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

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

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

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

So here’s the note I received:

Dear Janet,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear Janet,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transcript of “Mean Words, Aggressive Behaviors, Stalling, and Other Signs Kids Need Our Help”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Those of you that listen here regularly know that I like to cover several emails or questions that share a similar theme together in one podcast, because I want to try to be as helpful to as many people as possible. In this case, I actually have two categories that all these parent questions fall into: One of them is back-to-school, issues surrounding or that happen around going back to school. The second one, probably more important, is ways that children show us that they’re uncomfortable on some level and what can we do to help them. I’m looking forward to getting into this.

All of these notes I’m going to read are about children showing signs of discomfort, different ways that children do that. But before I read any of these, I’m going to share two ways that I recommend helping our children when they’re uncomfortable. And then I’m going to talk about how these two points apply and how they look in each of these situations.

So the first way to help is by not taking it personally. That means recognizing that this is a sign of my child’s discomfort. They’re not doing this at me, even if it seems like it’s at us. They’re showing their immaturity, as young children, in the ways that they manage stress. These are about our child, not us. They’re not our fault.

And yes, this is easier said than done because we are people in this relationship with our children and we care so much. We’re trying so hard, it is hard not to take offense or take it personally. But the problem is, when we’re not recognizing what’s going on with our child as their discomfort or their discomfort is making us uncomfortable, our child has to then reflect back our feelings, our discomfort, which can obviously exacerbate everything. So not only is it about our child being uncomfortable, but now it’s about us being uncomfortable and that making our child more uncomfortable. It can become a vicious cycle.

So that’s number one: working at that separation between us and our child that will help us to see them more clearly. When they’re babies, we can do this by practicing observing them, taking that little step back to try to see them with a little more objectivity. We’re never going to be completely objective observers, we’re always going to be inclined to project. That’s okay. And as children get older, of course it’s harder for us to just sit there and observe them like we can a baby, so it’s more of a mental challenge to separate ourselves. To see them as people going through their own stuff that’s not our fault.

And the second way that we can help children is to do something else that’s kind of counterintuitive for most of us: encouraging our kids to keep expressing it, sharing it, getting it off their chest, offloading it, however we want to look at that. Sharing these feelings with us their way, in their way and time. It’s seldom going to happen that we can say, “Hey, tell me more. What’s going on with you?” And our two-year-old is going to say, “Well, actually, I feel like this and that, and this is why I’m acting like this.” I mean, they don’t know themselves what’s going on with them more often than not, and even if they do, they struggle to articulate it, especially in the moment. They’re just feeling it, they’re just reacting, they’re just processing it. So this can’t be encouraging them to express it to us our way. It’s got to be encouraging their way, which is, as I often say, letting feelings be. And anyway, I’m going to explain how that looks in each of these cases.

Oftentimes, too, part of this encouraging is for us to say those quiet parts out loud. And I know that expression is often used as a negative, that people are sharing ugly thoughts out loud. But in this case, it’s very, very positive and healing when we can say those things that maybe we’re afraid to say because we feel worried that’s going to somehow make things worse. The opposite is true: The more we speak to the truth of what’s going on, the more helpful it is for our child as they’re offloading and processing these feelings.

So, (1) not taking it personally, and (2) encouraging kids to keep expressing it.

Alright, the first note I’m going to share is actually a little success story. It came as a comment on another podcast episode called “My Child Is So Mean to Me” and here’s the comment:

Yes! I’ve just been going through this with my extremely strong-willed four-year-old. [And she put a sad face.] Janet, your podcast was so timely. Today, my son wanted absolutely nothing to do with me, and acted as if he truly despised me. It was really hard not to take it personally, and if I’m honest, my heart was aching. I looked at him through your lens, before bedtime, and it completely shifted my perspective. Turns out he was upset that I can’t go into his preschool class with him (it is only three hours twice a week), and also upset that I’m smiling more at his three-month-old brother than at him (mostly because he’s been so hurtful and defiant). He even demonstrated my “half smile,” and said that it’s not a real smile. I thanked him for telling me, and reassured him that I love him, and that he makes me very happy. So thank you, thank you very much for your insight.

This is an example of the difference it makes when we put on that lens that it’s not a reflection on us, that we’re not taking it personally. I love her honesty here, that her heart was aching and that she felt despised by him. How easily we can fall into that, even as big, mature adults. So we can imagine even right there how challenging it is for a child when we are angry or annoyed or frustrated with them. Always normal to feel, but it can help even then for us to share those quiet thoughts out loud: “You’ve noticed I’ve been so short with you.” Or, in this case: “I haven’t been smiling at you all the way and I’ve been smiling at your brother more. That’s because I’ve been hurt by some stuff that you said and I’ve been taking it personally. But I realize that’s not what it’s about. It’s about you starting this preschool class and you want me to be there with you and here I am, home with the baby while you’re gone. That doesn’t feel nice, right?”

I’m not saying to say that in the moment when he’s saying something unkind to us or pushing us away, but at some point when you are more settled, that could be a very reassuring thing for him to hear. Oh, I’m not imagining this half smile. I don’t have to worry about that, that that half smile means I’m not loved. Putting it out there. And also recognizing that these kinds of behavior —when children reject us, when they’re defiant, they’re acting out to get our attention— all of those are very typical signs of discomfort. And because this child is four, he could really express himself, which is wonderful, right? A younger child can’t even do that much, so it can take more reflection to figure out what’s going on. It’s not going to be as easy as with an articulate four-year-old.

Okay, so now here’s a question. And this first one is, on the scale of discomfort, this is a more minor one:

Your books and podcasts have helped me tremendously in the past years as a new parent. I have a question regarding upbringing. We’ve tried as much as possible to practice respectful parenting, allowing my kids to have their emotions, let them grow and learn at their own pace, without being judgmental. This has really worked well and we saw our kids, especially the elder one who’s currently turning six, blossoming into a confident child. Sincere thanks from us.

However, we really found it challenging when my daughter started attending kindergarten when the teachers are using a more traditional approach and making fast and judgmental comments on kids. We were able to balance it initially and use it as an opportunity to teach her and see this as a different environment, therefore, good exposure for her. This was until the English teacher was changed, and she often uses very harsh words on kids. She will call her student stupid, etc. She’s shouted at kids, she would complain and lament a lot in front of the kids. Unfortunately, we are in the graduating year and changing school isn’t an option.

My daughter has started using the word “stupid” on her younger brother. May we please seek your advice on how to handle this? Thanks in advance.

And this note comes from a parent in Malaysia.

So the child is showing signs of discomfort by saying this word to her younger brother, she’s now calling him stupid. And the discomfort here is easy to understand, right? Even when we’re not on the receiving end of a teacher’s judgmental comments and yelling, it’s very disconcerting. This whole atmosphere of being judged is uncomfortable for any of us, especially a child.

Now, the reason I said this isn’t one of the bigger kinds of discomforts is that it’s not coming from the parents, it’s coming from a teacher. Which is still going to be uncomfortable, but not to the level of discomfort of having her parent yelling at home and being judgmental. We have the most powerful influence, so that can be reassuring—that our child is processing something, we can help them do that, and it’s easier for us to see here that this is not about us. So, easier to understand.

This parent doesn’t say what she’s doing about it, but her daughter is actually doing the perfect thing, which is she’s offloading what’s going on by bringing it home. Unfortunately, on to her brother. I don’t know exactly how this parent is reacting, but a normal reaction that we would have to this is, “Don’t talk to your brother like that. Come on, you can’t say that to him.” We push back on it, we get a little alarmed by that. We’ve got to make sure to let her know that’s not okay. But the thing is, she already knows that, she already senses that. She’s just trying to get this out of her system. And children do this when they’re exposed to uncomfortable things, they bring it home and they process it out. Whether that’s some kind of media they were exposed to or they observed something scary happening somewhere. Their job and our job, if we’re up for it, is for them to offload it with us.

So this is actually a great opportunity for this parent. She already did a lot of the work by explaining that this is a different environment. “You’re noticing that this teacher’s very judgmental and she has a short temper. Yeah, it doesn’t feel good, right? It doesn’t feel safe to be around that.” Instead of following that reflex that we all have to say, “Hey, don’t call him stupid, he’s not stupid,” or “Poor guy. You don’t want to be called stupid, do you?” Oftentimes children do know that it’s just a word, but we kind of fuel it with more, without meaning to, because we get offended for our child. Children, they’re so intuitive, they tend to see through it.

Which doesn’t mean it’s okay for her to call her younger brother stupid, though. In the moment, when her daughter says stupid on her younger brother, here’s how I would recommend intervening: “Hmm, now you want to call him stupid because you hear that kind of stuff at school from your teacher. I can’t let you do that with him. But I get that, I get you wanting to call everybody stupid. And it feels icky, right? That your teacher’s doing that kind of thing.” So, we can remind our child that something’s not okay while still holding them close to us. I don’t mean physically holding them close to us in this instance, but that idea of, I see you. I know why you’re doing this. I want you to do this, but don’t want your brother to be on the receiving end, if possible. But I’m not going to make a big deal out of it because then you and I are going to get stuck in a thing. I understand where this is coming from and why you’re doing this and it makes sense. I’m not saying to say all this to her, not all those words, but that kind of attitude. It’s okay, she’s doing the job, she’s doing what she’s supposed to do, bringing it home to us. So I would try to see this as very positive, a good sign.

Okay, here’s another one:

Hi, Janet-

I listen to your podcasts on a daily basis while I’m driving my kids to and from school, and it honestly has changed my whole perspective on all things parenting, and I truly believe I have become a better mum because of you.

There is one sticking point, however, that I’m finding myself in with my eldest daughter, who is six years old, and we can’t seem to move past it. She seems to lack any sort of intrinsic motivation when it comes to getting herself ready to leave the house. She’s more than capable of doing it all, but always needs me to ask her more than a handful of times and to keep reminding her: “It’s time to brush your teeth. It’s time to wear your clothes now. We will be late for school if we don’t get ready soon.” And she’s constantly getting distracted by her toys and wants to play while she should be getting ready.

I listened to your podcast with William Stixrud and I have also read his book, The Self-Driven Child, and I believe that I have perhaps been too involved and thus my daughter believes that it’s my job to do all these tasks for her or to at least be the one pushing her to do them. I was giving 95% and she would only give 5%. So this morning I tried taking a small step back and telling her that I trust that she knows what she has to do and I trust that she doesn’t want to be late for school. I told her I’m here if she needs me for the tricky parts.

She ended up moving so slowly and spent most of the time playing with her toy cars, so much so that she ended up being 15 minutes late to school. I am at my wit’s end and I’m really at a loss with what I can do to help her motivate herself.

I responded back to this parent via email:

Thank you for all your kind words and support. I’m thinking of responding via a podcast episode if that’s okay, but I have a couple of questions: One, how many children do you have and what are their ages? Two, can you describe in detail what you mean by doing 95% of her school preparation, her 5%? I would love to try to help.

And she replied:

Hi, Janet-

Thank you so much for your fast response. That honestly would be amazing if you could, it would help so much to get your take on this and some advice. I have two daughters. One is two years and the eldest is six years.

When I say I am giving 95% and she’s giving 5%, I mean this in regards to the amount of effort that is put in during the morning. I’m also referring to when William Stixrud explained in his book that the more effort we put into something they should be doing, the less they tend to put in. So I find in the morning, I’m the one that’s reminding her to brush her teeth, use the toilet, get dressed, and generally try to speed her along so we can get to school on time, and she doesn’t seem to have any intrinsic motivation to do this for herself. It’s a tricky situation as school, of course, is a non-negotiable and we can’t be late on a regular basis, but at the same time I really want this motivation to get dressed and get there on time to come from her.

Thank you so much for your reply.

So this is also kind of minor discomfort, I would say. Her daughter’s showing that she’s having a tough time in the transition of getting out the door in the morning. Very common area in which to be uncomfortable, especially for young children, in those transitions. And she has a two-year-old sibling who, I forgot to ask that, but who may be staying home with her parents. So she’s got to go off to this school, maybe it’s a new class. For whatever reason, she’s having a hard time and she has been for a while, I guess, and her mother’s been on her, on her, on her.

Now that can be just a frustrating waste of our energy when we do that. And yes, our children can get, as William Stixrud points out, they can get used to their parent being on their back for things. William Stixrud talks a lot in his book about homework and how kids really need us to stay out of that, which I totally agree with, not be the one having to nag them to do homework. And with this as well, it would be nice to encourage her more to do this on her own. But I think what might be getting this parent a little stuck is that she is now kind of, I guess you could say, taking it personally. She’s feeling like she did something wrong, and this is a sign that she did something wrong, and uh-oh now she’s got to fix it. She’s taking this on herself. When, in fact, there are a lot of six-year-olds who aren’t used to their parents nagging them to get ready that have a hard time, for a lot of different reasons.

And that’s what I would focus on here, for this parent. I would just notice, My child is having a tough time with the morning transition, very normal, instead of kind of wasting all that energy trying to nag her and push her. I don’t know about anybody else, but that’s the stuff I like least about parenting. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to repeat myself, nag, and I kind of refuse to. It’s much easier and more helpful to her if we just step in and give her a helping hand, instead of trying to get her to do something. So even with intrinsic motivation, we can’t make that happen. We can step back and encourage it, but it’s not going to be an overnight process. There’s going to be a transitional period. And it seems like this parent maybe felt, Oh, I’ve got to change this and I’m just going to change it all and let her do everything. And she’s showing that she actually does need help, because she’s getting distracted, she’s maybe kind of stalling, she’s getting stuck.

So instead of seeing this as, Uh-oh, I’ve got to do a different job here, I would take that in, that prompting her and prompting her isn’t helping her. But I would still help her. I would just say, “Oh, you know what? You’re playing with your toy. Come on, we’re going to go put your clothes on now. You can play with that toy when you get home. We’re not going to do that now.” Very lovingly, just give her a helping hand. And use this time to give her some of that physical care that she may be missing as the older sibling. Maybe we help choose her clothes if she’s getting stuck there and we help her, “Let’s put your arms up. We’re going to put this over your head.” And we set out a little time to do this. Not letting her stall. “Looks like, yeah, of course you want to play this now, I get it, but this isn’t the time. If you get all dressed and I’m here to help, maybe there’ll be time, but no, I’m not going to let you do that.”

So, very loving limits and what I’ve often called “confident momentum.” Which isn’t fast, it’s not pushy, it’s just noticing where our children are getting stuck. And when she does that, when she welcomes it, she’s helping her do it. I believe that is what will help her feel that connection that she needs, in a tough time, to move through. And this doesn’t take that much more time, it probably takes less time than trying to prompt somebody repeatedly. And it’s certainly less stressful for us when we kind of give in to somebody needing a helping hand.

And then, while we’re helping her, that’s when she’s probably going to express the feelings that she has around these transitions, and maybe it’s about her sibling too, or things she’s worried about that are going on at school. Not that she’ll necessarily articulate them straight out, but she’ll say, “No, I want to play. I want to play.” “Yeah, I know, it’s so disappointing. It’s frustrating! But, you know, this isn’t the time.” So even if it seems like the most ridiculous feeling, that she shouldn’t have at this point in her life, usher it in, welcome it in, while you’re giving her the help that she needs. And from there she will feel more motivated because she’s not being nagged to, she’s doing it because she wants to, because she feels that she doesn’t have to, and it’s a choice that she’s making. And we’re not going to give her the option of missing school or having to show up late, because that’s much harder for her too, to show up late.

But this is different from doing homework, which I really would leave between her and her teacher. Hopefully she doesn’t have it yet, in kindergarten. But when she does, I wouldn’t sit down and do it with her. That I would let go of. But this is really a typical time when children do need our help: in a transition. I hope that helps a little bit.

Here’s another one:

Hi, Janet-

I’m writing today about my almost four-year-old. He is a deeply observant and emotional child, always filled with questions, bringing things up from conversations he’s overheard us having. Meltdowns are always welcomed, and I can see the visible relief they bring to him afterwards.

Lately though, it feels as if his feelings are “stuck” inside of him, leaving him in this state of dysregulation where he may hit or push his sister out of the blue, destroy something randomly, pull things off of shelves and walk away, throw toys aggressively, or even try to bite me. When I try to address him, he looks at me blankly, far from his usually sweet countenance, and I struggle to help him move past the state he’s in. I acknowledge the feelings, hold firm boundaries, and I’m ready for a meltdown, but rather, the feelings just seem to remain.

A big issue we’ve been dealing with for quite a while comes at preschool pickup. For almost a year now, he’s attended a wonderful small, primarily outdoor-based preschool led by a loving teacher who also practices your principles. When I arrive, his face grows very serious. I immediately acknowledge him and ask about his day and offer a hug, but while I try to speak with his teacher, he usually takes to suddenly taking a toy from one of his classmates or trying to destroy something in the garden or knocking something down. These behaviors had only been restricted to this moment, he wouldn’t behave like this during the day, but recently he scratched a classmate during the day. When I later asked why he would do this, he stated it was because she wasn’t nice. He randomly pushed a boy at the playground recently —so uncharacteristic— and he claimed the same thing, that he wasn’t nice.

I’m truly at a loss for how to help him past whatever it is that’s causing all of this, and my best efforts don’t seem to be giving him what he needs. My patience is definitely wearing thin, particularly as he’s started to harm other children.

I will add I’m newly pregnant, seven weeks, but definitely having a hard time physically, which I’m sure he can see. I have to figure there’s a correlation between this and what behavior we’re seeing. We haven’t told him or his sister that I’m expecting yet. We’re hoping to wait for the first ultrasound so we can have the picture to show them, but that isn’t for another month.

The sister is two years old, by the way. Okay, so I wrote back:

Thanks so much for your kind words, I would love to try to help. I have a couple of questions for you if you don’t mind. Can you describe what you mean by addressing him at preschool and how you are responding when he hits or pushes or throws toys, etc., with his sister and at preschool? Thanks.

And she wrote back:

When I arrive at preschool, I come up to him and get down at his eye level, ask him how he is, and offer a hug and tell him it’s good to see him. If I then try to speak with his teacher, this is when he typically takes to doing something destructive to the space or even harmful to a classmate. Up until this last week, he never behaved like this during the school day itself, the teacher reported he was always very go-with-the-flow and cooperative.

