Transcript of “My Child Refuses Independent Play”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

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

Here’s the email I received:

Hi, Janet-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We can do this.

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

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

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

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

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

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

I wrote back:

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

And she wrote back:

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

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

So I wrote back:

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

And she said:

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

And I said:

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

And she wrote back:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And I replied:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And here’s what I responded:

Yes to this, well done!

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

I added:

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

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

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

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

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

Transcript of “Every Child, Even a Tiny Baby, Deserves Time On Their Own (with Hari Grebler)”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today it’s my great pleasure to host my very first parenting teacher and mentor, Hari Grebler. Hari’s parent-infant class, there’s no other way to say it, it changed my life. Gave me a whole new way of seeing, brand new direction, that eventually led me to train with Magda Gerber and find my passion in life, which is sharing this approach that’s made parenting so much richer and enjoyable than I could have ever imagined.

Hari studied with Magda many years before I did, and she still shares her wisdom and her encouragement about listening to and trusting our babies in her parent-infant classes. But recently she began sharing more online, on Facebook and on her Instagram page, Hari’s RIE Studio. For those who haven’t heard me mention this, RIE stands for Resources for Infant Educarers, which is the nonprofit educational organization Magda Gerber founded in 1978.

I’ve asked Hari to share with us today about a core element of Magda’s approach: developing safe play spaces for our babies and toddlers that help us to encourage their play beginning as early as possible. You’ve heard me refer to these as “yes spaces.” And first we’re going to discuss why nurturing play, beginning even at birth, matters to our children and to us. No one understands and can explain this better than Hari.

Hi, Hari.

Hari Grebler: Hi, Janet.

Janet Lansbury: This is such a treat getting to speak with you. As I introduced you, you didn’t hear that part, but you were my introduction to my passion in life. I can’t imagine why it’s taken me so long to have you on the podcast because wow, you are such a wealth of information and inspiration to me, to so many people that you’ve mentored. And thank you, I want to start by saying that.

And I love the work that you’re doing on your Instagram page, which really stands out to me. I mean, it’s interesting, you don’t have a lot of followers yet, but you are the one that’s out there saying really important, unique things. And I don’t find that on a lot of the biggest pages, there’s a sameness. And you are coming in very boldly with this perspective that I think is much needed. So I want to encourage everybody to follow you. And just, thank you. I have loved the content that you’re putting out there and the ideas that you’re sharing.

Hari Grebler: Thank you so much. That’s really sweet. I wanted to say when you were saying that about being bold, I mean, look who our teacher was.

Janet Lansbury: Magda Gerber.

Hari Grebler: So she was very bold.

Janet Lansbury: She was.

Hari Grebler: She said what she thought and we could say what we thought as well.

Janet Lansbury: Right. And she was kind.

Hari Grebler: Yes, she was.

Janet Lansbury: She wasn’t trying to be bold, but she just was because she was fearless.

Hari Grebler: And she really believed. She was the ultimate baby defender. My friends call me that sometimes. They’re like, “Uhoh, watch out! Here comes the baby defender.” Probably happens to you too.

Janet Lansbury: Yeah, but you don’t do it defensively. You do it with such love for babies and care for the people that are taking care of them. Just like with Magda, it’s not that you’re trying to be controversial or abrasive. You’re just saying these truths that people don’t understand, and that will make our lives so much easier as parents when we do understand and embrace some of this perspective.

What I want to talk to you about today is creating a safe space for our children to play in safely and freely, without interruption if possible. And all the benefits of it and how we start this from the time that children are just a few weeks old, that we start creating this space and cultivating this time for them. Do you want to talk about some of the reasons it’s important?

Hari Grebler: I want to say this: When I had my first child, I noticed how much that he played from the very beginning, like in the hospital. And I remember saying that to a friend, a mom, and she said, “God, I never thought to put them down. I wouldn’t have even known if they wanted to play because I never put them down. I didn’t know I could.”

Janet Lansbury: And how did you recognize this? This was before you were introduced to Magda?

Hari Grebler: No, I taught for years and years and years before I had my own children.

Janet Lansbury: That’s right, I forgot that you taught long before you had your own children. Because if we don’t know that’s possible, how are we going to notice it, right? We’re not. I didn’t notice it until I started taking your class and then working with Magda and realizing. Well, actually, I realized the very first time I went to your class with my baby who was three months that, wow, there is so much going on there that I wasn’t giving any space to or allowing to happen with my daughter. With her thoughts, with her interests, her deciding what activities she wanted to do, which were just basically lying there and looking around on her back. But how we don’t know that, right?

Hari Grebler: I mean, I learned and studied. And I think when people come to my class, I just have to remind them that there’s no way they could have known this, because it is so counterculture. What Magda did and what Dr. Pikler did, it just really goes against the grain. So no one should feel like, Oh, I should have known that. Well, why didn’t I see that? Oh, a good mom does this. It’s not true. And I feel like what’s great about our classes is that we talk about not moving into automatic, not just doing what they’re doing and what was done to us and what we see everybody do with babies. That’s what people do, we just kind of do what we see everybody else doing. So I think RIE really helps you step back and notice. And how do you notice? Creating the safe space from the start is what helps you notice.

And also having the permission to put your baby down in a safe, cozy place. And there’s a progression. We don’t put an infant on the floor to play. There’s a progression to that. First, a cozy bassinet where they could play. And then they can move to a crib when they get too big for that. And then after the crib, that’s going to be around three and four months, and they can move to the floor, to a safe space that you create. It starts right from the beginning that we have to start a rhythm.

And that’s the other thing, babies that have grown up this way have this inner life. They discover what they love, they discover themselves, they discover their bodies, like their hand, What can I do with it? And that’s a really big deal, I think.

And I never can explain in my classes how my kids have always, how they wake up and go play, and I’m still asleep. And people sort of think I’m just lucky, but I’m not. I worked hard at that. And you probably had that too. And to this day, my kids are teenagers, they want their time by themselves in the mornings or whenever. The oldest one wants it all the time.

Janet Lansbury: And it’s such a strength to have that capacity for being with yourself, tuning in to who you are. Interestingly, I am also reading a book by Sherry Turkle called Reclaiming Conversation. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it. It’s about technology and how that’s affected children growing up with empathy. And the part that I’m reading is all about nurturing our children’s capacity for solitude. She says this “is one of the most important tasks of childhood, every childhood. It’s the capacity for solitude that allows you to reach out to others and see them as separate and independent. You don’t need them to be anything other than who they are. This means you can listen to them and hear what they have to say. This makes the capacity for solitude essential to the development of empathy.” I really thought that was interesting.

Hari Grebler: I love that, I want to read that.

Janet Lansbury: It’s really worthwhile so far, and this is only the first section. “Solitude is where we learn to trust our imaginations,” she says. “When we let our minds wander, we set our brains free.” And interestingly also, she said, “today young people become anxious if they are alone without a device. They are likely to say they are bored. From the youngest ages they have been diverted by structured play and the shiny objects of digital culture.” So there’s that element to what she’s sharing.

Hari Grebler: Yeah, the bored part, I take issue with all these posts about boredom. So many of them show, like, a field or a lake. Why don’t we just let kids be bored? But we’ve created it. The adults are annoyed by it, right? But we’ve totally created it. It’s just like giving a kid a pacifier and then deciding that, Well, now you don’t have it anymore and I just take it away. And I don’t consider your emotional state, let’s say.

Janet Lansbury: Right, and the dependency, yeah.

Hari Grebler: The boredom thing is all about this… And then it also is about devices later. But before that, even. It starts so early where they don’t have a safe space. The child’s always getting interrupted, let’s say. No, you can’t do that. And no, you can’t do that. They have to move them away. So they can’t really get involved, it’s hard.

Janet Lansbury: Right. Or, Let me stimulate you, like I thought I was supposed to do with my baby. Because again, we don’t know that they can do anything on their own. We don’t know they’re capable of anything.

Hari Grebler: Right. And the stimulation is either talking to them constantly or showing them things or going places. And even going places, to activities, from really early ages. Sometimes people call me and I’m like, I used to have this question on one of my forms a long time ago. And I’d ask them, “Do you take any other classes?” And some of them, at eight months old, were in five classes. And I just said, “Could you wait and take my class when you don’t have so many classes?” So kids, they don’t have a chance to play free and safely, and they have a lot of activities. And then one day they wake up and they’re saying, “What are we doing today?” And it annoys everybody. “I’m bored. I’m bored.” Because they’ve gone to all these classes that have activities, not just gone and played outside or gone to the park to play, right? But they’ve gone places where there’s everything there and like you said, stimulation.

Janet Lansbury: And they’re just reacting and responding to it instead of creating it. Yeah.

Hari Grebler: It’s not fair to the kid. And also there’s a lot of kids that don’t have a yard. A lot of kids can’t go outside and all that. And I think that’s another reason why it’s crucial to set up a really great space for them to have for themselves. Some kind of playroom or playspace, if you have the space.

Janet Lansbury: Absolutely. And something interesting about this too is this idea of tuning into yourself and being with yourself and comfort with yourself. Studies show, and Magda knew this a long time ago, that it’s nurtured by not just leaving your child alone. It’s not about being alone, solitude could be with people. But it’s being allowed to be in yourself, in your own thoughts. And that it’s actually nurtured through this relationship of just what Magda said, the “wants nothing quality time.” Where I’m with you in your play space, and I am just observing, learning all this stuff about you and discovering you. And you’re knowing that you can flex your imagination and be yourself completely, with not losing my attention, with not losing me, my presence. And that’s actually how you nurture it, and that’s how it’s different than loneliness. Healthy solitude is a feeling of joy.

Hari Grebler: And the adult witnessing their babies playing independently can bring so much joy to the adult. And the knowledge of what their child likes, how long they play, are they tired. The other thing is you’re going to know their cry, you’re going to know what that means. And a lot of parents that I talk to, they don’t know that. And I feel like one of the ways to get to know your baby is exactly what we’re talking about, is creating this space. And where we coexist in that space or beside or close by or we have things to do. And sometimes we’re there, really just focused on them. But sometimes we’re just in that same area, let’s say. I mean, I remember as a parent, I’m doing some things, sometimes I would bring laundry in. Sometimes I was also getting things done, and there were times where I was just sitting.

But the simplicity of it is that you get to see so many signs, like when are they tired? And you don’t have to wait until they’re yawning and rubbing their eyes. After a while, you actually really know that they’re tired. They’re playing, playing, playing, and all of a sudden things aren’t just going their way so perfectly, right? Because people are looking more for that physical sign, a yawn or like I said, rubbing the eyes. But it’ll be more subtle. Did you experience that too?

Janet Lansbury: Yes. Because I didn’t like what you said about we don’t understand their cries. That was totally me with Charlotte, my first baby, that I brought to your class. That was another area where I felt, I am a terrible parent because I don’t know what these cries are. All I know is that I want them to stop right now, immediately, and they’re ear-splitting and they’re making me feel terrible. So it was very much my problem. Her feelings were my problem to fix, instead of really something that I could learn about her. And so it took actually a lot of time, because she was my first, it took time in your classes and learning about Magda’s work to be able to calm myself enough to start to see and discern.

But it was helped along by being able to observe her with all these other subtle things she was doing in your class, and see that she had thoughts, that she was nuanced, that she wasn’t just this one-note, simplified being. That she had all these levels and different things going on with her that were fascinating. So it’s about seeing them as this full human being, a person that’s not just a needy thing that we have to fix.

Hari Grebler: And I like what you said. You say, calm yourself, and I always say, get quiet inside. For me, automatically, just being with the babies, I just empty out. I don’t know, it’s just a thing. It’s always happened for me. I’m just right there, right present. I think that’s partly why I do what I do.

Janet Lansbury: I think it’s a practice though, that you, probably, because I do that too now.

Hari Grebler: Yeah, but I did that. I was always like, it just helped me. Well, before I started teaching, I taught nursery school, so I already had this experience with kids. And that’s what I loved about it, I always felt very present because you know me— personally, I’m not that quiet, I’m not that calm. I’m pretty impatient, I’m pretty hotheaded. Right?

Janet Lansbury: I guess. You’re not a picture of serene, no.

Hari Grebler: No. And nor was Magda. It just wasn’t like that. I mean, we are who we are, and that’s fine. And my kids know me, they do. But when they’re little babies, it’s so important to set ourselves aside, to quiet ourselves down. And like you said, calm ourselves. It really is. Or we won’t know anything about them otherwise.

Janet Lansbury: And we’ll get stuck doing a bunch of things that aren’t helping.

Hari Grebler: And nobody feels good. They’re just going through the motions. I had a funny experience with my son. I noticed he would suck two fingers on one hand and then two fingers on the other hand. Same two fingers, but some right, some left. And one day he sucked, I don’t know, it was either the right or the left, and I thought, Oh, he’s tired and I’m going to nurse him. Because he’s going to go to sleep and he might get hungry. It’s not really his nursing time, but I’m just going to do that. So I went into the bedroom, went to nurse him, and he moved off, pulled off and put his other hands in his mouth and leaned back to go into the crib.

Janet Lansbury: Wow.

Hari Grebler: And then he went to bed. And I called my mom and said, Is that even possible? And he did that a lot. And it really taught me, I can’t work on automatic. I used to call him the all-knowing head, you know what I mean?

Janet Lansbury: Yes.

Hari Grebler: Because he can’t move his limbs so much, but he could go, like, Get me in the crib! with his head. He did. So bizarre. Anyway.

Janet Lansbury: Wow. And that was something unique to him, that your daughter—

Hari Grebler: Oh, yeah. She did not do that.

Janet Lansbury: Your daughter didn’t do the exact same thing.

Hari Grebler: Yeah, she did other things. Yeah, they were totally night and day. But I got to witness that because of what I learned and how I could be in that moment and how he became more important, at times in the day, than me.

Janet Lansbury: Yeah. I would notice with my second that, when you were saying they get tired in the play space, that’s normal. And they start to whine a little or fuss and tell you that they’re tired or they’re just showing you those signs, those early signs, which hopefully we get, like they’re kind of spacing out all of a sudden or whatever. But what Madeline would do was fall asleep in the play space, if I didn’t catch it very, very early. Especially if it was at my little outdoor play space that I had, she would fall asleep. But it just looked so blissful to me.

Hari Grebler: Heaven.

Janet Lansbury: It was like falling asleep on the beach when you’re lying out, having a good time, and you just fall asleep.

And so I tried to take a movie of her going to sleep because she would do it also in her bassinet. She would turn her head sort of from side to side. She was not expressing any discomfort, but to my previous lens, it would’ve looked like, I better put her to sleep now. She’s turning her head, and maybe that’s not good for her, or something. But she was calming herself. And I tried to get it on video, and every single time I tried, she would outlast the battery of the video in how long she went. She would just keep going. And again, she wasn’t stressed out at all or showing anything like that, but it just would take her longer. And I finally thought, okay, this is too private a moment. I’m not supposed to capture this, so forget it. I’m just not going to try. Because she would always outlast me in her process.

Hari Grebler: I love that because that’s what they want to do: enjoy their process, if we could just give them opportunities. And I feel like that gets so misconstrued out there. I did an Instagram about it and I said, what if we did give them these little micro-opportunities to fall asleep when they were ready? To play first, but not meaning that we have to let them cry or be alone.

Janet Lansbury: Right. You’re opening up space for what they actually want to do.

Hari Grebler: Yeah. What they can do. Can I give you one example of that?

Janet Lansbury: Yes, please. Because I honestly think that all of this has to do with the play space. Learning to observe and just allow our child to be who they are and how that helps everything. It helps their sleep, it helps their learning for sure. It helps their imagination, helps them develop this sense of self and ability to be alone with themselves and all of those things. So this is just another thing, but yeah, tell the story.

Hari Grebler: So when we came home with our baby, I thought to myself, wow, our baby, he’s heard Shlomo and I talking all these nine months. They hear you, we talk so much. And I thought, let’s put him in the bassinet. And we did, we put him in the bassinet. And then I invited Shlomo, here’s a chair, and I laid on the bed, and we just chatted. And within the chatting, he just sort of played. And then he got tired and fell asleep. And I didn’t do it to make him sleep or to get him tired or anything like that, but I just thought we could just be together like this. He could be there, we could be here, he can hear us. And then I feel like from that moment, he loved to play with that around him, us talking or people in the room, but not focused on him. I don’t know if you remember falling asleep in the car and people are still talking, when you’re little.

Janet Lansbury: Oh yes, I used to love that. Or in the house just relaxing and sleeping and you hear the voices. Or my parents would be having a party, a gathering, and you’re kind of like, Ahhh.

Hari Grebler: Exactly. And I call it a micro-moment. There could be so many of those because it’s a process. It’s not like, “Oh, does your baby sleep through the night?” No, it’s not that. It’s discovering what it is together and not alone.

Janet Lansbury: And being open. Being open to your baby’s abilities that they’re showing you, not what you’re trying to make them do.

Hari Grebler: Yeah. I feel like so many things have gotten, they took the fun and the beauty out of them. So sleep is a sound machine, a blackout curtain. It’s at a certain time, a certain way, or it’s being held or being wrapped. Even that, right? Even both extremes are still these automatics, to me. And all I’m asking is, just give a little micro-moment in between these things. And Magda didn’t really talk about that. It was something I sort of discovered, just about us talking and him being there and feeling comforted by our voices and our presence. But it doesn’t also mean that I have to be holding him all the time for him to feel secure.

Janet Lansbury: Right.

Hari Grebler: Hearing the sounds of the home is comforting. That’s what I’m saying about taking the beauty out of sleep. Let’s make it so quiet. Let’s put this sound on. Let’s make it so dark. Wrap them this way. Let’s wrap them that way.

Janet Lansbury: Right, it’s a totally adult-directed process that’s just a chore. It’s just another chore that we have to do in the day.

Hari Grebler: And they can watch me wash the dishes from their bed. They can hear us talking. They can hear a party or whatever it is. So anyway, that’s just my little rant, my micro-rant.

Janet Lansbury: Well, I wrote down here something that you said about observation. Well, first of all, I love this comment that you make, I guess it’s one of your central quotes that’s very Hari and I love it: “Babies are worth getting to know.” I love that. And then you say in another post, I think it is: “To observe. Clear your head, step into the present. What can my baby do? What does my baby want to do? Can I detach and sit simply? It is a practice that we all can learn.”

So I think we’ve talked a lot about the beauty of the space, why it’s so worth doing. What do we do? How do we make the space?

Hari Grebler: Because you saw that post of the safe space, I got a question, a really good question. What to do with the baby before the play area? At what age do we start this play space and what should they do before? And that’s such a good question. Then I just wrote back, there’s a progression of the play area. The first play area would be the bassinet because it’s warm, it’s cozy, it’s inviting, and it holds the baby. They can only last so long in a bassinet, and then I would move them to a crib with a firm mattress. The baby should never be on a cushy kind of sunken-in thing, although it looks nice.

Janet Lansbury: No, definitely not.

Hari Grebler: It’s hard for them to move. So then it would be the crib. And then there could be a playpen or, around three to four months, when they start being interested in the world and other objects, that’s when I would have them come down to the floor. And the floor space evolves as their capabilities grow. The rule of thumb is they always need a bit more space than they might actually use. And we do that so they can be inspired. Inspired to move a little farther, inspired to go get that over there.

And it’s always better if a small space gets bigger than taking a big space and making it smaller for the baby. So if a child has already crawled all over the house, it’s harder to then make a smaller space. Not impossible, but just more difficult. So that’s the progression of the physical part of the space.

And you can take a piece of your living room, a bedroom. I personally took my living room/dining room. We have a little, little house, but that was one room. And I was able to gate my kitchen. That’s something real crucial in RIE, but a lot of people don’t want to do it. Magda used to talk a lot about gating the kitchen. Well, why would we gate the kitchen? Well, there’s accidents that happen, but also so we can go and do something fully and focus on. So when we go in the kitchen, we can cook. We don’t have to, Oh, there’s someone over here or rolling over here, or I’m worried about that and I have to tell them what to do. And it’s not like they can never come into the kitchen, when you have time to show them around. So I love the gated kitchen. I really think that helps.

