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

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transcript of “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 “Dr. Gabor Maté on Why Parents Matter More Than Ever”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

For most of you out there, I’m guessing that my guest today needs no introduction. Dr. Gabor Maté is a family physician, renowned speaker, with a special interest in childhood development, trauma, and addiction. He’s authored five books, including the classic he co-authored with early childhood icon psychologist Dr. Gordon Neufeld. The book is Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers. And Doctors Neufeld and Maté are reissuing it with a brand new chapter called In the Wake of the Pandemic: Peer Orientation and the Youth Mental Health Crisis. I’m seriously looking forward to discussing the invaluable messages in this book, and more, with Dr. Gabor Maté.

Hi, and welcome to you, Dr. Maté. I’m an enormous fan of yours and it’s really an honor to be able to spend this time with you. Thank you very much for being here.

Dr. Gabor Maté: Thanks for having me. I’m sorry that due to technical issues, the main author of the book Hold On to Your Kids, Dr. Gordon Neufeld, can’t be with us. But since I wrote the book with him and have worked with him for decades, I think I can channel his wisdom here, as best I can. But listeners should keep in mind that it’s his work mostly that we’re talking about here.

Janet Lansbury: I believe in you as a channel for his work, and you have amazing work you’ve done on your own as well. And this book, well now you’re reissuing it because you’ve added a new chapter all about the effects of the pandemic. Which I found surprising, your take on it, because it’s very different from the take that we’re hearing from many about it. So I really hope that you’ll speak to that today. But this whole book, it’s really a unique perspective, and remains a unique perspective, even though it was first written back in, what was it, 2008, something like that?

Dr. Gabor Maté: I think even before then. I think it’s probably 2005 or 2004, something like that.

Janet Lansbury: You’ve also added some chapters about the digital explosion that’s happened and how that affects this issue. I’m going to let you speak about the issues that this book covers and brings to light for people. It was something that I hadn’t considered before reading this. I’ve known the importance of having a relationship-centered approach to parenting, that that’s what it’s all about. That attachment is everything, that it’s key to the way that children learn, the way that they live and become who we want them to be or who they’re supposed to be. And that attachment nest needs to be present. But what your book with Dr. Neufeld talks about is that, actually, this is even more important than we thought because there’s competition. There’s this powerful draw of peer orientation. Can you talk a little about that?

Dr. Gabor Maté: First of all, we have to consider human evolution. And from the evolutionary perspective, mammals, hominids and hominins, humanoid creatures lived in small-band groups, where the children were around the adults all the time, 24/7, from birth to adulthood. And even with our own species, we’ve been on the earth for about 150,000 years, that’s the way we lived until the blink of an eye ago. So for 95% of our existence as human species, children lived around their parents all the time.

It’s like a duckling. A duckling is born, hatches from the egg, looks at the mother duck and imprints on the mother duck, and then follows the mother duck. Not because the mother duck asserts authority or threatens them or anything, just that nature causes us to be attached to our caregivers and to follow their guidance. And that’s the way it’s been for a long time.

Now, in more recent times, kids spend most of their time away from their parents from a very early age on. In the United States, 25% of women have to go back to work within two weeks of giving birth, which basically means that children are deprived of the natural presence of their nature-intended caregivers.

The duckling, if it hatches with the mother duck absent, will still imprint on anything that moves. And that could be a dog or horse or mechanical moving toy, but none of which are designed by nature to bring that duckling up to adulthood.

Our children, spending most of their time away from us, imprint on who they spend most of their time with. Their brain is programmed to imprint and to attach, but nothing in nature tells the brain who to attach to. That’s the job of the culture. So when you have a culture in which kids spend most of their time away from the nurturing adults, they imprint on whoever’s around, they can’t help it. They’re not doing it, their brains are doing it.

That means our kids are now imprinting and attaching to, and therefore getting their orientation from, immature peers. Attachment is like a magnet. It’s got two poles. One pole attracts, but the other pole repels. So when you’re attracted here, you’re pushing away from there. So when kids get attracted to and orienting by and attached to their peer group, they start pushing away from the adult. And now we think they have a problem, there’s something wrong with them, and we ratchet up the authoritarian parenting, all the punishments, the timeouts, all this stuff, which further drives them away from us.

And so what we’ve got here in our society, to make a long story short, is a culturally built-in, normalized, absolutely abnormal situation, where kids are getting most of their influence from their immature peers rather than the nurturing adults. And this results in behavior problems, learning difficulties, a lot of what we call pathologies (which are not pathologies at all, they’re manifestations of abnormalities in the environment), difficulties parenting, frustration on the part of parents, all kinds of other consequences which you can talk about. But in a nutshell, it has to do with the loss of primary attachments to the nourishing adults and the replacement—gradually, but insidiously—by the peer group.

Janet Lansbury: When does this begin? When children are three years old, four years old?

Dr. Gabor Maté: For those kids whose mothers have to go back to work at two weeks, that’s when it starts. Because then where do they go to? They go to poorly-funded, very often, and poorly-staffed daycare centers where there’s not enough adults to really connect with each child. Furthermore, we have this idea in this society that somehow we have to socialize kids. They spent the whole week in daycare and then, at let’s say age three or four, we arrange playdates for them on the weekend where they can be with each other even more.

And so I’m just telling you that so many of the problems that parents are having with their kids, there’s nothing because something’s wrong with the kids or particularly something wrong with the parents either. But because in this culture, the loss of parental attachment has been normalized and even encouraged. And there’s this invisible competition that we’re actually taught to court and to encourage.

Janet Lansbury: So what does healthy socialization look like? I mean, when you say that we’re supposed to socialize, I never consider it that way. I consider that children are naturally socialized. It’s not something that we have to try to make happen for them.

Dr. Gabor Maté: That’s the whole point. Your assumption is quite right. Socialization does happen naturally. But we can over-encourage it, because we forget or we don’t know that child development goes through phases. It’s like a pyramid. And the base and the broadest grounding for that pyramid is attachment to the nurturing adults. And that has to be maintained. These are not phases that we go through, this is a pyramid that we build. And attachment is the basis of it.

The second basis of it is not socialization. The second tier in the pyramid is actually individuation, which means the child develops a deep, entrusting sense of themselves. Now for that, attachment has to be secure. When children develop a sense of themselves, they can then respect the individuality of others and hold on to themselves without having to fit in, without having to mold themselves to the expectations of the group. But if they don’t have a strong sense of themselves, individuation, then they’ll try and fit in with the group rather than being themselves. Then we can see where that leads to. You know what the extreme of that is: gang behavior.

Then the third tier, as Gordon points out, is socialization. So socialization is like the peak of the pyramid. In a healthy sense, it’s based on strong attachments, proper individuation, and then socialization happens spontaneously. We don’t have to make it happen. But we do have to respect the pyramid. And so when we try and push kids into socialization too early, before they’ve individuated, then we’re actually asking for them to just meld in with the peer group.

Janet Lansbury: When parents have asked me, How do I do this? I need to socialize my child. And I point out—because my mentor, who happens to be Hungarian, Magda Gerber, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of her, but she used to say, you’re socializing your child with everything you do in your relationship. That’s how they’re learning social behaviors, through you. You don’t have to put them in a group setting. Group socialization is a whole different thing. They’re learning this through your relationship.

Dr. Gabor Maté: As a matter of fact, this is counterintuitive perhaps, and we’re not here advocating homeschooling, that’s not something everybody just can do, for all kinds of reasons. But if you look at the research, kids who are homeschooled, they socialize better later on. Why? Because they have a stronger, more independent sense of themselves. And now they can respect individuality of others and hold on to their own.

Janet Lansbury: If parents are in the position where they do need to have their child be in childcare, then ideally we want them to be able to attach—hopefully not as their primary attachment, hopefully that still remains the parent, right? That’s what we want. But they need to form a secondary attachment with those adults caring for them, so that they have somebody that’s an adult to be attached to instead of prioritizing the other children to be attached to.

Dr. Gabor Maté: Yeah, we’re not saying kids shouldn’t be in daycare. That would not be realistic. A lot of parents, for economic and other reasons, simply have to send their kids to daycare. The question is to recognize what we’ve lost and how to supplant it, okay? So if the kid goes to daycare, the first point is: what the child’s brain cannot handle is competing primary attachments. The child can handle many attachments, but not competing primary attachments. By the way, that’s true of the human brain in general. It’s very difficult even for adults, for example, to be in love with two people at the same time. Eventually the brain goes this way or that way, but it can’t hold on to both.

Now, the child’s brain, being very immature, is absolutely incapable of handling competing primary attachments. So when the child goes to daycare, the parent needs to encourage the child’s attachment to the daycare provider because that doesn’t compete with the parent, but the peer attachment does. So we have to have healthy adult attachments if the child is not going to be with the parent. It’s like Gordon says: in the morning, the parent hands the attachment baton to the teacher or the daycare worker, and in the evening, we take it back. That’s the first point. When kids go to daycare, parents should hang out in that daycare for a few weeks and make sure that their child sees them, the parent, forming relationships with the daycare provider. So that the child then sees, Oh, okay, I can be attached to both of these people. That’s the first thing.

The second thing is, we have to understand how children attach. And the more immature we are, the more primitive—and I don’t mean that in a negative sense—but the more basic our attachment styles are. So the first way that children attach is physically. To the senses, by seeing, hearing, touching, smelling the attachment figure. Smell, by the way, is huge. It’s one of the first things that develops. Babies can distinguish the smell of their own mother’s breast pad from that of other mothers within a few weeks of birth. So the senses are very important to children.

And other forms of attachment, such as being loyal or being important, holding somebody else in your heart, those develop later. You might have friends that you might not see for two years, but you still love them, you can hold on to them. Children can’t do that. Young children, they have to see you, hear you, touch you. Now, what does that mean? If they haven’t seen you the whole day, that attachment relationship has been attenuated. You have to regain it. So when your kid comes home from daycare at whatever age, hang out with them. Not for the purpose of telling them what to do or watching television together or anything, but just for the purpose of reestablishing the attachment relationship.

So in the first place, kids go to daycare: form attachment relationships with the nurturing adults. And most daycare workers need to be trained or understand the importance of attachment. They’re not just physical caregivers providing food and supervision. They need to be attachment figures, number one. Number two, at the end of the day, you have to reconnect, reattach with your kids. Especially the younger kids, but any kids, at any age. So we can deal with the daycare, not by going back to some ideal time when kids are with their parents the whole day, that’s no longer available to most of us. But we can understand attachment and then we’ll follow the guidelines of attachment to make sure that the kids being away from us the whole day doesn’t undermine our relationship with them.

Janet Lansbury: Yes, I love these points that you and Dr. Neufeld made in the book about the four ways to nurture attachment. The first one is when they’re infants, when children are very little, you call it “being in their face.” It’s having that face-to-face. And then that becomes “collecting.” I really like that word to describe it. I mean, I’ve seen all these memes and things saying, children want us to light up when they come into the room. Well, there is something to that. When we’re returning to each other, we want to drop everything. It’s so important that we’re not texting in the car or whatever. We’re present, we’re there. I collect you. You’re somebody big to me. You’re important.

Dr. Gabor Maté: You would do that with a lover, wouldn’t you? You do that automatically. We do it automatically with babies, too. I mean, even strangers. I’ve been on many airplanes where there might be a little baby there in somebody’s arms and the baby cries a little bit. Everybody goes, Aww. We just all naturally attune with the baby. That’s just natural. Babies evoke that attunement/connection instinct in us. The problem is that with the separation from our kids, that instinct inside ourselves is actually softened, weakened. So we actually get alienated from our own parenting instinct.

When some parenting “expert” comes along and tells you to practice timeout against a two-year-old, basically they’re saying to you, Use the attachment relationship to punish the child. The child’s biggest need is that you should be delighted and welcoming and unconditionally accepting. And when you use a timeout technique, you say to the child, I know what your biggest fear is: the loss of that relationship. And I’m going to deprive you of the relationship for a certain period of time. Now, to a two-year-old, five minutes is forever. And so that, not only does the culture normalize alienation of children from parents, it even teaches parents to use the child’s biggest need—for your delight in them and acceptance of them, an unconditional connection with them—against the child, to try and control the child. Which creates tremendous insecurity in children. It makes them conform to your desires perhaps, but what does it do to the child’s development?

We have to collect them, which means gather them in under our wing again. And Gordon says, collect them before you direct them.

Janet Lansbury: It does become less organic as children get older and we think, Oh, they’re fine, or They don’t care, or we’re busy or whatever. And how important that still is with a teenager, with a child at any age. I have three adult children, I still stand up—whatever I’m doing—if they walk in the door. It’s like a huge thing to me, run and hug and so excited. I naturally feel that way. But I think we can get caught up in our work and our lives and forget, especially when children maybe are already gone into more of that peer orientation space and then they don’t seem like they care. But they do, right? They really do.

And what can we look for, then, with our younger children? What are some of the warning signs that, Uh-oh, there could be something going on here? I mean, when you talk about the behaviors that children have when they do have that peer orientation, the behaviors that they have toward the parents, what do those look like with young children?

Dr. Gabor Maté: First of all, let me just say that even teenagers need this. Not just even, but especially. Because it’s such a difficult time. They need orientation. And in traditional cultures that orientation was provided by adults and elders.

One of my sons and I are writing a new book together. I mean, we’re just beginning to write it, so I’m not advertising anything here. But it’s going to be called Hello Again: A Fresh Start for Parents and Adult Children. It’s based on a workshop that we do. And all the adults that we speak to, adults in their thirties, forties who still want contact with their parents. They may not want the contact that they have, which is often very troubled, but they want genuine contacts. Never-mind infants, even adults are still looking for that.

So what are the signs when kids are getting alienated from us? Well, first of all, they want to be with each other all the time rather than with us, number one. Number two, with the technology that we’ve very unwisely put into their immature hands, they’re connecting with each other all the time. They will not be soothed by us when they’re upset. They will be more oppositional and resistant to our expectations.

Janet Lansbury: And that part could show up with a child as young as three or four. There’s part of that that naturally happens anyway, but then it can become more of a warning sign if a child is consistently having “behavior issues.” But it’s always a relationship issue when children are having concerning behaviors, it’s usually a relationship issue between us.

Dr. Gabor Maté: Yeah. In our society, more and more kids are being diagnosed with this, that, and the other. And many kids are being medicated to control their behaviors, which is a vast social experiment in the manipulation of the child’s biology and the indication is that it’s not particularly good for the child’s brain development. In fact, on the contrary, in many cases. What we’re actually looking at is we identify pathologies in a child, but actually there’s no pathology in a child. What there is is a response in the child to the environment, and particularly to the loss of attachment.

So there’s a so-called diagnosis called oppositional defiant disorder. I say “so-called” because not only does it not exist in reality, not even in theory can it exist. Now, it describes something. So in that sense, it refers to something real. But to say that ODD, that a child has it, is to imply that the child has some kind of a disorder. But let’s just look at it for a minute. Oppositionality by definition is relational. Can you oppose somebody if you’re not in relationship with them? When I talk about this, I say to my listeners, if you don’t understand what I’m saying, lock yourself in a room by yourself, make sure you’re alone, lock the door, and oppose somebody. And if you manage to do it, please put it on YouTube because we want to see what it looks like. So oppositionality by definition implies a relationship. In which case, why are we diagnosing the child rather than looking at the relationship, number one.

Number two, I mentioned individuation, the necessity for us to become individual beings in our own right. That’s nature’s agenda. Why? Because the parents are going to die. And nature’s agenda is that by the time the parents pass, the child has become their own adult person, individuated, knowing themselves. That’s just nature’s agenda for any species.

At age one-and-a-half, the child starts saying no. What do we call that? We call that the terrible twos. Why do we call it the terrible twos? Because we don’t understand there’s nothing terrible about it. What’s actually going on is the child is developing their own will, and in order to develop their own will, as Gordon points out, they have to put up a little fence against the overwhelming and overbearing will of the parent. And that’s that no that they start saying. If you don’t know how to say no, your yeses don’t mean anything at all. So there’s nothing inherently oppositional about it, it’s just that—Gordon calls it counterwill. Counterwill is just countering the will of another so that you can develop your own.

Now, we can manage that easy enough if the attachment relationship is strong. But if we mistake it for a problem, then what we do is when a child expresses their counterwill, their nature-built drive for independence, we push on them even harder. It’s in the nature of counterwill that the more you push on it, the stronger it becomes.

So who are these kids with the so-called oppositional defiant disorders? Number one, they’re kids who have lost the primary healthy attachment with adults. Now, if you’ve lost a relationship with somebody, you’re not going to heed them. You’re not going to listen to them or allow yourself to be guided by them, because orientation follows attachment. We follow, orient by, those people that we trust and are connected to. If, because of all the multiple pressures in our society, which is not the fault of individual parents, children’s relationships to parents have been attenuated, weakened, then their oppositionality increases naturally, number one. Number two, the more we push on it, the more confirmed and out-of-hand it becomes.