In calm moments, I’ve tried to come up with a way for him to communicate with me that he’s having a hard time at pickup— coming to hold my hand, putting a hand on my leg, etc., but nothing has stuck. When he tries to hit, throw, etc., I try to block or stop what he’s doing and typically get down to his eye level and express that I can tell he’s having a difficult time and that I’m going to prevent him from hurting himself, his sister, or breaking our things. Lately, he’s taken to biting me more and I’ve had to more strongly hold him back to prevent him, while I express to him that I’m going to keep him and I safe. But he’s growing stronger and I’m growing more tired. In moments where I’ve missed being able to stop him, if, for instance, he’s hit his sister, I check on his sister and issue her an apology and then offer him the chance to apologize, which he rarely takes, and then we try to move on.

I feel myself losing so much of the patience and calm I once had with him, and I’m yelling more, feeling disappointed in myself and very out of touch with my son. One other thing that has become a major sticking point: he has taken to unbuckling his car seatbelt while we are driving as well and refuses to put it back on. We’ve tried every approach to this: ignoring, calmly asking, regularly stopping to rebuckle him, I’ve yelled—but it continues to happen. I know he is absolutely leaning into my discomfort around this.

Yes, so another very perceptive parent with, as she describes, “a deeply observant and emotional child.” And here’s where I think this parent may be getting stuck in kind of taking this personally, taking this on herself. She notices that when he can have a full meltdown, that he feels better, but he’s not having a full meltdown here. He’s getting stuck in an angry, aggressive, defensive mode. And she’s trying to help him out of that, help him through this. She says, “I struggle to help him move past the state he’s in.” Well, that can’t be our job, helping him move past the state he’s in. He has to move past the state he’s in, and the way that he can do that is if, instead of this parent trying to make something happen here, and I understand she’s alarmed, right? It’s alarming when our children are suddenly acting in an uncharacteristic manner and hurting other children. It’s alarming and it’s a very, very common sign of discomfort.

And what could he be uncomfortable about? Her deeply observant and emotional child is noticing, as she says, she’s “newly pregnant, but definitely having a hard time physically, which I’m sure he can see.” So imagine a sensitive, emotional child, very observant. Something’s wrong. It’s clear, something’s wrong with his mother. What is this about? He can’t get a handle on it. And because he can’t get a handle on it, it becomes huge inside of him. Disconcerting, to put it mildly. Scary. Maybe I’ve done something. What’s going on? What have I lost here? I lost the way my mom used to feel, the way she used to be around me, the kind of energy that she had for me. So when we can stop trying to manage or help with the behavior, which is, I mean, this parent has wonderful instinct, obviously very attuned to her son, but not feeling her best. So it’s kind of the perfect storm for her to get stuck when she’s alarmed by his newer behaviors. But all of these are about him and his discomfort. And in this case, it seems pretty clear that he’s uncomfortable about her not sharing what’s going on with her.

So a couple of things here. Not taking it personally. Noticing, Wow, this guy’s really out of sorts. And when we note our child is going through something or we see that they’re uncomfortable, their behavior’s showing that loud and clear, maybe then we would choose not to talk to the teacher right then because he’s uncomfortable. And this is also an end-of-the-day transition, when children are the most tired. And now here he sees his mother, she says, “his face becomes quite serious,” like, There she is, and there’s something going on with her and she’s not telling me. And I’m scared, I’m filled with dread. It reminds me of everything that I’m feeling. So one thing I would consider doing is not leaving him then, helping him through this transition. When she stops to say hello, be ready for him to have a hard time. Help him get to the car and just help him out of there. Help him through that transition with confident momentum, but giving him what he needs at this time, which is her, her full presence.

She doesn’t have to talk about the pregnancy yet if she’s not ready. We get to decide that as parents. However, I would say the part out loud that you haven’t said maybe, which is: “You’ve noticed that I’m really tired these days. I get a little sick to my stomach. You notice that, right? It’s nothing to do with you. It’s something I’m going through. I’ll be back to myself again soon. But yeah, I should have told you this before, because I know you know me so well.” It will help him so much to know. Just as when we’re going through anything in our own lives with our relatives that’s affecting us, our children feel that. And if they don’t understand what’s going on, it becomes a big issue to them, a big, uncomfortable, scary thing. So clarify that for him. That will help a lot.

And then, instead of wanting him to have the meltdown and trying to get him there or trying to get him to come through this, I would try to receive the feelings as they’re coming. “Oh, that makes you want to hit. You want to bite, you just want to lash out right now. I’m here to stop you.” When I ask this parent what she does, she says she tries to block or stop what he’s doing. Yes, that’s what I recommend. “Typically get down to his eye level.” When possible, but he’s a four-year-old guy and she can look down to him sometimes too. “Express that I can tell he’s having a difficult time and that I’m going to prevent him from hurting himself, his sister, or breaking our things.” That, especially with a child this age, I would show more than tell. Not make a whole big deal out of it, just be like, “Oops, there it came back again.” Maybe you even end up having a little nickname together about the impulse. “There’s that upset guy again. I’m here to help you, I’m here to stop you.”

We don’t have to get into the whole I can’t let you do this to your sister and all that. I mean, because he does know that. So really just helping him in the moment instead of trying to make a bigger lesson about it. That’s often what we’re trying to do when we think about why we’re saying a lot of words around behavior. Just seeing it, welcoming the impulse without welcoming the behavior. And as with the other parent or all the parents, holding him close, figuratively, instead of being alarmed by it. Which we can only do when we see this is him, going through something, and what does he need? It’s not our job to fix, it’s just our job to welcome him to share it while helping him not do the behaviors that are harmful.

And with unbuckling the carseat, obviously there’s not a lot we can do about that, but his overall sense of, I see you. I’m here to help you. I’m not judging you, your behavior. I really get it. That will help him stop doing that too. And in the moment you could say something like, “Oops, I see that you wanted to unbuckle your buckle. You’re showing me something there, aren’t you? You’re really not comfortable with what’s going on. I want to know more about that when we get home, but for now, can you please put your buckle on?” I mean, there’s ways that we can deescalate the tension around that because it’s the tension that kind of feeds the behavior.

And maybe he won’t do it right then, but he will eventually. He won’t need to demonstrate this rebellion when he feels that you welcome his rebellion, you welcome all these feelings, in the way that they’re coming up. What gets us to yelling, which never feels good, is that we’re trying to manage behavior in a way that we really don’t have the power to manage it. But we do have the power to help him feel seen and be able to express what’s going on with him in the ways that he can, the ways that he’s doing it.

I really hope some of this helps all these parents. And thank you all so much for sending in your notes and trusting me to give you feedback. It’s an honor.

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 Mean Words, Aggressive Behavior, Stalling, and Other Signs Kids Need Our Help appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “Our Child Won’t Listen”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m going to be responding to a parent who wrote to me. He has three children, but he’s mostly concerned about his oldest, who doesn’t seem to follow instructions and has been acting out. The parents are both using positive parenting, but it doesn’t seem to be effective for them. They’re looking for what they might be missing, and hopefully I’ll be able to give them some ideas about that.

Okay, here’s the letter I received:

Dear Janet,

I listen to your podcast regularly and I’ve heard multiple letters that you’ve read from parents with questions I have as well. And now I have a question of my own.

My partner and I have three children, ages four, two, and almost a month old. My son who is four is normally a very sweet and caring child, and we’ve done the best we can to follow the principles of positive parenting. One of the issues we struggle with is what to do when our son refuses to follow instructions and begins to act out. We don’t approve of timeouts and we don’t spank, but there are times when I feel that calmly talking to him and using the phrase, “I see that you want to do that,” and similar phrases seems to have no effect.

The issue we struggle with often is him not listening at all and ignoring us and continuing the behavior we say we can’t allow, such as pulling his younger sister around, climbing on our back and shoulders while we’re trying to care for the newborn.

What is the positive parenting method of dealing with a child where removing them from the situation, talking to them about the behavior, explaining our expectations, trying to understand their perspective, etc. does nothing, and the attitude and actions continue? Thank you for any assistance you can provide.

First of all, I can’t help but notice that there’s a new baby here. So right away, this oldest child’s behavior, and the second child, if they’re having any behavior like this, makes a lot of sense. And this could have been going on since nine months before the baby came, or close to that, when children get a sense that there’s a big change happening. So even if there weren’t any other stressors in this child’s life at all that he’d be responding to —and obviously there are a lot of normal difficulties that all children go through, changing to a new school, a new caregiver— even if none of those were happening, he has a big reason to be feeling a little kerfuffley in his behavior.

He’s showing that he isn’t able to stop himself even when his dad is very kindly and respectfully speaking to him about it. He’s not able to control when he is jumping on his parents or being rough with his younger sister with words alone. I love this note because it reflects a common type of misunderstanding that positive parenting, or what I call respectful parenting, means that if we say something to a child politely and respectfully, they’re going to stop what they’re doing or they’re going to do what we want them to do. That that will be enough on its own to set a limit or elicit cooperation. And often it isn’t in these early years because children are very sensitive and emotional, and that means they’re impulsive and they don’t have the self-control that, most of the time, we have as adults. Their feelings get the better of them. They feel threatened and they get stuck. Here I am climbing on my parent again. I know I’m not supposed to do this, but I can’t help myself. They get stuck and they need us to do more than talk to them in those times.

I definitely wouldn’t try to reason with a child who is, as children often are, showing us that they’re beyond reason, that they’re kind of gone. They’re not acting out of thoughtfulness and using their minds. This boy, he sounds like he’s very unsettled in these moments. That doesn’t mean he’s like this all the time, I’m sure he’s normally very sweet and caring and all those wonderful things. But it still comes up for children, especially in these situations where his whole place in the family seems to have shifted again. And maybe he hasn’t completely even resolved with the first transition to his sister. And now here we go again, all this attention is going to this baby. And yikes, what have I lost here?

So with these two understandings: First of all, that this boy does have a lot of good reason to be in a bit of an emotional crisis, at times, at least. And two, that our words are not going to be enough and appealing to our children’s minds when they’re kind of out of their minds is not going to work. What can we do? What I recommend is what I sometimes think of as being a papa or a mama bear. Using that part of ourselves that’s ready to give our child that physical help, picking them up, stopping them, putting the object away, helping them move off their sister, from a place of confidence in ourselves. And not being surprised by the behavior, being ready. Because we’ve normalized this for ourself, we expect it.

This is a huge adjustment for the whole family when another baby’s born. I’m sure I don’t have to tell this parent that, or any parent that. And this is especially challenging for the children because they feel this massive change in their relationship with their parents. It’s scary, it’s threatening. And then in the way that they’re viewed by their parents, if we get into a cycle where they know they’re disappointing us, they hear us losing our temper, getting annoyed, and it’s hard not to, right? With the behavior that we see. But that amplifies the discomfort and fear that they have. And yet this commonly, commonly happens. No matter how conscious we are as parents and how committed we are to gentleness, we’re human also, and it’s going to be upsetting if our child is suddenly doing these upsetting things and we can’t seem to reach them. So be prepared and, whenever you can, reach him right away physically, but from a place of being confident about what you’re doing.

What this dad is doing is wonderful. He’s acknowledging, he’s saying things like, “I see that you want to do that.” And talking to him about the behavior, explaining his expectations, trying to understand his child’s perspective. Those are all part of connecting with our child, but they can’t replace setting physical limits. Our children need more. And sometimes with the explanations, it can be a little too much. What’s even more respectful, and these parents are obviously respectful towards their children, is just to briefly explain, “Oops, that’s not safe. I see, yeah, you want to pull your sister around the house. No, I’m going to stop you right there. Mmm, I can’t let you grab her that tightly. And it sounds like she’s saying no, so I’m going to stop you.” And as we’re saying this, we’re gently preventing him from doing those things. We’re putting our hand in between them, we’re taking his hands off of her. We’re helping him when we see that he’s gone over the edge.

If we get into too much explaining in those times, it becomes us trying to reason with him. We start to feel that, and he feels that. And there we’re actually not going to be connecting with our child because our child has just gone to this unreasonable place, and now we’re trying to connect with them in a way that they are unable to, they just can’t get it. At another time, our child can get this, but when he’s in the middle of these moments, he can’t. So briefly noticing and acknowledging the, “I can see you want to do that” part that this dad mentions— wonderful. While you’re doing that, I would already be stopping him. Maybe even stop him before that and then say, “Oh, yeah, I see you want to do that. That’s not safe.” Or “I can’t let you.” Or “I’m going to help you stop.” And each time a child repeats these same actions, say even less. So maybe it becomes, “Oops, nope,” as we’re moving his hand or we’re putting a hand in between the two children.

This dad mentions that one of the options that they’ve tried is removing him from the situation. He says, “What’s the positive parenting method of dealing with a child where removing them from the situation does nothing?” The problem with removing him all the way from the situation is that it’s a little bit of overkill. It comes off as, Ugh, this is just overwhelming. We can’t handle you right now. And that’s quite appropriate when a child has really gone overboard and you can see that they’re just completely gone and they’re wreaking havoc everywhere, then yeah, sometimes we do have to take that extreme approach of, Okay, you’re just not safe here right now. You’re showing me. I see you. I’m going to help you here because I’ve got to go do this and I need you to be safe. But if we use that for these smaller, everyday incidents, then we’re not going to be giving our child the helpful, calming message that we want to give them, and that will help make a change in their behavior, help calm these impulses. Because we’re saying, Hey, we’ve got a handle on this. You’re not throwing anything at us that we don’t, at some level, expect and understand. And, even, we want to see you asking us for help, and we’re going to be there.

Ideally both parents would do this. Children can be very clear in that if maybe one parent is doing it but the other one isn’t, then they kind of keep going to get help from that other parent, almost like they’re training us, right? I mean, on some level, obviously it’s not conscious. They need both their leaders to be solid and comfortable in their role and understanding of the child as much as possible, so that the child can feel safe and feel a little more settled. And then when children are more settled, there’s less of the behavior. So that’s our goal in everything we do. Our goal is a safe, settled child who feels understood and that they can count on us to help whenever they need us, as much as possible.

So climbing on his parents’ back and shoulders. Now, that’s obviously going to be a difficult one to handle in the moment, gracefully and confidently. It does, again, make a lot of sense though. Look at me here. I see you busy with that baby. I’m not comfortable with what’s going on. How are you going to handle me? Those questions are coming up for him, and it’s going to be very hard for us, with a newborn, to receive that with empathy in a way that’s helpful to him. It’s going to be very hard. So we just do our best. But all of these things happen less when we’re taking care of the bigger picture of being the kind of leaders that help him feel safer and more settled. In that actual moment I think I would, with your body, as best you can while still holding the baby, get him off. But if he keeps doing it and there’s somebody else there that can move him away, that would be good. “Oops, I see you can’t handle this right now. So dad will help.”

Another thing I would do, if we need to be privately with the baby, say we’re putting the baby to bed or changing a diaper, and our older children are showing us that they can’t handle that safely, or quietly, in the case of putting a baby to bed, then we close the door. Not from a punitive place, but from a place of, You’re showing me you really can’t be safe with me right now, and I need to do this. It’s a place of confidence that it’s okay to give them that physical barrier when you need to. And I know a lot of parents are reticent about this, but it’s really about the way that we handle it. And then what children often do is they yell outside the door or they bang on the door, and right there, he’s actually having a really healthy release of his feelings about what’s going on, letting some of that fear out. And if we’re doing this from a place of love, not anger and punishment, then the feelings our child has in response, even if they seem terrible to us, are very positive. That’s the release that will, again, help him to feel more settled. But we’ve got to do it with acceptance of him and, maybe not necessarily tons of empathy in that moment if we’re not feeling it, but an overall attitude of empathy towards him and his situation.

Another way to help with this is to, at a calmer time, or before you have to do this activity with the baby, make a plan with him. “I know it’s hard for you sometimes to see me caring for the baby. You want my attention then too, right? That’s what big brothers often feel. Is there some way that we can help you feel better at these times? Is there something special you’d like to do while I’m feeding the baby?”

With my oldest daughter, who was four when her sister was born, this became playing with her dollhouse. She came to that on her own after one or two sessions of yelling outside the door where I was putting her sister to bed. And I just had to move through that as best I could, knowing that if she could share these feelings —or hoping, I should say— hoping that if she could share these feelings, if I’m accepting of them and I’m not mad at her, she’ll feel better. Letting them out will be helpful. And that was how it worked. She decided to go play with her dollhouse. And I know she did a lot of venting with those dolls, I could hear it sometimes because she would play with them almost every day after her preschool, emotionally processing the events of the day.

A plan might also be to say, which I also did with my children, “As soon as I’m done with the baby, it’ll be your time for me to read a book or play something, whatever you want. And I’m looking forward to that. So as soon as I finish with the baby, the sooner we’ll have our time.”

Another suggestion: empower him with a task that he can do to help you with whatever you’re doing with the baby. And even better maybe, ask him as a favor to help with his sister, help occupy her while you’re doing whatever it is with the baby. And right after that, you’ll be there to give him your attention.

But the main message I want to get across to these parents is: don’t be afraid to step in physically. Children need a lot of physical care from us, even when they’re well past infancy. On some level, they can crave it. And it’s not just when we’re hugging and cuddling and doing those things that feel clearer to us as being loving. It’s also in these other moments when we’re using a gentle but firm hand to help him when he needs help. Perceiving it that way and responding with that perception that we have.

I often used to say to myself, and I still do this with the children I’m working with, sometimes I say to myself, Don’t worry, I will stop you. I won’t let you do those things like hurt the baby, hurt or bother me. And that don’t worry attitude, that voice inside my head, don’t worry, help to give me confidence and stay in mama bear-hero mode when my child was showing they needed me.

So I hope some of that helps and clarifies. Also, please checkout some of my other podcasts at janetlansbury.com. website. They’re all indexed by subject and category so you should be able to find whatever topic you’re interested in. And I have books on audio at Audible.com, No Bad Kids, Toddler Discipline Without Shame and Elevating Child Care, A Guide To Respectful Parenting. You can also get them in paperback at Amazon and an ebook at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Apple.com.

Thanks so much for listening. We can do this.

The post Our Child Won’t Listen appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “When Our Kids Reject Us (A Step-By-Step Response)”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m going to be addressing three questions from parents all around the topic of their child rejecting them, saying strong words to them or about themselves, showing that they’re angry or very upset, and pushing the parent away. These parents are all concerned about the state of the relationship they’re having with their child and are asking what they can do to respond to these behaviors in a manner that gives their child what they need and helps them to be comfortable and feel close again. And the first of these parents asks for a step-by-step. So, although that’s not always my m.o., I came up with a step-by-step that I believe applies to all of these situations.