The reason I did my dining room/living room, I wanted it to be like a family room/playroom kind of place where we gather. I could be on the couch and my children could be playing. And my room changed more than 50 times. I mean, that’s how much I’m about the kid. I’m not saying people should do this or everybody should. I’m saying this is what I did because I’m a total nerd in that way. I really wanted to put all this into practice, because I had been doing it for so long. I wanted the space, I wanted them to be able to crawl and do all the things that they did and I wanted to watch and I wanted to be comfortable.

Janet Lansbury: So what if people aren’t able to gate off their kitchen, which a lot of houses, unfortunately, that is difficult. I mean, I was able to gate off our kitchen and have a gated-in space, but I had to have these bookcases, very heavy, like standup bookcases, that I attached a gate to, and I had to form a space within this bigger space in my family room. Probably you would know how to do all this better than I did, but it worked for us.

Hari Grebler: That sounds perfect.

Janet Lansbury: Yeah. And so interesting, it remained the place—way after the gates were gone and all that—that remained the place where the child wanted to be playing or reading or whatever. They really bond with their—actually, I think it’s bonding with themselves, but within the comfort and familiarity of those spaces.

Hari Grebler: Yeah. I mean, my kids loved their room and I really let them do anything they wanted, practically. I think what you did was perfect. And that’s what I always say. If it’s a big space and you can create it like a little room within a room. Outside, we did it once with a gate to the couch. I didn’t want them when they were really tiny to get into the small flower garden I had. So I had a couch and then I gated that from there. So there’s so many creative ways to do it.

Janet Lansbury: But you agree, I’m sure, with Magda that establishing those parameters are important before the child’s able to move through them. Because then that’s just part of their play space. People say, Oh, it’s a jail and stuff. It is if you treat it that way and like, Okay, now I’m going to put you in this place while I go do something. Instead of, This is part of our routine. Every day after we do this, this is the time that you usually spend in there. I mean, it doesn’t have to be every day, but most days this is what we do. And as Magda said, a matter of course, it’s just a matter of course. And you still might not like when I leave and go do something, but you know underneath it that you’re not being abandoned, you’re not being punished. This is your space and it’s freedom for you, actually. And then children do, I mean, I’ve seen that with my own eyes that children totally believe that.

Hari Grebler: Definitely. When I was in Hungary, when I went to the Loczy to visit, when it was the orphanage, I had studied for I think about 10 years before I went there, and then I went there and studied. What I noticed was the way we learned about doing the caregiving and being fully present for the caregiving, for babies, the more the same it is, this is how they don’t get bored. How they really have that inner life and count on it. I have to say, even in the morning, if I get up and my daughter’s up, she’s just like, “I need to be alone.” You know, if it’s too early. She needs that thinking time.

Janet Lansbury: She’s how old now?

Hari Grebler: Thirteen. She’s not happy to see me. She’s happy to see me other times. But in the morning, they’re really used to having space in the morning. And why it is is because we had a rhythm, a very, very strong rhythm. And that was: you wake up, you care for them, you change their diapers, maybe get them dressed or maybe not, feed them, nurse them. And then you’ve given them so much, and this is what I saw in Hungary, which is by the end of that caregiving, they don’t want you to talk to them anymore. Those babies, they’ll look away, they’ll put their fingers in their mouth, whatever. It’s like, Okay, I’ve got everything I need and now I go to the floor to play.

And then what I saw is when they pick up those toys, and I know you’ve seen it too, is they really see what they’re looking at. They look at the object the way they were just looked at, if that makes sense. And it was beautiful. I was just so blown away by that. And understanding what it means to be filled up, to then be able and have the desire to do what you want to do.

And I think I must’ve learned it in Waldorf, this idea of breathing in and breathing out. The breathing in being the caregiving thing where you’re asking them and telling them and expecting cooperation. And then it’s this, Ahhh. I go down to play. No one’s talking to me. I can play with this or that and any way I want to. And no one’s going to interrupt me. So there’s a balance to what we’re talking about. One cannot happen without the other. Independent play and wanting to be in your play space can’t happen if you don’t feel filled up.

Janet Lansbury: Yes. And I was also thinking when you were saying that, as slow as we try to maybe aim to be with the caregiving time and talking to them and listening to them and having that be a mutual experience, when they get to play, time goes even slower. When we’re alone in our thoughts, that’s when we can really slow down to our pace and commune with that. I mean, I crave that. I’ve started doing where I don’t go on my phone until after I’ve done this whole bunch of things in the morning where I’m just on my own in my thoughts. I’m kind of doing things and then I meditate. But I’ve put off just looking at my phone right away because I need more of that time, with the work that I’m doing right now, to get ideas, to have more space. I mean, I really couldn’t get enough of that, personally. Really, I want to go to the phone. I want to go to the distraction like anybody else, but I’m just doing that for myself, to fuel myself.

Hari Grebler: I think that is exactly what happens when we create this space for the baby. We give it to ourselves. It’s a gift as a parent that you give yourself. Here, I gave you everything during this time I was just with you, and now it’s your time to do this and my time to do this. And when they can know and expect, because you do it the same every time. That’s why I think that’s so important. I mean, I don’t want it to sound like, Oh, I can’t ever deviate, because of course you can. That’s life. But when they’re little, it pays for both, for the child and the adult. It’s a gift for both. Oh, I can go into the kitchen by myself to make something, right? I can take a shower because I know they’re completely safe and content.

And sometimes people say, Oh, they don’t want to be in there anymore. They don’t want to be in there anymore. You have to commit to the space. That’s really important. You have to commit. And that means when they’re needing you more, let’s say, go be with them. Go be with them, but don’t bring them out of the space. So that’s the mistake people make. They don’t want to be in there. I take you in my arms, I take you into the kitchen. I cook, I’m stirring. It’s interesting. You like being up. And then when I put you back in your space, it’s not as satisfying anymore.

Janet Lansbury: And even if we’re in the space with them and they’re kind of struggling, first maybe seeing, just while I’m sitting here, I’m going to hold you in my lap. Instead of, okay, we’re getting up. Every time there’s something wrong, now you’re getting lifted up and changed.

Hari Grebler: Or sat up.

Janet Lansbury: Yeah.

Hari Grebler: That’s what a lot of people… they start getting fussy in their place, and when you do that, you sit them up, you can get maybe 15 more minutes of play. But usually they’re just tired, if they’re used to this. That’s what I was trying to say before. If you don’t do all the things and you commit to this simplicity, it’s sort of raw because it’s just you and them, right? There’s not a swing or a this or a that to fall back on, in a way. You can even lie down in their space. They can even crawl over you on those times.

Janet Lansbury: Oh, I do that. Yeah.

Hari Grebler: Right. It’s fun, you can get your little massage.

Janet Lansbury: What you were saying about setting it up for ourselves… It may seem like this is such a chore or I’m being so giving, having this connected caregiving time, but this is what’s going to empower us, empower our child to be able to be separate. And then yeah, when they’re expressing things, I mean, this encouraged me to leave my fix-it mode that I was in with my first. I want to find out what they’re expressing. I don’t want to just try to change it. I want to know what’s going on here. And that takes a little longer and takes us not making those rash moves to just pick them up and rescue them out of the situation or whatever.

Hari Grebler: And when you really come down to it, there’s not that many things that the baby could be bothered by. They could be hungry, they could be tired. And you’re going to start to see what that tired means to your baby. Hungry, you’ll think, oh, I fed them. And yeah, they probably are, let’s see. Or maybe they want their diaper changed, they’re not comfortable. Or their clothes aren’t comfortable, even. Sometimes it’s bunched up and that could bother them. So you can always check those things. And then things get more simple. Kids are able to eventually let you know what’s bothering them.

Janet Lansbury: Because they know you want to know and they understand that’s your interest because it is.

Hari Grebler: Yeah, they’re valued in that way. And a lot of people say, Oh, well they’re just getting bored now. And no, I don’t accept that. I just don’t. That’s an adult idea. So then you do all these other things, and then that’s the way we create them needing to be set. Because once you start sitting your baby up, they’re not satisfied anymore laying down. It doesn’t take that much, too, for that to happen.

Janet Lansbury: But just so people know, and I know you know this, you can change anything. If you’re aware of what you’ve done and what it’s caused and what’s going on and you want to change it. Maybe you don’t want to change it, that’s fine. But if you want to, all you have to do is understand that they’re going to express, Hey, why aren’t you doing that thing anymore? And they have a right to. Try to welcome that.

And I always admit, or encourage the parent to admit, Yeah, I was sitting you up and you’re used to that. You’re probably wishing I would do that right now. But I realized this is healthier for you. So you can tell me how much you wish I was doing that and how mad you are at me. That’s okay with me. I always want to know how you feel. That kind of attitude. You don’t have to say all those words, but that welcoming and honesty about, Yeah, of course, not just, Oh, shh. It’s okay. I’m not doing this anymore and now we’re going to do this. Really owning it, because otherwise they feel almost gaslit.

Hari Grebler: Yeah. I want to add to that, too. So if I was going to change a habit, and I do believe wherever you step into these ideas is the perfect place, just like you said. You can change, it’s not like a make it or break it situation. But if I did do something like sat them and then I decided to not sit them because I learned, I would start out like that, on the back, let’s say. But if the baby got too upset, I would also not stay in that. I don’t want them to get too upset at first. But I would always start like that. So then the next time I would start again like that on the back, I would start again and again and again. And leave a little bit more time and a little bit more time.

Janet Lansbury: While you’re communicating with them. And then picking them up and holding them in your lap and not just swooping them up.

Hari Grebler: Yeah, all the things you said. I just want to add that I would do it little by little. So if I was going to change something about sleep, let’s say. I would start out the way I would like it to go, but they were used to something else. Okay, we do that something else, but start out first the way I want it to go. Little by little, longer and longer, for them to get used to it without them having to be too upset about it.

Janet Lansbury: Yeah.

Hari Grebler: Because we did it. It’s just like, okay, I’m a cigarette smoker, let’s say. I’m not, but let’s say, and then somebody just takes it from me and they decide I’m never going to have one again. And they decide how it’s going to go.

Janet Lansbury: It’s like the boredom thing, yeah. Okay, now you’re going to be bored.

Hari Grebler: You need to collaborate with me now a little bit. I need a little collaboration, a plan, how this is going to change. I can’t just change on the spot because you who gave me the cigarettes in the first place are now going to take them away. No, it’s not fair.

Janet Lansbury: Yeah, I feel like it’s more, and maybe this is what you’re saying, but with sleep especially, I feel like it’s more being aware of where I want this to go. Because maybe in the beginning it’s just easier for me to do it this way, but I’ve always got my eye out: This is how I want sleep to go, because this is what I need and what we’ve decided for our family, and this is what I would like to happen. And so I’m going to keep being open to that direction, but not necessarily trying to even take a step there in the beginning if I’m not ready and I don’t feel like my baby’s ready. So it’s not like I have to start doing incremental things, but just knowing. And being open to what my baby can do, which that observation in the play space, again, teaches us.

I also just wanted to comment, you had talked a long time ago, wonderfully, about the physical thing of setting up the play space from the time that they’re infants and how that starts in the bassinet. And I would say also, especially based on my own experience, Charlotte, she first played in your amazing class that changed my life. My younger ones, I had to be open to them being able to do this, entertain themselves, and notice when it happened. Like you said in the hospital with your boy. In the bassinet one time, I came and she was waking up and she wasn’t looking towards me or anything, so I didn’t say, “Hi, time to get up!” She was looking to the side and I just let her look and was careful not to say anything, because I was holding space for this to happen. And with my son, it happened on the changing table, that we were going through it and I was helping him. And then all of a sudden he sort of looked off and he was just doing something, thinking something. And I let it go on for a while because I didn’t have to rush and be somewhere anyway, but I thought, Oh my gosh. So we want to notice those, so we can encourage them. It’s so easy to squash it all and not let it happen.

Hari Grebler: That’s called collaboration.

Janet Lansbury: Yes.

Hari Grebler: I’m doing something that needs to get done, but you’re interested over there. So I’m going to stop for a minute and be interested with you. It’s beautiful. Sometimes I’ll do snack, and you’ve done it a million times, and everybody’s looking at something else. And I don’t say, “Here, well, doesn’t anybody want some? Oh, here I am with the banana.” I look at what they’re looking at. We can all be so interested in it. It’s such a beautiful moment that it doesn’t need to be filled. And that is a collaboration.

Janet Lansbury: Right. And it’s also noticing that play happens all the time, if we want to call that play. It’s happening anytime.

Hari Grebler: It’s true. Yeah.

Janet Lansbury: So I also wanted to share, this is another one of your posts on Instagram. You say: “What do I mean, don’t introduce your child to boredom?” This is what you were talking earlier about boredom, I guess, and these are the ideas that you shared. It’s all about what we’re talking about today. “Let life unfold slowly and naturally. Don’t think you have to entertain them. Do age-appropriate outings, once in a while. There’s no rush to show them all the things. Let them notice and you can notice what they notice. Give them time to have their own thoughts. Give them plenty of time to putter around.” And then you say, “It’s unnecessary to rotate toys. It’s okay to bring a new one in here and there. It’s more a matter of providing open-ended.” There you go. That’s great advice right there.

Hari Grebler: Yeah, thanks. It sounded good how you read it. You read it too nicely. I’m like, I’m so intrigued.

Janet Lansbury: Who is that genius?

Hari Grebler: I know! Who wrote that? It’s just so nice, you know? I want people to see how sweet this is and simple it is.

Janet Lansbury: Yes. All this sort of simple wisdom that helps our children, helps us. And we only did the tip of the iceberg in terms of all the benefits of this. I really hope people will follow your Instagram page and your website, which is Hari’s RIE Studio, harisriestudio.com, and you can discover all the resources that Hari has to offer and be eye-opened by her perspective, which is just very sharp and unique. I don’t know, I think it’s a breath of fresh air personally, and I love it. So keep it up.

Hari Grebler: Okay! Thanks, Janet. This was really fun.

Janet Lansbury: This was really fun. Thank you so much.

Hari Grebler: Thanks for asking me.

Janet Lansbury: Bye.

For more on play, there are a ton of resources on infant play and toddler play on my website, janetlansbury.com. So please check those out under the topic category “Play.”

Thanks so much for listening. We can do this.

The post Every Child, Even a Tiny Baby, Deserves Time On Their Own (with Hari Grebler) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “Struggles with Independent Play”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m going to be doing something it feels like I haven’t done for a long time, which is talk about children who are, in one case, an infant, and then coming out of the infant stage into the early part of the second year. And so while this is focused on younger children than many of you have, I believe that some of the ideas I’m going to bring up will apply to toddlers, preschoolers, and maybe even older children, because this will be about boundaries around the attention that we’re able to give to our children. And as early as possible, I recommend starting to take care of ourselves in this relationship with our children so that this becomes normalized for them. And also so that they have the space they need to flourish as children who can entertain themselves, who learn through play the way that children do, enjoy their discoveries, their me time, getting to create their own activities. All things that serve our children well for life.

I have two questions that I received from parents around play and establishing play in the beginnings, or at least around the end of the first year and beginning of the second year, and the issues that can come up that seem to get in the way of this working and what we can do about them. What we can do to cultivate this time for our children, this really important time for them to spread their wings and have a healthy sense of control and agency in their world, following their interests.

Here’s the first email:

Hi, Janet-

I have a question regarding my eight-month-old’s independent play. When I am in the same room, even if I’m just observing, folding laundry, or reading a book, he excels at independent play and can entertain himself for long periods of time without intervention from me. I have observed him creating a challenging task for himself and focusing on accomplishing it for upwards of 25 minutes. Or standing at his window, observing the nature in the front yard. Or getting curious about tiny details in his room, like the door hinge, and returning to them repeatedly to investigate.

It’s a delight to watch. His room is a thoughtfully designed Yes Space with low shelving and a few toys on each shelf. When he was younger, he would stare at a mobile or out the window for up to 30 minutes sometimes while I did a few quick chores— while watching him on the monitor, of course. Now if I leave the room, he stands at the gate and screams and cries even if he can see me and we are chatting. I acknowledge and accept his feelings when this happens.

My question is, is he just not developmentally ready for me to leave him alone in this Yes Space to play for a bit while I do some tasks and will he grow into this and one day be fine with it? Or, should I work on doing some exposure therapy, so to speak, leaving the room for short periods of time, even if it is just to do laundry in the hallway where he can still see and hear me, knowing he will hate it and being ready to gently support him as he rages? I’m fine with holding that boundary and giving him practice dealing with those feelings, if it is a developmentally appropriate expectation that he be able to play alone in a gated room, and a skill he should learn.

Thank you.

Okay, so this parent has made this incredible discovery—important discovery, I believe—that her infant son has his own interests, his own ideas about what he wants to explore. He’s making all these discoveries and she’s learning that she can do a lot less than a lot of us think that we have to do with a baby to entertain them or keep engaging with them, getting them to engage with us. When we do that constantly, children don’t have this kind of time. They don’t have this space to express themselves and their own interests and develop important skills like attention span, creativity, their unique take on things. So she’s already done the most important, biggest thing here by valuing her child’s inner direction, his self-directed play, and wanting to nurture that. That’s the first step. So she’s done that.

And she sounds like she set herself up, and this is in I guess his bedroom or his nursery, she created a Yes Space. Yes Space is my term for the 100% safe, gated-off or enclosed somehow spaces that children can feel free to explore in. They’re free of us stopping them, interrupting them, saying no to this, no to that, and we’re free to be able to leave for short periods of time with the secure feeling that our child is safe. That’s freedom for us and freedom for our child. So, she’s designed this and now she’s running into trouble because it seems like all of a sudden, her child is having a hard time with her not being in this space with him.

To try to answer her more completely, I had some questions, so I wrote back:

What a wonderful setup you have. Could I please ask you a couple of questions?

1. Can you please describe in detail what this is looking and sounding like when you acknowledge and accept his feelings?
2. Is the gate closed or open when you are inside the play area with him?

I have some ideas for you and I look forward to sharing them. Sounds like you’re doing great.

This parent wrote back:

Thank you so much for your response.

1. While he is expressing his feelings, I calmly say things like, “Wow, it sounds like you’re having some big feelings about me leaving the room. You really wish I could be available right now for you and I’m not. The problem is that I have a few tasks to get done and I don’t want to carry you around while I do them because you need more time to play. I know, you really wish you could get to me and there’s a gate up. That gate is to keep you safe. Your room is a safe place for you to play while I work. I hear you. You’re feeling angry/upset/frustrated/sad about having to stay in your nursery. I have some other responsibilities right now, but I will be right back to check on you. Thank you for telling me how you’re feeling,” etc. All in an empathetic tone. I stay close enough to continue to talk with him, acknowledge him, and reassure him while I’m working on other things within earshot and usually within eyesight.
2. I have been intentionally closing the gate most times when I’m in the space with him to get him used to it. He either ignores it and plays in the room, or he treats it like a fun challenge, pulling up on it and trying to figure out how the latch works, trying to leverage his weight to move it, etc. He’s not upset by it.

For added context, we did have some very severe separation anxiety starting at five-and-a-half months and peaking about six-and-a-half months, in which he freaked out even if I set foot in a different area of our open-concept living space—for example, getting up to throw away a piece of trash—or if I was out of his sight for a second. We have mostly moved past that now that he is crawling proficiently. I can work in the kitchen and he is totally content playing out of eyesight in the dining room and crawling around to explore. I can tell him I’m leaving to do laundry in the hall and he will usually follow behind contentedly.

The issue is when he’s unable to get to me. I have the same issue if I put up a play yard fence as a barrier to something in the main part of the house. He’s fine as long as we’re both on the same side of the barrier. If I step over it and he can’t follow, he gets mad. These reactions sound much more like anger and frustration than the terrified cries a couple of months ago.

