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

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

Transcript of “How to Help Kids Behave in Restaurants, Church, Storytime, Music Class, and More”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m going to be addressing a topic that I receive a lot of questions about, which is, how do we help our children to be at their best, or at least not be disruptive, in situations like a restaurant, a library storytime, church, music class, or any other type of class? Parents often reach out to me concerned because their child wants to run around during the storytime or can’t be in church or sit in the restaurant. So I hope that what I share here today will help give you some clarity on what to expect and also how to help our child to meet these situations, and therefore help us to meet these situations, with as much success as possible.

1. Have Reasonable Expectations

Okay, so the first thing we want to do when our child is in one of these situations, setting ourselves up for success, is to have reasonable expectations. And that means to not expect that our child is necessarily going to be able to thrive in any of these situations. What will help guide us in our expectations is seeing through our child’s eyes, our individual child, what we know about them. But what we know about all children when they’re one, two, three, sometimes even four, five years old, is that it’s not developmentally appropriate for us to expect that a child will be able to sit in a restaurant, sit through a church ceremony, that they will want to sit when somebody’s reading them a book in storytime, or pay attention to a music teacher or some other kind of teacher.

What children are geared to do in these early years is be explorers, inner-directed explorers. And they explore with all their senses. Often that means movement, not sitting still. They’re gathering all of this information about their world, taking it all in. They’re learning so quickly. Self-directed means that they instinctively know what they want to learn next about that environment, that their interests will often be different than what we might put out there for them. And the more that we can trust that, the better that system will work for them. And the more confident they will feel and motivated they will be to keep learning. So it is something that we want to try to implement for them, that they get to direct their learning.

The situations I’m going to talk about today are all ones where there is an agenda that is more adult-centered. That we want them to sit for this period of time, that we want them to focus and pay attention to what the adults are doing, as in the case of these classes or storytime or church. So we’re kind of putting our child in, I don’t want to say an unnatural position, but it’s not what they’re organically geared toward. If we can come into these situations with the expectation that it very well may not work out for our child to be there, or be there in the way that we want them to at least, that’s the way to start in setting ourselves up for success. Because even though some of these classes are meant for children, like storytime, when children aren’t the one choosing that—and this can be true even with an older child, if they’re in a lesson that they are doing because we want them to, or they’ve got this idea that we feel that they should want to but they’re not genuinely interested in it themselves—then that also becomes a mismatch for them in their development as self-motivated learners and explorers.

The less that we expect our child should be fine in these situations, therefore, the less that we try to control. Especially if we’re frantically managing, putting a lid on behavior, trying to help our child conform to a situation, getting stressed about it, right? Because if we have that agenda, if we feel that responsibility on ourselves and, Oh, maybe other children are fine with this, why isn’t mine?, then yeah, we’re putting a lot of pressure on ourselves that will immediately get absorbed by our child. So the less that we expect our child will be fine, the better chance our child has to handle it well and surprise us. Why is that? Because we are feeling and being able to be that calm, safe, empathic leader for our child. We see them, we get them. Instead of having those “shoulds” about our child. Because even if our child can do this sometimes, they can’t always.

So that open perspective, knowing that I’m putting my child into a situation that is not going to be the best organic fit, because I want to be in this situation, right? That’s why we do it, because we want it or we think that this is what we should do for our child. But if we can let go of that, it will decide our outlook on the entire experience and how we react to our child’s behaviors. I know that sounds maybe really general, but I’m going to explain with more specifics, I promise.

So am I saying, though, that being a calm, safe, empathic leader, does this mean that we’re just chilled out and we let our child carry on as they wish and run around and maybe be disruptive? Absolutely not, in my opinion. Because our child is showing us that they need our help to be safe and appropriate and not a bother to others. Our child can’t be the one that’s in charge of that. It’s kind of leaving them high and dry, letting them be this person in the room that they don’t want to be, that will feel to them like they are failing. I mean, children are quite aware of people’s energy and their feelings around them. So if other people are annoyed and our child is not behaving as expected in that environment, then our child is taking that in as This is who I am with other people, maybe. At worst, I guess. Or, I can’t face these situations because I’m kind of failing here.

