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

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

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

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

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

Hi, Janet-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear Janet,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hi, Janet-

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you for everything.

And I wrote back to this mom:

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

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

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

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

Thanks so much for listening. We can do this.

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

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

Transcript of “Meltdowns That Keep Happening, Even When We’re Doing Everything Right”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I have a question from a parent that I received in an email, and she’s an amazing parent, clearly. She’s wondering what to do when she’s responding to her child’s upset feelings in all these wonderful ways, and yet he’s still having these extended meltdowns that end up making her upset. She says it’s breaking her heart. I would love to help her understand some nuances that might be missing here and how she can easily shift into a role that will, I feel sure, help him have shorter meltdowns and less meltdowns.

Okay, so before I read this note, I just want to comment that I try to choose topics and questions that I not only think will interest listeners, but that first and foremost interest me in terms of responding. Being able to share things that I haven’t shared exactly before. I’m just a person that doesn’t like repeating myself, I know that it can be helpful to do that. And also I’m very intrigued by the subtleties in our responses to our children. So not the broader strokes, but the finer strokes. So that’s what this response is going to be about. This parent is doing everything sort of by-the-book, the way that I put it out there—at least I can see how it seems like that to her. So I’m really looking forward to getting in here. She’s provided a lot of details, which is really helpful.

I actually had another question that was in a similar vein to this, but there really weren’t a lot of details. And what I did was I replied back, could the parent please take a video of these episodes with her child so that I could see for myself some of the nuances that are happening between them? I know that’s not easy to do, setting up a camera when we’re going through something with our child, but that can be extremely helpful. It’s why I love doing in-person consultations the most, because it’s all there right in front of you and you can really get a handle on what’s happening.

Okay, so here’s this parent’s lovely note. The subject line on this email is: Please help, desperate parents here.

Hello, Janet-

My husband and I both implement gentle, respectful parenting at home with our three-year-old son, who is very intelligent, verbally expressive, and perceptive. My interaction with my son today brought me to tears, as I felt completely helpless. I’ve been feeling that way lately during some of his huge 30-minute to hour-long meltdowns, and many of them seem to relate to control and power struggles where he tells me or my husband to do something.

Today he told me to put on his pull-ups for him. He’s very capable of putting them on himself and has been doing so daily for several months. To which I responded with, “Yes, putting those on can be tough. I’m here for you if you need help. Can you show me, what’s the first thing that you do when you start putting them on?” His voice became angry as he firmly told me that he wants me to put them on. Long story short, my refusal to put them on for him led to screaming and hitting me in the face with his pull-up diaper.

During this whole 45-minute episode, I offered empathetic words like, “It’s okay to feel mad. Big feelings are tough, but I love you and I’m here for you,” and offered hugs if he wanted them. I mostly tried to sit quietly with him during these moments because talking too much makes him more angry usually. He also gets very upset if I try to do something else, like get ready for his classes and appointments, even after showing empathy, which has made leaving the house very challenging lately. The really difficult thing is, despite teaching and demonstrating that all emotions are normal as long as we maintain gentle hands, he refuses to acknowledge his feelings. I’ll say something like, “You seem frustrated or mad at ___,” or, “Are you feeling mad, frustrated because ___?” And he would get even more angry and yell back, “No, I’m calm!”, even though he’s clearly angry.

We’re perplexed as to why this happens since we’ve been so keen on demonstrating that feelings of all kinds are healthy and normal. We are very mindful about maintaining structure to his day, especially around meals and afternoon nap time, and not overstimulating him with too many to-dos. We also offer safe, age-appropriate choices whenever possible, like his choice of outfits, shoes, meal items, etc., to empower him with decision-making, as well as get him involved in jobs like mopping, setting the table, etc. My husband and I spend a lot of quality playtime with him as I’m a homemaker and my husband immediately takes over when he gets home and on the weekends, but there’s also plenty of independent play time for books, Legos, and blocks, his favorite toys.

Anyway, coming back to today’s episode after all of that background info, the reason why I ended up in tears and feeling absolutely helpless is that as these intense and long episodes linger on, I start to feel myself losing my calm, usually around the 45- to 60-minute mark. I feel the anger and frustration inside myself intensifying, and I know that I can’t maintain the calm much longer. I need to be alone for a minute, but my screaming, irate child does not allow this. This is the moment when I will likely end up screaming at him because I literally can’t handle his screaming at me any longer. And then I feel the weight of the guilt for yelling at him when I know that I, the grown-up, am supposed to be his calm when he has big feelings.

Sorry for the long-winded message, but I am at a loss. I feel like I’ve exhausted my bag of tools. Are meltdowns of this length and magnitude normal? I’m definitely not trying to prevent tantrums, but I feel lost as to what to do during these intense episodes that seem to go on and on with no end in sight. I’m trying my best to be a connected parent and I don’t want to lose my own temper during these moments, but it’s a challenge that I sometimes fail at.

Thank you so much for any advice or words of wisdom that you can offer.

Okay, so there’s a lot here. Even as I’m reading this again, I’m seeing a lot of interesting little details. To me, they’re clues or little clues as to what is going on here. Why this parent’s responses—her very caring, thoughtful responses—are kind of misfiring with her child. She says in the beginning of the note that he’s a very intelligent, verbally expressive, and perceptive child. So yes, he’s reading really everything that she’s feeling and her intentions as much as hearing her words and seeing her actions. So as many children do, and especially children that are extra-perceptive, they’re tuned way in. So it makes it harder on us to pretend anything, even a little bit.

And I know that sometimes it can help to try at calm and then see the results of that, and sometimes that helps us to actually be more calm. But really, calm is an inside job. It has to come from the inside out. It has to come from our perspective on what’s going on with our child, our trust that it’s safe for him to be as mad as he needs to be at us, and that there’s nothing threatening there on our end. That we can welcome that as the big people we want to be for him. And that feelings pass. Obviously it’s daunting if it feels like there’s a 30-minute to hour-long meltdown. I would say that if that’s happening often, that it is a sign that there might be some adjustments we can make. It’s not typical for children to do that. So it seems like he’s giving a clear sign here that he needs a little tweaking in the parent’s approach. And part of it, I believe, is the way this parent and many of us tend to perceive calm.

What calm really is in these situations is that openness we have, that our child feels, to whatever they’re going through and really connecting with them where they are in that way. That’s what’s calming for a child. If we’re trying to practice being calm from the outside in, a child like this especially will tend to feel that and it won’t calm them. It feels almost like we have a little glaze between us of distance, that our child can’t quite be seen and heard through. But that’s a very typical kind of transition state for us as we’re working towards being calm from the inside out. So it’s a positive part of the process. Still, we need to go that extra distance and I’m going to try to explain how to do that based on what’s going on with this parent and child.

And believe me, nothing I’m going to say here or ever is meant to be critical of parents, most of whom—at least the ones that I hear from—are incredibly thoughtful, engaged, respectful, working so hard at this. And I have nothing but admiration for them or any of us that are trying to do this job. So I’m only intending to be helpful, not critical. Though I am going to go over the clues that she’s given me and offer alternative suggestions.

So when this parent says, “Today he told me to put on his pull-ups for him,” and she says, “He’s very capable of putting them on himself and has been doing so daily for several months. To which I responded with, ‘Yes, putting those on can be tough. I’m here for you if you need help. Can you show me what’s the first thing that you do when you start putting them on?'” And then she said, “His voice became angry as he firmly told me that he wants me to put them on.” So it’s wonderful that he’s able to put them on himself. And I think sometimes we can get caught up in, as parents, that if we do something for a child that they can do themselves. That word can. The definition of that in this instance is not, are they able to do the actions ever, but are they able to take those actions now, in this moment? Sometimes they’re not, because they don’t want to. And they have a reason, that they’re probably not aware of, that they just want us to do it.

And I could see how this parent would be concerned. Her child, she said, seemed “to relate to control and power struggles where he tells me or my husband to do something,” so I can see where she feels like, I don’t want him to be controlling me and bossing me, having me do things just because he says so. That’s a valid point. But in this instance, it’s not a big deal. He’s not asking her to go sit in a different chair or get him a different color this or that, something that is a bit unreasonable. He’s asking for a kind of caring, momentary interaction that he just wants. So I would look at, Is it really important that we make sure he do this, even though we know that he can? Or is it more important that I go the other direction, and I’m so willing to do it because I love caring for my child?

Maybe you have to be a parent of grown-up children like me to see how nice it is to be able to help children with their clothes, pull on their pull-up, help them on the potty, put on their pajamas, give them a bath, even if they’re able to do things themselves. Those are caregiving activities that children do tend to crave at different times in their life. And I don’t know what’s going on in the greater scheme of things here with this family, but it’s often when there’s something new happening or something where, just do that little caring thing for me, please. And I know he didn’t say please or ask very nicely maybe, but I would just shrug my shoulders and welcome that and not make a big deal out of it.

Because the way it can come off to a child when we suggest that he should give it a try is that we’re pushing back, we’re invalidating his wish there. Obviously this parent does not mean to do that, but sometimes we can get so caught up in helping our child to achieve and do things or to make sure they’re not bossing us or trying to take control over us in ways that aren’t healthy for them, that we just maybe make a little too much of these small things.

And the other part of this is when we say something like, “Can you show me, what’s the first thing that you do when you start putting them on?” It’s a little bit tricky. It’s not direct and totally honest, which would be to say, “You know what? I know you know how to do this and I don’t want to put those on for you. I want you to do it.” That might come off more direct in that moment. And I was thinking about how this would relate—if we can use an adult example, I know children are not adults, but the kinds of interactions we have with them and the kinds of feelings back and forth can be quite similar. These are human dynamics. So the adult example I thought of is if I said to my friend or my partner, “I don’t feel like driving now, can you take over?” and then they respond, “Start the car and see how that feels.” I would feel a bit invalidated, right? I would feel like you’re trying to get me to do it, even though I said I don’t want to.

So of course I would not do everything that he or any child says, but I would in this case say, “Sure, I’d love to.” Or if I really didn’t want to: “You know what? I don’t want to do that right now. I’ve got my hands full or I’m busy,” or maybe I don’t need to have an excuse. “I just don’t feel like that. Sorry, you can be mad.” That’s a little more connected. So to connect, it’s best to be honest and direct. It’s also best to stay in the now, which is almost always where children live, right? Rather than analyzing or giving an overview. That feels like a bit what this parent does when she says, “It’s okay to feel mad. Big feelings are tough, but I love you and I’m here for you.”

And she said she offered hugs if he wanted them. So going back to the adult example with the car and me not wanting to drive at that moment, and then after I got mad that they tried to get me to drive anyway, and this friend or partner says, “It’s hard to feel mad like that. I’m here for you.” It feels a bit more avoidant, right? Instead of, “Gosh, sorry, you really wanted me to drive and I pushed back on that and I tried to get you to do it. I get why you’re mad.”

When we want to give those messages that it’s okay to feel mad feelings and we love them and we’re here for them, those work better—just as they would with an adult or older child or older person—when we show, rather than tell. By meaning it, by allowing our child to have those mad feelings at us and us not trying to do anything to calm them down, make them stop, analyze them, go over the situation. That’s how children know, they learn deep down it’s okay to feel mad. And that we’re there still, sitting with them, and we’re not offended and we’re showing that we’re still caring and being there for them. Offering hugs can be great, but it can also come off as, Okay, I want you to feel better, so let me hug you right now. It can come off that way, if that’s what we’re feeling.

So I guess overall what I’m trying to say is that what matters in these situations is not the words we say, not the actions we take, but how we are feeling. Because that is what our perceptive child is feeling from us. So it can help to really look at our intentions: What is my intention when I ask my child to do the first step of this activity that they don’t want to do? What is my intention when I’m saying that feelings are tough and I love you and I’m here for you and offering a hug? What is my actual intention there? Oftentimes, if we really connect with this—and believe me, I feel this still, and it was definitely my MO in the beginning when I was first trying some of this with my oldest daughter and then the children I worked with—my intention, if I was honest, was I wanted to make this go away. I mean, not them, but the feelings. I wanted to calm them down, make sure they know that everything’s okay and everything’s going to be all right, and they don’t need to be mad at me. And I’m their friend, I’m on their side. But those were coming from my own discomfort. They weren’t coming from that place that I was talking about in the beginning of the true calm and the true way to calm someone else, which is to trust, This is going to pass. You get to feel this and you’re going to feel better on the other side. I know it. Instead of, I’ve got a responsibility here. I’ve got a job to do. I’ve got to make this work. I’ve got to help you feel better. It’s going on and on. I feel stuck and now I want to scream. I really do, because nothing I’m trying is working.

And that’s because we’re trying to get something to work instead of making our sole goal connection, with what’s going on between us right now. Accepting, rolling out the red carpet for those feelings, wanting them to get expressed in their full force all the way, because that’s how children move through it faster. When they go to the heights and the depths of the feeling, they move through it faster and they clear it, they get it out of their system. So it’s not going on and on and it’s not flaring up constantly all day long or all week long. It’s a productive sharing for them of whatever’s going on, which is not about a pull-up, I’m sure, or any of those specifics. It’s some other emotional process he’s got going. That’s what we want to try to trust.