If he’s going to outgrow this the same way he outgrew that, I won’t make a concerted effort to get him to be okay with the situation and we’ll just wait it out. However, since it’s anger and not fear, I think, I am more okay with practicing, if this is a skill he can learn and not developmental.

Thank you so much.

Okay, so that was helpful that she gave all that information. Again, she’s very much on track here, I just want to help her with a couple of thoughts.

First, she gave a lot of examples of things she’s saying to him when she’s acknowledging and accepting his feelings. And I don’t believe she’s saying all these at once, but this is a lot of verbiage for somebody eight months old. He’s not going to really keep up with any of that. It may be that she’s kind of saying it for herself, to bolster herself that what she’s doing is okay. And that makes sense, but I would recommend being much simpler in the way that she talks to him. Really just focusing more simply on his side of this. So, less about what she’s going to do and how she needs to do this and keep him safe and all that. That’s a common thing that we do as parents is that we want to share a lot about why our child shouldn’t feel the way they do, rather than, You’ve got a right to say no to this, and I want to hear that. Almost like, Thank you for telling me you didn’t want me to leave.

So, much more in-the-moment, less explanatory. A simple explanation: “I’m going to go do this and I’ll be back in a few minutes. Can’t wait to see you again then.” That kind of thing. And then from there, mostly focusing on, “Wow, you’re not liking this. I hear you. You’re saying no, you don’t want me to leave you ever, right? You want to be on the same side with me.”

And these reactions he’s having make sense for several reasons. First, I have the sense that he is a child with a stronger type of will. I have a special love for that type of child, my first was like that. And one of the things about them is that they tell you everything and they tell it to you strongly. Obviously at eight months, he doesn’t have words yet to explain. So with infants, when we have a child like that, it can sound like they’re deeply upset about everything, when they just are being emphatic. They, again, express a lot more than a more passive-type child.

So it can be tougher as a parent to assert ourselves with those types of children, especially when they’re this little. And he is just a tiny baby, but he’s kind of raring to go here, he’s giving it to her. He’s telling her in no uncertain terms that he doesn’t approve of her being the one to decide to separate from him and have a gate between them. It’s okay if he separates from her. As she said, he’s in the dining room and she’s in the kitchen and he can’t even see her, but he gets to decide whether to go see her or not. And now he’s crawling. So it makes sense that this started coming up before he was able to crawl. He didn’t even want her to be away from him. 

Because what happens is children get to this age—and he got to it pretty young at five-and-a-half months—that they realize, Hey, sometimes you go away and I don’t have control over you, and we’re not sort of the same person. You’re this separate person that can be away from me and I don’t decide that. I don’t like that. And separation anxiety is actually more common for the age he’s at now, it’s usually like eight months through 12 months, but maybe he started having it a little early. He has strong feelings about it and he wants to share. It’s hard to see that as a positive, but that’s one of the keys to being able to put it into perspective.

So, strong-willed children express themselves more strongly. And then with separation anxiety, we want to be sensitive to it, of course, so we’re not going to go off for a long time to show him or try to teach him a lesson, making him upset. We want to be sensitive to it, but we can’t let ourselves be completely ruled by this and still do something that’s super important, which is holding space for ourselves in this relationship. That’s the most loving thing to do, not only for us, but for our children. For them to learn, in this age-appropriate manner, that we are a separate person and that we have needs too. And yes, we subvert a lot of them to be there for our children, but we can’t erase ourselves in this relationship, or it’s going to be harder for us to manage the day and our feelings about our child too, to be honest, and much harder, therefore, for him.

To answer more directly some of her questions here: Is he just not developmentally ready for her to leave him alone in this Yes Space to play a bit while she does tasks and will he grow into this and one day be fine with it? Children like this, they’re almost never fine with just letting us go. So that’s a hard pill to swallow, but that goes with the territory. They’re not going to say, “Oh, go have some nice time off,” or “Go do the chores and I’ll just be here, I’m totally fine to hang out.” Oftentimes there is a bit of a complaint, at least. But is he developmentally ready to be left alone for a little bit? Absolutely.

And it’s much easier for him and for us to get comfortable with this the earlier we start it. Having some times away from our child, even when they’re just a few months old, being able to go get ourselves something to drink or go to the bathroom alone. Starting that not to train children in some artificial way or to even, as she says, do some “exposure therapy.” No, I wouldn’t consider this some kind of structured plan or therapy that she’s doing. It can be a natural, organic way of taking care of ourselves in the relationship, taking our space. Trusting that our child can learn this and handle this. We’re not trying to force a lesson. It’s just the way that relationships go, that we have needs that don’t always match our child’s wants.

He’s getting his needs taken care of, she’s not abandoning him. She said even if she’s right there, but there’s just that gate in between them, he’s still getting mad. Yeah, because he’s saying, Hey, wait, I can’t get to you right now. I can’t control this part of the situation. And I guess we have to decide how we feel about if he should control that part of it. But then when do we ever get to establish ourselves and have personal boundaries? That’s a question we have to ask ourselves. Because actually, it gets harder later when children aren’t used to this and it’s a new thing that we try to spring on them at age two or something. It’s much harder for us and for them.

So I would trust your needs and trust his right to have his own reaction to that— Hey, wait a second! And see that as strength in him, not something pitiable or terribly worrisome. It’s very typical and very healthy in a child like this. She’s got a live one here.

The bottom line is, for this or any kind of boundary that we’re going to set, ever, with our children or anyone, the more comfortable we are with setting the boundary, the easier it will be for that other person, the more settled they can feel around it. Not that they’re going to be comfortable and love it, but they feel that conviction coming from us and it’s much more comfortable than if we’re ambivalent, we’re wavering. Then they get stuck there, now they’ve got to keep asking and pushing. It’s like they’re reaching for a boundary and it keeps moving and they can’t get a handle on it. So that’s not really doing them any favors. Our comfort is always going to be the baseline for our children’s comfort in any situation. It’s especially true when we’re kindly and lovingly setting a personal boundary.

And the most challenging part is to find a place of okayness—I’m not going to say “comfort,” because that’s way too much to ask of ourselves and unnatural to be totally fine with our children expressing their discomfort. But okayness with it is vital, because it’s that okayness that gives us the conviction in our decisions to take care of ourselves, without having to supervise our baby 24/7, as in this case. To go to the bathroom by ourselves, to be caring to ourselves, and consider the household, that we have to get food ready for him, we have to do whatever it is. It’s all in his best interest and we need to do it. Finding that okayness so that they can feel settled in their rejection of our decisions.

Now I want to offer some ideas for helping this parent feel more conviction and comfort, and her child as well, with this situation. And encouraging his play the way she wants to do, which is such a great thing. It’s a gift that keeps giving, seriously. One thing I want to offer her is routine, routine, routine. So it sounds like sometimes she’s in there with him, sometimes she lets him wander now that he’s crawling. And I’m wondering if she has any kind of routine around this because that will help her and her child a great deal to get more comfortable with this. For her, setting the boundaries; for him, accepting her boundaries. So, routine, routine, routine means we develop something that works for both of us, keeping his energy for play in mind, which for most young children is earlier in the day when they’re the freshest. That’s a time that we really want to take advantage of because that’s when they have the best energy for that kind of play. But it can be other times in the day too.

And she mentioned him outside. I don’t know if it’s possible for her to create a safe play yard for him outside. Yes, he will still complain when she’s on the other side of it, but that could be a part of his day, when it works weather-wise. A lot of people don’t have outdoor area available like that, so that becomes a park or something else where the parent does need to supervise. But if you can have a less-supervised area like that, that’s going to be easier for us.

So a routine might look like, she takes care of his needs in the morning when he gets up, breakfast, nursing, diaper change, however that looks, giving him her undivided attention then as much as possible. And then there’s playtime. And maybe in that first morning playtime, she’s with him for a short period and then she gets up. She communicates she’s getting up. That’s another thing I forgot to ask this parent, if she’s letting him know. Because sometimes we don’t want to say, we just want to kind of sneak out. It sounds like she’s very communicative with him, so I imagine she’s saying, “Now it’s the time I’m going to get up and go do this, and then I will be back.”

And with a child who’s reacting the way her son is, I might even say, “And you get to be mad at me if you want to. And I will come back, and then you can yell at me when I come back, if you need to.” That’s for him, but also for myself. To feel that I have actually written that into the script here, I’ve written that into the play. So that means I can expect that that’s very likely going to happen, and I’m giving him permission and I’m giving me permission for that to happen.

But we don’t have to say that part. We can just say, “And then I’ll be leaving.” And maybe we even say that as playtime’s starting: “I’m going to be sitting here with you for a bit, and then there’s going to come a time where I’ll let you know that I’m getting up.” And of course we want to let them know, because otherwise it’s much harder for them to get involved in their play when they’re kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop and we’re going to go. The clarity and the consistency of the routine can be really, really helpful.

So now we get up and we go. He knows that we’re going to come back, because this is part of our day that we’ve set up. Maybe we want to set it up that we’re not staying with him in that first morning period. That that’s when we say, “Okay, after I’m done with this diaper or after we’re done with this feeding, I’m going to place you in your play area and I’m going to leave. And after I do some chores, I will soon come back. And you can yell at me. I’ll hear you, wherever I am. I know, you’ve got a right to do that, right? You don’t like me to leave. I will be back.” And then there’s other periods in the day that we have this regularity.

And some people, they want to be spontaneous all the time, I know. It just makes it a little harder for children, who are newer to the world and really kind of like those guidelines of being able to predict what will happen next. It’s confidence-building and it makes it easier for them to let go of us. Which doesn’t mean they do it calmly, without complaining, but it’s easier.

The other part of consistency is to have that gate in his play area always closed when we’re in there with him, if possible, so that that really gets established. It sounds like she does that. But sometimes people will want to leave it open until they leave and then they close it. And it’s understandable that a child like this, he’s very excited, he’s crawling now. That’s cool, but wait, now I’m crawling and now they’re stopping me and putting gates up? What’s going on with that? That’s not very encouraging, right? So if it’s part of his play area, as his parent is making it, it sounds like, then he does explore it the way she describes. And I asked about that to try to figure out if that was part of this or not, that maybe she was just closing it on him when she was leaving.

And also sometimes when children are up at the gate, they’re pulling up to stand and they’re very excited about what they’re doing and exploring the gate like she described. I mean, she’s very insightful here about what’s going on with them. She’s obviously a practiced observer, which I recommend, and she’s noticing that he enjoys figuring out the gate. But it can certainly appear as if, Oh no, my child just wants to be at the gate the whole time while he’s playing, and that means he wants out. And that’s not really true. They’re as interested in a gate or a bit of fencing as they are in anything else. They’re exploring all of it. So that is part of the consistency and the routine. That gate is established as a closed gate while he’s playing.

So anyway, now let’s say that she leaves and he’s upset. That’s when I would say, as she does, but I would say it simpler: “I hear that. You don’t want me to go, you don’t want me to go do this. You’re telling me no.” And then I would do whatever it is I have to do, and in another 30 seconds or another minute, I would say from wherever I am, “I hear you. You’re still not liking this. You’re in a hurry for me to come back, it seems like. I’ll be there soon.” And because I’m expecting this as a parent, because I know that this is a good sign of my child’s expression of himself and his wants, and it’s a very strong position to be in, to be able to kind of be the boss saying, Hey, I didn’t give you permission! So that’s not as intimidating when we get perspective on it. He’s not abandoned. He knows quite well that you mean what you say because you’ve always shown him that you come back. And especially if you’re there right in front of him, he knows you haven’t done some terrible thing to him.

He’s shown that he loves play and he’s very into his time and doesn’t need you every second. But he wants the option that he has you every second. That’s the difference. He’s not in pain, he’s not desperate. So we can respond in a welcoming way, not pitying, not trying to explain it away or convince him not to feel the way he does. Allowing him to vent. And oftentimes when we come back, then children really vent on us, and that’s when we can say, “Oh, I’m back. That was hard for you. You didn’t like that at all. I always want you to tell me. I always want you to tell me how you feel. When you’re mad at me, when you don’t like what I do, you can always tell me.” I would try to see it that way. I mean, that’s a wonderful setup for life, right? Letting him know that we’re okay with his communication no matter what it is and his feelings, even if they’re angry feelings towards us. We can hold space for that, we can handle that. We can handle him.

Sometimes parents will tell me that they felt like they were too much to handle, they were just too much as babies. And oftentimes that’s because the parent was afraid to set boundaries because of the reaction they were getting, or for other reasons, very understandable reasons, couldn’t handle those reactions and got mad at us for them, as babies or toddlers. So we get that message, because our parent’s exasperated: “Okay, I’ll come,” or “I’ll let you come with me.” We feel like we’re too much because we know that they’re doing things they don’t want to do, because of our reaction. They can’t handle our reaction. So we can do something much healthier by welcoming these, along with every other feeling that our child has. Anger directed towards us is probably the hardest one of all, right? So, welcoming the feelings, saying less, trusting more.

Okay, so here’s a different issue that another parent asked about:

Hello,

I’ve loved listening to your podcast and try my best to follow your philosophy of respectful parenting. I am a mama to a strong-willed 14-month-old-girl who is always on the go. It seems that she becomes bored easily and nothing seems to hold her attention for more than five minutes at a time. I would love to encourage more independent play but, more often than not, she starts repeating the word “done” over and over again, only minutes after starting a new activity. She will throw her hands in the air and continue to be upset until I pick her up. This “done” repetition has also started when she’s in her car seat, right after leaving the house, or in her stroller on a walk. I want to encourage the use of her words, but sometimes we simply can’t be “done” with the activity.

I acknowledge that I have heard her and explained that we’re not done until we stop the car or get to our destination in the stroller. She just keeps repeating, “done, done, done,” louder and louder until she starts crying. Do I keep acknowledging her every time she says “done”? Or is there a point where I should just let her keep talking without a response?

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Okay, so this is a little more unusual, but one thing that I do hear commonly is about children who don’t seem to have a long attention span, they’re going from one thing to another, they can’t seem to settle down. What I would do generally is trust that and see that as just where they are in their process and not worry about it. Because it’s okay, there’s nothing wrong with doing that. And sometimes if children feel that we’re uncomfortable when they’re doing that, it kind of keeps them stuck there. Like everything we feel uncomfortable about, children key into that and keep exploring it on some level or get stuck there. Especially strong-willed children, right? Because they’re sometimes extra-attuned. So I wouldn’t worry that she’s bored, she’s just doing it her way.

But this parent still can encourage more independent play with some of the ideas that I offered this other parent: the safe play area; the routine, routine of when we’re with them, when we go do stuff, that this sort of happens the same way every day; that we’re putting their communication, their reaction in perspective. And that’s a big one here, because this little girl’s saying, “Done!”, and it seems like maybe when she said this, the parent felt, Uhoh, that means she can’t play anymore. What I would do is practice when you’re with her in her play area—I don’t know if this parent has a safe play area for her daughter, but I’d recommend having one if possible—but even if she doesn’t, being present, just sitting there. Not worrying when she’s going from thing to thing. And when she says “done”: “Oh, you’re telling me that you’re done playing right now. Okay, you can come sit with me.” So we’re not picking her up and taking her out of this situation. We’re doing less. We’re letting her come to us and be with us.

This is just part of her play, it’s part of her process. Every child has their own process around play and learning. Now she says, “done, done, done”: “Okay, you’re done. We’re just going to hang out in here until it’s lunchtime.” And then if that’s usually what happens, that will help her get used to that. But not seeing “done” as some urgent thing we need to try to fix or rescue her from, or a command that we have to follow. It’s an expression that, You feel like you’re done playing. You’re done with all those things right now. Okay, you can take a break. We’re just going to hang out here then. And if she says, “I want to leave. I want to leave”: “We’re not going to leave right now. In a few minutes we’ll leave. But for now we’re here.” Just being comfortable with that boundary. Because she’s not harming her child, she’s right there for her. She’s just not jumping into action to her child’s expression of “done.” And it seems like maybe this child has gotten used to mom feeling that, Uhoh, oh no, she doesn’t have a long attention span. Or, Oh no, I’ve got to do something now and get her out of this. She’s telling me she’s done. I would try to reframe “done” as just she’s done exploring those toys or whatever it is.

Throwing her hands in the air seems to suggest that she’s used to pick me up now. But let her be upset with you while you’re just sitting right there, because it sounds like she’s sensed the power in this word now. She’s discovered that this word gets people jumping for me. And so now it’s exploding all over the place—in her car seat or in her stroller, she’s saying “done.” And she’s wondering if that’s going to have the power to change the situation. So allowing her to explore this while you’re there for her with play is the best way for her to start getting a different message about this.

And I’m wondering about this little girl’s definition of done, if it’s even the same as ours, or if it was the same when she first said it and now it’s taken on this kind of command thing. It’s so easy to fall into this as parents with our children because we’re excited they’re saying words and now we feel like, Oh gosh, that means I’ve got to get her out of this because she said she’s done. So dial this back for yourself and let her say “done” in the car and say, “Oh, you’re saying you’re done with sitting there in the car seat. Yeah, you don’t want to be there anymore, maybe. I hear that.” And let her be mad about that. And it may be kind of loud the first couple times, but your calm, your conviction that you’re not doing anything wrong by not rescuing her there or helping her be done will help her get settled in very soon.

But what is the key? Our conviction, right? Having that conviction that this isn’t something I need to be alarmed about, it’s really okay for her to say this. I don’t know what it means to her when she first said it. It’s safe to just let her have this, and every, feeling and not try to explain why she shouldn’t, and it’s not okay to be done here. And if she keeps repeating it louder, louder, louder—which I’m sure she will at first, because now this is a thing—you don’t have to acknowledge her every time. You can let her keep talking. I would nod your head, look at her if she’s making eye contact. Just nod your head, “Yeah, you’re still feeling done, you’re feeling like you’re over this. I know. The thing is we’re not there yet, but I hear you feel done. You’re ready to move on.” Not being afraid to acknowledge that truth of what’s going on with her, while you, as the parent with conviction, hold those boundaries.

And the boundary could be that we’re not home yet, so we’re not done with the walk, which should be easy to believe in, right? Or that we need to still be in the car right now because we’re on the freeway. But the play one as well. For children to feel comfortable at all with boundaries or get used to them, they need our comfort and conviction in them. Our okayness with their not okayness.

So I really hope some of this helps. And I just want to say again, I’m totally behind cultivating play for children. I feel like it’s one of the best things that we can do for them as parents and do for ourselves. But it’s not going to be seamless. And even when we think, Oh, they’re so settled and play is working great for them, there will be bumpy parts where they need boundaries, they need our sensitivity. Maybe they need to be with us more certain times, but we still feel clear and comfortable with our boundaries. That we’re doing the right thing, that we’re doing the most loving thing, because we really are.

Thanks so much for listening. We can do this.

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

The post Struggles With Independent Play appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Janet addresses a parent’s concerns about her daughter’s unwillingness to play independently. She seems to need constant stimulation and entertainment.

Transcript of “Best Ways to Encourage Independent Play”

The post Best Ways to Encourage Independent Play appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

A parent who’s always been her toddler’s playmate helps her child over the hump to flourish in independent play. Another parent learns to set boundaries, shift her perspective, and accept her child’s meltdowns. Janet shares a special milestone and much more in this latest episode of Unruffled.

Transcript of “Independent Play, Meltdowns, Boundaries — Success Stories from My Inbox”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury, welcome to Unruffled. Today, I’m going to be sharing some very revealing stories that I received from parents. These are success stories. I find them also to be instructive and I think you will too. They demonstrate how respectful care really does work. I’ll also be sharing an announcement about a special milestone.

I am blessed to receive so much wonderful correspondence. And of course, I especially love the stories parents share with me about how they’re using this approach I teach, how it’s helping them, and how they’ve faced the challenges that we’re getting in their way. So I’ve curated a few here that I want to share with you today.