Okay, here’s an email that I received:

Hi, Janet-

I’m the single mother of a spirited and loving five-year-old boy who until recently has been fairly straightforward to parent. Within the last three months, however, he has found a new voice and physicality that has totally thrown me. When we have a disagreement, he now threatens me with doing physical damage to throw or break something, calls me all the names under the sun, hits me, and generally taunts me to try and get a rise. I acknowledge his feelings and let him know I’m there while he’s having these strong feelings, but that I can’t let him hurt me or our property. Once I’ve removed any danger, he will continue with verbal taunting for up to 20 minutes. It takes every ounce of my being not to react with anger or sadness at these often sustained episodes. And in all honesty, it feels so disingenuous to move on from them without a huge acknowledgement.

At the moment, I’m just trying to act unaffected and calm, unruffled as best I can. But I’m wondering if this is making matters worse. I will often go back and discuss the events when things have calmed down, but my son is seemingly so unaffected that I don’t even think he remembers what he does or says. My question is, how can we move through a long episode of nastiness and downright mean behavior and give it the right level of attention? Or should I just continue to act unaffected and hope the episodes start to cease?

A step-by-step would be the most helpful to me, as I know that consistency is key in these cases, and with so many emotions running through me, I find it hard to remember what is next in this sequence of events.

I can’t think of anything that might have triggered a change in behavior three months ago, other than it coming towards the end of a long school year. His teacher says he doesn’t exhibit this behavior at school, but that he does have a tendency to whine and show frustration quickly. He has a good relationship with his dad who lives in another city, but they don’t see each other more than every couple of months. His grandparents —my parents— are daily figures in his life and he’s very close to them.

Thank you in advance for your help.

Okay, so before I get into offering a step-by-step for this parent and the other parents that have written to me, I want to talk a little about the most important element to embrace when responding to behavior or just being with our child: This idea of unruffled. What does it really mean? It’s about coming to the understanding that the stronger the behavior, the stronger the discomfort in our child. And that this isn’t personal, it’s something our child is going through.

Children have a very immature way, even at five years old and and even older than that, when they’re really uncomfortable, the way that they express that is very immature. So it may be personal in the sense that children are asking something from us through their behavior, they’re needing something from us. But they’re not articulating clearly what they need because they don’t even really know themselves. So this isn’t personal and a child means none of this in their reasonable brain.

And this is something that we can help to mend, always. That’s what children want us to do. They want us to mend with them and they want to feel close and comfortable with us, just as we do with them. So we have all of that in our favor. We know that in this case, this boy’s using these words to express his pain and his hurt, which is what’s directly underneath anger for our children.

So it’s this perspective that we want to dwell on and practice visualizing and practice in these types of situations repeatedly, not perfectly. Getting this in our system so it begins to feel natural. That’s what unruffled is. And even when we’ve practiced it a lot, we might still not go there directly every time. I still don’t, and I’ve been practicing this a long time. I get thrown off, I take things personally, until I give myself that moment to say, This is not about me. It’s what my child’s going through. So that is the homework, if you will, for us to do.

Unruffled doesn’t mean being static or walling off to our child, stuffing our emotions. Because when we do those things, children feel that and they have this impulse to keep trying to get their messages through. It can feel like it’s a brick wall. But it’s much more disconcerting than a brick wall because there’s all this vibration of feelings within it, within us, that our children are picking up on. And that’s more discomforting even than if we blew up at them, shouted at them, because they feel the rumbling of these feelings, and yet we’re showing them something else that doesn’t match that. So they have this impulse to keep poking at that: I know you’re in there! Why are you hiding?

This parent’s instinct is spot-on when she says, “At the moment, I am just trying to act unaffected and calm, unruffled as best I can. But I’m wondering if this is making things worse.” So, yes, it’s making it harder because it’s acting, and our children know that. When what they need is for us to be open and honest and in the present moment with them. That’s how we build trust. What this parent says is, “I acknowledge his feelings and let him know I’m there while he is having these strong feelings, but that I can’t let him hurt me or our property.” So I don’t know exactly what this is sounding like, but to me it sounds kind of removed, explaining. It’s a more distant way of acknowledging. Instead, we’ll want to practice acknowledging in the here and now, from this unthreatened understanding of our children’s behavior.

So here’s a step-by-step for this parent:

First: Be prepared, do the homework. Working on our perspective, 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 this mask on the outside, which is really mean and ugly and hurtful. Another part of being prepared and doing the homework is, if this is repeated behavior as in this case, we know that something’s up. We know that he’s expressing something that he needs to express, but he’s not quite getting what he needs around that. He’s not quite getting the response that he’s looking for, unconsciously. And he’s still a little child who adores you. Nothing he says, no matter how awful or scary, can threaten you if you can see beyond this ugly mask to that hurt boy there and how uncomfortable he must be to say such awful things. No child wants to be saying that to their mother. So that’s one, being prepared, doing the homework.

Two: In the moment, block physical behavior as best and as confidently as you can.

Three: If there’s a chance to have eye contact during these explosions, try to be open, soft-eyed, as empathetic as possible. I know it’s hard sometimes. Maybe nodding your head ever so slightly. Seeing the hurt behind the mean guy behavior, connecting with that.

Four: If there’s a break in his shouting, just reflect back what he’s saying. So we’re staying in the moment with him, acknowledging right there as it comes: “It feels to you like I’m the meanest person ever. You hate me so much right now. Those are angry words.” Remember, in his heart he means none of this. In fact, the strength of these words are a reflection of the depth of his love and his need for and his trust in the parent. I think it will help you a lot to gain perspective, if you can try to figure out where this might be coming from. Could it be that he witnessed his father being verbally abusive? There’s something going on here.

Five: Don’t talk about, “I can’t let you do this behavior.” Especially if it’s repeated behavior, because you’re showing him that by blocking him, you’re demonstrating I can’t let you do this behavior. And he already knows that this is unwanted, wrong behavior, so that kind of correcting can take us off track.

Six: Let it go. After it’s done, don’t rehash unless it’s to make a helpful, non-judgmental plan. In this case, that might be showing him that we care and we want to understand what’s going on with him. “You’re getting really upset lately, saying some really harsh words that I don’t think you mean. I know you know that’s not okay and I’m wondering if there’s something going on that feels really hard for you. Anything you want to share with me?” Opening those doors, that might be the plan in this case. Because you both know what happened already and he knows it was wrong of him, but his feelings broke through. They were that strong. We might never know exactly what’s happening with our child, but we can trust that it’s something. The feelings are real. Letting it go, this is one of the most generous ways that we can show love to our children, trusting their awareness and forgetting their errors, which will be many.

And if this really goes on for 20 minutes, I think it will be shorter when she’s letting him know that she hears his message, really hears it, and isn’t intimidated by it. But if it’s really going on a long time, then we don’t have to stop everything and sit there. We can go in the kitchen, we can be on the stove. We can say, “I’ll be right back.” Still holding that space and that attitude. Nodding at him, letting him know, Yeah, I see you. All of those ways of really hearing him in the moment, while we carry on.

So this is challenging, I know. But 99% of it is the mindset, is that unruffled homework: working on how we’re perceiving the situation. Yes, feelings will still come up for us, but we can even acknowledge those to ourselves, knowing that those are our feelings that our child is tapping into, but they belong to us. They’re not our child’s fault any more than what our child is going through is our fault.

All right, so let’s see how this same approach works with another parent’s issue. Here’s one I got in an Instagram message:

Hi, Janet- We have four beautiful children, ages 6, 4, 2, and soon-to-be 9 months. Life has been beautiful and crazy all the same. This last year, with our youngest joining the family, we’ve had many ups and downs with what seems different adjustments and behaviors that each child has exhibited, different tantrums and acting out on a variety of timelines.

Most recently, our six-year-old daughter has been vocalizing a lot of self-deprecating statements. For instance, if she’s in trouble for something and we’re correcting her, her response is more often, “I’m just stupid. Don’t love me. I don’t want you to love me. I’m just the worst.” We typically try not to harp too much on these words because I don’t want to give them too much power. But I may have responded in the past with something like, “I can’t let you talk like that. Just like hitting, words can really hurt and I don’t want you to hurt yourself like that.” I’ve also been curious and asked, “You seem so mad. Why are you so mad, do you think?” To be honest, much of what I say in these instances never really feels right. I really don’t know how to react in these scenarios.

Today, though, took me by the most surprise. My daughters (6 and 2) and son (4) were playing in the playroom while I was nursing the baby upstairs before placing him down for a nap. I heard things getting pretty rowdy and sure enough, they were getting out of hand with extra-rambunctious play/roughhousing. When I corrected them about it, they agreed to help clean up the mess. And my six-year-old daughter seemed particularly upset and she said, “I just want to kill myself.”

This is the first time I’ve ever heard her speak that way. And to be honest, I was just so upset, but tried to keep my cool. When I asked why she would say that, she says that she is sad and just wants to die. I don’t know where she would’ve heard anything like this before. Talking some more, I said how I understand how she can feel sad, I get it. But just because you did something you weren’t supposed to do doesn’t make you bad. My job is to teach you what you can do and not do to be safe. We tried to talk about it more later after she wasn’t upset anymore, but I still feel so dumbfounded that she even would say this. Have you seen this type of behavior before?

I do believe she’s getting accustomed to feeling different, bigger feelings. She just finished kindergarten and a new school this year as well, and she may not have the language to really express what she’s feeling. But I am afraid that if I approach this in the wrong way, I will only exacerbate it. Any and all advice is very welcomed and appreciated. Thank you.

Okay, so I want to go through this step-by-step, but first, whenever our child mentions hurting themselves, killing themselves, it makes sense to check that out with a mental health professional.

So let’s go through this:

One: being prepared, doing the homework. In this case it’s a little bit easier because, whereas in the first case we didn’t understand why the boy was suddenly acting this way, this is a little more clear because, as this parent knows, this is a huge adjustment. Even for the oldest child who’s already been through this a couple of times with two other siblings coming into the family. Being six years old, one might think —I know I thought this with my oldest when I had my third— Oh, well, they’re going to be okay. I just have to worry about the younger ones more. But actually the oldest one can become kind of a repeat experience, touching into that wound again of, Oh, here we go again. I’m going to be pushed aside a little more. Although we don’t mean to do that, it happens, just with our time and our ability to give each child attention. I’m going to have to share my parent, my piece of the pie just got a little smaller.

So knowing that, yeah, she’s sensitive right now. You know, when we’re feeling uncomfortable and less sure of ourselves and sensitive that way and someone tells us we did something wrong, it can feel a lot worse than when we’re kind of feeling good about ourselves and we can maybe handle that kind of criticism. She’s showing that she can’t, she’s having a hard time.

And if I was sitting down with this parent, I would love to know more about how she’s correcting. Because even that word “correcting,” it sounds judgmental: You’re wrong, you did this wrong, you have got to stop. And while we do want our child to get those messages about their behavior, openly correcting them is often not the best way. Stopping them, letting them know for sure that we can’t let them do this, but not with a big criticism, a scolding or whatever. That just sort of takes a hit on their feelings about themselves that goes beyond just being helped to know what’s right and wrong and what they can do and not do. And I imagine this girl must have already known that they shouldn’t make a big mess and get out of control like that, but it happened with all of them in that last situation.

So understanding this girl’s experience, yes, sometimes the way children express that is saying these awful things about themselves because it’s kind of an exaggeration of how they feel. And children tend to take things all the way, you know? So it’s maybe sort of hyperbolic, but she’s expressing pretty clearly that she’s hurt.

That’s number one, being prepared, doing the homework.

Number two: blocking the physical behavior as best as we can. So when we come in and we see that mess that the children were making, “Oh gosh, you know, this is not okay. Come on, can you help me? Can you help me out here, putting it back?” That’s the way I would correct. We’re all on the same team, guys. You guys messed up and you know it. So let’s clean up the mess. And that is how we will get more cooperation because children don’t feel that we’re pointing a finger at them.

You know, we hear a lot and it’s almost become this pat thing to say, connect when you correct, but really, correct and connect needs to be simultaneous. We’re correcting through a connection of knowing our kids know what they’re doing, that they got out of control. And that’s all a part of the correction, it’s not two separate things. So that’s number two.

Then three: if there’s eye contact, being open and soft-eyed, empathetic. So when she’s saying, “I’m just stupid, don’t love me, I don’t want you to love me, I’m just the worst.” That is alarming, right, to hear. And the really alarming one is, “I want to kill myself,” of course. But if we can know, because we’ve done the homework, that this is one of the ways that children share their hurt, especially as they get to six years old, five years old, they’re a little older and they have words and they use them. She’s saying, I’m really hurting deep here. She’s not meaning, I don’t want you to love me, when she says that or that she’s just the worst or she’s just stupid. I don’t think she believes that in her heart, but that’s what she feels in that moment.

So instead of being shocked by that— and in the past, this parent said she said something like, “I can’t let you talk like that, words can really hurt.” So yeah, that was just a little bit of a mis-response to her saying, But I am hurt and I am saying these words and see me here. Instead, this is sort of a correction: “I don’t want you to hurt yourself like that.” Or, “You seem so mad, why are you so mad?” That’s getting closer there. But I don’t know if I would use the word mad to describe this, necessarily.

What’s always safest is to go to number four: if there’s a break in shouting or the feelings, just reflect back what they’re saying. That’s safe and easy to remember, right? We don’t have to come up with an analysis of it or explain why she shouldn’t do it. Just, “Wow, that makes you feel like you’re stupid and we don’t love you and you feel like you’re the worst. That sounds sad, my love.” Just reflecting in the moment like that, which is actually, I think, easier to remember if we can be in that truly unruffled space. All I have to do is say what I’m seeing, say what I’m hearing, just let that be. I don’t have to put a label on it or an ending on it. Even with physical behavior, we can say, “You want to hit, you’re showing me you’re really feeling like hitting me. You want to hurt me.” That’s a way of responding that children can really receive and they feel completely seen and understood in that moment because we’re not taking it to any kind of adult place. We’re just meeting them where they are.

So then number five: to not say, “I can’t let you do this behavior,” which this parent said. And this parent is also, like the other parent, very insightful. Her instincts are spot on saying, I don’t feel like I’m getting it right. It doesn’t feel right, what I’m saying. So yeah, when we’re in the groove, it feels right. Again, we’re going to go back and forth, back and forth, but every time we nail that it gets a little more familiar the next time, that groove. And we can get back there again, not always, but more often. So don’t talk about the, “I can’t let you,” especially with things like that, that we really have no control over. What she says, it’s not something that we can stop. We can’t put something over her mouth and make her not say those words, unfortunately.

And when she says the thing about wanting to kill herself, I mean, I think that’s, I’m still trying to get through to you. You’re not seeing me. Maybe this will reach you, for you to see how much I’m hurting. So there, “Wow, you just don’t want to live anymore. You wish you were not alive. That’s so scary to hear.” But I’m open to you. I want to understand, but I’m not in a rush to understand, Why are you telling me?!? Why are you feeling like that?!? I am just focusing on being open and present in the moment. I think it can be scary for us as parents to be that honest and open and just say all the things that we would rather somebody didn’t say, just putting it out there in the open. You said this, you feel this. Yikes. That’s scary stuff for a parent to hear. And yes, this is scary when a child says something that serious and you know, we absolutely want to look at the whole picture and make sure that that isn’t more than just her reaching out to be seen.

And the way that we’ll know that is by our response of seeing her and welcoming her to share that, doing the opposite of what our impulse might be, which is to stop her from saying those scary things. Instead, going in the complete other direction: Tell me all about it. Tell me whenever you feel this way, I want to know. And then if that’s still persisted, then we would know that there’s really something serious here that we need to be concerned with and seek other help for.

And then, six: Let it go. Don’t rehash, except to make a plan together from a place of, I’m on your team. In this case, if there’s a moment with just the two of you after that, you could say something like, “I feel like I’m not able to give you the attention you need lately. Or that the way that I’m responding to you is hurting your feelings, and that’s the last thing I want to do. Is there something I can do to make it better?” And then depending on what our child says, or maybe they don’t say anything because they don’t know themselves, then we can see if we can do that or not. But that’s the only type of rehashing I would do.

Okay, here’s one more:

Dear Janet,

While I can’t always live up to the ideals you share, they are always my north star and have helped me form such a wonderful connection with my incredible daughter. I feel she’s a well-adjusted, wonderfully expressive kid who is securely attached to her parents.

However, five weeks ago, my mother, whom my daughter adores, was in the hospital with a perforated colon 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 day they returned, my mother died. That was two weeks ago. One thing you should know is that although my mom had cancer, she always appeared young, vivacious, healthy, and strong. This came out of left field for my daughter and I never even got to the part where I planned to slowly tell her her grandma was really ill. We thought we had several years to go, as her cancer drugs were working very well. So it’s a shock for all.

Since then, our daughter’s refused to let mommy put her down to sleep at night. She frequently pushes me away, says, “Go away, mommy.” And 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 very loving way, letting her know I’m here for her and I’m ready to play if she likes and it’s her choice. 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 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 have been very 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 that. We talk about it every day, but only when she brings it up. I follow her lead. I’ve read her the book Something Very Sad Happened several times, always at her request. It feels like we grieve together when I read that. I allow her to see me cry or be sad about grandma, but I do shield her from seeing me sob hysterically and stuff like that, things I think would be burdensome to a child. We have laughed together over funny things grandma says, and even sat in silence after reading the book. In other words, though I am personally devastated by the loss of my mother, I have tried to really role-model a healthy approach to grieving.

And though I have to admit 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. It’s like picking chicken over fish. 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.

I don’t blame her for any of this, obviously. It seems like probably a normal reaction to this terrible loss in her life. She used to see my mom twice a week and was just crazy about her. 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. Thanks so much for reading this terribly long letter. Thank you for everything.

Ah, yeah. First of all, I want to say I’m so sorry for this parent’s loss. So yes, here as in the last question, it’s pretty clear that this child is feeling this transition that’s happened. And, as children are, she’s especially tuned in to how the adults are feeling about this, how her mother is feeling. That can almost be stronger for a child than the feelings they have about the relationship. Because to them, yes, it’s a loss, but they don’t really understand the implications. They don’t have a frame of reference, it’s more confusing to them. And the more that we can be plain and simple and truthful, the easier it is for them to process it. And this parent is showing wonderful empathy and instinct for how she’s caring for her daughter. Being very, very loving.

