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

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

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

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

So here’s the note I received:

Dear Janet,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear Janet,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Janet’s No Bad Kids Master Course is available at NoBadKidsCourse.com and JanetLansbury.com.

Her best-selling books No Bad Kids: Toddler Discipline without Shame and Elevating Child Care: A Guide to Respectful Parenting are available in all formats at Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Google Play, and free at Audible (https://adbl.co/2OBVztZ) with a trial subscription.

Transcript of “It Works! Parents Report Powerful Benefits From Allowing Kids’ Feelings”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

So, recently I shared a podcast that I called “What to Do (and Not Do) When Kids Have Meltdowns, Tantrums, Strong Emotions.” It seemed to resonate with a lot of people, it was popular. And it got me thinking that, while I talk a lot about this topic of letting feelings be, how to do it, I don’t talk as much about all the benefits. How this practice—and it is a practice, this is counterintuitive for most of us: to encourage our children to feel whatever they feel when it’s an uncomfortable, unpleasant feeling. Even just attempting this practice, it’s challenging, right? So I hope that this episode gives you even more encouragement and also gives you more examples of what it looks like, what it feels like. And I’m sharing this in my most favorite way, which is through you, through the stories that you’re sharing with me, the insights that you’ve had about your experiences that you’ve been so kind to share with me.

Okay, so I’m going to be highlighting three different categories of relationship benefits for us and our child from allowing and accepting their feelings. Empathy, trust, and intimacy. That’s one category. Emotional intelligence, that’s the second. And respectful boundaries, that’s the third.

So, first: empathy, trust, intimacy. When we encourage our children to feel as they feel in the moment, this is a natural process to them feeling more empathy, trust, and intimacy with us. And at the same time, we will learn to feel more empathy, trust, and intimacy with our children. It works both ways. So here’s one of the notes I’ve received:

Although we are still learning through practice each and every tantrum and new situation, we can both testify we are closer to the kind, loving humans, parents that we dream to be. To not get angry/high-tempered, but practice empathy, sincere, genuine care and understanding, and genuinely model it to our kids from the depths of our hearts. As Christians, it’s helping us fulfill even our faith practice.

There are days I feel like a hero. My son, who’s two years old, may be expressing and yelling, but I don’t react with emotion. I just let him get it out. And I’ve come to recognize it’s so healthy for him to express all of this to us because he trusts us. And we try to treat him with empathy and understanding, knowing he might be feeling a lot of emotions due to: a transition after grandparents moved out of his room; preschool might be overwhelming; he might be overwhelmed by the stress of potty learning; understanding he might feel jealousy that I hugged his little brother.

And when I treat him with understanding and compassion, he calms down much faster. It seems he’s feeling reassured that, Mom doesn’t love little brother more than me. Mom is on my side and loves me unconditionally. Mom still loves me, even though I can’t control my impulses and strong feelings. I feel all of this through my little son when he calms down and gives me a hug. It’s like all these feelings came from a place of fear of losing his valuable position in the family after his younger brother was born. So reassuring him that he is still mama’s beloved boy almost every day is so important to him.

Your work has allowed me not only to treat my children with empathy and compassion, but also heal my own heart of harsh, self-judgmental tendencies. And also treat my husband, friends, coworkers with greater understanding and compassion. I am closer to who I dream of becoming.

I wanted to also say, having compassion and understanding of our toddlers rather than judging the powerful or angry emotions they feel is so empowering as parents. I feel we keep the parental power intact because we didn’t lose our calm. Near the end of a big meltdown, all I need to do is tell my three-year-old son, It’s been a long day, hasn’t it? We’re all tired. I understand. And I can feel he’s so relieved to hear that. Like, Mom really gets me. He cools down so fast after that.

This understanding has brought our relationship so much closer, too. Your work helps me to genuinely love my toddlers and even still find them cute after ugly meltdowns.

And then she put a smile. Yes, so this empathy and intimacy that we’re feeling through these practices, the way that we’re seeing what’s actually going on with our child— which is that they’re hurting, they’re uncomfortable, they’re stuck in that uncomfortable cycle of impulse. That’s something we can empathize with, right? I mean, we won’t feel like this all the time, but when we can. I mean, I love that she even said “ugly meltdowns” because yeah, I mean, we’ve got to be honest, we’re seeing a really unpleasant side of our child. It could be kind of awful. They might even seem evil to us, or just mean. And the extent of that is a direct reflection of how scared or uncomfortable they’re feeling inside.

But yes, it takes practice and really belief in this, I guess, to be able to get to a place where we’re more consistently seeing our child as the vulnerable, struggling person that they are. And that awareness of what’s behind this ugliness that we see in our child, it’s everything. Far more important than how we intervene, what we say when we’re intervening, what we choose to do, how fast we get there. What’s most important is what we’re seeing, because that’s deciding what we’re feeling. And that’s going to decide what our child will feel in response, the messages that they’ll get from these experiences. And I love how this parent said it’s given her more empathy for herself to see this in her child. It’s healing her “own heart of harsh, self-judgmental tendencies.” I totally relate to that.

Okay, here’s another note from a parent. And obviously I’m editing these down just to what I believe is most helpful to share. This parent says:

During my toddler’s nap recently, I came across your episode, “Healing a Child’s Anger (a Powerful Success Story).” Just wow, my eyes swelled up as I listened to this mother’s note about her five-year-old son. Since the arrival of our twins, I’ve been struggling with my toddler telling me to “Go away!” or “I don’t like you!” and “I’m going to shoot you!” Both when we are alone or in the company of others. It is humiliating and I feel completely stripped down. Aren’t I, the mother, supposed to be loved most and always adored by her son? I say that with some tongue-in-cheek.

Okay, and now I, Janet, I’m going to stop there to talk a little about that podcast “Healing a Child’s Anger (a Powerful Success Story)” because I’m sure not everybody listened to it that’s listening here to this one. So this parent in that podcast said, “I had a conflict yesterday with my son that we didn’t quite resolve,” and she felt still disconnected from him the next morning. And she said, “After I had done some self-care, a workout and felt well-resourced, I saw that he was drawing by himself and I went over and sat next to him. My closeness started bringing up the feelings. ‘I want space. Go away.’ I felt the doubt slip in. He’s asking for space. Shouldn’t I just give him space?“

And that parent went on to say that that was one of the messages she’d given him generally, that whenever you want space, just ask for space. “But then I remembered that he was pushing me away when deep down he probably wanted to be close so I stayed there quietly and just looked at him with love. His feelings started escalating, which unexpectedly made me more confident.” And he said, “Leave me alone. You’re so mean.” He screamed for dad to come. She says she let him scream.

And she noted—which is very, very typical—she said he knows just the words to say to knock her confidence. So yes, in the middle of those strong emotions or meltdowns, children, it’s like they need to check out, Can you really be there for me? Can you really help me contain this in a loving way? Or are you going to get thrown and not be able to lead me when I say things that get to you, that I know are your vulnerable spots? Obviously this isn’t a conscious process on the child’s part.

And then he said, “I only love Dada and not you. I want to kill you. I’m going to tell Dada to chop your head off with an ax. I hate you.” So some huge rage coming out there, right? And the parent struggled. Tears came to her eyes, but she said, “I trusted all of it and just let it flow.” She said she hadn’t been saying much, but then she said, “I’m going to stay close to you. I’m going to keep our bodies safe. I’m right here. I love you.” And she added, “I know this is so uncomfortable. I’m so proud of you.”

And what happened in the end was that they did come together. He felt relieved that she stuck with him through this really, really hard, long process. A lot of doubt this parent felt the whole way, but she stuck with it and saw immediately that that was the right thing to do. That he was able to clear the feelings safely, to land them with her.

So anyway, now we have another parent who listened to that and she’s hearing her five-year-old son say, “Go away. I don’t like you. I’m going to shoot you.” And she said:

After the podcast ended, I couldn’t wait for him to wake up from his nap. I went upstairs completely anticipating a “go away!” moment. And sure enough, he turned from me and asked me to leave. And in response, I assured him how much I loved him and that I would stay close. Completely vulnerable. After several minutes of being told to leave and countering his wish, he turned toward me, pulled me close, and wrapped my arms around him. I will never forget that moment. So instead of writing a question, which I still may do one day, I just wanted to reach out with a success and say thank you.

And I just want to comment there that I know that this idea of staying when a child says go away is controversial, because many of you have questioned that and believe that is the wrong thing to do. And I hear you and I totally understand that view. And I’m not saying this is the only way or the only positive way. But I would consider what children or any of us say in the heat of passion, in the heat of fear and anger and rage and hurt, and if we would hope, even as adults, that people could see beyond that to not taking us so literally. If we might say things we don’t mean when we’re in an emotional storm, imagine how easy that would be for a child to do, to say all kinds of things that they don’t really mean.

I love that this parent said, “Aren’t I, the mother, supposed to be loved most and always adored by her son?” He’s telling her, “Go away!”, “I don’t like you,” and “I’m going to shoot you!”, even in front of other people. And she said she says that with some tongue-in-cheek. But you know, it’s so interesting that we naturally will take what a child says. It’s hard to see past that, to see that he’s actually saying this because of how much he deeply loves and adores his parent. That’s where these feelings come from. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have such strong and scary things to say about her. The amount we love someone is the amount that they can hurt us. So it’s not the truth, what a child is saying in those moments. It’s not something we need to take personally as constructive criticism or an actual, literal desire that our child has.

Children, when they prefer one parent, it doesn’t mean that they’re not deeply in love with that other parent. Sometimes it means that they are, and they feel betrayed by a situation of a new baby coming. And that’s why they lash out in this hurtful way that they’ve sensed the first time they tried it, really, really hurt their parent. It was effective when they said, No, I only want to be with my dad, not you, or the other way around. Children don’t feel passionately about these things unless they have strong feelings for both people involved. But yes, it certainly is confusing, right? When we see our child as so capable in a lot of ways and then we forget, Oh, they’re also really immature and young. And we can’t expect them to take responsibility for their actions and their statements. Instead, we can help them by understanding why they’re doing that or saying that, where that’s coming from. And allowing them to express it and, with our safe response, heal that hurt. And that healing is what’s going on in all of these examples.

And as children are healing they’re also learning, through our example, about their intimacy with us, that level of acceptance that we feel is the level to which our child can trust us to share. That’s intimacy. And at the same time, we’re also helping children learn about feelings through our safe responses in these interactions. They’re learning emotional fluency, emotional intelligence.

Another parent wrote to me a long note, but this is the part I want to share:

My daughter often catches me off-guard with the emotionally mature and aware things she says, often behaving in a more mature way than her parents. It’s just mind-blowing how powerful parenting techniques are. We are literally forming a whole human being and in those early years, we’re cementing that person’s entire character.

And I so much relate to this. All of my children —well definitely as adults now, they’re all young adults— they are much more emotionally mature and perceptive about their feelings and the feelings of others than I still am, I feel. And when they were children, same as what this parent’s saying, I’d be caught off-guard with how wise they were and the healthy way that they expressed, and still do, and therefore move through and beyond their feelings. Clearing them, rather than holding onto them or stuffing them. Because they’d had a different experience than I’d had as a child. They’d had an experience where emotions were safe, their parents were curious about them, not intimidated by them. We knew there was always a reason and we wanted to understand, not put that away or just judge it as wrong or be personally offended by it.

And believe me, I was and still am a work-in-progress. I was by no means perfect at this, at any stage, or even anything even close, but it matters that you’re trying. This is one area of life we can really get a lot of credit and make a lot of progress just by trying. And repairing and being vulnerable when it didn’t go the way that we hoped for us, sharing that with our child so that they understand every step in our process and therefore learn about their own. We get to be the models for all of this. We can see it as a big problem or a big responsibility or a big honor, maybe depending on our mood.

And then the next two stories I want to share are both on this theme of, what is respectful discipline? What does it feel like and look like to give a boundary respectfully, and how this goes hand-in-hand, it’s really tied to our ability to accept our child’s feelings. Because what makes giving a child a direction or stopping them from a behavior respectful is our ability to not only say it respectfully and politely if possible, but understand that they have a right to feel whatever they feel about that boundary. It’s not our right to judge how they should accept or not want to accept or complain about or be appalled by, seemingly, a boundary. They get to own those feelings. We’re going to help them not act on them in ways that are destructive or damaging or hurtful, but if we can actually welcome those feelings, go all the way in the opposite direction of the way that maybe most of us would naturally feel, which is: You get to be as mad at me as you need to be while I make these decisions as the person that was given the honor of being your leader. I don’t expect you to comply easily and obey me without a word, and I want to hear all of that. And I expect that as part of my job, because I know that this is the way that children do often end up expressing feelings, by pushing us to those limits so that we can hopefully hold the limits for them and they can vent. That’s the dynamic of respectful discipline. And it works, because it will end up healing the feelings that are causing the behaviors in the first place.

Alright, so here are a couple notes about that:

For someone who was never taught healthy boundary-setting and struggled early into adulthood with this skill, your encouragement and education has changed my life. My husband and I have found healing, enlightenment, and freedom through the way we are parenting our daughter.