Here’s the first one. It’s about encouraging independent play:

I just wanted to say, thanks for all your help and support. I have two children, a boy who is four and a girl who is one. I first became aware of you when my son was around two-and-a-half. I have really appreciated your insight around self-directed play. I must confess I played with my son around the clock, taught him rather than let him work things out for himself, and prompted him with play. I thought I was doing the right thing and nurturing him.

He’s fiercely intelligent. He’s also very cautious. I’ve been really honest with him recently that I love him dearly, but that I don’t feel like playing or that I have things I need to do. We had a few months of upset around this, him becoming angry and saying he can’t play on his own. We’ve validated this. We treated his responses with kindness but remained calm and boundaries when we are not able or don’t want to play.

He’s now loving the independent play. I’ve seen such development these past few weeks, he’s had a hair salon, a shop, and he’s been using the sofa cushion as rocks and rescuing things. It’s a delight to listen to him talk in his made-up world. It’s also a great relief, understandably. Playing all the time was becoming tedious for me. And this was feeding into feelings of guilt. He played independently for hours yesterday.

So what did this parent do? She did the hard thing that really is what gets in the way with so many parents that I’ve worked with. They don’t want to say no to play. And there are all kinds of guilt-inducing quotes around out there on social media about how we should always say yes to playing with a child and how they need this time with us. So it’s hard to be honest.

The truth is that’s not our job to entertain our children. And our play does tend to, without us even realizing it, take over theirs, because we’re very powerful in this relationship. It’s not an even dynamic in terms of power. So with our best intentions, we can interfere with play both by the way that we naturally play with our child and kind of end up directing the play and also by not being comfortable freeing our child. And freeing our child often comes with boundaries. It feels mean, right? So getting over that hump to how positive it is, how freeing it is for a child to develop all these incredible things in their self-directed play, how therapeutic this is for them, how educational it is, how creative. We could never devise a curriculum for our children with play that would be as constructive for them as the one that they create for themselves.

I love that this parent took the plunge and allowed for those weeks of the feelings that her child shared, which could not have been comfortable for her. So kudos!

Okay, here’s another note I received about setting boundaries and allowing for a child’s feelings in response:

My wife and I have a foster daughter who is four, almost five. She’s been part of our family for just over a year.

I’ve been in childcare for quite some time and expected to be a bit more prepared for parenting. While there are certainly helpful things I’ve pulled from nannying and preschool work. I was nowhere as prepared as I thought I was to be a mom. She has quite a bit of trauma. The meltdowns are frequent and long. She has a hard time with boundaries. And while I can hold boundaries with my nanny kids, it’s been much harder to hold them with my daughter. I break at the first sign of her crying or being upset, particularly because of her trauma history. And I was giving in far too easily. Even when I knew better.

I started listening to Unruffled on the recommendation of a good and trusted friend. I wanted a better way of parenting, especially for her. I wanted to give her respect, love, and safety. I started with an episode surrounding “no,” and went back to start listening to them all.

All of my perspectives started shifting almost immediately. I could see she was venting her emotions and the trust that indicated.

I could see I wasn’t helping any of us by not holding boundaries. I started seeing where she was struggling and that it wasn’t “coddling” her to stop and help when it was too hard for her. That in and of itself was huge for us.

As the way I saw her behavior shifted, I saw everything actually getting easier.

Her meltdowns had receded for quite some time but recently resurfaced due to some big changes and some triggers. We were at a loss for what to do until I remembered that these were her venting her emotions.

So one night I held a boundary I wasn’t sure I could hold, but I could see her pushing it and I knew she needed the meltdown. I knew she was asking me to give her what she needed. So I held it and the meltdown started. I took her gently to her room where I knew she’d be safe if I had to step out and sat with her. I didn’t say much, just took breaths and sat, occasionally telling her that I heard her and I was here for her.

The meltdown ended so much sooner than any previous ones. And that’s continued to hold true, even when I’m not sure I should hold a boundary I do, gently and respectfully. My wife and I sit with her while she vents, giving space for her to have that and trying our hardest to sit in acceptance.

I used to get so frustrated when she’d have these big screaming meltdowns. And now I recognize that she’s just done venting and it’s okay to let her move on and be done.

I used to wanna rush her through meltdowns and just calm her down. Now I can see when it’s just too hard for her and I help her move through it. I don’t get frustrated and annoyed when she won’t listen. It’s easier for me to see that she just can’t. I pay more attention to her early cues and see where it’s going to be too hard. I walk her through things more. “Ah, this is too much for you tonight. I’m going to help you with brushing your teeth and putting on your pajamas,” et cetera. Instead of thinking, well, she knows how to do it herself. I see where she’s asking for connection instead of just seeking a negative “attention seeking” behavior.

Wow. So yeah, this parent is stepping up to hold the boundaries, realizing that letting her daughter release feelings with her is really the deepest and most bonding kind of connection that there is. We’re saying: I accept you as you are — your bright and your dark sides — and I help you when you can’t at that moment do it yourself for whatever reason. No questions asked.

It’s not that she won’t listen. It’s that she just can’t in that moment. Once we start seeing that way, we don’t go back. We’re uncovering another layer, and life with a child can be a little bit easier.

I also thought it was interesting and understandable that she said when she was a nanny it was a lot easier. Yes. It’s almost always easier for a nanny or a teacher to set those boundaries with children. Why? Because they don’t resist in the same way. They don’t have the same trust level where they’re going to push harder and share those feelings and maybe have those meltdowns. They’re not nearly as likely to do that with someone who they have a more professional relationship with and who’s not their parent or their primary caregiver.

And when a child does have trauma or any uncomfortable feelings inside, there’s going to be even more of that pushing to get the limits so that they can vent their feelings. So that’s where we can see the limit-pushing and the meltdowns as a high compliment that we’re trusted. We are their person. We’re the close ones to them. And with that understanding, the whole picture becomes clearer and easier. We’re still going to maybe get triggered by certain behaviors or certain feelings our child shares, but we have a place to go back to — a perception that this is all right, this is how it’s supposed to be. This is actually a positive thing that my child is pushing and pushing. And that I have to say no, and be the quote “bad guy” and allow them to get mad at me or frustrated in response or sad.

So, well done to this parent.

Okay. Here’s one that’s a little bit lighter and it’s about modeling respectful boundaries and the power of our modeling. This one came to me on Instagram in a message:

My husband and I listened to your podcast and really appreciate all of your work. So first and foremost, thank you. We had a laugh this morning when I was detangling my three year old daughter’s curls. And she very calmly looked at me and said, mama, I can’t let you do this. It is not safe. She then proceeded to show me safe ways to touch her hair.

So there you go. They’re listening. They’re watching and we’re teaching all the time just through caring for our children. It’s an organic process.

And they’ll show us the things that we’re not proud of that we do as well. That’s okay. Maybe that’s hard to take, but if we can see that as the kind of mutual training that’s going on there — they have this ability to reflect back to us where we need to grow and the things that we’re doing well that we can be proud of.

Okay, now I have a little milestone to announce. Unruffled has been going on for seven years. Seven years. Wow. It’s unreal to me. The time sort of flew by. I still have a million ideas for things I want to share about, and then I get new ideas from parents’ notes and messages every day. So I appreciate that.

And I want to take this opportunity to say, thank you for listening. Some of you’ve been listening for a long time. It’s an honor, and really a joy to be able to share with you this way.

Unruffled started on a whim. I was wondering at one point if audio might be easier than writing to answer readers questions and especially to demonstrate perspective and tone, which I found much more challenging to do with written words. And it matters a lot. Much more important than what we say is what we’re feeling when we say it — therefore, our tone, our manner, our attitude. That’s a little easier for me to convey through audio. So I thought, Hmm, all right, I’ll give this a shot. And then my husband, Mike, he agreed to try doing the engineering. And the editing was all new for him.

We were both really quite stunned that Unruffled caught on the way it has. And that I’ve had this added privilege of getting to have fascinating conversations with many, many eloquent, brilliant guests. So thank you to all of them as well!

I thought I should share, in honor of the seven years, the seven most listened to, most downloaded podcast episodes. And in the transcript of this podcast, I’ll be linking to all of these:

#1) “Finding Our Best Response to Children’s Turbulent Emotions.”

In that podcast, I respond to issues shared with me by four different parents. One writes that her two year old rejects her comfort when he has a meltdown, she says, “It breaks my heart. And I feel like I must be doing something wrong.”

Another writes that their seven-year-old says he doesn’t feel loved. Another email describes how a three-year-old’s tantrums last all afternoon and into the evening disrupting the rest of this family’s routine, and they all feel trapped by their three-year-old. And another one is a therapist who observes that their child holds in emotions in front of their family and peers.

I noticed that there was a common thread in all of these family situations, and I offer some specifics for how my overall recommendation to trust feelings and let them be applies in each of these cases.

#2) “A Holistic Approach to Baby and Toddler Sleep (with Grace Koinange).“

So, an incredible guest, a hot button topic. This was controversial as everything on sleep tends to be. What I found really interesting though maybe not that surprising is that Grace got hundreds of people reaching out to her for help. What that tells me is something I already knew, which is that there’s so much shame and judgment around this topic for parents, with their peers, with people online, even with experts who maybe have extreme one-sided views. These parents need help and they’re afraid to openly say that in a comment online. But what did they do? They reached out to Grace because what she said resonated with them and was hopeful for them that maybe some of the issues they’re having could be resolved and they didn’t just have to wait it out. There were changes that they could respectfully make.

#3) “Parental Burnout and a Reasonable Approach to Screens (with Dr. Meghan Owenz).”

You might be interested in Dr. Owenz’s book, it’s called: Spoiled Right: Delaying Screens and Giving Children What They Really Need. And in the podcast, Meghan offers some of the latest research on the effects of screens on young children, along with this whole host of practical alternatives. And we acknowledge that the many months of homeschooling and severely limited socializing and close quarters of the pandemic and exhausted parents have understandably caused most of us to rely more on screens to get those break times that we need just to survive. This podcast answers the question that many weary parents ask, which is how to manage all of this and what can they do instead of using screens.

#4) “How to Stop Feeling Frustrated by Your Child’s Behavior — A Family Success Story.”

This was wonderful. A family wrote to me a story where they shared their step by step process in dealing with their child’s very annoying, frustrating behavior. And as is often the case, it was their perceptions of the behavior which then dictated their attitude towards it that was getting in their way. So when they realized that and they shifted it, it not only made all the difference in ending this behavior, but brought them closer together as a family.

#5) “When Your Child Keeps Ignoring Boundaries and Breaking Rules, Try This.”

In that podcast there were three different families who had very different issues, but there was one common element that was missing. It’s a common one for us all to miss, actually. And similar to that #1 podcast on responding to turbulent emotions, I was able to offer specifics for how the families can apply this missing element to each of their situations.

#6) “It Will Get Easier — The Intense Struggles of a Parent with Childhood Trauma.”

This podcast is with Alwynn Hynes. She is a parent who actually wrote to me about how much she’s struggling to use a respectful approach to caring for her children with her own history of intense trauma. She is an amazing, courageous person. She has a very supportive Facebook group that she started after this podcast called: “Let Me Be Free: The Wounded Inner Child.” I’m a member of it, and I highly recommend her group. And she’s also coaching parents to help them with the struggles that she has faced and is facing.

#7) “Can We Be Angry or Sad and Still Unruffled?”

I hope you can guess that the answer to that is yes. A parent had written to me asking:

“I’m hoping you can clarify something for me that I’m struggling to understand. I know as parents, we should appear unruffled and be the calm, confident leaders for our children. As you’ve stated many times, I understand that this leads to them feeling stable and secure. I’ve also understood that it’s beneficial to let children see when we’re dealing with strong emotions rather than to try to hide them and pretend that we’re okay — that it’s helpful to know when we’re sad, disappointed, or frustrated, for example, as a way to model that everyone has these feelings, and to show how we handle them. What I’m confused about is what to do when those emotions are caused by our children.”

So that’s the question that I speak to in this seventh most popular podcast.

Those were the most popular of all.

Again, thank you so much for supporting this podcast. And I want to finish this episode with one more success story, which is about helping a child feel seen beyond the words that they say, beyond the way that they’re acting. Seen to what they really need and to feel that message: I see you, your words and actions don’t frighten me. I don’t take them personally. I don’t take them as facts or reasonable statements.

This parent says:

I just wanted to share a little proud moment. My son is three years old and I’ve been following you since he was about 18 months. We’ve had our fair share of challenges and always you give me peace and confidence with a respectful approach. Most recently, I spent a few hours away from my son, which is not significantly unusual, especially when his dad is in charge.

I did what I usually do and told him what to expect: Dad would give him lunch and pop him down for his nap. He happily accepted and was a charmer the whole time I was out.

I arrived back just in time for him to wake up and went in to rouse him. He was slightly grumbly, but that’s not out of the ordinary.

Slowly, slowly. He got more and more upset, telling me to go away, all the while trying to hit me. I did not go away as requested. I stayed and prevented the hitting, allowing him to express himself despite my husband saying, “Maybe you should leave him.”

As he let it all out, he slowly became more and more cuddly. After some time he went and took a book, sat on my lap and said, “Mum, Mum, you came back.” It was so beautiful.

Thank you to all these parents for sharing your stories and allowing me to share them on my podcast.

We can do this.

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.

The post Independent Play, Meltdowns, Boundaries — Success Stories from My Inbox appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “Don’t Let Your Kids Miss Out on Play (with Kisha Reid)”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today I have the pleasure of hosting Kisha Reid. Kisha’s been in the early childhood field for 28 years. She’s a true veteran and she continues to actively work in the classroom. She’s been a tenacious advocate of developmentally appropriate play-based education for young children for decades and has collaborated with Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood, Explorations Early Learning, and many, many more. She sits on the board of Defending the Early Years, which is an early childhood advocacy group. We’re going to discuss the importance of a play-focused early childhood for all of our children, why this matters, and should even take precedence over other kinds of learning.

Hi, Kisha, thank you so much for being with me today.

Kisha Reid:  Hi Janet, I am so excited to be here and talk with you.

Janet Lansbury:  Me too. I feel like I’ve known you for a long time because I’ve known of you and your work, and you’re quite renowned in my world. And you’re a veteran in this. I think we’ve almost been in this field the same amount of time, or maybe you’ve been in a bit longer even. So I can’t believe we’ve never talked before, but I’m really glad that we’re going to do it finally.

Kisha Reid:  Same here. I feel like I know you. I’ve been listening to your podcast and reading your work and I’m just honored.

Janet Lansbury:  Thank you. Well, I want to jump right in and ask what first lit your fire with the power of play. What made you first realize how important it was to support, protect, defend, and advocate for play in the early years?

Kisha Reid:  I think I have to go honestly all the way back to my own childhood, because that is where I learned who I was, like who I am. That’s where I learned how to take risks, how to be strong and powerful, and where I first learned that: Hey girl, you are smart. Leaning back on those times, those times when I can remember a particular time that my friends and I had ventured further away from home than we had ever ventured. I remember actually having this conversation with myself that I’m doing this without my mom. I’m going far away and I’m doing this exciting thing, and just the exhilarating feeling that I had, that sense of freedom going out on an adventure.

So that feeling is what I always want to evoke in other children because it started from there, and what’s in me… something grew, like just this sense of self and this strongness. I had proven to myself through my adventures outside and play, through my playing in the creek and climbing trees and running fast — it just kept solidifying within me how strong I am, how capable I am, how smart I am. And I took that with me all the way through school. When I felt like something was too tough or I wasn’t ready for something, I was reminded through those times that I was playing, that I can do it, that I’m strong, that I’m confident, that I’m creative. And I just fell back on that.

So when I began working with young children, I just had this playfulness because I’ve always pulled back there. But being in programs that were more traditional and not play-based, I had to keep reminding myself of those feelings and going back to that place so that I can make sure that I provided an environment that evoked that same feeling in young children. So it’s digging way back into myself to remember the importance of childhood.

Janet Lansbury:  And it sounds like even though maybe you weren’t encouraged in school to engage your play self into learning, that you were able to balance that at least beyond school. As you said, you would remind yourself: Oh yeah, I can do stuff. I’m capable. I’ve got all this in me. These people’s measurements aren’t as important or this is just as important and this is who I really am. That’s amazing that you’re able to do that because I think sometimes not all children are able to stay in tune with that side of themselves.

Kisha Reid:  Mm-hmm. Yeah. Working with young children in a more structured environment in the early part of my career, I found that I was always the teacher who had to close her door because we were the noisiest classroom and we let the kids get the messiest. We had the most open-ended materials and maybe we went off the schedule and maybe we stayed outside 30 minutes or 40 minutes longer than we were supposed to. So I was that teacher that everybody else looked at, like, “What is wrong with her? She can’t control her class.” And then a shift for me was that I began to share what I was seeing in young children with their parents and with other educators that worked with me. I did that through photography. I would take pictures of the children. Not having them freeze and smile at the camera, but really taking pictures of what they were doing, really trying to retell the experiences that they were having. I did a lot of writing that went with the photos and I would put them in the hallway.

So this started to create interest. Parents would stop and read it and look at it and start having dialogue around the photos and talking to their child about it in the hallway. And then I think other teachers started to notice: Oh, well, the parents are interested in that. I want them to stand around my door in the hall. So let me kind of figure out what this documentation stuff is. And we just started to value sharing what we knew and saw that children were capable of doing in our play environment, within my classroom, and with others. And it just started to catch on to other teachers in the building.

Janet Lansbury:  That’s so cool. It sounds like you were photographing the process, which is what does get lost when we might wonder as parents: What is my child learning? and then we’re not seeing any concrete example of that. They’re not coming home with a sculpture or a math worksheet. But what you did was find a way to capture the beauty and the much more powerful learning that happens in the process of a child engaging actively in learning, instead of just trying to make a result. That’s what real learning is, is being able to be in a process.

Kisha Reid:  Yes. And watching it unfold. There was a sense of excitement around that. So the language and the idea started to shift from, as you said, that product and, “Mom, this is what I made” to here is a more detailed conversation, a nuanced conversation, that’s back and forth about what we experienced.

Janet Lansbury:  And look how engaged they are.

Kisha Reid:  Yeah. And look how excited they are about the whole idea of learning something and doing something with their whole selves. It wasn’t just sitting at a desk and completing a task that an adult gave to them. It was the opposite. It was standing up moving and doing the things that their bodies told them that they needed to do.

Janet Lansbury:  I love that.

Kisha Reid:  So I was still working in traditional programs for a while even after that. I was always the sore thumb, always the person asking, “Well, why did we have to make everyone nap at the same time? Why can’t they play in the mud?” I was the teacher who took her kids to the creek, stayed all day, came back. I’ll never forget the day we came back and we were muddy. This was not the school for that, but we came back and I had the kids… we were all standing on the wall and I’m like, “All right, I’m going to hose you guys off so we can go in this building.” And right before I turned the hose on, the owner comes up and she gives me just this look. And I’m like, “Oh, don’t worry. We’re going to be clean when we go in the building.”

I had to make compromises, but nothing got in my way of allowing these children to play. If we had a math objective and I had to allow them to go into the forest and search for rocks and sticks and whatever and just document their experiences with those things and then fit it into the curriculum into what was required of me, I’d do that. It may be a little bit extra work for me, but it’s so much more meaningful. So I was just attempting to prove that it didn’t take a worksheet. In fact, real-life experiences were much more valuable.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah. Because it’s not only what they’re learning there, but it’s that they’re learning to love learning and they’re learning how learning works and that they can do it. That thing about being capable again, that: Hey, I’m really good at this when I’m into it, because I’m doing it through my own interest. So yeah. I mean, you’re preaching to the choir here. I’m totally on board with this.

One thing you brought up also makes me consider if we do value this type of child-driven play and a lot of parents do, what gets in the way of us allowing this, do you think? As parents, as teachers, and as a society maybe, what are the barriers that are making it harder for us to allow children this extremely valuable, for life, experience?