A couple of things stand 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, and of course I can’t be a hundred percent sure, I sense it’s that kind of brick wall feeling again, for this little girl. That she senses there’s a lot going on inside for her mother, but her mother isn’t quite expressing that to her in the moment. She gave this wonderful explanation, “we will miss her and be sad and mad, but also still feel her love in our hearts and all that,” she says. That’s fine, but children are again picking up on this whole devastation that’s going on inside this mother. And I believe that’s what’s making her uncomfortable around her mother. It’s that the mother’s sitting on a lot of feelings that she’s not sharing and it’s disconcerting.

And then when she is with her mother, she’s doing this really healthy thing, actually, that children do so beautifully, which is they will reflect back to us our insides and 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 I believe that maybe the simmering inside of such strong feelings in her mother is uncomfortable.

And the way to help her through that is, I believe to actually stand by her when she’s pushing her mother away and doing these steps. Blocking physical behavior. If there’s eye contact, being open, soft-eyed, empathetic, maybe nodding her head slightly. If there’s a break in the shouting or the tantrum, reflecting back what she’s saying: “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. It’s nice of her to say that I role-model nonchalant. I think, though, that it’s not so much nonchalant as unthreatened. Unthreatened, but you could still 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.”

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

And I love how this parent said she’s trying to show her a healthy grieving process. Wow, she’s putting a lot of responsibility on herself. Because a truly healthy grieving process is your human grieving process. Not trying 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. The healthiest grieving process is to express it and share it. And hopefully she is, with other people besides her daughter. But even with her daughter, I believe the key here is for her 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. I don’t believe this parent will lose control and get hysterical and scare her daughter that way, but just opening up some space to show that. So it’s not this mysterious, uncomfortable thing for her daughter. Letting her in, in the moment, when the feelings come up for you. “Ugh, I just got a pang of how much I just miss my mom doing this random thing.” Right? That’s how our grief often comes, is some random thing happens that triggers us. It’s safe to share that with your daughter. In fact, it’ll bring you much closer to each other, as being honest about feelings does.

So I hope some of this helps, and I want to thank all these parents for trusting me with your questions. And I actually want to also ask if the parents whose notes I responded to today could consider maybe giving me an update. An honest update, doesn’t have to be, Oh, it all worked. But whatever you did with this, if you did anything with it, because it helps others learn and it helps me learn how to communicate better, which is all I’m trying to do.

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 When Our Kids Reject Us (A Step-By-Step Response) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Yes. So what this parent said at the end, “does he just need to mature out of it?” That’s absolutely a big part of this because children do mature in their ability to handle disappointments and all other feelings and to regulate them better.

As I’m reading this note, I’m thinking how kind of prickly and sensitive this little boy feels as if he’s very, very sensitive to criticism right now or any kind of feeling that doesn’t seem trusting and agreeable to him. And like this parent. I wonder where this is coming from that it seems to be happening much more often these days. So like always, I have a lot of questions for this family. But a couple of things this parent says give me some clues. She says, “reasoning with him” and “trying to reassure,” and “it takes a lot of support when he gets upset and loses composure with his friends.” So I wonder what that support is looking like.

Because what I want to offer this parent is this idea that is so counterintuitive for most of us: that we allow children to feel the depth of their feelings of disappointment, loss of control, even of being criticized, that we really lean in to seeing and acknowledging and welcoming those feelings, helping our child feel heard and and safe to feel all the ways he feels instead of trying to correct or talk him out of them.

The post Controlling, Rigid, Argumentative Behavior (What It Means and What We Can Do) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Many of us imagine late afternoons or evenings with our children as the perfect time to wind down and connect after a busy day. Unfortunately, this is often precisely when our children need to unload the day’s stresses. Which means that instead of enjoying restorative quality time together, we’re faced with challenging behavior, high emotions, and discontent. Janet unpacks some of the reasons why evenings can be so difficult for kids and what we can do to help them (and ourselves!).

Transcript of “End of the Day Crazies with Kids” Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today I’m going to be talking about something most parents are aware of: that the end of the day with children can be challenging. This is true even if we’re home with children all day, but it’s especially true when there’s been separation throughout the day that our child is going to school or to childcare or they’re at home being cared for, and we’ve been somewhere else, and then we’re reconnecting. I’m going to offer some guidelines and then examples from parents who’ve written to me, and I’m really hoping this will be helpful.

Okay, so at the end of the day, children are tired. We’re tired. It’s a tough time. Maybe children are woken up from a nap or they’ve been at school or in a childcare center or at home, and we’ve been away. We’re all reconnecting and it can seem like the longest period of time. How do we get through it? How do we survive this?

First I’m going to share some guidelines for the end of the day madness with kids.

1) Expect it, have our expectations in order that this is a stressful time. We’re maybe not going to be at our best. Our children are probably not going to be at their best either. It is a thing, you’re not imagining it. It’s not just in your family. It happens. And if it doesn’t happen in your family, count your blessings.

And of course, it’s hardest when there are other transitions that are going on in your family’s life: when you or your partner has a new job or children have been out of their routine for whatever reason. Maybe you’ve been on holiday and you’re back and everybody’s getting in the groove again. Maybe there’s a new sibling or a sibling who is maybe now between one and two and starting to walk and talk and be more of a threat to that older child.

So all of those stressors will amplify the difficulty of the situation. We want to expect this so that we don’t come into the situation feeling like we’re doing something wrong or there’s something wrong with our children — that this is our fault. Just that getting caught off-guard makes it so much harder for us.

But in fact, this is a positive. This is how it’s supposed to be that our children offload with the people closest to them.

Part of expecting that this is going to be a wild time is setting ourselves up for success as much as possible. And by success, I’m not talking about a smooth experience because it’s very likely not going to happen, but being able to set ourselves up to make this as painless as possible.

That might mean in the way that we structure ourselves. It can be even something like: before we pick up our children, or before we come home to our children who are there already that we take that moment to listen to that favorite song on our playlist. Or we take that moment when we walk in the door, we’re going to change our clothes and we’re not going to play. We’re not going to deal with our children until then. We’re going to say a big hello, and then say, “Okay, this is my time. I’ve got to go do this and then I’ll be back to you.”

Our children aren’t likely to let us go gracefully. They may claw us grab at us, but if we can calmly hold our ground, it’ll be easier than next time. That’s putting the oxygen mask on ourselves first. That’s that bit of self care.

And sometimes that may be impossible, but there could be some possibilities there that we’re not taking advantage of. So consider that. And then for our children, setting ourselves up for more success is in that predictable routine that we have. It’s understanding children’s true needs and how those might differ from those wants or demands that are coming at us, doing whatever we can to make it work. And that’s obviously gonna be specific to your situation, and that’s why I hope that the notes that I’m going to read in a bit will offer a chance for me to give more specific examples.

The second major point I want to make is:

2) Reimagine quality time. I talk in my book No Bad Kids, about the two hats our child needs us to wear as parents: the party hat and the professional hat. The party hat is when we’re sitting with our child while they play or we’re playing with them, we’re hanging out, we’re laughing. We’re having what’s classically considered quality time: a family meal, a lovely, gentle bedtime routine. That’s when we were in our party hats.

Our professional hat is what children usually need a lot more during the end of the day crazies. This is the hat we’ll be wearing more often than not. And this is also quality time because we’re giving our child so many invaluable messages through our leadership with our professional hat — that we’re going to hold boundaries for our child. We’re not going to let them do those things. We’re not just going to talk about it, we’re going to stop them.

And because we’ve expected this behavior for the most part, we’re coming in without being already overwhelmed. We’re coming in with the challenges already in mind, that our child’s going to need us to stop them. That they sometimes have this wild behavior. They need a safe place for us to help them be, that they’re going to be maybe nagging and nagging us, “Can I do this? Can I do that?” And that we’re going to allow that nagging, understanding it’s just another way that children share the stress of their day and their feelings. We’re not going to give into it as a way to appease our child when it doesn’t work for our bigger plan.

But as leaders, again, maybe we can decide that we will stop and play this game with our child but ,ideally, we’ll strive for that overall awareness that our child needs us to be leaders here.

It’s going to look messy. There are going to be feelings. It’s not going to be smooth and delightful, but it is a really important kind of quality time that we’re giving our children, probably even more important than the party hat time, because it’s doing something that’s harder than having fun together. It’s more challenging for most of us to meet this role, wear this hat with grace and acceptance of what our children are going through, acceptance of the fact that we’re not going to get kudos from them for this job.

That’s where the challenge is really to rise into this higher part of ourselves that can be loving without feeling that love returned, that we can still act out of love without our child’s agreement.

So a major part of this is the third point I want to make. We’re going to:

3) Hold boundaries with a lot of space for children’s feelings. And acknowledging those feelings as much as possible so our child feels seen. We’re not just saying, “I can’t let you do this, I won’t let you do that.” We’re saying, “Yeah, you’re having a hard time. This is tough. You really wanted me to say yes. And I said, No. And that’s so upsetting.” “You’re having a hard time with your sibling, and I’ve got to keep you with me for now because I can’t let you hurt your sibling.” Or, “Oh, looks like you two guys really can’t play right now, so let’s figure out another way.”

Because what we want is to help children feel seen. So they don’t need to keep trying to show us their feelings through their behavior. And we’re not doing this only because it’s positive parenting, but because it’s practical. It’s practical because when children feel seen and heard and safe in these feelings, feelings of wanting to act out with somebody, feelings of just repetitive asking us to do something for them that we can’t do now or we don’t want to do… When they feel safe to share those feelings with us, the feelings pass much more readily. This really is quality time. And if we can see it that way, it’s going to help us to come into these situations with much more confidence and peace in our hearts.

So the next point I want to make:

4) Be realistic and flexible. Cut corners as needed. There’s a lot of research on the benefits of family meals and we can put a lot of pressure on ourselves to make that happen, right? Because we want to reap those benefits. We want to do what studies show is the best thing.

The thing is, there’s also quite a bit of research on the not so beneficial effects of being stressed out as parents. This doesn’t feel good to us and it’s not helpful to children either. Yes, stressful periods happen and often they are totally out of our control. But stressing about making that family meal or that perfectly nutritional balanced meal or this playtime when we all get home, or any other type of what we perceive as this lovely quality time… trying to make that happen is something that we can work on reimagining and maybe letting go of. Because remember, whatever’s going on now, this is a season of your lives together. It’s a passage that you’re in. It’s not forever. It’s not always.

Every single evening having a meal together isn’t what counts. Making this work for us and our family as best we can is what matters most. So often with young children, that means they need to eat right away and we can give them a snack. But then it could be that by the time dinnertime comes, they’re really too tired to eat anymore, even if they are still hungry. So it may be more helpful to pick up your children and have a picnic on the way home, bring some food, even if it’s leftovers or it’s stuff that you just picked up on the way or whatever. And maybe this picnic will happen in the car, we’ll pull the car over and we’ll just be present with our child. Maybe we’re eating with them, maybe not, but we’re present.

So I would lower expectations around these “perfect quality time” experiences and family meals so that we can take that pressure off of ourselves. It’s not worth it. And the most beneficial part of a family meal is that we’re making a little time to connect with our child in a receptive way, which we can do with a picnic right after school, or their bath, their bedtime routine. We can give children this so many different ways.

For me, with my children very young it was often that we ate at around five o’clock and it was just me with the children or one of the children because my partner worked late. And then as they got older, there were times when they all had sports and after school activities. We had a lot of weekdays without family meals. I would have one-on-one time with each child. Sometimes that has wonderful benefits too.

And somehow our children are still fulfilling their potential as adults now in all areas. And we’re a very close loving family. So it’s not make or break. And there will be time for family meals, Maybe even breakfast works in your family as a family meal sometimes. Or weekends, maybe that’s the time that you have family meals that work for everyone.

Let’s let go of perfect parenting, particularly at the end of a long day when all children really need is to feel connected. And that brings me to the fifth point:

5) Make a new imperfect plan together that works for everybody. Meaning, children can eat when they’re hungry, rest when they’re tired, have downtime. Let them putter. Let them bump against walls. Let them wail if they need to. We’ll be accepting. We’ll be acknowledging maybe we’re even empathizing. That would be something to strive for, but we’re not trying to fix the behavior. We know that this is all part of the afternoon.

If videos are allowed in that family, this would be the time for a very low-key, relaxing, slow paced video. Or even better, I always prioritize audiobooks, or now there are all these podcasts for children, because they have many benefits over screens. They help to develop proper listening skills. They teach children to pay attention to detail and help to build memory skills, especially if children listen to that story more than once. My children wanted to hear the same thing every day, and I realized they were learning a lot from that.

Audio books and podcasts stimulate the imagination and encourage visualization skills. And then there are those ones that I used to love with the book, there’s an actual book that you can have in hand while you’re listening to the audio, and that helps children learn to follow along on a page and can even help them learn reading. So those might be things that we build into the plan.

Okay, now I’m going to read these couple of notes from parents so I can respond to those specifics.

Hi, I have an almost 3.5 year old little boy and an 18-month-old girl. My little boy has always had high energy and is extremely strong willed, but also a charming and funny little character. His preschool says he’s kind and caring and is building friendships while there. My concern is when he gets home from preschool, he goes wild. He’s running up and down, literally climbing the walls, throwing toys, and most frustratingly hitting and kicking his little sister. Nothing rolls me up more than when he hurts his innocent sweet little sister who never fights back and gets so upset from this interaction. I calmly try and tell him I won’t let you hit her, but he just keeps going and going until I take him out of the room as I can feel myself getting frustrated with him and I really don’t wanna lose it. How else can I approach this situation?

Most of the time he is really caring to his little sister. It just seems to be after preschool when they haven’t seen each other all day as his sister is in a nursery in a different building, many things. I would really appreciate your thoughts.

Okay, so using these guidelines for this situation, number one, expect it because he’s gone off to preschool. It’s a huge experience for young children and I’m sure that he’s extending himself. He’s rising to that occasion, but they are going to fall apart when they leave. It’s wonderful that he’s getting good feedback from the preschool because that’s what I would look for if my child seems incredibly stressed, especially if it’s no longer the beginning of the school year.  If my child has been going for a while and they still come home with so much stress, I would always want to take a look at how they are at school because we want to make sure that this experience is not too overwhelming for them, that they are able to play and manage themselves there well enough.

So he’s got a brilliant report: “kind and caring and building friendships.” We can’t ask for more than that.

But he gets home and all that pent up energy is whew!  He’s overwhelmed and he can’t manage himself. So understanding that helps it to see that none of this is personal. And if his parent has gotten really upset about him having negative interactions with the sibling, then instead of feeling that safety, he’s maybe feeling that he’s in trouble already or that he’s going to get himself into trouble. And this is kind of a scary situation.

So we can dial that way down with our expectation and with reimagining her quality time: that this guy needs her to wear the professional hat with him.

And number three, holding boundaries with a lot of space for his feelings. So instead of saying, “I won’t let you hit her,” he really needs that vibe of a helping hand, staying safe and venting his feelings in the energy of the day. So, “I won’t let you hit her. And wow, you’re all wound up. What can we do?” Maybe the sister could have a safe play space that would be a setup for success that he can’t enter. I’m not sure if that’s possible. Also, just deescalating your reaction to this because it really is very typical, typical behavior: lashing out at the sibling because he knows that gets a big rise, a scary rise for him out of his parent. But it’s really a call for help and for making a new plan together that works.

So I might sit him down with you in a quiet moment and say, “This is what I see. And you’re having so much trouble when you get home and those feelings, feeling wild and wanting to run around. What can we do to help you?”

And when you bring it to him like this, instead of: you’re doing something wrong and I need you to do better, you’re actually joining him in, This is our family, I want to help. We’re going to figure this out together. I see you and I realize you’re not being intentional with this behavior. It’s out of your control. Because really for the most part it is. And this is what I have to do. So I need to take care of these things when you get home.

And then maybe, “Here’s a little window of time that I will have for you. So how would you like to spend that time? How would you like me to help you when I can’t be with you? What kind of activities will be helpful for you?” Maybe he needs something that could give him a physical outlet, if there was some kind of play equipment that he could bounce on or jump on.

But most importantly, it’s our whole attitude that creates that sense of: Yes, you’re wound up, but we expect this and we’re calm about it. We’re not mad at you. That’s what helps shift the behavior.

Here’s another question:

Hi Janet. Your insights have had an enormous impact on how we raised our five and six-year-old daughters. We have happy children who respect our boundaries and who we love being around. This fall, we entered another stage of life. Our youngest entered kindergarten. While this is the second time we’ve had a child in kindergarten, this has been a very different experience for us. Our lovely daughter goes to school happy and as herself and comes home as an off the walls. A silly, exhausted, bossy and defiant little one. We know how exhausted she’s been from a long day at school and from possibly holding in lots of feelings during the day. We want to be that safe place where she can release all of her feelings. But we have struggled to find a routine that allows her to do that and also allows us to have any quality family time together at all. We’ve had a snack prepared for her right when she gets home, since we know she gets hungry and we’ve had her go to her room for some “yes” time, but we can’t seem to figure out a routine that helps her regulate in time for dinner.

During dinner, she’s lying on her chair, refusing to eat, crying. We then ask her to return to her room and come down when she’s ready to eat. This results in us rarely being at the table altogether. I’m not sure if the snack is interfering with her dinner or if for a while she just won’t be able to regulate enough to sit with us and eat. Maybe we let go of that expectation altogether while she adjusts to school? It used to be one of my favorite times of day, so it’s extra hard to let that go. And I’m sure I’ve been placing extra weight and importance on her behavior at that time, which she picks up on. I would love to hear more about your suggestions for this, particularly for children who have a lot to release after school. I’m guessing others can benefit from your advice too.

This parent has a lot of self-reflective ability here and she’s answering a lot of her own questions. Going over the guidelines around this situation: expect this. So expecting this behavior more. It could be that the other child in the family is not such an intense or sensitive personality and had a different kind of adjustment to Kindergarten. Kindergarten is a big deal. Any kind of new situation is a big deal. But for this child, she’s showing that, yeah, she’s struggling right now. So expecting this. It sounds like this parent already does this. She knows she’s been exhausted from the long day that she’s holding lots of feelings. Very intuitive parent here tuned in to her child. She says, though, that she struggled to find a routine that allows her child to release those feelings and also allows us to have any quality family time together.