So when we’re connecting, we want to try to be honest and direct, stay in the now. And then the third way is to validate by only reflecting back what we know for sure. And this next part was a clue for me what might be going on with this parent. She says, “The really difficult thing is, despite teaching and demonstrating that all emotions are normal as long as we maintain gentle hands, he refuses to acknowledge his feelings. I’ll say something like, ‘You seem frustrated or mad at ___. Are you feeling mad or frustrated because ___?’ And he would get even more angry and yell back, ‘No, I’m calm!'” So there’s your answer: he’s mad. That’s why he’s saying, “No, I’m calm!” in the way that he’s saying it. The feeling behind that is he’s frustrated or mad. And I’m not sure the way this parent was saying “you seem frustrated or mad,” but the way that could work is if she was really looking at him in the eyes and nodding, “You seem so frustrated about that. Yeah, that’s so maddening, isn’t it?”

And then we don’t have to ask him why that is because we know what he’s given us in the moment, which is, “You wanted me to put those pull-ups on. You wanted me to do that for you. That’s what you wanted.” In a way that’s actually easier than trying to get into a kind of analytic lesson about feelings or having him try to connect with his feelings in these times. Even as adults, we don’t connect with exactly what we’re feeling when we’re in the heat of it. It’s later when we realize what it was. When we’re dysregulated like that, we’re not able to consider words like frustrated. Especially at this age because his prefrontal cortex, like all three-year-olds’, is underdeveloped.

And her son’s kind of sensing the emotions churning up inside of her. He’s sensed, probably way before she does, when she’s on her way to blowing up at him. And when we’re feeling those things as parents, yes, she’s got a brilliant instinct to move away. But when we feel that and we can reflect on it later that we felt those feelings rising in us, it’s usually because we’ve been making these efforts that are not paying off to try to use power that actually we don’t have: the power to make him pull his pull-up on if he doesn’t want to pull his pull-up on. We can do it for him, but we can’t make him do it. So that energy we’re putting into that is wasted for us.

I feel this parent trying so hard to do what she’s learned to do with his feelings, to try to reflect back and help him name his emotions and all these things that she said they’ve been working on. They’ve been working on a lot of this, so she’s invested in it, but all that effort is not paying off. And that would get any of us screaming when we’re trying so hard to do all these things at once. She’s also putting a lot on herself here: She’s got to teach him about emotions, make sure he does these skills, she’s got to be the perfect calm presence. It’s a whole lot.

So ease up, keep it simple. Just connect by being honest and direct, trusting that the feelings are safe for him, and validating by only reflecting back what we know for sure. Really believing that the feelings are safe and okay, in our heart of hearts. Reminding ourselves that it’s really okay for him to feel whatever he feels. It’s not my job to fix this.

And she says, “He also gets very upset if I try to do something else, like get ready for his classes and appointments, even after showing empathy, which has made leaving the house very challenging lately.” So yes, another place to consider our goal and intention is when we’re showing empathy. Why do we want to show empathy? What is our intention? Ideally, it’s to let him know we accept and we want to connect with him that way. We accept his point of view and welcome the feelings to be expressed. We’ll be able to achieve those goals. And this can be while we’re doing something else. But it won’t work unless we’re genuinely accepting and connecting, welcoming those feelings. And then when we do need to help him out the door, then it’s extra-important that while we’re moving him along physically, we’re fully accepting his side of things. That’s what I call “confident momentum.”

I hope some of this helps, and I want to thank this parent again for trusting me with this story of what’s going on with her. I know she can do this. So I hope she gives herself a break, and trusts her son and herself a little bit more to get through this rough patch.

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

Thanks so much for listening. We can do this.

The post Meltdowns That Keep Happening, Even When We’re Doing Everything Right appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “How to Connect with Your Upset Child, Even When There’s More Than One”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I have a question from a parent who wonders how she can connect with her children when she has two of them and there’s only one of her and they both seem to be needing her attention. I’m going to talk a little bit about what connecting with our children when they’re upset and in need of our attention actually looks and feels like.

Here’s the question I received:

Hi,

I’ve been reading more about respectful parenting and I have a question. If I’m interpreting it correctly, when I can tell my four-and-a-half-year-old son is feeling disconnected from me due to his behavior —whining, acting out, etc.— I should focus on connection to prevent power struggles and escalation of his behavior. I’m just wondering how to focus on the connection right there in the moment when I’m by myself with an 18-month-old as well.

My four-and-a-half-year-old likes to connect by climbing onto my lap for a cuddle, but my 18-month-old clearly gets jealous and starts squealing, ear-splitting, not possible to tune out, attempting to climb on me, hitting his brother, etc. If I pick him up too and cuddle them both, then he pushes, hits, kicks his brother, who then retaliates. Instead of properly focusing on connecting with my four-and-a-half-year-old, I’m trying to console/fend off my 18-month-old. My 18-month-old refuses to be redirected or distracted by anything. I’m just unsure of how to make this work with two children when I’m by myself the vast majority of the time. Partner works long hours.

Okay, so I chose this question because she brings up so many important points that I want to address. These are common, nuanced misunderstandings and misconceptions about the respectful parenting approach that I teach. And it’s easy to have those, even if I was the perfect communicator of this approach, which I’m not.

Yes, in a general sense, a child who is whining or acting out, etc. is in a place of disconnection and they do need us to connect with them. But what does that look like, and then what does that look like when we have another child or multiple children there as well, and they seem to need our attention? How do we connect with all of these children at once and how does that connection actually look with each child?

This parent gives the example that her four-and-a-half-year-old likes to connect by climbing onto her lap for a cuddle. Now, I’m not sure what has gone on before that and what the behavior or the feelings are that cause them to want to climb into her lap. But first I’ll say that the way to connect with children is not necessarily to give them what they seem to want on the surface in that moment. That is not what it means to connect with an upset child with this approach. When children are upset and behaving erratically or they’re even just whining, they’re not in that logical, rational part of their brain. They’re in the emotional centers of their brain. They’re just in their emotion, and the things that they ask for or demand or want in those states aren’t logical either.

And when it’s out of those feelings, often it’s just a part of expressing that feeling. When they’re wanting to tell us what to do, they need this, or they need another one of those. These are feelings, not facts. So when it’s out of these feelings, what connection is about is really just holding space and supporting those feelings to be expressed. It’s not to try to offer a solution to make the feeling stop. True connecting is seeing what’s really going on with our children, which isn’t always easy because we get touched off by their behavior and the emotions that they’re expressing. We can get easily overwhelmed.

So what I try to work on with parents is to perceive as accurately as possible, to see what’s really going on beneath the surface when our child is going to these places. And to recognize it as early as possible. Recognize that these behaviors that our individual child commonly displays aren’t reasonable requests. It’s more that they’ve just gone to a place that they need to ride out, with our support. And what our support is in those times is really mostly emotional support and acceptance. And out of that acceptance can come acknowledging: “Oh, you want this and you want that, and now you want to sit on my lap.” And if that’s something that the parent can’t comfortably do in that moment, she’s juggling things on the stove or she’s otherwise busy with something, it doesn’t work for her to cuddle right there, then I would cuddle a different way: with my emotional connection with my child. Which means seeing them, seeing and hearing what they’re saying. You want to cuddle and I can’t, and that’s so hard, isn’t it? It’s frustrating. You really want to be with me. Not necessarily even saying those words or any words, but looking at our child with that acceptance, welcoming their feelings while we keep doing what we have to do as the adult in the room.

Ideally, we can pause and give them that moment, but we don’t even have to pause. We can actually connect while we’re doing something else. Connection is in the way that we accept. It’s the way that we’re looking at our child, making that eye contact with that soft, accepting gaze. Calming ourselves, that’s a big part of this. Seeing that dysregulation our child is experiencing, not blaming them, not getting personally offended by what they’re doing. Understanding that this is just a place they’ve gone for now and it’s bigger than they are and it will pass.

But now let’s say that cuddling with our child is a good idea, right then. It’s something that we can do and we want to say yes to our child’s request. That’s lovely. Now, what happens if here comes her other child, who she says clearly gets jealous and starts squealing, ear-splitting, not possible to tune out, attempting to climb on her, hitting his brother, etc. What’s happened there? Her 18-month-old is venting some feelings of his own. He’s going into an emotional state. Oftentimes, a child’s feelings tap into another child’s feelings, giving them the opportunity to vent as well. And this is actually a form of empathy. You’ll see babies crying when they hear other babies cry or when they hear their older sibling upset. It doesn’t mean that they’re having some deep sadness. It’s a reflexive response and it’s kind of a nice thing that they’re joining with their sibling in those feelings.

And now her 18-month-old, he’s not going to be behaving reasonably either, and he starts squealing. Yes, it is ear-splitting, but the important thing here is that we don’t try to fix those feelings. We don’t follow that impulse that we all have as parents to comfort those feelings away, to console them away, to make them better. This mother says, “I’m trying to console and fend off my 18-month-old.” Consoling. Now, that’s a word that sounds very active on the parent’s part, to try to change something, and that can’t be our role. We don’t have that power, and that actually isn’t as connected —or I would say, even as loving— as seeing, accepting, allowing the feelings. What’s known as co-regulation. I’m not regulating you, I’m staying regulated along with you so that you can come back to that state. And now let’s say the 18-month-old comes over, and I’m still cuddling my four-and-a-half-year-old, and I acknowledge, “Ah, now you want me too.” And I’m looking at him. “You want to get up here too.” But I wouldn’t give into that because both children need the message that when we’re there for them, we’re there for them. We’re not going to move them away to make room for the other child because the other child is demanding it. And we can still connect with that 18-month-old, but trying to please both of them, as his mother shares, pleases neither child.

And it’s not our role in the situation. Again, connecting, it’s not about pleasing our child with what they’re saying on the surface. It’s about seeing in and allowing our child to be where they are in that moment, even encouraging our child to be where they are in that moment, because the feelings are not logical facts. This isn’t a deep need that our younger one has to be on our lap when the older one is there. We have to believe that, I know it’s hard. But our 18-month-old might behave that way after we’ve spent the entire day cuddling with them while the older one was in preschool. And now we give five minutes to this older child and the 18-month-old still complains, maybe. He has a right to, but what does that tell us? Hopefully it tells us that it’s not about getting what they seem to want in the moment. It’s venting. It’s an emotional release that’s super important. Maybe that child has been holding onto some control of getting his way with his mother and getting stuck there, instead of letting go and releasing some of that toddler angst.

Toddlerhood, it’s a very emotional time, and four-and-a-half is an emotional time too. It’s another stage of growing towards more autonomy and all of the push-and-pull feelings that go along with that. Both of these children, even if there weren’t any other stressors in their environment, have lots of reasons to vent feelings. And if this parent, like a lot of us do, has been trying to console or make things better, rather than rolling out the red carpet, supporting those feelings to be expressed, then there can be a buildup. And children, in this healthy manner that they have, will keep pushing up against us to —on an unconscious level— find those ways to vent. They’ll keep trying to release those feelings.

And that may be what the 18-month-old is doing here, pushing up against a limit that he needs to be able to let go of. Connecting with him is seeing that, seeing that he doesn’t actually need to be on his mother’s lap at the moment. What he needs to do is be in that place of frustration, be in a place of I don’t control everything and this feels awful, that kind of letting go. The way this could look would be, I’m cuddling my four-and-a-half-year-old and here comes my other baby. Oh shoot, you want to be here too, and I’m with your brother right now. That’s so hard. You don’t like when that happens. Again, not saying those words. I say a lot of words in these podcasts because I’m trying to demonstrate an attitude towards the feelings, an accepting attitude. And not accepting with sadness, but with, You have a right to the power of those feelings! I’m not trying to throw cold water on them and I don’t feel sad about them. I want you to feel heard.

Being that leader that still holds onto what I’m doing, the choices I have to make in these situations. Which is, in this case, I’m giving cuddles to this child who asked me first. I’m not going to erase that because his brother wants it as well. And she’s giving this older child some really, really important messages about his worth, about him getting to be prioritized sometimes. He’s already given up his parents to the birth of this sibling and now there’s this rival there and somebody else that he has to share it with. He can’t be expected to share every moment, so it makes sense to me that when she does allow the 18-month-old on her lap, wanting to please him too naturally, then there’s kicking and then the brother retaliates. Yeah, of course he does. It’s hurtful to never get to just have your mother to yourself for a moment because she wants to please your brother as well. So this is where it will help us to rise up to this job and be that person that can say no, even to an 18-month-old.

When she says that he attempts to climb on her and hit his brother, the 18-month-old, I would have your hand there firmly, not even letting him start to climb, if possible. Being very firm in a loving manner, being on this physically. So you’ve got maybe one arm around your four-and-a-half-year-old, and then maybe you have to take your other arm and your hand to hold off this 18-month-old, putting your hand up to physically block him. So we’re not even letting him start to climb up. And if he does get a chance to climb up a little, you gently but firmly help him down again, holding him off so that he can’t get up there or hit his brother or hit you. Be on this in a preventative manner if possible. Strong, convicted in your choice here. As a parent, that’s what both these boys need in this situation, a confident leader.

And other times this scenario may be reversed and it’s the 18-month-old whose right to be with his mother and have her attention at that moment is protected. Yes, of course we’re not going to really be able to pay full attention when there’s another child there screaming about it, but it’s that message that we give each time that makes this kind of rivalry not happen as often. Because children know that we’re not going to let them battle that way for our attention. That we’re strong and confident. We don’t feel it’s our job to please everybody and to calm down every emotion and try to make it better. That’s an impossible job for us as parents. This would be true with twins, with multiple children, in a classroom. We have to be the leader that displeases people, knowing that it’s really healthy for children to be in that situation and to vent those feelings.