So who are these ODD kids? Kids who have lost their relationship with the parents and who’ve been pushed on too much. And then we say they’ve got some kind of pathology. No, they don’t. What we have to do is to go back to basics and rebuild that relationship with them. Trust me, that oppositionality will melt like snow on a warm day. We’ve seen this over and over again. But unfortunately the tendency in our society is to pathologize children’s behavior, rather than to see its sources and its remedies in the attachment relationship.

Janet Lansbury: Yes, that makes a lot of sense.

And then the second point that you make about maintaining that attachment is giving children something to hold on to. In the beginning, that’s a body part, that’s very physical, but it soon becomes emotional as well. And just that feeling of, There’s this person that sees me, knows me so well, is always in my corner, and somebody loves me. And I can go out in the world and deal with some of the challenges, knowing that I have this person to go back to, that sees me better than anyone else.

Dr. Gabor Maté: Even in adult relationships, on separation, don’t we give one another little objects, little mementos? Those are something to hold on to. Children need that. So if the kid goes to daycare, give them a picture of yourself. Give them some cherished, not expensive obviously, but some cherished shared object that they can hold on to. So that’s what we’re talking about, is let them take a piece of you to the daycare or to the school.

Janet Lansbury: And then inviting them. The third one is inviting them to depend on us.

Dr. Gabor Maté: Yeah. Again, in this society there’s this belief that we have to push kids towards independence, but we don’t. I mean, a mother bear doesn’t have to push the cubs towards independence. At a certain point, it just happens. And the more secure the child is, the more independent they can become. If you look at these attachment experiments with little babies or little toddlers and so on, those kids that are more securely attached are the ones more likely to be able to play independently and then to come back to the mom or the parent when necessary. As Gordon says, to promote independence, invite dependence.

Janet Lansbury: Right.

Dr. Gabor Maté: That drive for independence is inherent in the child. At a certain point, the child developing in a healthy way will say, “I’m going to do it myself.” So you’re going to tie their shoelaces: “I’m going to do it myself.” That drive for mastery is inherent in a human being. It has to be. So we don’t have to promote it, we just have to provide the security so that it can unfold naturally.

Janet Lansbury: Right. And be that person that says, I mean, unless we can’t possibly do it at that moment, and then we say, “Well, I wish I could but I can’t right now.” But that welcomes them. To say, Oh, you want help with your shoes? You know how to do it, but so what? I’m going to help you with your shoes. Of course, I’m always here for you.

And yeah, I mean, the only thing I was thinking when I was reading that that I would maybe add is just that sometimes we have to honor independence when children do show it. Even as an infant, I want to look over here and notice this right now. That we consider honoring that instead of, Come look at me! I’m the only one here! So when a child does choose it—it’s never pushing a child that way, never. But it’s noticing those expressions of independence and honoring them, not stepping on them. Because one thing I really wanted to ask you—

Dr. Gabor Maté: Let me just quickly comment on that.

Janet Lansbury: Okay, yes!

Dr. Gabor Maté: Yes to what you just said. That’s called attunement. Attunement means being aware of and respectful of the internal experience of the other. At a certain point, the infant may have too much of you looking at them. They wish to look away. You let them. You don’t get anxious, Oh, come back, hey! You don’t try to inveigle them back into relationship with you at that moment, because their need at that point is that it’s become too intense for them and they need to just detach for a minute. If you’re attuned with them, and if you’re not anxious, you’ll allow that to happen. If you’re not attuned or if you’re bringing your own needs to bear, your need to connect with the child to dominate, then you’re not going to honor their experience.

So yes, you have to be attuned with the child, which means sometimes you have to let them look away and do their own thing. Usually it won’t last very long, but you need to give them the space to do that. So it begins very early. And very often parents hover too much in that sense. They should be attentive to the child and be there for the child. But hovering means that you’re bringing your own needs.

Janet Lansbury: And fears often, right?

Dr. Gabor Maté: Your own needs and your anxieties, rather than getting your cues from the child’s experience.

Janet Lansbury: I’m sure you’ve been asked this, you and Dr. Neufeld probably both, but how does your advice in this book stand with all of this research that’s come out about the over-parenting and the stifling of children, and how that’s linked to children who are depressed, anxious, have no sense of themselves, no individuation, I guess.

Dr. Gabor Maté: So for sure. It’s like I just said, it’s—

Janet Lansbury: Lack of attunement, right?

Dr. Gabor Maté: It needs to arise from the child’s needs, not from the parents’ anxieties. So a lot of that stuff has to do with the parents’ fears. We’ve got to take them to this class and that class and make sure they get into the right school. And if we don’t push them academically, they’re going to… In other words, it actually comes from the anxieties of the parent. And it also comes from the sense of the parent that they’ve lost a relationship with the child and they need to overcompensate. So as long as the relationship is healthy and well-attached, you can’t over-hover.

Let me tell you about a study that was done quite some years ago now. They looked at mothers and young children, I don’t know, about a hundred or 200 mothers. I quote the study in one of my books, not in this one. And some mothers, very few, were kind of distant and unavailable emotionally for the children as they interacted. Most mothers were good, they interacted, they played with the child. Some mothers were called supermoms. These supermoms cuddled the kid, extra loving, extra connection, and so on. Attuned, but very warm. Thirty years or more later, the kids most emotionally stable or the adults most emotionally stable, were the children of these supermoms. And what the researcher said is, you can’t love children too much. Now, loving them is not the same as hovering all the time and controlling them.

So the research doesn’t have to do with attachment, it has to do with control and intrusion. And yeah, if you control kids and intrude on them, you’re going to get negative results. But that’s got nothing to do with attachment. In fact, it’s a substitute for genuine attachment.

Janet Lansbury: Right. And do you also think it threatens the attachment relationship and could cause this peer orientation? That if a child feels like, they’re too controlling or they’re trying to mold me. I mean, I think sometimes parents feel like they’re supposed to judge their child, they’re supposed to keep on them. That that is what love is. That they’re supposed to mold, they’re supposed to be on them for everything and make it all happen. And there’s no trust in the child’s nature. And so naturally children can grow up to not trust their own nature, because their parent that they look to never trusted theirs.

Dr. Gabor Maté: Returning, I mentioned this book I’m writing, we do these workshops, my son and I, for adults and their parents. This is what we hear so often from parents. I wish I had left them alone. I wish I hadn’t tried to control them so much. They just needed me to be there for them and be there with them, not to try and direct them all the time. And the residues into adulthood are so negative. So we’re not trusting the child, we’re not trusting ourselves, we’re not trusting nature.

See, children who are connected to adults naturally want to learn from adults. We use this word discipline, but what does the word discipline actually mean? We think it means punishment. No, it doesn’t. Who had disciples? Jesus, for example, had disciples. Not because he punished or threatened them, but because he loved them and they loved him. So then naturally they wanted to learn from him.

So that’s one of the ways we attach, I mentioned the attachment physically. The next way to attach is actually by wanting to be the same as. So when children are well-attached to parents, they’ll copy what the parent does. I mean, look at all the teaching that that saves. There’s a lot of things we don’t have to teach our kids, they just learn it by watching us. Kids who are well-attached to parents will naturally want to emulate the parent, to be the same as the parent. Kids who are peer-attached want to be the same as their peers and behave like their peers and talk like their peers and look like their peers and wear the same shoes.

Janet Lansbury: And as you point out, these aren’t unconditionally loving peers. They can’t be, towards that child. And so the child is not getting the kind of attachment that they need.

Dr. Gabor Maté: No, but they’re getting the only one available to them. And the point is, these parents who think we have to guide and judge and control our kids. No, you don’t. You have to provide the warm attachment relationship. And then you set the guidelines, for which you don’t need to use force because the child who’s connected to you will naturally want to follow your guidelines. So you can back off on the coercive aspect.

There are limits. You’re not going to let a kid run across the street in order to find out for themselves how dangerous it is. You will not allow that to happen. If you live in New York, you’re not going to let your kid crawl out into the winter snow naked. I mean, parenting is a hierarchy, but it’s a benign, beneficial hierarchy.

The problem with peer orientation is it actually flattens the hierarchy. So when kids start looking to each other for guidance and validation, they start resisting the parents’ natural authority. As long as we have that natural authority, we don’t have to keep pushing our kids or cajoling them or judging them or controlling them. They will naturally, literally, fall into line. And by the way, this book has been out now for what, almost 30 years? Published in close to 40 languages. We get messages from all over the world that it changed their whole family dynamics and how they relate to their kids. And things are so much easier now and so much warmer now and so much effortless now. The stronger the attachment relationship, the less the effort you have to make.

Janet Lansbury: Because you’re prioritizing what really works. You’re putting your energy into what actually does help children with their behavior and every other thing that you’re trying to do, if you’re thinking about trying to mold them.

Dr. Gabor Maté: The problem is that by now, we’re talking 2024, by now, we’ve had several generations of parents who themselves were brought up peer-oriented. So to them this looks totally natural. They can’t even see the alternative, even though historically it’s an aberration. Evolutionarily, as I said earlier, it’s simply a blink of an eye. Not even that. And even historically, it’s just a few generations old. But it’s become so entrenched and so endemic in our culture that we take it for granted.

My most recent book is called The Myth of Normal. What I’m saying in general in that book, and I mention the peer orientation dynamic as well, is that things have become normalized in this culture that, from the human point of view, are neither healthy nor natural. And so peer orientation has become so normalized that most researchers don’t even realize it’s there. They just think it’s the way it needs to be. It’s unseen. It’s like a hidden epidemic that’s striking almost every family without people recognizing it. And we’re dealing with the effects of it, rather than dealing with the causes of it.

Janet Lansbury: So you’ve added on chapters about the digital age and then now this recent one about the effects of the pandemic with children. Could you talk a little about how parents can navigate the technology and screens and all of that with a very young child? If you have guidelines for that?

Dr. Gabor Maté: First of all, as a physician, I can tell you that the parts of the brain that are excited by the technology are the same parts of the brain excited by addictive drugs. The dopamine circuits, primarily. As a matter of fact, there’s a technology company called Dopamine Lab. The technology companies hire neuroscientists. I’m not making this up. They hire neuroscientists to target children’s brains in the most addictive fashion so they get hooked on the technology. And if you look at the research on brain scans of children who watch a lot of digital media, that interferes with the circuits of thinking and emotional connection and insight and creativity. So this is serious stuff.

Furthermore, I used to work with a highly addicted population here in Vancouver. One of my medical interests has been addiction. You take a child who’s hooked on technology and try and separate them from technology. You know what you’ve got? You’ve got an addict in withdrawal. The same rage, the same disdain, the same oppositionality, the same outrage, and the same obstreperous holding on to that object. This stuff is addictive.

If I was parenting kids today, I wouldn’t let them look at the screen for years. Certainly I would not let them look at a screen on their own for years. I would not give them a cell phone. I would not give them an iPad. If I watched television with them, I’d be choosing what they’re watching. But mostly I’d stay away from it. And I would stay away from texting and emailing in their presence.

Janet Lansbury: I was just going to ask about that, yes.

Dr. Gabor Maté: I don’t know if you’ve seen this, but believe me, I see it all the time. A parent is pushing a kid in a tram, a buggy, and their parent is on a cell phone. What message are we giving the kid when we’re absent in their presence? So it’s not that I would do without my computer or my cell phone, but I would not be letting them interrupt my relationship and interaction with the child.

And so it’s like everything else. There’s age-appropriate behaviors that are okay for one age, but not okay at another. I mean, it’s okay to have a glass of wine every once in a while, but nobody wants to give a glass of wine to a two-week-old. It’s not age-appropriate. Developmentally, it’s harmful. But there’s no rush. Even if they don’t see technology until age 10, which seems like a sacrilege in this society, they’ll learn it overnight. It’s not that they’re missing anything.

The problem is that parents are so busy and so stressed. Parents are desperate for a respite, and one way to get respite is to plunk the kid down in front of a TV set or to give them a cell phone. Now they’re going to be okay for hours, but at what cost? So while I understand the desire for the parents for a break and respite, and therefore using the technology as the babysitter, it comes at a great cost.

Janet Lansbury: I like that you pointed out that even pushing the pram when you’re not maybe facing the child or if the child’s on your back or front or whatever, that they can sense, because they sense everything about us, that you’re doing something else. Even when they can’t see our face. You know, that “still face” experiment always comes to mind when I think of us being on the phone with the baby there and suddenly we’re down a rabbit hole of something else that has nothing to do with them and how strange that is. But even not seeing our face, they sense that I’m not being collected by this person. I’m not in relationship with this person right now, in that moment.

And this is going to sound extreme to a lot of parents I think out there who have a lot of reasons for wanting the phones, but I believe as you do. And I feel thankful that my children are older and I don’t have to deal with it right now because it is very challenging. And I really do hand it to parents that are able to, not get rid of their phones, but have boundaries for themselves. Especially in those times that are togetherness times, the collecting when we’re in the transitions, when we’re greeting each other, saying goodbye to each other, the meal times.

Dr. Gabor Maté: Not to mention what that constant engagement with technology does to the parent. This last summer, I took a two-week break from digital media. I tell you, I was an addict in withdrawal. I turned the cell phone off. But even having turned it off, I picked it up several times a day, and then I thought, What am I doing? It’s not even on.

Janet Lansbury: How many days did it take you to not be checking it anymore?

Dr. Gabor Maté: The impulse never quite went away, but I never did turn it on for two weeks and I got calmer and more present to life as time went on. So what I’m saying is, quite apart from the impact on our kids, our constant cell phone obsession, what does it do to us? We become more scattered and less present, which then has an impact on the child.

Janet Lansbury: Yes. I wonder if you’d like to talk a little about this additional chapter, and then I promise to let you go.

Dr. Gabor Maté: Thank you. So look, COVID, the pandemic was interesting because it imposed an isolation on a lot of people, a lot of families. And I know there’s a lot of controversy in retrospect about those policies, and I’m not going to get into that. I’m going to talk about actually what happened. Two interesting things happened. On the one hand, the incidents of child abuse went up. More children ended up in emergency wards throughout North America with injuries sustained in home violence. Home violence went up. In some families, drinking behavior went up. On the other hand, in some families it was a godsend. And some parents said, My God, I got to be at home to see my kids’ milestones and I got to interact with them. I learned how they played and I played with them.

So what actually happened was that in families where there was multi-generational, unresolved trauma and fewer resources, emotionally speaking, the pressure of isolation took away from some parents their usual lightning rods, their usual ways of dispersing their stress and their anxieties. They couldn’t go to football games or sports events, entertainment events or to the pub. So the unresolved frustrations and stresses and traumas became expressed in the family. And for those people and for those kids, COVID was a disaster. And furthermore, for the peer-oriented kids, it was a huge loss because all of a sudden they lost their attachments with the people that they were naturally—not naturally, but unnaturally oriented towards, and they were at a loss.

Those families where the attachment dynamics were functional, and those parents who were either economically or emotionally or both resourced enough, this is an opportunity to deepen and warm up and build the attachment relationship with the kids.

So some people think that the COVID experience showed the importance of peer relationships, because look how kids suffered in their absence. Actually what it showed was how unnaturally important peer relationships became, so that in their absence, kids suffered. That’s what it actually proved. Rather than countering our thesis, it proved it. But again, because people took that for granted that it’s the way it should be, they didn’t notice that. They thought it was the loss of the peer relationships that created the problem. No, it was the already-absent relationship with the adults that created the problem. In the absence of the peer relationships, the kids just got more unbalanced, which just shows that the peer relationships had been overemphasized in the first place. So that’s how we understand it. And for us, it just meant we have just doubled down on that relationship.

Janet Lansbury: Wow, fascinating. Really eye-opening, and it makes a lot of sense. It really does.

I just want to say for everybody out there that this book, it will help you at every stage. It will help you to form secure attachments. And it will also help you notice when things might be not going the way that we hope and there’s some weaknesses in our attachment. And it also helps at any age to know how to get it back. As you said earlier, there’s nothing our child at any age wants more—or that we want more—but there’s nothing they want more than to reconnect. They just don’t know how. And we have to be the ones to lead that way back. But it will work, because it’s what children want more than anything. Whether it’s the two-year-old that we yelled at that just wants to feel safe with us again, or the adult child that feels estranged and doesn’t want to go through the rest of their life feeling that loss.

Dr. Gabor Maté: The two major responses we get to the book, some people say, Thanks, this saved our family because now I understand things. But the second interesting response we get is, Thank you, this book validated my instincts. So much of the parenting advice people get actually separates them from their instincts. So that when parents say to us, Thank you, your book validated my instincts. And now I can tell my friends who are telling me to use separation and timeout, “You know what? Here are these experts telling me that my instincts are right.” Now, you shouldn’t need experts to tell you that your instincts are right. As a matter of fact, I’d say in any contest between experts and instincts, listen to your instincts and forget the experts.

Janet Lansbury: Because your instincts know how to attach, that’s a primal thing that we all have. Your instincts know how to attach to your child. Your reasonable advice doesn’t necessarily.