So, reimagining quality time, really understanding this little girl’s floppiness instead of trying to get her to go along with this family dinner plan, which may be coming too late for her, even if she didn’t have the snack. Often tiredness overcomes hunger. And this would be difficult… for her to sit and eat dinner at that time. A lot of parents share this issue with me. I would try to do an earlier dinner with maybe just you and the two daughters, or just you and the younger daughter, figuring out another way that she can get her needs met. And you can have that family time in another way or on the weekends or as this parent said, maybe just let go of that expectation altogether while she adjusts to school. And this parent admits it used to be one of her favorite times of day, so it’s hard to let go of and she’s putting all this weight on it.

So yes, when we put weight on things, when we put that pressure on ourselves to make something work, then it shortens our fuse with our children’s behavior, right? Because we just want them to go along with that so much. And really it’s our expectation. And it sounds like with this family, everything’s going okay until that point. It sounds like she’s already holding boundaries with space for feelings because she understands that that’s part of what her child needs to do.

But trying to get her to come for a late dinner is not really a boundary that we can hold because a child is tired, a child isn’t hungry, and it’s not in our power to change that. So making that new plan together, reimagining this time, which could just be a season in your life. Everything changes so quickly with young children. And really the important thing is that we’re easy on ourselves, good to ourselves so we can meet the challenges of this time of day with as much confidence as possible.

And then there will be little surprises where it works. A nice moment here or there, when we can say, Oh, this was quality time, but maybe it only lasted two seconds. That’s okay too, because quality time, again is wearing that professional hat. At the end of the day, just helping our child get through, helping our whole family just get through it as best we can.

Please check out some of my other podcasts. They’re 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. That’s No Bad Kids, Toddler Discipline Without Shame and Elevating Child Care, A Guide To Respectful Parenting . You can get them in ebook at Amazon or Apple, Google Play, or barnes and noble.com and in audio@audible.com. And you can get a free audio copy of either book at Audible by following the link in the liner notes of this podcast.

Thanks so much for listening. We can do this.

The post End of the Day Crazies with Kids appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “Hitting, Screaming, Calling Us Names (and What We Can do About it)”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. In this episode, I’m going to be responding to a question I received via email, about a spirited child who is hitting, screaming, calling her parent names, and other behavior that seems out of control. Obviously not at her best. And I’m going to be talking about how this parent can help calm her child’s behavior.

Here’s the note I received:

Hi Janet. I’ve read your book and I follow you on Facebook. I’m so impressed by this style of parenting, and would really love to be able to apply it in my own home. A little background, I have two daughters, Bella, who is three, and Sarah, who is one. Bella has always been our emotional child who can go from hot to cold in two seconds. When she’s happy, she’s the sweetest funniest little spirit, but when she gets upset or triggered by something it’s immediate, no, and screaming, and we struggle to get it to stop. Our recent struggle is hitting, screaming, and saying “Stupid.” And, “Shut up, Mom.”

Before I really started to try to follow your guidelines, we tried time-out spanking, ignoring, taking things away, et cetera, but obviously, they don’t seem to work. And they seemed to just escalate the tantrum and issue. A lot of the time, these tantrums will start when she thinks she’s in trouble for something. For instance, if she’s playing too rough with Sarah, I will tell her “be soft, don’t push.” They’ll wrestle and it sometimes leads to hitting and pushing. She then responds “no” and will hit again. So I’ll grab her arms and tell her “I won’t let you hit, hitting hurts,” and she’ll then proceed to spit hit, say “stupid” and “shut up, Mom.” I then usually say, “You’re still hitting, your blanket is taken away for five minutes now.” But she continues to scream and name-call. This is when I really start to struggle. I feel like we’re going down a road leading nowhere and I’m just not sure what to do in these instances, which are starting to feel more frequent.

When she continues to scream relentlessly. I tell her if she wants to continue to cry, that’s fine, but she’ll need to do it in her room. She’ll then scream in her room. And once she starts to show signs of settling, I go up and hold and talk with her. But when it still doesn’t resolve, that’s when I lose patience and start yelling, which never helps, but I can only be patient for so long.

There are also issues with her wanting me to do things for her, but it’s more in a sense of, she wants to be in control. We’ll be trying to leave somewhere and I’ll ask her with my arms full, “Please grab your coat so we can leave.” And she’ll then proceed to cry and say, “No, you grab it, mom.” And falls to the floor. I’ll explain I have my hands full and need her help grabbing her coat. She’ll continue to cry on the floor until I eventually grab it myself and help her up.

I know a lot of this is me having to learn how to deal with her emotional little spirit.

I feel I always have good intentions and can stay firm for the first little bit, but when she doesn’t let up on her screaming or hitting her name calling, I don’t know where to go or what the next move is. I would really appreciate your help on what I can do myself to handle her better and make her feel more comfortable. Thanks.

Okay. So first of all, I just want to say that at least 85% of the families that request consultations with me have a similar issue to this one. They have a toddler or they have a four-year-old, or maybe even a six-year-old or older, and then they have a baby or a toddler who is one. This is a very difficult time for an older child. And I remember this myself with my own children. She’s lost her world as she knew it. And what oftentimes happens is children in this situation — because of their behavior that comes out of that discomfort they’re feeling, they start to feel more and more estranged from their parents.

That’s exactly what we want to try not to let happen because it is such an extremely uncomfortable place for children to be. It’s like we’re adding discomfort and fear on top of the discomfort and fear that was already there, causing them to act in the ways that they’re acting.

So the overall goal in these situations is to provide safety for our child in our relationship. And in that specific situation with her own feelings, the feelings that are creating this behavior, what it sounds like here is that this parent has a particularly emotional, spirited child. And therefore this child is sensitive and feels things, perhaps even more deeply and intensely than a less spirited child. So these feelings that she has around this change in her life, accepting a new sibling, at age one, the new sibling is becoming more of a person in that older child’s eyes, then on top of that. Not to judge this parent for doing this at all, but some of the ways that she’s been handling it have created more of a feeling of distance for her child.

Sending a child to time out, spanking, ignoring them, being scolded, taking things away as a punishment from a child’s perspective, that feels like rejection, messages that you don’t have my love and affection anymore when you act like that. Those things don’t help because the root of these behaviors is impulsive. It’s emotionally driven behavior that children don’t control at this age. They don’t know why they’re doing it. They know they shouldn’t be doing it, but they really don’t know why they keep doing it.

So when we blame them for this behavior and get angry with them and tell them that they’re wrong to do this, all that does is make them feel more estranged from us and more uncomfortable in themselves. Because it feels like as a child, I’m doing all these things and I don’t know why I’m doing them, and they’re really bad, I know. And I must therefore be a very bad person and I’m really scared and even more freaked out. And then that’s going to make me behave worse.

This is why it doesn’t help, and why we want to try to get off this track as soon as possible. Not that there’s anything wrong with us, or we’re bad people for getting angry and getting triggered by these things and resorting to the things we resort to. Those are all normal reactions. But because those reactions are actually creating more problems for us instead of helping us to stop these behaviors.

So even just for very practical reasons, it’s helpful to approach this differently, which means perceiving it differently because we can’t approach it differently unless we perceive it differently. And the way that I recommend perceiving this is that we have a very impulsive child who is really out of herself at this time and going through a difficult patch here. Rather than a girl who’s doing really bad, horrible things, Seeing it that way can help us to be able to come into this situation with this sense of uh-oh, my child needs my help. I can be this helpful caretaker when my child’s behavior is going off. We might even say some of the same things, but it will look and feel entirely different to us. And that’s what matters to our child, how we feel and how we are coming in, our attitude about them and their behavior at these times, the tone that we have, that’s what will make a difference.

One of the things that it’s felt like for me, and for many that I’ve worked with, it feels like we’re trying to rise very tall in ourselves, above this behavior, rather than getting caught up in it or taking it personally and worrying about it. Because maybe we feel there’s something wrong with our child or us that this is happening. It’s true it doesn’t look great, this behavior, but it’s still within the range of normal behavior for a child this age, in this situation.

As I said, most of the parents that want to work with me are having issues with this adjustment that an older sibling has to make. Their child may have had wonderful behavior when they only had that one, but now they have a second or third or fourth, and they just don’t know what’s happened to their child.

If we can come in as this bigger person, when we see hitting, instead of saying what this parent says that she said, which is “be soft, don’t push.” That’s an okay reminder, but it’s not really seeing that our child already knows those things: that they should be soft and they shouldn’t push. What they don’t maybe know enough and need to know more about is that we’re going to help her stop whenever she loses control like that. If we can be there. And we’re going to try to notice when she’s in that state and what that state is, which is I’m unhappy right now with you, mom, I’m hurting. I need to share this with you. I need to express this.

And this is, by the way, one of the reasons that separating the child or sending them off is okay as a last resort, maybe, but it’s really not going to help our child in that moment with what they need, which is to tell us that they’re upset and have us notice and be there to help.

So let’s just take the hitting first. Maybe we would say, “Whoa, you feel like hitting your sister. I see you’re showing me you’re not safe with your sister right now. You feel like hitting.” And meanwhile, you can’t see me, but my hand is there, making sure I’m stopping her as I’m saying this. I’m seeing that she may not be able to stop herself because she’s doing behavior she knows she shouldn’t do and needs my help holding a boundary there. My hand is there in between the children, but I’m doing the most minimal thing I need to do there. I’m showing her I’m here to stop you. I’m here to help you. If her hands and her fists are still coming out at her sister, I might need to hold her wrist and say, “Yeah, I see you want to do this. You feel like hitting. I’m going to stop you.”

Generally, we want to do less talking though. I’m kind of talking to explain what I’m doing in the moment and my attitude towards her behavior, but generally less talking and directing. Much more being there for her, doing the minimum of what it takes to effectively help her not cross lines with her behavior because her behavior is showing she’s not in a state to take direction.

So we might even gently block the wrestling as that can be a lot for a one-year-old to engage in. “That’s a little too rough. I’m going to stop you there. Maybe there’s another way you can play.” And my hand is there stopping her. I’m not being judgemental, not blaming her. I’m gauging her comfort level by tuning into mine. And I see this could go too far. So I’m going to stop it early and gently at the outset, and then be there to keep blocking as long as she needs me to.

We might even say, “I’m not comfortable with this. So I’m going to stop you there. Or I’m not sure I’m comfortable.” Confidently, non-judgemental.

I realize that may sound very time-consuming. But actually, if we can give these messages a few times, we’ll end up doing so much less because this is going to be really, truly filling the need that our child has in those moments, which is notice me, let me know if it’s actually okay with you that I feel like hitting, and that you are going to stop me from doing it because I know it’s not safe and you’re there to keep me safe. Please don’t blame me, that doesn’t keep me safe. Just help me, help me stop. Stay on my side. I need you.

So now let’s take the screaming. Screaming is actually a very effective way that feelings are released. It’s actually one of the healthier ways they’re released. Hitting isn’t one of the ways that we want them to release feelings but screaming, ideally, our attitude about that is let it out, let it out.

Yeah, she feels scared. She feels scared that she’s so unacceptable, that her behavior’s been so unacceptable and she knows it. She feels judged and she fears that she’s lost her place in her parents’ hearts. So I would see this as rage and terror and I would work on really encouraging her to let this out of her body. If she can share her feelings, she won’t need to share them through unsafe behavior. So I know this is challenging, but I would try to say yes to screaming. It’s really hard to hear, yes, but for children this age, it is the way they release emotions. And really it’s not hurting anybody. I mean, if she’s screaming in our ear, in our face, definitely get a little distance, put your hand over your ear, move away a bit and say, “Whoa, I hear you feel really strongly about this.” If she could even hear that, if not, and they’re likely not if they’re screaming, I would just nod my head a little bit, accepting, letting the feelings be, letting the storm pass.

Saying stupid and shut up, mom… This is where rising above, that image of us rising really tall, will really, really help. It will help us to realize that comparatively, she’s this tiny person at our knees, just waving her arms, wanting to hit and call us stupid and say, shut up to us. Words like those are actually a very common way that four-year-olds express feelings. Maybe they say, “I hate you. You’re this you’re that you’re stupid.” All things that they don’t mean, but ways to get our attention. And it’s like another form of screaming. See me, everything’s not great in my world right now, I’m struggling.

So if we can rise above this and see how small and unthreatening this behavior is and how much more powerful and in control we are, then we can say, “Whoa, you’re really not happy about that I said this or that or that I separated you from your sister.” Whatever it is. Only what we saw, only what we know. That’s all we have to reflect on. And that makes it simple. It means we don’t have to try to empathize because where the empathy comes into this picture is in our overall sense of understanding where a child is in this stage of life, how challenging it is, and how they process their feelings and what their behavior really means.

So it’s like an overall feeling of empathy. We’re obviously not going to be able to empathize when she’s hitting or when she’s calling us stupid. We’re not going to empathize in those moments. So take that pressure off of yourself and just acknowledge. That was Magda Gerber, my mentor’s wonderful word that she used. It’s so helpful because it’s not trying to jump in any emotional way.

We want this to be genuine. It can’t really be, “you want to hit,” without that genuine feeling of acceptance in our acknowledgment. And then it can just be, “Wow, yeah, it seems you’re mad. You’re telling me to shut up. You’ve got really strong feelings about that.”

Now, if she were to say, “Shut up, mom, and go get me some milk.” Then I would say, “That doesn’t make me feel like getting you milk. Can you ask in a different way?” So I wouldn’t try to jump to get her things when she speaks to me that way, that’s where boundaries are. But even there again, I would try to understand that my child’s feelings have put her in an out-of-control state.

This feeling of rising above can be so empowering for us and feel so good.  I’ve shared how I recently felt this kind of empowerment when I was parking at the RIE Center where I was teaching once a week and it was trash day on this residential street. All these trash containers are outside in the street and there was some right in the middle of the area I wanted to park in, but all I had to do was move them over about five inches and I’d have plenty of room to park on that street. So that’s what I did.

Well, this elderly man comes storming out of the house. He’s obviously seen me do this through his window. And he started flipping out on me saying, “you touched my trash cans, you move my trash cans!” And he was very upset about it. And for some reason, and I’m not always going to be able to do this by any means, especially with adults, but for some reason that day I was able to just acknowledge. “That didn’t feel good to you that I touched your garbage. I understand. I’m really sorry I did that.”

I didn’t get defensive. I didn’t try to argue my case. I didn’t try to fix it by moving my car out of the way. I really just heard him. And by the end of this rant and the screaming, he ended up asking me where I work. And he knew somebody that worked in that building and he said, “Oh, please say hi to so and so for me.” And that was all in a matter of a minute and a half. And I felt so good and proud of myself walking away from that. It didn’t hurt me to rise above it. It felt wonderful. And it reminded me of the many, many times this has happened with my children over the years.

So I wouldn’t go to where this parent says she tried, “you’re still hitting, your blanket is taken away from five minutes now” because that’s kind of getting involved in it on a petty level. It’s coming down there and saying, “All right, you did this. I don’t like that. So now I’m going to do this.” And it’s not going to help her child feel more comfortable.

I love that this parent says that’s what she wants: to help her child feel comfortable. Because that’s the key to everything. She says it at the end. “I would really appreciate your help. What can I do myself to handle her better and make her feel more comfortable?”

That’s it. Making her feel more comfortable is what will help her stop doing these things. They’re just coming up for her when she’s tired. Maybe when she’s a little hungry, overexcited, and unsettled, or maybe when her sister does something amazingly adorable. But generally, she will calm way, way down because she feels more comfortable because she doesn’t feel like a bad girl or a problem child in the house.

Children that are intense like this, they do scream more. They do have larger-looking meltdowns. That’s par for the course. So I would try to accept that and kind of recenter yourself, bracing yourself for these storms. They are going to come at you. That’s the way it’s going to be. And she will learn to control herself if she feels like she has our support. And if we can model not yelling.

Once in a while, we’re going to yell, for sure. But the more times there are that we don’t yell and that we give her a safer response, that will help.

Then this parent asks about issues with: “wanting me to do things for her, but it’s more in a sense she wants to be in control. We’ll be trying to leave somewhere and I’ll ask her with my arms full, please grab your coat so we can leave. And she’ll then proceed to cry and say, no, you grab it, mom, and fall to the floor. I’ll explain I have my hands full and need her to help grab her coat.”

So at that point, when you see that reaction, I wouldn’t try to keep explaining and talking her into it. I would hear her side of it, which is “you don’t want to grab your coat. You don’t want to go right now. You don’t want to do this.”

Sometimes it just takes that moment for her to know that we hear her expressing her dissatisfaction to us in the guise of a coat. It could be anything. And we don’t know exactly why she’s choosing that specific at that moment, but maybe it’s a transition. We’re getting ready to leave. And all transitions tend to be sensitive times for children, especially for emotional, spirited children. So I’d be ready for those things, if possible.

In fact, I would consider not even setting her up by saying, “Please grab your coat.” Because when we put children on the spot like that when they’re in this kind of state where they want to say no to us, and “you’re stupid” and they want to tell us that they’re not feeling good and they’re hurting, I don’t like what you did having this other child, or whatever it is when they’re in these states, it can be kind of a setup for us to say, “Oh, please do this for me right now.” We can be pretty sure that they’re going to want to do the opposite of that. So I wouldn’t even set myself up that way. I would say, “Oh, can you get that for me please so we can go?” Just something very light, undemanding, and understanding of where she’s at.

So then let’s say she still proceeds to cry, “you grab it, Mom!” Then I would say, “You really want me to be the one to get that.”

Let’s say she falls to the floor. I just wouldn’t get into a power struggle over that. I wouldn’t explain that you have your hands full and you need her help because that’s kind of setting up for a standoff by continuing to plead our case. So I’d let that go. I would just know she couldn’t do it that time and know that the way you’re going to be handling this will help her to do it the next time. That’s what we want to keep our eye on, that relationship of safety, comfort, and acceptance. Because that is the preventative measure that we can take.

So overall, this parent’s intention is totally right on. It sounds like she just maybe needed some help with the details of how to get there.

I really hope this helps. We can do this.

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

Thank you so much for listening and for all your kind support.

The post Hitting, Screaming, Calling Us Names (and What We Can do About it) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “When Troublesome Behavior Continues… and Continues”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today, I want to address an issue that most of us face at one point or another. It’s when behavior that our child has, difficult behavior, challenging behavior, concerning behavior, whatever we want to call it, keeps happening. What do we do? Maybe we’ve tried everything that we can think of to make it better, and it’s still happening.