So, trying to let go of the squealing, but I would fully prevent him from hitting or climbing on you. Holding him off firmly, not feeling like, Oh, I’ve got to let him get up and now I’ve got to get him off again. Being as preventative as possible physically. This parent says, “I pick him up too and cuddle them both.” So I recommend absolutely not doing that. I would stay focused as much as she can on just being with her four-and-a-half-year-old, letting his feelings be in the comfort of her arms, not trying to console the 18-month-old. When she says “fend off,” that sounds like maybe she’s letting him get too far. We don’t have to fend off when we’re confidently on it from the beginning, not even letting it start.

At the same time, we’re encouraging those feelings that the child has. Connecting with him by allowing his frustration, encouraging him to share that with you. Not feeling responsible for it, definitely not wanting to fix it. Understanding that it’s actually not just about this specific situation, that he needed to be on your lap. That is simply what touched him off. That’s what it means to connect, it’s a mindset. Obviously, she’s not really getting to focus on connecting with her four-and-a-half-year-old when this is going on, but maybe the next time or in a couple of times, because she’s being so clear with both of them so they can both receive this important message.

She says, “My 18-month-old refuses to be redirected or distracted by anything.” Right, and that’s actually healthy on his end because redirecting or distracting are really the opposite of connecting in this situation, and children feel that. Distracting a child from what’s happening, it can only be disconnecting. It’s literally saying, What you’re feeling isn’t happening. Focus on this and don’t feel what you feel. Don’t be where you are in this moment. I don’t recommend distracting a child no matter how young the child is and disconnecting that way. And redirecting is, again, in this situation, saying, Ooh, don’t want what you want. Don’t feel what you feel. Why don’t you do this? And that’s also putting the onus on us to try to fix it and make it better. I’ve got to do something to change this! But that can’t be our job because it’s not a job that’s going to work in the short- or long-term, and it’s not really going to be what the parent wants, which is to connect with her children.

In her final sentence, she says, “just unsure of how to make this work with two children.” What I would like to help her reframe is what “making it work” looks like. What connecting looks like. It’s not, Okay now I’ve made it work and everything is smooth. Unfortunately, it’s not that. Having young children is emotionally messy for them, and that’s why our attitude towards and perception of emotions is so crucial to ours and our child’s wellbeing. And we can do this with one or two or 12 or a whole classroom of children all venting together. Teachers can encourage at the beginning of the preschool year, for example, when several children are having a hard time with separation, Ah, you too. Ah, you all miss your moms and dads so much right now. It’s so hard to say goodbye. Yeah, it’s okay for all of us to feel sad. It’s like a group therapy session where our only role is encouraging and empathizing, not trying to make it all better. I suggest that actual thing all the time in teacher trainings and they think it’s bizarre when I suggest it, but it works. And it takes the pressure off of us. It takes demanding the impossible off of us.

I hope some of that helps. Also, please check out some of the other podcasts on my website, janetlansbury.com. They’re all indexed by subject and category, so you should be able to find whatever topic you might be interested in. And 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,

Thanks so much for listening. We can do this.

The post How to Connect with Your Upset Child, Even When There’s More Than One appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “How To Help a Frustrated Child”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

In this episode, we’re going to talk about frustration. Our child’s, which maybe then leads to ours, of course, and how to help them develop more patience. It’s really common for our children to express frustration as they practice new skills, but how uncomfortable this can be for us to witness, right? So I’m going to be responding to a parent and offering some advice regarding helping her easily-frustrated child learn more patience.

Okay, here’s the note that I received:

Dear Janet,

Thank you for your books, Elevating Child Care and No Bad Kids: Toddler Discipline Without Shame. When our son was born, in those first few days of looking into his eyes, I saw a deep understanding that I wasn’t expecting from a baby. I remember saying to my husband that I could almost imagine him just opening his mouth and having a regular conversation with me. He’s just turned two, and I still see that wisdom in his eyes, that he expresses in a way that he’s able. Before becoming a parent, I would observe many children that I thought were not polite and respectful, and oftentimes just out of control.

It’s easy to judge when you’re not a parent. So when my boy was born, I was torn, as I didn’t want to raise a kid that ruled the house, but I also didn’t want to force pleasing behaviors that were not genuine. That’s why I appreciate your books, which are about raising polite and respectful kids by being the example you want your kids to follow. You gave me a way to apply discipline that allows me to stay connected, but also recognize my own limits and needs.

I do also have a question, if you have time at some point: How do you encourage patience? My son is very bright, and for a two-year-old has a big vocabulary. He can sometimes focus for a very long time on his own, flipping through books, playing with his stickle bricks, or just talking to and rearranging his cuddly toys. However, both my husband and I and his wonderful caregivers at daycare have had conversations about how he can also very quickly become frustrated when he can’t figure something out immediately. Blowing bubbles himself, clipping something together, opening a box. He immediately starts crying, whining, even though he has the words to express what’s bothering him, and he often throws the object.

I respond by saying, “You’re frustrated, but some things are hard to figure out. You have to focus. But I can’t let you throw your toys. I’m going to take it away. Next time, let me know if you’re stuck. You can ask me for help.” At daycare, they encourage waiting and to not be too quick to jump to respond to him.

He is currently an only child, although there is a second on the way. If there’s any better language or behavior I can use to help him foster patience, I would greatly appreciate your input, as it would be helpful as we add a new member to the family. With this new arrival, I’m very excited to start using your childcare philosophy from day one.

Okay, so to help children when they have this low threshold for frustration, I recommend doing actually the same thing that I recommend in many situations. In fact, if you’ve listened to my other podcasts, you probably notice that there’s a thread running through all of them that I’ve experienced in my work with parents as the most important message, that we need to keep reminding ourselves of because it’s a huge challenge. And that is just letting the feelings be. Allowing our children to experience whatever they’re feeling, not trying to fix it or change it or shorten it even, or control it in any way. We’re going to help them control their behaviors, obviously, but not the feelings themselves.

And really this is just trusting children to have these naturally uncomfortable experiences, particularly these age-appropriate uncomfortable experiences. In this case, when this boy is, let’s say, trying to blow the bubbles and it isn’t working for him, and he flips out. Well, first he starts crying and whining, I can’t do it! So rather than say something there, I’d consider just letting that be what it is. He’s expressing his feeling beautifully right there.

And then if he throws the thing down— well, first of all, we want to generally not give our children access to unsafe objects that could hurt them if they throw them. Still, we obviously don’t want him throwing stuff. But the throwing in a way, it’s very similar to— well, even if he wasn’t throwing, just expressing this feeling is very similar to a writer who’s frustrated. And in the old days, we used to write on a typewriter. We rip the page out of the typewriter, crumple it up, throw it into the trash can. Just getting that frustration out.

And what happens when we get that frustration out is we open up something. We open up that space again, where we can come back and approach the challenge again. Or sometimes we might let it go and move on to something else. But oftentimes we let go, we clear that feeling. “Okay, this is really hard,” we might say to ourselves, and then we give it a minute, and we’ve started again. Well, children do this too, but what can happen is as parents, we tend to get caught up in it. We get caught up in wanting to teach them how to do this better or to fix it for them, because we’re uncomfortable and we’re maybe riding this wave with them and we just want it to stop. Doesn’t feel comfortable to us either. So it can help us to get off of that wave, be the anchor instead, and separate ourselves from the feelings. These aren’t our feelings and it’s very safe and very positive for a child to experience them.

If we’re frustrated about something and let’s say our loved one or a friend says something like, Well, you just focus a little harder. If you just try a little more, you’ll get this. Or, Here, I can help you. That’s not really what we want, right? We don’t want to be told we should work harder or have this other person do it for me. I want to do it myself. I really do. I just want you to let me be upset for a minute because this is part of my process. That’s all I want: See me. Acknowledge that I’m upset, and that I have a right to be.

One of the reasons that I’m comfortable working with parents and toddlers is that, as you’ve probably heard me say on this podcast, I very much relate to the way toddlers feel. A part of me must have gotten emotionally stuck in those years somehow. And I think we could all relate because toddlerhood is a time when our hearts are on our sleeves. Our feelings are out there and all over the place. It’s a very healthy time, actually. So while it’s totally well-meaning, obviously very well-meaning in this parent’s case, it can be a little annoying when we just want to say that we’re frustrated and people aren’t comfortable. They want to fix it for us or tell us that we should just do it this way. We’ve chosen this challenge that we’re taking on for a reason— because we want to be able to do it.

And that’s a little bit what this mother’s doing, so lovingly and it’s so understandable that she wants to do this. But this is more her own concern that she’s bringing up when she says, “You’re frustrated, but some things are hard to figure out.” The message a child can receive there is: You’re frustrated, but you shouldn’t feel frustrated because you should know that some things are just hard to figure out, and that’s just the way life is. So you don’t need to feel what you’re feeling. And it’s a subtle, subtle message for sure, because again, this mother is very well-intentioned as we all are when we have this urge to talk our child out of the feeling. Well, everybody I know, and certainly I have the urge to say something like that. But what it does is invalidates it: You shouldn’t be frustrated. You have to focus. You have to focus. This is how you can do better.

So I really hope this doesn’t sound like I’m criticizing this parent because that is the last thing that I intend. Her examples sound intuitive to me. That’s why I chose this to respond to on this podcast, because this is what I and perhaps many of us would naturally, reflexively say.

She says, “I can’t let you throw your toys.” So the thing is here, he’s already thrown the toy and he likely knows he wasn’t supposed to do that because children learned this the first time they ever tried throwing a toy. So a message like that can be a waste of our energy because it’s disconnecting. Our child isn’t going to really feel seen there. So instead, if he’s still caught up in that feeling, I would be ready at that point to stop him. Block that, touching his hand, touching the toy, and say, “Oh, I see it looks like you’re about to throw something else. I’m going to have to take that and move it for you.” So a little more of a helpful mode, seeing that he’s in a state where he’s likely not as able to follow a direction like, “Stop throwing your toys.” I would just focus on keeping him safe while a hundred percent accepting his feelings.

And maybe saying something like, “Yeah, that’s so hard.” Maybe even the same words that this parent did use without the “but some things are hard to figure out.” Instead, “It’s hard to figure that out.” So we’re connecting with him right where he is in this experience. We’re joining him right there. Yeah, it’s hard. This is really hard for you. Only matching what we’re getting from him. And if he’s whining, Yeah, I hear you. That’s hard. You’re doing something difficult, you’re having a hard time with it. That’s all you have to say. I wouldn’t try to give him instruction at that time. Maybe if he was calmer or if he was trying something for the very first time. And this is, again, to meet and connect with him where he is, which is much harder to do when kids feel misunderstood or invalidated, not seen. Instead, all they need is just to vent and clear the feeling so that they can move on and achieve what they’re trying to achieve or get closer to it or decide to give up. That kind of needs to be okay with us too. We really don’t need to fear these feelings. These feelings are healthy.

The rest of what this mother says in the moment is, “Next time, let me know if you’re stuck. You can ask me for help.” Again, what this is saying though, and this mother doesn’t mean it at all that way, but what it’s saying to the child is, It’s not okay for you to whine about this or cry about this. That’s not what you should be doing. You should be asking me for help instead. Reasonable things that make sense. Very reasonable— ask someone for help. But the thing is, the emotions are not reasonable. They’re just impulses. They pass through us, they just flow out. And at this age, they’re very, very good at flowing out. So it’s a positive thing. We don’t have to try to make him act reasonably about emotions, and we don’t need to teach him patience. They learn this through our modeling. They learn this through the self-control that they gradually develop, their executive function.

But even as adults, we go through periods and have emotional times where we don’t feel as patient, and that’s okay, right? Children are encouraged to be more patient mostly by being able to follow their own interests. And it sounds like this parent is doing that brilliantly, allowing him to flip through the books, play with his bricks, letting him choose. When he is playing for a very long time on his own, he’s showing that he has a lot of patience in all of these activities. Patience doesn’t mean —especially at this age, or even for me as an adult— it doesn’t mean that we don’t flip out when it’s not going our way. It means that when we do flip out, we eventually get back to feeling better, feeling calmer, feeling like we released something we needed to release. That’s still patience. It’s patience with some feelings around it, some messy feelings that come out, but it’s still patience. So we can trust children’s process. We’ll never go wrong trusting our child’s process.

And then if they ask for help, doing the most minimal thing. I probably wouldn’t help at all if a child didn’t ask me, but if a child asks, the way I help can sometimes look like I’m just giving moral support. And that’s often all that they really need or want. So first of all, I always say “yes” to help. “Can you help?” Yes. I come closer. What are you doing? “I’m trying to blow this bubble.” Oh, wow. Let’s see how you’re doing it. Hmm. Maybe you could move that wand a little closer to your mouth. So we’re letting him try. We’re keeping this very slow and gradual on our part, not rushing.

And most importantly, being calm ourselves, trying not to get anxious. Which we can do when we practice trust, knowing that this is safe for him to experience. When we’re anxious, it’s almost impossible to be patient in a situation like this one. Instead, we’re feeling maybe like, Oh no, he’s going to explode. I better help so he doesn’t. And if we think about it, that’s actually how we are modeling, and therefore encouraging, less patience. So being calm, being patient, not worrying. Allowing a child to be in this process, not jumping our child to the finish line or jumping there ourselves in our mentality.