Tonight we had such an amazing moment. I was cooking and my daughter saw me use the sink, so she wanted to wash her hands. She’s 21 months, by the way. I told her, “I hear that you would like me to wash your hands. I can’t do that right now because I’m cooking. I will wash your hands when I’m finished here.” She was upset at the boundary and I repeated, “I know you’re upset. I can’t wash your hands right now. As soon as I’m done here, we can do that.” She stood there for a moment and then came over to hug my leg, and then kissed me. My heart could have exploded.

Okay, so here’s another one:

Tonight was definitely about boundaries, and my daughter had so many feelings she was just looking to release. She was making kites at the table, which involved scissors, and typically this is fine, as she is almost five years old. I was just happily watching her create and she started cutting really close to her fingers, so I reminded her to leave some room and not get too close. A few moments later, she started cutting really fast and out of control and looked at me. I calmly took the scissors and said I was putting them away. She completely melted down, tried hitting me and screaming that I was mean. I got down on the floor with her and blocked her hands and just stayed as still and calm as possible. This continued for about 10 minutes of her crying and screaming at me, and she then stormed off to her room. I tried to go in, but she yelled for me to go away and said she needed space, which lately I’ve been trying to give her when she requests since she’s getting older. So I told her I would be right in my bedroom and still listening.

About 15 seconds later, she emerged and ran to me and crawled into my lap, crying a few minutes more. Then she stopped and noticed something in my room, at which point I knew the storm had passed. She turned around and said, “I love you, mommy,” and wrapped her arms around my neck. Then she said, “Can I help you make dinner now?” And we held hands as we walked to the kitchen. I have tears in my eyes as I write this because I just didn’t even know that this type of connection with anyone, let alone the most important person in my world, was even possible. It took me a lot of work to get here, but your articles and podcasts made it possible and was like this light that I kept just working toward. Today I embodied that light and I can’t express how grateful I am.

Thank you so much to these parents for sharing with me. I’ve always felt this is one of the most helpful, powerful tools, the stories that you all share, so please keep them coming. And congratulate yourselves. As this mother says, “it took me a lot of work to get here.” It takes a lot of work. These are generational cycles we’re changing around our attitude towards feelings and the way they’re expressed. And there are probably a lot of people listening saying, Oh, you shouldn’t let children do these kinds of things. I get that. Yes, this is an unusual path. It’s probably still the one less-traveled, but it’s definitely worth it for so many reasons that I think these stories I’ve expressed better than I could. So thank you again.

We can do this.

The post It Works! Parents Report Powerful Benefits From Allowing Kids’ Feelings appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

In this week’s podcast, Janet breaks format slightly by sharing back-and-forth interactions she’s had with listeners and her reflections about these exchanges. In the first, a parent eloquently describes a revelation about his children’s challenging behaviors and how they can bring out his best self. The second exchange explores the nuances of navigating boundaries and the messages we unintentionally give children by walking on eggshells vs. welcoming their feelings. Janet connects these discussions by noting how they both express what putting love into action really means with our kids.

Exciting news: Janet’s “No Bad Kids Master Course” is available now at: NoBadKidsCourse Check it all out and receive an introductory discount!

Transcript of “Love Doesn’t Mean Walking on Eggshells”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m going to be doing something completely different. I’m sharing some correspondence back and forth between me and some people that reached out to me. In one case, it’s a comment on Instagram that I decided to give a long, drawn-out answer to. And I’m sharing these in hope that they’ll clarify some things, get a little deeper into the nuances of some of the issues that we have as parents. And I guess also kind of to let you into my world a little bit. I must love my job a lot because, as busy as I’ve been lately, I still get certain comments or notes that I feel compelled to respond to, because I want to explain. I want to help people understand the view that I’m sharing. And I believe this episode will help you clarify your role with your children and frame boundaries, these things that are really hard for us to do sometimes, in the most positive manner.

Okay, so first I am going to read to you an email that I received. Here it is:

I’m a dad to an extremely impulsive four-and-a-half-year-old and an extremely sensitive two-year-old, with baby number three due in three months. So you can imagine we have an exhausting house at times. As I’ve been listening to your podcast, I’ve come to understand parenting in a new way and wanted to share it with you.

It goes like this: Everything my child does is a different way of asking me, What does love mean? Thinking about parenting this way has completely changed my perspective and given my parenting a purpose. What does love mean when it’s time to clean up, but I say no and keep playing? What does love mean when I’m sick and wake up crying at 3:00 a.m.? What does love mean when I can’t stop grabbing things off the counter? What does love mean when we lay in bed talking at night? What does love mean when you tell me not to hit the TV with a toy and I grin at you while doing it one more time? What does love mean when mommy has morning sickness, but I’m hyper, playful, and mischievous? What does love mean when I’m having a meltdown, when I scrape my knee, when my sibling takes my toy, when I’m scared of monsters, when I’m supposed to take a nap, but instead take out every single piece of clothing from my drawers and throw it on the floor— again? I know I’m not supposed to bang the kitchen cabinets open and closed, but what does love mean when I do it anyway? What if I do it when we’re being playful together or when you’re busy making dinner or when I’ve already just done something wrong? When you’re in the middle of disciplining my sibling, when I’m already feeling mad about something else? The list goes on.

I think this is such a beautiful way of looking at my interactions with my children. It’s also a huge responsibility knowing that everything I do is a different way of answering that question for my kids. How I handle it in the good and bad times, or when they’re acting up, will define what love means for them for the rest of their life. How do I handle it when I’m already stressed or impatient or frustrated or exhausted from work is defining what love means for them, and they’re listening carefully. So thank you for your wisdom and advice and guidance. It has put me in a position to be really intentional about how I handle the day-to-day moments with my kiddos. I’m not always perfect, of course, and then I get to show them what love means when I need to apologize.

Adam

Here’s what I wrote back to Adam:

Dear Adam,

I love this beautiful perspective. What a lucky family you have. I wish everyone understood discipline this way. Unfortunately, people might also think that love is spanking and other punishments to teach right and wrong, et cetera. You obviously don’t, but maybe there’s something you could add to this that would make that clearer. I have a quote from my book, “Boundaries are one of the highest forms of love,” and I believe that 100%. I’ve seen proof time and again. Again, your family is so blessed to have you.

And Adam wrote back:

Thank you for your feedback. It’s funny that you bring up the different answers to, What does love mean? That’s the double edged sword of parenting, right? My wife and I are defining what love means to our kiddos. It’s solely within our power to decide if the message they subconsciously internalize is: love is manipulation, intimidation, fear, and painful consequences. Or, love is patient, empathetic, grace-filled, and affirming. Our kiddos are going to get an answer to their question, whether we’re intentional about it or not. I can scream, spank, banish to a bedroom, and force the behavior I want, or I can connect, listen, guide, and still expect the behavior as I lead them with my hand on their back. The confident momentum you talk about a lot. Either way, I’m going to hold my boundary, whatever it is, but I’ve got to be okay with the picture of love I’m painting in my child’s mind. And you’re right, it is unfortunate that some parents do define love for their kids through spanking and punitive, arbitrary punishments, maybe unintentionally or maybe because they think they’re providing a good definition of love. But when my kiddos look for a spouse in 20ish short years, the person they pick will be a reflection of their internalized sense of what love means. I hope they have a healthy perspective by then.

To clear things up in my original message, I would add this paragraph: I can define love for my children one of three powerful ways. I can generally do nothing, be passive, inattentive, and permissive. I can lose my temper, scream, spank, intimidate, and manipulate. Or I can connect, attune, regulate, empathize, and guide. Our parents likely defined love for us in one of these ways. I know which definition of love I hope to embody for my kiddos.

So that was that exchange with Adam. What an amazing parent and person, right? So now I would like to share an exchange that I ended up having, spontaneously, on Instagram. A parent responded to last week’s episode, Weird, Worrying Behaviors That Our Child Keeps Repeating. So in that episode, I responded to notes from a few different parents, but the last one was from a parent whose daughter was turning four. She was going to have a birthday party, and the little girl had expressed that she would like to invite two of her good friends this time. I guess usually it’s been a family affair, just with relatives. But she offered that up and her parent seemed like she wasn’t that sure, but her daughter persisted, so she did go ahead and invite the friends. Then this happened. This parent says:

Tonight she’s been unsettled and unable to sleep. She’s called me into her room multiple times. She asked me if I could talk, so I laid in bed with her as she told me she no longer wanted the two girls to be invited to her party, that she wanted me to contact their parents and uninvite them. I just listened calmly as she told me in various ways that she’d like to take back the invitation. I know that she’s probably nervous and that this party is totally foreign to her. It’s probably scary anticipating something she doesn’t know anything about. No matter how much we plan, who can reliably prepare a four-year-old on what to expect? And I know it’ll be overwhelming with grandparents and family wanting to love on her. My question is, what do I do? Do I honor her feelings?

So that’s the gist of it. And my response was:

The key is to welcome your daughter’s understandably wound-up feelings, but not accommodate them, because that gives an unintended message: When you feel uncomfortable or in conflict, you need me to fix that for you. I don’t feel safe when you are upset and demanding. When in truth, these mixed feelings she’s having are a normal part of life. If she disinvites friends, she will likely regret that too. So the answer I recommend is to hold the boundaries while welcoming the feelings however she shares them. Something like, Ah, unfortunately, disinviting people isn’t an option because that’s hurtful and unkind. I hear you, though. It’s normal to change your mind or have second thoughts about a decision. You wish we could disinvite them. You wish they weren’t coming. But just reflecting back what she’s actually saying, not adding on.

And I went on to say:

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

So I had written that back to this parent before sharing that exchange on my podcast last week, and when I did, the parent gave me a short note back:

Welcome them, not accommodate them. Such a great reminder. I appreciate you diving in and going into detail for me.

So that was that. So then on Instagram, another parent commented:

I love your work. I’ve listened to every single one of your podcasts at least once. And to say that your teachings have been invaluable is an understatement. However, for the first time ever, I actually disagreed with some of your advice today, and I’d be interested to hear your feedback.

It was regarding the young girl who was anxious at night because she had changed her mind about inviting a couple of friends to a birthday party. You emphasized a lot about not wanting to be unkind to the other children, but I’d be inclined to disagree. I think that at three years old, you can make a decision and then realize that it wasn’t the right decision. And if that results in feelings of anxiety, I think it’s our job to help ease that for our kids, even if that means uninviting some kids to a party. I am 100% for allowing kids to experience upset, disappointment, rejection, et cetera. But the thought of a three-year-old dreading her birthday party in order not to upset people doesn’t sit right with me, especially as I’m always trying to teach my children not to go against our guts to please others. I know it was mentioned that maybe she would have regretted it if she didn’t invite them, but I’m not certain that’s the case. My daughter is extremely sensitive, and if she had realized that she made a mistake by inviting her friends, I know 100% that, for whatever reason, she didn’t want them there. Hopefully I’ve explained this clearly.

I had this incredible urge to write her back. Instagram, to me, isn’t really conducive to these long conversations, but I couldn’t resist. So I said:

I’m so glad you shared this feedback with me. You really got me thinking, which I love. Here are some thoughts I have about that particular situation.

First, I took note of the fact that this wasn’t the parent’s agenda to invite the friends, but the daughter’s, and the daughter persisted in her request and decision: “This year, she expressed she’d like to invite two girls from her class. I said that sounded good, and we moved about our day. When it came time to fill out invitations, she mentioned the two girls from her class again. Again, I acknowledged and made sure to make them invitations. When I let her know that they RSVP’d yes over dinner tonight, she was excited.”

Then, as you noted, she changed her mind. But honestly, I never sensed dread at all, but anxiety, which is par for the course for a child anticipating their birthday party. To me, it sounded like she began focusing her nervousness on that one decision she had made, which is what children and all humans tend to do when we’re excited, anxious, whatever. We doubt ourselves, question everything, sometimes obsess on one specific thing. I do this. As this was something new for this child, inviting friends, it made a lot of sense to me that she might focus on questioning that aspect. I didn’t suggest that she would regret not inviting her friends, but that once she did and was happy about that at first and then later changed her mind, she might well regret disinviting them.

And that brings up the main point I want to make, and maybe where we are seeing this differently. Where would you draw a line? Where would the boundary be for you? If the friends were disinvited and then the girl regretted that and wanted to change her mind again, would you then re-invite them? What if she focused her anxiousness on a particular family member who was set to attend? Should they be disinvited? Or what if her nerves about the party made her want to call the whole thing off? Would that be a decision to leave up to her too? In other words, for me, this is an instance of a child needing help from an adult to navigate, i.e. set a boundary, around a decision that originally came completely from her.

I would trust that innocent voice that told her she’d enjoy sharing her birthday with her friends this year over the birthday nerves voice. I would not be concerned about disappointing her friends or upsetting them at all. My concern would be leaving a child high and dry when they have worked themselves up to a state that makes thoughtful decisions really, really hard. Children say a lot of things they don’t mean when they’re having strong feelings. My sense is that this child might be disappointed in herself at her birthday because she canceled the friends. And that’s where I would be protective and try to be the adult in the room. If she was coming from calm thoughtfulness when she said, I don’t think having my friends there is a good idea, that would be another story. But this is also about knowing our child, and I’m sure you know yours better than anyone.