Okay. So, first I just want to talk about a couple of terms that I’m not a fan of because I don’t believe that they’re very helpful. One that we commonly hear is “behavior is a reflection of an unmet need.” While there may be some truth in that one, I find it very guilt-inducing, personally. I don’t think it’s completely accurate because a lot of the time behavior is a reflection of a new need that a child has. It’s not saying that we’ve neglected something or that we’re missing something, we’ve overlooked something.

I don’t know, I feel like, underneath all that it’s saying, you’re not being a good parent. You’re not being a conscientious parent. I don’t think that’s what’s happening when children’s behavior turns up or when it continues.

The other term that I’m not crazy about is “behavior is a bid for connection,” because that’s very general, again, sort of like unmet need is general, and it’s not always the case. Oftentimes, a behavior is reflecting a question a child has about how we handle things.

Let’s say we’ve been paying attention to our child for hours, and now they want more. They want us to keep playing with them. This is not a bid for connection. It’s a bid for clarity from the parent. It’s a bid to be able to express feelings that a child has, the typical frustration of not getting what they want. And often there are other feelings underneath that, that are building up when a child asks for something pretty unreasonable like that.

The reason I bring these terms up is not that I think that you have any interest in what I feel about certain terms, but because they’re confusing, and I don’t think they’re helpful. If, when we finally say no to our child, after we’ve been giving them attention, or we know that we’ve given them some attention that day, and we just can’t right now, and now they’re saying, “I need you to play with me. I need you to keep playing with me…” If we’re worried that means that we need to give our child more connection, that’s going to mislead us, and make us feel guilty for having a reasonable boundary and self-care.

Children aren’t inclined to welcome us to have any kind of self-care or just a moment to ourselves. We have to make that happen. They can’t be the ones to do it. But if we’re worried that every time they react or they act out in some way, throwing something, because we’ve said no to them, and now we’re feeling, oh no, they need more connection from me, that’s not going to help us. It’s going to make matters worse.

For me, a helpful way to look at these behaviors continuing is to see them as my child is stuck in this behavior, and oftentimes that means that we’re stuck in a dynamic with them. So, they’re stuck. How can we help them get unstuck?

I have a couple of specific questions parents have sent to me, and I’m also going to be sharing sort of a checklist for figuring out what’s going on when this behavior keeps happening.

The first thing I would look at…

1) Ask yourself: What do you think is really going on here? What do you think this is about? Because you are the person that knows your child better than anyone.

I find it fascinating and very cool that someone will share what’s going on and “this keeps happening, and what can I do?”

I’ll respond, “Do you have a sense of why this is happening?”

Nine times out of 10, the parent does have a sense, and what they’re guessing sounds right to me. The parent knows but, they’ll even say this, they needed that validation. They needed corroboration to trust their instincts.

So, for what it’s worth, I’m validating your instincts. You know your child better than anyone. You know what’s been going on in your family and what’s been going on for them. You probably do know what’s happening here. What’s your child communicating? What questions are they asking through their behavior? What is the response that they need that maybe they’re not getting?

Use your intuition to tune in beyond the surface of what’s going on, because that child that says they need us to keep playing with them — what’s often going on underneath there is, I just need to share these feelings with you, things that are going on for me, me feeling a little too much control in that house, maybe, because you aren’t as comfortable with boundaries as I need you to be, and I can let it all go when you set that boundary.

It’s going to be noisy when I let it go, maybe, or I’m going to keep nagging you and whining, but if you stay certain, I can let these feelings go. I can express them all the way, and then I feel better.

So, trust your instincts. Often, it’s about some change that’s happened to the family. It’s almost always about something uncomfortable that’s going on for that child, which could be a change, a transition of some kind. It could even be a positive event that’s coming up, like their birthday. But that anticipation that children feel is stressful for them. It’s dysregulating. So, anything that touches off their emotions will make them at least a little uncomfortable, and that’s often behind their behavior.

When you’re thinking about it, when you’re using your intuition to figure this out, there are two things I hope you’ll cross off your checklist right away, 1. that you’re a bad parent in some way, or, 2. that your child is a bad seed, a problem child in some way. I can almost guarantee you that the behavior is normal for your unique child, with their unique sensitivities, under those unique circumstances.

I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I can’t even think of a time when behavior could not make sense to me at all. So, trust your instincts. Normalize this for yourself.

Okay. The next point I want to make…

2) What could be missing: confidence. Confidence is crucial. This was the biggest struggle for me personally, as a naturally unconfident person, and very often it’s what’s missing when our responses and directions aren’t working. When we’re confident, we’re decisive. We have conviction. Even if we decide to change our minds later, in that moment, we project conviction.

It’s often upbeat, not angry or stern because there we’re projecting discomfort rather than being comfortable, which is what confidence gives us — that we can comfortably be a leader for our child.

Children sense our feelings, and they can easily detect whether we believe in our decisions or our directions or limits. If we don’t, then there isn’t a chance in the world our kids can feel comfortable, which means they’re far more likely to cry or whine or protest, object, or keep pushing those limits. This is a universal law of parenting: Children can’t approach situations with confidence and get unstuck unless we do first.

So, what does confidence look and feel like? Here are some more questions to ask ourselves:

Am I being clear, simple decisive, upbeat, matter-of-fact, even maybe somewhat nonchalant or bored, rather than tentative or ambivalent, wavering, uncertain, anxious?

Am I feeling calm and capable, unruffled, like I can handle it, rather than urgent and emotional?

We have to keep in mind that toddlers are tiny. They’re impulsive. They’re non-threatening people, even though they may seem very mature on the outside sometimes, even when they’re behaving in ways that are challenging: talking to us in a mean way, pushing that limit, doing that behavior that they know we don’t want them to do. There’s a tiny child inside there that can’t help themselves.

So, when we’re confident, we’re matter-of-fact, rather than rushing in there and shouting. We’re being brief. Do we have a coaching tone, rather than a lecturing tone?

Sometimes it’s just that extra split second that we give to correcting behaviors that can turn them into this interesting experiment, uncomfortably interesting, that children have to continue. Maybe they’re feeling: Hmm, why is hitting such a big deal? Why can’t they easily stop me? There’s so much bigger than me. Why such a pointed lesson? I definitely got a rise out of them.

This is unnerving, which is why children are smiling sometimes because they’re unnerved. So, they get stuck repeating this.

Do we believe in our decisions and directions? That’s very important, and there’s no reason not to because if we’ve been too rash, we can always change our minds later. With confidence, hopefully. That’s great modeling to say, “You know what? I thought about that, and actually, you can do this.” Or, “Actually I do have some more time to be with you.”

Not because we’re afraid of our child’s feelings about it, but because we have tuned in to ourselves and realized: Oh, actually this is okay, from a place of leadership.

We can say, even, “I’m sorry, I didn’t think that went through carefully. You know what? There is more time for you to play before you go to bed.” Whatever it is.

Okay. So, how do we get that confidence? That’s easy for me to say, but how do we do that?

Again, this has been my journey, so I can tell you what’s helped me and helped a lot of parents that I’ve worked with…

3) Prevention. That’s the third point I want to make. Setting our children and ourselves up for success.

A recent guest I had, expert and childcare provider, Erica Orosco Cruz, who spoke about balancing the needs of more than one child, on my podcast, I love the way she referred to this as “creating an environment that supports us.” Because, if we’re caught up on our heels, we aren’t going to come in as that assured leader. There’s no way we can. If our child’s doing it again, we’re going to get touched off. That might happen anyway. But we want to give ourselves the best chance possible to respond in a way that gets our child unstuck and ends this behavior.

It’s not about: we’re not good parents if we’re not doing it, or we’re doing something wrong. It’s just about: how do we get what we want? And what we want to help our child with, which is to make this behavior end.

So, how do we create that environment or set ourselves up for success? Children learn by exploring and testing their environments, right? So, if we don’t want to keep telling our child to stop jumping on the couch or climbing on the dining table or playing roughly with the baby, then we want to create an environment that supports that, so we’re not a broken record constantly saying no, and trying to limit this again and again and again, which of course, is going to lead to frustration for us. It can’t not. It’s not going to be comfortable for us when it’s not working.

So we want to have that separate place for the baby, have childproof areas or what I call a YES Space. A YES Space is a completely safe place, enclosed with a gate. Everything in there is safe to use so that we don’t have to keep jumping up and stopping things and setting limits again and again. That’s why I call it a YES Space. We don’t have to say “No, no, no. Don’t do this. Don’t do that.”

But there will be things that we can’t limit in the environment. Maybe our child has gotten a little bit older, and they’re kind of growing out of an enclosed space, so we want to have doors that can lock up high or close so that children can’t get into areas that are not safe or appropriate for them.

Then when we do have those things like the dining table or the couch that we can’t change in the environment, we can’t keep them away from there, then we want to have that very calm, even boring, nonchalant response. “Oh, there you go.”

So, we’re not rushing up. We’re going to make it safe enough that none of these things is an emergency.

So, let’s say our child is on the dining table again. Well, if this is available to our child, we’re going to maybe put padding under there in case something happens. But this isn’t a red light situation. We’re not going to leave out anything that would be a red light, where we have to rush in.

So, it’s a yellow light. We don’t want our child to do it. We can walk in, “Oh, there you go. No. I’m going to help you down.”

When a behavior doesn’t ignite us at all, then children don’t actually keep repeating this. They might in the beginning if we’ve been a little charged up by it in our response, they might keep trying it again for a few days. But pretty soon, if we can be boring about it, they will stop. So, that’s even more reason to have that confidence. There’s nothing that’s going to happen here that I can’t handle. Walking in, striding in, or even standing there going: “Ah-ha. There you are. Can you come down on your own please, or do you need my help?”

Confidence and setting ourselves up for success, these two work together.

Other ways to set ourselves up well are to have relatively peaceful, calm routine days, as predictable as possible because predictable routines create comfort for children. Even if there are things in those routines that they don’t really like to do, or they have a hard time doing, it’s easier for them when it’s part of the routine that they know. Every day, they’re going to go brush their teeth and we’re going to help them. Sometimes it’s harder, I know, but this is what we always do. It’s easier for children to accept. We’re not going to have as many struggles or things that throw us off balance.

Young children greatly appreciate being able to predict what will happen. I know sometimes adults say they don’t like predictable environments, and I totally understand that, but it’s something to consider. Like: when we walk near the road, we always either hold hands or my parents carry me. There are still going to be complaints and resistance, but not as much.

Another part of the environment or daily routine that helps is…  Do I spend time observing and understanding my child and give them moments (moments, just a few minutes here and there, is all that’s really needed) of positive, full attention? So, that’s 100%. Our phone isn’t right there, ready to interrupt us. We’re not busy with other things, just for those moments.

With the approach I teach, we recommend utilizing caregiving where you really need to pay attention anyway to that diaper or that nail clipping or whatever it is, that bedtime routine, helping your child get dressed and undressed, and then dressed in their pajamas. Those are natural times to be intimate, and when we refuel children with 100% attention during those times, we can actually fill their attention needs. Not their attention wants, mind you, but their attention needs. They’re always going to want more.

All right. The fourth point I wanted to bring up, I call this…

4) Early action. It’s not that children don’t understand our words. They do, especially if we’ve been in this situation before, but they need more from us when they’re stuck in that impulsive behavior.

So, that can mean that we’re calmly shadowing a child who’s hitting, we have our hand there ready if our child’s getting close to another child. We’re ready to stop it early rather than seeing them hitting children, and then we have to run in, or now we’re getting triggered.

The reason this helps children get unstuck is that, ah, they can feel safe. They can feel calmer: my parents have a handle on this. They’re helping me. They’re even anticipating the help I’m going to need. They’re on this. I don’t have to worry about that. I still have all the feelings I have of being a young developing person, and being in whatever transition I have or whatever sensitivities I have, but I’ve got this most important thing, which is a safe leader who has my back and is not only not blaming me for my behavior and angry at me but is even anticipating what I might do because they know me so well.

Anything that calms children and helps them feel safer is going to help them get unstuck.

Then maybe if a child’s behavior is getting too much, we bring them to us. “I’m going to bring you over here to me, because this isn’t safe, and it seems like you’re having a hard time stopping.”

“I know you want to go back in there” and maybe they’re starting to hit me. “I’m not going to let you hit me. Not going to let you hurt me. I’ve got to stop you. This is my job. But you want to keep playing, I know.”

The reason that often happens that children react strongly when we do help them with a boundary like that is, that was what was fueling their behavior in the first place. They didn’t think it was something we wanted them to do, to go around behaving that way. They knew reasonably that they weren’t supposed to do that, but they had this feeling that they had to keep going. Something was pushing them there. It may be that they feel unsafe with us in those situations, because we haven’t taken care of things early enough or confidently enough.

So, again, not judging, just suggesting what we can do to help children get unstuck, and get ourselves unstuck. It’s also about our confidence. It’s asking ourselves, Am I ready and willing to take the actions necessary to help way, way before I even get the slightest bit irritated or annoyed by my child’s behavior? Sometimes, we’re still going to get irritated and annoyed, for sure. That’s just par for the course. But whenever we can act early without that happening, because we’ve normalized this behavior for ourselves, and we have this intuition about what’s going on with our child, so we can help them, then we’re going to take a step forward to easing the behavior. Instead of staying where we are, which is maybe stuck.

The next point is…

5) Acceptance, which is rolling out the red carpet for feelings, accepting and acknowledging, and really acknowledging, not just saying, “Oh, you’re upset. You didn’t want to do that.”

“You didn’t want to. I know. I saw that.” Really trying to connect, even if it seems like a ridiculous point of view. That’s what acknowledging is. Because, often when children feel heard in that way and understood, and that we’re not threatened by it, in fact, we agree with their right to feel that way, we may not agree with that feeling, but that they get to feel that way, then that feeling that may have been driving their behavior is heard. It’s understood. They get to exhale it out of their bodies. It might take a little while, but they do it.

All right. So, here are a couple of notes I want to address from parents, so I can help demonstrate how to apply these points I’ve just made to specific situations.

A parent said to me on Instagram she was at her wit’s end…

” …so I thought I’d reach out. My daughter’s almost two, and she’s awesome, super curious, smart, adventurous, quite verbal. She has a baby brother. She’s been wishy-washy on him, sometimes super excited, but often when he’s lying on the ground playing, she will sprint over and out of nowhere, grab his face and say, “Baby cry” or “baby will cry.” I think she’s testing to see what makes people cry, but also jealous of others who were her people, and are now with her brother. It’s been going on for five months, and the baby has scratches on his face constantly and his eyes have even been bloodshot and swollen at times.”

This parent says she’s said, “I see you want to grab your brother. I won’t let you do that,” or simply, “I won’t let you hit the baby.”

“But often she beats us to it, and so I grab her arm away and say, “Don’t hit him,” or “I don’t want you to hit the baby. That’s not okay.” I don’t know what else to do. This has been very hard, and I’m obviously concerned about the baby’s well-being, and feel very sad we’re unable to give him floor time, but also keep him safe. Any advice would be amazing. We feel like we’ve tried everything, yet it persists.”

Okay. So, this one seemed to me that it’s about setting up the environment for success. This little girl is showing that she cannot be allowed near her brother right now unless she’s in a calm space with somebody right there ready to intervene when they see her behavior amping up.

First of all, we’re going to set up the environment in a preventative way, so the baby has maybe a playpen or a safe area that she can’t just dive into when he’s having floor time.

If the baby’s in our arms, we’re going to have our arm ready to hold her back if she comes running over. We’re not going to overdo it like this is an emergency, but we’re ready. We’re going to take early action, which is just to block her from coming in too quickly. My hand is out there. I see her coming towards him. Let’s say on the floor, this is if he’s not in the playpen…

“Oh, I see you’re coming close. You want to see your brother right now, I guess.”

So, my hand is there. She’s coming up. “I’m going to hold you back a little because you’re coming in really fast. I know you’re excited about him, right? But we’ve got to keep you safe. We’ve got to keep the baby safe.”

So, yeah, prevention in the environment that I would take care of and then early action and confidence, rather than letting her surprise us, and then trying to say, “Don’t do that,” and then she does it anyway. Then we’re going to, naturally, we’re going to lose our cool at little one. We’re going to be angry. We don’t want to let ourselves go there if we can help it.

While also encouraging her feelings, because this little girl has the usual, I’m sure, very mixed feelings. It’s a very scary situation for a child when the baby is born, and their world shifts in such a huge way. So, welcoming her to share those feelings, either it’ll be in that moment when we’ve stopped her, and she’s crying, because we’ve had to hold her back a little.

If she’s really out of control there, I would say, “We’ve got to bring you over here,” but now my baby’s in a safe place, so I can help her, bring her in for a time in. And that may be when she shares feelings.

“I know it’s so hard. You’re so excited about him, but you also want to hurt him. That’s normal stuff to feel about your baby brother. That’s normal stuff. But yeah, we’re always going to be here to help you with that.”

Those messages, not that you would always say all those words, but those are the messages we want to get across to her that will help her feel much less alone in these scary feelings that she has that she’s acting out on. And that should ease the issue.

All right. This other one, it’s a long note. I won’t read the whole thing.

“I’m wondering if you can speak to a situation I often experience with my five-year-old daughter, which has many layers to it. The recurrent scenario is that my daughter has tantrums, and meltdowns daily that come out of nowhere, and are so big and explosive that it often disrupts the entire day for the whole family. A common way this happens is as follows.

We, myself, and my other daughter, who’s two, are sitting at breakfast. Everything is fine. People are eating and suddenly her affect shifts, and she says she has “the grouchies.”

I’ve learned that there is no going back from this moment. It is the point of no return, and it is the first few seconds of the meltdown. There are no words, strategies, distractions, or skills that can avoid what happens next. She fills with rage. She screams and cries. She convulses and grunts and melts to the floor. I have to bring her to another room to protect my other daughter from the stressful scene.

This transition always escalates the situation further. She will kick, hit, pull hair, throw things, and has even bitten me on occasion. I often take her to the bedroom and wait with her. Sometimes I wait in silence. Sometimes I try to comfort her.

The fastest “solution,” which I never intend to use, but ends up happening when I lose my temper is that I will scream at her to stop. My lost temper shifts her mood from angry to sad, and from her sadness, she cries and seeks comfort instead of trying to harm me. I hate this cycle and I feel so much shame.”