And then maybe we notice, because we’re open, we’re not in a rush, we’re trusting that it’s okay for him to feel uncomfortable here. We notice that, Hmm, it’s more like he’s kind of spit blowing instead of slow blowing, the kind that works. Blowing bubbles is really hard. I remember that being a hard skill for my kids to learn. It does take calmness and it takes finesse. Maybe there’s something else we can say there like, “Hmm, maybe if you put your mouth like this?” and showing him. So we’re talking him through it, trying to do the most minimal thing to allow him to do more, which means learn more and accomplish more. The more he does, the more confidence he has the next time. So we’re still helping, but helping doesn’t mean we do it for him. Helping means that we trust him and we’re there to support him and pay attention, but not to expect or meet a certain outcome.

If we’re really there with our child and not jumping ahead, sometimes we’ll notice that our child actually loses interest. And what’s interesting is, I notice sometimes that parents in my classes, they’ll be staying engaged in the task after the child has already moved on. The child has dropped that and is onto something else. Trust that. The tendency many of us have is to jump ahead of our child and try to get them back into the experience. Okay, come on, let’s finish. We didn’t blow the bubble yet. Here, maybe try this. I’ve seen this happen a lot and I understand it because a part of me still feels that right along with the parents. That’s when we’re getting caught up in the goal rather than just being there to support our child with what our child is interested in doing. Meeting them where they are, not where we want them to be. So if he puts the wand down and starts going to something else, we don’t have to try to keep him doing this. Let it go. And that encourages patience because patience is about being in a process.

And children naturally do this, they’re very inspiring this way. They don’t go for the gold, they’re very interested in the process of it. And we’re often the ones who teach them that they have to get the goal and that there’s nothing to enjoy about the process, it’s only good if you’re able to do it correctly. If we’re aware of that difference in the way that we as adults often think from the way children do, we won’t need to influence our child that way. And instead, we can encourage them to be as process-oriented as they naturally are. They have this gift, and if they can hold onto that even a little throughout life, they’re going to achieve a lot more than a person that feels that they’re failing unless they get to the end goal, which is most of us. So that is developing patience. And they’re probably going to be a lot happier, too.

And by the way, this parent mentions the addition of the new baby, it’s especially important to allow our child to express all his feelings because he’s in this big transition. There’s always a reason for the feelings, but there may be extra frustration coming out during these tasks that he is trying to do because it’s actually feelings of fear that are coming up for him around this impending huge change in his life. Which I’m sure is not lost on him. He’s heard people talking about it and he’s getting that there’s some big, mysterious, scary thing that’s going to happen. I mean, this is mysterious enough to us as adults, and we have a frame of reference for it. So there are a lot of reasons for him to have more whining and crying and frustration and fear. And that’s another reason for us to always trust the feelings, not try to color them or correct them or fix them. Only accept them. These feelings are gold.

I really hope some of this helps and I hope it makes sense. And thanks so much to this parent for asking. She has everything she needs to make this subtle shift in her approach.

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

And please check out some of my other podcasts on my website, janetlansbury.com. They’re all indexed by subject and category, so you should be able to find whatever topic you might be interested in.

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 e-book at Amazon, Apple, Google Play, or barnesandnoble.com and in audio at audible.com. And you can even get a free audio copy of either book at Audible by following the LINK in the liner notes of this podcast.

And for the complete scoop on respectful discipline, please check out my No Bad Kids Master Course.

Thanks so much for listening. We can do this.

The post How to Help a Frustrated Child appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “Let Kids Choose . . . Except When They Can’t”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m going to be talking about choices. Most of us know already that it can be helpful and confidence-building to give our young children choices, and continue to give them more and more choice as they get older, so that we can nurture that sense of autonomy and agency in them. They can feel that their point of view is valued by us.

The focus of this podcast is going to be on the less-intuitive aspects of giving children choices, understanding that there are certain situations where we may want to be giving them a choice and it doesn’t work out for us or for them. And that can frustrate us, infuriate us even. How do we puzzle this out? How do we know when to give choices or what kind of choices to give children, and what kind of choices they need us to make? So I’m looking forward to getting into this more thoroughly and hopefully answering some of the questions that you might have.

So yes, it’s pretty intuitive for most of us, this idea of giving our little ones choices. And this becomes more obvious when they are toddlers because they seem to seek that kind of autonomy. That’s part of their development at that age, is to feel their sense of self, their sense of separateness from us, their power in the world. Interestingly, Magda Gerber inspired us to begin offering our children these types of decisions with our infants so that they can get a taste of their little bit of power in the world. Obviously, they are dependent on us in almost every way, but there are a few areas where they can actually start to express self and start to feel more of a sense of autonomy.

For example, when we come in the room or we see them waking up, rather than immediately picking up our baby or directing their attention to us, Hi, sweetie!, she suggested that we first observe whether they might be involved in their own train of thought and not interrupting, because that’s a choice that they are able to make. And that also looks like, that we would place just a couple of simple toys or objects in their vicinity when they’re lying on the floor or in their cribs or in their playpens, rather than placing it in their hand, so that they can decide whether they want to grasp something. Maybe they just want to look at it, or maybe they just want to stretch their arm out towards it. We can trust our babies with those kinds of decisions, and there are many benefits to allowing them to make those whenever possible.

We might consider not putting a mobile or a play gym right above them, right in the center of their vision. That can feel like they don’t have a choice. They can try to look away from it, but it’s a choice that we’ve made for them right there. Instead, if we have a mobile that we think is beautiful or some kind of hanging toys, we might place those to the side, giving that infant a choice to check that out or not. This is also a great way to protect against overstimulation, because babies will turn away when something is too stimulating. They can start to gauge this for themselves better than we can gauge it for them. So when we give them those options, then they have a chance to do that.

Another thing we do is, let’s say our baby is uncomfortable and we sense it’s teething pain, instead of offering them that one teether, we offer two so that even then a baby can choose which of those they want. They often take both, by the way, but at least we’re giving them that chance. They can make these kinds of choices. I didn’t know any of this with my first baby, but with my second two, I saw, Wow, there’s so much going on for them and they are so much more capable than we’d expect. And then the choice that follows those choices is that, once they have chosen that toy or object, and this of course continues throughout their toddlerhood and preschool age and everything, that the materials are there for them—they get to decide how they want to use them. And even with art materials —within reason, with boundaries around it— they get to choose what they do with that, how they experiment with it, and for how long. So those are all really healthy, powerful choices that children can make and continue to make.

Then, as we notice with our toddlers, choices become even more important because developmentally they’re seeking that autonomy and that sense of self as separate from us. It’s healthy for them to do. So offering them choices whenever possible can be empowering for them and set them up to confidently make all kinds of choices throughout their life.

And then here’s where it gets tricky: This desire that we’ll have to keep offering choices, it can also confuse and frustrate us as parents because it can be hard to know when choices don’t work as well or at all. So knowing these things, being clear about the choices we can give and the choices that children can’t make as easily and really do need us to make, will help us a lot as parents. And that’s what I want to focus on in this podcast. I have three types of choices that it can seem like might be a good idea for us to give our child, but they actually need us to make.

1) The first is the most obvious one: false choices. That’s when we give a choice like, Okay, do you want to go to Aunt Lisa’s? And we were already planning, we’re all going to Aunt Lisa’s. That really wasn’t an actual choice we were giving our child, but we were kind of framing it that way because that felt, I don’t know, maybe more respectful or kind. But the thing is, then we’re going to be probably disappointed or frustrated if our child says, No, I don’t want to go. Where do we go from there?

With children, they often miss those kinds of subtleties, and they really need, as much as possible, clarity: Is this my choice or isn’t it? And even that word, “okay?”. So for me, I still say, “okay?” at the end of a sentence with a child sometimes because it’s such a habit for so many of us. It’s time to go, okay? We’re going to do this now, okay? I mean, none of this is cut and dry, but it’s just something to be aware of, that “okay?” is offering the choice: Is this okay with you or not? When the only answer we want is yes to that choice, then maybe we should reconsider the way we’re framing those sentences. Choices that are actually not choices, it’ll work better for us if we try to avoid those.

Then even choices like, Do you want to go in two minutes or five minutes? Hmm, all right, so I guess that’s a real choice. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It just feels a little bit —and I think it will come off to children as a little bit— tricky and manipulative. That we’re trying to pretend we’re giving them a choice, but it’s really not that great of a choice. Just something to consider. Because directness, honesty, clarity, we can count on those as our best policies. That’s what we want to model for children, right? And that is the most respectful. And we’re all works in progress at this. But if we’re aiming to be that confident, loving leader that’s not afraid to say the truth, not afraid of our child not being happy with our decisions because we know that that’s part of their right. And especially as toddlers, to be that autonomous person means disagreeing with us a lot of the time. Even when they don’t actually disagree, but they just feel the need to. So the more that we can meet those situations with confidence because we expect them, we know it’s okay, that it’s not our job to please our child all the time. In fact, it’s our job to help them have an honest relationship with us. And part of that is the ups and downs of our relationship, the ups and downs of our boundaries and what we allow, what’s going to work for us and the rest of the family. The more that they can feel those ups and downs, the more confidence and happiness they feel.

2) The second type of choice that will help us to be aware of: choices in transitions. Transitions, I have my theories that I’ve expressed here before about why these are so hard for young children. I think one of the reasons… I kind of understand them is because they are still hard for me. The toddler in me gets, I don’t know, this weird, panicky feeling sometimes when I just have to go from point A to point B. Getting ready to go out somewhere, all of a sudden I can’t figure out what I’m supposed to do. There’s a stress involved in it, leaving one thing that you were doing and moving on to another. And for young children, with all the developmental transition that’s going on inside them, and then oftentimes situational transitions in their lives— moving houses, finishing school, starting a school, a new baby in the family. All of those things add another layer of transition. And then these little everyday transitions, especially going to bed at night, that’s the hardest of all, right? Because they’re tired, we’re tired. That’s the king of all transitions and not in the best way.

So I would be very careful about giving choices in transitions. A simple choice like, Do you want to walk to the car or shall I carry you? Now, this doesn’t mean that we wouldn’t give a choice like that, because it can also help a child through a transition to feel that they are in charge of that in some real way. But when doing that, I would always have in the back of your mind, if you can remember to, that they may not be able to make this choice, because it’s a transition. And I just think of this capital T, this kind of neon sign, Transition! Transition!, just to help myself prepare for the idea that my child may not be able to do that.

We might look at this as similar to when we’re in a big life transition —which young children are every day because they’re changing so much and growing so much— that trying to figure out what we want to make for dinner, that kind of choice, it’s just nice to have somebody else say, Okay, we’re going to bring the dinner, or, Let’s just put this together. Because having to just make those simple choices when we’re overwhelmed is really hard. And this is how young children feel a lot of the time. So when we give the choice like that, which is still great to offer, have in your mind they may not be able to do it, and they may need me to help them through.

So I’m poised right there, ready, to see, can my child move forward with getting into the car, let’s say. I offer the choice and now they’re pausing. So what we often end up doing as parents is we wait, we wait. And then the longer we wait, the harder this gets for our child, because it’s like they’re falling into this chasm of transition-land and they’re getting stuck. So before that has a chance to happen, I would say, You know what? I’m going to pick you up and take you, or, Come on, let’s go. I’m going to actually be the one to put this on for you. And yes, our child may complain at that point. They may have a strong reaction. I would expect that too, because that’s them expressing the discomfort of the transition. And maybe through that, the discomfort of all the other transitions going on for them. All of those are getting expressed together, which is why it’s often so strong when children express things. Seems like, Wow, we’re really hurting them, helping them to the car or helping them in the car seat, because they express things all the way.

And that’s why I recommend what I call confident momentum, knowing that transitions are a time that children will need more help and more awareness on our part, that this is tough for them, and they probably can’t handle a lot of decision-making power. They may be able to handle a little bit, but not necessarily. And definitely not a lot. Sometimes I’ve seen this, very loving parents, we want to give three decisions, right? Do you want to go this way, that way, or the other way? And then that gets really impossible for a child in a transition. I’m not saying they can never do it, but it’s a tricky place.

The other day I had an experience that ended up inspiring, in part, this topic today. I was jogging on the public beach near me. It’s a small town, and I guess this parent had already reached out to me and we couldn’t quite click. She wanted to start a little group of children for me to come facilitate, and we just couldn’t arrange it together. But anyway, I’m jogging by and this woman said, “Are you Janet Lansbury?” And believe me, I don’t get recognized randomly, but because it’s a small town, and she had reached out to me. And she said, “Oh, you know, I’m a fan of your work. Thank you. And I love it, but it’s really hard, right? And you know, it just doesn’t always work.” And not to negate anybody’s experience, but I wouldn’t be doing any of this if I thought it was too hard and that it wasn’t going to work. For me, there’s just no point sharing something that I think might or might not work. I’m not confident about a lot of things in my life, but I’m very confident that this works. And so I gently countered her and was asking what she was referring to.

By then I stopped jogging and we were talking, and she was great and really open. Her adorable toddler son was right there. And she said, “I try to help him go to the car and I give him a choice, or what shoes he wants to wear. Then I wait and wait, and then he can’t, and then he changes his mind, and it’s really, really hard, right? And then when I do have to pick him up or help him move, then he gets really, really upset.”