So that’s the first point I want to make. Have reasonable expectations. Don’t expect that children can conform to adult-agenda activities.

     2. Know Your Child

Second, know your child. Consider your child’s temperament, their readiness, what they’ve shown you. And sometimes they’re maybe ready one time, but this other time they couldn’t handle it because they were too tired, too hungry, we were stressed that day, we were rushed. All those things can make it less possible for them to approach a situation.

To give you an example, I have two daughters and a son, and the son is the youngest. My daughters both were, amazingly to me, the kind of children who, even as babies and toddlers, could sit in a restaurant longer than just while they were eating. And they were also both the type that, they’d be at a birthday party and they’d be sitting there finishing their cake while the other kids were up and running around. So they enjoyed the whole meal experience. Then we had our son and he’s a very active temperament, loves to move his body. Even as an infant, he wasn’t able to be in a family diner with us. He wasn’t able to hang out like that, you know? So we would get takeout instead when we could. But we learned this by trying it and then seeing, Uh-oh, this is not going to work out. And then we didn’t try it again for a long time. I mean, he could definitely sit while he ate, but not in a restaurant situation. It was harder for him. Therefore, we didn’t take him out to restaurants. We would get takeout, we would go sit outside somewhere. We would go places where he could just eat and then get up and jump and go around, because we weren’t going to let him do that in a restaurant and be maybe unsafe and disturb other people.

So, knowing our child. They will show us what they can handle and what they can’t.

      3. Prepare and Inform Your Child

The third point: we want to prepare and inform our children, so that they have the best chance of meeting the situation with more confidence and maybe even eagerness.

Telling your child about the story time at the library, We’re going to go there, this person is going to read a story and all the children are going to sit on the rug and listen to the story. This isn’t a time to get up and run around. If you feel like you have to do that, then we’ll leave and we’ll try again when you want to. Or, This is what happens at church. We’re going to go in, we’re going to sit down in this pew. And we’ll hear music, there’s people singing and we’re going to sing along with them. You can sing along with us. Then there’ll be a part where we say prayers. So whatever we know about the situation. You’ve heard me recommend this a lot—going to a doctor’s appointment, going to a new school, getting ready for a new baby in the family—to give our children all that information. Just what we know for sure. Or we could say, I think there might be this. So not trying to pump them up or get them excited about it.

Maybe even openly sharing some of the downsides, like, Sometimes it feels hard to sit while people are talking and if you want to sit on my lap, you can, if you want to sit next to me, you can. But we have to stay sitting. Or in the restaurant, We have to wait a little while to get our food and we’re going to bring some crayons for you. If you want to color, you can, or draw, while we’re waiting. Or we can talk to each other or we can look around at all the people. Giving that kind of information. That helps children, even in the dull parts, to know that, Oh, this is all part of the story that I heard was going to happen. And it’s very empowering for them. Young children tend to love the idea of knowing something. Because so much of their world is overwhelming and they don’t understand it. So giving them as much as we can to understand, it’s a great setup for success.

       4. Prepare Ourselves With a Plan

The fourth point: we want to prepare ourselves. And that goes with that expectation thing. Preparing ourselves, which means we’re going to have a plan B, hopefully, ideally. What if they can’t be there? What if they want to get up and run around? If I’m with my partner, maybe you can take them out for a little walk or we can take turns or maybe we get takeout. I’m talking about a restaurant now, obviously. But having an exit strategy in all kinds of situations, even a party or a place that we know they want to be. Because stuff happens, and we’ll feel less disappointed and thrown by these things if we’ve included all of them in our plan. All the possibilities.

So now the next five points I want to make are under the heading of once we’re there.