Okay, so then this parent kindly replied back to me:

Thanks so much for taking the time to reply. This is also interesting to read and has made it much more clear in my mind the reasons you felt it’s so important for the boundary to be set. I loved what you said about hearing the child’s innocent voice over the birthday nerves voice, and that children say a lot of things they don’t mean when they’re having strong emotions. I’ve always realized this was the case when children were feeling angry or upset, but hadn’t considered that it would be the same when they were feeling anxious.

And then she added: P.S. Dreading was the wrong word for me to use.

So all of that exchange is on my Instagram page. And then, just in case, I decided to reach out again to ask that original parent of the soon-to-be four-year-old for an update on how the birthday went.

And the parent said:

Her party was great. She was thrilled to see her friends. She was actually disappointed one couldn’t make it due to the weather.

It’s also worth mentioning that following your simple advice, Welcome feelings, don’t accommodate them, has helped in so many other interactions with my now four-year-old. I didn’t realize that I was walking on eggshells a lot of the time, trying too hard to make her world positive and happy, which is both unrealistic and exhausting. I think within myself, I was afraid of conflict or calling her out, probably a reflection of having a mother that enjoyed conflict and calling me out. Whether we have a conflict or a meltdown or strong negative feelings, I repeat, Welcome, don’t accommodate, in my head. It’s become my mantra. In doing so, she has a clear leader, I have firm boundaries, and we both seem to communicate better. I feel a million times more confident. I think so many parents that follow respectful parenting have this blurry line of trying not to be a “mean, authoritative figure” that we lose sight that we are their biggest teachers. We need to allow all feelings to flow and take the opportunity to teach whenever we can.

Wow, I feel like the luckiest person in the world to be able to be in communication with these thoughtful, insightful, eloquent people. And for me, this all circles back to Adam’s note, What does love mean? What does love mean when I’m anxious, in nervous anticipation, questioning everything, indecisive? For most of us, being loving could mean getting drawn into our child’s feelings and stuck in that awful suffocating space of discomfort that can seem like it will never end. We’ll want to resolve this for them, right? We just want our kids to feel better. That’s being a caring parent.

And then maybe out of that passionate love for our child, we do the brave, really awkward thing of going back to those parents of those children and telling them that they shouldn’t come after all. But then later, maybe not until the actual party’s there or even afterwards, maybe our child expresses their regret that the friends weren’t there. And how hard is it for us not to want to snap back, Well, you were the one that told me you didn’t want them. How disappointing and discouraging that could be for us, right? And maybe even make us resent our kids a little? Understandable. It’s the same as if our angry tantruming child says, Go away! I don’t like you! I never want to see you again! Do we hold them to those kinds of decisions? Or maybe, I hate all of these toys! I don’t want them anymore. Do we give all those toys away? And then when our child asked for them again, Well, you said you didn’t want them. We gave them away. We can’t take everything children say in a state of emotion as fact. But instead, we can be the adults in the room that see beyond the moment to that bigger picture, understanding our child’s immaturity and what help and love really look like when they’re struggling.

And yes, this thing about walking on eggshells. I remember feeling this way, and so many parents mention this to me in consultations, in notes. Try turning this around and imagining how it feels to be a child when your parent, this tower of power in your life, this pillar of strength, is walking on eggshells around you. How can that make you feel safe and comfortable? Feels like there’s something to be afraid of, right? Because our parent is acting in that tentative way out of these beautiful intentions: We don’t want to be the mean guy. We don’t want to be the mean person. We want our child’s world to be happy and shiny and without all these explosions and discomforts that they might have. But that doesn’t help children to feel their own positive power. Instead, it feels like they’re very powerful in a kind of scary way. They’ve got their parent scared.

This is the looking beyond the surface that actually makes our experience as parents much richer and more interesting. But it’s challenging. That’s where the answers are, though. They’re not in words that we say or our child says, or in certain actions that we’re taking. It’s really this understanding and connecting from that place of intimacy, that knowing place, or at least that curious place that wants to know.

Again, I want to thank all these parents for sharing with me and engaging with me and giving me a chance to explain myself. I value all of your viewpoints so much. So please keep them coming. I wish I could offer a personal response to every single one. Unfortunately, that’s not possible.

But I do have something now that just feels good to finally get it out there in one whole package. And that’s my Master Course, where I teach respectful discipline, boundaries, helping children when they need our help. All the elements that we need to absorb this deeply for ourselves. And many of you have noted, we don’t have that many models out there around us of what it looks like to frame boundaries as love, as Adam does. So if you haven’t already, I hope that you’ll check out my No Bad Kids Master Course, because there’s a lot of modeling going on there, including many actual demonstrations. And this is all designed to give you self-confidence so you can stand tall and be proud of the way that you’re parenting. Be proud of the way that you’re engaging with your children and the relationships that you’re building with them. So anyway, if that interests you, it’s at nobadkidscourse.com. Or you can always go to my website, janetlansbury.com. Tons of free information there for you, tons. And you can also get information about the Master Course.

Thank you so much for listening to and supporting this podcast. We can do this.

The post Love Doesn’t Mean Walking on Eggshells appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today I’m going to be sharing a success story that I received that exemplifies several important aspects of the parenting approach that I teach, and describes how these ideas are benefiting this family in some surprising ways. The letter talks about trusting a baby as a capable person and accepting their feelings. In short, we could say it’s about, in my mentor, Magda Gerber’s words, doing less, observing more, enjoying most.

The sponsor for today’s episode is JLML Press, which is the company that produces this podcast and also publishes my books, No Bad Kids, Toddler Discipline Without Shame and Elevating Child Care, A Guide To Respectful Parenting.  They’re available in audio at Audible, in paperback at Amazon, and in ebook at all of your favorite ebook distributors. I’d love you to check them out and let me know what you think.

Okay, here’s the note I received:

Dear Janet, I grew up believing, and still largely believe, that I had the best childhood ever. There hasn’t been a day of my life that I didn’t know I was deeply loved and delighted in. However, I was raised in a conservative, evangelical community where spanking was the norm and sin nature was the engine behind all undesirable behavior, and the goal of parenting was to eradicate behaviors based on that behavior’s desirability to the parent. As my own faith evolved or devolved, depending, I knew what I didn’t want to perpetuate. But that alone did not give me positive alternatives and new tools. I felt like new wine in old wineskins, to borrow the analogy. I tried Attachment Parenting, but it was very overwhelming and seemed yet another impossible standard, another burden falling disproportionately on the shoulders of, in my case, the woman. How could the goal be to have a child that never cries? How can I be human and meet my own needs when I am the be-all-end-all for someone else’s needs, and sometimes multiple someone else’s?

I had read a bit about RIE during pregnancy, but so many articles just focused on: “you have to ask permission to pick up your baby and that’s ridiculous.” I missed the message. When I really dug in, it was truly a revelation. I really got into it before a cross-country flight to see my parents, and I was so concerned about how I would entertain, placate my baby for that long. Your podcast gave me all the tools and confidence I needed and helped me set appropriate expectations, not just for my baby, but for myself as well. And we had a sublime flight. I observed and let her explore and experience her surroundings, and was blown away time and time again, how long she would spend examining something as simple as the seatbelt buckle or tray table, or overhead lights.

Beyond that, it was the final piece in my faith journey because it gave me a developmentally appropriate lens through which to view my child. It has challenged me to better understand, manage and express my own needs and emotions, which, of course, makes me a better friend, spouse, coworker, and human. It has allowed me to be more compassionate. Even the conversations I had with my daughter when she was screaming in her car seat (“It sounds like you’re frustrated. Maybe you don’t like being stuck in your car seat. It’s hard to feel restricted or have to stay in our seats when we want to get out. As soon as it’s safe to do so, I’ll get you out. Until then, you can keep telling me how you feel about being in your car seat. I am a safe place for you to share your feelings, and that means I won’t be swayed off course, controlled, or angered by your feelings. You can always share them with me.”) Obviously, I’m saying this to her to reinforce it to myself. But having these little conversations has helped me regulate my own emotions and help me stay focused on the end goal, not the momentary frustration or that every-cell-in-your-body-is-screaming-to-“fix”-the-problem-when-your-baby-is-crying thing.

The difference between seeing tantrums as a behavior to punish versus seeing it as an outcry of emotion or overwhelm that is deserving of our presence, love, and compassion… that’s a paradigm shift, the positive implications of which are limitless.

You and Magda have given me such a gift: the ability to enjoy parenthood in a way I would not have otherwise been able to. And not only that but tools to care for my own childhood self and the tools to cultivate my own emotional maturity where it was lacking. This has benefited me, my child, my marriage, and all my relationships. It has also become a great way to connect with other parents. “Oh, you listen to Unruffled too?” Immediately, we’re at ease, knowing we don’t have to do “performative parenting” because we’re coming from the same philosophical starting point and won’t be judged because we aren’t running after our toddler constantly, but rather letting them explore at their own pace, navigating their own social dynamics in a safe but not micromanaged way. I could go on and on, but I feel I’m already past the point of TL;DR! Thank you again.

I am deeply touched by this note and so grateful to this parent for taking the time to share with me, especially these details, which I hope will be helpful for other parents listening.

The first thing I want to do is clarify a misconception that she brings up. I try to understand where this comes from. It’s such a common misconception that comes up all the time in various articles. It’s this idea that we are suggesting to ask permission to pick up a baby or ask permission to change a baby’s diaper. She wrote, “You have to ask permission to pick up your baby and that’s ridiculous.” And yes, it is ridiculous because a baby cannot answer that kind of question. And that’s not at all what we’re saying.

What we’re saying is to give your baby a bit of warning, to open up to them the invitation to participate in every aspect of their life. So I’m not just going to pick up the baby, I’m going to let my baby know and maybe ask if they’re ready, but not expect I’m going to get some clear answer. I am going to let my baby know, at least, “Hey, I want to pick you up now.” And I’m putting my hands out to them. “Are you ready?”

And why do I offer these questions? Not because I expect an answer, although babies do start to give answers once we’ve opened this door, but because I want my baby to know that I’m interested in their point of view. I believe they have one as a human being. From birth, they already have a perspective that’s worth considering. And I want them to know that I am interested in a relationship with this other person and that I want them to be an active participant in their own way when they’re ready. When they can. Children can’t really do that if we don’t open the door first and communicate with them with this respect and politeness. And empathy as to what that person might be feeling or thinking or ready to do right there.

As I said, I’ve thought a lot about how this misconception comes about, because it is very common. A lot of people think this about the RIE approach. And of course, they close the door on it. It’s so hard to imagine, and I remember this myself at first, it was so hard to imagine that a baby is an actual aware, sentient person. It’s so hard to see that and believe that. When someone suggests it, we only jump to what we know, which is, well, an adult’s a person, so you’re saying to treat a baby as an adult. That’s not what we’re saying at all. A baby is a baby. But because it’s challenging to accept babies as people, we jump to an extreme idea like we would expect them to act like an adult and respond in an absurd way that they cannot — giving permission for a diaper change.

A child is a person. They shouldn’t need to be treated as an adult to be treated as a person.

And as a person, we understand that they have their own unique interests that we should trust. Because we don’t know them. The only way we can know them is through one of the core practices that I recommend, which is observation, sensitive observation, noticing what our baby chooses, noticing what they’re looking at, what they’re interested in exploring. That takes us letting go of an agenda to entertain, to keep a baby constantly occupied, and ameliorate any kind of effort that may appear to be a struggle. It takes more of an open mind and believing in that baby, trusting that they are capable, that they have basic competencies. That’s what this parent does in the airplane example.

A baby’s a person with this innocent beginner’s mind and this incredible ability to learn and explore. It’s this wide-open, fresh perspective on the world. What that means is that they’re seeing everything for the first time. They don’t need a lot of entertainment. They don’t need us to wave toys or point things out to them. They are able to take in their surroundings. They have what researcher Alison Gopnik calls lantern attention. They’re taking in everything very capably, working to understand their world, exploring. They’re interested in understanding all these details that we ignore and take for granted.

The downside to that is that they’re very easily overstimulated because they’re absorbing everything without a filter, these filters that we develop as we mature. We’re less aware than a baby because of these filters. But the baby doesn’t have them so they get very overstimulated easily. And a lot of times when we do something with them, like take them on a trip, there’s all this novelty, but we want to keep them occupied, quiet on the plane, all of those things. And so we’re keeping them busy, we’re adding more and more stimulation when they’re already getting a lot.

What this parent did is she trusted. So she did less, but she says she observed and let her explore and experience her surroundings, and was “blown away time and again by how long she would spend examining something as simple as the seatbelt buckle.” Yeah, seatbelt buckles are pretty amazing if we consider seeing them for the first time and trying to figure them out, or a tray table or overhead lights. The parent had a sublime experience because she trusted her baby. She did less and she observed more and enjoyed seeing these things anew through her child’s eyes.

When we trust babies this way, what happens is that they are actually able to dictate just the right amount of stimulation for them. If we’re not adding it in, they’re not forced to take in more, and they’re going to take in just enough. So we won’t have those crying jags from overstimulation. They’re so common, especially in the first year. Gauging stimulation with our adult view is going to be difficult, and we’re going to be likely to overstimulate.