And so because I was with her, I was able to hear that and actually kind of show her, without touching her son. (Although he was trying to distract me so I wouldn’t talk to her about this!) I was able to gesture and demonstrate with her. I was even kind of bending towards him as I gave him the choice. And so I was ready, with my hands out, ready to help him if he paused. And I showed her how, if he pauses, you can help him right away. And then you may get some pushback for sure, but it won’t be to the extent of what happens when we wait for our child to make that choice. And we’re trying to be so respectful and so caring and loving, but we’re making it harder for our child and harder for ourselves without meaning to. And she was grateful, I think, for the advice. And she said, “Oh, okay, yeah, that makes it clearer.”

This is so much easier to demonstrate than to try to explain in words or even in a podcast. So I appreciate those opportunities. I’ve never seen this not work. I don’t know if that sounds cocky or something, but it’s really what I believe.

So, choices in transitions, be careful. It’s probably more of a yellow light. Just be careful, be aware that it might not work. And as soon as you feel your child pausing or stuck, you can help them through very lovingly and make that decision for them.

3) The third area where choices can be difficult, and this dovetails with the transitions topic: when children are upset, dysregulated, or otherwise not in a reasonable state of mind. Very hard for them to make a choice then, because a choice takes the prefrontal cortex part of their brain, which is not developed, not in a mature state, so it very easily goes offline. And we all know that happens to all of us when we’re dysregulated or upset. We can’t access that reasonable part of ourselves. We can see when our child is upset, that isn’t going to be a time that they can make choices. I’m not going to say always, but almost always.

Here’s an email I received:

Hi Janet,

My daughter is two-and-a-half. She has entered a stage where she wants and then doesn’t want and then wants something. In the context of extremely intense emotions— screaming, pushing away, with risk of throwing, crying, begging me to come close, but then insisting on space if I do.

I would love your perspective on this. It seems like she’s in distress. She’s having strong emotions and I want to welcome those, but I don’t want to accommodate the yes/nos. I tell her after the first one that I won’t accommodate, so I either won’t give her the thing or won’t come to her despite her begging for a hug. Because I know if I do, she’ll scream and demand that I give her space. Any advice or recommendations here?

Sometimes I have to “mama bear” if she’s in one of these modes and it is time to change clothes. But otherwise, if we have time, I try to just take her to her room and ride it out with her. But the intensity of it really makes me question myself. Am I feeding this behavior in some way? Am I refusing to give her the emotional support she needs by setting a boundary when she starts the yes/nos and refusing to come to her or give her the thing? It is such a frustrating place because there is no winning, especially when it’s bedtime.

Yes. So this is a common issue, and this parent is spot on that her child can’t make those decisions at those times. The two-and-a-half-year-old is not accessing the reasonable part of her brain. She can’t do it.

This parent says, “She’s having strong emotions and I want to welcome those, but I don’t want to accommodate the yes/nos. I tell her after the first one that I won’t accommodate.”

So when we say, I’m not going to do this if you change your mind again, that makes sense, right? And it’s honest. The only problem is, it’s talking to her reasonable side of her brain to say that. Well, if you do that again, then I’m not going to give you this. Maybe that works if our child is in a reasonable state of mind, but when they’re upset like this, that is a misconnection. It’s talking to a part of her that isn’t able to listen. That can feel even worse to a child than they already feel when they’re upset. Obviously that’s not what we’re intending, but they feel like we’re not really seeing them and what they need right then.

So instead of talking about it that way, hopefully we can breathe and understand this is normal for children to go through these meltdowns and emotional states. And that we are safe, and we can be that safe person for them. So we’re calming ourselves. We can hear that voice inside us say, Oh, she’s not in a reasonable state of mind, so she can’t make the choice probably. So maybe stick with one of the choices and don’t give her another. So saying that to yourself, rather than to her.

And what that would look like is, this parent says, despite begging for a hug, “I know if I do, she’ll scream and demand that I give her space.” So mostly when children are really upset and kind of flailing like this —and the parent calls it “pushing away, the risk of throwing, crying, begging me to come close, but then insisting on space if I do”— mostly when children are in these meltdown states, a hug is not going to help or reach them. And so I would have that in mind too.

But then knowing her child as she does, she knows that she will ask for the opposite. So I would give her the space, just being there for her without touching her. And if she says, I want a hug as part of that meltdown, that’s part of those feelings. She probably doesn’t even know what she’s saying there, much less meaning what she’s saying. So look at her, hear her. You want a hug, and then you push me away and you want me to go away. Maybe you even say that. Or maybe you just say this to yourself and you nod your head, looking at her with empathy and soft eyes and safety.

So you know all this information, but you don’t need to try to change her mind because you’re not going to. She’s stuck where she’s stuck.

That’s what I would do with any choice that children are trying to make or have us make in these situations. Sometimes children have even asked me, I want water, water!, and, I’m thirsty. But if we wait for a moment, because if we brought them that water, they’d probably hit the glass away or not be able to drink it. They’re not in that calm state yet, and they will be there sooner the more that we accept and hold space for these feelings to pass.

This parent says, “I don’t want to accommodate the yes/nos.” Absolutely, don’t accommodate. Make the safe choice as a parent and welcome her to feel what she feels about it. Because the more you welcome this with open arms, well, not literally arms, but rolling out the red carpet for her to feel this, the more quickly and easily she’ll pass through it.

One other thing this parent says is, “Am I feeding this behavior in some way?” I think the only thing that she’s doing is maybe a little bit misreading what she can say in these moments, or what her daughter will understand. And really trusting this more, finding more decisiveness in herself about her role in these moments.

This parent also says something about, “take her in her room and ride it out with her.” But this idea of riding things out with our child is, in a way, giving it too much, I don’t want to say attention, but making too much of an event out of it. Instead, I would be there for her, keeping her safe. You’re waiting it out with her, but I would wait it out as the anchor in her storm, not riding the waves with her. That is going to drain a parent and make it much harder for them the rest of the day. So it’s really more helpful to both of us to be in our role as this separate person who trusts our child to be in these states. And we help them when they need help getting from point A to point B, but it’s not our job to make this better or ride it along with them.

If we have to go do something or we want to go do something, we can do it, holding out that same space for the feelings and trusting them. Children can sense sometimes when we’re kind of feeling it with them or we’re impatient or we’re telling them things that really are best kept in our own minds and hearts.

When she’s done, then we can talk. But I wouldn’t go over it with, Well, this is why I didn’t hug you, because you changed your mind and all that. Unless she says something like, Why didn’t you hug me?, I wouldn’t bring that up. We don’t need to remind them of how out of control they were.

And then I really feel what this parent said: “It’s such a frustrating place because there’s no winning, especially when it’s bedtime.” Yes, bedtime is going to be the hardest time and the hardest time for us to let go if she’s not in the happiest mood. Yeah, it’s not about winning. It’s about the comfort that we feel in our role as the loving adult in the room.

I hope some of this helps. I go into these topics much more clearly and deeply, and I actually demonstrate the countenance that I describe here for helping to co-regulate with our children and allow them to process their feelings in my new No Bad Kids Master Course. You can read all about at nobadkidscourse.com.

And please check out some of my other podcasts on my website, janetlansbury.com. They’re all indexed by subject and category, so you should be able to find whatever topic you might be interested in.

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 e-book at Amazon, Apple, Google Play, or barnesandnoble.com and in audio at audible.com. And you can even get a free audio copy of either book at Audible by following the LINK in the liner notes of this podcast.

Thanks so much for listening. We can do this.

The post Let Kids Choose… Except When They Can’t appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

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

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

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

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alright, so here are a couple notes about that:

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

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

Okay, so here’s another one:

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

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

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

We can do this.

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

Transcript of What To Do (and Not Do) When Kids Have Meltdowns, Tantrums, Strong Emotions

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m going to be talking about a topic that I don’t think we could ever get too much support on: What do we do, what do we say, how should we act when our children are upset, maybe tantruming or having a meltdown? I talk a lot about this topic, but I don’t often describe in detail what we can actually say and do to help children share their feelings, process their feelings. Helping them develop emotional health, resilience, increasing the trust between us and the trust that children have for themselves as capable of handling their feelings and the ups and downs of life. I have three notes here that I’m going to be addressing, and then in the end, I’ll get into my specific recommendations.

Now, one really interesting thing about these notes is that they’re all from people who work with children professionally. They’re not from the parents of these children. So I thought that was interesting in itself. And these caregivers, and in one case an ER doctor, as often happens, all of them already have a sense of what they can do to improve these situations, and what isn’t working as well. So I’m mostly going to be offering my encouragement and agreement with their instincts. I just want them to feel even more confident about the direction that they sense they want to head in. And also in these notes are some really common ways that we all tend to respond that are not as helpful.

So here’s the first note:

I am a nanny to a 2.5-year-old who I’ve been with for two years. She is strong-willed and very articulate for her age.

For some context, she gets a lot of one-on-one attention from the adults in her life, because I am with her about 30 hours a week. Her mom works from home. Her dad is essentially retired, so he is around most of the time. And her grandparents are around a lot as well. While this amount of quality time is a huge blessing and a privilege in a world where most parents and caregivers are stretched so thin, there are times where I wonder if it is overwhelming for her, specifically in moments where her emotions are running really high.

For example, this week she had a really intense meltdown because she woke up from her nap and wanted her mom, but her mom was not home. At first she was just crying, but her dad heard her and came in the room, and after that, it really escalated. Both her dad and I are always calm and reassuring during meltdowns like this, but I came away from the situation wondering if, as a child, having two adults sitting next to you waiting for your emotions to subside feels like a lot of pressure.

The next day I asked her if she wants someone to stay with her when she is upset or if she wants to be alone, and she said she wants to be alone. I don’t take that statement as absolute fact, but everything that I was witnessing in the moment the day prior corroborates that idea that she truly wants space, even if it feels counterintuitive to us. I know you have a lot of experience working with kids while their parents are nearby. I wondered if you might have any thoughts on this or any specific advice.

So what a perceptive nanny this is. She saw how the child escalated and expressing her feelings seemed to last so much longer because of the way that she and the parent were there. I have the sense that they’re stopping everything and sort of making an event out of the child’s feelings. And while it’s wonderful to be available to the child—and that’s a common time that children sometimes have feelings. It’s that transition of waking up in the afternoon, it can be a rough one for some children. But then if people are sort of witnessing you like an audience, yes, it can extend the whole experience. And it can give the message to a child that this is a big deal to us. This is not just the normal passing through of feelings. Now we’re stopping everything and saying, This is an event. This is a situation that needs all this attention and care. That’s obviously very loving coming from the parents. But yes, sometimes we don’t realize that the message is that this isn’t just a normal, natural part of your day. This is a problem. This is, Whoa, I hope she’s okay, and we’re going to wait for her to feel better.

What I would do instead is definitely not just walk away and leave her alone. That can also give a message, the message that we are trying to avoid you when you feel this way. So I wouldn’t recommend that either. What I would recommend is keeping the flow of your afternoon as best you can, rather than getting stuck there. And maybe that means confident momentum, helping her up. Come on, let’s go. We’re going to go in now and help you get up because you’re having a rough one. So helping her to move forward and for you to move forward so you’re not just stuck waiting for her.

And at the same time, welcoming those feelings as you move her along. And if she doesn’t want to come, she doesn’t have to come. We’ll be right here waiting for you. As soon as you feel better. We’ll be getting your snack ready. Whatever it is that you would do next, just invite her to come along while you acknowledge, Oh, it’s so hard to get up out of bed sometimes. Waking up, yeah, you have feelings about that. Normalizing this.

And that not only helps our child, but it helps us not be exhausted by the ups and downs that a child has. Not have to think, Oh gosh, now we’ve got to wait this one out. And this problem, oh boy… Instead think, Yeah, you know what? It’s going to happen. It’s good for her to get it all out. We’re not going to rush that, at all. But we’re going to show her that life goes on, feeling however we feel in whatever state we’re in. But we’re not a stuck audience to this.

So I agree with this nanny. Not that she should be left alone, but that it doesn’t help this little girl to have people stuck there with her waiting for the emotions to subside. That is pressure. And then if this little girl said she wanted her mom and her mom wasn’t home, Oh, you wanted your mom, you’re stuck with us. Ah, that’s really hard. But we’re saying that from the understanding that she’s safe, it’s okay. It’s just a feeling, comes and goes.

Okay, here’s another one:

Hi,

I’m a childcare worker who uses positive discipline, discipline without shame. I was working with 15- to 32-month-olds, but I’m now working with three- to four-year-olds. Typically, how I would deal with crying would be to let it happen and trust the process and be there for them while not accommodating, which worked wonderfully.

Since switching age groups, the adults in the room seem to be a lot less okay with crying. Instead of letting it run its course, they put a huge emphasis on taking deep breaths, calming their body, etc. This calms them for a while, but then they become upset again within 10 minutes. With this age group, should I be helping move their emotions with these calming techniques? I guess to me it feels like they’re not getting a chance to really feel it and move through it. What is the right time to start teaching these skills? What would you do?

Thank you so much.

So again, we have a very insightful caregiver here. There is, I think, encouragement for this that’s around and about in parenting advice and childcare advice that there’s some kind of lesson-teaching that we need to actively give to children around their feelings. I don’t agree with that for the reasons that this childcare worker is noticing. Which is that instead of giving the message that your feelings are healthy and normal and they pass, we can give the message that this is something we have to work on with you to make it go away.