       5. Allow Your Child to Engage on Their Terms

Number five is allow children to engage on their terms, following their interests as much as possible. Oftentimes as parents we have these ideas, especially if we’re excited about sharing something with our child, like the storytime or the music class, we kind of have an image of what it’s going to be like. There’s nothing wrong with us for doing that, right? The fun of parenting is getting excited about things. But it can be just as fun to not have expectations and be really open to learning about who our child is in those moments.

For example, I was doing an in-home consultation for a few days with this family and they took their boy, who was not even one-and-a-half I don’t think, something like 15 months, to a music class. I’m not sure what it was called. And the mom asked me to come along, so I did. What I saw was similar to what I’d seen with my oldest daughter when I tried this with her. That very sweet, lovely adult was the one directing everything, of course. I mean that’s the way most of us think we should do a class like that. So she was deciding what they would do next, the next song, and what everyone would do, clap their hands, or the way that she wanted everyone to participate. One of the reasons the mother wanted me to come with her was because her boy wasn’t really participating in the past and she just wanted my input on why that might be. He was a newish walker. He was interested in chair legs and pulling himself up. And he was just interested in the whole environment, as children are, exploring. He was listening to the music. I mean, how could he not, right? And seemed to enjoy it sometimes. But he wasn’t sitting there and following her direction. And actually most of the children weren’t, but the moms were kind of helping them.

When I saw this, though, and I think I even said this to the mother beforehand, it made sense to me that, yes, he’s doing really age-appropriate learning and exploring. And really there was nothing wrong with that there because he wasn’t disrupting anything, he wasn’t doing anything unsafe. He was just doing his own thing in this classroom.

And there was a point where the teacher was having them all drum on these rhythm instruments, they had little drumsticks that they were supposed to be hitting the instruments with. And she was showing them the beat that she wanted them to do. And there was this one little boy, he started doing this really quick bum ba bum bum bum with the stick, just waving his hand furiously. And I was a little disappointed because I thought that the teacher could have maybe let him take the attention for a minute. Oh look what he’s doing. Wow, you’ve got your own beat there! And maybe, I’m going to try to follow what he’s doing. In other words, encouraging that contribution, that participation, that children have to an experience. For me it’s the main reason to be in these experiences, is to see what the children are bringing to it or what’s holding their interest in that experience, what they’re learning about. And fostering their self-confidence at the same time: You’re doing something valid. This is interesting. You’re going to take the floor for a minute, we’re watching you, we’re welcoming this. Instead, this teacher did what I think is normal and, again, very well-intentioned. She kept going with her way, her plan that she wanted this to go.

So what I’m saying, as parents, is to be open to that. Your child may be in church, they love that red hymnal and they want to be the one to hold the book open while we’re singing. Or maybe they love the little nook in the pew bench and they’re just enjoying that. They’re meeting the experiences on their terms. And that’s gold, that we often miss. And that ends up kind of discouraging children when what we want is to encourage them to be there as themselves, bringing in who they are, as long as it’s appropriate.

       6. Encourage Engagement, Not Distraction

So six, under once we’re there: take them outside if needed, but as much as possible encourage engagement rather than distraction from the experience. So have boundaries in this situation like taking them outside of the restaurant or outside of the church, removing them from those situations as needed. But otherwise, as much as possible, encouraging engagement rather than distraction from the whole experience. You know, bringing in your crayons to a restaurant or having them utilize the ones that are there, or maybe even bringing a little small toy in that they can use at the table safely. That allows them to still stay in the experience.

But when we do something that’s really common these days, and I do understand it, we take out our phone for our child or a little tablet or something while we’re at dinner. We do whatever it takes, right? But if this is a regular practice, what we’re teaching is that, You can’t handle this experience with us. And we’re also teaching that it’s okay to not pay attention to what’s going on in life right now. It’s okay to just totally be somewhere else. Probably for most of us, that’s not a message that we want our children to have. No judgment if you do. But it’s sort of the opposite of encouraging mindfulness and presence and values that a lot of us have.

