d be laughed at. But I was wrong. I think! I mean, maybe people are still laughing behind my back about this, there’s a good chance of that. But I’ve also heard how this advice has encouraged people. I guess there’s a lesson in that, that if something helps you, no matter how personal and silly it might seem, it might yet help someone else.

And that’s also why I love sharing your success stories, and I have one of those to share today. Sure, it’s validating for my efforts when my perspective helps somebody, but I don’t share success stories to toot my horn. I share them to encourage you that if a certain way of addressing or seeing behavior, a certain way of responding to it, helped that family, helped that parent, maybe I could brave that too and it would help me. It gives us more permission, it gives us more inspiration. Oh, people are really doing some of these things that seem scary and hard and it’s working for them.

I’m a fan of Dr. Susan David’s work in her book Emotional Agility. And this is one of my favorite quotes from her: “Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is fear walking. Walk directly into your fears, with your values as your guide, toward what matters to you.” And that relates to the little secret I’m going to share about.

Alright, so cough it up already! My silly secret is imagery. And again, if you’ve read or listened to my book, you’ve heard me speak of this. It’s my superhero suit. I imagine myself putting on a superhero suit, with a cape, the whole business. And it has a shield that covers my chest and it allows for all the intensity, the frustration, the anger, rage, or dysregulation that my child has to kind of bounce off of me. It deflects it, so all of that emotion doesn’t get into my heart. I’m safe. I can be in hero mode.

Slipping into this suit also reminds me, and this is from my book, that this is a V.I.P.M., a Very Important Parenting Moment. Releasing these feelings is so good for my child. This explosion will clear the air and lift my child’s spirits. Staying present and calm, sticking with whatever limits I’ve set and being a safe channel for these emotions is the very best thing I could ever do.

Here are some of the superhuman parenting powers my suit provides. You could see these kind of as affirmations. They have been for me.

• I understand that difficult behavior is a request for help — the best my child can do in that particular moment.

• I remember to acknowledge my child’s feelings and point of view. The importance of this can’t be overemphasized.

• I have the confidence to set and hold limits early, before I get annoyed or resentful. And I do so calmly, directly, honestly, non-punitively.

• I know that my words are often not enough. I’ll likely need to follow through by intervening to help my child stop the behavior.

• I’m not afraid of what others think when I need to pick up and carry my crying, screaming child out of a problematic situation, because my child comes first.

• I have the courage to allow feelings to run their course without trying to calm or rush or fix, shush, or talk my child out of them. I might say, “You have some very strong feelings about that,” rather than yelling, “Enough!”

• I move on without resentment once my child’s storm has passed. Rather than feeling angry, guilty, or dejected for the rest of the day, I hold my head high and congratulate myself for being an awesome, heroic parent.

And just to touch on that point about “I’m not afraid of what others think when I need to pick up and carry my crying, screaming child out of a problematic situation”—it did take a couple of times of this happening before I could really proceed with confidence. With those blinders on that are so helpful to us sometimes as parents when we’ve got a lot of input from disagreeing sources or the public or we’re embarrassed, all of that getting in our way. These blinders can help. And we can get those when we practice this, it takes practice. But after a few times or even the first time to a great extent, I did feel that. I started to feel like instead of, Oh gosh, I’m so ashamed I have to do this and my child and what’s the matter with them? Because I knew it wasn’t that my child was being a bad person there. I knew, and I would soon realize, what had caused this. Often it was tiredness, hunger, but mostly tiredness actually, in most of my cases. And kids just can’t show us that so easily, when they’re very young especially.

I began to feel like, I’m actually a model right here. I’m a model for all these people watching, whoever they are, of being a brave parent. Of, as Susan David says, fear walking. I’m walking through it. And it was like I would open up this channel for myself to be in it and to own my benevolent power at that point. And people may have snickered or thought terrible things about me and my children, I don’t know. But I know that it felt right, and that’s all I needed and that’s all my child needed, was to feel the positiveness of this. I mean, I wasn’t smiling and laughing and enjoying it, but I was okay and I was centered and I was doing the right thing. And that always proved true.

So when parents talk to me about what everyone else is thinking on the playground or wherever they are, the relatives, I encourage them to believe in themselves as the hero in those moments. Because they really are. And the more we believe it, the more others will tend to see that kind of glow around us, Wow. That’s not being permissive, it’s not letting our child unravel and continue the behavior with people or hurt someone else or make a scene. Instead, we’re rescuing them from that.

One of the toughest aspects of the job of superhero is that our kids are usually showing us that they don’t want us to be doing what we’re doing. And it’s easy to take this as that they’re mad at us and they’re even madder that we’re intervening. It’s like we’re trying to save someone who really doesn’t want to be saved and that makes it so much harder, right? To have conviction. Many months ago I did an episode around that. I called it When Our Kids Reject Us (A Step-by-Step Response). And I offered the steps and how they applied to the issues that parents shared with me in three different letters. So here are those steps again, but I’m just going to be paraphrasing them.

1. Be prepared, do the homework. Working on our perspective, that’s the homework. How are we perceiving our child’s behavior? Because that’s going to direct our actions and decide our feelings. If we see a hurting child, it brings up totally different feelings in us than when we see what really is a mask on the outside, that seems really mean and ugly and hurtful. And then another part of being prepared and doing the homework is that if this is repeated behavior, we know that something’s up. We know maybe not exactly what’s happening, but that our child is expressing something that needs to be expressed, that they need to express. And they’re not quite getting what they need around that, not quite getting the response that they’re looking for, unconsciously. So that’s all part of the first point, being prepared, doing the homework.
2. In the moment, block the physical behavior as best and as confidently as you can. And confidently means we’re not overdoing it, we’re just blocking as needed. We’re kind of trying to make it look easy if we can. And that comes from being ready for it, because we’ve done the homework. And blocking early. I mean sometimes it’s going to happen anyway, but we’re not waiting until after something happens and then it happens again. We’re ready that next time or ideally, we’re ready before the first time, because we see it coming.
3. If there’s a chance to have eye contact during these explosions, try to be open, soft-eyed, as empathetic as possible. Breathe. Maybe nodding your head ever so slightly. I know this is hard, but it comes from seeing the hurt behind the mean behavior and connecting with that.
4. If there’s a break in their shouting or their screaming, just reflect back what your child is saying. We’re just staying in the moment, acknowledging it right there as it comes. “It feels to you like I’m the meanest person ever.” “You didn’t want me to be the one to pick you up, you wanted daddy.” Or, “You hate me so much right now,” if that’s what they’re saying. “Those are angry words.”
5. Show more than tell. Not talking a lot about, “I can’t let you do this behavior,” especially if it’s repeated behavior. That part goes without saying. We just want to show, without tell, that we’re going to stop them, we’re going to block them, that we can’t let them do the behavior. And for the most part, children already know that this is unwanted, wrong behavior.
6. Let it go. After it’s done, don’t rehash, unless it’s to make some kind of helpful, non-judgmental plan together about how we could do this differently. And the non-judgmental part of that is key. So it’s not, “Well, what are you going to do next time?” It’s really, “This keeps happening. Is there anything I can do? What can we do to make this easier?” That kind of openness makes our child feel safe. And sometimes even just that interaction, that we’re open, we’re not judging them, and we want to help. Sometimes that’s enough that we don’t actually have to have a plan, but just the fact that we’re open to that can be enough for them to feel better and not do that behavior, whatever it is.

Here’s one of the particular notes that I responded to, which I’ve edited. This is the parent that just this week gave me an update. She says:

Dear Janet,

I feel my daughter is a well-adjusted, wonderfully expressive kid who’s securely attached to her parents. However, five weeks ago, my mother, whom my daughter adores, was in the hospital with emergency surgery. Although my mom had cancer, this surgery came out of left field and for three weeks I was at the hospital every day. I still made sure to spend at least three hours with my daughter daily in a present, attuned way. Still, she knew something was wrong with grandma. She kept saying, “Mommy, hospital, care, grandma.” And I told her where I was going. Plus, she felt her schedule change when I wasn’t there as much.

Then my husband took her away to see her other grandparents for three nights. She’s never been away before and her sleep completely unraveled. She could only fall asleep by falling asleep right on daddy. She’d also never been away from mommy that long.

Then the very next day they returned, my mother died. That was two weeks ago. This came out of left field for my daughter. I never even got to the part where I planned to slowly tell her grandma was really ill. So it’s a shock for all.

Since then, our daughter’s refused to let me put her down to sleep at night. She frequently pushes me away, says, “Go away, Mommy.” This has blossomed into not even letting me pick her up when she’s finished napping or sleeping, demanding daddy all the time and shrieking and tantruming whenever daddy isn’t there. Whereas we used to cuddle every afternoon after her nap, now she sobs hysterically and asks me to leave her alone. I do. I do my very, very best to be nonchalant, but in a loving way, letting her know I’m here for her. Eventually she gets up and wants to play, but seems only to feel truly okay when daddy returns.

She’s never had tantrums before, she’s never preferred daddy before or pushed me away or said, “Go away!” I’ve put her down almost every night of her life. It seems that in some way she blames me for losing her grandma or associates me with the bad feeling she has about it.

She talks about grandma a lot, is very upset about this weird death thing. I’ve been straightforward about explaining that grandma died and her body stopped working and I’m so sorry and we will miss her and be sad and mad, but also still feel her love in our hearts and all of that. We talk about it every day, but only when she brings it up. I follow her lead. I allow her to see me cry or be sad about grandma, but I do shield her from seeing me sob hysterically, things I think would be burdensome to a child. I have tried to really role model a healthy approach to grieving.

And although it’s very painful to be constantly pushed away from my daughter at the exact moment I lost my mother, I do my absolute best to be nonchalant in the sweet way you always role model. Like, Sure, go with daddy. I admit she has probably picked up on my hurt here or there, but I really try not to burden her with that or manipulate her in any way. I understand she’s going through something and I don’t blame her for any of this, obviously. But I really don’t know what to do to make it better for her or to be included in her sphere of affection and safety again.

I responded: First of all, I want to say I’m so sorry for this parent’s loss. As children are, her daughter seems she’s especially tuned in to how her mother is feeling. That can be almost stronger for a child than the feelings they have about the relationship because though they feel the loss, they don’t really yet understand the implications. They don’t have that frame of reference. And so the more that we can be plain and simple and truthful, the easier it is for kids to process it. This parent is showing wonderful empathy and instinct for how she’s caring for her daughter.

A couple of things stood out to me. First is that this parent concludes: “It seems in some way she blames me for losing her grandma or associates me with the bad feeling she has about it.” That part doesn’t ring true to me. To me it feels like this is more about that she senses there’s a lot going on inside her mother, but her mother isn’t quite expressing that to her in the moment. And children, they pick up on this, this whole devastation that’s going on inside this mother. And that can be what’s making them uncomfortable around that person. It’s that the mother’s sitting on a lot of feelings that she’s not sharing and that’s disconcerting.