Dr. Gabor Maté: That’s right. But again, instincts have to be evoked by the environment. So anyway, the two responses we get are Thank you, now we see it differently. But the other response we get is Thank you, this validated my instincts.

Janet Lansbury: Yeah, I mean this book is so informative and it’s alarming, though. And I could see where you might also get people saying, Oh, come on, that’s hogwash. It’s good to be with peers and it’s the best thing that could happen. But as you two point out, it’s when you come to that peer relationship from a place of you’re still holding on to your parent as a primary attachment, that that’s when it is healthy and works well.

Dr. Gabor Maté: We’re not saying kids shouldn’t play with each other. Children always have, since creation. But what was the context? The context of kids playing with each other was under the watchful eyes of caring adults. I remember growing up in Budapest, Hungary, in the 1950s. We played out in the street with other kids, but there were always parents on the balconies looking at us. And every neighborhood home was a home to all the kids so that we would go to each others’ homes and other mothers would give us lunch or look after us and so on. So that there was a community, a community of caring adults. So it’s not that children shouldn’t play with each other, it’s that that should not be the primary relationship, number one.

And number two, it needs to be in the context of adults being present. So if you’re going to have playdates on the weekend, for God’s sake, be there in the same room with the kids. Don’t have the adults chatting away here and the kids on their own. And adults should always be present with them. So maintain that primary relationship with the adults. Yes, kids should play with each other. No, that should not be the primary relationship.

Janet Lansbury: Because it’s about influence, right? Who’s influencing your child the most? We want that to be us.

Dr. Gabor Maté: That’s right.

Janet Lansbury: It’s such a hopeful book. And that last chapter was just such a beautiful ending, really hopeful and will leave parents feeling not afraid, but that this is normal. I mean, it isn’t normal like you said, but it is the new unfortunate normal and that there’s a lot that they can do to counteract some of the draws and influences. That that really is in our power and that children want it to be and need it to be.

Dr. Gabor Maté: That’s right.

Janet Lansbury: Thank you so much for sharing with us and for this book. Your work is really profound in so many ways.

Dr. Gabor Maté: Thanks for having me.

Janet Lansbury: It’s an honor. Thank you so much. Take care, and we’ll hopefully engage again at some point in the future.

Dr. Gabor Maté: Take care.

***

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

The post Dr. Gabor Maté on Why Parents Matter More Than Ever 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 “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 “A Secret to Helping Our Kids Achieve (Advice for the New Year)”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m going to be talking about this running thread that’s through many of the issues that parents share with me. It’s actually maybe not so much in the issues themselves, but in my thoughts about how to address these issues. These are the concerns that we have with our children’s development of skills of all kinds. Could be social skills, cognitive or motor skills, manners, character traits. We worry about those, right? Especially when kids are seemingly unmotivated, they’re not making progress, or they seem disinterested in doing things that we know that they’re capable of.

Could be a lot of things like getting dressed, building with blocks, drawing, not being welcoming to our friends and family, seeming too shy or too bossy with peers, not using good manners as we wish them to. Not interested in learning letters or numbers or learning to read. Seeming unfocused when they play, moving from one thing to another, or seeming to focus too much on this one mundane task with a toy. And even motor skill development, like when our child is still not walking at a year-and-a-half or even before that, we worry and we wonder what we can do to help.

Often the problem, or at least one element of the problem, stems from this spot-on comment that my mom used to make as a grandma. She was an excellent grandma, so into it. And I remember her saying, with her great sense of humor, when she would maybe make overtures to a child or she would be in the room when someone else was doing it, Oh, come on, give me a hug! She’d say, “Ah, I know. Oops. I want it too much, right?” Or to the other person, “I think you want it too much.” When we want it too much, our children feel that. Even when we want it a lot, our children feel that. And that can be pressurizing. Just as with all of us, or maybe just most of us, pressure can be uncomfortable. It’s nerve-wracking, unsettling, and it doesn’t set us up to learn or perform at our best.

So yes, there are exceptions for sure, but for most children, at least in this impressionable time of their life, this more open-to-us, this sensitive time from infancy right through their early teens, they need us, they need to please us. It’s a basic survival instinct that they have. So that pressure, that expectation that we have makes everything harder for them and can even delay learning, affect self-confidence and sense of self. When children know they’re not quite pleasing us, it doesn’t feel good.

The other element that goes hand-in-hand with this is our children’s healthy development of autonomy. Wanting to be their own person, especially as they start to become toddlers, and then all the way through the teenage years. They’re driven to feel autonomous, to feel a little independent of us. Of course, they still want us desperately and they want to be the ones to decide when to be independent of us. But that can get in the way of what we want, right? Because when we want our child to be able to do this thing and our child will likely feel that coming from us, it can make this side of them that wants to be autonomous say, No, they’re not going to do it. And that’s why the toddler years can be so challenging for us as parents because all of a sudden something that our child can do or usually wants, and now they’re saying no to it. What’s that about? It’s about growing up, it’s about being their own person. And it’s very, very healthy. And ideally we can try to remember to see it that way, that sort of rejecting us or things that we want for them is really integral to their healthy development.

But this is why it can be a very hard time when we’re directing our child’s toilet learning or wanting them to do things socially or all these other skills. The need for autonomy can show up there and cause children to naturally want to resist. Sort of holding themselves back from things that they could do to unconsciously make this stand as themselves, as their own separate person from us. If you want it, then I have to say no to it. That’s why children, beginning as toddlers, seem to say no a lot. They’re asserting self in this—hopefully we can see it as positive—way.

So, wanting things too much, wanting our child to do this specific thing, focusing our attention on it, worrying about it, maybe. That doesn’t help our children or help us to get what we want. And so what do our kids want? What do they need from us to be able to flourish?

It’s actually pretty simple because if we think about it, it’s what we all want from our loved ones. We want others to not only accept us as we are wherever we are in our journey, we want to be accepted wholly and loved for that. Rather than our loved ones or especially our parents wishing for more or different or the next thing in our development. So this is very simple, but it can be hard. It can be hard as parents to trust where our child is right now.

And there’s not a lot of help around us, usually. We live in a society that’s achievement-oriented rather than process-oriented, which is the arguably much healthier way that our kids are naturally, as innately gifted learners and explorers. So most of us, we’re not prone to being comfortable with the status quo. When we’re dating somebody, everybody asks, “Oh, how’s it going? When are you going to get married?” Then we get married. “When are you going to have a baby?” We have a baby. “When are you going to have another one? Are you going to have another one?”

And even a lot of parenting advice that’s out there these days is achievement-oriented. If you say these five words, your child’s going to feel better. Or, play a silly game with your child, not because you’re in a fun, loving mood that you want to share with them, but to get them to brush their teeth. Recently there was a popular post going around that said something to the effect of, The best thing you can say to your kids is that whatever grades you get in school, I’m going to love and accept you just as much. Now, there’s nothing really wrong with this, but I couldn’t help but see this from a child’s perspective. And I believe to a child, this would come off as this very kind of surface and late-in-the-game kind of message. Why is my parent saying this? Why does this need to be said? They’ve been giving me this message, or the opposite of it, through all their actions for years and years ever since I was small. Are they saying it to try to convince themselves? Are they saying it because this is kind of a band-aid that they hope will fix the years of subliminal messages that they’ve been giving me? Like when they interrupted my play to quiz me, Where’s your nose? Tell me the numbers, the alphabet song. Or when they got way more excited with my interest in reading than they ever did when I made mud pies or just played in the mud without making anything.

Children need us to show rather than tell these messages, because everything we’ve done with them has been showing them how we feel. If we really do take an interest in where they’re at, if we feel that that’s not only enough, but cool. So it’s not that we were wrong to do or say those kinds of things, but if we want our kids to be motivated in a healthy manner, from a place of confidence and comfort in their skin, knowing that they are enough because we’re making a point to show them that. And we won’t be perfect at this, we’ll need to keep reminding ourselves that actions speak louder than words. They always have, they always will.

So what do we do? Let’s say we realize that we’ve unintentionally given our child a lot of achievement messaging or that we’ve been subtly pressuring them to develop a certain skill. How do we change? Where do we begin? First of all, always, with self-compassion. With forgiving ourselves for doing something normal that almost everyone does at least a little bit, because we don’t have support to do otherwise, really. And knowing that really we’ve only been hurting ourselves, in a way, by buying into what’s encouraged around us by the greater society, by our family and friends. Isn’t your child doing this enrichment yet? Oh, they like that? You’d better give them a lesson so they’ll get better at it. We have a lot against us when it comes to trying to trust and wholly accept our children as they are. A lot against us. We don’t have encouragement, and we need it. So that’s where the self-compassion comes.

And then I recommend taking a look at some of the particulars, these things that we want so much for our child. It can be different for all of us. It’s worth exploring, right? Because, really, these things that we want a lot, that maybe we want too much, they’re a window into ourselves. They’re things that we want that we didn’t get, that weren’t encouraged in us, or that maybe we were scolded or rejected around. With that kind of self-reflection, there’s a lot we can learn about what matters to us. That’s where the healing begins. And that’s where we can start to differentiate between our child’s path—which we really don’t control at all. We can only encourage and support and hold boundaries around as needed, but we can’t decide who they’re going to be, what kind of things they’re going to like, what they’re going to want to do with their lives. So that’s where we get a clearer view of our child’s path and our own feelings, our wishes, our self-criticisms, etc.

So just as an example, and actually this note that I received from a parent is part of what stimulated me to want to talk about this today. This question kind of exemplifies what I’m talking about:

Hello, Janet-

Your guidance has fallen in line with the way my ex-wife has shared parenting with me. This framework/philosophy has not only improved the entirety of my daughter’s remaining life, but has also made my life better.

In regards to your recent episode about assertiveness, I found it, ironically, lacking in assertiveness. I’ve been in martial arts since high school, so I’m familiar with assertiveness, and I’ve “trusted the process” while trying to encourage my daughter—who’s eight—to speak up and stand up for herself. The issue is her lack of proper assertion is now starting to result in negative outcomes from interactions in her life. There has been non-zero progress, but nearly as much backsliding. I’m concerned that trusting the process is, in this case, too lackadaisical and will be harder to correct as she gets older.

Thank you for your work, and I hope you can offer some type of more specific action.

I wrote back: “Hi, thanks for your support. Can you explain your situation? Your question is too general for me to understand what you are getting at.”

And he wrote back:

Yes, sorry for being vague. I view it as a broad issue. I noticed this morning you have an episode about a strong-willed child. My daughter is strong-willed. She’s often bossy and wants to lead play on the playground. I joke she’s going to be the activities director for cruises. Paradoxically, her speaking up for herself is a skill I’ve tried to work on for most of her life. If she’s feeling cold, if there’s something she’d like to get or do, etc., it’s been some effort to get her to express herself.

It came to a head recently on the playground. A boy hugged her from behind. It was an unwelcome hug. She did nothing. Later that day, he hit her. She did nothing. This has also resulted in her grabbing things out of the hands of others, and she’s lost her cool with me once. It seems so strange, such a smart, strong-willed little girl not being able to express herself and set boundaries when appropriate.

I’ve talked with her and she agrees that sometimes her not speaking up leads to her being frustrated with people or situations, so she lashes out. Her daily behavior is phenomenal. I don’t want to misrepresent her. It’s that this is unusual behavior and increasing in frequency. I’m doing my best to get her to recognize the times she speaks up and it makes things better. I’m also flat-out having talks about why it’s an important skill. But I’m wondering if there’s a particular thing that can help me get her more secure in asserting herself.

Hopefully this better explains things.

I love this note. I love the love that this parent has for their child and their deep interest in them, and it seems like he sees his daughter very, very clearly. And this is so interesting, right? Because here’s a strong-willed girl, he describes her as, who’s very strong, can be bossy, bright, and she’s not standing up for herself. And as he says, this is unusual behavior. So I guess like other mysteries that we’re trying to solve, when something’s unusual, that means something, right?

This dad says, “Her speaking up for herself is a skill I’ve tried to work on for most of her life.” So there’s a clue, right? There’s the first clue. This is a really important skill to this parent. I don’t know how it’s looked that he’s tried to work on this for most of her life, but she knows it’s important to him and he’s focusing on it. We could say maybe he wants it too much. So she knows that, and she’s probably feeling both of these elements that I brought up earlier. She’s feeling the pressure of that. Oh, I know he wants me to assert myself when this child does this with me. And I’m feeling that vibration from him. He’s talked about this with me a lot. It’s a big message. It’s a big learning he wants me to do. Uh oh, the spotlight’s on. I can’t do it. So there’s that.

And also the other. I think especially because this is a strong child. He wants me to do this so much, I have to say no. And I don’t think this is conscious at all. I just can’t do it. I can’t give him what he wants here because I am my own person and I’m not going to let him decide just because he wants something that I’m going to do it. So again, not a conscious process inside our child’s mind, but that’s the impulse. That’s what we set up when we want it too much.

And he notices this. He says, “It seems so strange, such a smart, strong-willed little girl not being able to express herself and set boundaries when appropriate.” The thing is, she’s sort of expressing herself and setting boundaries with him, in a way, in these situations. You’re not going to decide how I handle this. I’m not going to do something that I know pleases you even though it would please me as well. And then the frustration that comes from that resistant mode that she goes into and feeling the pressure, both, that makes her later want to lash out. It’s frustrating, I wanted to do this, but I couldn’t do it.

He says, “I’ve talked with her and she agrees that sometimes her not speaking up leads to her being frustrated with people or situations, so she lashes out.” He says, “I’m wondering if there’s a particular thing that can help me get her more secure in asserting herself.” Yes, I believe there is, and it’s what we all want. You didn’t feel like asserting yourself there. Interesting. And, So what. That attitude. And I would dial all the way back his talks with her about how important this is, the teaching that he’s doing. All of that has sunk in, but now it’s holding her back, I believe. And when he backs off and becomes totally accepting of where she is right now and what she’s doing and taking an interest in that. Interesting. This very strong-willed girl doesn’t want to confront in the moment with some of these behaviors. That’s interesting. It’s not a bad sign. It’s not an endgame. It’s not a direction we need to worry about. It makes sense when we understand the way children think and feel and how perceptive they are when it comes to what we want. And how they’re, in this very subtle way, maybe training us to want the child we have, where they are.

And from that place we can learn to walk this very fine line of balance between where children need our support and help and where it’s getting in their way. And it’s kind of a lifelong journey that we’re on, trying to figure this out. We’ll never be perfect at it, but it’s sort of what takes raising children to another level for us mentally. That we can engage in this really interesting challenge of supporting without wanting it too much and without taking over in a way that doesn’t help our child.

And what I would say to her if I was this parent or any parent who realizes they’ve been maybe pressuring their child in some way or creating that resistance without meaning to, besides dialing it back and just not doing that and really accepting our interesting child where they are right now, I would put it forward. Because she knows and we know that she knows and she knows that we know that she knows. So I would put it out there: “You know what, I’ve talked to you a lot about standing up for yourself and how important that is and how much I want you to do that. And I realized you’re going to do it when you want to, when you feel ready. And that’s really nothing to do with me. I trust you. You know what you’re doing. You’re totally capable. And when you want to do that, when you’re ready, you’ll do it. If you ever want my support or my ideas around it, just ask.” She’s eight years old, so we can definitely have a conversation like that. But I would have one even with a one- or two-year-old. Maybe a little bit simpler, but I would offer up, You know I’ve been doing this. I know I’ve been doing this. Whether it’s around potty training or whatever. “I’m going to trust you when you’re ready.”

But we have to believe it first. We have to get there first before saying those words. We have to mean it. This is where what I used to do a long time ago, acting, and parenting are similar. It’s not good unless you believe it. In that moment, you believe it. So this is real life and we can believe it, right? It should be easier to believe in this child that he says “her daily behavior is phenomenal,” whatever that means. Wouldn’t we all love a parent who feels like that about us? So there’s no reason not to trust this child.

I remember an example from my class with this adorable girl. She was in my class from the time she was a very young infant until around three years old. And her parents were amazing and they really got the trust thing, and they saw how capable she was from quite young. I mean, we all saw it, we see it with all the children in different ways. And there was no reason not to trust her. But one day she—and I can’t remember how old she was, but I think it was after she had turned one, some months after—she took a few steps, she started walking it seemed. But then, she went back to walking on her knees. I guess crawling, but not on her hands and knees, just on her knees, like straight up. I haven’t seen that many children do this. And of course the parents were a little worried. What’s going on? Why is she doing this instead of walking now? We know that she can do it. They didn’t want it too much, but they were naturally curious.

One thing I was able to point out to them, and that’s what these classes are about, and the gift of them really, is that we can point out to parents what she is doing and give them all the encouragement they need to keep trusting. I said, “Well, this is still working for her, on her knees. And look at the muscles she’s building here. And look how speedy she is, getting around on her knees. When she sees the reason that she really would rather be walking, she’ll be doing that again.” And sure enough, I don’t know, it was maybe like three or four weeks went by, and she was up and walking. Very solidly, because she had all the confidence, all the motivation, all the muscle development and balance that she needed. She’d worked on it, on her knees.