Now, if this situation is a car for a long trip or especially an airplane, then yes, these are kind of static situations for a child. There’s not more happening, it’s sort of a lot of sameness. That’s when I might give them something that removes them a little more from the experience. But still I would do that as a last resort.

And this is also something to prepare for, going back to those first points I was making. You’re going to be in your car seat and we’ll be driving. It’ll be a long time. Would you like to hear music? Which music should we bring? What kind of object would you like to bring, or a book that you can look at, or a toy? If you want, you can always look out the window. There’s going to be sights passing by. What can we do to help you be comfortable in this situation? And of course if our child isn’t able to answer yet, then we’ll have those options. But still, I would prepare even your baby for what’s going to happen. And, You know, you may want to go to sleep because you will feel sleepy in the car probably. And we’ll be there in the front, but we won’t be able to sit with you until it’s time to stop. So all of that honesty, putting it out there. If you’re like me, you want to avoid the negatives, but that really doesn’t help our child. So to be brave and say all of the stuff, that’s a gift that we can give children. And ourselves, because it will probably go better.

        7. Give Your Child Autonomy by Inviting Their Participation

Okay, seven: consider and invite participation for that healthy sense of control and autonomy. Again, following your child’s interests.

Maybe in the library, they can still be there without running around, but they want to stand or they want to be the one to choose a book to bring and see if the librarian will read that book. And if not, you can read it to them after. My children, we were able to manage church for all of them, somehow. But you know, it was touch and go, and we used Sunday school, too. In those cases, maybe one of you, if there’s two of you, or just you, if you’re a single parent, you go to the Sunday school and you miss the service for a couple of Sundays, so that you can help your child get accustomed to those people. Because nobody wants to be left—especially when you can’t express yourself that well yet—with people that they don’t know, that don’t understand them, that are going to have a harder time knowing what they need. It’s uncomfortable, right? So give your child time to get used to a situation, it will pay off.

So yeah, we used Sunday school and also involving them in the experience of church services. And sometimes when they were quite young they were able to do it, and I was always amazed. I just remembered, because my mother-in-law brought it up recently, my son, he was four years old and he was an acolyte. He was carrying, in the procession, this huge candle. What my mother-in-law said the other day was, “I remember when I went to church with you all once and saw him doing that. And there was this girl walking right in front of him with long hair, and I thought, Oh gosh, he could set her hair on fire.” But you know, he was rising so much to that occasion, as children do when we give them ways to participate like that, real ways, that he took that job more seriously than anybody else there. He was so into that.

So if we give them that purpose, based on what they’re interested in, it can really help them settle and enjoy. Children want to feel autonomous. They want to be involved, not be bystanders. Allow them to express their autonomy and their capability.

Another thing to do in all these situations is, if you have more than one child, invite an older child to help with the younger one. Do you want to be the one to sit next to your brother and help him stay comfortable in the service or at the restaurant or in the storytime? That’s a very powerful way for an older child to participate and feel autonomous, feel that sense of control. That’s healthy.

         8. Let What They Do Be Enough

And then number eight: let what they can do be enough. If they’re like this boy in the music class, if they’re exploring around the room, not disturbing anyone, it’s perfectly appropriate for him to do that there. Let that be enough. See that as a success.

         9. Create Shared Rituals

And finally, number nine: create rituals together with your child around these experiences. So with what your child enjoys, or what you enjoy and decide to introduce them to, have those routines that you develop.

For us, for example, my oldest daughter, we went to this little Mexican cantina in our neighborhood, and we tried to go once a week when we could. Well they had an old-fashioned jukebox there. And we tried that one time and I let my daughter push the buttons, and I think she was barely one. But this became our thing. We enjoyed Here Comes The Sun, we enjoyed La Bamba, and all these great oldies that they had. It was so exciting for her to know we chose the song and it’s going to come on. And to be a part of that and enjoy that together. So that became our routine in that restaurant, and I love those memories. It was an amazing time with her.