When she is with her mother, she’s doing this really, really healthy thing that children do so beautifully, which is that they reflect back to us our insides. They’ll put the feelings they’re picking up from us on the outside. So when she’s saying, no, no, no! and has these tantrums and refuses to be with her mother, I would stand tall and face that if you can. I mean, this mother’s going through her own thing. And number one, she obviously needs to take care of herself. She’s being so gracious about her daughter and trying to protect her from these feelings. But maybe the simmering inside of such strong feelings in the mother is uncomfortable for the child.

The way to help her through that is to actually stand by her when she’s pushing you away. And doing those steps that I mentioned. Blocking the physical behavior. If there’s eye contact, being open, soft-eyed, empathetic. If there’s a break in the shouting or the tantrum, just reflect back what she’s saying, just what you know for sure. “You want me to go, you just want daddy, you’re not comfortable with me.” Letting it be okay for her to share that and not shying away from it. I was flattered that this parent said that I role model nonchalant. The way I see it, though, is not so much nonchalant, like I’m pretending I don’t care when I actually do, but as something that I can believe, which is that I’m unthreatened. And then we could say, Ouch, you don’t want to be with me. But you know what? I can hear that. You can tell me that. I’m still going to be there for you.

And then I said, now if it gets too much for this parent, yes of course, let daddy do it. But remember: every time we do that, we’re accommodating. We’re agreeing with our child that, Yeah, you need to be with daddy now and not me. And she’s still going to be expressing these feelings to you in this seemingly mean, awful, rejecting way. That’s going to happen for a little while until she processes it through.

I love how this parent said she’s trying to show her daughter a healthy grieving process, but wow, she’s putting a lot of responsibility on herself. Because a truly healthy grieving process is exactly your unique human grieving process. In other words, there isn’t a perfectly healthy grieving process, so we don’t need to try to make it smooth or right or hit all the right notes. Because each person has a different grieving process with each type of grief that they’re experiencing. And so the healthiest grieving process is just to allow that, to express it, to share it. And I said, hopefully this parent is sharing it with people besides her daughter.

But even with her daughter, the key here is just to say in the moment when it comes up, “I miss my mom so much right now, this makes me want my mommy.” Opening that up a little bit more, because I don’t believe this parent will let herself lose control and get hysterical and scare her daughter that way. And it’s safe for her to open up some space to show her pain so it’s not this mysterious, uncomfortable thing for her daughter. So we’re letting her in, in the moment, just when the feelings come up. “Ugh, I just got a pang of how much I miss my mom” while I’m doing this random thing. That’s how our grief often comes. Some random thing happens that triggers us. So it’s safe to share that. In fact, it’ll bring you much closer to each other, as being honest about feelings does. Always.

Just this week, this parent got back to me, many months later:

Hi, Janet-

I’ve wanted to write you back since you responded to my letter in your show so long ago. I think I kept waiting for a time I could report feeling like a healthy, happy human again. In fact, eight months after losing my mom, the grief is still very intense and I still feel I’m on an alien planet. Losing my mom was more life-changing to me than becoming one. Thankfully, it does not stop me from enjoying my daughter, it only adds a sadness that my mom is missing this incredible kid. Or maybe she isn’t, who knows?

All that said, I never got a chance to tell you that your advice to me, while terrifying, completely worked. You told me to stay the course when my daughter screamed in my arms demanding her father and to show her that I was not going anywhere. I was genuinely scared to try this out, but I did so, the very night I heard your podcast.

The first night she cried for 15 minutes straight, constantly tried to wiggle out of my arms. It was absolutely awful. And then she stopped and we went back to our old ritual. When she fell asleep, I felt like Marlon Brando at the end of On The Waterfront, completely brutalized but triumphant. The next night she cried for about five minutes and then just stopped and we were fine. The third night she started to cry for one second, seemed to remember all was good now, and gave me no pushback whatsoever, ever again. It was actually amazing to see something work so incredibly well so fast. So thank you so, so much, forever.

Lately, my daughter, who is now two years and seven months, is definitely sliding into frequent meltdown mode, being defiant at every turn, and saying no to everything, usually quite cheerfully. “No, I think I will not put on a new diapie!” and instantly going apoplectic when she doesn’t get her way. I feel like I’ve spent almost three years preparing for this moment by listening to your podcast. I set the boundary while remaining totally sympathetic to her feelings. There are some things I can’t physically force, such as making her blow her nose, so I let those go. And sometimes I do just let things go because I’m tired, like I’ll let her run around naked for too long and then she pees on the floor. But on the whole, I feel like your counsel has given me such a concrete goal to constantly practice.

In your message to me in the podcast, you made the distinction between being nonchalant versus unthreatened. This difference is really powerful. Deep down, I admit I am kind of threatened by the intensity of toddler emotion. My first thought is always, Well gosh, if it means this much to you, I relent. Or I fear I don’t truly have the authority. But it is downright palpable the way my daughter ultimately relaxes against a boundary. As an anxious type, it really helps to remind myself that this is a way of protecting her from the anxiety of always getting her way.

Thank you for everything.

And I wrote back to this mom:

I’m thrilled to hear that you are walking through the terror (It’s real, I know!) of facing your daughter’s intense emotions. Laud yourself for showing such courage. I hope you’ll savor these moments when you succeed and savor the experiences of your daughter, as you say, “ultimately relaxing against a boundary.” Replay those moments to bolster yourself whenever you need to be in hero mode for her and know, without question, you can do this.

I’m sorry to hear you’re still suffering in regard to your mom. I believe that somewhere, somehow she’s proudly witnessing the developments in her incredible granddaughter and in you.

And here’s what I wrote at the end of my chapter on being a superhero:

Occasionally (though it’s pretty rare) my superhero perspective even allows me to recognize the romance in these moments. I’m able to time travel at hyper-speed into the future, look back and realize that this was prime time together. It didn’t look pretty, but we were close. I’ll remember how hard it was to love my child when she was at her very worst and feel super proud that I did it anyway.

Thanks so much for listening. We can do this.

And by the way, you may have noticed that my audiobooks are not available at the moment and the paperbacks of both books, No Bad Kids and Elevating Child Care, are going to be re-released at the end of April. I believe you can get them in Kindle still and you can buy some used copies that Amazon is selling. But the reason for this is a positive one. For years, those have been self-published books and Random House is now taking over the publishing of them. And they’re also publishing my upcoming book, which you’re going to hear a lot more about as it gets closer! So, this is obviously thrilling for me and I’m sorry for the inconvenience of not being able to get the paperbacks right now, but the audiobooks should be back on any day now. I just wanted to give you that update, and thank you again for all your kind support.

The post Tantrums, Meltdowns, and Other Intense Outbursts: My #1 Secret for Staying Calm appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “We Don’t Like Upsetting Our Kids”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

I love this topic I’m going to get into today because it very much relates to my personal struggles as a parent and the perspective shift that I needed to eventually work on to be able to overcome them and why that mattered. It’s the difficulty that many of us have with setting a boundary that our child resists or gets upset about. With my people-pleasing tendencies, this has been a big one for me. And while I can’t say that I’m completely cured of this, I’ve come a very long way, and I’m going to share how I’ve done that.

First, here’s an exchange with a parent who I very much relate to and appreciate. We had this exchange in Instagram messages, actually. Which I’m unfortunately not always able to respond to, but in this case, the timing worked out for me and I got on the hook. Here’s the first message I got:

Hi, Janet. I hope you’re well. I was wondering if you could help. At parents’ evening, I was told that my daughter (who started school six months ago) is emotionally dysregulated, that she cries over small things such as not being able to finish her work for the next activity or wanting to explain her ideas during focus time when she should be writing.

At home she is not displaying this. We have always let her let out her feelings, and she has become good at doing this. I usually have been calm and held her emotions. I have struggled with boundaries. Not the usual ones, such as lifestyle expectations, crossing the road safely. These are all fine. It’s been the boundary of demand that she puts on me, such as wanting me to play characters for extended amounts of time, so much that I had to say no characters at the dinner table or out of the house. And when she’s tired, she’s been controlling and wanted things a certain way. At times, I’ve adhered to that controlling behavior.

I wrote back:

This reflection you’re doing about boundaries may be the key. Why do you think it is that you cave to her demands? What do you fear about disappointing her in those situations?

And she wrote back:

Thanks, Janet. That’s a great question. Two things which I’ve never put into words before: When I cave into those demands, it’s not always obvious to me. Especially with playing characters, it’s how we entertained ourselves in the pandemic. I might get a sense of irritation, like, She’s asking too much, but I’m not always aware enough to see it for what it is, which is her calling out for a boundary, I guess. I think I’m a people-pleaser and avoid conflict. I think I fear hurting her feelings? I can happily say no to buying her things in a shop, though. Also, I don’t always feel I have the capacity to deal with the fallout when caring for her one-year-old sister.

Funnily enough, today she wanted to play characters before we entered the house. I said, “No, that’s the rule, no characters outside.” She didn’t want to come in, so I gently picked her up and took her inside. That went well. She had a little cry, but it felt like the right decision not to cave in. I think it reassured her. Where I struggle is the alarm bell that tells me that a boundary is needed now. I don’t always hear it, or if I do, I’m good at ignoring it.

So I wrote back:

Well explained! Yes, it sounds like you aren’t accustomed to sticking up for yourself with loved ones if you fear it might upset them and they might reject you. If that rings true, I can totally relate. And I would try to consider this an important step to figure out in your journey, gradually. Maybe consider what it’s like to have someone play with you or do anything that they’re not really into. It’s not a great, clear feeling, right? It’s not satisfying or truly enjoyable.

And she said:

Yes, it’s the rejection. I think I was probably brought up with conditional love, which is why it’s been so refreshing to allow my daughter all her feelings and so helpful to have you out there guiding parents through this different way. But I’ve never reflected about it so specifically like this, Janet. Never been brave enough to have the conversation. When you write about it like this, I can see how healthy it is to try to get those boundaries in because they matter to my daughter and will benefit her more in the long run, and even the short run. Thank you so much for sharing that with me. I think my goals are: Have a sheet up on the wall at home, a script for me to say if she’s being particular and what to look out for. Set a limit for character play. If I know the parameters, it will mean I can implement them. So I’ve set myself homework.

And I said:

Sounds great. And keep in mind that any amount of character play is not your job. It’s not our job to entertain our kids and, as you’ve noticed, it can create a kind of dependency. Also, without us meaning to, our ideas tend to take over our child’s, so they’re not getting the opportunity to freely and thoroughly explore their own imagination. I’m only sharing this to hopefully encourage you to give yourself permission to say a loving no. And you don’t need perfect words, just conviction in yourself as a fair and loving leader who isn’t afraid of your girl. We are teaching kids how to get along with others and how to take care of ourselves and emotional intelligence. When we’re honest about our feelings and say no when we feel no, it’s far from selfish. It’s heroic, truly.