Kisha Reid:  I think there are so many things. We have more parents who need to work now. We have smaller families. So grandparents may not be living with them. I grew up with my grandmother living with me. So somebody was always home. We were always outside, always able to play. Someone’s mother or grandmother was in some window watching us from somewhere. We knew all of our neighbors. It was just a slower pace. Everything was slower. We weren’t rushing off to soccer, gymnastics, or swimming. Our extracurricular was to go outside and play until the street lights come on.

So I think just the faster pace of life, the necessity for multiple parents to work find children and after-school programs more often. The high-stakes testing and pressure on academics and homework that has started to take up more of children’s lives than they ever did before. So before, you went to school, you came home, you did a five-minute coloring page or something, and then you were out the door. Now it’s so much more of a burden on young children’s time. They just don’t have as much time as they did before.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah. I mean, even those after-school programs though could be designed the way you designed your program. They could still offer that. But I think just putting myself in the parent position and all the parents I hear from, we worry sometimes that our child is going to miss out on something else. Or maybe we think that we’re being neglectful or lazy just to let them go run off to the creek or go play or do their own thing. We feel like we’re being better parents to make sure that they’re getting all this enrichment. But it’s exactly what you said. That slow life, that simplicity is where the freedom is for them.

Kisha Reid:  Yes.

Janet Lansbury:  I guess there are worries, maybe as parents. And then the worries as parents get transmitted into the worries as educators. They’re picking up: “What if our child misses out on these windows for language learning, for music, taking an instrument, for sports? They’ve got to know what it’s like to be on a team.” We’re deciding all these experiences that we want to make sure that they have. And therefore we’re eliminating the most important things of all.

Kisha Reid:  Yeah, which is just time and space to be creative, to play, to make friendships with people in authentic ways. I think there’s a time and a place and an age for team sports and those different experiences. But I think when children are young, they don’t need that. “You like soccer? Okay, let’s go kick a ball. Let’s go to the playground, bring a ball, have some friends gather around and experience the idea of kicking the ball, running after the ball, playing with friends, creating new games.”

When I was young, we would arrange huge games of kickball and dodge ball and soccer and all these amazing things that we had to come up with the rules for. We had to organize the players. We had to go around and knock on doors and find the players. We had to negotiate to make teams. We had to decide who was in charge of who is out or who is in, who’s the ref. All of those things we did within our community of mixed-age group players.

So if you really think about it, the only thing that we were missing out on is having someone outside of the play, an adult, tell us how, where, when and what. But how much more valuable is it when you have to organize, you have to plan, you have to think, you have to negotiate? It’s just so much more valuable. And you still get the team play. You still get the collaborative play. You still get the excitement of a win. All of those things that people look to team sports to achieve.

Janet Lansbury:  I would even argue that it’s more conducive to being a team player because when you were saying that, it almost made me picture a lens where you’re all the way zoomed in and you’re just zoomed in, maybe as a parent on I want my child to get the skills in this sport and everything that they need to be on this team. I want to make sure because I’m a caring parent, that my child becomes the best soccer player they could be let’s say. And so we’re zooming in and we’re kind of getting this really myopic perspective on it. Rather than zooming way back out and saying: Oh my gosh, the learning that’s going on here is a million times more important!  And in that zoomed-in less our child maybe feels, “Oh, well, this kid is doing it better maybe and the coach likes them better. They’re getting a better position or they’re getting…” It’s not conducive to real team playing.

Kisha Reid:  And you know what? A lot of this is attached to academics because if you’re going to get into the best college, you got to have a resume. And it’s starting younger and younger where we’re looking for scholarships to such and such a school. So it starts to become this resume builder at such a young age. And it’s a lot of times attached to that academic piece, that ultimate plan of happiness that we, as a society, feel comes with checking off the boxes to getting into the right college so that you can get the right job, chasing after this happiness when really that comes from that sense of knowing, that following of your passions, that sense of community and belonging and all those things that can sometimes be missing when we’re chasing happiness.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah, exactly. Those life skills. Absolutely. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense that the rush to get kids ready for the next thing gets in the way with the thing, which is that they need to experience every stage of development ideally and to be trusted to know what they’re ready for and what they’re interested in. And yeah, I mean, it doesn’t really help a lot of parents either… because I do hear from many people who have their child in gymnastics or a music class or dance, and they get frustrated because their child doesn’t want to go. This might be a four-year-old, five-year-old child, or even a six-year-old child or older. The child doesn’t want to go, the child doesn’t want to go to practice. They won’t participate when they get there. It becomes this kind of feeling of failure, I think, for everybody. For the parents, for the child.

So it often doesn’t serve us as parents because now we’re putting ourselves into the situation where we’re frustrated because of our agenda when all we had to do was really let go of our agenda and trust a little bit more.

Kisha Reid:  But it is hard to be that parent who believes these things and have the child who’s not signed up for anything when everybody else in their preschool class is on the tee-ball team or is taking whatever the lessons are. It is hard to be that parent.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah, that peer pressure. I know. I hear that a lot from parents too, that they want to trust, but everybody around them, even family members or everyone around them, is giving them more doubt. So that’s why I love that somebody like you is out there. You’re so important because you’re a defender of this type of learning and you’re out there advocating. But yeah, it’s hard to hear that with all the other noise.

Kisha Reid:  My advice for a parent that feels that way, if everyone around you is… their child is in something or multiple things and you just don’t think it’s the best thing for your child but you also feel kind of left out of that, my advice would be to invite them over in your backyard if you have a backyard or a grassy area that you can find and just play. Invite them over for open-ended play so that your child now still has some experiences with these children and they’re doing something, but it is open-ended in its play. And the parent still has that social aspect.

Because I think a lot of it is social for the parents. The kids are in whatever the sport is. They’re playing or they’re practicing. And now the parents can sit back and hang out and chat and talk. There’s a social aspect of it for the parents as well. So I think that we can kind of meet a lot of the needs or a lot of the desires of everyone involved with a simple backyard — bring a snack, bring some balls, and play.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah, just a gathering. A weekly gathering.

Kisha Reid:  Just a simple gathering.

Janet Lansbury:  I would say also in my experience that a lot of these things that maybe we’re excited about as parents: the other parents are going to be there and my kids are all on this team or my kids are all in this dance program and that community feeling that I have, or maybe we loved dance as a child and we can’t wait to get our child in there, there were so many things like that. Even taking my child to an amusement park or story time at the library, I couldn’t wait. I was excited to have my child do that. I’d been trained with Magda Gerber who was so much about, “Let the child lead their development.” Trust them, trust them, trust them. Basic trust in them. But I would feel myself being like: Oh gosh, I want to do this now.

I would make myself wait almost always. There were a couple of times I didn’t. And then I learned. You know what? This would’ve been more fun just to be in our backyard this afternoon than to go to that puppet show with the marionettes where she had to sit there.” It wasn’t as great as when I was a kid, or maybe I was older and I was able to appreciate it more. But when we wait and we allow children to come into an experience, first of all, because they want to, because they’re eager, they’re ready and therefore you can trust their wish to do it, if we’re not the ones bringing it up at first. If it actually comes from them, you can really trust my child might be ready for this experience now.  And then maybe we’ve read a book about it, or they’ve gone to watch a practice or they have a real sense of what it is. And then they come into these experiences that we’re so excited for them to have with this grace and all these things that readiness offers that we can’t force.

And so many times that happened where I was like: Oh gosh if I would’ve taken them to this thing earlier, we did it earlier, they would’ve been striving, they would’ve been trying, they maybe would’ve been trying to please me on some level– 

Kisha Reid: I was going to say. Yep.

Janet Lansbury:  Because they feel they should. The idea of coming in at the top of an experience, so ready for it is just this magic, but it’s hard to wait. So I think our impatience sometimes can get in the way.

Kisha Reid:  It’s just this sense of them having an intrinsic motivation versus something that comes from outside of themselves. I had a student once, and she just… I mean, she was born to dance. She’s born to dance. She walked around like a dancer. She carried herself like a dancer. I have a dance background. So she literally had me. I mean, this child had me. She’d grab my arm. She started this at four years old. She would come to school with leotards, not just for herself, but for her friends as well. Ballet slippers. All the things. And she would tell me the different types of music that she wanted to listen to. “Slow. Or I want to listen to just pianos.” And she would say, “Okay, teach me.” And she would have me teach her. “Okay. All right. So what is this called?”

We would do a lesson as long as she wanted to do a lesson. And it was her. It 100% came from within this child that she wanted to do these things. I don’t know if… she probably had seen something or maybe an older sister who did ballet. I’m not sure what it was, but there was a deep interest within this child to move in this way. Even when she wasn’t dancing, she moved with grace and on her toes, stretching her arms out fully.

I don’t deny that.

When there’s an intrinsic passion, by all means, allow them to shower themselves in it, because play and dance are not the same as actually having to do an hour of standing still, waiting your turn, standing up straight. There’s a difference. There’s playing around with the passion until her development is in a place where she can do those things in a structured fashion. I don’t know. I just found it very magical to watch this child grow into her passion at such a young age.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah. And sometimes they create their own dances, but then once they start the class, then now they know there’s a right way and a wrong way. And if I only can do it this way, then it actually makes them less free. A child like that…  you were able to follow her lead and do all of that, I can see how parents… Because probably everyone else would be telling them this too. They see this talent and they’re thinking, “You’d better get her in a class now or it’s going to go away somehow.” I think that’s another thing that gets in our way. We think something’s going to disappear. If our child seems interested in reading. Gosh, we might think we better start really teaching them because this might go away and then they’re going to lose this.

Or even with toilet training or something. Maybe their child goes on the potty once, so gosh, we better stay on this track. I’d better make sure that my child doesn’t ever use diapers again because otherwise, she’s going to lose something. So I think we can fear that too, as parents, that somehow our child is going to lose momentum on something. But that’s the opposite of what it’s really like when you’re ready for something. You can’t put it out, really. Or it’s hard to. I guess you can if it becomes not fun. I’ve also known a lot of children with that experience. Something was really fun for them, but then they took the course, maybe too early, or maybe it was the wrong kind of course. And then it wasn’t fun for them anymore.

Kisha Reid:  And they drop it. The passion’s gone.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah. So it’s almost like the fear that we might have is in the opposite direction of what we should fear if anything. Not that we should fear anything as parents, but what we should care about protecting.

I love that your podcast was called the Defending the Early Years Podcast. So you’re a defender of play in the early years and you’re promoting developmentally appropriate play-based education. So what goes on in your programs? What are you doing?

Kisha Reid:  Almost everything we’re doing here is playing. When we’re getting dressed, it’s play. When we’re having lunch, when we’re reading stories, when we’re running around outside, it’s all play because they’re choosing to do it. They’re choosing how they do it. They’re choosing with whom they do it. It is creative and playful because they’re leading it.

I think one of the most important things about this place and about what I’m hoping for all early childhood settings is relationships. Just authentic relationships where you know each other, and flexibility so all these different diverse needs can be met. I think the difference between what we’re doing here as opposed to what a more traditional preschool setting does is we’re not getting them ready for our next step. It’s a byproduct of playing. It’s a byproduct of feeling safe and happy and confident in knowing yourself that you’re going to become ready for the next step, but that’s not our focus. Our focus is really on the right now and meeting the needs of right now and what that looks like through the process of inquiry and co-learning and trial and error and creativity.

We’re just playing and living together. We’re eating when we’re hungry. We’re napping when we’re sleepy. We’re crying when we’re sad. It’s a second home for them. It’s not what we as a society would picture a classroom being, but it is what we as a society should decide that a classroom is.

Janet Lansbury:  I love that. So what should parents do if they have concerns that seem valid that their child isn’t at a level that they should be at in some way, or they don’t seem to have their age-appropriate skills? Even a child with disabilities, or…

Kisha Reid:  We have had children that had diverse needs. We still have children that have diverse needs. All of them have diverse needs, but then we have children who have additional needs. I believe that all children need play. All children need freedom. All children need to express their personal passions. I like to think that we can meet those needs. There are cases and times where we need to call in extra help and we need to help parents identify support. For us there are so many local organizations that step in and help with assessment, supporting the parent to understand what the child is going through or where they are developmentally, or what special accommodations they need. And then we do our best to meet those needs.

We have, over the years, been able to observe children who are on the autism spectrum within our play-based program. I’ve worked at lots of places that have a strong belief that those children need structure and control and rewards, punishments, these things that we do not believe, I do not believe, typically developing children need, nor do I believe that children on the spectrum need those things within my program. None of these children need to be fixed. They all need to express who they are within. They all need to be met where they are, loved, and supported in order to have whatever their needs are met.

So if that is to be swinging or moving their body to get that self-regulation, then we figure out a way to put a swing in the classroom and lots of swings outside because we know that that is soothing and that child needs that.

Or if it’s heavy work — they need to really move those muscles and lift up heavy things — we fill our environment with those things. If it is special one-on-one support that they need, we look for the resources. And there are times when we don’t have the resources so we have to go outside of our program. For me, it’s the goal to support every parent that walks through the store in any way that I can. I don’t know all the answers for them, but I will sit with them until we find the answers for their individual child.

Janet Lansbury:  That’s wonderful because I agree with you that every child… I mean, you could even argue that a child with delays or disabilities deserves even more trust, more belief in them than the typical child. But yeah, they all deserve that.

What do you think about summer learning loss?

Kisha Reid:  Well, I don’t believe in it. I don’t believe that when you truly have learned something, deeply understood a concept, you don’t lose it. It’s like riding a bike. You just don’t lose it. I do believe you can forget things that were quickly taught to you, that you learned by memory, or that you were taught by rote, or that you learned for a particular test or that you had zero interest in but you had to learn it because it’s a part of the curriculum. Those things can surely be lost. In fact, they probably are almost pruned out as soon as the test is over, as soon as the school year’s over, as soon as the class is done. But you do not forget the things that you learn through your whole self when you’re using your — I just wrote a post on this — your mind, your body, your hands, your soul, your whole heart. You don’t forget that stuff. You just don’t forget it.

I always joke that sense, it ain’t common. We’re not all born with common sense, but so many of the things that are common knowledge that you never had to read about or ask questions about, or take a class about, that we just learn as humans. Like we observe people walking, we learn to walk. We learn to talk. We learn that some things are heavy and some things are light. We learned that when you throw something up, it comes down. All of these things that we keep gathering.

For example, if you watch children at play and they have multiple items, let’s say rocks because I observed this yesterday. They sort, they arrange. Sometimes they line them up like a graph. They count. They look at what’s different and what’s the same. They can classify them in lots of different ways. This is ingrained in them. They understand these mathematical concepts. They understand these similarities and differences in size and shape and all this. You can’t lose that because you know it.

Janet Lansbury:  Right.

Kisha Reid:  There’s a difference between remembering extrinsically because someone else is telling you you have to and seeking out knowledge.

My daughter, for example, wanted a piano in the house. Somebody was giving away a piano and I’m like, “Okay, we’re going to get this piano, put in the house.” And I said, “Well, I know someone who teaches lessons. Do you want me to sign you up?”

“No, I want to teach myself.”

I’m like, “Okay.”

My other daughter asked for a guitar. This is when they were preteens. And I said, “Do you want to take a class? You can take a class.”

And she said, “No, I’m going to teach myself. I will enjoy it more and I’ll be more proud if I teach it to myself.”

And I’m like, “Okay.”

And they taught themselves. It was a passion from what was in them. And they taught themselves at their own pace, in their own way.

I know I went way off your question.

Janet Lansbury:  No, that excites me too, because we all need to remember and just remind ourselves maybe every day of what you’re talking about. It’s gold. It’s the most powerful thing to be able to create your own learning and have all that autonomy. I mean, you could take lessons for years and never have that.

Again, it’s about the way we’re setting children up for life rather than college, I guess. Which is just so much more important. But yeah, to be trusted to create that learning, there’s no replicating that. And it’s just so much more powerful than any other kind of learning.

I love that they want to do that stuff. It’s so great.

And I also love what you said about “as soon as they’re done with the test, they lose that.” So, well, should summer learning be every day the parent has to drill them? Obviously not. Because if they’re just going to lose it, it wasn’t really embedded learning anyway. It’s not going to carry them into the world. It’s not going to do what it’s supposed to do. So why?

I have a post called “A Summer to Forget ” that’s about… maybe it’s okay for your kids to forget. How important it is to shift gears and have this more freeing, forgetting, but still learning new things the way that you’re talking about, teaching yourself things, or just learning what this certain kind of water in this pond feels like compared to the ocean. I mean this is-

Kisha Reid:  And learning who they are.

Janet Lansbury:  And learning who they are. Yeah.

Kisha Reid:  What would I do if no one was telling me what to do every minute of the day? That’s what I think summer should be about. Honestly, that’s what I think every day should be about.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah.

Kisha Reid:  But if summer’s the time that we’re giving children, then we need to give it to them.

Janet Lansbury:  I would give it after school too, like the way you describe for yourself that you had that.

But with that post or anytime I’ve brought up this idea, I get the response, “Well, that’s a privileged perspective.”

Kisha Reid:  Mm-hmm. I’m sad that that is a privileged perspective. I’m very sad that young children of color or children with a lower economic status aren’t seen to be able to have the same freedom. It upsets me because what I know about play and what I know about how much you actually learn and how far that will actually take you in this world and that sense of self that you’re going to develop, I know that every child, and in some cases especially the child that is not privileged, deserves that.

Janet Lansbury:  I agree.

Kisha Reid:  Part of what I want families to understand. I want to make sure that Black and Brown children are having access to play. I read studies about the number of words that children hear and that there are less words in this type of family and more words in that type of family. I just squint my nose up because I’m in a Brown family and there are so many words. And I’m around a lot of Brown families and there are so many words. I’ve grown up without many means, and there are so many words and so much dialogue and so many experiences. They may be different from the traditional White or American experience, but they’re rich. Listening to family stories and playing games with our families. And so I think that we just need to shift the measuring tool that we use for some of our assessments of young children so that it’s inclusive in values, more diverse things.

Janet Lansbury:  I couldn’t agree more. I think it comes from the same perspective that we’re talking about, that we want to help some group of children that we perceive as disadvantaged. We’re trying to help give them a step up, but that’s the wrong way to look at it because this is actually getting in their way and maybe creating a deficit in the kind of time that’s so much more valuable. These kinds of experiences children get from free play, they’re ultimately much more important for developing higher learning skills and self-confidence.

Back to the story you started about yourself, you actually have been able to stay in tune with yourself. And how confidence-building that was. I don’t think about that a lot for myself, but it’s actually true for me too. For us, it was dolls. My sister and I lived through our dolls. But what we learned about relationships and people and these stories that we created about these families…

I love Stuart Brown’s book (Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul). He talks about how as adults we can say where our talents come from. We can look back and see, Oh, that’s the way that I played. He goes into this whole thing about all these different areas. I looked at them, all that he suggested, and I thought, I’m none of those. But then I realized, Oh my gosh, “storytelling.” It’s a type of talent that’s developed through play. And it was what I was drawn to as a child. And it’s what I’m drawn to now, understanding the story, what’s behind this, what’s happening with these children in this family. Anyway. Yeah.

Kisha Reid:  It’s so deep, isn’t it?

Janet Lansbury:  It’s so deep. And it’s so much more fun as a parent too when we can just relax and trust a little more. Doing nothing is doing a lot. It’s healing when children can come home from school, even a center like you have which sounds so idyllic, and still come home and switch gears into this: You know, I just want to sit and look out the window or, I just want to, I don’t know, do nothing and just see where my mind goes.

Kisha Reid:  Yep. And I love to watch that. I love to just observe the children as they come in and see what’s going to spark their interests, what are they going to do, and where are they going to hang out. That to me… I just wait for that. I don’t put things out. We have our materials that are our materials. They know what’s there. And I just don’t know what’s going to come of it each day. I love to see where it goes and how it develops.