We also had, there was this little sandwich shop that we used to go to. And we would sit outside on benches, and the pigeons would always be there trying to get your food, and have our sandwiches. And then they had a little playground, very small playground. She would play on the playground a little while and then we’d walk to a bathroom in this little shopping center. So we would do that. It was a ritual that we both looked forward to and that she felt, again, that on-top-of-it feeling of, Yes, I’m a part of this because I know everything that’s going to happen. Pretty much, I mean obviously she didn’t know what children were going to be at the playground or how many birds there would be that day. But those rituals frame our whole experience.

And then all of our children, in the local restaurant, it was the cantina and this other restaurant that was right next door to it that was a Japanese place where they would have rice and miso soup and it was the most inexpensive meal and they loved it. And then there was a little fish pond outside and either my husband or I would take them out to the fish pond while the other one got to stay in and finish their food. And then everybody would come back and maybe eat a little more.

So find those rituals that work for both of you. And, if they’re like my children and most children, they’ll never get old. We’ll only miss them when we all grow out of those experiences and look back with nostalgia.

I hope some of that helps. And, as always, these are my opinions based on my training and my extensive observations of all different kinds of children over the years in my work, and of course my own personal experiences with my children. So you don’t have to agree, these may not be right for you. I would love to hear if you can write to me or share somewhere in a comment or review some of your ideas or what’s worked for you in these situations. I would really love to hear it. So I guess this is the first time I’m saying I’d love some feedback.

Thank you so much. We can do this.

The post How to Help Kids Behave in Restaurants, Church, Storytime, Music Class, and More appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Janet shares 3 notes from parents whose kids have experienced unpleasant interactions with other children. The parents’ instinct was to step in, but they were uncertain how to do that without offending the other parents. Janet explains her perspective and specific advice for handling each of these encounters.

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

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

Transcript of “Problems with Other People’s Children”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m going to be addressing three notes that I received. I always seem to get things in threes. These are all on the topic of other people’s kids.

We’re working really hard, a lot of us, on how to engage with our own children, how to help them with their behavior, how to teach them right from wrong. But what happens if we’re dealing with other children who are maybe not being safe with our child, not respecting their boundaries? And then we also have the other children’s parents. What are they doing? How are they handling it? How do we navigate this? So, it’s a big topic, but I’m going to use these three notes from very mindful parents to offer general guidelines and also some specifics to help us in these social situations.

Okay, so first I want to talk about what can get in our way of responding in a manner that’s the most helpful and productive in terms of what our children are learning, even what other children are learning. Oftentimes, I’ll hear from parents that are making this really challenging transition to a respectful, thoughtful approach from being raised in a very different way. So they could be breaking generational cycles, learning something that maybe doesn’t come as naturally to them, that they’re not as confident about, but that they really, really want. And sometimes we can be in that position and we either overreact or under-react. Overreacting—and parents have expressed to me that they feel they have a right to do this, and they certainly do. To come into these situations fiercely protective of their child, so angry at that other child, raising their voice, scolding them.

And while that happens—and it certainly does make sense and there’s nothing wrong with us for feeling that way—we’re not helping either child in that situation. Instead, we’re adding more fear into a situation where our child is already a little afraid or trying to process something that just happened. And we’re coming in in this scary way, Yikes, this was really, really scary, what happened here. So scary that my parent is having a strong emotional reaction. I can’t handle this. It is scary to be out with other children or to be engaging with this particular friend. I’m not safe. And then that other child, if that other child is the one who’s hurt our child, we’re not helping them either. Their behavior’s coming from discomfort already and now we’re adding a lot more. So we’re not helping that child in the moment or the next time. Because this impulse will come up for them again, especially because of the way that we reacted. So, that’s the one extreme direction that we can go.

The other one I often hear about from parents who, they don’t want to be that overreacting person, but they’re not sure how to go into the situation with confidence. And so they don’t intervene and they kind of let it go. Then their child is getting hurt, getting hit, showing that they’re not able to defend their boundaries themselves. And the parent is feeling too tentative to be able to intervene in a protective but calm manner. All of that is understandable as well.