So for the next year and the next and the next and the next, let’s give our children an empowering, life-giving message: You know your journey better than I do. You’re enough as you are, not because I say these words to you, but because you know that I really believe it. And to help us believe it, maybe we can work on a message from—and now I’m really dating myself—John and Ken. They had a talk radio show for years. My mother listened to it, so it’s got to be ancient. They used to say at the end of every show, EGBOK. And EGBOK is an acronym for “Everything’s Gonna Be OK.” One of my children and I always end our messages and calls with EGBOK. So, EGBOK to you, it’s gonna be okay.

And I have an idea for you for starting the new year right. My No Bad Kids Master Course will help you to fully absorb and internalize my relationship-centered approach. You can check it all out at nobadkidscourse.com. And my books have both been bestsellers on Amazon for years: No Bad Kids and Elevating Child Care.

Happy New Year. We can do this.

UPDATE: The parent who sent me the email kindly responded to this podcast:

Hello again Janet,

I just heard the episode in which you addressed my email. Thank you so much for giving such an insightful and thoughtful response. 

I can absolutely see either scenario fitting with what’s going on inside her. But beyond that, you’re of course right about her doing things on her own time. 

She took slightly longer than normal to walk. She took so long to talk, we began to wonder when we should become concerned. She regularly is chill, and then surpasses any expectations. 

I do trust her, and I think your advice was great. 

Thank you again. I look forward to future episodes, and I wish the best for you and yours.

Thank you!

The post A Secret to Helping Our Kids Achieve (Advice for the New Year) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “When Parenting Partners Don’t See Eye to Eye (With Melina Gac Levin)”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m welcoming Melina Gac Levin to the podcast to speak on a topic near and dear to many of us: How do we parent together when we see differently? When we have different views on topics like discipline, eating, manners?

Melina is the founder of Pueblo, parentpueblo.com, which is an educational and consulting organization born out of her experience as a mother and parent educator. She says, “As a Latina immigrant mother, raising two children with a white Jewish-Italian co-parent, Pueblo is the support I hope for when I’m looking for advice. A company that sees us, that understands the joy and challenges of raising multicultural children, and that provides advice that can weave our different perspectives together.” She believes that each of us has a unique culture and family history that is integral to who we are as parents, and that self-knowledge and reflection are keys to empowered parenting, whether we are a single parent or seeking common ground in partnership with another.

I’m looking forward to this conversation. Melina, thank you so much for wanting to be on the show, and welcome.

Melina Gac Levin: Thank you so much for having me. I’m such a big fan.

Janet Lansbury: Oh, thank you, that’s sweet of you to say.

I am so interested in your work, and it reminds me of a lot of the issues that I’ve tried to help parents with, but probably without the skill that you have. When we were sort of going back and forth about putting this together today, I brought up the idea that you help parents with differences in culture, like ethnic backgrounds, and oftentimes I’m trying to help parents who have just come from a different family culture. And you quite eloquently said, yes, there’s micro and there’s macro, and both of those come into play and make our lives harder as parents. Because we need to have teamwork, if we have the luxury of having another parent. We need to lean on each other and have it work and not have it be another issue besides dealing with our child.

Melina Gac Levin: Yeah.

Janet Lansbury: I love the work that you do. Can you tell us about it and tell us about how you got into it and what some of the common issues are that you help parents with?

Melina Gac Levin: Of course, yeah. And thank you so much for saying that. One of the things that I really loved about our exchange before this conversation was getting to this place of understanding how there’s many layers to culture. And so I talk about working with multicultural families and that looks very different for different families. You mentioned the ethnic background can be a part of it, it can be religious differences. And then, as you mentioned, it can also be these small things where it’s just this difference in family culture in the home that you were brought up in. And sometimes even people with similar ethnic backgrounds have these cultural differences from where they were raised and in these sort of more micro ways. But it does influence our perspective, right? Our culture is hard to see until it’s contrasted against something else.

And so when I’m working with families, that’s one of the things that I see often is a lot of assumptions being made by me, by families, by everybody, because we’re working with who we are and our own lenses. And so one of the primary things that I try to help families do is to become conscious of how our cultures are shaping how we even think about our children, how we think about ourselves, how we think about our roles. And that’s all happening in the context of our homes, which in the case of multicultural families, there’s multiple cultures interacting with each other. And then also in the culture of our greater homes. So our city, our environment, that’s also adding other understandings of how we should be as parents and how children should be. And all those things come together and we have to make sense of them if we’re going to work together to collaborate to raise a child.

And that’s really what Pueblo does, is that we take this premise that we have these multiple cultures that are in interaction with each other, and they can all be honored together. And that that’s going to look different for each family. And that we need to layer that in with some information about child development and what we know about how children develop and what they need.

Janet Lansbury: Yes. And the way you just explained it, it sounds like a lot, right? It sounds like, how do we even know? Do we see this coming? Let’s say that we’re partners with someone before we have children, do we notice then? I guess we do notice that we have different outlooks on things and we have different ideas of what even building a home together, just the two of us, should be. So are there signs there that we can notice that will help us to be able to partner together as parents better? Can you talk a little about that?

Melina Gac Levin: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s interesting because for me, my own family is multicultural. I myself am multicultural. I have a Chilean father and a Puerto Rican mother. I was raised primarily in the States. And then my family with my own children—I have a six-year-old and a three-year-old—is also multicultural. My husband has a very different background from me. And even though we knew that going into having kids, and we’d been together for about a decade when I had my first daughter, we had so many shared values that I don’t think we really realized how it was going to show up in parenting. I think we actually went into parenting feeling like we were very much on the same page. And it wasn’t until there was a baby in front of us that we had to make decisions about and that we both cared a lot about that suddenly we realized, Oh, actually there’s some differences here. We don’t see eye to eye on everything.

And that was one of the inspirations for this work, for myself, was experiencing this in my own home and realizing there are things I’m going to have to let go of a little bit. And then there’s things that are actually important to me to hold onto that are different for him. So actually for me, it caught me by surprise. Even though ethnically, religiously, and in many ways we’re very different, it still caught me by surprise. And I’d been working with parents at this point. So it’s funny to me to think of myself as being surprised by this, but I was.

Janet Lansbury: No, I honestly think that that is probably the model. I mean, I think that’s how it is for a lot of us. It makes so much sense because when we’re together as a couple, we’re so much about being together and sort of molding ourselves to that other person a little bit. While still holding our own, but we’re all about joining as two. And now here’s somebody else that we both have to take care of. And it totally makes sense that that’s where we go, Oh, wait a second.

Melina Gac Levin: Yeah. And it’s easy, for example, to agree, We both want to raise a good eater. That’s something that came up in a consultation recently. So it’s easy to agree on that when neither of us really knows what the other person means by that. I think for a lot of families who are coming into parenting, and we think we see eye to eye because we think my goal is this sort of more abstract thing. But once you get into the specifics, if for one person a good eater means more of an intuitive eater who eats when they feel hungry and what they would like, and if for another person it means a child who loves vegetables, that’s very different. That’s a very different definition, right?

Janet Lansbury: And for somebody else, it means that you clean off your whole plate.

Melina Gac Levin: Exactly. And so I think in many cases we come in thinking, Oh, we’re on the same page about this. And then the baby’s there and you’re like, Oh, wait a second.

Janet Lansbury: What they thought was normal “good eating” is not my normal.

Melina Gac Levin: Exactly. And that’s where that information about what we know about how children develop also then comes into play and can help us make sense of a situation.

Janet Lansbury: So when you work with families, can you talk a little about your process with them in terms of, let’s just bring up the eating example, or any one. I also want to hear about some of the common areas that parents tend to have issue with.

Melina Gac Levin: Eating is one of them. Sleep is another one. And that was actually one of the places where I entered into this work in my own personal life was through sleep. And that’s something that I think comes up early and then continues to come up, unfortunately, throughout your child’s life.

Janet Lansbury: And is one of the most stressful areas. So that makes sense too that it’s fraught with emotion.

Melina Gac Levin: Exactly. Everybody cares about sleep. So I work with families in a few different capacities. One of the ways is through these courses that you mentioned, some I have for taking before the baby arrives and then some after your baby arrives. And the before-baby courses are really important for starting these conversations before the stakes feel higher and everybody’s a little bit more elevated, you’re more sleep-deprived, you’re having to learn a lot of things. And so everyone’s in a more heightened emotional state. But if you’re doing this leading up to the baby arriving, there’s a little bit more space to step back and there’s a little bit less urgency, I find. So I really recommend families start with those courses.

And then another way that I work with families is through individual consultations. These are usually Zoom calls where we talk through a specific question that’s coming up for parents, a specific tension. And sometimes that’s once and sometimes that’s once a month in a longer-term capacity as we work through what it means to collaborate and what it means to raise a child together in a way that honors both cultures and both parents.

And then practically, what that might look like, to go back to this idea of sleep. So for example, in our case, I brought my baby home and we had her crib set up in our room because the AAP says have the crib but have it in your room. So we did that and I felt very confident that my baby was going to sleep in her bed, we were going to sleep in our bed. And then she didn’t like her bed and all of a sudden we were thrown into this place of, What do we do? My sense in that moment was overwhelmingly that I needed to support her and to nurture her and to be there for her. And if she cried, I was going to go to her. My husband’s sense was much more that she needed to learn independence.

And that in my family, and in many other families that I work with, is a real point of tension, this sense of, how do children achieve independence? Is that a value that we hold or not? It’s important to some people and it’s less important to others. It’s rarely at the forefront of my mind. It’s often at the forefront of my husband’s mind. And so the way that that manifested in sleep was his really strong desire that she should sleep in her own space and be able to put herself to sleep. And my sense that this didn’t really matter to me and I’d rather be there for her if she was upset and I would be the one to help her as opposed to her needing to help herself.

We really couldn’t figure out what to do at that point. And of course, because the baby was there, we were super sleep-deprived and I did what I tell all parents not to do, which is I did the 3am Googling and the 3am rabbit holes of, This is going to be terrible. This is going to be perfect. This is the solution. And eventually we found a book that claimed to be scientific and evidence-based. And that appeals to both of us, that’s a shared value that we have is this desire for a scientific understanding of things. So we basically outsourced our decision to that book and we’re like, This is what we’re going to do because it’s close enough to what he wants to do and it’s close enough to what I want to do that we can kind of try. It didn’t work. So then we were back at square one where we had to come together and have this discussion with each other.

One of the things that was interesting in our case is that we also had the example of my sister-in-law who had recently had a baby also. And she’s married to an Indian-American man, and they were co-sleeping, which is something that neither of us really had considered. I remember looking at them and thinking, Well, it seems to really be working for them. So my husband and I came back together and were talking about it, and it seemed eventually the place where we realized that we had a lot of commonality was this desire for all of us to get the most sleep possible. Suddenly that really rose to the surface. A sort of shared common ground was we both just want to sleep as much as we can and this baby needs to sleep as much as the baby can.

And we brought in this layer of understanding about independence and how children become independent and that they’re not necessarily born independent. So I think the fear that my husband had that if she was going to be in our bed, she would be in our bed forever fell away. And then at the same time, it addressed my own real concerns at that point, which was something that is not cultural but got layered in, which was that I was about to return to work and I was breastfeeding and really needed my supply up.

So all of these factors layered in together drove us to try co-sleeping. And we ended up co-sleeping with my first child until she was about three and then stopped, and it’s been a whole journey. But it’s not at all the solution that I would’ve assumed we would come to, and it’s not actually a cultural practice that either one of us has. But it was the thing that we landed on that felt like it allowed us to have both my desire for her to be really cared for, and especially with the nursing and also with being able to be right next to her, and it also still allowed for him to have that sense of, well, she will get towards independence. And we had an understanding, even when we began co-sleeping, that this wasn’t a forever thing.

Janet Lansbury: Right. So you’re saying bed-sharing?

Melina Gac Levin: Yes. So we began bed-sharing with her and it ended up working really well for us. We actually bed-shared with my second from the beginning.

One of the things that I think is interesting about this is that for some folks, the practice that they land on is something that is based in their own culture. Something that they grew up with or something that they bring from their own family. And for some of us it ends up being something totally different, but that honors the underlying values and concerns that we have.

And that’s where a lot of the work that I do with families is. I don’t think co-sleeping is for everybody. And I don’t think sleep training is for everybody, and I don’t think it’s for no one. I think for some families that’s the exact right solution and for some babies. But families have to get to that place through dialogue and collaboration and understanding both what their babies need and what their own desires and goals and values are.

Janet Lansbury: So it was this experience, though, that you say on your website was what inspired you to do the work that you’re doing now with parents. And can you talk a little about the process? One of the things I’m thinking is how hard it is as parents not to shame and blame the other parent or be shocked. What do you mean? Why would you think a baby could be independent? Or, No, we don’t want to bed-share! So is what you teach in the before class and in your consultations that you do, is it more about general relationship, talking to each other, conflict-resolution type stuff, or is it different than that?

Melina Gac Levin: There’s a layered approach. There’s the information piece, so both the before-baby classes and then the year one classes, there’s information that’s provided about how children develop. And that information is heavily researched, it’s vetted by some folks that I work with, a pediatrician, a neuropsychologist, some educators, and it’s based on scientific research and my own academic research and looking at ethnographies and what we know about how children develop in the first year. Because I do think that having that baseline understanding is important. If you know that a 10-month-old has no impulse control, then that’s really important to know even if your goal is for them to eventually not hit. So it’s important to have that understanding of what is actually happening for an infant and what are they capable of and what is beyond them at this point and how do they get there?

Janet Lansbury: A hundred percent, yeah.

Melina Gac Levin: And a lot of it is skill-building. So all of the classes have really strong frameworks around how to communicate and how to approach some of the questions that we explore. In part because the goal is for families to start really listening to understand each other. That I think is the hardest thing for many of us to do, is to try to listen to a partner. Especially when we have really, really strong feelings about our child and about how we want them to be in the world and who we want them to be and what kind of world we create for them. It’s very loaded for all of us because we care. And so it becomes really hard to listen to someone who seems to want something different from us in that moment, sometimes something very different, and to try to listen to understand what’s underneath that. Is there a fear underneath that? Is there a desire that we can relate to? Because once we can really understand the other person, and if they can really understand us, then we’re able to start seeing, Okay, there’s actually things that we both want here. There’s actually some overlap. And that’s what I try to build on.

Janet Lansbury: Exactly. And also, that fear is understandable. Just the way children’s fears, they might at first seem irrational, but then, Oh, that’s understandable. No wonder you are worried about this, or no wonder you are reacting that way. Because that’s really touching something off in you that’s scary about this person that we love more than life itself, right? This child.

Melina Gac Levin: Yeah.

Janet Lansbury: So the fears make sense, I think. What I notice in the parents that I work with is that it does get maybe even harder after the infant stage when, in terms of the way that we discipline, for lack of a better word, and feelings and the way that we respond to those things can be a difficult place for parents to come together. And I often work with parents who struggle with this. Are those other big areas that you’ve noticed?

Melina Gac Levin: Yes.

Janet Lansbury: So it’s food, for sure, food, sleep, and then feelings, discipline strategies, behavior. Because there’s a lot of fear around that, right? A lot of fear around, My child is going to be a terrible person, or My child is going to be somebody that can’t handle their feelings and they’re just going to sink into deep, deep depression.

Melina Gac Levin: Absolutely. And once kids hit that toddler stage, I notice a lot of zooming out and projecting into the future. So we see toddlers doing things that are very appropriate for a two-year-old or a three-year-old or a four-year-old. But I think for many of us, myself included, it’s hard not to project and think, Oh my gosh, but what if they’re 10 and speaking to me that way?

Janet Lansbury: I better put a stop to this now!

Melina Gac Levin: Exactly.

Janet Lansbury: And also I think that’s because that’s when a lot of people start to see there’s a person there, they really connect with that. Oh, this person is talking to me. The baby was a different thing, people sometimes see it as. I don’t.

Melina Gac Levin: Neither do I.

Janet Lansbury: I mean, I did before I learned all about this. I did. I think that’s the cultural view for a lot of us, is that they’re this adorable, less-than-people thing. But then when they start talking and walking and they’re in our face, yes, it’s really hard to remember. And a lot of my work is about that perspective on how tiny they are. And they seem so huge to us. Even in my classes, because I sit on the floor observing the children a lot of the time, and the toddlers especially, they seem so gigantic. And then after class I’ll be out on the street going to my car and I’ll see the parent walking with that child and I’ll think, No, that can’t be that same child that I saw in my class. That was such a big dynamic character to me. This is just a little tiny person.

But yeah, it’s very easy to project into that stage and project into the future, like you said.

Melina Gac Levin: Definitely, definitely. And I do think it’s funny, children do have that quality of being giants and infants at the same time. You look at your sleeping toddler and you can see the newborn and then all of a sudden they wake up and you see this huge being in front of you. They sort of shapeshift, almost. I used to think of it that way when I would see that with my children. I was like, But you were just a baby and now I can’t not see the teenager in you.