Obviously, that’s not what these teachers or caregivers are intending at all. But usually when we do this, the impulse to want to help children work through their feelings this way, it usually stems from our own discomfort with the situation. We want the child to feel better, and maybe we feel like we’re not doing our job if we’re allowing feelings to run their course. But we can still be there for the child while we move on and help with this other child, And you’re still with me. And maybe sometimes all the children are upset, And you’re also upset right now. You’re having a hard time since your parents left.

And I think this is also why people will sometimes say to me, Oh, I can’t possibly do this. I have more than one child, or, I’m a teacher, I can’t do this thing that you’re talking about. Because I think what they’re imagining is working each child through their feelings in this active manner. And young children especially have a lot of feelings, so if each time they express something, we have to do all this work around the experience, then yes, that would be impossibly overwhelming.

What I’m suggesting is passive acceptance that doesn’t use up our energy or stop us in our tracks. It’s a big difference. We can be there, we can acknowledge, without making this into an event or a problem that we have to fix, that we have to help our child through and do something active to make better. I know it’s really hard to be with children when they’re upset, but as much as possible, our comfortable presence, that’s what helps children through. That’s what teaches them through our modeling, through showing them this is a healthy, normal, acceptable state. This is nothing to fear, not a problem. We don’t feel good for a while, and then we feel better. And we’re here for you, the whole way through. We think it’s okay. We think it’s normal. That’s the message we want children to get.

And when we’re saying, We’ve got to breathe and we’ve got to do all this, we are turning it into, without meaning to, a scarier situation, an unnatural crisis, even. And again, if we really look at that in ourselves, what makes us want to do this? It’s like we’re not comfortable with our child in this space. Not that we’re ever going to be completely comfortable, but that’s the challenge. That’s the whole thing right there, that practice that we build on to let feelings be. To know that every time our child expresses something, they’re healing something, if we can allow it and be the safe presence. And sometimes it takes longer, sometimes it’s shorter. It’s not our process to do anything about, it’s really theirs.

So I totally agree with this childcare worker that what she’s seeing is not as helpful as what she was doing before with the younger ones. And children will learn. Again, they learn through our message of acceptance and the way we’re perceiving the feelings as normal and healthy and a passing thing that we trust. That’s how children learn to move through the feelings better. Simply through that example that we’re giving them. I think a lot of times too, that when we’re in a field of teaching, or even, you know, as a parent, we feel like we’re supposed to teach, right? And that means we’ve got to do something. Instead of actually facilitating an environment for learning. And this goes with every kind of thing that children learn, especially in the early years, this precious window of time. We want to work more on facilitating the right environment instead of teaching.

Because children are such expert learners, they’re learning all the time, but they’re not always learning what we want them to learn. That’s Magda Gerber’s famous quote, “Be careful what you teach. It might interfere with what they are learning.” So we think we’re teaching how to work through emotions, how to relax yourself, how to take deep breaths. But what we might be teaching instead is, Ooh, this is kind of scary and not normal and you’ve got to help yourself to feel better. It’s not okay to be in that sad place or that angry place. You’ve got to get on with it and get past it.

Okay, so here’s one more question. This one, I think this came on Instagram and I responded to it. Here it is:

May I ask a question? I work as a doctor in the pediatric ER and often have to do painful procedures on children. I always try to be kind and truthful with them about what’s going to happen. I use numbing agents plus sedation and avoid restraining them as much as possible, etc.

However, understandably, they will still usually become very upset both during and following the procedure. When this happens, I can see that not only are they distressed by the situation, but that their trust in me and nurses/doctors in general has been compromised. I’m not sure of the best way to address these two issues. Often I will say, “I’m so sorry you’re upset,” or “I’m so sorry that hurt you.” But I wonder if there’s a better way of approaching this in terms of validating their feelings and reassuring them. Would you have any suggestions?

Thank you so much.

Okay, so she really nails something so important here. Trust. This is one of the results that we want when children are upset, right? We want them to trust in us, trust in themselves, trust that their feelings are okay and healthy. So here’s what I responded to this doctor:

I would be completely honest and open about every detail. Sounds like you are already in this direction, but maybe even more. This part sometimes hurts, stings. And then you will actually build trust if you can, in the moment, welcome whatever the child shares. So not only, “I’m sorry that hurt,” which is great, but also being there receiving in the moment. Ah, you didn’t like that part. That was uncomfortable, wasn’t it? Whatever they’re giving you and what it’s related to, if you know. In other words, you’re not only apologizing for and commenting on the feelings, you’re welcoming them as they come.

And if a child is too upset to hear, just be in that welcoming, accepting place. Nodding your head a little, looking at them with empathy but not sadness, obviously. Ah, I know. That one can be especially uncomfortable, you didn’t like that. If it’s a situation where the parent isn’t there, I might say, Ah, I bet you wish your mom was here. You’ll see her soon. But it’s hard not to have her here right now with you. In other words, saying all those truths that most of us are afraid to say. We fear it makes matters worse, but it actually does the opposite.

And she wrote back:

Hi Janet, thank you so much for your reply. I appreciate it so much. I could definitely adjust what I’m doing based on your advice, as I am guilty of taking kids’ emotions on board too much and showing that in my face, i.e. looking sad. Thank you again for everything that you do. Kind regards.

And I wrote back: Not guilty! Totally normal. And it’s great that you are aware.

So yeah, when we’re not the parent, we can still get our buttons pushed. It can still be so hard for us, as in the case with this ER doctor and also the caregivers that were trying to get the children to breathe and work through their feelings. As parents, it’s even harder for us because we’re so deeply invested in and connected with our child.

So this is what I recommend doing: Working on not letting our discomfort take prominence over our child’s. And really trusting in letting feelings be, that it’s safe, that feelings come and go. And then when we feel ourselves reacting with fear or anger, breathe. I mean, we don’t have to take this unnaturally deep breath. Just feel yourself breathing through normally. Center yourself in your body. For some people, it helps putting their hand to their chest or feeling their feet on the floor. For me, I love using imagery: My hero suit that I would put on when my children were upset or I knew I was going to be upsetting them. It has a shield that deflects my child’s feelings, so, as a sensitive person, I don’t take them in and absorb them. Or I’d imagine I’m a therapist welcoming those feelings to be shared, seeing how positive it is that a child does this, that any person does this. Or being that anchor in the waves, just letting those waves pass by. Not trying to stop them, knowing they’re right, they’re what should be, and that they will subside.

But what has helped me and those I’ve worked with most of all is connecting with this perspective: Feelings are healing if we let them be. This is not a problem to fix, but a passing state my child is in, and this is the healthiest thing for them to be doing right now. And I’m being the greatest parent or teacher or grandparent or caregiver by allowing and supporting this.

And in terms of saying something, I wouldn’t say anything in the beginning when I’m first working on this. Because often those words we want to say are going to come from that place that’s not comfortable in us or that’s trying to achieve something. And the only thing we want to achieve here is demonstrating how safe this is, how acceptable the situation is. So that’s usually better done, at least in the beginning when we’re kind of transitioning into this way of seeing and being. It’s better to just let your shoulders drop, finding that exhale in yourself, and if your child makes eye contact, just nod your head.

And then later, when you are more practiced at this, sometimes words will come out that are always going to be in agreement with what your child is saying, agreement with their right to say it. So whatever they say, you acknowledge, Ah, you didn’t like that, or Oh, you wanted to do that thing that I wouldn’t let you do, or You think I’m the worst mom, it feels like everything’s wrong right now. Just mirroring what they’re saying. And try not to talk for any other reason. If you’re coming from that place of overall acceptance, let that be your guide. So if there’s something you need to do or a place you need to help your child move to, do that while still being in that same mode. So comfortable that I can pick you up out of this situation while you’re upset, I’m not mad at you, I’m not pushing back on this. I can be that hero helping you through.

And then I think it’s important to really focus in on our goals overall as we practice this. And I can’t say enough how profoundly trust between us is increased when we can meet our children’s feelings bravely with empathy or at least acceptance, rather than sympathy or fear or impatience, without stopping everything to cater to them. Being as comfortable as possible, an un-rushed presence. Not letting our own discomfort take prominence over theirs. Perceiving what our child feels as this healthy flow rather than a problem to fix or an ordeal to help them through.

I’ve witnessed the beauty of this hundreds of times with my own children at all ages. And believe me, it never gets easy, though it gets a whole lot clearer with experience that we’re doing the right thing. I’ve done this with children in my classes. And even with children that I just met in an in-home consultation, I see a result. It feels like I see how I’m going from being a stranger, in those cases, to becoming somebody who helps them feel a little safer, maybe, more seen, accepting them as they are. And often they’ll look at you with this kind of surprise, I don’t know, a little bit grateful too, maybe. These are the memories I draw upon every time I need to bolster myself to be this person for children and for all people the next time. So know that this is relationship-building. Really, the safety and trust that children feel with us is everything.

And we’re going to help children to process their feelings fully and completely when teaching them, through these experiences (the best way to learn, experientially!), this healthy attitude toward their feelings and regulation states, fostering emotional health. So we can do all of these things through just this one type of experience, letting the feelings be. I’m sure a lot of you listening already know all of this, because I do touch on these themes a whole lot. They’re so important. But I do feel like for myself, I could never get too much encouragement and too many reminders that this is the groove I want to be in. So, I really hope this helps.

And for a whole lot more help, if you haven’t done so already, please check out my No Bad Kids Master Course. I go into all these topics. Tantrums and meltdowns. What do we do when kids say words to us that are unkind? What’s driving all these behaviors that children have? And how we can effectively ease them, heal them. At the same time, building this incredible lifelong relationship of mutual respect and trust and enjoyment of each other. How we can enjoy our whole experience as a parent so much more. It’s all about the way we see. So I hope you’ll check out that course, it’s at nobadkidscourse.com, or you can also go through my website, janetlansbury.com.

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

The post What To Do (and Not Do) When Kids Have Meltdowns, Tantrums, Strong Emotions appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

It can be confounding when our children behave in negative ways after we’ve told them umpteen times it’s wrong. Surely they’re aware that we don’t approve! And yet, they repeat the behavior no matter how frustrated, annoyed, or angry we get. Janet offers her perspective on this dynamic while answering a question from the mom of a short-tempered 6-year-old. This boy’s father believes certain behaviors are simply unacceptable because their son is “old enough to know better,” but this mom isn’t as sure and wonders if Janet can clarify what they should realistically expect for a child their son’s age.

Transcript of “Shouldn’t They Know Better By Now?”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m going to address a concern that parents often share with me, and usually it’s in the form of questions like, At what age will my child stop doing these [fill-in-the-blank] impulsive behaviors? Or, When can I expect my child to be able to self-regulate? For instance, stop having tantrums, stop flying off the handle, stop losing self-control. When can we expect more consistent kindness or manners, or at least that our child stops lashing out at their sibling or yelling rude things when they’re upset? Shouldn’t they know better by now? The short answer to that one is yes, but as I’m sure you guessed, I also have a longer answer.

So yes, our children not only should know better, they actually do know better. From the time they’re born, children are already sensing our feelings and doing their best to try to adapt to them. This is basic human survival instinct. Children need us to feel okay and be accepting towards them. They sense they need to be in our good graces so we’ll fill their needs. Still, though, they can’t manage their discomforts and emotions enough to be those perfect babies for us. But we could say that even they “know better.” The very first time our baby flaps their hand at us or pulls our hair, they learn that this bothers us and it isn’t acceptable behavior. Which doesn’t mean they stop doing it, but if we can try to calmly block or just disallow the behavior without giving it a big, interesting reaction that children might tend to have the impulse to explore, they usually do stop.

So this isn’t about “knowing better.” It’s about how much control their thoughtful, reasonable center of their brain has over their behavior in any given moment. Certainly by the toddler years, but even infants, demonstrate self-regulation when all life’s elements are in their favor. They can do that. But in the early years especially, children are easily overwhelmed by internal developments, there’s so much rapid growth in these early years, along with stressors in their environment, threat detection, and other discomforts. And then, bye-bye, knowing better! And there they go, seeming to overreact, doing these annoying or destructive behaviors again. Reason leaves the building.

Now, does anybody besides me relate to this happening to us, even as adults? It happens to me all the time. And I love the way that my brilliant, generous, charismatic friend Mr. Chazz makes children’s behavior relatable to us as adults through his videos. He’ll remind us of things like, Hey, did you get that speeding ticket because you didn’t know better? Did you shout obscenities at people driving too slowly? Or what about that extra glass of wine that you know wakes you up at night, right? But you did it anyway. Or those chips or the chocolate that always makes you want more. Did we know better? What about yelling at your spouse, your kids, your friends, or in the office? What about that meltdown over something teensy that happens after we’ve had this long day and we just can’t take it anymore? We can find ourselves making these kinds of “choices,” but how thoughtful and conscious are they?

So what’s the answer to, When will children stop doing such and such? or, Why are they still doing this? It’s true that there’s a gradual maturation in the prefrontal cortex that finally matures around age 25 or so, and that helps us to regulate better. But still, for us and for children, it’s always relative. Our ability to act from our knowing place will always be relative to our comfort level, our inborn sensitivities, our temperaments, our moods, and our internal comforts, combined with the stressors we’re managing in our environment. And there isn’t an age cutoff for this, unfortunately, or we’d all be perfect angels by now. Which might even make life kind of boring, but that’s a whole other topic.