The goal that we want is to find that just-right intervention that offers the most positive, empowering messages to both children. That feels safe to them, so they’re in an emotional space where they can be receptive, where they can learn positive things, like that I have a right to boundaries and how to express my boundaries. And for that other child, that people are actually out there looking out for me when I need help with boundaries, when I need help stopping these impulses that I have. And they’re not mad at me about it, they’re not judging me. Which is the only way we really can help. As soon as we’re judging a child, they can’t receive that as help. They receive it as just more evidence that they’re bad, that they’re not okay, and that they’re kind of alone in this.

So, how do we get ourselves to that just-right frame of mind? We get it with clarifying our perspective. And in this case, the perspective that I recommend working on is letting go of what we don’t control, completely, which is going to be those other adults’ reactions. We have no power to control that, and there’s actually a lot of good reasons not to. We’re raising our children not to be in a bubble, but to adapt to the world around them. Which children will naturally do, they’ll naturally want to do. And we can be there as supporters and guides in this journey, but they are going to get exposed to, and they’re supposed to get exposed to, all different kinds of reactions to their behavior and to other children’s behavior. Maybe that even comes from relatives. Maybe one of two parents reacts differently, and maybe not ideally.

But children really only need one person who is in their corner. Still seeing them clearly, but not judging them, understanding that they’re going to show every different kind of behavior. They don’t need the whole world and everybody else in it to act the same way. Even if people are using terms for them or for their child who’s acting out with them, maybe they’re using terms like naughty or bad or yelling at their child or yelling at your child. Obviously that’s not ideal, but that’s life.

And we’re there, one step behind them, in terms of the way that they’re processing what they’re learning, so we can reflect with them later, taking our cues from our child. Did something happen there that was mystifying to my child? I see that expression on their face. Then I could ask them, maybe afterwards, Did that seem different to you, what that parent was doing? Or, You noticed that that child was behaving this certain way, and what do you think that was about? How did that feel to you?

Okay, so now instead of me going on and on in this general way, I think it will work better for me to use these questions to explain what I’m talking about:

Hi, Janet. I know this question may not be what you normally talk about, but it’s been something that is coming up a lot lately for me. How do I deal with other children misbehaving? Sometimes parents don’t step in when I would expect they would, and it leaves me feeling uncomfortable and unsure how to handle it.

A while back ago, we had friends and their kids over. Their kids were very physically aggressive, and my kids had been hit and pushed several times. The mom would lightly address it, but it kept happening. Then he started being destructive and hitting furniture and other things with a toy. They just laughed it off. But I ended up asking him not to, and things got awkward and uncomfortable. Is there a way to politely handle a situation when the parents don’t? By the time I end up saying something, I know my emotions are feeling tight, and even though I try to keep it out of my voice, people can sense it.

Okay, so when we get to that point where our emotions are feeling tight, that can happen with our own children too, right? And the reason that happens is because we’re letting something go. We’re not stepping in right away, as early as we can, to put a stop to things. We’re expecting other people to work it out. In this case, other parents or, in the case of us with our child, we’re expecting them to just follow our directions. You know, when we say stop, we expect that they should stop. But oftentimes they can’t.

So in these cases with other children, when you see the energy of this other child or other children, then unfortunately the children need us to not be sitting back just talking to the parents and hanging out and pretending everything’s fine. And then of course, knowing that it isn’t, we get worked up, and then we come in with the less helpful kind of energy. And we feel really frustrated because we’ve let things go and why aren’t these parents doing what I want them to do? Other parents usually won’t feel judged or that there’s something wrong with you, if you come in non-judgmentally, early to the situation. You see this going on, like, Ah, yeah, you guys want to, oh, nope, that could hurt him. I know you don’t want to do that, so I’m going to stop you. And while I’m saying this, I’m just calmly kind of buddy-guarding, hanging near the children, so I can stop them. Maybe I don’t always get there before something happens, but I’m there pretty soon after. And I have my hands up to stop them, even if I have to kind of hold their bodies a little bit. I’m doing it with respect. I’m doing it with calmness.