Janet Lansbury: Exactly.

Melina Gac Levin: And it’s very hard to navigate that and to hold that perspective. So I am working on building out some toddler classes, but I wanted to start with before baby and with that first year in part because I do feel like it’s a time where these skills can be practiced. And it feels a little easier for many parents to practice and build these skills of how to collaborate and how to compromise, which is really what a lot of this is, before you do get to that place where you’re thinking about discipline. And so it’s almost like it’s a muscle that you’re building because by the time you get to those conversations, there’s more heat to them. We really care how our children turn out. And that’s a good thing, and it’s a hard thing.

Janet Lansbury: Yes, the stakes are very, very high.

I have a question from a parent that seemed to serendipitously come to me as I was getting ready to speak with you. So I thought, hmm maybe she would like to speak to this question. Would you mind?

Melina Gac Levin: Great, absolutely.

Janet Lansbury: Okay:

Hi, Janet-

I am currently separating from the father of my four-year-old. We are from different countries and have no common language with our son. I speak my mother tongue and his father does the same. English is reserved for the parents, so our son understands a bit but doesn’t speak it.

We also do not have common parenting approaches, as the father uses shaming as a discipline technique. Whenever my son has a different view, a complaint, or doesn’t want to comply, I can hear the father shaming him, asking him how old he is, if he is a baby, and sometimes even asking him if he is normal. The father has enormous difficulty dealing with our son’s cries or whines and will almost always order him to shut up and stop screaming. They are cries, not screams, but he feels them as screams and reacts very negatively. I can see how my son is hurt by these comments, and I also feel devastated by it. My son will redirect his rage mostly towards me, and I try to contain it. He will hit, bite, and tell me that I don’t know anything or that I’m a baby.

That’s okay. I’m learning to handle it more and more and your advice has been plenty helpful. But I want to help my child to cope with these shaming strategies that are not in my power to change. Now that he will be living in different households and share custody, I feel it is crucial that I support his loving bond with his father, but also build the trust inside him to foster his self-confidence without undermining his father.

I write to you to kindly ask your help for me to better navigate this.

Melina Gac Levin: What a beautiful question. There’s so much there.

My first thought and my first reaction to hearing this question is how incredible this mother is for being able to hold all those perspectives at once. You can hear her understanding how this feels for her child. She mentions how hard it is for him to feel shamed. And she holds on to how devastating it is for her to see this play out. And she also has this understanding of the father’s perspective too, right? The child isn’t screaming, but “he feels it as screams” are the words that she uses. So there’s this ability to hold these three perspectives, these three realities at once, that I think is really, really powerful.

My sense in terms of ways to support her child, and I think she mentioned he’s four right now.

Janet Lansbury: Yes.

Melina Gac Levin: So this is a really little guy, but if we think about it sort of over the long term, helping her child develop that ability, that reflective functioning of being able to understand the different perspectives in the room. So that he can both honor his own truth while knowing, Okay, my father’s having this different experience, without internalizing that being about himself. So it’s this ability to sort of hold onto the, Okay, he’s having a hard time with something. That doesn’t mean that I’m a bad child or that I am a baby.

And the power that this mother really has is in being able to model that understanding that she carries. I mean, she’s modeling it right now, even in asking this question. This understanding of the separateness of those experiences, even if they impact each other. Of course, his dad saying something is going to impact this little person, but being able to know, Okay, his reality is not the only reality, I think is really protective, especially over the long term.

I also noticed something in this question that is very common, which is she mentions the child saying a lot of those things back at her. So the father calls the child a baby and then the child calls the mother a baby. And I think that’s actually very common. We see that with a lot of children as they’re trying to make sense of something in their world, they’ll throw it out at their safe people.

Janet Lansbury: Exactly.

Melina Gac Levin: To try to make sense of it, to try to understand it. And I think holding onto that understanding that, Okay, he’s trying to make sense of this. This is something that was said to him. Then I would encourage this parent to consider, what is the voice she would want her son to be saying in his head when those things get said to him? Because if he calls her a baby and she says to her child something like, “That’s terrible,” or “Don’t say that,” then that gives that child the information that that’s a bad thing to say or that’s a horrible thing to say, and maybe it just amplifies the shame. As opposed to saying, and this will depend on what feels right to this parent, but I’m imagining myself saying something like, “I know I’m not a baby.” What is it that we want him to know about this situation? “I see that you’re very upset, but I know I’m not a baby.”

Janet Lansbury: I love that you noticed all the empathy that she has here, for all those perspectives and for the way that her child needs to offload the phrases and the words and to understand that too. And yes, I think you’re absolutely right too about helping him with the voice and what that means. And if we just say, “Oh, that’s terrible. Daddy shouldn’t do that,” that doesn’t help our child, who still feels, Daddy is a god to me. So besides shaming, it’s very confusing. And they also identify with both their parents. So, This is my dad. That means if my dad’s terrible, then I’m terrible too. Children can’t separate that out.

That’s why I love what you were getting at, which is to help their child understand where that kind of reaction comes from. So whether this husband was in her life still and they were going to be parenting together, or whether it’s going to be separate as it sounds like it is now, I would say to her son: “Sometimes daddy says those things to you.” Maybe even when he’s saying it to her, “You’re a baby!”: “Daddy says that sometimes. It’s really hard for Daddy to hear you cry. That’s just something that’s hard for him. It’s not hard for me, and it’s a normal thing to do. Everybody cries. But it’s so hard for him because maybe when he was a little boy, he wasn’t allowed to cry like that, and so when you cry, it feels like you’re screaming right at him. So that’s why he says those things.” I mean, maybe simpler than that with a four-year-old, but you can speak to that a little.

I used to do that with my kids, even when they had friends that were unkind or something. I would say, “What do you think makes them want to be unkind? What do you think makes them want to say that? It’s because they don’t feel good inside right then. They’re not coming from a happy place inside them.” And just giving them that basic information so that they can start to have the perspective. And then it’s still going to be hurtful for their son, but at least he can separate it out as a vulnerability in his dad instead of a fact about himself or something his dad actually believes about him. That’s another thing she could say is that, “I know that your dad doesn’t believe that about you. He thinks you’re amazing.” And not that she has to build him up, but just people say things they don’t mean when they’re really uncomfortable. And kids can kind of relate to that because they do it too.

Melina Gac Levin: Of course, yeah.

Janet Lansbury: And then they know, Yeah, oh yeah, I do that too. Then in a way that helps take them off the hook as well. Not that they should get away with that per se, but I mean it helps them to understand that we understand why you’re saying that to me.

Melina Gac Levin: Well, it normalizes a very human experience. And often we think of gentle parenting or these sort of more mindful approaches to raising children as about raising children who are more compliant in some way or easier in some way or able to self-regulate more easily. These are all things that I’ve certainly encountered from families that I’ve worked with. And the reality is that everyone still gets upset sometimes and that it’s not about compliance. So I think really normalizing these experiences goes a long way for children, and these emotions.

Janet Lansbury: Yeah, and you could even say, “Just like when you want to lash out at me when you’re not feeling good, sometimes even adults do that.”

Melina Gac Levin: One thing that I want to point out is that it’s really incredible to be able to offer him that insight into why these things happen. And that at the same time, it’s important to acknowledge his experience, the child’s experience, as equally valid in those moments so that it doesn’t become about fixing his father.

Janet Lansbury: Exactly. Yeah, thank you for the balance on that.

Melina Gac Levin: And that’s what I think this mother is doing so wonderfully in this email, at least, is talking about the validity of all of these experiences. Yes, he has a hard time. And it’s not okay for him to say that to you and it hurts when he says that.

Janet Lansbury: Exactly. Not just, You should feel fine about this because here’s why. I mean, it’s a normal tendency to have and that’s another way of invalidating, right?

Melina Gac Levin: Exactly.

Janet Lansbury: Well, don’t feel like that because look at him. He’s got it worse. If we’re always hearing that, right? How can you be down? Look over there. Yeah, so you’re absolutely right. I’m so glad you brought that up.

Melina Gac Levin: And that’ll look different at four than it does as this child continues growing, but the root of that can start now.

Janet Lansbury: Yes. These things that we might say, I would have it come from that place—and this is a hard thing that I struggle to express because it’s very easy to demonstrate in person when it’s happening in a class or in a home consultation. It’s that even when you’re acknowledging feelings, it’s not something that we’re doing from this other place. It’s going to work best and feel best and be most helpful if we’re doing it from that place of, You’re hurt, I feel you’re hurt, and here’s some things I want you to know about it. But not, Here’s some reasons you shouldn’t feel hurt. I’m doing it from that place of connecting with your hurt or your anger or whatever you’re feeling. So it comes from that. It doesn’t help to say, Oh, I understand you’re upset that we didn’t do this thing. It’s like, Ahh, yeah, you’re upset that we didn’t get to do it. It’s got to come from that connected place, or it’s not going to feel connecting to our child. It’s not going to feel like they’re really being seen, and it just feels like we’re trying to explain it away or something.

Melina Gac Levin: There has to be authenticity.

Janet Lansbury: Yes. And that our overall feeling is, I’m not trying to change what you’re feeling. I’m just sharing from that place of accepting what you’re feeling. So I guess that’s the difference. But yeah, it’s an easy one to misinterpret.

I also always want to tell these parents too, that a child having one person like this, with this parent’s incredible generous spirit and incredible empathy and insight, that is such a gift. And it’s okay if everybody’s not at the same level and it’s okay if the other parent has a different journey.

And another thing I’ve noticed is that, and I’m sure you notice this too, but when I work with parents beyond just a note like this, but I’m really working with them in a class or I’m in a consultation with them or I know them in person, you see how they are kind of balancing each other out in some way. You see how they’re complementing each other. Even when they’re in their rough patches, they’re helping the other parent see, Well, maybe you’re not noticing this part. I see that so much, that parents, they’re actually bringing something helpful to the situation no matter what. A helpful perspective. And the answer is kind of like how you found with sleep: it’s somewhere in between. It’s not this one’s or that one’s exactly, oftentimes.

Melina Gac Levin: Yeah, and I think that you’re right. I think that most of the times when I’m working with families, and really all of the time, both parents are bringing lots of strengths to the table. And it’s really helpful to start from that place of strengths, understanding what we’re contributing and what we can learn from each other, even if those things aren’t necessarily something that we might do ourselves. I think that there’s something important about having an approach where we’re communicating and collaborating, but I don’t think that that means that every parent in a family has to be parenting the same way all the time.

Janet Lansbury: Yeah, you said that better than I did, but yes, that is true. Because oftentimes people will come to me and say, Well, I’m doing all this hard work and I understand this, and this other parent is kind of undermining the whole thing, or they’re not doing it. But then once we get beyond the surface and we start to hear from that other parent, we find, Oh, wait, but they’re seeing some things that you might not be seeing. It never ceases to amaze me how, I don’t know, there’s a destiny for these parents that they’re finding together.

Melina Gac Levin: For sure. And the thing that gives me the most hope and that I find the most sort of joy in working with multicultural families is that if we can find those places where we really see each other and we see our differences and we see them as not just negatives but as strengths, and if we can work together across difference to care for someone, that’s incredible. If we can raise a generation of children who can work together across difference because that’s what’s been modeled in their homes. And to care for each other through collaboration and compromise, even when they don’t see eye to eye with another person. I can’t imagine a more important goal.

Janet Lansbury: Well, you’re doing this work, so…

Melina Gac Levin: I mean, that’s what drives me, is this vision.

Janet Lansbury: I love that.

Melina Gac Levin: Thank you.

Janet Lansbury: Well, everybody, please check out Melina’s work at parentpueblo.com. And all the amazing workshops that she has, the depth that she brings to this work, it’s quite impressive. And thank you. Thank you so much for sharing with us today.

Melina Gac Levin: My pleasure. It’s such a joy to connect with you.

Janet Lansbury: Likewise. Alright, bye.

Melina Gac Levin: Bye! I don’t how you end, I just realized.

Janet Lansbury: I don’t either. Awkwardly!

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

Thanks so much for listening. We can do this.

The post When Parenting Partners Don’t See Eye to Eye (With Melina Gac Levin) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

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

Transcript of “Our Strong-Willed Child Is Running the Show”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

A parent reached out to me via email with concern about her child, who’s seven years old. And apparently it feels like he’s running the show, according to this parent. She describes him as strong-willed and she says that she and her husband are utterly frustrated and exhausted. Children with this type of temperament—and there’s a range, it’s not like you’re either strong-willed or you’re not—I have to say, I have a special fondness for these types of children. I have one, I’ve worked with many. So what do we do when our child seems to be taking over? Their behavior’s rude, disrespectful, out of control, and nothing we’re trying, no kind of response that we’re giving, seems to be making a difference. That’s what I’m going to be going over in this podcast.

Here’s the note from this parent:

Hello, Janet-

Thank you for your rich resources. I do cherish them and listen often, although we continue to struggle daily with our seven-year-old son.

He is extremely strong-willed. He has been difficult most waking hours on a daily basis since age three-and-a-half. He doesn’t listen, rebuttals everything we say or ask of him, talks back. Is extremely rude and disrespectful. He knows it all. He rarely takes care of himself—showering, eating, dressing, brushing teeth—and we have to give him constant, repeated reminders to do these things. He acts helpless. He rarely self-plays. He has no personal space awareness. He’s always around us and it’s difficult to get things done or have alone time when he’s awake. He’s constantly pushing our buttons and we have to repeat ourselves on boundaries. For example, making loud, weird noises when his sister is sleeping.

We value respectful parenting, but find ourselves going from one extreme to another on the parenting spectrum because we are so frustrated. Nothing works, nothing gets to him, nothing changes his behavior. Our house is total chaos every day. He is running the show.

On top of that, he’s starting to affect our two-and-a-half-year-old daughter’s behavior. She’s not listening and manipulates us. My son is always engaging her in play, controlling what she can and can’t do, telling her to say and do things that he knows we shouldn’t.

I should also mention he’s good for others. There are rare complaints from school.

We are utterly frustrated and exhausted. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you.

So, where to begin here? I want to say something that I really, really hope doesn’t get taken the wrong way because these are obviously very caring parents and they’re trying their hardest to be respectful. When our child is running the show, when they seem to have more power than anyone else in the house, that is something that can only happen if we allow it to. And please don’t take this as a criticism of anybody, because I’ve been there. It happens and it happens to the best of us. But I think it’s important to recognize that this is in our control. We can stop allowing this to be the case in our home. We can change this.

And there’s good reasons to do that. Not only, as this parent says, is she utterly frustrated, exhausted, she sees it happening with their younger child now. But for our child, this boy does not want to be lord of the house. It’s not a comfortable way for any child to be, no child wants this. But unfortunately he can’t be the one to shift this dynamic that’s gone on, it sounds like since he was at least three-and-a-half years old. He can’t do it. We have to do it.

I hope that doesn’t feel like criticism and instead feels like good news: that we do have the power to change this and get out from under this spell that our child has seemed to put our whole house under. And it’s actually simpler, although I know not easy, but it’s simpler to do than we might imagine. So I’m going to be talking all about that.

Let’s start with going over some of the reasons that we fall into this dynamic. It’s like we’re in this stuck place with our child. We’re stuck and our child’s stuck, and it keeps going back and forth like a feedback loop. It’s not working. Like I said, we can change this. We absolutely can.

One reason that it happens, and that may be part of this parent’s challenge, is that we do not have enough models around us of what a respectful approach to discipline or, I don’t know what people call it, conscious parenting, gentle parenting, I’m not sure how people define those things. But oftentimes what happens is that we were not raised that way. We were raised with more of an old-school, authoritarian, harsh, punitive upbringing. And we’re drawn to respectful parenting because we don’t like the result of that upbringing. We don’t like the way it made us feel about ourselves, the relationship that it’s made between us and our parents, maybe the relationship that we still have with them.

So we’re drawn to this different way. And with this different way, we’re learning that we want to try to understand behavior and not just scare children or punish children into behaving a certain way. We want to understand why they’re behaving that way and resolve that behavior through our response, resolving the cause of the behavior.

But it’s a process, it’s a big learning process for us. So maybe we’re kind of in the middle, like a lot of people are, like most people are, I would say, that are interested in this. And maybe it’s always a process, we’re never at the end. But we’re not quite able to picture yet, and therefore embrace inside ourselves, how a more respectful approach to boundaries looks and feels. It sounds good, but we’re not quite there yet.

And again, that’s so understandable because there are just not enough viable models of this for us to learn from. There’s a lot of people these days sharing tips and scripts and perspectives, but that’s not the same as seeing it in action. That’s not enough to be able to make this enormous shift, cycle-breaking a lot of the times. It’s a huge deal that we’re trying to accomplish here, and we’re not going to be able to snap our fingers and do it. And especially because we can’t see it in action, we kind of have to find our way there without that. Shifting from what we’ve known all our childhood, all our life, about the way that parents respond to your behavior. And the things that you would never, ever do because you wouldn’t dream of doing them because your parent would punish you or yell at you or reject you in some way. How does it look in all these situations to own our positive power as leaders for our children? How does that look in all these specifics that happen every day when our child is saying no or being bossy or telling everybody what to do, being rude, disrespectful? We would’ve never gotten away with that. We would never have dreamed of doing it.