This is also why, with the RIE approach, we believe in simple toys and objects. We believe that those are the most encouraging to babies who want to learn and understand their surroundings. So, even though I know this is a small detail, just to give an example, we don’t put a mirror in their play area because they can’t understand a mirror yet. Studies show that children don’t really understand until closer to two years old that that is their reflection. So with the RIE approach, we don’t want them to be distracted by something that they can’t actually learn from. We want them to be able to feel that sense of comprehending their environment, mastering, discovering everything an object can do. That encourages them to seek more knowledge, to understand more. Instead of feeling overwhelmed that oh, there’s so much in my world that I can’t possibly understand.

So this parent’s note also mentions at the end how she trusted her child to be a capable explorer, physically, cognitively, creatively, and socially. She says, “We aren’t running after our toddler constantly, but rather letting them explore at their own pace, navigating their own social dynamics in a safe but not micromanaged way.”

What a relief that is for parents, right? We can trust that they know how to learn, that they are self-learners who will seek out enrichment in their environment. So we don’t have to be the ones to always come up with it and figure it out. And what do they need now? And what should we put there? And how do we stimulate them? How do we keep them from being bored? If you imagine really being a baby, how can you be bored? Everything around you is new and interesting and weird and different. But children do get overstimulated and overtired and will cry for that reason. And sometimes misinterpreted as boredom.

Through this practice of observation that this parent says she’s using, we’re able to see the world through our child’s eyes. That’s how we gain more empathy for our children. That’s how we understand them and feel compassion for them, understanding them better and understanding ourselves better. As this parent said, most of these ideas apply to all relationships, understanding where that other person is coming from. So as this parent said, these tools helped her to have the confidence she needed to set appropriate expectations, not just for her baby, but for herself as well, challenged her to better understand, manage and express her own needs and emotions, allowed her to be more compassionate.

Then she talks about the conversation she had with her daughter when she was screaming in the car seat. And I absolutely love this. Not that I would expect or would even suggest a parent say all of those things to a child at one time. I mean, maybe just one of those sentences, “Ah, it sounds like you’re frustrated. Maybe you don’t like being stuck in your car seat.” And maybe we would add, “I’ll get you out as soon as I can. But until then, yeah, I hear you.”

This parent said a version of that. But what I love is that she recognizes the self-talk here, because I believe it’s crucial to being able to do this huge task. This parent acknowledges the huge task of allowing and accepting and even encouraging our child to express their feelings without putting a stop to them ourselves. It’s a huge task.

And what this kind of self-talk does: “I’m a safe place. I won’t be swayed off course, controlled or angered by your feelings. You can always share them with me” is it helps bolster us and helps focus our intention on something helpful. It’s a relationship dynamic that will carry us through our child’s adulthood. You have a right to feel what you feel. Your feelings are not about me. I want to hear them. I want to understand them. I want to be that person for you, but they’re not mine to change. Obviously, I will tell you honest things that might reassure you like that I will get you out of there soon, out of that car seat. But we’re not trying to shut down our child.

A lot of times parents will say things that are acknowledging, but they’re saying words when what they really mean is: okay, I hear you, now please stop because this is so hard for me. And I understand it’s hard. It’s hard for me too. It’s still hard for me. But I know, and I’ve seen, time and again, how important it is, and how letting the feelings flow is the right thing and the best thing that we can do. Often, the only thing that we can do. To accept, to trust that it’s okay for our child to feel how she does. I mean, she has a right. She’s in a car seat. She’s stuck. What is there to like about that? Nothing. So yeah, I want you to tell me that. I agree with your right to feel that. It’s understandable to me.

Accepting, acknowledging, encouraging, trusting.

And feelings won’t always be understandable to us right away. Usually, they will later on… we’ll figure out what that was about. But following our instinct to try to put an end to the feelings often results in more frustration and disconnection for both of us. Instead, what this parent focused on, and what I highly recommend is: I am a safe place for your feelings. And that means ultimately my own as well.

I hope some of this helps. And I want to thank this parent so much again for sending me her note, and all her brilliant examples. I’m thrilled that she’s made a huge paradigm shift and most thrilled of all that she’s gaining exactly what I did from this approach, from this way of being with children, the ability to enjoy parenting in a way that I would not have been able to. That’s the exact reason I’m here, podcasting, writing, sharing with parents: to try to help make your experience more enjoyable. Parenthood is really, really difficult. We deserve to enjoy it as much as possible. And Magda’s teachings were also, for me, a paradigm shift that changed everything — gave me clarity, helped me feel freer with more ability to enjoy the day-to-day and the long term as well because of the relationships that I’ve been able to build with my children.

I really hope some of this helps. We can do this.

(The tools for traveling with babies that this parent refers to are here in Traveling with Babies, Toddlers, Preschoolers)

The post Surprising Benefits of Doing Less, Observing More, and Welcoming Feelings appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transcript of “It Will Get Easier – The Intense Struggles of a Parent with Childhood Trauma”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury, welcome to Unruffled. Today I have a very special guest, her name is Alwynn. She reached out to me in an email with the subject line, “Not yet a success.” Of course, I always love to read success stories that people share with me and it was interesting that she said “not yet,” so I was intrigued. I read her story of how her repressed childhood memories came to the surface, sent her into what she calls “a survival mode, merely existing as a mother,” and the memories that resurfaced for her were overwhelming and made it feel impossible to be the kind of parent she wanted to be for her children. Her message is one of survival and hope and I think will be a gift for any parent listening.

Hello, Alwynn. Good morning. It’s the evening for me, morning for you over there in Australia.

Alwynn:  Yeah.

Janet:  I just want to say straight out that you are my favorite kind of hero. You reached out to me with your subject line, “Not yet a success,” which I love in itself for so many reasons, that you know you’re in a process, and your goal is this beautiful thing… I’m just going to read it from your note here. Your goal is that you want to “spread awareness that it’s okay to not have it all together,” that others are not a failure if they feel that way. You said, “I want your listeners to know that no matter what it is that they are failing at as mothers, no matter what it is they’re doing wrong, there is so much they’re doing right.”

So anyway, this message that you’re so brave to be here and share with us is: you want to give hope. I’m just in awe of you, so I just have to say that starting out.

Alwynn:  Thank you, thank you so much. And I’m definitely quite emotional, even as I talk, because being willing to be seen is probably the biggest obstacle that I’ve had to overcome. I started out… I wanted to be a mother my whole entire life, and I guess I imagined it would be hard, but I just never imagined it to be as hard as it has been. I started out my journey and I became a mom, and I was really, really blessed to find a group called the Conscious Mothers. I didn’t have any idea about conscious mothering or respectful parenting. I was starting to really, really struggle with my toddler, and he was 16 months at the time, and I was really, really struggling with his behaviors.

I remember saying to someone, “I’m just angry all the time, and I’m just so tired of being angry, and he doesn’t deserve it.” And I remember people saying to me it was normal, that it’s okay to be angry, kids make you angry. And I think it upset me that that was normal, it upset me that everyone was saying that it was okay for me to be angry all the time, but I didn’t feel like it was okay, I didn’t feel like this was the way it was meant to be.

I had this vision of motherhood, and what it was turning out to be was not what I expected. And gratefully I had been a part of this group and explained the issues that I was having with my toddler. I was getting so uncomfortable with his emotions that I was considering self-harming, I hit myself over the head with a plate just so I wouldn’t hurt him, and I thought there must be another way, and that’s when they forwarded me onto your work.

I’ll be truly honest, when I started listening to your work, I think like many other moms and many other parents, all I felt was complete lack. I just felt I must be such a useless mom because where Janet is talking about as a parent feels like a million miles away from where I am.

But I wanted things to be different, and so I really tried to start implementing your techniques, and I really noticed that there was a difference. Yes, it seems so far from what I’d been taught, as in suppress children’s emotions and not see them as individuals. It got to a point where your techniques, the way that you were teaching parenting, I was failing at it, I was really, really feeling like I just couldn’t get it right. Why was I so angry? I know that my toddler and my children have these big emotions, but why do I feel so helpless? And why do I feel so hopeless all the time? I must be a failure, there must be something wrong with me.

Janet:  I’m so glad you’re being honest about this, and I’ve heard that before and it makes sense to me, your perspective on what I’m doing at first. What were some of the things that you were trying that you just felt you couldn’t do? Are there any specifics that you remember?

Alwyn:  Well, what I realized, I guess, is with respectful parenting it’s about giving them choice and it’s about being able to see them in all their big emotion. If they’re exploring you can say, “Oh, I can’t let you do that, but I can let you do something else.” But I found myself getting really angry.

I’ve listened to so many of your podcasts and other parents, and it made me so comforted to know that where kids were constantly going into the pantry and pulling out the food. And I was like, I should be reacting with love and, “Wow, I see you really want to get the food, but I can’t let you do that.” But I was reacting with anger and an anger that was so uncharacteristic for me. I just couldn’t bridge the gap, it was like from zero to 100. So I knew all the things I was meant to be doing-

Janet:  Well, I mean, we’re not supposed to love that, just to be fair. We’re not supposed to love that our children are doing those things.

Alwyn:  Yeah, but even, I guess, the distance and the spatial awareness that I could see that what he was doing was not a direct reflection on me and my parenting and who I was as a person.

Janet:  It felt threatening.

Alwyn:  Everything felt threatening. And so essentially, I guess what it got to, really, for me was I was able to be quite a calm person until I had kids, and then when I had kids two years ago I had a lot of suppressed memories of abuse from my childhood come up, and that really set me into a spiral, as you can imagine. Years of memories that you didn’t have before all rushing to the forefront, and every pain that I had, I literally just sank into a deep, deep hole, and I had these two kids that were under three.

Janet:  Wow.

Alwyn:  They needed me, and my kids were the most incredible fighters because they wouldn’t let me suppress them. They wouldn’t allow me to just put them in a box and say, “Leave me to just sink into a hole.” They fought every day, and by that I mean they kept on pushing the boundaries.

If there were times where I didn’t want to get out of my bed, my four-year-old or my three-year-old would go up and break something so that I would be forced to get up and take care of him, so that I would be forced to step forward and be his mother. I had so much anger, I had so much sadness, and I was seeing these kids, and actually with my inner child… I speak quite a lot about inner child because essentially all of us parents have wounded inner children.

It doesn’t have to be great things like abuse, it doesn’t have to be great things that we’re conscious of, but no matter who it is, we all carry some sort of wound from childhood that isn’t healed, and we carry that little child within us that never got to grow past that point.

And so essentially what I got to was I had two little boys who were screaming to be seen and screaming for safety and screaming for love, and they were reflecting within me a little girl who was constantly wanting to be loved, who was constantly wanting to be seen. And so it got into this fight, my toddlers were fighting my inner child, and who gets preference, whose needs are more important.

Janet:  Yeah. What happened when the memories came up for you? Was it just during the day, or were you in a therapy session?

Alwynn:  No. So when I started my spiritual journey, I guess eight years ago when I started having reoccurring miscarriages, I was given the message at that point that I needed to heal some trauma and then my children will come in, they needed me to be the strong healer. That was from a psychic.

Janet:  But you didn’t know what that was that they were referring to?

Alwyn:  No, I didn’t know what that trauma was. And so a few years ago I started having more dreams, started having more things come up into my life where I was like, these things aren’t normal, these things aren’t…  And I’d become a health and life coach at this point and so I was very adept at exploring my inner world, exploring what was not working or what I was dealing with.

So I went to a lot of energy healers, because I’m very much about energy, and I went to see psychologists, and many different avenues, but really it just started to come up organically in my dreams, in little flashbacks. But I was able to push it down for quite a long time and ignore that it existed, because I didn’t want to believe it existed — until it got to a point where my sister and I just, yeah, we had to sit down, and we both really just said, “Okay, we have to acknowledge that this happened, because it’s literally chasing us.”

And once we were aware and ready to face it, those little wounded inner girls, those wounded children felt more safe to show us and give us more.

Essentially, I feel like as parents, and as individuals, we give all of this energy to the children outside of ourselves. But I believe firmly, after everything that I’ve been through, the first person that we need to start with is that little child within us. Because I wasn’t capable of truly opening myself up to love, truly opening myself up to the possibility of being that safe, unruffled parent that my kids needed. I didn’t have safety within me.

So the biggest and most difficult part of the healing journey was when I got to a point where my anger was really, really, really bad, and through that period I really thought that my kids would’ve been better off without me. Because I was okay with the pain that I was feeling, but the only thing that I wasn’t okay with was how my pain was affecting my children.

And what I really, really wanted to share, especially on this podcast episode, is that I didn’t have a choice or an option on how I reacted to my children. I knew and I still know how affecting that is for them and how affecting it was for them for me to be aggressive, because I was.

I had a little child in me who felt so unsafe and felt so unheard and unseen that my children triggered me constantly, they were mirrors for all of the deep pain and sadness I felt inside. And they just really wanted me to love myself as much as they loved me, but I couldn’t love me. So I got so angry about that and I was aggressive and I was lashing out at them.

And I was thinking one day, what would Janet Lansbury say to you right now? You’re disgusting, you are pretty much hurting your children, you are so far away from a conscious loving mother.

Janet:  Oh gosh, I would never have said that.