We’ve had balls in a basket in our classroom since the beginning of the school year. I don’t think I recall anyone ever touching them. The other day they had all the balls out and they arranged five different games with the balls. The games kept getting more intricate and involving other materials and rules. It was just so interesting to watch a group of three and four year olds get a spark for an idea from a material that’s so just simple and open ended and play for over an hour on their own, going through conflict and negotiation and figuring it all out. But everybody had one goal and it was to keep that play going. So I got to witness that and it’s amazing to see.

Janet Lansbury:  I’m totally with you on that. I love it with an infant, I love it with a toddler. I love it. As long as my kids will let me watch them, which unfortunately wasn’t that long. At around seven or eight, they were like, “Just stop watching me” with the doll house or something like. Oh my gosh, I get goosebumps, I love it so much. Parents could maybe enjoy the experience so much more if we took a little pressure off of ourselves.

Kisha Reid:  Yep.

Janet Lansbury:  And tune out the people that are making us doubters and listen to people like you.

Where can we hear more about you and the work that you’re doing? I know you have your podcast, the DEY Podcast with Kisha Reid.

Kisha Reid:  You can find that on dey.org. I really enjoy talking with teachers who are working in classrooms and bringing play to public schools or bringing play to communities where maybe there’s not as much access. So many wonderful people doing lots of great work. I’m just excited to be able to amplify their voices and spread the word about all we can do for children, and all we can do really for society, because anything we can do for children, we’re doing for society.

Janet Lansbury:  That sounds really inspiring. I haven’t listened to enough of them and I’m going to listen to all of them because I need this inspiration.

Kisha Reid:  Well, I’ll be listening to you while you’re listening to me.

Janet Lansbury:  It’s so great to be with a kindred spirit in this work, who I’ve again, known and admired for so long. Thank you. Thank you for sharing with us.

Kisha Reid:  Thank you so much. This was great. Thanks.

Here are some links to enjoy more wisdom from Kisha Reid:

Defending The Early Years and Kisha’s podcast

The DEY Facebook Page

Kisha’s center: Discovery Early Learning Center

And please check out the other podcasts and posts on my website. They’re all categorized by topic and you should be able to find whatever you’re looking for. There are many of them. Also, if you’re not aware of my books, please check them out. They’re best sellers on Amazon. No Bad Kids, Toddler Discipline Without Shame and Elevating Child Care, A Guide To Respectful Parenting are also available on audio at audible.com. You can get one for free by using a link in the liner notes of this podcast. You can also get them in paperback at Amazon, and an ebook at Amazon, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, and apple.com. If you find this podcast helpful, you can help it to continue by giving it a positive review on iTunes and by supporting my sponsors. Thank you again. We can do this.

The post Don’t Let Your Kids Miss Out on Play (with Kisha Reid) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

For a deep and complete understanding of ALL these points and much, much more, check out Janet’s No Bad Kids Course.

Transcript of “7 Daily Reminders for Parents”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. I recently received an email from a parent who I thought had a great suggestion for me and I’m going to follow that suggestion now, or do my best to at least. She asked if I could do an episode on general reminders as you start your parenting day. She said she wishes she could cut snippets out of episodes to listen to on repeat. So she thought it would be great for me to do a daily snippet. That’s what I’m going to do. I actually have seven, so that’s one for each day of the week, but they’re all for all days of the week, of course. I’m going to explain why these are recommendations of mine, and I’ll probably make a list up in the transcript or somewhere where you can easily copy/paste or put it on your refrigerator.

Again, thank you to this parent for your brilliant idea for these daily reminders. You’ll notice as we go that these seven reminders overlap, compliment, and support each other.

I’m going to start with:

1) Let the feelings be.

If you listen here, you hear me say this all the time because it’s really a lifelong challenge for a lot of us. The reason we do this is that feelings come and go. We don’t control them. What we want our children to learn is that it’s okay to feel whatever they feel. We’re not going to let them act on a lot of those feelings, of course, that’s our job. But we want our child to share. We want to know what’s going on with them.

Even if it’s something painful for us to hear, it’s better that they share it than not share it. Better not only for the quality of our relationship and our child’s sense of self and acceptance of self but even in a practical sense, it helps us. Because when children can’t express the feeling they’re more likely to do so through concerning behavior: hitting, lashing out, throwing things, saying things in really unkind ways, escalating. Or on the other hand, they might start to suppress these feelings that they have because they feel that these are unacceptable and that there’s something wrong with them. And that creates a lot of issues that we want to avoid.

So “let the feelings be” applies to the most minor feelings a child expresses all the way to a full-on meltdown. In all these cases, we want to remember that it’s safe, it’s positive, and that we can trust our child to share whatever it is. Without us pushing back on it, without trying to fix it, talk them out of it or scold them for expressing it. Instead being curious and open, so that we can learn more and understand our child and help them to feel better just by listening, just by allowing them to feel heard.

So let’s say our child says, “I don’t like this shirt today” and we know that’s our child’s favorite shirt usually, and everything in us wants to say “What do you mean? That’s your favorite shirt” or “Okay, well, here’s another shirt. How about this shirt?” Instead, we could let the feelings be by saying “Oh, you’re not liking that today. I wonder what’s going on with that? What about it don’t you like?” Just giving it that openness, having that attitude of Huh. Well, that’s interesting. I want to know more.

That’s how we connect and help our child to feel close to us, safe with us, and to be able to share what’s in their heart, or in their mind, rather than holding it in.

Okay. Number two:

2) Acknowledge

When our child is expressing something, even if it’s something that’s scary to us, “I hate my sister” or “I hate my mom,” instead of pushing back, we’re going to trust that sharing it is much more positive than not sharing it. We can’t do anything to make that feeling disappear — that’s not in our child’s power, it’s not in our power. So we want is to acknowledge, “Your sister’s really upsetting you. What’s going on with that” or “You really didn’t like what mom did, it sounds like.”

We’re not going to try to say too much. We’re just going to let our child know that we are open to them. That we hear them, that we want to know.

The misconception that people sometimes have is that if they just say this acknowledgment, then they’re saying something that’s going to make it better. Now, sometimes that’s true, but other times it can upset our child because we might be saying the words, but not really being genuine, not really empathizing with them.

So I could say “I know you’re upset with your sister” Or “I understand you’re upset with your sister.” So I’m acknowledging, but I’m not open and accepting of my child. There’s a big difference. This is why sometimes parents will say that it doesn’t work for them. It doesn’t work when they acknowledge feelings. Their child says “stop talking. I don’t want to hear that.” That is often because if we tune into our intention there, while we’re acknowledging, it might be: Okay, I’m doing what I’m supposed to do. Now just stop. Or: You shouldn’t feel that way or that’s not okay that you have that feeling. When in fact, what we want to do with acknowledging is the opposite.

That can only happen if we are in the mode of trusting, letting the feelings be. So that has to come first. That has to be what’s inside of us and what we’re intending when we’re acknowledging. Or else, to children, who see right through our words into what we’re feeling, they will get: I’m really uncomfortable as your parent and I don’t like this and I really want you to stop. So then that’s what they react to with, “Stop talking! Stop saying that!” You’re not letting me share.

So “acknowledge” has to be genuine. We don’t have to actually empathize. Sometimes we won’t empathize because it’ll seem too unreasonable and wrong, but at least accept and be open to it. Don’t try to say too much. Trust, accept, and acknowledge from that place.

Okay. Number three, this was what Magda Gerber called her magic word:

3) Wait

The reason to wait is that we have basic trust in our baby or child of any age as competent and able. And a struggle that they’re engaging in that they seem to want to be engaging in because they’ve chosen it, is a worthy struggle that we don’t want to interrupt, if possible.

So our child’s play and their experimentation, what they’re doing when they’re learning through play, learning how to use an object. This belongs to them. With the approach I teach, we value that. We value our child’s inner-directed learning and the power of them being able to guide their learning and achieve what they’re interested in achieving. Not what we’re interested in them achieving. Or what we want them to get a little faster or what we worry that they’re going to feel discouraged about if they don’t get to it.

So when a baby, let’s say, is in the supine position and they’re twisting and they’re working on rolling to their tummy, we see that happening. Maybe they’re making sounds that are effortful. Well, we want to notice, observe if they’re in a manageable struggle or not. If it doesn’t seem manageable, if it seems like distress, exhaustion, or an overwhelmed baby, then we’re obviously going to offer to pick them up.

This is another time to acknowledge, “It seems like you’re working on something there, you’re working on rolling over?” It’s so easy for us to fix children, turn them over, pick them up, put the blocks together for them, do the puzzle piece. We can do those things, but whenever we do, we’re erasing the possibility that our child can have an “I did it” moment — to feel that incredible gift of agency in their life, of ability. We’re going to take that away sometimes because we’re human beings and we don’t want to see our child uncomfortable. It will happen, but we want to be aware… if we do value this idea of our child’s feelings of competence and agency in the world that will encourage them to be lifelong learners, to embrace lifelong learning, joyfully.

I’ve worked for years with children in parent, infant, and toddler classes and I’ve feel it too. I want to show them this thing over there that fits with what they’re doing. Here are these balls that are similar and they can roll them all together. I have so many ideas. I have so many great, I think they’re great, fun things to add to what a child’s doing or to make it what I think could be better for them. What I’ve come to do is observe and wait, observe goes along with wait, and invariably, they do something completely different. They do it their way. They climb down the steps on their tummies facing downward — the opposite of what we think they’re supposed to do. They’re supposed to turn around, right? to go down steps. Well, children usually don’t. They find their own way to go down.

I remember this one child, the first time she walked to the top of this step of what we use in these classes. A lot of the time it’s this rocking boat on one side, but it’s like a little bridge-looking type step thing on the other. And usually, they’re crawling up first when they’re younger. And then one day they start to step up. This child, the first time she did that, not only did she step up, but she had a toy in each hand, a heavy toy, like a wooden car. That’s how she chose to achieve this.

So they surprise you in these wonderful ways. It really makes parenting so much more exciting and enjoyable and surprising and helps us to see how capable our children are, how interesting they are, how creative their ideas are, how much better their ideas for them are than ours for them. So we can really enjoy that.

Then I know parents ask “well, what if my child asks me for help?” Oftentimes, that’s because we have done it for them in the past, but either way, let’s say our child asks us for help. I’m referring specifically to help during play. I believe in always saying “yes” to help. I would never say “no, I’m not going to help you.” I say “yes”, but the way I define help is different than “I will fix it for you.” To me, that’s not helping, it’s not helping my child to feel confident, to be able to do things, to want to do things themselves.

So I’ll say “yes, okay.” Oftentimes, all the child wanted was to know I was there supporting them and they actually do it right there, but if I have been helping in the past, then they might hand me the jar to open for them. I’m talking about a kind of plastic jar that they have in their play area, a jar that they could open. If it’s too tight, then I might loosen it just a little bit, but that’s the most I would do. I would hold it for them. If they want me to do it. I would say “oh, I know I did that for you before. I’m not going to do it now because that’s not really helpful for you.”

I’m there and I trust, maybe my child gets upset, but that’s okay. That’s a healthy expression of frustration of: I’m maybe not able to do this yet myself or you did it for me and now I’m uncomfortable because I’m used to that you do these things for me.

We can give them a false sense of dependency when we rush in and we don’t practice “wait.” So we say “yes” to help, we come over, we come close. We make sure we’re giving our full attention there because it’s not helpful if we’re also distracted on our phones or doing something else. I’m going to help you by giving you my full attention and support for what you’re doing. We don’t have to say “you can do it, try it, try it.” In fact, I wouldn’t do those things because that can create more pressure. Oh, my parent wants me to do it they think I should be able to do it. It makes it harder for them. So I’m just there. I’m breathing to keep myself comfortable. I’m trusting.

Then we do the smallest thing.

So if it’s a physical skill where they’re climbing or something, we would be spotting to keep them safe. And so maybe we would say “I’m here to keep you safe. I won’t let you get hurt.” That’s it. That’s the first level because we want to do it in stages so that our child gains more out of this experience — more agency, more confidence, more belief in themselves as capable.

The second level is that we give a verbal direction, maybe. “It seems like you’re stuck there. Does that feel like you’re stuck?” So we’re acknowledging the feelings or what our child is expressing to us. We wait for a moment and then maybe we say “try putting your foot down to this next bar below the one that you’re on. Can you get that foot out of there?”

Now let’s say our child is starting to get more frustrated and they seem unable to do that.

So then the next thing I would do, always waiting in between a little bit so that this is really in stages and I’m not just rushing from zero to 10 here… and all along I’m acknowledging and empathizing with what they’re feeling… The next stage is: maybe I help you move your foot, which is stuck next to your other leg. Maybe I help you move that foot out and I say “okay, now I think it’s free to go down. Do you want to try that?” Let’s say they can’t, they’re feeling a little stuck. Then I might put their foot down. So I’m not taking them all the way down. I’m not putting them all the way up onto something. I’m doing the most minimal thing because that’s truly helping, rather than taking the experience away from them and fixing it, which is again, so easy for us as adults to do.

Maybe if we’re impatient, we do it, but whenever possible, let children reap all the benefits of the experience. They also learn: something can be hard, I can feel a little frustrated, I can feel that struggle and the discomfort of that, and then I push through it to the other side.

So we could say those words to them till we’re blue in the face, and it’s not going to help them. Experiencing it is what teaches them, experiential learning. That’s the way children learn best. They learn through all their senses, experientially.

Okay, so that was number three, “wait.”

Number four:

4) Set limits early

So, wait in terms of development and play and problem-solving. Set limits early when it’s about behavior that we don’t think is helpful to our child, that is uncomfortable because our child’s doing something with our stuff that we don’t want them to do or bothering our bodies. Set limits early, and I would do this with a confident light attitude.

When we see our child rushing towards us with that kind of manic energy, and they’re going to crash into us, we put our hand out and we stop them. “I see you rushing towards me. When your body’s calm, I’d love to have you sit with me.” Not waiting until they’re already jumping on us and then we might be saying “get down, I don’t like this.” So at that point, we’re already probably feeling annoyed with our child, victimized, and we’re not helping them with this impulsive behavior.

Setting limits early is understanding that children, much of their behavior is very impulsive. They don’t know why they’re doing it half the time. If we wait too long, we have much more of a chance of getting frustrated, not being able to have a confident, light attitude, the kind that eases behavior, that calms children, that helps them feel: oh, my parents have this. They’re the leaders and they’re not intimidated by me and I’m not a problem for them. They can handle me.

So if I see my child running towards the baby, part of us might feel: oh, I don’t want to discourage their relationship with the baby. Don’t worry about that. It’s much more encouraging to your child to let them know that you are there for them. You’re there to stop them.

So I would put my hand out or put my hands on my child lovingly say “oh, looks like you’re running very quickly to that baby. I don’t know if that’s going to be safe, so I’m going to stop you right here. If you slow down, you can come closer.” And then I’m ready to help my child through all the stages of that. They can come closer now I see that their body is calm, so I can allow them to come close into the baby’s face, maybe, but then I might still have my hand nearby because I don’t want them to headbutt or abruptly move into that rougher behavior, which is very, very common with toddlers who have a baby. They’re feeling out of control with this new situation and they’re just vibrating with this impulsive energy.

Anticipate, be the one to say, “I’m going to leave you in your safe place while I go to the bathroom.” Instead of waiting until our child is already there with us and now they’re doing things in the bathroom that we don’t want them to do and we can’t relax. Anticipate and help your child right at the get-go, or before the get-go because that when we can be the calm leaders or children need.

This goes along with the next one, which is number five:

5) Concerning behavior is a request for help

It can be all levels of help. It can be this more minor: help me feel safe with you as a leader because when I grab your glasses off your face, you get really stern and angry and it’s disconcerting to me and there’s something in me that just keeps doing that, even though I don’t want to be doing it. I know it makes you mad, but just feeling the power of that is so weird and I need to keep testing it.

That might be what our child is feeling, not having conscious thoughts about this, of course, but that can be what’s going on for them. Or it can be: I’m really out of control here, hitting kids and pushing people in the park.

So we want to help them there, right? And ideally set limits early, be in there early: Oh, I see my child’s kind of having a day here or seems really tired. For some reason, they’re having this behavior. I’m going to come in and stop them. I’m going to be right next to them. Be what I call a buddy-guard and hang out and make sure that nothing happens here. And maybe I’ll make the choice to take them home before this gets worse, because usually these types of behaviors don’t suddenly resolve and get better. They usually get worse in those moments.

So being that advocate for our child, helping them when they can’t help themselves, and being that safe person, the hero our child needs in those moments.

I’m saying this like it’s easy. I know it’s not. It’s all about the way we perceive. If we perceive the behavior as a request for help: my child needs my help here. I’m going to be more clear with the boundary (if that’s what they’re asking). I’m going to be more confident and light with the boundary because they seem to be repeating it for that reason. I’m going to answer the question that their behaviors asking me as best I can as a confident leader and I know that behavior reflects my child’s comfort level.

They’re doing the best they can in any given moment. So we can put all concerning behavior into this one category: a request for help. It will make our lives so much easier.

Because when we see behavior as children are out to get us or they’re bad children, or they’re going to be doing this when they’re 20 years old still, and I better give them a lesson right now… The lesson children need is that we’re in their corner, we’re going to help them when they can’t help themselves, and that we understand that they are immature humans reacting out of stress, out of tiredness, getting dysregulated very, very easily with emotions overwhelming them.

They’re people, but they’re at a different stage of life than we are, a much different stage of life where they don’t have the self control that we have, even if they sometimes are so articulate and seem so wise beyond their years, they’re still little ones. They still need our help.

Okay. Number six:

6) I won’t let you

This is the only reminder I’m sharing that is actually words for us to say. I know we all like scripts and I do give them as examples, but I don’t believe in “if you just say these words, this is going to do the trick” because I know that it’s not about words. It’s about our intention, which comes from what we’re feeling and our perceptions of the situation, and our perceptions of our child, and our role as a parent.

What I won’t let you reminds us of is that we want to be in connection with our children in a genuine way when they need our help. We hear a lot about “connect before you correct,” but then we also hear suggestions to say “hitting hurts, we don’t hit.” It’s common to suggest talking in third person: “Mommy doesn’t want you to… Mommy doesn’t like it when you…” All of these things were the norm when I was first sharing online 12 years ago. “I won’t let you” is actually Magda Gerber’s suggestion that now is becoming more common, which is great.

Here’s why it matters: the connection. “I and you.” I’m in first person and I am connecting with you. That may seem like a small difference from saying “mommy or daddy doesn’t want you to”, but it will really make a difference to us in the way it feels. It will feel more clear and confident. It will remind ius that we are talking to a human being and that we are comfortable being their leader. We’re not trying to put it off into this mommy person over here on the left that isn’t quite me.

It’s me and you and I’m here for you. “I won’t let you.”

And we’re suggesting with “won’t let you,” that I’m here to help, and I’m going to stop you, not get mad at you because you’re not following my verbal direction. I’m going to help you stop the behavior. I won’t let you go in this drawer and I’m stopping you before you open it, setting limits early, again because I know that I’m not in the mood for you to go in this drawer and take all my stuff out. Maybe in another moment, I would be, but right now I’m not and I’m tuning into that with myself. So I’m going to stop you right here.

And now you want to do it again.

“I won’t let you. Let’s go to the other room. I’m not going to let you do that.” And we take our child away from the object of that impulsive behavior.

This is also why a Yes Space can be really, really helpful, a place where we don’t have to say “don’t do this, don’t do that” all the time and our child can feel free to be the explorer they’re born to be.

Okay. One more. Number seven:

7) Confident momentum in transitions

Because transitions are hard, very hard for young children who are in so many transitions internally and feeling everything intensely that’s changing around them. These mini transitions that happen throughout the day are often when they fall apart and need our help. Confident momentum is when we understand that going in, or we at least try to remind ourselves: Oh yeah, I’m going to need confident momentum. We’re going to get into the car or I’m going to help my child get dressed for school, even though they can do it themselves, they may need my help and confident momentum.