And why is this understanding important for us to grasp and make peace with? Because here’s a universal truth about caring for children: Our responses to children’s behaviors will stem from our perceptions and expectations. So if we’re finding ourselves and/or our children stuck in challenging patterns, in other words, our child keeps repeating those behaviors or the behaviors seem to worsen, chances are that our perceptions and expectations are at least a little bit inaccurate. And these misperceptions are causing us to feel and react in a manner that’s continuing or worsening the behavior. Because out of those misperceptions, we’re not giving our child the helpful response that they unconsciously seek. And instead our mis-response can make our child feel more distanced and alone, afraid maybe, uncomfortable. Which means more struggles with self-control and behavior.

Now maybe that sounds really complicated, but to offer a simple example: In my work with parents, often the most helpful feedback I can give them is assurance that their child’s behavior is typical, within normal range, for their developmental stage and for their current life situation and stressors that are going on—when I tell them that from my years of experience and training and research this behavior makes sense to me. And honestly, that’s just about every time with every kind of behavior. At least eventually, with enough information, it makes sense to me. And just that realization, and I totally get this, I’ve felt it myself about my own children, that Phew, okay, I’m not doing anything terribly wrong. There’s nothing I need to fear about my child here. This is just the way they’re reacting, reflecting, processing, and maybe adapting to everything that’s going on right now. That increases our comfort and makes it possible for us to be less fearful and more helpful as our children’s leaders.

So now here’s a question I received on Instagram:

I would love to hear about how to approach boundary-pushing in older children, six or so. My husband is convinced that since they have greater understanding of the world than babies and toddlers, that they should know better and that your principles don’t apply. I have yet to find an eloquent or even literate way of describing how it would still apply greatly.

So then I asked her if she could please be specific, and she replied:

He’s been very disrespectful in the way that he reacts to any scenario. He dislikes bedtime, chores, non-screen activity. There’s lots of talking back, tuning out, coming out of nowhere to reprimand us. Just generally very sensitive and reactive, which my husband sees as being too much for his age. I’m not sure exactly what our realistic expectations are for this age.

Okay, so generally I’d say when we have this mindset that there should be certain cutoffs for when our children should be doing this or doing that, or they should stop getting upset about small things, that they should be behaving a certain way at a certain age. The answer is, as I said, there’s really no set timetable for children to react a certain way. They always react out of what they’re feeling. And this general idea that I recommend absorbing is that our children’s behavior is a reflection of their comfort level. So when children are uncomfortable for different reasons, then they’re going to have more defiant-type behavior (if children have those tendencies). They’re probably going to have more emotional behavior and, as this parent says, they’ll be more sensitive and reactive to things. So I don’t know why this boy is reacting as he is, with this information that she’s given me, but one reason could be that he’s feeling his dad’s disapproval of him. And maybe this is anger or maybe fear. Dad may be afraid that his son isn’t going in the right direction, and the son is picking up on that. So that’s one thing that I could say for sure from this information, there could be other things.

But the behaviors that this mom is describing, they all sound like they’re within the normal realm of the way a six-year-old or a five-year-old, maybe even a four-year-old or an eight-year-old, has a tantrum, has a reaction to a limit, has a disagreement with a limit or a with a direction that we give them. And really, children ideally need to have a right to have their reaction throughout the years. So we’ll want to be able to confidently set a limit, but then accept that our child needs to be able to say, I don’t like that limit. And that basic dynamic continues. What this parent is describing can be what it looks like with a six-year-old child. He’s snarling back and saying, I don’t like you guys! Talking back, tuning out, I’m not going to pay attention to you! This is similar to the toddler that’s “not listening.” They are listening, but they’re just getting stuck in this impulse to resist. Making that choice, not a very conscious choice, to not jump up when their parent wants them to do something or to stop doing something.

And at six years old, they’re still young human beings, they’re still easily overwhelmed. And when they’re uncomfortable, they’re going to have messy, unpleasant behaviors. So believing as this husband does, and it’s very understandable, Hey, he’s six years old, he should shape up and cut this out. Certainly makes sense. But the problem is that this lack of acceptance of the stage his child is at right here is what’s continuing the problematic behavior. And this is why it’s the most helpful for us if we can try to remember to come from a place of curiosity: I wonder what’s going on with my child? Rather than having this expectation that our child should be whatever, and by doing so, preventing ourselves from being able to see what’s going on.

When we follow this natural inclination that most of us have as adults to understand things by labeling them, whether we’re doing it positively or negatively, but especially when it’s negative, we’re going to miss out on understanding. It’s like we’re closing doors that we really want to keep open, perceiving something as fixed. They’re a bully, or they’re shy, or they’re too aggressive or they’re too passive. We close off our ability to understand and to be able to see how to help make things better. So we want to try not to impose labels, that judgment that our child will then feel. They’ll sense that, they’ll pick up on that, and it has a chance of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy for them.

Now for this situation, with the little information I have, it’s kind of hard. But it may be that the mother or both the parents aren’t being as confident in their limit-setting. Because when we talk about things like bedtime, first of all, that’s a transition. Always hard. It’s the hardest one of all, because it’s the end-of-the-day transition, when everybody’s tired, especially our child. It’s not a time when we want to give options that there’s something else they could do at that time besides be in their bedroom. We can’t force a six-year-old or any child to fall asleep, but we can say, You’re not having screens now. There won’t be screens in your bedroom. We’re not going to let you have more drinks or give you more attention when we’ve done our bedtime routine and we’re done. This is your bedtime. Our job is done for the day. Instead of getting sucked into trying to convince our child of our point of view, trying to get their agreement. All those things that keep our child holding on because we’re still holding on.

I know that’s very oversimplified, but I wonder if the parents feel positive about setting limits to free their child to fall asleep, in this case. That finality that we feel with that limit is really important. And a big part of that certainty and that finality that children need is when we’re also fine with him saying, No, no, but I don’t want to do this and I want my screens! Then we can even acknowledge, Oh wow, you don’t want to do that. You really don’t want to go to bed now, or you don’t want to stop using your screens. Whatever it is, that’s okay with us. We accept how you feel. We really do. And we don’t mind when you say that. We’re confident enough in our position, we can handle that pushback. In fact, we expect it.

Not giving power to these things that he’s doing, like talking back. Instead seeing this as, That’s your reaction. That’s okay with us. You know, it doesn’t hurt us in any way that you say no. We’re still, as the parents that love you and that you need to help take care of you, we’re the ones deciding here. I know that talking back can feel very threatening, especially if we feel like we’re seeking that agreement from our child, which I would honestly give up on and let go of, even with a child this age. And so maybe we end up repeating ourselves. We’ve got to make it so clear, No, this is what you’re supposed to do. Don’t you get that? Appealing to what he knows.

But that’s not the part that’s getting expressed here because he does “know better.” He knows that it’s bedtime. He knows that he’s not supposed to do this, that, or the other. He knows the parents don’t want him to talk back, but he’s doing it anyway. So that becomes wasted energy on our part, leading very quickly, if we didn’t already start that way, to frustration, anger, and annoyance. Ah, this child, they should know better. Why are they acting like this? We’re getting caught up in it. Instead of seeing it for what it is, an immature person that we love that does know better, but they’re just not doing it right now. They can’t. Accepting that.

This child sounds like a very strong child, an alpha child, which is all to the good, ultimately. With those children especially, they need us to be even more certain and to expect, of course, we’re going to get pushback. If we can shrug our shoulders, accept, not let it matter to us, not let it shake us: That’s where he is. This is where we are. We’re not going to pull ourselves down into bickering about this because it’s wasted effort. He’s not going to happily accept everything that we decide. It’s not our job to change that. And it’s better for him to share these feelings that he needs to share because, just as with a younger child, their reactions are not really even related to screens or bedtime or anything in particular, so much as those are tipping points. And what they’re expressing are themes, feelings, and relational dynamics that they’re processing. So their reaction is magnified by, Oh, I know my parents get angry at me here and I’m absorbing those scary feelings from them. Or, I don’t like some things that happened today. Or, I’m exhausted. I’m just over the edge and I’m just venting to the people I’m closest to, the people I trust the most. So let him blast and whatever he says, you can allow and acknowledge. You’re still going to stick with your limit.

So with the screens, children need a lot of clarity around that because just like for all of us, screens are kind of addictive, right? There’s a lot of temptation there. So I would be clear, certain, comfortable, and expect a lot of pushback. Be ready for it. It’s not going to be quiet acceptance most of the time. I think that’s a fantasy that we can have, but we’re not going to get that. We’re not going to get, Sure, okay, you’re the parents and of course I’m going to do what you say. You’re right! And really it wouldn’t be healthy for a child, especially a child like this, with this kind of temperament, to just give it up. Instead, we’re going to get a lot of pushback. That’s what they’re supposed to do. So instead of seeing this as a red flag or a problem or a sign that he’s not where he should be, I would see it as nothing that can threaten you at all as parents if you don’t let it, and really healthy.

And I would let him tune you out all he wants as well, but you’re still going to stick to those limits. So one of the examples she gave was chores. Now with chores, we do have to remember to be polite. Which we often forget with children, especially if we start out a little annoyed with them because we’re expecting, Oh, they’re not going to do this and I’ve got to nag and I don’t like nagging. Which is why I didn’t insist on too many chores with my children, that’s just me. But they need that politeness and just a reminder with a very light touch. And I believe it will help us to have low expectations. I wouldn’t expect any help at all at the end of a school day, for example, because children get drained. It’s a lot for them.

And it definitely won’t help our cause to make these voluntary activities into power struggles. We are going to lose those struggles, because doing chores is voluntary and we want to be able to see this bigger picture that we’re going to have a much better chance of gaining our child’s cooperation if we aren’t getting into a fight with them about it every day. If we’re saying something like, Oh, just a reminder my love, could you please help us empty the dishwasher? and maybe want to add, As soon as you’re done, we’ll have our dinner. So making it a part of the routine like that, very light and polite. Matter of fact. And we’re open to doing it with them, ideally. So we’re not trying to force an issue that we really don’t have the power to control. Instead, we’re nurturing that relationship where children want to be helpful to us because they’re part of a family unit where they’re unconditionally accepted.

That doesn’t mean we accept all their behavior, but we accept their stage of life. We accept that they’re human and easily overwhelmed and won’t want to do everything that we ask them to do. Just like we don’t. I mean, I don’t like brushing my teeth at the end of the day when I’m tired. I do it, but I’m a grown-up. So it’s that bigger picture, that relationship of acceptance and not getting threatened and not getting our back up about this little stuff. Seeing it for what it is, that’s what’s going to help make children agreeable in the long term, and that’s what we want.

This parent says their child seems to come out of nowhere to reprimand his parents. Again, that sounds like maybe he’s trying to see if the parents are going to give this little guy power there to upset them. He’s checking it out, and maybe they’ve given these kinds of behaviors power and some negative attention and things like that. But I really wouldn’t. I wouldn’t give that behavior any kind of power over you. Maybe hear the feelings behind what he is saying, but not make a big deal out of this. That’s what makes it go away. You know, when a six-year-old is trying to boss us around, we could have a sense of humor about that: No, I’m not going to do that, but thanks for asking.

So at the end of her comment, she says she’s not sure exactly what are the realistic expectations. And the realistic expectations are, Is he capable of doing chores? Is he capable of following directions? Yes, he’s capable of all those things, but being capable and wanting to do them in the moment, or even being able to do them in that moment, for children are two different things. That second part is the part that requires really confident empathic leaders who aren’t intimidated by what comes out of a six-year-old’s mouth.

And I think it will help to take a deeper look, coming from this very open-minded place. Nothing to fear here, looking at what’s going on in the dynamics with both of these parents and their son. Are they being clear enough? Are they being confident in their limits? Are they okay with him disagreeing? Are they still seeing him as a little person that adores them and has only been around for six years and really needs leaders that are above this, that can rise above all this petty stuff and not be insulted the way we would be with a peer or someone that was on our level of maturity? So a reasonable expectation is that when he is feeling really comfortable, he’ll accomplish a lot and he’ll be much more cooperative. And when he’s not as comfortable, with his leaders or in himself or something else in his environment, it’s going to be harder for him. It’s going to be rough, there will be grumbling and messiness. Accepting all of that is what he needs at all ages.

Children thrive when we accept them, meeting them right where they are and trusting that there’s always a reason. And none of them are fatal flaws in our children, or something we’re doing wrong. It’s a process. Our relationship with our children is a process and their development is a process. And we can always switch gears. We can always apologize for reactions that we’ve had and keep reminding ourselves that he’s not mature. Yes, he can be very capable, so can a one-year-old, so can a two-year-old. But he can also be snarly, reprimanding, reactive, a side that most of us still have as adults in some form.

So I hope that answers the question. And I’m not sure if that’s going to be what this dad wants to hear or if it’s going to make any difference with him, but this is what I’ve learned and I really hope it helps.

And there’s more help on the way—my new No Bad Kids Master Course!  This immersive course gives you all the tools and perspective you need to not only understand  and respond effectively to your children’s behavior but also build positive, respectful, relationships with them for life! Check out all the details at nobadkidscourse.com.

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

The post Shouldn’t They Know Better By Now? appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “It’s Hard to Feel Compassion for Unreasonable Emotions”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today I’m going to be responding to an email from a parent who is concerned that her three-year-old seems to have entered a stage of constant frustration and anxiety that’s a stressful situation for both of them. And this parent, she has a theory that’s disconcerting to her about what might have brought this on with her daughter, and she’s looking for ways to help them both cope in a healthy manner.