So that’s a lot that we’re up against, right? And I wish I could show you right now—and maybe there will be a way in the future that I can do that, besides through my podcast and my writing and recently my online course. Maybe there will be a way that I can demonstrate this, but in lieu of that, I’ll just keep sharing and offering verbal examples to try to help you picture this for yourself.

So this son of theirs, he’s very strong, which is so very positive. And what he’s showing through his behavior in this family is that he really needs to know 100% that he’s not able to run the show. That his parents are even more powerful than him. That they can be the leaders that he needs, so that he can be the child in the relationship, so that he can be freer.

How do we do that? These are the things that are getting in their way. One thing they’re doing is they’re getting caught up with the surface, which is the behaviors that are in their face. Why is he doing this? This is disrespectful. We’ve got to make that stop. Instead of that broader perspective, that deeper perspective, seeing beyond to why he’s acting like this. We can get so easily caught up in this, especially if we had an authoritarian upbringing. How dare my child act like this? I’ve got to make that stop. I’ve got to make sure they do this and I’ve got to make sure they eat and make sure they bathe and not let him talk to me that way. And push back on all these behaviors.

So I’m trying to fix it on a surface, behavioral level instead of seeing this bigger picture that he’s calling for help underneath all this. Not even consciously, he doesn’t know he’s doing it. But he’s checking out again and again and again, and it’s been years now, so he’s kind of stuck there, as they are. Now, as this child, I’m kind of assuming this role in the family of this child who behaves like this. How did this happen? I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be doing this. I just want them to look at me and see the small person and say, “I’m not going to let you talk to me like that.” Instead of reacting to it and trying to push back on it. Or just letting it go, because we don’t want to push back at it, we don’t want to yell at him, but now we feel like we’re not sticking up for ourselves and it feels terrible. There is a way that’s not either of those things that I’m going to talk about.

So what I would like to help this parent and other parents see is what’s really going on. It’s not that he thinks it’s okay to do these things. And the most wonderful part of this note is that she says at the end, “I should mention he’s good for others. There are rare complaints from school.” Wow. So what can we take from that? He knows how to behave. He understands other people’s boundaries. He’s learned all the lessons that they want him to learn because he’s doing them with other adults and peers. He knows how to do it. So these parents are getting their messages across to him. However, in his relationship with them, they’re all still floundering because his parents aren’t quite giving him what he needs with them.

Now sometimes with children, they will be doing these kinds of behaviors away from the home too. That’s a sign that they are feeling overwhelmed with the amount of power that they have with other people. And sometimes you’ll see children like this and maybe they have a teacher that punishes, uses timeout, or friends that reject them. And while those things are hurtful and make them feel very alone, you can also get the sense sometimes that they’re almost grateful for the rest that they get there. Being in timeout, it doesn’t feel good, but it’s a rest from having to be this power player all the time. A little break from it. And sometimes you’ll see children that seem to even want that kind of punishment in a way because it feels like a little escape from that uncomfortable feeling of overpowering everybody.

But this boy does not have that issue at all, so that should give these parents even more confidence. We can help with this. We can change this by owning our power, by assuming our role in the family. Which is to not get wound up by what a seven-year-old or a six-year-old or a three-and-a-half-year-old is doing. Really seeing them as small children. Yes, they’re very capable, they’re very strong, they could be very articulate and bossy and powerful-seeming. But they’re little tiny people with just a few years or less than a dozen years on this planet. Whereas we have decades, right? Why would we let them push our buttons? So, getting caught up with the surface and just those behaviors that are in our face, that drains us, that drains our power. Our buttons get pushed because our upbringing is getting touched off, those experiences that we had with our parents.

Another thing that can get in our way is that we might be afraid our child isn’t going to be a nice child, that they’re messing up, that they’re a rude person, that they’re all these things. In this case, the child is showing that they’re not when they’re out in the world. But even if they were, that’s a stuck place that a child is in. It’s not who they are, it’s not a sign that they’re that kind of person. And we have the absolute power to shift this.

Another way they’re draining themselves in the moment is repeating themselves. Repeating ourselves, let’s consider why we’re doing that. Do we think that saying it another time, when our child clearly isn’t going to jump to what we said the first time, do we think that just saying it and saying it, that’s going to help? It very seldom does. And sometimes even the way we say it the first time, if we kind of look at it, it can be from a place of powerlessness. A way to own our power, positive power, when he doesn’t listen, he rebuts everything they say or ask of him. So if he’s not listening, saying it again is not going to help him listen, not going to help him do it. And a lot of times the first time we say it, we’re kind of saying it with that tone in our voice that’s either challenging, like, You’ve got to do this, come on, or already feeling like we’re mad at him and this isn’t going to work. When we own our power, we can be polite. We’re rising above, feeling that feeling of rising tall into our power and, “Oh, it’s time to do this. Would you please help?” Very open like that, not in a kind of already defensive or challenging manner.

Because a child that has a strong will like this—it’s a wonderful thing, they tend to be charismatic and colorful people and power players in the world—but they especially, and really all children, it’s not going to work with them when we’re challenging them. That’s going to create a chasm between us. What does help is for us to reach across, be our politest, most loving selves, and help them to save face so that they’re not in this adversarial position with us. We can put them into that place by the way that we ask them things. And again, it’s hard not to, if our child never does this and is getting on our nerves already and now we’re asking them to do something, it’s probably going to come off in a manner that’s not going to help us. And then what do we do? We get drained, we say it again, and then we feel smaller and smaller and smaller and less powerful.

So I would consider—and I’ve done a whole podcast about this—I’m not going to repeat myself, I’m going to say, “You know what? I’m going to give you a helping hand, here we go,” or, “Let me help turn the water on for you, darling.” Not sarcastically, it’s got to be genuine, but we’re not going to allow that gap between us. We’re going to reach our arms out through it and carry our child through as best that we can. And then if they’re still digging their heels in, we can let go of a lot of those things. “You don’t want to take a bath right now? Okay, let’s skip it.” Letting go of those not-crucial things for the win, so that in the bigger picture we’re not putting ourselves in that position of feeling powerless and our child is not getting stuck in that position of feeling nagged and pushed, which just makes them want to hold their ground even more.

Another way these parents are making it harder on themselves is inconsistency. So I hear this from parents a lot when they’re reaching out to me, they’ll say, We’re trying all these different things. This parent says, “We value respectful parenting, but find ourselves going from one extreme to another on the parenting spectrum because we’re so frustrated.” That’s understandable, but we’re creating more eventual frustration for ourselves by not being consistent. Because what happens on our child’s end, our perceptive child gets this message, and it can happen very young too, our child gets stuck wondering, and then they behave out of that wondering. What are they going to do this time? Even though they know, of course, that will make us angry and it’s not what they know they should do. But it becomes almost intriguing. What are they going to do this time? I feel that they’re almost exploding, so I’ve got to keep pushing that button to see if that’s going to come through. Leaving our child wondering like that is not going to be as helpful. It’s going to cause them to get stuck in those kinds of behaviors, those resistant behaviors. I know it can be difficult if maybe one of the parents is trying to go for a more respectful approach, but the other parent isn’t there yet, and that’s okay. The parents don’t have to be the same, but if each one of them could be consistent in the way they respond, that would help our child from this need to, I think of it as testing.

But it’s interesting, recently I’ve been hearing a lot of negative comments, not directed at me so much yet, I’m sure they will. But comments about that word testing, people don’t like the word toddlers testing. And that’s understandable to me, I appreciate this. This is very much constructive criticism that has got me thinking that the connotation of testing, it’s this adversarial thing. They’re trying to get me to perform in a certain way, that that’s how we think of testing. And that doesn’t help us to see our child in a positive, loving light and to see the help that they’re asking for here. When I use testing, I’m using it to mean they’re checking it out, like the way children will test toys and objects. What happens if I do this with it? What happens when I put these two together? So that’s what I mean by testing, I mean they’re checking it out. They’re very drawn to learning, children are expert learners in the early years especially. And most of all, they want to learn about us and their relationships with us and where their power is in our relationship, how much they have and how much we have. And they hope in their heart of hearts that we have a lot more than them because they can’t be free, young children without that and get to have a full childhood where they don’t have to worry about us, we’ve got it covered.

So, inconsistency, it’s totally understandable when we’re trying to find our way in this. And maybe we’re not in that role enough that we’re just feeling like, Now we’re just letting him be awful to us. It’s very hard not to get our buttons pushed and blow up.

So now I want to talk a little about all of these things that this parent brought up that her child is doing and how to respond to them from a positive power/leadership role. She says he doesn’t listen. I try to demonstrate a little about how to be when a child isn’t listening. It can be taking their hand, helping them physically. Also just approaching them with politeness and positive energy so we’re not already foreshadowing that it’s all going to go wrong. And really, how can a child push back when we’re being so polite? They’ll find a way, but when we’re welcoming their feelings, when we’re seeing their point of view, “Oh, it’s so hard to stop playing, I know, and take a bath now.” And we can state positive consequences of what’s going to happen next, like “Let’s help you get your bath, and if you want I can wash your hair. I love doing that. And then when you’re done with your bath, it’ll be time for dinner.” Using that positive, polite attitude rather than dreading and I’m already annoyed, or You better not I’m-challenging-you attitude. That’s when we own our power. We’ve got nothing to lose, right? If he doesn’t do it, it’s not the end of the world. If it’s something that we can physically stop, we stop it. We’re not afraid that he doesn’t know how to behave properly, and then every time that he does this, that’s feeding our fear. We understand this as a dynamic that he’s gotten caught up in with us.

So, “rebuts everything we say or ask of him.” Right there, one way to diffuse that or just own your positive power there is to say, “Hmm, okay, that’s an interesting point of view. You know what? We’re still going to do this.” But not to get into, “Yes it is. No it’s not. No it’s not, young man.” You know, have a light attitude about that. But again, that can trigger into our we could never do this with our parents, we would’ve gotten yelled at feelings. So that’s something that will help if you really explore it, if you haven’t already. Come into communion with the experiences that you had and how that made you feel and how hard it is every time your child does this, that it just feels wrong, right? Because it was considered so wrong for us to act like this. That’s going to get in our way, so explore that, make peace with it. Ideally put it aside, so that it doesn’t get in the way of the power that you own in this relationship and that your child desperately wants you to own.

Let him rebut everything, let him talk back. Just don’t get into a snapping back thing with him and talking back and talking back at him. Rise above it. “Oh, you don’t want to do that. Okay, hmm, that’s interesting.” Allow him to argue and don’t take the bait, don’t buy into it. Because he’s testing or checking out, Can I throw them off-balance? And if we decide we’re not going off-balance for this guy, if we practice that, then we won’t. And then he’ll stop because he’s getting what he unconsciously is asking for and needs: parents that can rise above and see him for what he is, a small child.

I just want to mention, too, that if these parents can make the shift—yes, the fact that it’s been going on for a few years now, it may take a little while for it to shift. But probably not as long as we think, because this is what our child wants in his heart of hearts more than anything. And when our child is getting what they want, then the shift can happen pretty quickly. But I would be prepared for there to be, in the transition, way more rebuttals, everything to be harder, way more resistance. He’s going to check this out to the hilt, hoping to find that relief, which you can give him. So he talks back, let him talk back. Rise taller, which means you don’t talk back at him talking back.

“Extremely rude and disrespectful.” So he can try those things, but the way to rise above those is to let it pass by, knowing he’s just trying out all the words and all the things that have bothered you before. But hold your ground, don’t go get him the thing he wants when he’s being rude or disrespectful. Stick up for yourself that way, that’s where the boundaries are here. “I don’t really appreciate that. Is there another way you can say that to me? Because that doesn’t make me feel like helping you right now.” That honest response, but not an offended response, If we can help it. Which means we have to do all this work in our perceptions of him, what he’s doing, what’s really going on here. Not just seeing that surface behavior, but seeing beyond to the red flag that he’s raising. Help, help, help, guys! Don’t let me do this anymore. See that, so that we don’t get offended. We see, Oh gosh, he’s got to try everything in the world now. He’s got to check it out to see, for us to prove to him that we can be this.

And I think the reason that I love this work so much is because what it brought out of me with my child, who was maybe three when I started to open my eyes to what was going on and that I needed to adjust my approach, what it brought out of me, it allowed me to grow a side of myself that I never knew I had. A powerful side that can love when someone isn’t being that loving, that can still love, but not be a pushover, not give into. But still love them and come back at them with love. It seems like a big thing to ask of ourselves, but it feels so good when you find that place, and everybody has it in them.

So, “extremely rude and disrespectful.” This has gone on because we’ve gotten triggered by it, because we’ve reacted to it, understandably. Rise above. See it as this little tiny person railing at your ankles, saying all these things and names and trying so hard to pull us down. And we’re not going to let it happen.

She says “he rarely takes care of himself—showering, eating, dressing, brushing teeth.” And she said, “we have to give him constant, repeated reminders to do these things.” So, those repeated reminders are getting in the way of him doing these things and making us feel drained of power. They’re not helping him, they’re making him hold onto his uncomfortable power that he doesn’t want to have. Don’t remind him, just say, “After you shower, we’re going to eat.” If he doesn’t want to eat, don’t make him eat. “The food’s going to be out. Here’s what we’re offering. We’d love you to sit and eat with us, but if you can’t, you can’t. Okay, we understand.” Let go of what you don’t control. If he really doesn’t want to shower, “Okay, you don’t have to shower today. Do you want to take a bath instead? Let’s have a smell and see if you need cleaning.” But anyway, have a lighthearted attitude about this.

Dressing, I would consider helping him dress instead of telling him to do it. Brushing his teeth, I mean all of these things, these are caregiving activities, except for the eating he really needs to do on his own. But I would offer to help him with the showering and the dressing, the brushing his teeth. So we’re not nagging, we’re not repeating ourselves. We’re just saying, “Can I help you do that? I know it’s hard. It’s a bummer to do, right? You don’t want to get dressed right now. Let me help you. I love dressing you.” Even though he’s seven years old and of course he knows how to do it himself, sometimes children just want a little TLC there. And yes, he’ll resist. “Oh no, no, I don’t want help.” “Oh come on, let me do it. I love doing it.” If we come at him with love, it’s going to melt away some of that resistance.

And then, “he acts helpless. He rarely self-plays.” That I would leave alone. I wouldn’t direct him to play on his own or do anything. That requires him to be able to let go on his own of being the power player in the house. And that’s going to be a process that he’ll come to.

“No personal space awareness, always around us.” So instead of letting that bother you, just kindly but firmly push him back. “You know what? I need a little more room here. I’m going to move you over.” But don’t let it bother you that he wants to be all over you. If you don’t let that bother you, and you just take your space when you need it. “You know what? I am going to close the door to the bathroom, and I’m actually going to lock it.” Calmly, confidently own your space. Don’t let it bother you that he’s shadowing you. Just push him back when it’s too close. “You know what? I don’t want you grabbing me.” And while you’re doing that, you’re going to take his hand off of you very comfortably, very confidently. “You’re feeling really touchy. Yeah, I don’t want the touch right now. Thanks though.” So taking the power out of that behavior.

And then she said, “repeat ourselves on boundaries.” So instead of talking the boundaries, and definitely instead of repeating them, help him stop with the behavior.

“Making loud, weird noises when his sister is sleeping.” So we really can’t control that directly. What I would do is welcome him to make the loud noises with you. “You know what? I know that’s really fun to do, isn’t it? And get us wound up that way. Come on, I want to hear those noises over here. Let’s go over to the living room and hear those noises. They’re very funny, huh?” The less you feed into that, the sooner it will go away. I mean, sometimes I would just let it go, honestly, altogether, and just say, “Hmm, you’re really having fun there. Making those noises, huh? Wow, that’s very loud, isn’t it?” He will stop when you stop getting bothered by it. And really, that’s true across the board with all these behaviors, and that’s what owning your power is. He’s going to wake her up this one time, and he won’t do it again if you let it go. And do the opposite of what he’s expecting, which is he’s expecting you to keep getting mad at him, getting your buttons pushed. We can deactivate these buttons, we really can.

She says, “we value respectful parenting, but find ourselves going from one extreme to another because we’re frustrated. Nothing works, nothing gets to him, nothing changes his behavior.” Right, because they’re trying too hard and responding to all these little things instead of rising taller, doing less, not trying to change his behavior that way. It’s like that story about how the wind was trying to make this man take off his jacket, and it wasn’t working. And then out comes the sun. The sun just shines. And sure enough, the man takes off his jacket. The sun doesn’t have to try so hard. Be the sun and save your power for positive power.