It’s not about being fast or disrespectful. It’s about closing the gaps, so our child starts to put their socks on, and then they say “no, I don’t want this.” Or: now I’m going to go look over here at something in the corner that’s interesting. Maybe we would let them do that during a play period. That’s a great thing to do, explore and experiment with everything that’s safe for you.

But right now we can’t, right, because we’ve got to get from point a to point B and we don’t want our child to get stuck in the transition. So in that case, we say, “You can look at that when you get back, but for now, we’re going to get going.” It means, “Okay, I’m going to help you put your shoe on.” And maybe we have to pick our child up and get them to the car and get them in the car seat. We invite them to participate, but we try to notice right away when they’re not going to be able to. We try to catch that early. We notice early: oh, they’re stalling or they’re getting stuck, so I’m here to be the hero. “I’m here to help you. Here we go.”

Confident momentum in transitions usually requires a lot less physicality than we might have believed, because when we’re confident, when we’re coming in ready to go, ready to move forward, knowing we might get push-back and it might be hard, but we’re still going to go forward. Not going to let it stop me and throw me off. I’m in confident momentum mode. Then I can be ready to just put my hand behind your back and guide you, take your hand. I do it with confidence.

And confidence makes all the difference with children. Our comfort, our confidence just eases their mind. They feel so safe. They feel: oh yeah, I’m the little child and I do have parents here that can do this stuff for me. They’re not waiting for me to decide these things. I get to decide my play. That’s the area where I’m in charge.

So that’s my list:

Let the feelings be

Acknowledge

Wait

Set limits early

Concerning or inappropriate behavior is a call for help

I won’t let you

Confident momentum in transitions

Then there’s one more and it’s the most important one of all:

 BE GOOD TO YOURSELF

Be patient with yourself. Remind yourself every day that this is a process. It’s a journey. We’re never going to be perfect. We just keep going, keep showing up, and learning along with our children.

Please feel free to download this illustration by Anne Kenny from Caring Ink!  Thank you so much, Anne!

I really hope some of this helps. And please check some of my other podcasts on my website janetlansbury.com. There are 200-and-something of them at this point and they’re all indexed by subject and category so you should be able to find whatever topic you might be interested in. And I have two books, they’re available 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.

Thanks so much for listening. We can do this.

The post 7 Daily Reminders for Parents appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “‘Earlier Is Better’ and Other Child Development Myths (with Rae Pica)”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today, I’m joined by Rae Pica, a true standard bearer for early childhood education. I’d never met Rae, but I certainly knew of her and her work. She’s been focused on this for over 40 years. So I’m thrilled she agreed to come on the podcast. Rae is dedicated to developing and educating the whole child and she’s written 20 books on the subject. She’s a brilliant keynote speaker and, as a consultant, she’s offered her expertise and experience to an incredibly diverse list of organizations, both public and private, including the CDC, Sesame Street, Mattel, Gymboree, Nike, Nickelodeon’s “Blues Clues,” and many health departments in schools. Rae and I will be discussing how children actually learn, how to encourage their intrinsic developmental processes, and some of the parenting myths that are so common these days and can stifle a child’s natural instinct to explore, discover, learn, and flourish.

Hi Rae, welcome to Unruffled and thank you so much for being willing to share with my listeners today.

Rae Pica:  Oh, I’m happy to. Thank you so much. I love the title, Unruffled, that’s just great.

Janet Lansbury:  Oh, well, it’s something to strive for. I think when we do understand child development and our place in it, all of that perspective can really help us. We don’t have to pretend we’re unruffled, but the way that we see children and trust them as capable, it can help us to actually be unruffled.

Rae Pica:  Yeah, understanding child development is so important.

Janet Lansbury:  And I know that’s been life’s work and that you have been such a wonderful communicator of your knowledge to the public. So, anyway, I’m thrilled to have you here.

There are so many things we could talk about, but I was thinking the other day that what I would like you to share is, I think, something that will be very practical for parents and helpful. I always try to focus on what can I offer that might help, and one goal that we all have as parents is that our children thrive. That they flourish physically, cognitively, creatively, socially, emotionally; that they reach their potential in all those areas. Sometimes there are things that we don’t realize are getting in the way of that.

What are some of the common hinderers of this desire that we have for our children? What gets in the way?

Rae Pica:  Well, Janet, I think the biggest one is, I hate to say this, all the misinformation floating around out there. There’s just so much information. I mean, there’s so much information. Never, in the history of parenting, has there been so much information and so much of it is wrong, in my humble opinion. It just is wrong. Ugh, gosh, that just sounds so negative.

Janet Lansbury:  Well, I think what you’re saying is this is a blessing and a curse. I think most of us understand the blessing, hopefully: that it’s helping make our lives easier and making our role clearer, helping us with our children’s behavior in the moment, all of that. So hopefully it’s doing that, unless we’re just getting very confused, which is also very possible. So what do we need to look out for? Like when we’re getting information, how do we know…?

Rae Pica:  Yeah, how are you supposed to sort through it all and know what’s right and what’s wrong? I mean, we mentioned child development earlier. Most parents, unless they’re in a field that requires it, haven’t studied child development, and they sure as heck don’t have the time to keep up with the research and anything pertaining to young children or early childhood education. So, yeah, there are several pieces of misinformation. Let me just start with the biggest that has become very prevalent in our society and that is keeping children from thriving. We think that it’s doing the opposite. That piece of information is that earlier is better.

“Earlier is better” is a myth. I don’t know how all of this started. I do know that traditional and social media haven’t helped. They’re very good at perpetuating myths and in fostering competition. And I’m not just talking about parents, but policymakers, adults in general have received the idea that we have to give children a jumpstart. Whether we’re talking about academics or athletics, we have to get them started as soon as possible because if we don’t, they’ll fall behind forever and stay that way.

And it’s just not true.

The harm is that, well, for one thing, it puts a lot of pressure on parents. Pressure that doesn’t have to be there.

For another, it puts a lot of pressure on the children because child development is a process and it can’t be accelerated. You know how much they want to please the important adults in their lives. The little ones do, and when they can’t do what we’re asking them to do because they’re not developmentally ready to do it, they’re not supposed to be doing it yet, it puts a lot of pressure on them. They feel anxious and depressed and just plain unhappy. So let’s start there, Janet, because I can just ramble on.

Janet Lansbury:  Yes. I’m absolutely in agreement with you here, nodding my head, and that’s exactly what Magda Gerber used to say, “earlier is not better.” I have a couple theories as to how this could be being perpetuated. One is from when I had my first daughter, which was 28 years ago. There was this whole “super baby” trend at that time and it was so much pressure and it just always seemed so arbitrary to me. “Stimulate them this way at this age and then by this many months, you’ve got to do these games to your baby and do this to make sure they’re getting that,” and the whole responsibility was on us. That we were going to miss windows or we were going to-

Rae Pica:  Yes, the windows.

Janet Lansbury:  Those horrible windows. It was up to us to make sure those windows were getting filled with something.

Rae Pica:  Well, if you could name another group of people easier to scare than parents, I mean, of course, they were frightened by that. I mean, they want the best for their children and if they didn’t get on board with all of this … and, part of it, I remember, and I don’t know what year it was, when Rob Reiner came out with “This is Your Child,” I think the program was called. He was very excited. It was very well-intentioned and I really don’t know a lot about it, except that it was based on the new research about the first three years of life, how many brain cells and neurons and all of that. All of that that’s happening in the first three years. Well then, then the marketers jumped in and they aren’t necessarily well-intentioned except to line their pockets.

Janet Lansbury:  True.

Rae Pica:  But they jumped in with, “Well, you need these flashcards and you need infant lap wear, and you need all of these doodads.” So parents wanted to be good parents and they rushed out and bought them. It was based on the idea that enrichment matters in the first three years, but nobody told them that enrichment is really as simple as paying loving attention to your child.

Janet Lansbury:  Right, and trusting them to play and see what they’re interested in. Taking a step back and observing who they are.

Yeah, so I think the other part is this sort of general idea that I know I had before I started working with Magda Gerber and learning from her, that children respond because we do something to them first. That we have to teach them everything that they are going to learn.

Both of those ideas, the “super baby” and this other kind of more general idea that if we don’t pull a child’s hand up and get them on their feet, they will not walk…

Rae Pica:  Yes.

Janet Lansbury:  Magda countered that with, no, children are actually born self-learners. That there’s a wisdom in all children that should be trusted in terms of their timetable, what they’re working on, who they uniquely are, and that there is something there. They’re not just blank, waiting to be filled in by us.

Rae Pica:  Exactly. Exactly, they’re born with a love of learning. I mean, they’re all about learning and asking questions, exploring and discovering, and they need the time and the space to do that.

I hear so many stories about children who were really excited about learning and so they were excited about going to preschool and kindergarten and, days in, they’re miserable and they’re burnt-out in kindergarten, because learning, this is where the policymaker piece comes in, the curriculum has been pushed down to accommodate this education race, and it’s just preposterous. Again, child development cannot be accelerated. So why has kindergarten become the new first grade?

A University of Virginia study showed the differences between kindergarten then and kindergarten now, and, oh, it’s just horrifying. You talk about your empty vessels. We’re trying to pour information into their little blank heads, forcing them to sit and do worksheets, and it’s just …

Janet Lansbury:  And there’s no joy in it for the adults, either because, again, as we were saying, the whole onus is on us to do everything. So, of course it’s, well, let’s get it done sooner because then we’ll be done with that and onto the next thing and we’re doing a better job that way if we get them all doing this, really.

Rae Pica:  Yeah, it’s a terrible amount of pressure. Parenting, I think, has become harder because of all this misinformation.

I remember the young mom who approached me after a keynote speech and said … this was a few years ago. She said, “Is it okay if I don’t sometimes… if I don’t always play with my child?” I honestly, Janet, did not know what the heck she was saying. I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around it, and then it dawned on me. She thought she had to play with her child all the time in order to be a good mom. “I have to keep my child entertained” is another one of those myths that I’m trying to debunk.

I like my mother, I love my mother, but I can’t imagine her playing with me all the time when I was little. Benign neglect was sort of our parents’ parenting style and it worked fine. I mean, I think I turned out okay.

Janet Lansbury:  I think we can say yes on that. I think also that parents do want to be more involved. I mean, that’s why they’re taking in all this information and they’re excited and they want to learn, and that’s such a positive thing.

The thing about the benign neglect is that you can give children the benefits of that, that you got and I got when I was just playing all day, making up games, discovering our own ways to play. They can have that benefit, but still be involved, if we can learn to tune in and just enjoy what our child is doing and be the audience, not the player. So we can still have that.

I don’t think it’s a question of: Well, I’m just ignoring my child, or I’m playing with them. There’s this whole other area that brings so much joy and discovery of our own child. It’s so educational for us. We’re the passive partner in their play, just responding when they’re asking us to, and letting them know that we’re there and we’re present sometimes when we can be.

Rae Pica:  You’re right, there’s definitely a balance involved. I’m just encouraging parents to know that it doesn’t have to be as challenging as maybe it’s been to this point.

Janet Lansbury:  Yes.

One more thing I just thought of when you were saying about the parent believing that we need to entertain and play with our children all the time, which I definitely did at first. I believed that with my infant, that I had to keep her busy. In fact, I was completely over-stimulating her and then she would get really cranky and I wasn’t understanding the sensitivity of her to stimulation actually.

But one of the big pieces of misinformation parents are getting is that their children being disappointed or having feelings or crying about something is actually dangerous. That whenever a child is crying, because they maybe want the parent to do something the parent can’t do it right then or doesn’t want to do in terms of play, or any boundary, really, the child is disappointed and cries about it, then that child is in danger of what people call “cry it out” and this causes brain damage. So there are parents living in that fear.

This was brought to my attention recently by a psychologist who follows my work and said she finally realized that this fear was what was behind parents never wanting to say no to their child in regard to play or anything. So that’s heavy.

Rae Pica:  If you hear these things often enough, of course, you’re going to believe them and that puts even more pressure on you, doesn’t it? You must say yes to your child all the time.

I mean, I think that boredom is a gift for children because then they will use their creativities, their imagination, their wonderful mind to come up with something to do. Now, I’m not saying that you just say, “Go away.” Maybe you have to ease into the child learning how to play on his or her own. You set up some art materials over here and maybe some blocks and Legos, construction materials over there, and you give the child a choice. “Well, there’s this over here. There’s this over here. Pick one.”

Do you want to hear some other myths?

Janet Lansbury:  Yes, I absolutely do.

Rae Pica:  One is that “play isn’t a productive use of time,” and it’s closely linked to “earlier is better,” because if we believe that earlier is better, then what we value is accomplishment and productivity, and I’m not so sure those two words should be associated with early childhood. So, play seems like something frivolous, not a productive use of time. But nature had a plan in mind and we really can’t imagine that we have a better one. Nature intended for the young of almost every species, including human species, to learn through play. It’s the basis of the adult personality. They learn self-discipline, conflict resolution, negotiation, cooperation, and collaboration, how to take the perspective of others. They learn all of these skills that will serve them so well throughout life through play, through free play.

Free play, authentic play, is child-initiated and child-directed, which is why we can’t put them in an organized soccer game and feel that they’re getting the opportunity to play. It’s not the same thing.

Play is how they express their fears and their feelings. During the pandemic, a lot of children were playing doctor or hospital. Right after 911, a lot of children were building block towers and knocking them down, and that is how they take some control of their world and they need to have that. No matter how loving we are toward them, how much love and attention we shower on them, they still need to have some control, make some sense of their world. And they do that through play.

Janet Lansbury:  This is true on their own, not just with others as well, right?

Rae Pica:  Oh yes, absolutely.

When I did workshops in the past on creativity, I would ask the participants to list some words related to creativity and then list some words related to play and they always, they always intertwined. There was such an overlap there. We give a lot of lip service to creativity in our society, but we don’t do a lot to promote it. We don’t really value it the way we should. It might be because we associate creativity simply with the arts, but we need creativity in business and industry, technology, science, medicine. Creativity is about problem-solving. It’s about seeing beyond what already exists, seeing beyond the problem to the solution.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah, I think we can get caught up seeing creativity as a product, that our child is able to finish a drawing or something like that. Instead, it’s a process, it’s a way of thinking. It’s an aspect that I think we all have in ourselves to some degree. It’s not just certain people are creative and others aren’t.

Rae Pica:  In early childhood education, we’ve been saying it for decades, if not longer: with young children it’s all about the process, not the product. It doesn’t matter if the finger painting ends up all black. It really doesn’t matter, that’s the product. What matters is the process in getting there. So, yeah, it’s hard to describe how important these things are in early childhood.

Janet Lansbury:  One of my mentors actually, an associate that also studied with Magda, she, I remember, brought up an example once of a teacher going over to a child who was painting, a young child, and saying, “What are you painting?” and the child says, “Paper.”

Rae Pica:  I love that. I love that.

Janet Lansbury:  That’s a good answer.

Rae Pica:  Yeah. Well, there’s a whole podcast to be done on how we should respond. “Oh, I see you’re using a lot of purple in that drawing,” is non-judgmental and gives the child some information and values the process, not the product, so yeah.

Janet Lansbury:  It’s all about the process, and that’s the learning process that we want them to stay in love with as they get older.

One of the things we notice with young children, with what I do, we notice in infants that they’re fine with not being able to reach what they’re reaching for, unless we start to react to that. They don’t mind challenges. They don’t mind “failing.” I don’t think they even understand that’s a concept that applies to life. It’s just: I’m doing this, I’m reaching my arm out. I’m trying to touch this. It’s beyond my reach. Let me try something else. Or not, and I’ll do something else altogether.

So it’s just not this fraught thing that we can sometimes feel as parents like: Oh my gosh, I better get it for her because she needs it.

Rae Pica:  Exactly, because the reaching is the process and if you get there, that’s great. But if we make a big deal about them not getting there, then we’re putting our emphasis on the product again.

And that’s one of the other myths, that “we have to protect them from ‘failure and mistakes.‘” My gosh, you and I know we learn more from mistakes and from failure than from successes, and there’s not a single life that avoids failure and mistakes. Not that they have to get used to it when they’re little, but they have to learn how to begin to learn how to deal with it in a positive way.

Janet Lansbury:  And that is normal, right? I mean-

Rae Pica:  Yes.

Janet Lansbury:  And we’re not trying to train them into that. It will happen, if we can trust that it’s okay. It will just naturally happen. Children will seek out those challenges that are just beyond their reach, or…

Rae Pica:  Yes. Taking those risks, climbing the tree or hanging upside down from the monkey bars, and all those things that we’re frightened of these days, because we’ve been made to be frightened of them. We’ve gone a little bit overboard on that.

Janet Lansbury:  Would that be another myth that we need to-

Rae Pica:  Yes.

Janet Lansbury:  … protect them from doing anything that could possibly be a failure or dangerous, or?

Rae Pica:  Exactly. I mean, it’s funny, I had a call this morning, a voicemail on my phone from a grandmother. She follows my work and she and I have become friendly. She had to pop in to say, “I’m here at the playground with the little ones, and even with everything I know about how we should let them take risks and find the edge of what they’re capable of doing,” she said, “I heard myself saying, ‘Be careful.'” I thought: Well, of course, you did! I mean, we all have to retrain ourselves, right?

Janet Lansbury:  Yes.

Rae Pica:  I mean, I know the statistics, and this is true, that it is the safest time to be a kid in America. It’s the truth, and the information is out there. I know all of that. Yet we hear so many horror stories through the media that if I see a little one outside playing by herself, my first instinct is, “Huh,” and then I have to think it through, like someone who knows better, but it’s hard.

Janet Lansbury:  It really, really is hard to calm ourselves. And I think that’s a good place for us to segue right now…

Okay, so we know that these myths are getting in our way, but how do we stop? How do we trust that it’s okay for my child to be doing what they’re doing right now, and not doing this next thing that my friends are doing?  Or that I saw somebody on the internet doing? That their kids can do? How do we find that in ourselves? How do you help parents and professionals understand this?

Rae Pica:  The comparisons are brutal, aren’t they? I mean, if you do happen to believe and know in your heart that your child doesn’t need to be enrolled in 47 million programs, but another parent looks at you and says, “Seriously?” with horror on her face, then you’re going to start to doubt yourself.

So, you’ve used the word “trust” several times and we do have to trust our instincts, trust our hearts, trust that the children know best.

One of the ways that I’m trying to help parents … Obviously, if you’re finding information, you need to be able to trust the people you’re getting that information from.  Like you. And, I hope, like me. And I’m not sure how we know that we’re the right people to get information from, but I have started a new program for parents, because I want to reassure them, and I want to make parenting easier. I want to help them to make their children’s lives… to live that life that we’re talking about, the healthy, physical, social, emotional, all of that. It’s a monthly membership program and anybody who wants to know anything about me can go to raepica.com.

Janet Lansbury:  Well, tell me a little about what you’re going to be doing in the program.

Rae Pica:  Well, I’m offering a video a month and it’s just 10 minutes max, because parents are busy, so I keep them short. In each video I tackle a myth.  I don’t think it’ll be ending anytime soon because there are so darn many of them floating around out there!  And then there’s also a transcript.

Maybe, most importantly, there is a private Facebook group with like-minded parents. Because I want to also share… What kind of things do you say to the mom who looks at you in horror or doubts what you’re doing? How do you respond to that?

So I want to support the parents, but it will also help early childhood education. Because so many parents believe that play isn’t productive, that they have asked when they’re interviewing at preschools… They want to find the academics-oriented ones. And the play-oriented ones are sort of going the way of the dodo bird and we can’t have that happen.

So anyway, I’ve taken on this huge task and I would just love to have people join me on this journey.

Janet Lansbury:  Well, I’m sure they will.

What you were saying about preschools, that’s absolutely the case that the one that my children went to. Didn’t have a fancy name for the philosophy or anything, it was just the old-fashioned kind that I’m sure you endorse, that I know Magda Gerber used to endorse, which is this-

Rae Pica:  It didn’t have academy in the name?