Alwyn:  No, your response was great, actually, your response to… In my head, I took a pause and I said: You know what? Janet Lansbury would say that you are doing everything that you can be doing, you are fighting every single minute of every single day and you are alive, and that’s all she would care about right now.

I just got to the point where I decided that no matter what happened, I was going to live, and I wouldn’t leave my kids without a mom, I wouldn’t take my life no matter how hard it got, and it got very hard. There were times where I considered signing myself into a mental health institute because I was concerned that I was going to hurt them. There was so much within me that was just wanting to be let go of and released.

As I continued on this journey, day by day I just kept on saying to myself: Alwyn, you know the parent you want to be, and you’ve seen that it’s possible. Through the little techniques that I’ve used from your work I knew who I wanted to become, and I believed that yes, I wasn’t that person. And I still am struggling at times, but I believed that I could get there, that I had that vision of the mom that I wanted to be, and I wanted to be a safe mom. I wanted to be safe for myself and for my kids, and I wanted to be unruffled, not as something I put on, but actually just because I felt strong enough to give my kids that space to feel everything that they wanted to or needed to feel.

And so although I was quite angry and aggressive and I really hated myself in those times, now as I have come out the other side of it I realize that it couldn’t have been any other way and that I can’t compare myself to these moms who don’t have that deep, deep anger, because this is my path, and this was my journey.

My kids are the most incredibly beautiful, resilient, strong kids. And I believe that that’s because of me, because they watched me fall to pieces, they watched me repair, and I did a lot of repairing throughout that time, but it’s all because of the work that you’ve done, and the awareness that I had that kept me fighting for their freedom and my own freedom, because I knew what was possible at the end of it.

Janet:  So you’d gotten some glimmers, being able to practice some of the ideas that I’ve shared, you saw that you could occasionally feel yourself doing this, and giving your children space to feel their feelings, or whatever it was.

Alwyn:  Yeah.

Janet:  But it sounds like you were still being steered by-

Alwyn:  Wounds.

Janet:  Yeah, and you weren’t in control of yourself until you healed that. I’m so glad that you did.

And one thing that really helped you is you found this self-compassion — it’s so key to be able to do any kind of healing, or really just to even become a better parent, to rise up out of whatever our natural reflexes might be as a parent, to know that it’s a process, and we’re never going to be perfect at it. That you gave yourself that permission is, I think, such an important part of this for you, and for everybody.

Alwyn:  You know… of course this journey has been extremely difficult, but I am so incredibly grateful for it, because I now get to experience my children and love my children in a way that I had never actually been able to do before I healed. I’d never been open to allowing someone into my heart because I was terrified they would break it. And that included my children. I could never actually connect with them on the level that they deserved and I deserved.

And in order to get to this point, I had to let a lot of my expectations of myself go. The TV, I was very strict on TV, no TV, no sugar, I wanted them eating organic. But all of that I feel was so secondary to the real needs that they weren’t having met having a mother who couldn’t love herself enough to love them. In order to get to that beautiful, strong unruffled, powerful woman, I had to let the expectations of myself go, and the expectations of, but if they watch TV it’s going to be a cycle, and I don’t want them watching TV, I’m a terrible mother.

And I recognize that, you know what, that’s something that I can work on once I’m better, that’s something that I can face later once I love myself and heal myself more.

Janet:  Yes. Before we love, we have to accept ourselves. Here I am in these pandemic times, this is what I’ve got, this is where I’m struggling, this is what I need to survive this, my children watching TV or having lots of sweets, or whatever it is, that acceptance of just being in the process.

For a long time, I felt like I had to be the perfect one or I was nothing, and that there was no in-between. I mean, it was such a bind that I put self in, and a setup for failure, because you’re not going to be perfect, and I think a lot of us feel that way.

Just to say: hey, this is where I am right now, and I’m going to take care of me first because I’ve got to accept me first, and I’m going to do that for my children. So if I feel at all that it’s selfish, it’s absolutely not. It’s not selfish, that’s for my children. That’s the step, as you so clearly discovered, that’s the step to being the kind of parent I want to be with my children, loving them in the way that I want to. I’ve got to accept myself.

Alwyn:  You know, we are constantly judging ourselves and judging anyone else around us as mothers. It’s always looking for who’s doing it right and who’s doing it wrong.

A year ago the mother I would’ve been was the mother that you would’ve looked at and said, oh gosh, she’s doing it all wrong, she’s shouting at her kids, she’s angry, she’s manipulating, she’s X, Y, or Z.

But what I want us to all see is anyone that is acting like that with their children essentially is just wounded, they’re only hurt. No one wants to treat their kids other than loving and beautiful and respectful the way that they deserve, but in order to do that, we need to also, as I said, get to that point of loving ourselves.

But in those times, even as I was that parent who was angry and just not living up to any expectation that I had of myself, I was able to hold onto that one goal, that viewpoint in the future that I’ll just keep on taking one step forward, I’ll just keep on fighting and I’ll get there eventually.

And I want your listeners to know that no matter what it is that they’re experiencing right now, no matter what it is that they’re dealing with, whether it’s internal or external, whether it’s their kids or their partners, or whatever it is, to hold on to that slither of: I know I can do this. Because we can do this. We are empowered. We are way more powerful than we could ever imagine, women and men alike.

I want everyone to realize that if they can just take a step back and see that maybe it’s a need that’s just not being met within in themselves, maybe it’s a bit of sadness or a bit of grief that they hadn’t processed, maybe their child is just reflecting a part of them that’s wanting so badly to be seen.

I feel like we, as a whole collective, all deserve better, and if we keep separating ourselves — the good parents from the bad parents — we’re never going to get to where we need to get to. We need to all find the compassion, find the love, and normalize healing ourselves first, in order to change the generations, change the future, and become this loving, safe, beautiful space that we and our children deserve. And never mind any of that, to actually experience the depths of love that are available to us when we let go of the pain. Because it’s only now that I’m getting to experience that.

Janet:  What you’re saying there is so important, there are no bad parents, there are parents that are, like you said, wounded, they’re hurting, they’re struggling, they’re healing, they’re going through something, and they’re not bad, they’re in a process. So that same grace that we give to our children that I always talk about is the same perspective we have to take on ourselves first.

Alwyn:  Yeah.

Janet:  I was told that there are a lot of people that don’t have children that listen to my podcast, even younger people, because they are hearing a version of being raised that maybe they didn’t have that they could hear and relate to in terms of the healing that could happen to them, the way they could be perceived.

Alwyn:  That is just amazing that you just actually brought that up because that was my next point.

One of the things that I recognize in my own healing was that desire to be held and loved and mothered in a way that feels so safe and secure and loving, but it was such a difficult thing to imagine or feel when you haven’t experienced it.

I found, even just when I got on the phone call with you, I could feel the loving mother, the loving energy, and it brought me to tears even just as we began. Because to be in the presence of someone that can fully see you, even that child self within you, is just beyond beautiful, and to see, like you’re seeing, that opportunity to be raised and re-raised, because we can do that. We can re-parent or ourselves, or imagine Janet Lansbury as my mom. I’ve actually imagined you as my mom, by the way. What would she say to me right now? How would she want me to show up for myself? And even just feeling that embrace and that hug.

Because we as parents, we take on the world. We have so much responsibility, and sometimes just want to be taken care of, the way the little child within us really wanted to be taken care of. I believe so strongly now that our kids when they’re acting out, when they’re doing things that really, really trigger us, I believe that they’re reflecting the part of us that really is needing love.

I remember saying to you in the email that I  was really terrified. I was terrified that I was never going to love my child. I was terrified that I just hated him because I just felt so triggered by all of his behaviors and his actions, and I was afraid that no one would ever love him, and I was terrified of even admitting that.

And then I realized it’s not my little three-year-old that I hate, it’s not my little three-year-old that I think is not going to be loved. It’s me. I’m terrified that I am never going to be loved. I am terrified that I will never be seen. And he is ultimately just reflecting back all of that to me, so that he can say: here mom, please heal it so that you can love yourself exactly the way that I love you.

And as you’re saying, through that inner parenting process, even by listening to your podcast, it’s a great opportunity to reparent ourselves, because that is where it starts.

Janet:  Yeah, well you said in that note, you said you would’ve just continued to blame your son, painting it with some brush, “difficult,” maybe ADHD, et cetera. But because of my work, you were able to look past that and know that “he was not anything but a struggling little boy looking for a safe space, love, and acceptance,” and from there you found yourself.

Alwyn:  Yeah, and that is ultimately it. I could have projected everything that I was feeling onto a label that I wanted him to be painted with. And it’s not wanted. But what I recognize most in this healing journey was that a lot of the times when I’m experiencing things outside of me, with my kids or even with my husband, with the people at work, whatever it may be, a lot of the time it’s a reflection of what I need to see within myself, or what I need to heal within myself. Sometimes we pass that blame onto other people around us. The kids are causing me to be stressed, my husband is causing me to be X, Y, or Z.

But ultimately it’s really an opportunity to go: okay, what is it that I’m feeling right now deep within me? What is it that I’m experiencing? Because my kid is just doing what they’re meant to do. They’re being a child, they’re not trying to punish me.

One of the things that definitely was big and strong for me was every action that my children took that you would maybe class as being naughty or “behavior,” what my inner child was saying was: you see, they don’t love us, they don’t love us, no one’s going to love us, they hate us. And so my reaction couldn’t be calm and unruffled, because the perception that I was having was: they’re doing this because they don’t love me, a very different perception to have than seeing them as wow, they’re really exploring.

Janet:  Yeah, and if you think about that objectively, well, why wouldn’t they love me? They love their parents more than anyone else in the world, almost no matter what. If we get a little distance on that, then actually they’re doing this because they love me so much.

Alwyn:  Definitely.

Janet:  I would love for you to share, because I think it could be helpful if you have thoughts about this, just some of the concrete steps that you took, things that you tried that really helped you as you’re going through this healing inside. And then what were some of the things you tried, even things that didn’t work. What kind of steps did you take when you were coming out of this with your children and shifting?

Alwyn:  So with regards to my own healing or with both?

Janet:  Well, both. But in terms of them, and being more the parent that you wanted to be. How did you turn the corner, taking what you’re learning about yourself, and then you shared the thing about getting the different perspective on your son, your spirited son, but were there any practices or steps that were helpful?

Alwyn:  I think that the biggest one was having the awareness. Having listened to your podcast, the awareness of what is really happening. Like, okay, he’s having big emotions, this isn’t about me. To be honest, in a lot of cases I actually couldn’t follow through with dealing with the situations adequately, in a safe and unruffled way. But also having that awareness was probably the biggest key. I was always able to repair, and that is never going to be as good as obviously just doing it right the first time, but I didn’t have that option.

Janet:  That’s right. No, no, no, I think this is perfect, this is exactly what I think is really helpful. So you started to get the perspective, but you would get it after the fact, almost, like you’d already yelled or done whatever it was, gotten sharp with them?

Alwyn:  When I would react, essentially I would go offline. My children would do something, I would be triggered, and it was as if I checked out. I didn’t have any control over my physical body. And essentially I would wake up afterward and I would be filled with so much grief and pain that I had just reacted and acted in such a terrifying way even to myself, never mind to a small little boy. But then straight away, obviously, I then would get down and be very upfront, I would say, “I’m really sorry. I’ve got a lot of pain inside my heart, and sometimes that makes me act in a way that I don’t want to act, but you don’t deserve that, and I’m really sorry.”

But the problem was, Janet, it was happening so often that the inconsistency of my parenting and my behaviors, nothing could repair the inconsistencies and everything that I was enduring. But what I guess I just kept on fighting for, as I said, was that inner healing.

So if I could say what was the most concrete thing that I would recommend for every single parent, there are definitely some resources I would most definitely share, but I have a coach, she is an inner child coach. What I loved about her was she would work with me on my inner child, but also factoring in my kids and their behavior and helping me to understand how my children’s behaviors were actually reflecting some of my own pain. And so she was helping me to interweave my parenting into my own trauma and my own feelings in order to have the awareness and the understanding and let it go so that I could be the confident mom that I wanted to be.

And so what I find so important is finding a practice or healing modality that works for you.

For me, as I said, I believe so, so strongly in inner child work, inner child healing, because I believe that’s where it starts, and also it links so much into our parenting because essentially we’re parenting a child within. It gives us the strength and awareness and ability to parent a child without.

And even if you’re 100 years of age, you still have a little child within you, and so I believe that one step is probably the biggest shift and change for me as a parent and how I parented the boys.

The awareness of your work was absolutely so important. Letting people know that you don’t have to get it all right, you don’t have to be the perfect parent in order to have the goal that, one day, you will get to that point where you feel like a confident parent. You can listen to podcasts from you and take what you can take for the moment and implement that as best as you can, but always come back to compassion, that deep sense of I’m doing the best that I can do, and if I leave the best that I can do on the table at the end of every day, then there is nothing else I could have given, and there is nothing else I have to do.

I know that my boys are very proud of me, and I know that they do not at all resent me, and I know they love me beyond belief because we’ve gone from a space where my kids wouldn’t even hug me, they were terrified of me, they would barely hug my leg. And now my toddler hugs me about 40 times a day and he says, “I love you to the moon and back,” I’d say about 50 times a day. He is just showing me in every moment, he just says to me without saying it: thanks for not giving up, thanks for fighting for us.