And then she says her daughter started doing it too, “not listening and manipulates us.” Yeah, so she’s started exploring the same thing. What is this power this behavior has with my parents? And now I need to check it out, too. And I don’t want to have more power than them either. As far as the two children together, when her “son is always engaging her in play, controlling what she can do.” Let them do that. Let him do that with her. She’ll stand up for herself with him, she’ll learn to. And let that go. I mean, he’s playing with her. That’s amazing for a seven-year-old to want to play with a two-and-a-half-year-old, right? They are going to be dominating in that play. As long as he’s not hurting her, I would let it go. And “telling her to say and do things that he knows that she shouldn’t.” I would try to be, honestly, amused by that. “Oh now you’re trying that too. Yeah, you learned that from your brother, huh? Very clever. Yeah, that doesn’t really work with us, but sure, go for it.”

Deactivate the buttons. Save your energy. Be the sun.

I really hope some of this helps, and thanks so much to these parents for reaching out to me. I feel you and I believe in you 100%.

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

Thanks so much for listening. We can do this.

The post Our Strong-Willed Child Is Running the Show appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “Caring for Our Children and Ourselves in Tragic Times”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m going to be talking about caring for ourselves and our children in times of crisis, like this crisis that our whole world seems to be in right now. And I hope what I have to say also applies to crises in our personal life, in our communities. How do we care for ourselves while caring for the greater suffering of others? How do we find our way when it’s all so overwhelming? I’m no expert, so I can only humbly share what I’m learning from others who are, and what I’ve discovered for myself that helps me, and also some specifics for helping our children.

So, the reason this is very focused on us is because we are our children’s number one, as their parents or caregivers. When we become parents, we take on an enormous responsibility that challenges us to our depths, brings us lots of pain, but also enormous joy. Our power and influence over these younger people is undeniable and it’s unrelenting. It’s a job that only we can do, we’re it. We’re their baseline, always. The baseline for our children’s well-being is ours. That can be daunting, I know. And as I brought up in the intro, I know some things about caring for children; I don’t know as much about caring for ourselves, and I’m learning. So I’m going to share what is helping me and also what I’m learning from people who are experts on this topic.

And on that note of learning from others, I’m learning that I have to be discerning about the input that I’m receiving. And when we’re taking in information and perspectives, to keep the focus on feeds that feed us, feed our spirit rather than draining us. And maybe that’s not being on media at all. There’s so much misinformation, so much rage and hate. So whichever perspectives we’re letting in and giving our attention to, I’m learning that for me at least, it’s important to keep checking in with myself and keep assessing: Is this fueling my empathy and compassion, or is it draining it? It’s really okay to not be glued to the news 24/7, especially if we’re caring for young children—which I’m not anymore, my children are adults. Still, I’m creating boundaries for myself around the sources that I follow and I’m limiting the times that I check in. And, as you all know better than I do, we can still support a particular voice, a person, or a page by following them and then muting them, maybe, and checking in when it works for us. So, I’m learning to use the media, not look away from it, but use it in a manner that I can digest and that helps me to be in the place that I want to be for the people I care about, so that I can be of service in some way.

And then I recommend also focusing on what we can do, who needs us most, which is our child, and accepting those limitations. Our priority has to be this job that only we can do, which is raising a secure child, raising a compassionate problem-solver, and a future peacemaker. This is the biggest gift that we have the power to bring to the world.

So, focusing on that, and then from there, are there ways that we can be of service?

Children, they give us this gift in all challenging times, times of crisis, this gift of the mundane. They still have all their ordinary needs and feelings. They still need to cry over—seemingly, comparatively—small things, they still need to play and laugh and be silly with us. They still benefit from the reliable daily routines that we’ve developed with them. So I would try to allow for this healing gift and welcome it. It’s good for us, and it’s good for our kids. Yes, it’s normal to feel guilty for the many privileges in our lives, the privilege of our life, the privilege of our safety. And sometimes, yes, our feelings of guilt are a sign that there’s something more that we can do and want to do, there are changes that we can make. But guilt alone doesn’t affect us or anyone positively. It drains, it hurts. So what I try to do is—and I have a lot of guilt, believe me—I try to turn my guilt into gratitude and, from there, empathy and compassion. I don’t always succeed at that, but that’s my aim.

And speaking of sources that feed us, I want to share some very wise words from one of my favorite sources, which is Susan David. She’s the author of Emotional Agility, she’s been a guest on this podcast, and she has a newsletter that I could not recommend more, it’s at susandavid.com. You can sign up for a free newsletter. And here are some thoughts that she shared this past week. I’m just taking an excerpt, so this isn’t the whole piece. You’ve got to go sign up for yourself to see it. Now I’m direct quoting her:

So how do we protect ourselves—and our ability to be compassionate—in a world that seems to be asking more and more of us each day? It’s crucial to recognize that “empathy fatigue” or “compassion fatigue” does not arise from having “too much” compassion or empathy. In fact, when we reduce empathy or compassion in the face of exhaustion or burnout we’re likely to actually perpetuate burnout rather than reduce it, because we numb our natural tendencies to connect and commune with others.

So instead of trying to blunt our inclination towards empathy or compassion, it can be helpful to think about how to enhance emotional regulation skills, including self care, setting boundaries, and recognizing what is within our sphere of influence and what isn’t. Remember that in order to maximize our compassion for others and reduce our risk of burnout, we must also show compassion to ourselves. None of us can do everything for everyone. None of us can eliminate pain from the lives of the people we love. But all of us can do something, and accepting our own limitations is integral to a compassionate life.

So, none of us can eliminate pain from the lives of the people we love, but we can connect. We can connect with them to bring compassion to them and ourselves. So if you’re blessed to have people in your lives that do need you, maybe even outside of your children, people for you to be with, commune with them, especially in times like these.

Here are some other things that I do. I cry. Lately, I’m crying at least once a day. And it’s so interesting to me that I still experience this moment of resistance. It’s like this little wall of resistance, this voice saying, Oh, don’t do this. It’s going to make you feel bad. Don’t give into this. But yet, just as with our children, it never does. It releases something that allows me to feel a little bit better, a little clearer, a little more connected to my humanity, vulnerable and therefore open to others. I mean, I’m a crier. If you’re not a crier, then maybe there are some other ways that you can allow yourself to release your feelings. In healing ways, not ways that actually end up making us suffer more like when we’re enraged and then we feel guilty about that or regret that. We have to keep caring for ourselves, loving ourselves. It’s crucial for caring for our children.

Now, how do we talk to our children about our feelings? Like, say we are crying. And how do we talk to them about what they may be hearing or seeing? First and foremost, listen. To their perspective, to their questions, their feelings. Then, to the questions they have, offer honest, simple, age-appropriate responses and explanations. “You see me crying. I’m feeling sad because people are fighting and hurting each other, and I wish there was something I could do to help them make peace.” Another gift of being able to be honest with our children is that it affirms us, it helps us get our center and express how we’re feeling.

And saying, “I’m feeling sad,” it’s this small adjustment from saying, “I’m sad.” That’s a tendency that I still have, to have the feeling be almost my identity in that moment. But this is something I also learned from Susan David, to give yourself that distance as a person from the feelings. It’s a perspective that helps us remember that feelings pass through us, they are not stuck places. They have a beginning, middle, and end, as Magda Gerber said. So right now, I’m feeling sad. Susan David even says sometimes to say to ourselves, “I’m noticing that I’m feeling . . .” Even giving it a little more distance so that we can not only have a healthier relationship to our feelings, but understand them. It takes that little bit of distance to understand it instead of being just totally absorbed in and overwhelmed by it.

And then with children, we always want to do what I’m always harping on in this podcast: encourage them to express their feelings, or not. Maybe they don’t have what we would expect as feelings about a situation. Just encourage them to express it in whatever way they do, or not express it if they haven’t processed it enough yet. And of course, if we are in or near danger ourselves, we want to remind children with as much confidence as we can muster, “I’m here to keep you safe,” along with welcoming their feelings.

And we can model for our children, with them and with others, small acts of kindness. Here’s more from Susan David’s newsletter. She says:

The beautiful thing about compassion is that it’s a practice we can all develop. One way to become more compassionate is to notice moments in your daily life when you’re inadvertently withholding compassion. It’s easy to get so stuck inside our own heads that we miss opportunities to care for ourselves and others. We move through the world on autopilot, failing to realize the small ways we can contribute: taking on an extra household chore to support an anxious spouse, calling a lonely friend who just moved to a new city. These simple gestures may not feel heroic, but compassion doesn’t require us to be heroes. It just asks us to be aware of what we can do for others while honoring what we must do for ourselves.

And now I’d just like to end this with a prayer for the Middle East conflict by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend Justin Welby:

God of Compassion and Justice,

We cry out to you for all who suffer in the Holy Land today.

For your precious children, Israelis and Palestinians,

Traumatized and in fear for their lives;

Lord, have mercy.

For the families of the bereaved,

For those who have seen images they will never forget, 

For those anxiously waiting for news, despairing with each

passing day;

Lord, have mercy.

For young men and women,

heading into combat,

bearing the burden of what others have done and what

they will be asked to do;

Lord, have mercy.

For civilians in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, that they

would be protected and that every life would count and be

cherished and remembered;

Lord, have mercy.

For the wounded, and those facing a lifetime of scars,

for those desperately seeking medical treatment where there

is none;

Lord, have mercy.

For medical and emergency personnel, risking their own

lives to save those of others;

Lord, have mercy.

For those who cannot see anything but rage and violence,

that you would surprise them with mercy, and turn their

hearts towards kindness for their fellow human beings; 

Lord, have mercy.

For people of peace, whose imagination is large enough to

conceive of a different way, that they may speak, and act,

and be heard;

Lord, have mercy.

Mighty and caring God, who promised that one day, swords

will be beaten into ploughshares, meet us in our distress,

and bring peace upon this troubled land.

Amen.

Thank you for listening. We can do this.

The post Caring for Our Children and Ourselves in Tragic Times appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “Problems with Punishments (Described by a Parent Who Used Them) with Michelle Kenney”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Michelle Kenney coaches parents who seek more calm and peace at home and want to move away from yelling, threats, and punishments into more connection. And as a self-described former yeller, recovering perfectionist, and reformed control freak, Michelle certainly understands the problems our punitive methods can cause, and the solutions, and also how to help others navigate the challenges of transforming their approach as she has done. I’m delighted to welcome her to share with us today. Michelle hosts the popular parenting podcast Peace and Parenting, and she’s the author of an insightful new book, Unpunished.

Hi, Michelle. Welcome to Unruffled.

Michelle Kenney: Hi, Janet. Thank you for having me. It’s so nice to be here.

Janet Lansbury: It’s really nice to meet you this way. You have a book, a new book out called Unpunished, and is that your first book?

Michelle Kenney: Yep, it’s my first book.

Janet Lansbury: So often we talk about the how in terms of parenting without punishments, gentle parenting, respectful parenting, conscious parenting. But we don’t often talk as much about the why. And that’s what I wanted to get into because you’ve had experience where you were punishing your children, right?

Michelle Kenney: Yes. I was a teacher and way back when, when I became a teacher, we really learned to reward and punish our students. And when my kids weren’t behaving, my oldest especially, I thought, I’ll just reward and punish her and then she’ll just whip into shape. And that didn’t work. She was not having it. And so we struggled for a long time before I finally decided that I needed to change things.

Janet Lansbury: Can you talk about how you realized it wasn’t working and what the effects were that you were seeing in her?

Michelle Kenney: Yeah. So I think the tipping point, and I talk about this a lot, is that she and her sister, who are three years apart, they were probably like two and five or three and six, and they were in the pool. And my oldest took my youngest and held her under the pool water. And I had to dive in and get them both and get them out, all of us screaming and yelling and me terrified that something terrible was going to happen. And at that moment I finally said, I have to change things because these are just kids and they’re obviously not responding to the way in which I’m coming to them. So in that moment I just said, I need to find something new. And I went on a rampage to change the way in which I was parenting them because I felt like we were on a really bad path.

Janet Lansbury: Did you feel like your older daughter was trying to get your attention with this kind of behavior? Like an unconscious call for help or, you know, I have all these feelings about having a sibling. Which happens, as we know, there’s a lot of feelings that that older child has to process around the situation. And if they don’t feel safe to process them with us, then it just gets all bottled up inside them and it can become rage or sadness or the whole gamut of emotions.

Michelle Kenney: I think that was the beginning of it. I think she displayed with aggression right away when she had a baby sister. And I think what exacerbated that aggression was my reaction to her aggression. So I started to really come down hard on her, correcting and reprimanding and sending her to timeout and really coming down hard on her because of my own fear that she was going to hurt her sister. And then also tied into my own sibling relationship, that wasn’t very good growing up. And so I was in this place where, if I didn’t get it to stop, they were going to grow up and have a horrible relationship. So, my own triggers. And I think she was playing out the relationship she and I shared on her sister. That she really was angry with me, but taking it out on Pia.

Janet Lansbury: Well, let’s shoot back to before Pia then, when it was just, what’s your older daughter’s name?

Michelle Kenney: Esme.

Janet Lansbury: Esme. So when you had Esme and when she became a toddler and started to have pushback behavior or whatever you want to call it. So that’s when you started using punishments with her?

Michelle Kenney: I did, but it was like she didn’t really push back. We had a pretty good relationship. She was able to follow directions and do as I asked, and really fell into line, so to speak, right up until right before I had her sister. And so I didn’t have a lot of experience with her really pushing the boundaries or trying out her own free will or anything, until her sister came. That was really the precipitous of it.

Janet Lansbury: Well, what did you mean about your relationship, that she was acting out your relationship with her sister?

Michelle Kenney: I think after her sister was born, our relationship —mine and Esme’s— changed. And I really became more punitive with her and more aggressive and more corrective. And so I think that was really hard on Esme. She didn’t know what to do with those feelings and she knew she couldn’t get them out with me because I would just punish her. And so she was playing out that dysregulation, for lack of a better word, with her sister.

Janet Lansbury: That’s what I thought. But then I thought maybe there was something in your relationship before that, that you thought that she was expressing through her sister.

Well, the situation that you have is, in my experience, very typical and instinctive. Especially when you had a child who didn’t show much resistance and everything was going along smoothly. And then you see this other side of them. I experienced this with both my children in different ways. You see this other side to them and it scares you and it brings up all these feelings of your own sibling issues or whatever. It’s so hard not to start bagging on that child or getting very stern with them. Because we’re shocked, right? It’s like, I never saw this side of you before. And it’s a side that comes from a lot of fear and hurt on their end, but it’s really hard to see that because they just can seem evil.

Michelle Kenney: Yeah. This loving, sweet, adorable kid who I love to the bottom of my heart is pinching and squeezing and hitting my baby. And you think in your head, This has to stop and I don’t know what else to do, so I’m going to get aggressive.

Janet Lansbury: Yeah, right. Then that taps into our fear: What have I created here? What’s going on?

Michelle Kenney: And I think too, for me, when we brought Pia home, Esme said, the first day, she said, “She has to go live with the neighbors because she’s taking all my people.” And I think in some instances I felt like I’ve ruined my oldest daughter’s life by bringing this baby into her life because she feels so displaced. And so I didn’t know how to rectify it all in my head.

Janet Lansbury: She actually verbalized it?

Michelle Kenney: Yeah.

Janet Lansbury: Wow. That’s pretty amazing.

I have two older sisters and one younger one, so I know what it’s like to be the younger and the older. And when the oldest one —who is an intense, strong personality— when my mother came home—and my mother had c-sections with all of us, so she was in the hospital for a bit. And when she came home with second older sister, the oldest one was only 15 months. And my mother said that she turned her head away from her, she just did this very deliberate, I can’t look at you with this baby. And it’s so heartbreaking.

Michelle Kenney: Yeah. You know, I think that schism, it lasts, it doesn’t really go away very quickly there. That hurt is there.

Janet Lansbury: Yeah. Because then you’re seeing this baby being taken care of and all this physical attention and the nursing and everything. It’s a hurt that just keeps flaring up because it’s right in front of you. And what you were talking about there sounds like another thing that I remember feeling, which is our own sadness around the loss of that relationship that we had with the older child that was nice and smooth and we were a team. And now, we see their heartbreak or maybe we don’t even recognize it as that, but on some level we know that we’ve totally rocked their world.

Michelle Kenney: And it changes. Your relationship changes. I felt the change, I felt more distant from her because I was caring so deeply for her sister.

Janet Lansbury: Yeah. Well you have to make room for that other person. And then we feel guilt around that and that makes us even more reactive to the behavior, right? Because we’re not really entirely regulated in how we’re feeling.

Michelle Kenney: And I think punishments play a big role in the sibling relationship, but I think they also permeate, they’re everywhere. They really affect everything in your parenting. I don’t think it just stays in the sibling relationship, but it feels like it’s this hard thing that exists in every interaction that you have with your kids when you’re using punishments. It’s almost like you feel hardened toward them when you’re using punishments.

Janet Lansbury: Can you describe that a little more? What that feels like or how that looks?