And she wrote back:

Oh, that’s interesting. The character play is very much led by her. It’s almost in the realm of drama therapy, where I feel that her fears and feelings come out. However I agree that a sort of dependency is occurring and it hadn’t occurred to me that this type of play wasn’t really what she needed. In the past couple of days, I’ve already been saying no more and it feels good. I’m working towards reducing it down to once a day—which might sound a lot, still, it’s progress for us. I’ve just been reading your article How Our Boundaries Free Children to Play, Create, and Explore, and it’s sort of blown my mind a little bit. My daughter also enjoys the laptop. She’s not on it every day, but what will she be freed up to do if I say no to characters and no, sometimes, to laptop? It’ll be nice to see what’s inside of her, not just what she does when she’s stuck.

And I’ll just add that that article she refers to, How Our Boundaries Free Children to Play, Create, and Explore, that’s actually a transcript from another podcast episode. And it is about how these boundaries that we can perceive as negative in some way are actually so freeing for our children.

So then I wrote back to her and asked if I could please use this exchange in a podcast. And several days later she wrote back and said:

Yes, of course, especially if it can help other parents or carers who’ve been stuck in a similar cycle. Two days ago I said no characters, and we did none all day, and there wasn’t the major fallout I’d imagined. She was tearful and cross a couple of times and tried to encourage me in, but I explained that it was too much for her to be in control and that I’m her mummy. So she can just relax and play now.

It has been like the scales have fallen from my eyes. My daughter looks different to me somehow. I think because the power balance has shifted, she seems younger and calmer. I was told that she was often tearful at school and I saw her being particular at home, wanting things a certain way. It was giving me concerns. My daughter is five, and I was worried that I’d messed things up and it was too late, that the path was set. I knew something wasn’t right, but I didn’t have a clue about what needed to change. It took some reflection with your support and the courage and understanding to make the change. It’s a hard thing for me to accept that I was the problem, as I see my errors as a rejection as opposed to being part and parcel of being a human.

Boundaries are so clear to me when they’re physical things like brushing teeth, it’s not okay to hit, cross the road safely, but this boundary was an emotional one and I just couldn’t see it. I can’t thank you enough. The impact of our conversation will last long into the future, and this girl has a more confident mummy now, and she can go back to being little again. Thank you.

Wow, thank you to this mummy and she really articulates her whole process so beautifully. I can’t say how much I appreciate this.

I want to touch a little more on what gets in our way. Often it’s old feelings, worries, fears that we’ll get rejected if we assert ourselves too much. Maybe we felt that significant others’ feelings were our fault and that our behavior—meaning us, in the way a child thinks of that. When we scold a child for being bad, they take this as that they are bad. So as the child, we might believe that we’re making people feel a certain way, and that’s scary and guilt-inducing, and we have to be careful, right? Whenever we’re stuck and concerned and it feels like maybe there’s a cycle that’s continuing that we don’t know how to stop, looking into our feelings around boundaries is often the key.

And here’s another parent who wrote a comment on a post that I put up on Instagram about being stern and how setting boundaries with confidence is not the same as sternness. Sternness doesn’t really project confidence. It’s overkill. If we think about the feelings behind when we’re stern, we’re usually not feeling on top of it but under it. So we force it a bit. And that’s why it doesn’t work as well as really projecting confidence as a leader. Children are sensing what we’re feeling, that we’re not comfortable. So I put up a post about that and this wonderful parent who often comments on my posts, and I love that, she wrote:

This is something I’ve been having to work on. And in most situations, it honestly feels uncomfortable to me to set boundaries. I overthink the perfect words and then get so confused about what to say or do whenever I know my child is stuck and needs my help.

And I replied:

Great that you’re getting to this. “It honestly feels uncomfortable to me to set boundaries.” That’s the key right there—exploring why you are so uncomfortable, what you’re afraid will happen, what you might lose by upsetting your child and sticking up for yourself. Figuring that out and making peace with it is the answer. Realizing that our children need us to walk through those fears for them. This is far from selfish. I would dig deep on this with yourself, ideally with a counselor or therapist. Because the words we say matter very, very little. It’s all about how we feel when setting and holding the boundary. When we are stern, it usually means we’re uncomfortable or unsure of ourselves and trying to compensate. That’s why it doesn’t work as well.

This parent, as I said, often leaves comments and they are very focused on words. So I felt like this was such a gift that she’s gotten to this place of recognizing that really she could say any perfect word in the world and her child would still sense her discomfort, because it’s there.

Of course, none of us want to upset our children. We never want to upset them, right? But here’s what helped me, focusing on these things that I do want and that most of us do want.

One, we do want to teach them about self-care and boundaries in relationships. This is the most profound way that they learn that: through their relationship with us and our self-care and boundaries. So it’s not just respecting their personal boundaries that teaches them that, not handing them over to the adult who wishes to hug them, but it’s ours also that instill this.

Two, we do want them to succeed with peers and other adults, to be liked. Because they know how to respect and not overstep other people’s boundaries. We’re teaching them that.

Three, we do want to avoid unwittingly adultifying our kids. Giving them unsettling responsibility and power over us, making them responsible for choices that are really ours to make. So I don’t mean this to the extent of adultifying a child that’s seriously harmful or abusive. That happens, but that’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about our children deserving the freedom and the messy emotional fluidity of childhood. And when we’re tentative around that, their feelings, and maybe afraid of them, it interferes with that. As that first parent shared about her daughter, she said, “My daughter looks different to me somehow. I think because the power balance has shifted, she seems younger and calmer.” That’s big, right? And don’t we all want that for our children? The way to get there isn’t always what we think. It’s doing this hard thing. Standing up for ourselves, being personally honest with them. And not loving it when they’re upset, but not fearing that either. Facing that music.

Four, we do want a free and clear, honest relationship, rather than one where there’s resentment or annoyance on our end. That means sticking up for ourselves, not giving into demands that we aren’t really into.

Five, we do want emotional health and resiliency for our kids. They need to vent these emotional roller coasters they’re often riding, particularly in the early years and in adolescence. Getting upset about our reasonable, honest boundaries is the organic, therapeutic way children do that. And they learn that the feelings are normal and healthy and that they pass and then they feel better. And that starts with us knowing that and showing them that, because that’s what we believe. And these feelings are not really about their need for us to play characters or do that specific thing. It’s a bigger theme that they’re expressing. Reminding ourselves of that is how we’ll be able to do this.

And knowing that this is a priceless message that we can give our kids that will help them function in their world. They’ll know that they won’t always get things their way and that they can be disappointed for a time, but soon they’re going to feel better. And they can live with it. It’s not a scary, strange, overwhelming situation for them. It’s life. Sometimes things go my way, sometimes they don’t. And I can handle both. I prefer them going my way, but I’m not tied to that, because I know I can make it through the other situation as well.

And the last point, we do want the profound bonding effects of welcoming our children to share uncomfortable emotions. You’ve heard me talk about that a lot, and many of you have experienced it and you’ve shared that with me. The safety we can provide another person by accepting and allowing them to feel however they do, even if we are the cause of their disappointment or their anger.

So for all those reasons—and there’s six there, and there’s probably more if I think about it—we might be encouraged to work on processing our own discomfort. Which can indeed be a lifelong, continuous process. But any step we can make towards that will make the day-to-day of our job as parents easier and set every relationship in our life in a more positive, authentic, trusting direction. We’re worthy.

And now I thought it might be helpful to share what’s actually a follow-up question that I received in regard to a podcast I did a few weeks ago, Coping With Your Child’s Possessiveness. Because this also relates to the idea of upsetting our children by setting limits. And sometimes it can cause us to be tentative, which doesn’t help our child as much as when we can proceed with confidence. Knowing that yes, they may get upset, but that can be a natural—and even I would say a healthy—reaction to our boundaries.

Here’s the message. It was on Facebook, actually, where I posted Coping With Your Child’s Possessiveness. And the parent said:

The day after listening to this podcast, my three-year-old got very upset about his new baby brother wearing the same diapers that he wears. My husband picked them out without thinking. He tried pulling it off of him. So I tried to remember what you said and replied, “Oh man, I know that’s so hard seeing him wear the same diapers. I can’t let you take those off him, though,” while as gently as I could trying to release his grip. I hope that was the right way of going about that.

I also know you said it’s okay to allow them to take a few toys, but if it seems they’re stuck to kindly stop them. However, what if it’s a teething item in the baby’s hand and they shout, “I want that! It’s mine!”?

And here’s what I responded:

Yes to this, well done!

Where she says, “‘Oh man, I know that’s so hard seeing him wear the same diapers. I can’t let you take those off of him, though,’ while as gently as I could trying to release his grip.”

I added:

You can be firm, though. With that wonderful empathizing you’re doing, removing his hand as easily as possible will come off as love and care. Too gentle can come off as tentative, which won’t be as helpful to him. And regarding the teether, no, I wouldn’t allow him to take that away from the baby. So do the same: acknowledge and firmly, kindly block or remove the teether from your older child’s hand.

So yes, sometimes we can feel, Aah, I want to do this so carefully, and that projects our own discomfort in a way, or our lack of conviction in what we’re doing. And it kind of prolongs the interaction for our child, instead of doing the kind thing and just taking it out of their hand. And again, that idea of empathizing is what makes this a loving interaction rather than an overly strict, harsh interaction.

For more about boundaries and our children’s feelings and responses, for more encouragement, more examples, more demonstrations, please take a look at my No Bad Kids Master Course, because I’m able to offer some video demonstrations, some of them are with children. Many people have told me that this has been a game-changer for them, so have a look. And my books (No Bad Kids and Elevating Child Care) of course are available on Amazon. We’ll put the links in the liner notes and in the transcript of this podcast. Thank you to these parents for allowing me to share their comments and our exchanges.

And please know: every one of us, we can do this.

The post We Don’t Like Upsetting Our Kids appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

In this episode, Janet explains why this behavior actually makes sense and what we can do to help kids pass through these phases readily and in a healthy manner. She illustrates by addressing a question from a parent about his 5-year old’s incessant impulse to protect his territory and possessions from his baby brother. While he and his wife try to maintain an understanding, respectful approach to the behavior by acknowledging his feelings and his space, they’re perplexed by their son’s demands which seem unreasonable and often nonsensical. Worse, he can act aggressively toward his sibling, which is alarming. Janet offers specific advice and verbal examples for handling “mine” and other controlling behavior between siblings and peers.

Transcript of “Coping with Your Child’s Possessiveness”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m going to be responding to a parent who asked about their child’s possessiveness. And one sort of general bit of advice that this reminds me of is that a wonderful way to figure out what’s going on with our children and what they need from us and how to help behavior shift, or at least understand it, is to imagine ourselves in our child’s shoes. Reminding ourselves that our young children are new to the world, everything is fresh. They don’t have these preconceived notions about not sharing, possessiveness, stealing, all of these things. They don’t understand what any of this is. And this is to their benefit, actually, that they don’t have all these judgments in their head about how other children are supposed to behave, how they’re supposed to behave.