Janet:  Wow.

Alwyn:  That’s all he keeps saying.

Janet:  You’re the safe person they can share with now, completely.

Alwyn:  But I had to allow myself to go through that process.

So there are definitely some resources. Whenever you do the podcast and if you put it up on your Facebook, I would definitely love to share some resources beneath that podcast for anyone that’s looking to do this work. Or anyone that’s looking to just find happiness, because it’s n sometimes not even about the parenting. You might feel like your parenting’s going good or okay, but you might feel like your relationship with your husband isn’t the best, or you’re feeling lonely. All of this impacts us, all of it impacts our children, all of it impacts the collective, and so this work applies to absolutely everyone, not just parents, not just for our kids. Ultimately it’s for us so that we can have the happiness that we deserve.

And I believe wholeheartedly that in order to experience the biggest and greatest depth of joy and happiness that is possible in this world, you have to be willing and ready and able to experience the depth of sadness and pain that might be within you. But it’s worth it.

What I considered during that time was pretty dark and pretty deep, but believe me when I say the happiness is worth it, joy is worth it, connection with your kids is worth it. It’s all worth it, if you’re just brave enough to put yourself first and love you first, it’s all worth it, I promise.

Janet:  That’s so beautiful. Well, as one of your imaginary mothers, I’m very, very proud of you, and thank you so much for sharing with us today.

Alwyn:  You’re welcome.

Janet:  Just keep going, that’s all I can say. Keep going and keep shining your awesome light.

Alwyn:  Thank you.

Alwyn shares some afterthoughts to this conversation that I’ll be posting in the transcript on my website, and also some resources, including a contact email to connect with Alwyn for support. Those will be in the transcript and also in the show notes for this podcast.

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

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

Alwynn’s afterthoughts and resources:

As I was reflecting throughout the day on our conversation a few things came up regarding what life looked like physically as I was and am healing with the kids. I wanted to just send it in case anything was of any use.

What I noted was to be an unruffled confident leader initially takes a lot of energy. Emotional, mental, and physical energy. Healing or living through any type of trauma takes all of someone’s resources and so what was left for my children was nothing but desperate cries “please just listen to me” “please don’t fight me on this” “please see I’m struggling and help me out” but you know yourself that children cannot hold that level of restraint and responsibility for their own emotions let alone their parents. They need us to be safe not the other way around. So my children would dump out the washing that took me a day to fold. They would spill the milk as I was using all of my energy to make the breakfast. They would hit out at me as I tried to force them into clothes because I just needed them dressed and I needed something to be easy. I would lash out at their big emotions, at their rejection “I don’t love you” because I couldn’t face or process my own emotions, my own lack of self-love and I resented my children even more. “Why can’t you love me” “why do you punish me” “why am I never good enough”. A vicious cycle of my children’s search for safety and stability vs my own. A clash of wills. A clash of needs. A clash of power Vs powerlessness

As parents through these difficult times a lot of our emotional, physical and mental resources are being spent holding too many balls up in the air and as we are doing that and neglecting our own needs there is little left to give to our children when they too are trying to navigate the murky waters of life. Dump on top of that: expectations of who we should be as parents and the guilt at not living up to them. Dump on top of that generational and personal wounding known and unknown and you have exactly what I described. A mother constantly shouting at her children to listen, to stop torturing her through constant resistance and persistent fights. And therein lies the biggest bottom line… We owe ourselves the compassion and space to find a way out of the dark, the exhaustion, the inner turmoil before we try correcting and trying to change our children’s “behaviours”. To try our best to let go of all of the things we have to do and only focus on the things we truly need to do.

Today, as I felt exhausted and drained following our call, my 4-year-old was “acting up” hitting his brother, throwing things. And again I found myself on the verge of tears as yet again I was reactive and very much the opposite of supportive and unruffled. I took a bath and asked myself… How do I do this? How can I help my beautiful boy, how can I support him the way he deserves and the answers that came were still the same…

By healing yourself first.

And so that’s it. I get up to face more unfelt, stuck emotions within me and hug my 4-year-old and pray that one day repairing won’t be such a frequent occurrence in my life, and I have compassion that I’m still fighting for that day.

Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me.

Contact Alwynn: alwynnhynescoaching@gmail.com

Alwynn has recently begun a Facebook community HERE and she welcomes you to join.

Alwynn recommends:

Inner child work & healing: www.laviniabrown.com

Marisa Peer

Some of the therapies she used in her healing:

– Craniosacral therapy
– Energy healers (there are a few different types eg reiki, intuitive, but I always say go with your gut)
– Somatic therapy practitioners (works with trauma stored in the body)
– Hypnotherapy
– Ice baths/ocean swimming
– Meditation

“I believe that when the student is ready the teacher will appear. And so if you are someone committed to and ready to heal… I believe the right healing practice and modalities will come to you. Then it is about immersing yourself and taking control of your own destiny, your own path, and your own healing. No one can do this work for us but believe me when I say you wouldn’t want anyone to because it is only through taking responsibility for one’s own happiness that we can really see the strength that lay within us all along.” – Alwynn

(Cover photo by Sania Ahsan)

The post It Will Get Easier – The Intense Struggles of a Parent with Childhood Trauma appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “How Our Boundaries Free Children to Play, Create, and Explore”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today I’m going to be doing something a little bit different. I’m going to be talking about some thoughts that have come to me recently based on, first of all, a success story that I received that I’m going to read here, and various comments on various things I’ve posted. I’ve been reminded of a way of perceiving our children’s behavior and our role in it that was pivotal for me as a parent and becoming a confident leader for my children.

Basically, this understanding that I want to share today is about seeing our child when they’re being demanding, when they’re repeating an unwanted behavior, challenging behavior. What’s actually going on there a lot of the time is that they are stuck. They are stuck in an uncomfortable place for them. And that’s the part that they can’t really tell us. They can only tell us that through this behavior.

So to generalize, what they need is for us to help them get unstuck. And that usually means that we are more confident in our boundary, and that we’re more welcoming of their feelings around the boundary, which are often loaded with a buildup of emotion that they have that they do need to share. And that’s part of the reason they’re pushing whatever it is or continuing whatever it is.

Then what happens is that we free them.

I just want to encourage it to those that are uncomfortable setting boundaries like I was. I was much more of a people pleaser. I didn’t want to confront and disappoint anybody and make my child upset. There are a lot of parents that lean in this direction. And it was so helpful to me to understand that my reticence wasn’t as loving as the confidence my child needed to be freed from their stuck place.

So rather than keep talking generally about this, I would like to first share this success story. Some of you maybe saw that I posted it on Facebook, and here it is:

I’m a major fan and wanted to share a parenting win I had recently, thanks to your advice. I’ve read your books, listened to every podcast, and work hard to maintain boundaries and encourage independent play.

When I bought my son Legos, I didn’t show him how to use them. And it took him a year to realize they stick together. I didn’t show him how to use blocks. I let him direct the order in which we read the pages of books, et cetera.

Recently, I bought my son his first box of crayons. He always ate them before, but he’s two and a half years old now. I made a rookie mistake. I drew a picture of an excavator with them. From that moment on, he became obsessed with me drawing pictures. Inside, he’d bring me crayons and paper and outside, he’d bring me sidewalk chalk and demand drawings of every kind of truck imaginable anytime I would sit down.

I think I made this mistake because I am an artist and felt so much guilt when I would say no. I started to realize that I just don’t want to draw excavators all the time with sidewalk chalk and that this is a boundaries issue just like anything else. So I pushed past the guilt and told my son I wouldn’t draw pictures anymore.

Of course, he had a lot of strong feelings about that. But remarkably quickly, he became engrossed in drawing on his own. It’s like I set him free. For weeks now he spends hours every day drawing with the chalk and crayons. We had to replace his 30 pack of jumbo chalks because he wore them all down to little nubs in three weeks. I was shocked to watch his lines quickly advance from scratches and dots to swirls and closed shapes, to closed shapes that he colors in, until the other day he drew a pretty accurate dump truck.

Anyway, I was so encouraged at how setting a boundary and giving my toddler back agency in his own learning was so successful and also such a relief for me. Thanks for all that you do.

So in this case the parent got caught up in something very normal and common, which is guilt. I’m prone to guilt, so I am very familiar with that. And there’s very little about our guilt that ever helps our children. What it does is make us doubt our own feelings and our own sense of what’s going on.

So she started something very innocent and normal. And it sounds like she is like I was in wanting my child to be a discoverer of things, because that is such a profound way of learning, and it’s so encouraging to children to be the discovers instead of the followers of the parent’s lead. That’s why taking this to the extreme that I did, and it sounds like this parent was kind of doing — she didn’t show him how to use Legos, she didn’t show them how to use blocks. So those are things that not everyone will choose to do. But yes, I took that approach and I found it was very empowering for my child.

But then she drew something for him. And this is the thing most parents probably would do — to get their child excited about drawing, or just share themselves with their child, or to do something fun while playing with your child. So, really normal thing to do. Then she found out something which also commonly happens, and a lot of parents bring this issue to me, especially whenever I post something about creativity in children. Their child, who may have been drawing before, won’t draw and only wants the parent to draw.

Legendary early childhood educator, Bev Bos, who died in 2016, and I had the pleasure of seeing her speak, she was adamant, “Never draw for a child,” is what she said. I know this is a controversial opinion, but her reason was that a young child can’t possibly draw the way that we do when we make a picture of something. A child sees a product that they can’t recreate or anything close to that. And besides, children are experimenters of materials. They’re not so much into drawing something for someone else, they’re into seeing what chalk does, experimenting with all the different kinds of marks it can make and what it can do. And they do that with all materials. Sometimes they can do this for years and that’s healthy. It’s a process that most of us want to encourage. So Bev Bos noted that when the adult creates something, it can make it harder for the child to want to explore those particular materials.

In this case, she says he became obsessed with me drawing pictures. So it seems like an obsession that he has to keep testing this, pushing her, pushing her that she has to do this, she has to do this. And maybe he was learning something from that about how to draw pictures, but he was also not feeling the confidence to explore himself.

Then what happened is that the parent started to feel something. And this, for all of us with any boundary we need to set, is the signal that’s going to help us recognize when we’re getting caught up in a guilt pattern, or child-pleasing pattern, or a fear of their feelings pattern. We start to feel annoyed. I don’t want to be doing this. I don’t want to be drawing for my child right now. It doesn’t feel right to us.

If you’re a people pleaser like me, you might tend to override that feeling and even feel more guilt about it. Well, I should want to play with my child. I should want to draw with my child. What’s the matter with me?

And then we keep going and our child stays stuck.

There are a lot of things as parents that we have to do to care for our child that we don’t want to do. But in a situation like this, or if your child wants you to play with them and you can’t play, or your child wants to go outside and they’re not safe to go there on their own and you don’t want to go outside with them right now. So many things come under this heading. What I would love to do is give every parent permission to listen to that voice inside them and to know that we’re not doing children any favors saying, “Okay, I’ll do it,” if we really, really don’t want to do it.

Yeah, of course, there are those off moments where our child says, “Let’s go outside,” and we do and we realize we have a great time too. That happens. But more often than not, that voice in us, that feeling in us that doesn’t want to do it, it’s a voice that at least deserves to be heard, if not abided by.

So this parent had the realization that: I just don’t want to draw excavators all the time and that this is a boundaries issue just like anything else. And wow, what a light bulb moment. I can trust my feelings as a parent. I don’t have to do things I don’t want to do that aren’t about primary care for my child. I don’t have to try to entertain and please and be uncomfortable knowing it, be bored, be annoyed.

She listened to that feeling. And she says, “I pushed past the guilt and told my son I wouldn’t draw pictures anymore.”

That’s all we have to do: say no. And when we say no, then we’ve got to hear the feelings on their side about it, which honestly are oftentimes a relief for our child because… and this is the overall point I want to make… they’re in a stuck place there. How does the child feel when they are directing a parent to do something constantly? It doesn’t feel good.

I’ve had the benefit of facilitating classes week to week with parents and their children. So I’ve been able to see and learn a great deal from the dynamic. And when a parent is not setting their limits with confidence and the child has to keep nagging, and whining, and begging and repeating, that child looks so uncomfortable. This is not a happy free explorer. What you see is a tight, controlling: I’m holding something in.  A burdened child.

That’s the stuck place that they go into. And only we in our relationship with them can free them from this — by listening to ourselves and setting the reasonable boundary. Seeing, when our child is in a pattern, that’s the help that they need. And that that is much more loving than allowing it to go on and getting stuck in our own guilt place, getting more and more annoyed. And yeah, we can even start to resent our child and it’s not the child’s fault. I mean not that it’s really our fault either, but we are the ones that have control over this and we’ve let it happen to us. Whether we resent our child or annoyed with them, that’s on us to control.

So this parents said, “Of course, he had a lot of strong feelings about that.” Yes. Finally, he’s releasing this flood of feelings he’s been holding onto as the controlling, bossy child in those moments. So yeah, this tends to be a buildup when children are holding on to control, they’re holding onto control of their feelings. That’s why it’s not a comfortable place. But if this parent is confident like she was when she got that light bulb moment, it clicked for her and she went for it with confidence. And that’s why, remarkably quickly, he released his feelings.