Janet Lansbury:  No, just learn through play, what we used to call “developmental preschool,” right? But then they started having to make an agenda for parents that said “science” and “math.” Then what science would actually be was that their children were playing with water tables and sand or something like that, but they would translate that to make the parents feel more confident that they’re not going to fall behind, that they’re going to be learning all the things they’re supposed to be learning.

So that was unfortunate that they had to do it that way, and then, of course, the school did go away, like you said, like the dodo bird. So I’m totally with you on that. I would love to see the re-emergence of places that really understand development and where children can really thrive and enjoy learning.

Rae Pica:  Exactly. I mean, other myths are that “sitting equals learning.” Absolutely false, but the belief in it has children sitting for hours either in front of a screen or doing worksheets.

When we look at play, and it is hard to have to justify play in terms of academics or whatever, I mean, the truth is that they are gaining academic knowledge through play, if we could just trust that that’s happening. The research shows that the more senses we use in the learning process, the more information we attain and retain. Doing worksheets isn’t authentic learning and it’s not indicative of what’s being learned. It’s not indicative of intelligence and it doesn’t provide evidence of any kind of what children are capable of. Of course, it uses one sense, the sight.

Janet Lansbury:  And that’s the exciting thing about children that makes them so fun to watch. When they’re given free rein to play and do what they want to do, they use their whole body. They put everything into something, whether it’s an emotion that they’re having or the way they’re playing or the way they’re learning. And that’s what they’re supposed to do. And that’s how it integrates into our whole system — what we’re learning — and it becomes part of us, instead of just this lesson that someone gave us.

Rae Pica:  Exactly, exactly. You just touched on another myth, that “the brain and the body have nothing to do with one another,” and that, that goes way back. That goes back to Descartes saying, “I think therefore I am.” Again, it’s not the truth. There’s more and more research about how the two are … They’re interdependent, and when we make children sit, we’re not providing opportunity for optimal brain development. They do learn with their whole selves and all of their senses.

So if we want children to be successful and to thrive … and I’m talking about successful in terms of being happy and healthy and all the ways that you mentioned … then we need to let child development guide the process and we need to let child development guide our decisions. So I’m on a mission to make sure that happens.

Janet Lansbury:  Well, I’m with you all the way, and thank you so much for sharing with us, and especially sharing your program as well so that we can turn parents onto that. Our job is doing less and enjoying them more.

Rae Pica:  I like that.

Janet Lansbury:  That was a phrase out of Magda Gerber, “Do less, enjoy more.”

Rae Pica:  Writing this down. Magda said, “Do less, enjoy more.”

Janet Lansbury:  Enjoy more. She actually said also, “Do less, observe more, enjoy most,” about children.

Rae Pica:  What a brilliant woman.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah, she really was. But anyway, I love all of it, and I’m really glad that you’re out there supporting children, and love you. So thank you again.

Rae Pica:  Thank you, Janet.

Rae Pica’s exciting new (reasonably priced!) program for parents is called: “The Truth About Children.” You can get more information and sign up HERE.

Also, 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 “Earlier Is Better” and Other Child Development Myths (with Rae Pica) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today I’m going to talk a little about YES spaces. YES space is the term that I coined for Magda Gerber’s concept for cultivating your child’s learning and creating through play by offering a 100% safe space.

First I want to give a little background. I first used the term YES space … Actually, I called it “yes place,” I think, in my post in 2010 called Baby Interrupted, which was about how we can encourage a long attention span and encourage play and encourage learning by being careful around interrupting children beginning as infants. It’s a normal thing that we all do, that I did before I learned about this approach. We don’t consider that babies or young children are doing something of great value. So when we want to show them something, tell them to look over here, or we just want to say hi, we tend to interrupt.

And one of the ways that we interrupt children playing is when they are getting into inappropriate things or doing something unsafe. What Magda Gerber said is give them a 100% safe space, which means enclosed. And a lot of people don’t realize this part. Maybe they’ve heard the term YES space, but they don’t realize that that actually must mean the space is enclosed, so that a child can’t wander out of it into an unsafe situation.

So with this kind of space, we set children up for success, for them to explore as extensively as they need to, within reason, of course. If it’s long after lunchtime or there’s another reason that we need to interrupt, then we do. But as much as possible, we want to give them free rein to do what children do best, which is explore, learn. They are the masters at this. So we trust them to develop their skills and follow their own interests in this safe space, where we’re not having to say no, don’t do this, don’t do that.

When I first came online to share about Magda Gerber’s approach to parenting, also known as the RIE approach, and I termed it “respectful parenting.”… When I first started doing this, it was late in 2009, and the climate online at that time was very much Dr. Sears and Attachment Parenting. And it was really more mommy blogs than early childhood education websites. Mostly what was talked about was babywearing, breastfeeding, bed sharing. Everything was about physical connectedness, and there wasn’t any talk about babies possibly being able to initiate their own activities and have that agency. And so there wasn’t information out there about encouraging self-directed play or about parents taking a break from their child and having a safe place so they were able to do that. That just wasn’t part of the conversation. And in fact, if a child was placed down, a lot of the attitude was well, they should be able to be free inside the whole house.

I remember when I would bring up the enclosed place space with a gate, that was thought of as a jail, a prison, a cage that we would never do to a child. So when I was presenting it in Baby Interrupted, this idea, I wanted people to see the positive —  that actually freedom is not having run of the house when your parent is needing to interrupt whatever you’re doing. You’re naturally as a young child going to get into those places to see if this thing is allowed and that thing is allowed. That’s just part of your job as a learner. What are the rules here? What gets my parent excited? What gets them upset? What brings them to me? So children are naturally going to be driven to do that. And it’s not as freeing for them, or as freeing for parents to be told, “no, no, no, stop. You can’t do this. You can’t do that.” And have your parent naturally getting impatient, getting frustrated, getting annoyed. That’s just going to happen in that dynamic.

So anyway, that’s why I framed it as a YES space, because I was wanting to communicate this idea that this is a freedom place for children and for parents to enjoy their children. Because we don’t have to say no. We don’t have to get up and stop them doing this or that.

We can also have a place where we can leave to go do something in the kitchen, to go to the bathroom. And we don’t have to bring our child with us so that we’re trying to do things with one hand, holding a child, sometimes unsafe things in the kitchen. We can step away with peace of mind because we know that our child is in a safe place.

And Magda Gerber’s requirement for a 100% safe place was: if for some reason the parent or the caregiver got locked out of the house for four hours, the child would be safe. The child would probably not be happy. The parent or caregiver would definitely not be happy about that, but they would be safe. That was her standard, because safety is always number one.

So that’s a little background.

I noticed that this term is used widely now and that’s very exciting, that people are understanding the importance of encouraging play by setting children up for success. I only wish that they would at least credit Magda Gerber for the concept, if not credit me for the term. But anyway, ultimately I’m happy that this is becoming widely understood and advised.

So another less known fact about YES spaces is that they need to be part of a daily routine for us to really be respecting our child in them. We can’t expect that we can just use it as a drop off place. Oh, now I’ve got to go do something. I’m going to put my child in this place. Children are not going to accept that happily, nor should they really.

YES spaces are places that children love to be in. This is their place. This is where they have their “me time.” This is where they get to be trusted and enjoyed by us when we are there present — fully present sometimes, just interested in what they’re doing, not trying to get them to do more or less or different, just being with our child and our child getting all those incredibly accepting, empowering messages as they get to be agents of their own learning and their own interests and their own life.

So these are very positive places. We are there in a comfortable seat. What we do in the parent-child classes at Resources for Infant Educarers is we use these things called backjacks that are kind of floor seats. Maybe you already know what those are. So we’re sitting on the floor. We’re available to our child. We’re not with our phones or distracted in those times. We’re just there. We’re present, no expectations. If our child chooses to spend that time on our lap, we let that be as well. We don’t try to engage them. We don’t try to set up special play and get them to do it. We just use it as time to be.

And children will play. They will seldom just sit with the parent unless they feel that the parent might get up and leave any moment or isn’t otherwise really paying attention to them. And then they kind of feel like they have to draw that parent in and keep them a part of it. They can’t let go of us until they trust that we’re going to be there for a bit.

We want to have this as part of our daily routine. Children will naturally prepare themselves when they know what’s going to happen next. And we can also communicate it verbally to them again. We can say, “Okay, after we had breakfast, then we’re going to change your diaper.” And I would do this with an infant for sure. “Then it’ll be time for play. And I will be with you for a while, and then I will get up to leave.” And so our child knows that after breakfast, after diaper changes, there’s playtime and my parent’s with me. And then after a certain amount of time, perhaps my parent gets up, my parent tells me they’re getting up. They don’t try to sneak away because then I’ve got to be sitting on them or totally focused on them because they could just disappear.

So we want to be honest. And if they say no, we don’t want you to go, or they have a feeling about that, we want to acknowledge it. “I hear you don’t want me to go to the bathroom right now. Yes, I get that. I’ll be right back.”

And we still go. We don’t go for a long time if our child seems distressed, but we still go for a minute and do at least some part of what we wanted to do, and then we come back back and say, “Oh yeah, that was really hard for you. You didn’t want me to go.”

Instead of saying “Hey, I just went to the bathroom, it’s okay. I’m back.” We want to remember to lean into the feelings and feel safe about them ourselves, because they are healthy. It’s wonderful for children to be able to say. “Hey, I don’t want you to go.” Why would they want us to leave?

We want to come back and say, “Yeah, that was not fun for you. You did not like me going to the bathroom. I hear you. Now I’m back.”

If we start this quite early, children will actually get used to and revel in this time. We will be able to leave without them being upset a lot of the time, unless they’re going through sensitive periods, separation anxiety, they’re tired that day, and then we do our best to adjust to that. But we still take care of ourselves when we need to, and we just don’t prolong it.

That’s how to cultivate these ideas working. We’re with our child, and then we are also allowing them to be in the space while we do other things.

And we want this to be in a place that’s very convenient to us, so it’s next to the kitchen, always within earshot. We always want to be able to hear our child, even if there are in a 100% safe place, we want to be able to hear the sound that they’re making if they need help and have it be, again, as convenient as possible.

For a very small baby, it can be a crib or a playpen. And then as babies become mobile and need more space, it can be a small part of a room or even a hallway people have used. We used to use … It wasn’t even quite half of our family room playroom area. We had a bookcase that was like a standing bookcase, not too tall, so it was safe. It couldn’t be knocked over. And we had that dividing the room. Then we also had a gate that was partly hooked into that and then hooked into the doorway.

So even when children don’t need the gate part anymore, they’re two years old or more than two years old, and we feel safe about having them be in and out, they still love the same space. Mine did. That was their play space, that was where all these magical things happened. That’s the way that we want to present this.

And then here’s another little known fact… When we are with our child in the safe place, in the YES space, we want to have the gate closed or the door closed, not having it open when we’re there and then closing it when we leave. We want to establish this as early as possible, ideally with our infant, who’s just starting to play and maybe they’re not even moving yet. We want to establish the space as an enclosed space, so that it’s not a surprise and a message saying now I’m leaving, so I’m going to close you in. Children will naturally object to that. And it makes sense because they’re very sharp and they’re taking in everything in the environment at all times. Alison Gopnik called this their lantern attention, as opposed to — as we get older, we have more of a spotlight type attention where we’re focusing on one thing and we’re not noticing the rest of it. Well, young children actually cannot do that. They will take in everything.

So establishing that enclosed area. That’s what a YES space is. And enjoying the yes factor as parents who can relax and be in the space and not have to get up and worry, and we can just stay in one place and enjoy whatever our children are doing. We’re not always silent. If our child is looking to us for a response or verbalizing something to us, then of course we respond, “Yes, I was watching you do that.”

So we take interest in, sometimes it looks like nothing, but if you really are looking, they’re doing something. A lot of people have said that they’ve noticed that their child was actually looking into a beam of light coming from a window that the parent didn’t even notice, but then finally did, or they took a picture and then they noticed. Children are always thinking and learning and doing interesting things. If we can bring ourselves down to that slower, more beginner’s mind pace that they have, it’s wonderful. We get to see through their eyes, the world and all the little miracles that we tend to miss.

So now the fun part, what is inside the YES space. There have been studies about less toys causing children to want to play longer. And what Magda said is “simple toys,” so that the child is busy learning and creating and exploring and understanding everything they can about that little stainless steel cup, rather than pushing a button, a song plays and then they can’t really understand how that works ever. They can’t really master that. They can’t use it in a variety of creative ways. They are more passive to those kinds of toys. And therefore, those kinds of toys are less encouraging for them. They don’t have that sense of confidence in their ability to understand something in their environment.

But if they can turn it every direction, put it on top of things, under things, around things, put it on their head, put it in their mouth, which they all do — in the first year at least they’re putting everything in their mouth to feel it. So we want to have the toys ideally be encouraging for learning, encouraging for mastery.

And what we’ve noticed in our parent infant classes and toddler classes, because they basically take place in a YES space, where the parents are sitting there on the floor, just paying attention. Sometimes we’re talking as well, but other times we’re just observing quietly what the children are doing. That’s the most fun part to me. What we notice is that what children will do is use those same items that they used as infants in different ways that are valuable to them as they get older.

So again, going to that stainless steel cup that I recommend, it’s like a condiment cup, they’re very inexpensive. I’ve linked to them on my website. That baby might hold it, feel that on their lips and their mouth, maybe drop it and see how it kind of spins.

Then as the child gets older, they’re pretending to drink from it and giving the parent a drink, saying “I’m making coffee” or stacking them in different ways, putting other toys inside them, making rows of things. There’s a never ending amount of things that children can do with simple toys.

And often a child will do something totally unique that I’ve never seen before, after teaching for 20 years. It’s pretty amazing.

So this is one of the differences in this approach… We don’t recommend switching out toys — that we take away the toys that were there and put out all new ones. Why? Because we don’t feel that’s as respectful to a child who loves to predict, loves to know their environment, feel that sense of confidence of knowing, and maybe wanting to use that item again and not able to tell us that. And then they just notice, oh, that’s not here.

So we believe that it’s more encouraging and respectful to not be moving toys in and out of the play space as a choice that the parent makes. And if we do want to take things out, it’s nice to say to your child, “You know, it seems like you don’t really use these. So I’m thinking that we’ll put these away for a while, or we’ll give these away,” to give your child that heads up.

Another thing is, as much as I love the aesthetic, personally, of all the beautiful wooden toys, those are fine for one child, but you don’t want to have big heavy things that a child could hit another child with accidentally or could be harmful. So sometimes the most beautiful toys are not as freeing for children or for us as the ones that are plastic. Be sure to get the non-toxic plastic. They are lighter.

I remember I used to go into Pier One Imports or one of these import stores and be picking up interesting objects. And I would sort of knock them on my head to see how hard they were if they were to hit a child on the head. That was to ensure safety with group play.

And also with group play, you want to be able to wash the toys easily. So that’s another reason to maybe choose more of the lighter, more plastic-y type things than the heavy wood.

Here’s another difference in this approach… We want to have, ideally, different types of objects or toys in the environment. And maybe if we’re trying to minimize, just one or two of each type of toy. So we want to have something for their gross motor skill development. We used to use these big square cubes made of wood that were hollow on the inside that a child could crawl through, they could pull up on. Later, they could climb up on and even stand on and jump off. There was something that they could grow with and use in a lot of different ways.

Also, you’ve seen me share, it’s called a rocking boat, but it’s actually better used, especially in the early months, as a step climber. It’s arc-shaped. And so it can turn over to be this rocking boat, but it’s made of wood and you can pad the floor around it if you’re worried. You want to be attentive maybe in the beginning to see how your child does with it. You don’t want to help them up or help them down. You just want a spot so that they don’t fall unsafely. But we don’t want to give them a false sense of balance by grabbing them off of it or putting them on it or helping them do it. It’s really important for children to find that balance in themselves. It makes them so much safer. So we like to trust them to use it however they’re ready to.

Also, you could just use a coffee table that’s safe, where children could pull up and use that to cruise on. And there are foam pieces, also, that you can use.

So anyway, something for gross motor, and then for fine motor, you can get manipulatives, which are basically like a bunch of one type of thing that are smallish. You don’t want to too small for choking, but we used to have these little nuts and bolts that were made of hard plastic that would all be in a bucket together or a colander, or they might even be Duplos or Legos as children get older. So having those types of manipulative toys, where there’s several of one of the same thing together in a bucket, and then children can use that different ways. They can shake the bucket and make the sound. Anyway, there’s endless variety of things they can do with those as well.

So that kind of toy for fine motor, then things that are firmer like stainless steel and the wood, and also soft toys, like maybe there’s a stuffed animal or a soft baby doll. And then there’s also maybe a harder material, baby doll, a more lifelike baby doll.

So hard, soft, maybe a soft area that has big pillows around it. And then maybe there’s a little basket of books there. Although books are kind of a separate category because you can’t do everything with a book. Well, you can, but it’s not great for babies to put books in their mouth and chew them and throw them around, so that we kind of want to keep separate. But in a home, it could be nice to have a little basket of board books there that we just keep more of an eye on children using those appropriately. Or we have the books up a little bit and we don’t have them in the free play area.

Balls, can’t get enough balls in a play area. Different kinds of balls are nice to have, different sizes, different materials, soft ones, harder ones, lighter ones, ones that are a tiny bit heavier, maybe, they’re still safe. So a whole basket of balls is wonderful to have. A lot of learning and play happens with balls.

I’m going to share at the end of this, a whole bunch of resources for the types of toys and videos, where you can see a play space set up and children playing in them. But yeah, it can be a lot of fun as parents, and this is our creative contribution to play, ideally, that we get to choose the items and set up the play area.

Then from there, we have a big challenge of letting go to what children are doing. If they’re turning the rug over to the wrong side, we let it be. And there’s just a fun kind of letting go and trusting everything they do is perfect as it is. It’s all about them and their choices and what they’re choosing to learn. It can be such an educational experience for us in knowing our child. And again, the messages they receive from this are just so empowering and loving and accepting and easy to give, really. We just have to set it up and let go and trust them.

The last thing I want to say is outdoors is also wonderful. It’s never entirely safe. We always have to keep somewhat of an eye on outdoor play because we can’t control some of the elements, even if we have a gated area set up, which I did with my young children when they were babies. But wow, if you can have a window where you look out and your child is there and then you can easily step out if you need to…! And then you can make your life outdoors as much as possible. Magda Gerber highly recommended that. She said to have a table outside where you have your coffee. In the old days we had newspapers, but you could have your laptop maybe out there. So having time where you’re just doing your work or having a snack and enjoying your child in their play space that’s near you, or you are sitting in there with them.

Children play usually much longer outdoors and they love it, helps them sleep better, eat better. It’s wonderful for us as well. Just really elevates the whole experience.

So anyway, that’s a little about yes spaces and I hope it’s helpful. Let me know if you want to hear more or on certain aspects, I will do another podcast on this. So thank you! and hope it helps.

Also, 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.

(Large photo is of wonderful Isabel courtesy of her mother Yeni )

More YES Space and play resources:

The Best Toys for Babies Don’t Do Anything and Selecting Toys for Infants by Magda Gerber

What is Play? by Lisa Sunbury Gerber

Setting up a Play Space by Kate Russell

Creating a Safe Play Space by Christina Vlinder

From me on this website:

7 Gifts That Encourage Child Directed Play

Infant Play – Great Minds at Work

How to Create a ‘Yes Space’ Outdoors When You Don’t Have a Yard 

Play Space Inspiration and Outdoor Play Spaces (I can’t vouch for the safety of these parent-submitted spaces, but they’re great for ideas)

Baby-Led Adventures — 5 Reasons Babies Need to Lead 

Better Toys for Busy Babies

Creative Toys Engage Babies

Colander Girl

Shhh… Babies Playing (Scenes from a RIE Parenting Class) 

Fearless Baby, Empowered by Risk 

You may also wish to check out my recommended toy section and the many videos on my YouTube Channel

The post YES Spaces – What They Really Are and Why They Matter appeared first on Janet Lansbury.