Yes, they need our guidance, for sure. But if we can guide from a place of that kind of empathy or imagination—really, it’s us imagining what it’s like to have this fresh perspective that they have—that’s how we’ll be able to be truly attuned to them. To really see them and help them feel the comfort of being seen.

So with that introduction, here’s the question I received in an email:

Dear Janet,

Lately, my wife and I have been struggling with how to maintain a respectful approach when our 2.5-year-old protests our six-month-old playing with or even touching anything that’s not explicitly designated for him.

Whenever the baby touches, say, the wall or the kitchen table or the basket of clothespins, his older brother yells, “No, that’s my wall!” or “The baby’s too little to play with that. He can’t play with that!” We strive to stay unruffled and acknowledge that he doesn’t want his brother to touch those things. And also let him know that the wall or table or whatever it is is for the whole family and that the baby’s actually old enough to play with clothespins (they’re the plastic, non-pinching sort). Our older son usually accepts this with chagrin, but in another few moments, it’s a new protest over a new item.

Sometimes when he discovers the baby touching something, he’ll run over and attempt to pull the baby away physically, his lips pursed with aggression. We intervene as quickly as possible and restrain him, saying, “I won’t let you hurt your brother.”

We’ve drawn a line for his own toys, acknowledging that they’re indeed his, and that he has a reasonable expectation that the baby not touch them if he doesn’t want him to. When the baby begins to roll eagerly toward one of his toys, we coach our son through moving the toy out of the baby’s reach or taking it to his play space we’ve partitioned off so that he has his own refuge from his brother. But we don’t want to have to allocate every single toy as for one boy or another. And nor can we readily abide our son’s continuing expectation of the baby’s less-than-equal role in the family. But more than anything, we don’t want to set our son up to resent his little brother.

Any advice you can offer would be great.

Okay, wow, these parents are being extremely respectful and sensitive and they have a lot of empathy. Really they’re doing a remarkable job, and I love that they’re being so considerate of this situation.

Here’s what I would add: When their son says these things, I would keep in mind something that I guess could probably be the title for this podcast: trust the feelings. What I’m hearing here is something that I experience with toddlers in my classes and when my own children were little. I hear a lot about this from parents that I consult with. And that’s, by the way, the reason that I choose certain questions. I choose them because they bring up a theme or a question that I’m hearing about from lots of other sources, messages in social media, parents I work with in consultations or in my classes. I realize that these are common concerns, and so it seems that they would be good to share on the podcast.

I have to say, I kind of love that this boy is going to the extent that this parent is saying he doesn’t want the baby to touch the wall or the table. Because this makes it so clear to me. It makes it so clear that this is totally beyond reason. I mean, there’s no question, right? It doesn’t make sense. And what that means is that it’s not going to make sense. That these are feelings, not facts, that he’s expressing about the situation. That he has a baby brother, and the baby came and took over his whole life and changed it with his parents. And moved him a little bit out of being the center of the family, which he was used to. And that can be very scary and painful. So he doesn’t really want him to be here in certain moments. Just don’t touch the wall. That’s my wall. This was my whole house, these are my parents, this is my everything. And here’s this baby wanting to touch things, and it’s representative of how he’s invaded my life.

And often this also happens in classes with children and their peers. If a child has a baby at home that the parent has added to the family, then it’s very likely that I’m going to suddenly see a change in their behavior, that they become more possessive with other children. They’re in that holding on mode because they feel their place in their home slipping away. So they’ll say mine!, they want everything that every other child has, sometimes. And do they really want those things, those particular things? I don’t think so. I think they want to express, I’m feeling scared or worried or unsettled. I’m wanting to control things. I’ve lost control of what I knew of my life the way it was.

This can also happen for developmental reasons. When children are toddler-age and other children come to their house and they don’t want those children to touch everything. It’s not that they’re showing that they’re mean, selfish brats. They’re showing that they’re experiencing a feeling of feeling out of control of something that they’re used to having control over: their home, their toys. Now somebody else is here and I’m losing control. And if we recognize how quickly and completely toddlers are developing these first three years. Children develop more in the first three years than they do in all the rest of their years of life put together.

So this is a time we can have that impulse to want to hold onto something, anything. Everything’s changing, without even having a new baby in the family. A toddler’s life can feel like, Gah! I want to hold onto things. I need anchors. And that’s why they need us so much to be an anchor and, if possible, not to be reactive along with them. They also benefit from having a predictable routine, which is not too much stimulation, not a new class every day. They’re most comfortable in what we might consider boring, predictable, routine days. Why? Because there’s something there they can hold onto.

My point is that there are a lot of reasons that children feel like this, and rather than judging them, as we might want to in these moments, or trying to talk to them about what’s reasonable, what makes sense, No, this is not your toy, and This is the wall that holds up our house, it’s everybody’s wall. I can definitely understand the urge to want to explain those things, but that’s not really addressing what’s going on here. What’s going on is our child just wanting to say, I want this. I don’t want him to have it. This is mine. I want to hold onto all these things and have them all.

So to help our child feel more comfortable and satisfied and healed, expressing these feelings, all we have to do is actually what this parent is doing, which is acknowledge him. Acknowledge that he doesn’t want the baby to touch those things. That’s it, that’s the perfect response. We don’t need to explain what’s reasonable, and what I strongly believe that this child already knows, which is that the wall or the table or whatever is for the whole family, the baby is indeed old enough to play with this type of clothespin. This is the tendency that comes up for most of us. As parents, we want to explain it, the way we would to an adult or an older child. Let me tell you what’s true. And it feels like if we could just convince him and reason with him, he’ll see what a silly thing that is to say. But it’s silly because it’s an impulsive, emotional thing to say. I believe even as adults, we can say things we don’t really mean because we’re expressing a feeling in the moment. Well, younger children do this a lot more. So I would just stick with acknowledging, welcoming him to feel like that.

And then, because he’s let us know that he may decide he’s going to push his brother away from that wall or take his hand off the wall or do something else physical, we’re ready to stop that. So as we’re saying, “You don’t want him to touch the wall,” we’re ready to calmly intervene if we need to. And then if he tries to do something physical with his brother because he doesn’t want him to touch the wall, that’s when we say, “You really don’t want him to touch the wall, and I can’t let you move his hand. I’m not going to let you stop him,” while we’re blocking him with our hand. “But I hear you. You don’t like him touching that.” And if the baby’s expressing something then, that’s healthy. We acknowledge that too. That’s it. That’s all we have to do.

The other benefit of this: not only does our child get to express what they need to express to us and have us accept it in a non-judgmental, totally accepting way, the way that they really can feel heard and understood and not judged. We’re not only giving them that, but we’re also not winding ourselves up. Because when we’re trying to reason with someone that isn’t expressing reasonable things, they’re expressing these flashes of emotion, unreasonable things, we’re going to wind ourselves up. Because it’s a frustrating enterprise, right? It’s not going to get us anywhere. That’s also what I love about this experience that this parent shared. They got to see that it doesn’t help, because what did their son do? Well, they say he “usually accepts this with chagrin, but in another few moments, it’s a new protest over a new item.” So yes, that’s what makes it so clear that it’s feelings, not facts.

One of the many reasons I love children this age is because they’re so clear that way. It’s so over the top, right? Some of the stuff that they say that we know it’s not meant to be a reasonable truth. Young children are very uncomplicated. They just need to express it. So if I can’t express it with you here and you’re just not getting it and you’re not hearing me, now I have the impulse to keep trying to express it in another way, to do something else. You’re not letting me express it. And again, the more unreasonable these comments are, the more we can feel certain that they’re using this as a self-therapy, which is what children do. They’re not thinking consciously, I need to tell my parents that I don’t like this baby in my house. But that’s what their unconscious is telling them to do.

You may have heard or read somewhere that when toddlers say, “Mine, mine!”, mine means a lot of things that it might not mean to us. It means I want it, I like it, I need it, I feel like having it, or I don’t want him to have it. It doesn’t mean that my parents bought this at the store for me. Children aren’t thinking of it that way. They’re very in the moment with the feeling, and they’re saying it to express something in that moment. They’re not saying what’s true factually, but expressing something.

So continuing with the details from this note, sometimes when their son discovers the baby touching something, “he’ll run over and attempt to pull the baby away physically, his lips pursed with aggression.” There’s that guy getting into my stuff and he’s taking over my house. He’s taking over my parents. I want to control this guy. Which is also the reason children want to take all the toys away from a baby. It makes a lot of sense, right? This baby ripped my life away. Maybe if I just control every single thing he does, then I’ll feel better about him. He won’t be a threat.

Children feel this. It’ll flare up at different times for each child in different ways maybe, but it’s kind of a grieving process. And the way we grieve about any given situation has its own life and its own process. For example, we might go to our friend’s funeral or our family member’s funeral, and we’re not even crying then. And we wonder, should we be crying? What’s wrong? I don’t feel sad right now. But then maybe some random thing happens, we see something, we hear something. And suddenly, we’re bawling. This is how children grieve this loss, this change in their life. There’s this new person sort of pushing them aside. The feelings come when they come.

That’s why parents will often share with me their concerns that, just randomly, the older child is lashing out at the baby. It doesn’t make sense. No, it doesn’t make sense. And that’s why I encourage parents to try not to judge their children in these situations, because they are grieving and they’re doing it in a very immature, messy way. And yes, they need our help not to do wrong things, but if we could let the little things they say and those feelings that don’t make sense go by and just acknowledge them, they get through it more quickly and without the resentment that this parent says they’re worried about.

So if they’re just taking toys a few times, I would allow that, if it’s not this rampant thing that the child keeps doing. And then I would stop them to help that child, whether it’s with a sibling or a peer, that’s when I would say, “You want that one too, that he’s holding? I’m going to stop you here, because it seems you’re kind of stuck doing this again and again.” Without judgment, we help. But him expressing things like, “I don’t want him touching this or that,” we can let that go by, just validating.

But when he’s running over there, yes, I would try to get over there. I don’t know that I would run unless it was really an emergency. Because coming closer with that calm response, just walking over there at a nice, brisk pace maybe, and trying not to run unless it’s an emergency, helps us to demonstrate a more accepting, calm, non-judgmental attitude. Instead of telegraphing, Wow, you’re doing something really urgently terrible here that I feel I can’t handle unless I stop you immediately! Even if we don’t mean that, that’s kind of how it comes across, that my parent isn’t confident in their leadership here and that I’m doing these really terrible things.

And the tone that’s helpful to create is more of a calm, safe tone. Hmm, I’m going to see. I don’t want you to touch him that way. That’s a little too hard. And then blocking accordingly. So if there’s just a bit of something going on, if it’s not hitting or totally grabbing in an unsafe way, if he’s just maybe touching his hand a little roughly, then I probably wouldn’t even say, “I won’t let you hurt him.” That’s sort of saying the obvious, right? At that point, I would just say, “Hmm, that’s a bit too much.” And I’d have my hand there. “I see. You don’t want him touching that at all. You’re not liking him touching that. Hmm, yeah, that’s a bit too hard. I’m going to need to stop you there. You didn’t like that. You didn’t want him to do that.”