Then she talks about how she has underlying anxiety whenever she (the daughter) is around now. She also describes her, later, as a very capable girl who’s taught herself songs on the piano by ear and things like that. So this sounds like a strong, talented girl, and children like that have strong emotions as well. Those two things go together. It’s like they’re achieving on a very high scale, and then they have to go the other direction, releasing feelings.

I don’t know what her feelings are about, but it seems she’s gotten stuck in a cycle where when she’s expressing her feelings, she feels her parent get tense, get scared and then act kind of, it sounds like, a little bit fearfully in trying to help her with the feelings.  Because she said she’s worried about her younger daughter witnessing this scene.

Mostly younger siblings don’t get distressed by their sibling’s emotions, especially… I’m sure this child is well aware that her sibling has these feelings and acts this way sometimes when she’s expressing them.

What is more concerning for the younger child is the parent who is anxious and tense and angry about these feelings. So, that would be more disconcerting than the sibling’s feelings. Most children can relate to another child’s meltdowns because they kind of know what that feels like.

But from their leader, they need confidence. And that’s what this little girl needs, too, the five-year-old.

“Oh, the grouchies, oh, yikes. That doesn’t feel good.”

She may have a full-on meltdown right there. I would normalize this for yourself, and not try to do something. This parent says that she’s tried all these things to make it stop, and it doesn’t stop. That’s right because feelings have a life of their own. They have their own beginning, middle, and end.

So, I would say that what will really help this family get unstuck, at least with this short response that I can give right now, is welcoming those feelings, and rolling out the red carpet for her to be… to have the biggest meltdown.  Even though she’s five years old, even though we think she shouldn’t be doing this at this point, she is. So, these are her sensitivities. It’s her feelings. They’re not ours to decide if they’re valid or not. She just needs to know that it’s not going to scare everybody for her to feel this way, and that it’s not something we need to try to fix or take care of.

I mean, if she was in a public situation, I would try to get her away just for her own privacy reasons, but not with her sibling. Her sibling has seen it all from this sister, I’m sure.

If the parent could see the feelings as positive and acceptable, and just what this girl’s doing right now, I think that will help them get unstuck. Right now she’s putting a lot of energy of her own into the feelings, which just kind of builds on them. As the mother said, taking her away makes it stronger. Well, that can be because she feels our uncomfortable energy and that builds on hers.

So, just let her do it at the table or on the floor right there. I would just hear her and say, “Ah, you’re really having a meltdown. This is so tough,” or say nothing. Just say, “The grouchies. Yeah. I know sometimes that happens with you. You get that.”

Not changing the family, not it becoming this event that takes everyone’s attention and emotion. It’s just part of who she is right now.

So, having said all this, another thing to check if our child’s behavior is continuing is that maybe they need an assessment of some kind. It never hurts to do that. I’ve experienced that where a child I was working with would come into the play space with other children and just start hitting, and he didn’t seem dysregulated at all, but it turned out that he had some sensitivities and neuro-divergence. It was a lot for him to be with those other children. Then the behavior made a lot of sense because it wasn’t going away. We realized that was just his discomfort with a group of children in that setting. It was just a little intense for him.

So, the more we know, the more aware we are of what’s going on with our children, the more confident we can be in helping them get unstuck.

I hope some of this helps. And if my podcasts are generally somewhat helpful to you, then please consider giving a positive review on iTunes.  And thank you to all of you for listening.

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

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

The post When Troublesome Behavior Continues… and Continues appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “Navigating the Playground with a Child Who Seems Too Physical, Shy, Huggy, or Bossy”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury, welcome to Unruffled. Today instead of responding to an individual question, I’m going to offer some recommendations that I have for a composite of a lot of different questions that I receive in regard to different things that happen on the playground, when we go to the playground with our child, ways that they might behave, ways that other children are behaving, and where we want to support our child. So these are different types of issues children have that parents commonly ask me about. I’m going to be covering some of the basics, obviously not able to get into every nuance as I’d like to, but as much as I can in the 25 minutes or so that this podcast will last.

Okay, so I want to start with my basic general advice. This is based on the RIE training that I have, the training I have with Magda Gerber, and also on the many, many, many hours of classes I’ve done with parents and their infants and toddlers up to age, maybe, three and a half — the dynamics that go on and what I notice is most helpful for children in learning to socialize with each other, which is one of the reasons we want them on the playground, and one of the reasons they want to go to the playground.

So my basic general advice, and of course if parents aren’t uncomfortable with this, they should do what they’re comfortable with… My suggestion is to go to the playground with your child, have a place that you will park yourself, and stay there as much as possible, unless you need to intervene. And I’m going to talk all about the different ways and different reasons to intervene.

Oftentimes parents will go around the playground next to their child. The reason I don’t recommend that is while we think we’re just being supportive to them and helpful to maybe what they want, let’s say they’re asking us to come around with them, they’re holding our hand and trying to pull us over to the different areas of the playground, or to where the different children are, by going along with that, we are giving our child the message that we agree that they need us next to them to participate in activities on the playground, when this is an age appropriate situation for young children, and one that they can learn a great deal from.

Another reason is that if we’re moving around with our child, we are not being what in Attachment Theory is the “secure base.”  We are moving around with our child, and so our child doesn’t have that experience of being able to leave us as the confident explorer, and then return to us and know where we are all the time. They have that security, that secure base. And from that place that we park ourselves, I would right away start observing.

So, I wouldn’t start socializing, I wouldn’t be on my phone, I would be paying attention to the energy, and maybe I already know this going in, the mood, the space my child is in. Are they tired? Are they fresh? How has their behavior been lately? Do they seem off balance? Have they had recent difficulties on the playground or socializing with other children? I want to know that, and I also want to suss out the energy of the other children that are there.

So if I see a child who seems quite dysregulated, or their behavior is “out there,” you can see that in children — they’re vibrating with this out of control energy, then I know, okay, if my child goes near that child, I may need to slowly come close. That may be a time I need to leave my spot and intervene. So I want to be as aware as possible, and if there’s the possibility of something unsafe, I want to be close and be able to get there and be there in a calm way to support my child. That’s the best way to support our child… if we are regulated, if we are in a calm, open, observant place.

Another reason that I might go to my child is if I see them going on to some equipment that they haven’t mastered, is not completely safe, or maybe there’s another child on the equipment, and maybe I know that my child sometimes goes up to another child on the equipment, or I see that this child’s energy might be doing that, and while separately my child might be safe on this equipment, together I’m not sure. So I’m going to come closer, slowly walking over to be close. And the reason to be close is so we can do the most minimal thing to keep our child safe, because that’s almost always the best kind of intervention. It’s the most empowering, supportive intervention to our child.

Ideally we want to be able to have our child stay in the situation, but we’re there to keep them safe. So if they’re going on equipment, we’re going to be spotting underneath them, and if our child says, “Help me do this, help me up,” I wouldn’t help them up, because that isn’t as safe for me to do it for them, I want my child to get their own sense of balance, know their own ability, so that they can build on that. So if my child said that I would say, “Ah, you want me to help you do it? I’m going to help keep you safe, I won’t let you get hurt.” And then if my child slipped or started to fall, I would actually try to let them still feel that gravity of going down, but I’m there cushioning their fall, making sure that it’s a safe fall, they can’t get hurt. So that would be the ideal, always better to do less so that our child can experience and learn more.

So I’m in my spot, and I’m aware, I’m observant. Now if my child has been to this place a bunch of times and I see everybody’s got calm energy, sure, then I could socialize with someone, or do something else, take my attention away for a bit. But I may also want to learn about my child, what’s going on with them, especially if I don’t have a lot of time with my child. Maybe I work outside the home, or I’m busy a lot, and this is my time of day where I get to be together. I would want to be mindfully present, because we learn so much by observing. What’s my child working on? What are they interested in today? How do they engage? Are their efforts successful or are they getting a little stuck in certain things? Are they working through ways of engaging with other children?

There are two big things that can get in our way of intervening in the kinds of ways that I’m going to suggest, and they’re linked. One is fear, the other is projection. And again, those two happen together. So if I’m afraid that my child is not a nice person with other children, and then I’m maybe even projecting that my child is going to be mean to other children, they’re going to hurt them, they’re going to hit them… or, on the other hand, that my child is helpless and might get very easily discouraged if something goes wrong, then I might perceive my child as either this villain or this victim.

That’s just one example, there are so many projections. We can project: oh, I really struggle to make friends, and now I see my child seems reticent in certain situations, oh no, they’re going to be like me, I was really unhappy as a child and I’ve got to do something, I’ve got to help them.

And then we end up projecting to our child a lot of judgment and fear around them just being themselves and their process at this moment. They’re trying to understand why this child pushed them, or why they tried to play and that child ran off to somewhere else. They’re curious.

It’s interesting because children go into these situations with what would help us to go into them with: interest and curiosity. Why did this child do this, what’s going on with them? They don’t come in with the baggage that we naturally have. And the more we can be aware of our own, and usually when parents write to me they’ll say, like this one parent said recently, “My husband and I are very outgoing and our child isn’t, they want to stick with us when they’re in a social situation, and it’s really hard not to judge that they’re just not fun person, they’re boring.”

But if we know those things, knowledge is power. Then we can find a way to calm ourselves to understand that every child is different, they have their own process. And actually all of the examples I’m going to give today for children that seem, because I don’t want to label them, but it seems like they’re a bossy child, too passive, too huggy, too physical, or too shy, those are all examples of children who are interested in engaging socially, and that’s why they’re doing what they’re doing. So I’m only saying that to normalize that, from what I’ve seen, where I sit, all of these behaviors are normal for that child in that moment. It’s just where they are in the process. And if we could trust that, it would take such a load of pressure off of ourselves, and really help us to be these observers that can come in and minimally intervene for our child’s maximum benefit.

Okay, so first let’s talk about a bossy child who seems too bossy with other children. They’re telling these children to play this way and that way, and they want to be in charge of everything.

With some children, maybe that’s working, because that’s interesting to some children that somebody’s got all these ideas, and they get to play along and they get to join in. Other children will step back from that. They won’t want to join in. Those are all healthy options. But let’s say the bossy child is saying something like, “I don’t want to play with you, I don’t like you,” or, “I won’t play if you don’t do,” this, that, or the other. There we have to make a judgment call as to if my child is actually being unkind.

Through some lenses, when we’re projecting, it looks like all of it’s unkind, all of it’s wrong. But it’s not unkind to say “I don’t want to play with you.” Really, it’s not unkind to say “I won’t play if you don’t do A, B, or C.”

“I don’t like you” is a little unkind, so that I would probably intervene on a little more, go up to my child in a private way, not yelling across the playground, but I would walk up as calmly as possible, “Could you come here for a second? That can be really hurtful when you say those things to children. I think what you’re saying is you don’t want to play, right? Because I don’t really think you know them well enough to not like them. But in this moment it sounds like you’re disappointed.”

So interpreting for our child what they’re saying can help. And these are all basics: 1) observing, 2) going in close if needed from a neutral, curious place, because we know it’s all part of the process, 3) intervening as needed, like the example I just offered, and 4) interpreting when we intervene.

Because what the seemingly bossy child needs to learn is what works with other children and what doesn’t, and most of that will happen experientially. The seemingly bossy child commonly feels a little out of control in some parts of their life, and so they’re trying to gain control by controlling others. It could be that they’re in a big transition, like a new sibling, or a second sibling, those will put a child off balance. It could be that the parent isn’t as comfortable and on top of boundaries with his child, which can also make a child feel off balance, out of control. I’ve got too much power here. So that can also be a reason that children seem to behave that way.

Let’s say our child is on the other end of that exchange. The bossy child wasn’t my child, so I’m not going to intervene with that child. I’m going to take my cues from attuning to my child.

Instead of assuming that my child feels really bad about this thing that just happened, is slighted, or whatever, I would really notice, because oftentimes, as I was saying, children are just curious. Wow, I wonder what’s going on with her? That’s pretty out there for her to say, ‘”I don’t like you,” or, “I won’t play with you.” She doesn’t want to play with me.

Oftentimes it’s just interesting to a child, they’re trying to figure out what just happened. So I wouldn’t go in with any pity, of course, or anything, but taking notice, neutrally.

And if my child looks really puzzled, that’s when I might acknowledge and help interpret. “So you said you didn’t want to play that game and now she said she doesn’t want to play at all with you, I guess she wanted you to play a certain game.” Or, “Wow, she’s saying she doesn’t like you because she doesn’t like that you said no to the game.”

So just interpreting. We’re not blaming anybody. We’re not feeling sorry for anybody. We’re trusting both children as being in a process that they are capable of being in with our support.

And this is where, when I start talking about these things, then I think about people that say, “Oh, the RIE approach, or Magda Gerber’s approach, is just about you sit back and you just let the children do whatever.”

Actually, this is the most attuned approach that I have ever heard of in terms of what we’re really noticing, being careful not to project our own stuff or over intervene. It’s very, very thoughtful. So if somebody tries to tell you that the RIE approach is about turning away and just hanging back and not getting involved, they don’t understand this approach at all. Because there aren’t just two extremes — that you are in there all over it, or you’re ignoring. There’s this sweet spot that we’re not going to be able to hit all the time, but we want to try for, that’s very attune. We’re being mindful of ourselves and our own feelings, and we’re being open to what’s happening in this process. Because children, again, they learn so much when we don’t take over and make it about us.

Now let’s use another example of a very physical child, physically aggressive, or just having difficulty containing their physical behaviors. This often happens with very young children who don’t have a lot of verbal expression yet.

So when a child is coming in and hitting or pushing, one thing we can say for sure is that child is not comfortable in the situation. Maybe somebody is too close to me, I don’t like what’s going on, they are dysregulated in some way. So if we know our child is going through this, we’re going to probably do what I said not to do in the beginning, which is stay by them. If we think that it’s good for them to be in this situation: be close, be what I call buddy guard, which is a very chilled out, neutral, but very aware parent or teacher ready to block whatever might happen before it happens.

So if I’m right there, it’s really easy for me to put up my hand and say, “Whoa, it looks like you want to connect with him, but I can’t let you do it hitting.” And my hand was there right away, my arm is out, or as much as it needs to be. So I’m not going to let any physical stuff happen if I can help it.

If I’m sitting there and all of a sudden it takes me by surprise that my child does this, and I’m sitting back in my spot as the secure base, then I will stride in. Maybe if something looks really dangerous or harmful that my child is really hurting, I would run in then. And then I would say, “Oh, I can’t let you do that, I’ve got to stop you,” and then to this other child, “Are you okay?” Checking them out.

And then again, if that other child, the quote “victim” of this, was my child, then I wouldn’t rush in and grab them, I would block to make sure it’s not going to happen again, and I might say the same thing, “Oh, I can’t let you hit him. It looks like you didn’t like what just happened, or I don’t know if you’re trying to say hi, but that’s not safe.” My hand was already there.

So to my child, I would check out how they’re feeling, what they think about that. “Are you all right? Sorry that I wasn’t there to stop that from happening.”

And if my child was in floods of tears, then yeah I might say, “Oh gosh, that was really upsetting for you.”

I’m very close, and I’m wanting to hear the feelings. I’m still not grabbing my child and moving them out of there unless they really can’t recover from the feelings, and then I would escort my child to where I’m sitting on the bench, or something, and have them come sit with me, and then see if they need to go home, or if they want to play more.

So the messages we want to give to the child who’s, again, the quote “victim” is that I see you, I’m interested. Are you okay? I’m here for you. If the child reached out to me, of course we’d be hugging, but I don’t want to override their feelings and give them a message: oh, you can’t handle this, other children are overwhelming. Because those things will discourage my child from their interest in engaging socially, and that’s the opposite of what I want to do, I want to encourage their interest. I want to encourage them.

Let’s go with another example: a huggy child, a child that goes in and wants to hug every child. I actually get a lot of questions about that, and it’s an interesting one because usually it is a form of physical aggression, but it’s a socially acceptable form of it to the parent, so the child does it. Sometimes it is that they’re genuinely adoring of children and want to hug them, that can be the case too. But even then I would be aware that this may not be welcome behavior with other children, and I don’t want the other child to feel that they aren’t supported there. And I don’t want my child to feel like it’s okay to do that with everybody, because it’s not.

Sometimes children get a big hoopla about it because it does look adorable to us, and we make a big deal out of it, and then sometimes you’ll even see a child hugging, and they’re looking at the parents. See I’m doing this adorable thing that you gave me kudos for, and what do you think of this? So it’s inauthentic that they’re hugging, they’re not doing it from a place of affection. But like I said, regardless, we want to be there. So if we know that our child has this tendency, when I see my child going up to another child, I would be the buddy guard. I’d be ready to come close so I can be right there. Then I see my child reach out to hug, but my hand was there right away. (You can’t see me, but I’m even doing it here while I’m doing this podcast.)

So you come close. Right away you see your child start to reach out, you’re going to put your hand there so it can’t happen, ideally, and you’re going to stop your child very gently there, but firmly, just so nothing’s going to get around you, or whatever. And you say, “It looks like you want to hug this child, I’m not sure if they want that.”

Then I’m looking at the other child, “Looks like he wants to say hello to you and hug you, but I’m not sure if you’re comfortable with that.” And I’ll get a vibe from that child, and if the vibe is anything but looking excited to hug back, or very open to it, very relaxed, if there’s any tension there at all, then I’m not going to let my child do that, because of the messages I want both of them to get about personal boundaries that people have. And even though this seems so much sweeter than a hit, it’s still about personal boundaries.

So if my child goes up and tries to do this again to someone else, I’m just going to keep stopping them, but I might say, “It looks like you’re really having a hard time, you really want to hug,” and this would be the same if a child was hitting, pushing. I’m blocking the behavior, especially the second time, now I’m ready. I’m not going to let it happen again.

And I would apologize to that other child if I let it happen and the child seemed uncomfortable. So I would say to the other child, or let’s say the other child is my child I would say, “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to stop that. It looks like you weren’t ready for that, or you weren’t wanting that hug right then.” And sometimes you can give children a little language, “You can put your hand up and say no,” not expecting that they’re going to be able to do it right away, just as a suggestion.

So again, if my child was the quote “victim” of this, I wouldn’t judge that other child, I wouldn’t make a big deal out of it, even if the other child was hitting, because I know that that child is doing the best that they can in that moment. Yeah, it is hard not to get all mother bear or father bear when our child gets hurt, absolutely, and we can’t blame ourselves if we do that.