Okay, here’s the letter I received:

Hi, Janet. My daughter just turned three. She’s always been full of passion and drive, but lately it has turned into near constant frustration. I know that this is age-appropriate to an extent, but it has begun to control our days and leave me having a hard time being compassionate. I always make sure to acknowledge her feelings and be present with her while she feels them, but they’re always accompanied by screaming, crying, and whining, which is hard to listen to so very often.

The bigger issue though, is that I’m becoming increasingly concerned about her ability to deal with frustration in a healthy way. Her reactions are escalating in both frequency and intensity with triggers from “I dropped my raisin” to “I don’t want you to stop peeing. Mommy.”

I have a hard time knowing what to do. And I feel guilt both about this and the fact that she saw me dealing with undiagnosed postpartum anxiety disorder for the first 18 months of her life. I worry that I modeled this behavior for her and that she has her own anxiety issues, and that my compassion has begun to turn into frustration. How can I help her cope with her frustration in a way that’s healthy for both of us? Please help.

Okay. Wow. I feel for this parent. And one of the things that I hope to do in this podcast is help alleviate her concern and the guilt that she says she’s feeling, because that’s not called for at all in my opinion. And it’s the last thing any of us need to be getting down on ourselves for what our children are going through, especially to blame ourselves for things that are completely out of our control, like anxiety or depression.

I see a very clear way to shift this situation. At the root of what this parent is sharing with me is a dynamic that I admit I find kind of fascinating actually. It’s sort of been one of my consulting secrets, and that is when a parent has a concern, a big enough concern for them to want to ask me a question about it or consult with me, there’s one thing that I can deduce for sure off the bat. Well, almost for sure, because of course, nothing’s for sure between parents and children and the dynamics that go on, those are individual situations. But I can be fairly sure that the child is aware on some level of the parent’s concern, the child is feeling it too. The bigger the concern, the more likely that the child is aware of it.

That doesn’t mean the child’s aware of every detail of the specifics, but they’re picking up discomfort or fear or anxiety, or even just a particular focus around an issue. They feel their parents thrown off by it.

So then what commonly happens is that something that was maybe a one time action or behavior or just a little phase a child’s going through that’s just impulsive, or maybe just an expression of a child’s temperament, and I’m going to go into that part in a second, the child feels their parents’ concern around that particular behavior or that theme of behaviors in this case that the child is overreacting and getting frustrated about these tiny things. And then the parents’ concern, that they’re picking up, gives it this sort of increased power that can tend to cause it to develop into more of a continuous issue. It’s as if our child is feeling: my parent, who sets the tone for how I feel about everything isn’t on top of this. They aren’t comfortable, and they’re worried and they’re upset by my behavior, and they don’t quite trust themselves or me in this situation.

So while it may be normal for parents to feel that, that can become puzzling and then maybe even worrisome to our child, because of course, to feel free and easy as a child, or kids need leaders who can be mostly okay handling what goes on with them. Comfort in a house, it’s always top down.

That’s why much of my job, I feel, has been to help parents realize how normal and typical behaviors are, because that alone can help us to take a step back and breathe, stop blaming ourselves and stop worrying that there’s some kind of permanent damage that I’m creating with my child or that I’ve done to my child, for us to stop feeling all those big uh-ohs, so that we’re actually able to see our way out of these feedback loops that our concerns help to perpetuate.

Again, though, we want to do this without self blaming, but with greater awareness, maybe more self-awareness.

And in this case, from what this parent says, she seems to know this already. Objectively, she knows, and she’s totally correct, that her child’s behavior is age-appropriate and normal. Children do express frustration, sometimes huge frustration over the smallest things. Because what happens is that other feelings that maybe they’re holding onto or maybe older feelings that they need to offload, they get touched off by these small frustrations and disappointments, these minor experiences. It’s like these are what finally open up that spout on the tea kettle for them to let off all this steam that’s been simmering inside.

In this case, I don’t know what else is going on in this family’s life, but it’s true that some of these feelings may be old feelings to do with that discomfort that the child absorbed from her parents’ anxiety in those first 18 months, because children do absorb whatever their powerful leaders their parents are feeling. They’re sensitive learners that way. And that’s okay.

So that might be one of the reasons why this child seems to have a very low frustration tolerance. Maybe there’s this backlog she’s needing to offload, and so she’s doing this really healthy thing, doing it through these opportunities of minor disappointments. That’s what she’s supposed to do, offloading the feelings. And children are self-healing geniuses. I mean, their body knows how to express the feelings that are in there. So it’s actually a very healthy process that she’s doing this. Some of these feelings that could have been from those first months of discomfort around her parents’ feelings or a lot of other things, and she’s getting those out of her body, very, very healthy.

This parent says, “but it has begun to control our days and leave me having a hard time being compassionate.” And this is something I hope I can help with because it really is about our perspective. The only way that someone else’s feelings can control our day is if we’re perceiving those feelings as that there’s something wrong, that their feelings are a problem and that in this case, this parent worries that she’s created. Instead of something that’s naturally healing and healthy.

Therefore we’re taking them on as our responsibility to work our child through to make better, rather than what I talk about a lot in this podcast and in my posts, just letting them be just accepting that these are this person’s feelings, my child’s feelings. She’s doing her job expressing them, and they’re not my responsibility to try to do something with, or even be compassionate about. All that I need to do is accept that she feels whatever it is, maybe acknowledge that and support her to share that. 

Our children are going to have lots of responses to situations that don’t make any sense to us. Lots. We’re not going to be able to be compassionate when our child’s upset about dropping her raisin. We can’t be compassionate about things like that. And there’s no need to be. In fact, it doesn’t really help children if they feel like we’re so involved in their feelings that we’re concerned about everything, and we’ve got to help them feel better, because that can end up sort of confirming for our child: oh, this is a big deal that I felt disappointed about something.

So instead of expecting ourselves to be compassionate, we just want to notice, “Whoa, you really didn’t like that that happened.” We’re not feeling sorry or sad for her, which would be pretty much impossible for most of us in the case of a raisin. Instead, we’re speaking to her strength and her right to express to the full extent what she wants to express from our own strong place of not feeling responsible, not trying to make it better, not trying to somehow get her through this to feeling better. That will happen on its own.

The feelings have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

The message children get when we, we try to work them through things is actually the opposite of what we want them to get. What we want them to get is: It’s okay to express your feelings. Feelings come and go. We express them and they pass. Instead, children can get: Wow, this feeling that’s come over me is, is a big problem, and it’s not okay. It’s not quite safe for me to go here. My parent has to work so hard and she seems concerned. Or, she’s trying to be compassionate and help me through this feeling. So this isn’t just a natural downer in my day that I need to express. It’s this is a problem that she’s got to help me work through

So we can understand how that might not help our kids to have as healthy an approach to these feelings and to know in their hearts that these are natural, normal, a part of life, especially in these early years.

Then the mother says, “I always make sure to acknowledge her feelings and be present with her while she feels them.” And there again, acknowledging feelings, that’s important. Acknowledging, accepting, being present when we can. But it’s not the end of the world if we need to be occupied with something we’re doing. We can still acknowledge if children continue, “You’re still mad about that poorly behaved raisin, ah, I’m going to do this and I’m going to come back and check on you in a little bit.”

Overall, we wanna be comfortable with this, comfortable and normalizing of these overreactions, knowing that whatever comes out of that is healthy for our child.

And an accepting attitude is a passive attitude toward the feelings. We’re not trying to do something about them. We’re not trying to be eye-to-eye present. It shouldn’t be work. It should be a respectful interchange between us and our child. Yes, I see this is what you’re feeling, and that’s okay with me. That’s the subtext behind acknowledging: “Hmm, you want me to not stop peeing. That’s how you’re feeling about this.”

So it’s not my job to change that in any way or to try to defend my right to stop peeing, right? As if we have control over that.

That’s one of the things I’m sensing here, that maybe this mom is taking on a lot of responsibility around her child’s feelings, when the opposite would be better — to let her child express them to the hilt as much as she needs to and not to get involved. Because our involvement, as I was saying earlier, can send a message to our child that tends to make these situations last longer and happen more, because now it’s like our child’s starting to feel that we have a problem with her going to these places, and that makes it a scary place to go instead of a normal place to go.

Then this parent says, “The feelings are always accompanied by screaming, crying, and whining.” Yes. So unfortunately, those are all par for the course. And then as children get older, they’ll also be accompanying these feelings with statements like, “I don’t like you!” and other unkind words. It sounds like this parent’s not necessarily getting those yet, but she’s getting the whining and the screaming and the crying.

Feelings are expressed all different ways. These are all healthy ways actually, even though they’re not fun ways for us, but they’re healthy ways that feelings are expressed at this age and even older. And it doesn’t mean at all that she’s going to be a whiner as she gets older. It’s a healthy expression of feelings for children who don’t have mature self-regulation yet. And that’s where the three-year-olds are definitely at.

It’s hard to listen to, but it’s even harder when, as this mother comments, she says that “I’m becoming increasingly concerned about her ability to deal with frustration in a healthy way.” So it’s hard enough just to hear those sounds, but to hear that and have it feel like, oh, this is really worrying me, that’s just amping up the discomfort for us, right? Because it’s like it’s pushing a huge button in us every time.

So this is the crux of it. This is what’s being felt by her child, this concern, and it’s coming through in these situations when this mother feels like she should be more compassionate. When instead, understandably, it’s really bothering her because her perspective is: Yikes, this is a big problem. This is a big concern. I’ve created something. I’ve done something wrong, and I’m a terrible parent. You know, all those places that we might go in ourselves. This is my fault, but it’s really not. And even if we did contribute to it, we can support our child to process these feelings out, moving through them by trusting our child and trusting the feelings.

These concerns this parent has that have created this responsibility she’s taking on around the feelings is what’s making this into a constant issue instead of just a healthy release that any child is going to have about a whole gamut of things. There are lots of reasons that children have residual feelings to discharge, and it couldn’t be more healthy.

But if we’re concerned, then our child is going to sense these are dangerous places or that my parent can’t quite handle this. She can’t handle me. She can’t do her job just letting me be the wobbly one in this relationship because she’s wobbling there with me.

The somewhat amusing thing that children do, and this is not to make light of this parent’s concerns at all, but it is amusing that children, when they’re unconsciously seeking a different kind of response from us and tried to give us this message that they just need to be seen for these little people that they are, they’ll often go to wilder and wilder, illogical extremes, impulsively, and as I said, it’s unconscious on their part. It’s an impulse, but it’s what they do to sort of try to open our eyes and get that calm, comfortable parent leader response that they need.

It’s like they’re saying: it was hard for you to let me have feelings about the raisin. Okay, let me try something more blatantly ridiculous. See if you can feel sure that this isn’t your fault or your problem somehow don’t stop peeing. And then the next thing might be to insist that the parent jumps over the moon right now. It’s as if she’s saying: I’m asking for you to be okay with my ridiculousness, to not feel worried about it, not feel responsible for it, and just have a calm response.

So with the example with the peeing thing, “Huh, wow, you really wanted me to keep keep on peeing when I was done.” And then I would hope that my child would melt down there because that’s what’s underneath this. That’s what she needs to share, that release, that relief, because these feelings are what’s getting kind of funneled into all these little ridiculous requests and concerns and overreactions.

Then this parent says, “I’ve had a hard time knowing what to do.” Yes. And that’s what her child is feeling too, that her parent doesn’t know what to do in these situations, and that’s what makes it uncomfortable and makes the child have to kind of keep doing it.

This parents says, “I feel guilt both about this and about the fact that she saw me dealing with undiagnosed postpartum anxiety disorder, and I’m worried that I modeled this behavior for her and that she has her own anxiety issues.” That is such an uncomfortable feeling for this parent to have. And as I said in the beginning, her feelings are her feelings, but that doesn’t seem like a foregone conclusion to me. And even if it was true that she modeled the behavior and her daughter picked up on it that way, she can always help to shift that by modeling something else.

I see what her child’s doing as typical behavior. Obviously, if this parent continues to be worried about her having issues, she should seek the advice of a mental health professional, if she hasn’t already. But these are behaviors that I recognize and make sense to me in terms of… she probably does need to discharge some of the fear around those 18 months of her life. That doesn’t mean we should feel guilty about that. What I hope is that it could help you feel empowered to help her heal this, because she’s showing this parent that she is healing this, if the parent could see it that way, and the parent, understandably, is having a hard time letting her and trusting this process, but children are brilliant at this. They know what they’re doing, and if we take that process and turn it into something we should feel guilty about painting it in a negative light, then it’s harder for our child to heal. Because she can only feel as comfortable as we are.

So this dynamic, it can change quickly with a different perspective, with a real and true and healthy perspective. So much of my time consulting with parents is trying to assure them that it’s typical behavior so they can feel good about approaching it as a leader. Our kids, they want us to be solid, you know, and this little one’s telling her parent again and again that she believes her parent can do this, and trying to help the parents see what a little girl she is with all these overwhelming overblown feelings and bizarre requests.

I really hope this helps, and again, please trust your instinct to be in touch with the mental health professional. Hopefully you’ve already talked to someone about what you’ve gone through. If you need someone for your child, please consult with them as well. I believe in you.

The post It’s Hard to Feel Compassion for Unreasonable Emotions appeared first on Janet Lansbury.