So those kind of things show that we’re not perceiving everything as this big emergency. We’re projecting that calm confidence that can be so important and helpful to our children. And to us, because the more we’re in that zone, the more we see how helpful it is and the more confidence we feel in ourselves, and therefore, it can become a natural way that we have with our children. It’s all about the way we’re perceiving this. Hmm, he’s getting into a little bit of trouble there, I better go help. Instead of, Ugh, there he’s doing it again! I got to stop him.

And then maybe if they really need to be separated because our older child keeps going back and he can’t stop himself and he gets in a rage, or he’s just so lost in his impulses, dysregulated, then yeah, then I would separate them. But whenever possible, I would do something much smaller, the least thing. Do less, because that gives the message that we’re not freaked out by his behavior.

This parent says “We’ve drawn a line for [their son’s] own toys, acknowledging that they’re indeed his, and that he has a reasonable expectation that the baby not touch them.” Yes, so that’s good to do. And I think it might help to say more like, “If you want to keep those things away from him, here’s a way to do that.” Maybe making less of a deal about these things are yours and these things aren’t yours, which can kind of feed into that possessive behavior without us meaning to. Again, because this logical part of the situation, that’s really not what this is about.

And that will help with what this parent mentions later in the note, which is: “We don’t want to have to allocate every single toy as for one boy or the other. And nor can we really abide by our son’s continuing expectation of the baby’s less-than-equal role in the family.” So there it feels like the parents might be veering a little bit into trying to keep things so equal at this point. And the truth is, with children, everything isn’t equal. I really love how this is expressed in Siblings Without Rivalry, that wonderful book. I kept it on my bedside table for years. One of the perspectives that it gives is that everything isn’t going to be equal with siblings, but everyone’s going to get what they need. So if you need 10 Ps, our older child, and the baby only needs two Ps, that’s how it’s going to be. It’s not, Well, he got this many, so he has to get that many. I found this idea to very much resonate and be true and helpful.

This baby was born into a very different situation than his older brother was, with all the excitement and the bonuses of having a sibling. But there’s also some, I don’t know, I guess I don’t even think a baby thinks of it that way, but maybe negatives to that, or some things that there’s just less of. There’s less time alone to be the one with all the toys, maybe there’s less one-on-one time. But the trade-off —and the baby doesn’t know any different— is this amazing day-to-day social experience with somebody else, this exciting person. Many of us have noticed that our babies, they know the difference between a child and an adult, and they’re much more interested in the children a lot of the time. They kind of light up. And if toys are taken away from the baby and we haven’t made a fuss about it or been too judgmental, then it’s really not a big deal to them. Most of them don’t mind it at all. Nobody wants the stuff as much as they want the attention of the other child or the attention of the parent.

And yes, seeing it this way also helps us because it makes for a lot less work for us in terms of, Okay, this is yours and this is yours, and Who had it first?, and all of that stuff. That can be hard to decipher at times, especially when we’re talking about children playing with peers. That’s not our job. Nor is it helpful to our children as they’re learning social behaviors, constantly being the police or the referee that’s in there. And instead really trusting a lot more that children can figure these things out a lot of the time, maybe not to our perception of how it should be, but to their liking, to something that satisfies them. But yes, if something’s nonstop, he keeps taking every toy away from the baby, then I would say something light, a little tip, and maybe stop him. “You’ve taken a couple of things. Let’s let him keep that one.” Not in a judgmental way. We’re still on both of your sides and we’re just coaching both of you to navigate this relationship.

That’s the way that we get this wish that this parent expressed. It’s the same that I certainly had and I believe all parents have. We don’t want to set our child up to resent their sibling. This is the way to do that. We understand that you’ve got these impulses. We understand they’re not reasonable. We’re going to stop you when you get too out there with them, because we’re on both of your sides. That’s how we give our children the opportunity to really develop a mutually respectful relationship and help our older child to not resent a sibling. Or resent us, or feel that we don’t understand and that his feelings are wrong and that he needs to somehow correct them. None of us can correct our feelings. We can work on our behaviors, the way that we express our feelings, but the feelings are just there. We just have them. They don’t make sense a lot of the time.

Again, I often see these situations with not just siblings, but with peers saying, “mine, mine!”, taking toys. And as parents, we want to say, “Well, no, that actually is not yours,” and we want to make sure that they get this right. But what’s even more important is to trust them to just vent the feeling, the momentary feeling. I’m holding that, I don’t want him to hold that. That’s all they’re saying. They’ve got that. It looks interesting in their hands. I want it. And when nobody has it, when it’s available, it’s often not as interesting.

This is similar to saying “share” to a very young child. They don’t really know exactly what this means with friends. We can explain “share” by using it in our behaviors with our children. Here, let’s share this umbrella so you don’t get wet. Or, I have some extra carrots here. Would you like me to share them with you? Or, Thank you for sharing those with me. That’s how children learn to share, not by it being demanded in situations where it means giving something up that they want.

Know that most of these awkward behaviors are impulses. They’re not reasonable thoughts that they’ll understand that they shouldn’t do if we just talk to them about it more. And the more out there the behavior is, the more you can trust that. Again, helping our children feel safe with all their feelings is really all we have to do.

I hope this is helpful. And there’s a lot more information about these ideas and many, many more on my website and in my books, No Bad Kids and Elevating Child Care. And in my No Bad Kids Master Course, if you really want to deep dive. That gives you the complete picture and helps you internalize this approach. Go to nobadkidscourse.com.

Thank you again for listening. We can do this.

UPDATE: A parent shared how she’s using the advice in this podcast and I thought our exchange might be helpful:

Parent: The day after listening to this podcast, my three year old got very upset about his new baby brother wearing the same diapers that he wears. My husband picked them out without thinking He tried pulling it off of him so I tried to remember what you said and replied, “oh man. I know that’s so hard seeing him wear the same diapers. I can’t let you take those off of him though” while as gently as I could trying to release his grip. I hope that was the right way of going about that. I also know you said it’s ok to allow them to take a few toys but if it seems they’re stuck to kindly stop them, however, what if it’s a teething item in the baby’s hand and they shout “I want that! It’s mine”

My response: Yes to this, well done! “oh man. I know that’s so hard seeing him wear the same diapers. I can’t let you take those off of him though” while as gently as I could trying to release his grip.” You can be firm though. With that wonderful empathizing you’re doing, removing his hand as easily as possible will come of as love and care. Too “gentle” can come off as tentative, which won’t be as helpful to him.

The post Coping with Your Child’s Possessiveness appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “How an Angry Mom, Hating Parenting, Found Immediate Success”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m going to be sharing a note I received from a parent, the subject line, “Immediate Success,” and she details what she did to break out of this pattern that she was in that wasn’t working. She was doing all kinds of things as a parent that she doesn’t believe in, that she didn’t want to do. Feeling angry. She says, “I defaulted to anger and to what I’d seen my parents do.” And then she made a shift, which she talks about. Now her children are telling her they love her and she’s feeling worlds better about their relationship, herself as a parent, and their days. I’m excited to share this note with you and also offer some commentary on why I think what she did is helping.

And the reason I thought this would be a wonderful thing to share today on my podcast is that I’m often offering examples of what to do differently, but to actually hear from a parent what she did differently is, I think, much more powerful and will be much more helpful to you.

So here’s the note I received:

Dear Janet,

First off, I just have to say, wow, thank you. I’m not normally inclined to leave feedback either positive or negative on things. However, I just had to let you know the impact you have had on my 4-year-old, 2-year-old, and 11-month-old, and me this last week. I will never go back to the way it was before.

Here’s the story. I had listened to some of your podcasts and read some of your blogs before my first was born. I remember thinking how great it sounded to parent with this style and wanted to implement it. I did, of course, do things as you and others recommend throughout the beginnings of my daughter’s early life without much effort. Telling her I needed to change her diaper before doing so, giving her a heads up on things to prepare her for transitions, etc., And it was pretty easy going for a while. I had friends comment on how patient I was and how amazing I was as a mother. It felt really good to hear those things because I had no experience with children prior to having one, so I was worried I would be a terrible mother.

Then I got pregnant with my second. My daughter was about 10 months old at the time. Things were still going pretty well, until she was about 16 to 18 months old. She started throwing tantrums and exhibiting behavior that people would call the terrible twos, and I began to worry because she wasn’t even two yet. Why is she having such strong feelings already? I really struggled with this because I have a pretty flat affect and I was the good kid in my family, because I saw with my older sister what happened if you didn’t toe the line. Don’t get me wrong about my parents. My sister was a hellion and I just wanted nothing to do with it. I had a very loving home and my parents are my best friends. And I want that so badly for my children, to have that kind of strong relationship with my husband and I.

Fast forward to the present and the situation that brings me to this email. I now have baby three, which will be turning one next month. And your teachings had all but gone out the window due to the stress of strong emotions from my toddlers, fighting between the two toddlers, my son not being nice to his baby brother and saying that he doesn’t like him. Tantrums, screaming, hitting, throwing, and everything in between. I have spent so much time in the last four years being so much angrier than I ever wanted to be as a mother. I defaulted to that, I defaulted to what I had seen my parents do. I had tried timeouts, spanking, and on a number of occasions yelled to where the crying and screaming that set me over the edge went up to a higher decibel of noise.

I couldn’t handle it anymore. I felt terrible and thought terrible things about the fact I had these three beautiful children, but I hated my life. I was in the military for 15 years. I went to Iraq and Afghanistan four times, lost friends, been blown up, can’t hear very well—and I wanted that life back. That life was easy. Being a mom is hard.

Last week as I was driving home with my children asleep in the car after a visit to my parents’ house that didn’t go very well, I thought, Enough is enough. This isn’t working. By the grace of God, I remembered Unruffled and immediately started devouring the podcasts on the drive home. It all started coming back to me on what to do. So as I got them in the house and put them in their beds asleep, I knew I would give your way a shot, starting fresh in the morning.

It has been a life-changing difference in just one week. Sure, there’s still sibling infighting going on, some mild tantrums here and there, and my son still likes to pick on his baby brother. But everything has just been so much calmer and happier in the house, especially me. I have been happy. The toddlers have been saying “I love you” so many times throughout the day that I know they can feel how much different it is in the house. I’m here for them and I’m on their side now.

The biggest testament to the success of the switch was on Sunday. We go to a traditional Latin Mass Catholic church that is an hour away from our house. Sundays are so hard. I don’t think I’ve been able to pay attention in church since my daughter became mobile, and then it has gone progressively downhill since then. I knew that Sunday was going to be the test to see how much this has helped. It was a miracle. Sure, I still didn’t get to pay attention in church, I was still having to manage the children by giving them snacks, making sure they were staying in the pew, and doing stuff all parents have to do in church to keep the peace. But it wasn’t an absolute fight. I wasn’t angry with anyone. It was just calm direction.

I can’t even describe properly the change that has come to our family without writing a novella to you about the last seven days. Bless you and all that you do to save us parents from ourselves and help us to be the best we can for our children.