She said, “He became engrossed in drawing on his own. It’s like, I set him free.” She set him free. That’s absolutely what she did.

She shared some of these pictures that he’s drawing and how into it he is. He would even let his 10 month old baby brother be drawing next to him on the same large sheet of paper. That’s comfort, that’s freedom, that’s joy for a child. But it took that hard thing, for the parent to see and be brave.

I like for us to own that we’re heroic a lot of the time as parents. Every one of these moments is pretty heroic — to overcome our guilt, and our fear, and maybe shame, and doubt, to do this most loving thing.

Another thing I had posted was about encouraging independent play in toddlers. So on Instagram there are a lot of messages about it. And I know that parents struggle with this so much. What I try to do is help them to see how uncomfortable a child is when they’re holding onto the parent and trying to control them this way and how much freer and better they feel when they can be explorers, learners and creators, as young children want to be.

This parent in this success story used the term “agency.” Yes, there are books out and lots of talk about how studies show that children are growing up without a sense of agency, because the parents have worked so hard to please them, and look out for them, problem solve for them and help them avoid disappointment and failure. The insecurity that creates for young adults when they’ve been prevented from those experiences of not getting what they want, of disappointment, starting with the parent in a situation like this, they don’t feel free. It’s like they have to continue in that stuck place of dependency and control.

And we can avoid that. Actually, with the track that we start on with our infants and definitely in the toddler years, we can get on a path that completely circumvents hovering, doubting, pleasing our children. This is how to do it. Being in a relationship with them where our feelings matter, where we don’t let them get stuck, or at least not for too long in these places where they just need our confident answer and to share their feelings about it.

So, anyway, one of the comments that I was referring to earlier on Instagram was on a post about encouraging independent play in toddlers, and it was more about separating. “I have to go do something in the kitchen. I can’t keep playing with you.” And this parent wrote:

“Exactly my issue now with my three-year-old. She constantly wants me around her holding her which is difficult as she has a year-old brother. Sometimes I feel guilty not spending as much time with her brother as she always wants my attention.” And the parent put a sad face.

So here’s a rare case where a feeling of guilt could actually be helpful to this parent because it’s an indication that there’s something important to her that she’s missing. I don’t know my exact words commenting back, but I believe that I asked her what she thought her three-year-old was feeling when she, according to this parent, “Constantly wants me around her holding her.” What is that child feeling? And how did this boy feel when he was demanding his mother keep drawing for him?

It’s a stuck feeling. It’s not fun to be calling the shots with your parent and then have them catering to you, even though you know, because children do know, that they don’t want to be doing that. But they’re still doing it. So you’re not getting a clear, authentically joyful connection with your parent. You’re getting this kind of forced, “Okay. All right,” giving into you kind of response. It doesn’t feel good. And it’s not a good message for children to get that people don’t have boundaries with them, that they don’t have to respect what another person wants, that they just keep asking and badgering. The child is stuck.

This is so easy to fall into. I’m raising my hand, you can’t see me, but I’ve been here.

As I said in the beginning of this podcast, turning this on its head, the way that I’m suggesting here is what helped me turn a huge corner and feel confident in myself as a leader, feel that I was being loving, doing the hardest, most loving thing, being heroic, even when my child was strongly disagreeing. Because children can’t express this to us, they can’t express: Oh, this is not comfortable that I have to keep doing this and I’m stuck here.” They’re not even realizing it. And if they were, they couldn’t articulate it. So we’re not going to get that answer straight from them.

And that’s the tough thing about the toddler years and why we all write so much about them and podcast so much about that age, because it’s when children go from infancy, where what they put out there in terms of their requests and their communication, it’s often pretty clear. They need us to pick them up, they need to move their body because they’re really uncomfortable with digestive pain or something, they’re hungry, they’re tired.

But with toddlers, it’s not as clear. There are more layers there and they’re not always telling us on the surface what their actual need is. So we might worry that their need is to be held all the time as in the second example and paid attention to constantly, or that their need is for the parent to demonstrate art to them. But their actual need is: Please give me a boundary because I’m stuck. Please stop me. Please help me out of this stuck place that I am in with you where I’m not making you happy and I’m not making me happy.

I really hope this perspective helps.

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

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

The post How Our Boundaries Free Children to Play, Create, and Explore appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “Healing a Child’s Anger (a Powerful Success Story)”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today I am doing something a little different. I’m sharing a success story that a parent excitedly wrote to me. For those of you who are familiar with my written work, my books and my posts on my website, you know that I love to share success stories. I feel it really helps all of us to get specific examples of what these principles and responses that I recommend actually look like in practice, how parents are using them. And I’m also going to give some commentary, which I don’t often get to do so much in my written posts, bit by bit, about this experience.

Okay, so here’s the email that I received:

Hi Janet. I have a success story that I wanted to write down for myself and then thought, I should share this with Janet. It was a textbook “Janet” moment for me.

At a low point last January after my five-year-old boy hit my mom, I read No Bad Kids and it started a deep shift in our family that I’m incredibly grateful for. Thank you so much for your profound work. Since last January, I’ve read something of yours several times a week, awkwardly trying your approach. Wondering if I was doing it right, with small successes and some hopeless moments, but today it all came together. I’d love to share that story with you.

My son and I had a conflict yesterday that we didn’t quite resolve. I still felt disconnected from him this morning so after I had done some self care, a workout and felt well resourced, I saw that he was drawing by himself and I went over and sat next to him. My closeness started bringing up the feelings. “I want space. Go away.” I felt the doubt slip in. He’s asking for space. Shouldn’t I just give him space?

But then I remembered that he was pushing me away when deep down he probably wanted to be close so I stayed there quietly and just looked at him with love. His feelings started escalating, which unexpectedly made me more confident.

“Leave me alone, go over there. You never learned how to listen when you were a kid. You’re so mean.” He screamed for Dada to come save him from me. I let him scream.

He ran around the yard. I calmly followed. Then he tried to throw something at me and I held his thrashing, biting, hitting body strongly and calmly. We were really in it now. He knows just what to say to knock my confidence.

“You’re hurting my wrist.”

Me: am I hurting him?

“I’m hot.”

Me: is this cruel?

“I need space.”

Me: I’ve taught them to ask for space and now I’m not giving it to him.

“You’re not listening to me.”

Me: am I supposed to listen to him like this?

This time I realized that’s what was happening and I leaned in, instead of backing off. I held him as lightly as possible, but was quick and ready to keep our bodies safe, and carried on. I felt so clear about what was happening. I trusted what was happening.

The next layer came up.  “I don’t like any of the Christmas presents you gave me. I only love Dada and not you. I want to kill you. I’m going to tell Dada to chop your head off with an ax. I hate you.”

I felt some of my own sadness well up and just allowed it. My eyes brimmed with tears. He made gagging noises and said he couldn’t breathe. I trusted all of it and just let it flow.

Up to this point I had said very little. “I’m going to stay close to you. I’m going to keep our bodies safe. I’m right here. I love you.” But here I added, “I know this is so uncomfortable. I’m so proud of you.” I felt inspired by the deep work he was doing, allowing all of those really scary feelings to come up. That’s hard for me as an adult to do and here was my now six year old, really going for it. Wow. Now I felt like his cheerleader.

Then the intensity just passed. He tied my shoelace in knots, which felt like an acceptable and shifting expression of wanting to hurt me. I rubbed his back a bit. He was able to make eye contact with me. His eyes were big, soft pools. I told him I loved him. And he said, “I love you too, kind of.” A couple more minutes and then he was in my lap. I was kissing his face and neck and we excitedly set off to go draw monster trucks together.

I know we have a lot more of this to do together, but now I don’t feel scared of it. I often brace myself for these sessions, but today I felt in my body what it feels like to welcome the messy and uncomfortable feelings. To trust that they are good, that he is good and that this is what really deep emotional healing looks like.

P.S. In our family, we call this rush of feelings a wave because that’s kind of what the energy feels like it’s doing, an ocean wave crashing to the shore. I love that it doesn’t have a negative association. I’m in a wave, you’re in a wave. It feels neutral.

Thanks again, for all your clear wisdom. It’s fun for me to be able to share how much it’s affecting our little family.

When I reached out to this parent to thank her for sharing her story with me and would she mind if I shared it in a podcast, while saying yes, she sent me another little addition:

I’ve gotten so much from others sharing their nitty gritty stories on your site. I hope my own learning will help others. One thing to add, we had a really great day and before dinner, he came upstairs from playing with his brother and said, “Mama, is there anything I can help with?” I literally melted. I looked at him and just said, “I love you so much.” Thanks again.

I just now realized she mentioned a brother in that part, and I’d kind of thought there must be some challenge that this boy has in his life besides the regular six year old challenges. But now this makes even more sense that he’s dealing with a brother as well.

Okay, so again, I want to thank this parent for sharing and also to congratulate her for this incredibly challenging work that she’s doing. Shifting our approach is no small thing. Changing these patterns that are maybe ingrained in us and then have developed with our children as well is so difficult and so brave. I hope that this parent is very, very good to herself and congratulates herself for every success and every time that she’s able to stay regulated when her child is not. And it does get harder the older a child is, not because it’s harder for our child to adjust, but for us it’s much harder because, again, we’ve developed these patterns — the way that we see our child and their behavior and the way that we react or respond. Shifting our adult brains to seeing it differently and, therefore, feeling differently about it and responding differently, it takes enormous commitment.

The other part that’s harder is that children are expressing their feelings in ways as they get older that are much harder not to take personally. For example, when he says these very scary things about hurting her. It is so hard not to be ignited by that.

Let’s look at what she did here. She said they’d had a conflict that wasn’t quite resolved. Her son, a lot of feelings were stirred up in him. And it sounds like that he’s been kind of on and off in this dysregulated place. Maybe not being able to clear his feelings all the way. And she realized that, so she decided to connect and see if there was some repair work she could do there.

And sure enough, he started right away. “I want space. Go away.”

Now, how hard is it not to say to a child this age or any age, “Okay, I’ll go away. I’ll give you privacy”? How hard is it not to see it that way? And it sounds like this parent did have that impulse at first and then realized, no, this is something he wants to express to me — that he’s angry.

She says, “I felt the doubt slip in.” Oh no. He’s asking for space. Shouldn’t I just give him space?

But then she remembered that “deep down he probably wanted to be close.” Yeah, seeing beyond what we’re getting on the surface, that’s part of the challenge. And that happens with much younger children as well, that they will say, “I just want this thing,” but they are in this aroused state, or about to be, and we naturally think, well, if I give them this thing, that’s going to help. So we try to make it work for them. And then it doesn’t help and actually makes it worse, and now they’re asking for something else or continuing on. And at that point, one of the challenges is… it becomes harder for us to stay regulated when: well I got it for him and he’s still doing this! And the reasonable thing is:  Well, that’s not fair! That’s not right.

It’s normal for us to feel those things. That’s why this perspective takes so much practice. And as this parent has found, she needed to feel it. She says, “I felt in my body what it feels like to welcome the messy and uncomfortable feelings. To trust that they’re good, that he is good and that this is what really deep emotional healing looks like.” Yes. That trust and the perspective on what’s going on here is what carries us through.

She stays. She saw his feelings escalate and that unexpectedly made her feel more confident because she felt, yes, there’s a dam that needs to break here. Or as she puts it, “A wave.” There’s a wave coming on here. And now I see it’s starting to crest and yes, okay I can trust this.

It can be easier when it’s clearer to us that our child is in a state of dysregulation. It can feel clearer to us than when a child is just saying, “I don’t like this and go away,” and they seem more rational. She saw that the wave was gathering. That helped her to trust.

And then he’s, again, pushing her away: “Leave me alone, go over there.” He says, “You never learned how to listen when you were a kid. You’re so mean.” These are things maybe that she had said to him in the past. I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter, but he’s throwing them back at her, lashing out, throwing his hurt out at her. And again, to not take this personally — very challenging.

He screamed for his dad to come save him from her. That’s something that happens a lot where the child will say, “No, I need this other person.” And for that parent to hold strong, not take it personally, not have all their insecurities pop up… Oh gosh, he likes him better and he doesn’t love me. All of those voices have to be overridden with this trust. Trust in the feelings and the healing that happens when feelings are expressed.

I hear a lot from parents who — their child seems to have a preference and it is so hard for that parent who is the not preferred parent in that moment to stay strong and trust that this isn’t personal. He doesn’t mean this. He’s expressing himself in this moment. Feelings are not facts.

And also maybe sometimes the other parent hears and wants to come and rescue. And of course we can’t ideally allow that to happen, because then the child may seem to be getting what they want on the surface level, but this is not what they really want and really need.

In a podcast that my daughters recently did together for Unruffled, they were talking about feelings and my daughter had an interesting description I hadn’t quite heard. She notices that even with adults, that adults have their version of a tantrum. And that when adults are in these spaces, she’s noticed that it’s as if they’re in a blackout. And she said, “You can’t believe anything they say.” And she’s learned that these moments just need to pass for that person.

That’s accurate. We can’t take to heart what our children are saying in these moments where they’re raging or having a tantrum. They’re in the wave.