I remember one time, I talked about this in my book, No Bad Kids, I was walking with my daughter over to the playground and this boy, who was with his dad, came all the way around three corners of the playground and ran up just to hit my child, and he was a little older. I was just stunned. I mean, that seemed so over the top to me. I didn’t start screaming at him, but I was very surprised, and I had my hand there right away and I said, “Oh, nope, I’m not going to let you do that.” He went back off running to his dad.

Thinking about it later I thought, wow, he really wanted his dad to notice that everything wasn’t okay with him. This was raising a flag to his dad: see me, see what I’m doing, see how far I’m going to show you I’m not okay.

So there’s always a reason children do these things. And yes, I would apologize if another child got hurt because of my child, I would apologize to that child, “Oh, I’m so sorry. That really, really hurt.” But I wouldn’t do what I hear some people recommend, I just don’t believe in this, that we would then say to our child, “Look, you made him cry, see how sad he is that you hit him.” Because children are the most aware people on the planet. And I know that my child, or this other child, is going to see all those things, they don’t need me to point it out to them. They’re there taking it all in and more, and feeling the shame, and feeling the sadness, and feeling whatever it was, the confusion, the fear that made them do that, so I don’t need to add to that.

I would want to understand it as that parent of that child, I would want to understand it, and what I could do to help my child. It may just be a “see me in my pain” situation. See me in my confusion and my discomfort.

So now let’s quickly talk about the passive or shy child. So this is the child that’s sitting with the parent at the playground, doesn’t want to go play, maybe tries to pull the parent to go play with them. This child is watching the other children, they want to learn how to engage, they’re sussing it out.

Oftentimes they’re children who want to come in, and I have one child like this, she likes to come in at the top of things, already gliding in elegantly knowing just where she fits, just how it’s all done, she wasn’t a jump in child. She took her time so that she could master the situation and come in with aplomb. So there are children like that. It’s a very strong choice that they’re making to wait until they’re ready, and it may not even be at that trip to the playground, or the next one.

Some parents I know could never do this, but I recommend saying, “I’m going to stay here, I’d love to have you sit with me and hang with me,” and hold our ground, so we’re giving them the option at all times: you can go in and explore this, or you can be with me. Either one’s great for me.

Then we’re actually going to get what we want sooner, which is that our child does make a move. But if we’re trying to get them out there, “Oh, look over there, there’s some fun stuff, don’t you want to play with this?” Or, “If I bring you over here, maybe you’ll like it.” If we’re patient and if our child doesn’t feel us trying to get them away from us, trying to get them to do something, then they feel that emotional space, and also that we’re not judging them as, my child, what’s the matter with her? I’m worried about her, there’s something wrong with her.  They’re going to feel that vibe and it’s going to make it less possible for them to let go of us.

But if we’re like: I love this. She’s going to be older soon and she won’t want to hang out with me, so let’s do it. If we have that attitude, then we’ll be surprised that our child will make a move when they’re ready.

And then if they’re more passive in a situation with another child, let’s say a child comes up and wants to play with them and they turn and run away, or whatever, those are still strong choices: “You’re thinking about this,” or “you weren’t ready right then.”

So basically what I’m saying is these are all places to trust, to try to help where we can when there are things going on that are stressing our child out so they’re not at their best, but they’re not problems to be afraid of.

And some of the things we can say to our child afterwards… if there was an exchange with another child, let’s say with the bossier child, and our child looks confused, we could say, “How was that for you? Yeah, I noticed that he had a really strong opinion about wanting you to play a certain way.” Again, from that neutral place.

There’s positive power in staying neutral, it brings out the best in children. They also surprise us how they’ll give a child another chance, they’ll forgive right away, they’ll see the best in each other, more often than not, they can really inspire us if we let them. So go into these experiences with confidence. Be ready to help as much as needed, but trust in your child to navigate with your support.

I hope some of this helps. Thank you so much for listening and all your kind support. We can do this.

At last! I’ve created the No Bad Kids Master Course to give you all the tools and perspective you need to not only understand  and respond effectively to your children’s behavior but also build positive, respectful, relationships with them for life! Check out all the details at nobadkidscourse.com.

The post Navigating the Playground with a Child Who Seems Too Physical, Shy, Huggy, or Bossy appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury, welcome to Unruffled. Today, I’m going to be responding to a note I received from a parent via email. The subject line is “How to stay unruffled when I’m angry or sad.” I’m fascinated by this topic. It’s one of my favorites, and I’m thankful for this opportunity to explain some misconceptions about the title of my podcast and what it really means to be unruffled. And how do we get there in a way that isn’t also stifling our own emotions?

Okay, first of all, you may have noticed something going on with my voice. I’ve had this really intense laryngitis for a week now, and I’m just kind of starting to come out of it. So I hope it’s not super annoying to listen to. I’m going to do my best. I’ll read this note that I got from a parent.

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

For example, if my toddler does something that makes me feel angry or frustrated, should I hide it the best I can so that she can feel secure knowing she can’t do anything to ruffle me? I find it extremely difficult to do this sometimes, especially when someone could get hurt or something could get damaged. I can’t help reacting angrily, but I try to take charge of it by explaining to her that I need to step away for a moment to calm down. Or sometimes I let her see me take a big breath and try to regain control. After I feel calmer, I go to her, bend down to her level and assure her that I love her and that it’s okay for her to feel angry or silly, but I can’t let her scream in my face or throw books or do whatever it was that’s unacceptable. Is that the wrong approach?

I’m trying very hard not to lose my temper and stay calm, but my emotions often get the best of me. So handling it this way has become my way of at least not letting it escalate, acknowledging my emotions to my child, and trying to repair any damage I may have done from my initial angry response.

My question also applies to other emotions. For instance, I understand that it’s considered okay to let our children see that we’re upset if something sad happens. But what if we are sad because of them? My daughter is sometimes very affectionate, but most of the time these days she doesn’t want to be hugged or kissed and is constantly rejecting any affection I try to show her. I’ve taught her to clearly state when she doesn’t want to be touched. And I always respect her wishes, but sometimes I find it hard to hide my disappointment at not being able to connect with her in that way.

Is it bad to let her see that disappointment? I’m not trying to purposely make her feel bad. I simply say something like, “No goodnight kiss tonight? Okay.” But my tone usually gives me away. Should I be trying to hide it more? I want to be as authentic as possible with her, but I do understand that I need to project a calm demeanor, at least when it comes to how I respond to her in order for my daughter to feel secure. These ideas seem to be at odds though. If you’re able to shed any light as to what I may be doing wrong or misunderstanding, I would very much appreciate it.

Okay. So… yes to what she said about clearing up a misunderstanding, because this is what I want to start off with. I would not be doing a podcast called “stuff your feelings, hide your emotions.”

If you do listen here, then you know that I’m all about the opposite. I’m all about encouraging normalization of emotions, all emotions, having a curious attitude about them, encouraging our child to express all of theirs — no judgment on emotions. And yes, we do need to do that for ourselves as well and model.

But when I speak about being unruffled, what unruffled really is, is an understanding of our child and child development and behavior. What causes children to do these kinds of things that this parent shares about? Screaming in her mother’s face, throwing books, saying she doesn’t want to be hugged or kissed. Those are the only actual examples that she gave, but I can picture a lot of things that children this age do. So why did children do this? What’s going on with them? When we understand that and can connect with it…

We’re still not going to be perfect. Yes, we are going to get triggered or have an emotional reaction to certain things, but not as much. And the more we practice what we’re seeing here, which is, in all of these cases, maybe not quite the affection one, but I’ll get to that. But in these cases of behavior that, yes, could make us angry or annoyed, the reason our child is doing that is impulse. Impulse that comes from dysregulation. Their emotional centers, they’ve gone into fight flight or freeze. They are in what Mona Delahooke calls the red zone. They’re not using their brains and their reason to do what’s right, what they know in the frontal part of their brain is right. That part is getting hijacked by their emotions. And Tina Payne Bryson, and Dan Siegel, talk about children “flipping their lid.” Well, that sounds very extreme, like something we would definitely notice. If my child was just going off completely, sometimes that does happen, we notice that.

But there are all these other subtler forms of it. Things like… Here’s one that maybe we can relate to as adults… Maybe I’m on a diet and I’m cutting sugar out, but you, my friend, see me… there’s a candy bar there and I grab it, tear the wrapper off and start taking bites.

Am I super upset there? Am I flipping my lid? Not really, but I’ve done something impulsive that I don’t want to do. And so my friend telling me, “Janet, you shouldn’t do that” wouldn’t be a helpful thing to say, because I know I’m not supposed to do it. And I did it anyway. An impulse made me do it. Maybe I was just a little tired and I wanted that pick me up, and I just felt I needed a little sugar energy. Or, emotionally, things are going on for me and I just wanted to change how I was feeling.

So there are all different levels of dysregulation and almost all behavior that toddlers have and young children have, and even older children have, almost all of these concerning behaviors are from some level of dysregulation or impulse. So when we practice this understanding and we actually try to train our lens to see our children that way, we’re not always going to be able to do it. Sometimes they will just look like they’re being horribly mean to us and just such awful people. And how could they do this to me after I’ve done all this stuff for them today?  Then we realize all that stuff we did together today made them tired, but it seems really unfair. It seems all of those things. So please don’t anyone beat themselves up for having normal reactions.

But we can also train ourselves to have less of those through practicing this different lens.

It’s that expression, “my child isn’t giving me a hard time, they’re having a hard time.” Janet didn’t grab the chocolate because she thought that was suddenly good for her, but because she was having a bit of a hard time in that moment controlling herself.

So point being, the way that we perceive affects the way that we feel. It actually is the only way that I know of to change our feelings about something in a healthy way: to practice the way we’re perceiving it. There’s no other magic wand that does this.

This parent is right that stuffing her feelings and pretending is not a healthy thing, because what happens if we do that is there’s a buildup and we just get madder and madder inside trying to stuff it down, trying to stuff it down. And then we explode. So that’s not going to help us and it’s not going to help our child.

But what does help them and us and our relationship is to see them, to see them for what they are, their place in our life and ours in theirs. We’re their whole world. So when we do have an emotion, it is jarring for them. That doesn’t mean that we, again, that we want to stifle all emotions, as this parent really does understand very clearly. She actually understands a lot here. I think she’s just getting a little stuck in that lens, taking it all a bit too personally. It’s really easy to do because our children seem so capable to us. They seem so mature a lot of the time. And then there’s these other times when they’re really not, it’s not their fault. It’s not our fault, but depending on how we see it, it can make us reactive.

Or, alternatively, it can make us feel: wow, I better put that stuff away because sometimes when she goes off, she starts throwing the books or screaming in my face. She really needs to share this feeling with me. And I’m just going to put my hand here so she can’t get right in my face. I’m just going to hold her back a little bit. But wow, that’s some powerful stuff coming out of my child. It’s not about me.

Now I also understand that we have triggers. We have traumas. We have different ways we were handled as children that will get touched off in these situations. For example, if anger wasn’t acceptable to our parents, which a lot of parents I talk to it wasn’t, including myself… Then our child showing that emotion does tap into our own suppressed anger that we had from childhood. So that can happen. That’s why, again, self-compassion. You’re not going to be perfect, but our odds will improve on being able to be authentically unruffled or less ruffled if we practice perceiving.

And that’s why so much of what I try to share is about perception and perspective — understanding what’s going on with our child and this type of behavior.

The way this parent is actually handling this sounds really, really helpful and healthy to me. The only part of it I think that could work better for her is the way she’s feeling inside when she’s doing this. But her actual actions sound very respectful and positive. She says she moves away. Yes. “Step away for a moment to calm down.” If that’s where we’re at… Again, we want to try to work on that happening less, but it’s going to happen. No guilt here. No shame here, but that’s the perfect thing to do. “I just need a minute.” And then taking a moment to pause, breathe, to say: Oh, this is coming up for me. This is getting tapped into in me. These old wounds, these old feelings are getting touched off. I’m getting angry about this.

Again, the more a child does sense our dysregulation, the more this behavior happens, unfortunately. Which again, isn’t for us to feel bad about. It’s for us to understand… that if we’re getting a lot of it, it could be that our child is reflecting back to us, which is often what happens, our own feelings and ones that probably when we were children that we didn’t get to let out, so they’re coming up now.

And what are they doing with those feelings? It’s vibrating through their body. It’s making them throw, it’s making them scream. They’re showing us our insides.

But back to the way this parent is handling this, she says, “Sometimes I let her see me take a big breath and try to regain control. After I feel calm, or I go to her bend down to her level of assure her that I love her and that it’s okay for her to feel angry or silly.”

Yeah, I would more there just… “Sometimes you feel like throwing books. I want to know about that. Where does that come from?” Or maybe we know that it was in response to something specific that happened and then we can say that.

She says, “But I can’t let her scream in my face or throw books or do whatever it was that’s unacceptable.”

So yeah, “I can’t let you get that close in my face when you scream, let’s go over here where you can scream because I know you feel like screaming right now, I see that. It’s not safe to throw the books, I got to stop you. Ah, you really want to throw, you want to do all this stuff right now.” Trying to connect with our child’s feeling.

But that may come later. In the beginning, just working on our perception of our child in these moments.

So if we’re noticing. like this parent is. that it feels like our child is making us angry, our child is making us frustrated. Again, it’s not about that we just put those feelings away. It’s something to take a look at in ourselves. Maybe not in that moment, but when we can, with a mental health professional, maybe, or a counselor, to look at what’s happening to us when our child is doing these very typical normal things. Take a look at that so that we can process what we know and understand it. So we can separate it out from our child and it becomes about us.

Just like our child’s feelings were about them, our feelings are about us, and we want to have that same curious attitude towards ourselves.

So this parent says, “Is that the wrong approach?” No, again, I think her approach is spot on, but the way she’s feeling, the kind of simmering that’s going on, it can’t help but be disconcerting for a child and create, maybe, more of this kind of behavior. So just on a practical level, it’s not going to be helpful. That’s why we want to look at that. And just for our own comfort, we want to look at that.

Then she says, “My question also applies to other emotions.” And she describes how, even though her child gets to decide if she’s hugged her kissed, that when her child makes this decision not to be affectionate, that the parent feels rejected. Which again is very understandable. But it’s not actually what’s going on here that the child is saying, I don’t want to be close with you because I’m angry with you or I don’t like you.

It sounds like this is about you told me I could do this so I’m doing it. And I’m also sensing that this is uncomfortable for you. So that can be curious for a child. Why would they tell me to do this if when I do it, it makes my mom sad?

And whether we’re saying we’re sad or not, children are feeling that from us usually. So it’s an interesting kind of uneasy place for her that she may be getting a little stuck in. This is so curious. She said to say this, so now I’m saying it and she’s taking a personally.

Which again, I understand. Our days are long as parents, toddler years are… every parent deserves a medal for getting through each day. Emotions are all over the place. Behaviors is all over the place. They’re so easily dysregulated with all the changes that are going on inside them, and then all the transitions and stressors on the outside. That’s just life. So yes, of course we want our little reward at the end of the day, especially if we’ve gotten angry at our child that day, we want to feel better.

Unfortunately, our child can’t be that person for us. They just can’t. No one will ever love you as much as your child does, but they can’t be our nurturer and comforter, unfortunately. That’s just not a position they can be in. Sometimes they will do it and they’ll amaze us and we’ll be so touched and grateful, but that’s not their role.

Understanding where our child fits with us in this relationship, what they’re capable of, what they’re not capable of, will help us to see it differently and therefore feel differently about it. It’s not about her deep feelings for her parent, I can guarantee you. This sounds like an exceptional parent, so loving. This one adjustment I think will really, really help.

So what this mother is saying is, “‘No good night kiss tonight? Okay.’ But my tone usually gives me away, should I be trying to hide it more?”

No, don’t try to hide things. But if we’re expecting that our child should, of course want to kiss us good night every night, and if she doesn’t, then she’s mad at us or doesn’t like us, or we’re doing something wrong, then we’re setting ourselves up for the way this parent is feeling.

If we know that we taught this lesson and that our child for sure senses that we’ve been vulnerable around this, then they need to check that out. And that’s what she’s doing, that’s all. She’s just interested in what’s going on here with her sweet, wonderful mother.

And the place you want to try to get to, I know you may not be there yet, is a response that takes it all sort of lightheartedly because you don’t take it as this heavy rejection. You’re seeing it for what it is. And so you might say something like, “Okay, well I’ll keep my fingers crossed. Maybe tomorrow will be my day to get that hug.” Or something, but it doesn’t really matter what you say, but how you feel about it.

Just quickly along these lines, a note that I got on Instagram in a message, and it’s a very unusual situation. It won’t apply to very many people, but it actually blends really well with this topic. And I thought it was interesting. This parent says:

Hi, Janet, I have a nine month old daughter and something I struggle with is that I cry when she cries. Not because I’m overwhelmed or frustrated, but because I really feel for her, I generally cry very easily and I’m not bothered by, ashamed of that, but I don’t know what the right thing to do is here. Should I try to hold back more? I don’t mention or address it for example, oh, look, I’m crying too. But I just let the tears flow silently while giving her a hug, talking to her, but still I have this doubt that I’m being self-centered and am making the situation about me. Am I taking away from her by crying as well?

So I didn’t have an answer for this right away. I thought it was so interesting and sweet that this mother is feeling with her child. Then I started to think about the baby’s perspective. And we also need to understand this with the toddler in the other story and any child.

So a nine month old or a toddler’s perspective is that these people that are caring for me, this is the biggest, most important part of their world. And now when I’m, as a nine month old, I’m expressing feelings, I’m sad or I’m tired or I’m overstimulated or something, I’m having a feeling and the world is having this feeling with me. Does that feel comforting or does it feel a little scary?

I’m guessing for a baby it feels a little disconcerting that if I’m kind of crumbling and my world is crumbling around me, it doesn’t feel like I have a safe place held for me to have these feelings.

So yes, I would look at that and I would look in herself if she’s feeling really sorry for her daughter. Again, feelings we want to encourage as a strong, powerful thing, actually. A positive thing, not something that we feel sorry for. That’s the healthy attitude for all of us about our emotions. This is information. This is telling me something about what I care about, or what’s happening in my day or how I feel. It’s a positive thing.

So that’s what I would look at there. Again, I just thought that was a very interesting, unusual situation. Thank you to this parent and thank you to the other parent as well for sharing and allowing me to respond. And I really hope some things that I said brought some clarity and thank you so much for listening.

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

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

The post Can We Be Angry or Sad and Still Unruffled? appeared first on Janet Lansbury.