So here’s what I wrote back to her. I basically wrote back that I do want the novella! I said:

This news is so wonderful to hear. Thank you, thank you, thank you for taking the time to share with me. I’m wondering if you’d like to share more about what you’re focusing on or doing, what shifts you’ve made specifically that are helping you. But no worries at all if you’re too busy. If you are open to allowing me to share your story (anonymously), it can sometimes help parents a lot to hear how others are using this approach and making positive shifts. Please know that either way, I’m so grateful to you for making my day—or month, rather!

And she wrote back to me that she’d be happy to do that, but not right now, she was too busy. And then eventually she wrote:

Dear Janet,

Sorry for the delay in response. Some of the shifts that I’ve made with my toddlers:

1. Instead of saying things like, “Knock it off,” “Don’t hit so-and-so,” “Don’t take that toy from the baby,” and other such demands, I’ve really worked on rephrasing it to things like, “Hmm, seems you really want that toy. I won’t let you hit so-and-so.” “Wow, seems like you’re really upset.” And it’s really helped me defuse the situation before I get angry.
2. Another example that had just happened this morning with my 11-month-old. I’m guilty of doing whatever it takes to stop babies from crying. That normally means picking them up and holding them, nursing, changing diapers, etc. Mostly picking them up and holding them if I know they don’t have other immediate needs. This morning I was trying to do something in the kitchen and my son was playing with a couple of trucks when all of a sudden he started crying. Normally I would pick him up, but instead I looked at him and said, “I hear you. What is it that you need from me?” I sat down on the floor with him and waited. He crawled over and handed me a truck. I said, “Oh, you didn’t want to be picked up. You wanted me to play with trucks with you. I’ll try to be better about responding to your needs in the future.” We sat on the floor and played trucks for quite a while.
3. Another example this morning with my toddlers. They were scratching each other, leaving really bad scratches, something they had never done before. I tried things like, “It seems you really want to scratch. I can’t let you scratch your brother.” Then time would pass and another scratch would occur. Finally feeling a bit defeated but determined to avoid my old ways, when my four-year-old daughter asked to be on my lap, I talked with her. “It really seems like you want to scratch your brother. I don’t understand what’s going on. Can you maybe tell me about it?” This is where I figured she wouldn’t really have the words to explain anything, but I was open to whatever came next. She said, “Yeah, there’s a lot of snow outside and we’re inside. That is why I’ve been scratching.” My response: “Wow, thank you for telling me. I’m sorry I didn’t understand what was going on earlier. Let’s get all our snow clothes on and go outside and play while the baby’s taking a nap. When he wakes up, we’ll come inside. So let’s be quiet and hurry up and get ready so we can play longer.” Immediately, the shift in attitude was clear and happy again. Phew!

It has been an amazing shift in the household ever since I have adopted this approach. I’m more open and honest with them about stuff too, thinking that maybe they can handle my emotions too. For example, “I need you and your brother to go play in the living room while I finish making dinner. I’m getting really frustrated with you guys leaving toys right here that I end up tripping on.” Sure, there’s probably a better way to go about that, but it’s better I get it out that way than letting my feelings escalate to where I yell at somebody or something.

There have been many instances prior to this switch in approach where my son or daughter would say, “Dear God, make äiti happy. Amen.” Äiti is the Finnish word for “mother,” and it just breaks my heart that these little people are trying to pray away my frustration. Since taking on this approach, they haven’t said that once. Instead, there have been so many more hugs and them telling me they love me.

I know I have a long way to go. There are a lot of times that I’m not sure exactly what I should say in the moment. It will get easier with time, I’m sure. Eternally grateful.

So one thing that seems amazing to me just off the bat is that this parent was able to make a shift so quickly. Because that can be hard to do, right? We get set in our ways, our children get set in theirs, and even if we have an idea of what we might try to do differently, it’s hard to really keep the focus on doing that. So kudos to this parent for so many things, and especially for sharing all of this so that I could share it with you.

And now I want to suggest three things that are definitely all related that I notice that she’s doing differently, that are helping her to make this shift.

First, she’s seeing beyond the behavior. She’s noticing, she’s seeing in. It can be so challenging to see past those icky behaviors our children are showing us, right? We just want to snap back or say, “Stop doing that. What are you doing? Cut it out.” But the problem with that is it keeps us stuck on that level with our children and can create more and more distance between us. And more discomfort for everybody, which means more behaviors like these. When we see beyond, to the cause of the behavior, and consider the why, we get ourselves unstuck from that judging, correcting place that’s on the surface. That’s how we make a difference.

And with this parent, she said, “Instead of saying things like, ‘Knock it off,’ ‘Don’t hit so-and-so,’ ‘Don’t take that toy from the baby,’ and other such demands, I’ve really worked on rephrasing it to things like, ‘Hmm, seems like you really want that toy. I won’t let you hit so-and-so.’ ‘Wow, seems like you’re really upset.’ And it’s helped me to defuse the situation before I get angry.” So she talks about this as rephrasing, which is definitely what she’s doing. But what she’s also really doing is speaking from a place that represents a mind shift in her and in her perception in the way that she’s seeing her child. She’s shifting to a place in what she’s saying to being open to the feelings, to the point of view of the child, and by doing so, dealing with the behavior at the source, at the cause level. And that is the only real way to solve or change any dynamic that’s going on with our children and us.

What happens if we work on making this shift at the perception level of what behavior really signifies and what our role is in stopping the behavior, if we want to look at it that way, or certainly changing the dynamic, that will free us from this need to have to feel like we’re searching for words and rephrasing. Though sometimes it does help to start the way this parent explains that she is—although I think she’s doing more than rephrasing here, I think she is changing her perspective—but when we shift our perspective to even go a little in that direction, the words come to us naturally. So that’s the direction to keep going in. And it’s okay to go from the outside in, with words, but the real change and the most effective change will come when we keep working on that perspective, which is what I talk about all the time in this podcast.

The second response that she’s offering here that’s helpful is actually wanting them to express their feelings, to share those feelings however they can, and acknowledging them. And this is also something you hear me speak about all the time on this podcast. The reason I do so is that it’s countercultural, it’s counterintuitive for us to do this. As she said, “Another example that just happened this morning with my 11-month-old. I’m guilty of doing whatever it takes to stop babies from crying.” So I don’t see this as any reason to feel guilty, but that is a pattern that a lot of us are encouraged to start with babies, that they are somehow this sort of slightly different species or this different stage of life where their crying just needs to be stopped. And all of it is expressing a need for the parent to do something other than listen. And while that is true, a lot of the time with babies, it could be this automatic response that we give. There are times when they really just need to share.

I’ve seen this in my classes. This new person came in the room. I don’t know this person. Another parent coming in the class, let’s say, a new parent that they haven’t been exposed to before. And they’re coming and sitting near me and I feel their energy. Some children are very sensitive to that. Or, Ahh, I’m overstimulated. It’s all too much. Everybody was talking, or we went out to a restaurant or to a market. Babies are very sensitive to that. So there are reasons that they cry other than, I need something right now. And yes, they do need something, but sometimes what they need is just to share that, to discharge it, to unpack it with us.

If we can start seeing babies that way, it will help us to make a seamless transition—or a more seamless transition, at least—to the toddler years, when there are tantrums and meltdowns and whining and all kinds of expressions that children just need to share, without us jumping to fix them. There’s nothing wrong with picking up a baby, for sure, or picking up a child of any age, but as this parent realizes, that’s not always the answer. And having that mentality that we’re supposed to do that can make it harder to adjust and not be this fixer. And the fixer of feelings is going to get worn out with a toddler, for sure. Especially toddlers that are a little dysregulated like these seem to be, with all the transitions in their lives and maybe absorbing the feelings, the anger that the parent has had. That’s normal to do. Children absorb it, then they vent it out in all these different ways. So ideally, they need to be allowed to, right? The feelings, right from the beginning, right from our baby’s birth, the feelings are healing.

Also, often, the feelings are the key to all these behaviors that are going on with our child on the outside, the ones that we want to get mad about, right? I mean, it’s normal to. Those feelings are what’s driving the behavior. And the ability to reason—which young children have, babies have—it often takes a backseat or it doesn’t come along at all when there are feelings. So letting feelings be, welcoming them, rolling out the red carpet. You’ve heard me say all these things. Yes, it’s hard to let children have their feelings. We all want to fix them as soon as possible.

This is especially common, even often advised, with babies. Just pick them up. And one of the problems with that, besides that it’s not encouraging our child to communicate nuances to us, is that we’re perceiving all their crying in a kind of black and white manner, as one-note. And also, again, encourages these reflexive habits in us. It’s harder to try to make a transition than it is to work on perceiving feelings as nuanced communication from our baby’s birth. Wanting to know what they’re saying, being attuned, wanting to understand so that we can respond accurately. This is the beginning of developing an attuned relationship with our children. Acknowledging doesn’t mean giving in to what our child wants in that moment.

And one little note for this parent: I only want to encourage her, but also add that as she gains confidence in the benefit of her children expressing the feelings, how healthy this is even when it sounds really bad to us, she’ll be able to brave the next step. Which is not trying to fix them another way by giving our child exactly what they say they want in that moment if that’s not convenient for us, if that’s not what we want to do. Because that’s not always going to be possible or sustainable. Maybe we don’t want to play with trucks at that moment. That’s valid, and it’s not as positive for us or our child to do things for them just to please them. It’s a quick way to depletion, to resentment, to more frustration. And it’s less practice getting somewhat comfortable (we’re never going to be super comfortable) being in disagreement with our child. Having them be mad at us, disappointed in us, frustrated because of us, or even just frustrated if it isn’t because of us, to allow that to be. We all need practice with that, again, because it’s countercultural, counterintuitive, the hardest thing that we do as parents. But this is really what’s helped her to make the shift.

Now I think she’s going to be ready soon to take it even further to, Oh, I don’t have to please my child after they’ve communicated to me, either. Just that communication and me accepting it and acknowledging it has a bonding effect, is giving my child what they need. They don’t need me to say yes all the time. What they need is for me to be honest, actually, and say yes only if I really feel yes, from a place of genuinely wanting to do it, not yes, because I can please you and I will.

Now the third thing. Again, these are all very interrelated, as you can tell. From this open, accepting, nonjudgmental, undemanding place this parent has found: explore. The example she uses is:

Another example this morning with my toddlers. They were scratching each other, leaving really bad scratches, something they had never done before. I tried things like, “It seems you really want to scratch. I can’t let you scratch your brother.” Then time would pass and another scratch would occur. Finally feeling a bit defeated but determined to avoid my old ways, when my four-year-old daughter asked to be on my lap, I talked with her. “It really seems like you want to scratch your brother. I don’t understand what’s going on. Can you maybe tell me about it?” This is where I figured she wouldn’t really have the words to explain anything, but I was open to whatever came next. She said, “Yeah, there’s a lot of snow outside and we’re inside. That is why I’ve been scratching.”