Michelle Kenney: When Esme was doing something that I didn’t like, like being aggressive with her sister, and then I came down in this harsh manner, it almost put this wedge between us where I was like, No, you’re wrong and you’re bad and you’re doing something wrong and bad and I’m going to punish you. I’m going to almost retaliate against you because you’ve done this thing. So it made me feel like I was less loving toward her.

Janet Lansbury: And the chasm gets bigger and bigger, right? Because then that’s not working. And then you’re more frustrated and more angry and you feel more like that’s an “other” instead of your little girl.

Michelle Kenney: You’re willing to hurt them emotionally, yeah. Which is hard.

Janet Lansbury: And then that doesn’t feel good to us. And then our feelings of guilt and sadness and discomfort and the distance from this person that we used to be closer with. Even if we just started that with our first child when they became a toddler, we felt closer when they were an infant. And then now they’re a toddler and they’re saying no, and they’re not doing what we ask all the time. And they seem to not do things that we know they know how to do, just to spite us or whatever. But there’s always a reason behind that that isn’t about spite, it’s about their discomfort. 99% of the time it’s coming from their own discomfort, on some level. And then we feel, Oh, what happened to the baby that we used to be able to hug and snuggle and we had this bond with? It feels like it goes away, right? Or that it’s being threatened.

Michelle Kenney: Yeah, it feels like it. You just become distant. You’re not as close, you’re not as connected.

Janet Lansbury: And so how did you see your way out of this?

Michelle Kenney: Well, I went to a school event later that week and we were doing council in schools and we were being trained and we had to sit in a circle and talk about our kid. And I just started bawling, because I was feeling so ashamed and I think stressed around my relationship with Esme. And this woman came up to me and she said, “You should really check out Hand in Hand Parenting. You should check out connected parenting.” And she’s like, “I have a coach.” And I was like, “I don’t really care who she is, just please send her to my house. I cannot do this anymore.” And I was lucky enough to fall in love with that ideology and that kind of started my journey into this world.

Janet Lansbury: So Hand in Hand Parenting, that’s Patty Wipfler. She’s been around forever. And she knew, and I think studied also with, my mentor Magda Gerber. So we have a lot in common. And years back when we were first sort of online, we did some events together, but I haven’t been in touch with her for a long time. But yeah, that approach is similar in many ways, especially in that it values and makes room for the feelings a child has that are really what is driving their behavior.

Michelle Kenney: Yeah. So I became a certified instructor through her program. And her ideology really is, all expression is valid. And that embracing that helps a kid really offload the feelings that are getting stuck, that create the behaviors like Esme had. And once I started letting Esme have big tantrums and being there for her and understanding her and not punishing her, she totally changed. She became a whole new kid. And it was incredible, it was a drug to me. I was like, No, we need more tantrums, we need more connection, we need more everything! Because it was so profound.

Janet Lansbury: And how was it that Patty Wipfler and Hand in Hand presented feelings that helped you to make that adjustment in your own thinking? Because it sounded like you were thinking like most of us do, which is, Maybe my child is doing this on purpose, throwing a tantrum to get something from us. It’s manipulative. Or, This is just another sign that we’re bad parents. We should feel bad about this and we need to make it stop, stop, stop. That’s the focus that a lot of us have just innately: You’re upset, you’re my child, I’ve got to stop you. I’ve got to make it stop. How did you make that transition? Because this process is different for each of us, recognizing that, Oh wait, these feelings are our friends, they’re not our enemies or our problem to fix.

Michelle Kenney: There are a bunch of different things, but I think one of the most profound things, and I think what’s different about Hand in Hand Parenting, is that you’re deeply listened to as a parent. So when you feel that empathy that I never, ever encountered as a kid and didn’t really encounter as an adult too much either, except for maybe by my therapist, when you really feel empathically listened to and that becomes something that you cherish yourself, you realize how to give it to somebody else and you realize the importance of it. So I think the receiving of it makes you able to give it, and it helps you realize how deeply profound listening to anybody is.

Janet Lansbury: So when you go in the class, everyone’s sharing and they’re sharing their own experiences and everybody’s listening to their feelings around what’s going on with their child?

Michelle Kenney: Yeah. It’s something called listening time. And in one-on-one sessions and in group sessions, everyone’s able to share and be heard. We don’t fix, we don’t really try to tell people too much what they need to do, but just kind of hold space. And so it feels good as an adult to experience that.

Janet Lansbury: So they help you see how this is what your child needs too.

Michelle Kenney: Yeah. And when you give it to them, I think this is the other big piece is that I kept thinking, I can’t sit there during this one-hour tantrum with my kid who’s spitting at me and kicking and hitting. This is insane and ridiculous. But I was like, I’m going to try it. And when they come through the other side and you see them calm and connected and feeling better and saying, “I’m sorry, Mommy,” and hugging you and not leaving your side for the rest of the night, you think to yourself, This worked. This helped my kid offload all this crap that was stuck inside of them that they needed to get out. And that’s the gold about it, I think.

Janet Lansbury: I don’t know about you, but I still feel when I’m helping a parent with a child or if it’s my child —my children are all adults now, but it never goes away— this feeling that, Oh, this is bad. I’ve got to fix this, this is a problem. And, poor them, and I’ve got to talk them out of it. That still comes up for me, even though I’ve done this hundreds of times now. But I don’t. Because once you’ve done it once or twice, you have that memory of, Oh yeah, I remember what happened and it was the right thing to do. So just trust it, trust it, trust it. Just let it be, let it go. And it validates you again that that’s the right thing to do. So yeah, it’s amazing. But to me it’s just so fascinating that it never goes away. Those feelings of wanting it to stop, it must be some very primal, responsive feeling that we pass down generation to generation. It’s so embedded in us, you know?

Michelle Kenney: Yeah. I also too think nobody ever let me have feelings growing up. If there were big feelings in the house, that was a bad thing. That should not happen, that has to be squashed. And so I think I really brought that into my parenting. There can’t be bad feelings here. We’re happy and that’s the way it has to be. And I’m going to do whatever it takes to make sure that we’re not having any upsets. That upsets are bad.

Janet Lansbury: Yeah. So we had that modeled to us. We have not felt that for ourselves, that that’s okay for us to have the feelings. I got to see my mother in action when I had a baby. “Don’t cry, don’t cry. It’s okay. It’s okay. Don’t cry.”

Michelle Kenney: That’s my mom.

Janet Lansbury: So you see it right in front of you. Oh, that’s maybe why. That could be part of this.

Michelle Kenney: And then mainstream parenting still says, Shush the baby. Quiet the kid. That’s still way in our ethos.

Janet Lansbury: I know we’ve come a long way, though, because when I first started sharing online and Hand in Hand was one of the few, and Aware Parenting, Aletha Solter, she’s another one that was a champion for allowing children to have their feelings. But it was not accepted. And we’ve come such a long way. People are writing whole books about feelings and making their whole professional profile about allowing kids to have their feelings. And I think that’s fantastic. It gives me a lot of hope that we’re on our way to this getting more and more accepted.

Michelle Kenney: Yeah, I think we are. You have obviously seen more, but I even see it in the last few years. There seems to be a much bigger awareness around just being kind to your kids. You don’t have to spank them, you don’t have to punish them. And that’s huge for our society.

Janet Lansbury: Yes, it is. And then there’s also the backlash against that, that the pendulum is swinging too far the other direction. You’re nice to your kids, but you never want them to feel bad about anything that you do or make a boundary that they’re going to react negatively to.

Michelle Kenney: I think people don’t want to punish and don’t want to yell and don’t want to do these things, but they don’t exactly know what else to do. So then they end up just maybe placating a lot or making sure everything’s okay all the time and always trying to make their kids happy. And I think it’s because they haven’t quite figured out what to do instead, how to set the limit and allow the feelings, how to have the boundary and be okay with it. They haven’t quite got to that place.

Janet Lansbury: Right. And sometimes that’s a positive because they’ve went this far and there’s just a little more work to do.

Michelle Kenney: Yeah, I think so.

Janet Lansbury: Is that what you find with the parents that you work with?

Michelle Kenney: Yeah, I think there’s a couple of different camps. There’s a camp of parents that, they want to do the right thing, they just don’t know how to have a kind, calm, loving, empathic boundary. The only thing they know from their past is to be harsh. So in default, they do nothing. And I get that. I totally get that. And it’s just an easy fix, really.

Janet Lansbury: Yeah. We’re afraid that that harsh part inside of us is going to pop out, then we’re just sort of ambivalent and that makes children uncomfortable, obviously.

Michelle Kenney: I know. And yeah, it is tough. And so I think that’s also why the gentle parenting world gets a lot of backlash is because we see this group of people maybe out there who don’t quite understand the boundary piece. And so many people are like, Well, that’s permissive.

Janet Lansbury: Yeah. Which I think it definitely can be.

Michelle Kenney: It can be, very much so.

Janet Lansbury: Can you talk a little about— you brought up before your sibling dynamic that you had as a child— I think that plays in very much to how we feel with these sibling behaviors and how we react to them and the triggers that we might have.

Michelle Kenney: Mm-hmm. I grew up in a house that was pretty punitive and shaming. Except for…  my parents, they really had this hands-off approach with siblings, which I see often. Like, just let them figure it out kind of thing. And so what ended up happening is that I was the older, stronger-willed child, and so I won every fight. I was in charge of everything and I basically just squashed my sister. And so she of course hated me for it. And we had this really terrible relationship growing up. Now since then, we’ve gone to therapy and figured it out and we are much, much closer now, but, you know, I’d already gone to therapy and I’d already figured it out with her. And so I feared so much that Esme was going to be me, and that she would ruin the relationship that she shared with her sister, that it just ignited me to this place of fear. And so I was bringing all that baggage right into my parenting, almost like a direct line. And it was really hard. And because I had two girls and my sister and I are two girls, it was like the perfect storm to be the bad recipe.

Janet Lansbury: I don’t think it’s a natural tendency to just want to totally dominate your younger sibling. My guess would be that that did come from shame and your own fear around the situation. I think your parents must have let you know very clearly that they didn’t think the way you were acting was okay, and maybe they turned a blind eye to it, but at some point you got the message. You were shameful. You weren’t feeling great about yourself, or you wouldn’t have acted like that.

Michelle Kenney: Yeah. I think my dad came down really hard on me and was very punitive. And so, I learned that. I learned how to be punitive. I learned how to get what I wanted by using fear and by using punishment, so to speak. Again, like Esme was playing out her relationship with me on Pia, I was playing out the relationship I shared with my dad on my sister. And I don’t want to say I didn’t know any better, but I was in a really bad place.

Janet Lansbury: Yeah. You know, that wasn’t the healthy, happy side of you that was acting that way.

Michelle Kenney: No, it certainly wasn’t. I was dysregulated and having a really tough time in my own relationships in my nuclear family, the other ones. And my poor sister ended up being the fallout from that.

Janet Lansbury: Yeah. And that’s a very typical dynamic that I hear a lot about. For me, it was my oldest sister, but she, I know for sure, had a lot of rage and fear and my parents could not handle that at all. They weren’t punitive per se, but they could not handle the feelings. So they let her know quite clearly through their words and actions that that wasn’t acceptable. And so she had to hold it in and act it out in all these other ways and gain control of herself by gaining control of us. And it was a very disruptive situation at home. But I also weirdly related to her, especially when there was a younger one, younger than me. It defined her whole life, really, as a very intense personality, but like brilliant, creative, all these things. And she eventually chose to become estranged from the family.

When I had my daughter and then a second one —and my daughter is quite intense, my oldest one, reminded me a lot of my older sister in positive ways—I was ready for her to have a hard time with the next one. I wasn’t going to let what had happened to my sister happen. And I knew enough then about emotions and what causes behavior, what children go through. And so I took a lot of care to give her the boundaries for sure, but help her find acceptable ways to share with me, for her to feel seen by me, empathized with.

Michelle Kenney: I think too of what you say about your sister, how she was kind of estranged from the family, I hear that a lot. Online, a lot of people share that they can’t be part of their family because they’ve been labeled “villain” or “the bad one” and they have a hard time coming back into that role as adults. And that it’s very painful.

Janet Lansbury: And I guess it’s the labeling that causes the punishing, but then the punishing continues the behavior.

Michelle Kenney: Yeah, it does.

Janet Lansbury: But the great news is there’s all this education out there for parents, though I’m sure it’s totally overwhelming.

Michelle Kenney: Yeah. But I think too, on the positive note, I know now, my daughters are 14 and 17, and the relationships that I have with them is like, it’s a dream. It’s what I wanted, right? It’s what I wished I would’ve had as a kid. And it’s such a beautiful thing when you can get there, having these good, connected relationships where your kids feel safe to share with you and where you still have ups and downs and hard moments and big feelings and all that stuff, but it just, it feels good. And so I know, anyone out there, if you just try to get rid of the punishments and infuse some connection pieces that you can get there too.

Janet Lansbury: Can you talk about what’s different about your relationship with your children than what you had with your parents?

Michelle Kenney: I mean, my kids, I don’t think they tell me everything. Maybe I’m delusional, and I think they probably don’t share everything with me, but we share most things with one another. And I know they feel safe coming to me no matter what, when anything goes wrong and they’re having a hard time, they come straight to me. And it can be anything. And I know they feel safe. And I never felt that way when I was growing up. I didn’t feel safe to go to my parents. I lied. I snuck out. I did all of the things that kids who are scared of their parents do. And so that safety and that trust, it’s beautiful.

Janet Lansbury: Yeah. I feel something very similar to that, that I didn’t tell my parents much at all. And I was afraid to, and I thought I’d be judged for most of the way I was living my life as a young adult, for sure. And way before that, I think I got the message when my little sister was born that I have bad sides to me and I can’t trust myself entirely. And I was afraid of how I was going to be seen by them. And yeah, my oldest told me the other day or she was telling somebody else that was over, “My mom gives great advice,” and it made me feel like a million dollars.

Michelle Kenney: That is so sweet.

Janet Lansbury: The sharing is unbelievably different from what I had and the feeling that if things go wrong between us, that it’s not going to be the end of anything. There’s none of the threat that I felt with my mother for sure. There was a threat that she was just going to turn away from me forever if I asserted myself in a negative way towards her. If I asserted feelings that were not positive. And you know, it’s interesting, it’s taken me a long time to even realize all the things, because I didn’t have some really harsh upbringing or anything. I had a lot of love and loved my parents all the way through and just more things come to light as you go along in life. And I don’t know, it’s interesting.

Michelle Kenney: Yeah, when Esme turned 12 and I was doing this work, I was like, This isn’t working anymore. She is out of her mind and I’m going to have to go back to punishments because this isn’t working. And I remember talking to my listening partner and she was like, “No, just stick with it. Just stick with it.” And I kept thinking for that whole year, what if I get to the end of this road here with this kid and this stuff doesn’t work, I’m really going to be upset. And now getting to kind of the end —she’s almost 18— I feel like, thank God I stuck through all of that, because there are hard moments. It’s not always easy, but it works. It does work.

Janet Lansbury: Was she doing a lot of rejection-of-mom things? Yeah. I mean that’s definitely girls with their moms in those adolescent years. Totally. And I think it’s very healthy and, you know, it’s the toddler saying no all over again.

Michelle Kenney: Oh yeah. She was all in her will. That was for sure.

Janet Lansbury: And that’s how they grow more separate from us and more autonomous: I have to reject everything you are to be able to be myself. But it is kind of shocking. I remember that. And then I remember it for my daughter, the older one, it was 14 to 16, like on the clock. She turned 16, all of a sudden she liked me again.

Michelle Kenney: Yeah. They come back. I was like, Oh my gosh, you came back. Thank goodness. I was waiting!

Janet Lansbury: Yeah, you’ve got to stick with it. But it is scary sometimes. Can we trust? And I get that a lot from parents and I really get it. How’s my child going to learn that they shouldn’t do these things? Because you’re helping them not do them.

Michelle Kenney: Yeah. We believe the punishments will teach them right from wrong, which they really don’t.

Janet Lansbury: Yeah. Well I’m so glad that you found another way and that you are doing this amazing work, helping parents find another way.

Michelle Kenney: Without people like you and Patty, none of us would be doing this, so thank you to you.

Janet Lansbury: I love this. It’s like trying to sell something that you know works, so you’re not trying to sell it, you’re just sharing it. You’re just passing on what was passed to you that saved your skin.

Michelle Kenney: We keep going, we keep going.

Janet Lansbury: Well, you’re wonderful and thank you.

Michelle Kenney: Okay, thank you. Take care, bye.

Janet Lansbury: You too, bye.

You can check out Michelle’s book Unpunished, along with her courses and other offerings, at peaceandparentingla.com.

And please check out some of my other podcasts on my website, janetlansbury.com. They’re all indexed by subject and category, so you should be able to find whatever topic you might be interested in. And my books are available in paperback and on audio, No Bad Kids: Toddler Discipline Without Shame and Elevating Child Care: A Guide to Respectful Parenting. You can find them through my website or on audible.com. And you can also 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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