She says she let him the scream, even though he was screaming for his father to save him. He ran around, she calmly followed. And then he tried to throw something, so she held his body. And then I thought it was great that she knew just sort of when to back off and still be containing his behavior without restraining him (I don’t recommend that). It sounds like she was just trying to keep him safe and let him know that she was there for him. Showing him she was there for him as the safe person that he can express with.

This is when we have to put on our therapist hat with our children. And as I’ve said, it’s not an active working on, making something happen. It’s a trusting, allowing, accepting, letting pass the wave.

We don’t want to be riding the wave with our child. If we’re riding the wave, we are going to be exhausted because children, especially young children have a lot of waves of emotion. They need to pass through them. But if we’re on them as well, we’re not going to make it through the day without losing our temper or being reactive. But if we are witnessing it, letting the wave pass and trusting that it will pass, that’s the best that we can do for our child to allow for the healing.

So then, and this part is really, really hard when he says, “You’re hurting my wrist. You’re hurting me. I’m hot. I need space.” I’ve had to work with other parents whose children were doing these things and I was the one sort of helping contain them in their emotion. And it is very hard when children start saying, “I’m thirsty, I’m this, I’m that.” Or if they say, “I need to hug right now!” But you can see that your child is not in a place to accept that hug. That if you did try, they would be beating up against you. Or just kind of lashing out with the things that this mother said so well, she said, “He knows just what to say, to knock my confidence.” Right. Children have been figuring this out from day one where our vulnerabilities are. This is just learning and intelligence, this high awareness that young children have.

So they are reading us all along and they do know just what to say. And in these moments, they will impulsively lash out and check out all the places where they feel we might cave. And I guess it’s a way to really share your feeling of hurt is to kind of hurt someone else. But again, they don’t mean it personally. They can’t help themselves. This just has to pass.

I love the way she shares all her doubts. Am I hurting him? Oh, am I being cruel? Those come up for me still every single time when I’m working with children, especially because I’m worried that the parent is feeling all these things as well. It’s still always amazes me when I realize repeatedly that trusting and allowing it to pass is the right thing to do, is the perfect thing to do, is the healing thing to do.

Then says the next layer came up. He didn’t like any Christmas presents. Here’s another thing: my child’s entitled. I tried so hard to get the perfect presents. He’s again, lashing out in those vulnerable places. “I only love Dada and not you. I want to kill you.” Wow. He’s really escalating this. And maybe in the past, this parent did the normal thing and reacted to some of these types of statements, taking them personally or being alarmed. That’s why they’re coming up again. He senses that these are weapons that are an effective way for him to share the depth of his feeling. Does he really mean these things? Absolutely not. I say that with confidence. Absolutely not. And wonderfully, this parent realizes this as well. She said, “I trusted all of it and just let it flow.” Man.

And then she told him, “I know this is so uncomfortable and I am so proud of you.”

Wow. The high place in herself that this parent went to trust and be that big, big person for her child. That’s what children need.

And when we see this way, of course, we’re never going to be happy that our child was upset, but there is a rewarding feeling to being able to rise above as this parent did. She really did. And then it just passed.

Then he did this thing of tying our shoelaces in knots, which she insightfully says, “Felt like an acceptable and shifting expression of wanting to hurt me.” Yeah. “I rubbed his back a bit.”

And then he said, “I love you too, kind of” when she said she loved him. That sounds so six years old. He doesn’t want to give her too much.

“A couple more minutes and then he was in my lap and I was kissing his face and neck.” And then they excitedly went off to play together.

Again, I’m overjoyed that this parent and child are confidently on their way to full healing in their relationship. And it’s believing in our child, to trust that they are good and that he is good. Believing in ourselves in our role as parents high above. Not getting sucked in or trying to stop what needs to happen.

So kudos to this mom and anyone else who’s on this lifelong journey that I’m still on, to not take people’s feelings personally. To understand that they belong to them. And taking a big step forward in a healing journey for both of them. I really hope this helps and inspires you as it did me.

I share more on all of these topics in the No Bad Kids Master Course!  I created this course to finally give you all the tools and perspective you need to not only understand and respond effectively to your children’s behavior but also build positive, respectful, relationships with them for life! Check out all the details at nobadkidscourse.com.

And by the way, if my podcasts are helpful to you, you can help the podcast continue by giving it a positive review on iTunes. So grateful to all of you for listening! And please check out some of the other podcasts on my website, JanetLansbury.com. They’re all indexed by subject and category, so you should be able to find whatever topic you might be interested in.

And both of my books are available on audio, please check them out. Elevating Child Care, A Guide To Respectful Parenting and No Bad Kids, Toddler Discipline Without Shame. You can even get them for free from Audible by following the link in the liner notes of this podcast, or you can go to the books section of my website and find them there. You can also get them in paperback at Amazon, and in ebook at Amazon, Barnes And Noble, and apple.com.

Thanks again for listening. We can do this.

The post Healing a Child’s Anger (a Powerful Success Story) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Part of the challenge is that we adults have developed emotional self-regulation and mostly live in our reasonable minds. Young children are quite different. For them, emotions are more free-flowing and turbulent. They brim to the surface easily, and kids just haven’t yet developed the power to prevent overflow. Unreasonable, senseless, fervent losses of control that would be rare in adults can be a daily occurrence for toddlers and preschoolers.

And in these cases, spilling emotions to a safe, accepting parent is exactly what kids need to do. Far from an indication that we’re failing, our children’s outbursts are an opportunity for us to practice rising to the occasion with courage and trust — breathing, calming ourselves, remembering that the feelings are our friends and not enemies, not a problem but often the cure. Because when children can fully express every one of their emotions in the presence of a calm parent, stress is relieved. The feelings are no longer in the driver’s seat dictating irrational behavior and our child’s overall mood.

It gets easier with experience to trust our kids’ feelings. We begin to recognize that their outbursts are not only the very best they can do in that moment, but necessary healing. Still, it’s never easy. How could it be easy to let our child suffer? How could it be easy not to take these outbursts personally when we work so hard to make things right for our children? We give our kids our all, and their meltdowns seem so unreasonable… because they are.

The practice of allowing feelings and even encouraging them (a parent once told me it helped her when I took it to that level), is a cornerstone of Magda Gerber’s approach. Authenticity and emotional health are greatly valued, and this acceptance piece was one many of us missed growing up. Perhaps we were shamed, rejected or otherwise encouraged to squelch unpleasant feelings. We were expected to move on from them almost immediately, as if that could make them disappear, but that wasn’t possible. Instead we hid them from view. Of course, their residue remained, internalized, and manifested in various degrees of shame and self-doubt.

“Let feelings be” is the underlying message in nearly every piece of writing or podcast I share, because I know how scary and challenging this is for parents. It’s tricky to grasp. We need reminders, practical examples, and practice. So I was thrilled to discover that a recent podcast, “Meltdowns at Bedtime (or Anytime)” seemed to click for many. Several parents shared success stories with me, and I appreciate them all!

Here’s the story that Geneva kindly shared. She nails it when she notes:  “It really is hard to wrap your head around it until you see it in action.”

Your perspective has been critical in helping me continuously re-center my parenting compass, particularly over the past several months. While I’ve had many successful moments that have been guided by your wisdom (amidst a sea of not so great moments), I wanted to share one specific story.

A few weeks ago, I listened to an episode of your podcast in which a mother was struggling with her daughter’s pre-bedtime “meltdown” ritual. While I had never struggled with that particular issue, my passionate four-year-old has frequent meltdowns, so I listened intently to your advice to use in similar scenarios.

Well, fast-forward to last night and tonight: my daughter suddenly developed the same nighttime ritual. After all elements of her bedtime routine were complete and it was time to turn out the light, she identified a reason to be upset (something small that would usually be inconsequential) and worked into a meltdown.

Tonight, I could feel my impatience growing along with my urge to threaten to leave the room. Instead, I remembered your response on the podcast.  I thought about my own busy day and how I, like you said, could probably use a good cry myself. I didn’t say a word but lay in her bed while she cried and writhed around (continually suppressing my urge to leave in frustration) and suddenly, just when I was starting to think maybe I should intervene, she stopped crying, crawled next to me, said “good night mommy” and was asleep within 5 minutes.

My heart felt so full. Thank you!

When I contacted Geneva to thank her for her story, she offered an update:

My success with that one nighttime meltdown has made it much easier for me to handle subsequent meltdowns (at any time of day). Now I truly respect her need to have a meltdown and my accepting stance leads to a much faster de-escalation! I’m sure you tell people this all the time, but it really is hard to wrap your head around it until you see it in action.

Thank you, again, for your wisdom. I hope you and your family are safe and well.

Best,
Geneva

Thank you for allowing me to share your story and lovely photos, Geneva!

The post The Blessing of a Meltdown appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

It can feel safer to swallow up our own needs and wants to avoid making waves, even though this invariably means we’re the ones left drowning in a sea of resentment, anger, self-pity.

At some point, if we’re lucky enough to recognize this demoralizing pattern, we might come to the realization that there’s nothing helpful, noble or loving about permissiveness. And with that comes the revelation that our children not only need the boundaries we offer them, they actually crave them.  And sometimes, sometimes our kids will even be so wise as to let us know. If you get even a faint whisper of this message, grab it and use it to fortify your heart forever for all the many moments you’ll feel reticent, uneasy, tentative, doubtful, torn, or afraid to stop your child and say some version of no when yes feels so much easier.

To children, our boundaries mean we see you, we love you, we care enough to make the effort, an effort that children always sense and appreciate. Never doubt that.

Here are stories from two parents who were surprised and moved by the sentiments their children expressed in response to their respectful boundaries:

Hi Janet,

I am a professional animal trainer in a world-class zoo and have spent my career developing confident, respectful relationships with animals, carefully planning, setting myself up to succeed and using primarily positive reinforcement to generate some amazing outcomes.  Many of the species I work with can literally kill me (gorillas, chimpanzees, giraffe for example), so without respect and mutual cooperation I have nothing.

I felt quite confident when I was pregnant with my first child- surely my training would help me be the mother I had always hoped to be?  Turns out that the juvenile human, especially during the toddler years, had me stumped.  4 years and 3 kids later life is not what I expected.  I was constantly frazzled, irritated and angry, my kids wouldn’t follow my instructions, had frequent meltdowns, and I was no longer enjoying their company.  Each day was about surviving rather than thriving. This was especially the case with my beautifully extroverted and confident, very strong willed 2.75 year old.  The other day I used a technique that you teach, and it worked so well that I had to share it with you.

My son was playing in the front yard when he picked up a stick and walked over to my car and lightly touched it.  I said to him from the porch, “Please don’t touch the car with the stick, it might scratch it”.  He continued his behavior.  I walked over and knelt down next to him: “I won’t let you touch the car with the stick, you can put it on the grass or give it to me”.  He motioned back towards the car. “I can see that you are having a hard time putting the stick down, I’m going to take it from you”.  There was momentary resistance, but about 5 seconds later he said, “Thank you for packing away my stick, Mummy.”  I couldn’t believe it- he thanked me for the discipline!!!  I realized that by gently taking control I relieved him of an impossible decision.  He knew what was expected of him and didn’t want to get ‘in trouble’ (as would have previously happened), but the stick was new, exciting and had value to him. His 2yo mind lacked the will power to put it down.  He needed me to gently take control in order for him to save face.  To be able to resolve situations like this so smoothly with confidence and respect is liberating.

Thank you so much!!!

Emma

Dear Janet,

First of all I want to thank you for the peace and love you have brought to our home. After beginning your methods our lives are so much sweeter, and I mostly go to bed free of the mom guilt that plagued me before I read your books.

I just wanted to share a little story with you.

I had read some of your blogs when my first was a baby, and implemented a lot of it, but when I had my second things kind of flew out the window. Bedtime became a struggle. My son started climbing out of his crib, and I would either physically stop him or get frustrated and put him back in. We tried a bed, but he begged for his crib, craving the security of the bars. This became a nightly struggle in which I was visibly upset. I stumbled upon your post about boundaries, and the next night I tried my hardest to stay calm and simply tell him, “I won’t let you climb out,” while creating a physical boundary. To my shock, he stayed in!

We did this for several more weeks with me keeping the physical boundary, but one night I was changing the baby on the bed next to his crib. He started to climb out when I wasn’t looking, but then he stopped. Gently, he said “Mama?” and pretended to start climbing out. I smiled and said, “I won’t let you do that,” and back in he went. Now every night, pleased with the safety of his boundaries, he swings one foot over and stops to look at me. I tell him I won’t let him, we have a giggle, and I wonder how we got to this beautiful point.

Just wanted to reiterate what you’ve said a million times that became so true for me: children need boundaries, they crave them, and it gives them joy to know you will deliver them.

Thank you again from the bottom of my heart.

Kate

“Lack of discipline is not kindness, it is neglect.” – Magda Gerber

In Confessions of a Pushover Parent I describe my own journey to understanding that boundaries = love. And I share much more in No Bad Kids: Toddler Discipline Without Shame. 

Thank you to Kate and Emma for allowing me to share your wonderful stories and photos! (Cover photo from Kate!)

The post Our Children Crave Boundaries – Permissiveness is Unkind appeared first on Janet Lansbury.