So from an open, nonjudgmental place, this parent wants to understand. She’s going beyond the behavior, seeing the communication, that there’s something here that’s being said. So this open, accepting, nonjudgmental part is really important because it isn’t going to be helpful, it’s not going to work if we say this differently. Like, “Why are you doing that?,” with judgment. So we have to work on one and two: First one, seeing beyond the behavior, and two, wanting children to express their feelings and point of view, to share them however they can. So those two elements have to be part of us exploring. Or else it’s not exploring, it’s criticizing, shaming, lashing out at. All those things that can be reflexive for us to do, but they don’t help, as this parent has noticed. What she’s doing does help.

I love that she said, “This is where I figured she wouldn’t really have the words to explain anything, but I was open.” She was open. And children surprise us when we’re open to them, when we believe that they probably know more than we think they know. That they probably do understand way more than they can say. And in this case, she was able to express it, too. Beautifully, actually. So that right there is the response, what this parent did.

Here again, I just want to lovingly caution this parent that her relief in making her child happy with the snow, going out and playing in the snow, it’s a little bit part of what she mentioned earlier about doing whatever it takes to stop her babies from crying. I don’t think she should feel guilty about that, but it’s something to look at, because she does that with this outdoor play and with playing with the trucks. So that’s where I recommend she keeps heading in that direction, into normalizing all the strong disappointments that her children need to express in a day.

In times like these, especially as the parent has shifted some things in only a week, there’s going to be some carryover that children need to vent from this change. Even though it’s such a positive change, right? But still, there are feelings, there are feelings about every kind of change. So all the more reason for this parent to trust herself and what she really wants to do. And that the feelings are the healing, and it’s not up to her to stop the crying. Often we will disappoint children in the moment by giving them what they need in the bigger picture, a safe place to vent and to feel accepted. It’s an opportunity, if we look at it that way.

I love how this parent shares her process and the way she frames it, that she’s starting with changing the words. At the same time, it really does seem that rephrasing is helping her to understand and feel this new perspective. And to answer what she says at the end. “I know I have a long way to go. There are a lot of times that I’m not sure exactly what I should say in the moment. It will get easier with time, I’m sure.” I want to say yes, it will get easier. And she will know what to say if she keeps practicing wearing this lens with those three elements, this relationship lens. It’s a relationship between two whole people who both have needs and wants, one of whom is much newer to the world and more open and easily overwhelmed by their emotions and expresses them impulsively. So these are not two people on an even plane in terms of ability and maturity, far from it. And that’s why they need us so much to see them, to help them express all their feelings in safe ways. To show them, through these opportunities, what an unconditionally loving, respectful relationship between two people with sometimes opposing wants looks like. And it doesn’t unfortunately look like pleasing our child at our own expense. We matter too. Our child needs us to, even when we’re displeasing them.

I promise this parent and everyone listening that with practice, this will become our lens and guide us throughout our children’s lives. Once it sticks, we never lose it. Sure, we might get sidetracked by our own feelings and stress levels and priorities for a while, but we can always readily find our way back. We can do this.

And I have one more thing to share with you. If you’re sometimes confused or aggravated by your toddler’s behavior and you find yourself pleading, manipulating, or bribing, threatening or punishing your child. It doesn’t feel good, right? Maybe you end up yelling and then feeling guilty or just breaking down in frustration. I get it. If you want to learn how to remain more calm and present, not faking it, but feeling it, even during your child’s most difficult behaviors, the No Bad Kids Master Course is for you. If you’re exhausted by all the parenting tips and tricks and quick fixes, and you want a more fulfilling, effective way to relate to your child, this course is definitely for you. And if you want to build a lifelong bond with your child based on love and mutual respect, if you want to learn to really enjoy and take pride in your parenting, let’s go. I promise you, we can do this. Go to nobadkidscourse.com.

The post How an Angry Mom, Hating Parenting, Found “Immediate Success” appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Learn more about Janet’s “No Bad Kids Master Course” at: NoBadKidsCourse.com.

Transcript of “My Toddler Won’t Separate or Warm Up to Anyone Else”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m going to be responding to a question from a parent who says that her two-and-a-half-year-old has always had separation anxiety and can’t get comfortable with grandparents, even the child’s father. This little girl gets upset whenever her mother isn’t there to care for her and seems especially anxious around family members that try to engage her or touch her. This parent’s wondering if there’s anything she can do to help her child become more comfortable in these situations and take some of the pressure off this parent, who feels like she’s the only one her daughter will be contented with.

Okay, so here’s the question I received:

Hi, Janet-

Thank you for all the work you do. I have a question about my daughter’s separation anxiety from me (mom) that has seemed to be present since birth.

I’ve always tried to be respectful of her communication. So as an infant, when she showed distress at being held by other family members, I always took her back or, if I had to leave the room, I would let her play on the floor instead of forcing her to be held by somebody else. My mom said that when she seemed upset, I should say, “It’s okay, it’s just grandma.” But I wanted to respect that she didn’t want that physical contact with someone, as we would with an older child who didn’t want to give a hug to a family member. When she was six weeks and I had to go to my postpartum appointment, I left her with my husband and he said that she screamed bloody murder almost the entire time until I returned.

Now, at two-and-a-half, she still has barely ever been left with anyone but me—only for my medical or dental appointments—and she still does not like to be picked up by other family members. She’s very independent when we are at home or in familiar public places like the library, but at family members’ houses if I go to the bathroom she starts crying anxiously for me, even if she was playing independently up until that point. Unlike other children in the family or whom I have worked with, she is never soothed or comforted by other family members, even her dad, and will only accept comforting from me. If she is already happy and comfortable and I am around, that is the only time she can enjoy other adults. And they have to work really hard to be fun or silly or she wants nothing to do with them. She’s definitely more anxious around the family members who have been known to try to pick her up, such as grandma, than the ones who have always given her space.

I guess I’m wondering if I should have allowed her to get used to being held by others when she was an infant. Was she too young for me to employ the rule of not forcing a child to hug anyone she doesn’t want to? But I’ve never seen another baby who is so bothered by being held by others, so I also wonder if it is just her inborn personality.

Thank you.

Okay. While this in its entirety is a very specific issue this parent is having, it’s common for children to be slower to warm up to other people besides their primary caregiver. And that makes sense, right? They’re used to this person, they’re comfortable with this person, and getting comfortable with somebody else outside of this first person they’ve bonded with or are bonding with requires a little stretch for them. It’s a little uncomfortable. And it’s true what this parent says, that some children are more sensitive to this than others and it’s harder for them. They don’t want the touch and smell of that other person or the way that person touches or holds them. It’s unfamiliar.

And I love that this parent was considering that from her child’s birth, it sounds like. She says to me, “I’ve always tried to be respectful of her communication. So as an infant, when she showed distress at being held by other family members, I always took her back.” Because this parent believes that, she believes the truth, which is that a baby deserves the same respect as an older child.

And now her child is two-and-a-half and is still struggling with this. Some of what the issue is is really not something to be concerned about. The fact that her child doesn’t want to be held by people other than her mother, that’s very understandable. But the fact that she can’t be comfortable when her mother leaves the room and she feels, I don’t know if it’s unsafe or that she’s unsure of what other people might do, but the parent can’t get away at all and is kind of trapped. That’s rough, right? When we feel like we can’t get away for a minute without our child expressing displeasure.

And a lot of parents come to me with that issue, saying their child won’t separate, clings to them, what can they do? And it’s really only one thing that I recommend that it sounds like this parent might not be doing, and it’s something that most of us in this situation don’t consider. We miss it, and actually it’s something that we miss in a lot of areas with our children because it’s kind of a brave thing to do. It’s not something that is practiced in our society and it requires this leap of faith.

If you listen here, you’ve heard me talk about this before: really welcoming those feelings. Really welcoming a child to share that discomfort. And that’s kind of the step beyond the wonderful respect that this parent is showing her child, respecting her wishes, not wanting to put her in situations where she shows any discomfort. This is a step even further that’s even more respectful, because what it is is seeing and hearing and welcoming a child to share. That’s the opposite of what is commonly done, which is what this parent says that her mother does, which is, “It’s okay, it’s just grandma.” That’s invalidating, right? Taking our child away or moving them away from that person is thoughtful, and that’s respecting what we are assuming is their wish right then. But the place that I recommend that goes even further is allowing our child to be in that space with their feelings while they have our full support and that we’re acknowledging them.

And this is also a difference that I talk about a lot on this podcast, which is the really important difference between acknowledging and accommodating. When we accommodate, when we say, Oops, you’re crying or you’re showing displeasure with this person, so I’m going to move you away, that is accommodating. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but accommodating tends to keep our child stuck in the discomfort because what it does is it affirms to our child that we see their discomfort as very valid and something that we need to fix, instead of valid and something that they need to express to us. That’s the difference. Both are saying it’s valid, but one is wanting to hear and know about discomfort.

Because this is a precious thing that our child is sharing with us, especially as an infant. I’m telling you something, and because I don’t have the words, this is the way I’m telling you that I’m feeling something here. This is new, this is different. I don’t know this person. I wouldn’t give my child over to someone and then try to acknowledge the feelings my child has while they’re in that person’s arms. I would not take the step of letting this person hold the baby until I had the sense that the baby was saying it was okay. And I’m going to talk about that whole process, but first, I just want to make this overall point that I believe that if this parent started to welcome all these feelings their child is sharing with her as a toddler now, and not be afraid of them and not let them stop her in her tracks or prevent her from going to do the things she needs to do to separate.

And ideally if the person that’s with the child when mom separates, if this is dad or grandma or somebody else if mom’s going to the bathroom, ideally these people will also welcome the feelings. But again, it’s a counterintuitive thing. I wouldn’t expect that people will be able to do that, but that would be the ideal. That dad could say, “Oh gosh, you want your mom so bad. You don’t want me here with you right now. You want to be with mom, right? She’s the one that usually gives you that bath, she’s the one that usually” whatever it is.

To be able to be in that place with our child, unintimidated by the sharing, in fact wanting the sharing—it’s such an opportunity for bonding. I’ve been in this situation with my own children, with other people’s children. That will level you up each time in your closeness if you can be brave and welcome a child to share. This is true with a preschool teacher or a kindergarten teacher or the new caregiver or the old caregiver on a time when the child is just feeling vulnerable and didn’t want the parent to leave that day. The grandparents, the aunts, the uncles, the friends. I’ve seen the bonding effect that bravely welcoming a child’s feelings has. Really welcoming them, not just saying words, “It’s okay to be sad,” but Yeah, I feel you. It’s amazing what this does, but it’s a scary one and it’s still scary for me after all these years. So getting over that hump is very scary.

And you have to believe in it. I mean, maybe what I’m saying here sounds ridiculous and you don’t believe in it and you don’t agree with it. That’s okay, too. This is what I recommend and I know that it works and it helps and it’s what our children need to pass through these different things that they’re going through.

And when this parent says that when her child is around family members, they have to really do a song and dance and a show to be fun or silly to get her attention, that’s not really fair to those adults. I mean, it’s fine that they want to do that, but that’s a lot of work that we don’t need to do. We can be our genuine self with children if we allow them to go through all the feelings that they have about us.

When I have a new child in my class, people coming to the door, they’re holding their baby, and the baby will look at me. And the younger a child is especially, the more they just look at you so openly, right? They’re looking straight into you, and you can kind of read their feelings of, Who are you? Can I trust you? And I always acknowledge that. I’ll say hello to whatever the child’s name is, “Yeah, you don’t know me, you’ve never seen me before, and now you’re coming into this room with me. Who is this lady, right?” I’ll reflect back that vibe that I’m getting from the child and help them to know that it’s really okay with me and it’s valid for them to feel all those things about a new situation and a new person. And I want to encourage that sensitivity in them. That’s why young children are such great learners, because they are so open and sensitive and that’s a good thing. So I want to let them know, “Yes, I’m sure you’re feeling a lot of things. Who’s this lady? Yeah, you’re looking at my hair. Yeah, I have different hair than your mom does.” Whatever it is, I want you to share it with me.

And I’ll do this if I’m going into somebody’s house. I mean, that’s even a more intimate situation that now I’m in your house and I’m sitting with your parent. You don’t know me. Who is this lady talking to your mom? Setting boundaries with you sometimes, if that’s what I’m modeling in that consultation. Who is this person? I don’t expect you to be comfortable with me. I’m brand new to you.

So with this parent, with the family members and the grandparents, I would do this from the very beginning the next time you’re all together. As soon as your child is expressing something about somebody there, “You’re looking at grandma. Are you wondering if she’s going to want to hug you today? Yeah. Well, grandma’s not going to hug you unless you want it, but yeah, I see the way you’re looking at her.” And of course, if grandma could do this too, that would be incredible, but it’s okay, we can still help bridge that for our child. And also we’re kind of modeling for the other adults there that this person has a perspective that’s valid. And the more we allow it, the easier it’ll be for her to pass through it and feel more trust and feel more comfortable with us. That’s how the process looks.

So then I wouldn’t try to entertain her or get her attention. I would encourage everybody to trust that they’re enough. And if you really allow her to be herself and see her and acknowledge her, understand her as she is, where she is in this process, that will help her to want to come to you. And I’ve seen this happen so many times. If we do a big show, then in a way we’re kind of distracting our child from, it’s not a negative thing, but we’re distracting her from those feelings that she has. And we’re performing in a way that we should never need to have to perform with a child. We get to be ourselves in these relationships. That’s what the deepest kind of respect is. Respecting ourselves, respecting our child.

If I had to get up and go to the bathroom and my child may not be comfortable with these people, I’m not expecting her to run up and jump into their arms. I’m asking them not to approach her because I want them to trust that she will come to you if you allow her to be herself. Now I’m going to go to the bathroom, and now she’s upset and she’s screaming, “Oh, you don’t want me to go. You’re not sure about these people, right? Yeah, you’re used to me all the time. It’s hard for me to leave.” I’m saying that as I’m leaving. You can share with us. We want to know. We want to hear about it. I go to the bathroom, I come back, now maybe she’s yelling at me some more. “You didn’t want me to go. Yeah, you’re still sharing with me. You can tell me all those things.” And at her age, she may have some words she’s saying, so just reflect all of them. Nothing to fear here, nothing to fix. It’s freeing, but it’s scary at the same time. So that’s the key that I hope you’ll try.

And when this parent says, “she’s definitely more anxious around the family members who have been known to try to pick her up, such as grandma, than the ones who have always given her space,” you might even bring that out into the open, too. “I know grandma tried to pick you up before and you weren’t sure if you were ready, so now you’re not sure if she’s going to try that again. It’s okay. I talked to grandma and she’s going to wait because she knows that you will want to come be with her at some point when you’re ready.” Just something like that. No secrets here, no unsaid things, no things we’re afraid of, things we’ve got to fix, things we’re worried about. Putting it all out there. The more you do this with your children, the more freedom you’ll feel and the closer you’ll all feel.

It’s like the way sometimes when we can say something to a partner about something we’re unhappy about in the relationship, and the person accepts that or hears it. Maybe they don’t agree with it, but they hear it and they still accept you and seem to still like you and want to be with you. How much more do we love that person after? How much closer do we feel? A lot of us weren’t allowed to express anything remotely negative or not what people wanted to hear and still feel accepted. That’s why it’s so scary, I think that’s one of the reasons. So there’s a lot that this parent can do right now.

I also want to speak to her comment where she said, “I’m wondering if I should have allowed her to get used to being held by others when she was an infant. Was she too young for me to employ the rule of not forcing a child to hug anyone she doesn’t want to? But I’ve never seen another baby who is so bothered by being held by others, so I also wonder if it’s just her inborn personality.” So yes, I agree it is a sign of her inborn personality, that she is on the sensitive side. And I also agree that she shouldn’t have forced her to get used to being held by others when she was an infant. That’s not what this is about. “Was she too young for me to employ the rule of not forcing a child to hug anyone she doesn’t want to?” Absolutely not.

But interestingly, this idea of accepting all feelings that children have, it seems to be becoming almost a mainstream idea, the way there’s so much acceptance and talk about this idea of letting feelings be. And that was not the case five, 10 years ago. So that’s a wonderful thing, right? That we’re realizing that feelings need to flow, and that’s the key to everything: Our child’s behavior being understood and helping them to move through it. And improve their behavior, if we want to see it that way. For them to have emotional fluency, social-emotional intelligence. To feel close to us, to feel wholly accepted. This is wonderful progress that we’re all making. And maybe I’m imagining that it’s becoming mainstream because it’s very much around in my world, but even if it’s a little more in that direction, it’s wonderful.

The interesting thing, though, is that this idea, for most people it starts somewhere in the toddler years, this idea that children have feelings to express and need to express them. It’s still uncommon for people to consider that an infant has this need. And that’s what’s quite different about Magda Gerber’s approach. And one of the things that stuck out for me so strongly when I heard it from her was that even a baby has a right to cry. Now, if we don’t quite think of a baby as a full-fledged human being quite yet, that maybe we think of them as this more simplified state, then we will maybe only be able to imagine that allowing a baby to cry is abandoning them, letting them cry it out, not caring, forcing them to. Not something that we are intimately involved in supporting. So that’s an idea I would like to bring forward here.

Because this parent is certainly right in that she shouldn’t force the baby into someone else’s arms and try to force them to get used to it. But what the parent did, and what most people do is, she just thought, Uh-oh, she’s saying no, so I’m going to avoid this situation. Instead of hearing all the in-between. What’s in between accommodating our baby in the situation and forcing them to be in an uncomfortable situation or leaving them to have uncomfortable feelings or distress. Never ever, ever do we need to do that. The truly respectful, loving place is in between, where we’re curious about what our baby is sharing, and we’re not assuming that we have to fix this, that allowing it is some kind of abandonment or not caring about what our child is feeling. It’s the exact opposite. It’s noticing the nuances of what they’re expressing. And babies cry to express a lot of nuance because they don’t have those words to say yet. Now, obviously, we don’t want the baby to get to a point of deep distress If we can help that.

Here’s the process that I recommend. So here I am, here’s grandma. I’m holding the baby. Grandma says, “I want to hold the baby,” or reaches out for the baby. Of course grandma wants to hold the baby, right? I stop. I maybe gently put my hand on grandma, or I somehow gently block and I turn to my baby in my arms. I make sure the baby can see grandma, and I say, “This is your grandma. She would like to hold you right now. What do you think about that?” And I hold my baby up a little closer towards grandma, and I check it out with my baby. I read her body language, I look in her eyes, I see if she’s showing comfort or trepidation. And if I see any kind of trepidation, I say, “It looks like you’re not sure yet. That’s okay. We can wait.” But then let’s say grandma’s reaching out and my baby starts to cry. “Oh, that’s not making you comfortable, right? This is a different person here. It’s your grandma. You’re going to get to know her very well, but you’re not ready for her to hold you right now.” Something like that.

And what this does is it takes us down a path of acknowledging instead of accommodating. So our child gets this message as early as possible that they’re allowed to have a process of getting comfortable with people. It’s not about you’re either comfortable or you’re not. It’s this in-between. Where are you now? What are you saying? What are you noticing? We can talk about all of it. And I know there’s some people that are going to think, well, how could you do this with an infant? Mostly, they’re people that haven’t ever tried it. So try it, if you want to. Because there is some truth in what this parent’s saying about if she could have allowed her child to start getting used to people earlier. She could have, and that’s the way. Through acknowledging, through being open to and bravely willing to accept and put words to what our child is feeling.

And if we don’t know, we say, “I don’t know. I’m not sure if you’re ready. Hmm.” Maybe grandma reaches out, “Let’s see. Let’s see how this goes.” And then the baby starts crying, “Oh no, it seems like you’re not ready yet. You don’t want grandma to hold you.” And then even with grandma holding her right there, I’m still there in close contact with her, letting her know that if she looks at me with those scared eyes, yes, I’m going to take her back. But it’s possible that she just wants to express, This is so new. This is all brand new. Who is this person? They hold me differently than mom does. Consider that there’s a lot more to what our children feel from the time they’re born than extreme things. Total distress, I can’t handle this!, and Okay, I’m fine with it. When we simplify babies that way, we can both get stuck in these kind of patterns that may have been created here, this very loving way of accommodating. It’s easier to start considering welcoming a child’s feelings as early as possible. And it’s helpful for us too to know that, Oh, there’s nuances here. Every cry isn’t an emergency that I have to fix.

And when I’m caring for my child’s specific needs, they’re crying because they’re hungry or tired, even then we’re of course filling the need, but we’re also acknowledging, “My, you’re in a very big hurry. You want to eat right now while I’m getting my pillow, while I’m getting comfortable. Yeah, it’s so hard to wait sometimes when you’re hungry. I’m glad you’re telling me that. I always want to know what’s going on with you.” Those messages. Or, “Oh gosh, I think you may be getting very tired. We did a lot today.” Or, “This person’s brand new to you. You never saw him before. It seems like you’re saying no, you’re not quite ready for him to be this close right now. Thanks for letting us know.”

That kind of openness goes a very long way. I mean, it lasts all the way through our kids’ adulthood where they can tell us all the hard things, all the uncomfortable things, the things that are happening right now between us, even. It’s powerful because we’re taking care to want to know, instead of giving them that message subtly, lovingly, that we don’t think they can handle this situation at all, even in stages, so we’re going to protect them from it. That’s accommodating. Or telling them, Shh, don’t feel what you’re feeling. It’s okay. It’s just grandma. Don’t feel what you’re feeling. Don’t share what you’re sharing.

If any of this makes sense to you, try it, and please let me know how it goes. And for this parent with a two-and-a-half-year-old or any parent, a parent with a teenager, it’s never, ever too late to start bravely accepting the feelings. Never too late.

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.

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