The key to coming in with confidence is being there, being close enough and ready so that we can help and not get caught on our heels. So when we see, as this parent does, that sometimes parents don’t step in when I would expect they would, that’s okay if they don’t step in, I’m going to step in. But I’m not going to step in in a way that should anger those other parents or embarrass them. No one wants their children to be hurting another child. That would be odd. I doubt you would be friends with people who really didn’t care. Maybe they just are afraid to step in, or they don’t know how to do it in a calm way. Or maybe they believe they’re respecting when they’re actually not really seeing their children clearly, not helping them.

So when other people aren’t helping, be the hero. Be the one who helps, way before you get to the point of being angry and annoyed. Yeah, it’s reasonable to have the expectation that other parents would care and stop their child. But there are a lot of reasons why parents haven’t gotten to that yet, and we have no control over that. But we do have control over our behavior in the moment and what goes on in our house and what goes on with our child. And that’s where I would be protective. So not storming in angrily, but, You know, this is a little rough today. So I’m here. Ooh, no, no, no. Yeah, I can’t let you use those toys that way. That’s not safe when you throw them like that. I’m there. I’m not just talking. I’m in there, acting as if I can handle all of this.

And it’s amazing how that translates to children. If we really believe we’re being heroic here, we’re being the great model. Even for the other parents, because we’re sincerely helping that child who is struggling with boundaries. And maybe this is why they’re doing this in front of you. It’s almost an unconscious, Hey, people aren’t helping me with this. Maybe you can? Obviously that’s not a conscious process of thought, but that’s part of the impulse. Like, Help! Somebody help me! Look what I’m doing now. I’m out of control. I don’t want to be this person that’s doing this. So stepping into that role will feel –when you get used to it and you can own it– feel really, really good. And if people are put off by that, honestly, there’s something wrong with them. Because you’re being kind to their child. You’re not mad at or finger-pointing, you’re helping.

I had a live event a few years ago collaborating with this wonderful educator, one of my favorites, for this very enthusiastic and engaged group of parents. And one of them asked what to do about their four-year-old who had this friend of his, this little boy would come over and the little boy would want to wrestle and want to do things physically that their boy was saying no to. But he was going along with it because the other child wasn’t listening to him and kept going.

And so the person I was collaborating with on the stage, they had a different opinion, which is fine too. I’m sure a lot of you out there have very different opinions from mine. In this case, the person I was on stage with said, Let them work it out. That’ll be really good for your child. You know, boys play like that sometimes.

While I totally could see that point of view, I have a very different perspective, which is that this child is showing they’re struggling with boundaries. Both children are actually showing that, but especially this child who is not listening to my son. He needs help. And I believe he’s asking for it here in this house, and I want to be the one that gives it to him. So I would go in and say, with my hand there, I’m going to stop you. It sounds like you’re saying you don’t want that. You’re telling him. Yeah. So he’s saying he doesn’t want that, so I’m going to stop you there. I wouldn’t redirect them to something else. I would allow them to have that moment. And then on their own—and I’ve seen this happen hundreds of times with children—on their own, they come up with another way to play. I don’t have to do that for them. All I have to do is help them with the boundary. It is really hard with your peers. You want to go along with them, right? You feel like, Oh, maybe there’s something wrong with me. I should be okay with this. Sometimes children do need a helping hand, and when we’re there to offer it, I would see that as a primetime parenting opportunity.

Okay, here’s another note I received:

It might be interesting to do a post or include in a future podcast what to do when your child is the one who is hit, shoved by another kid. I have been in a few situations now with other kids and their parents present where a toddler shoves or hits my toddler, two and a half. It is very hard to navigate because most parents instantly demand their child stand in front of mine and apologize. That’s their first response.

My kid is usually just sort of stunned and I get in there with him to softly say, “It’s not okay for someone to hit you or hurt you. How do you feel?” I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say to him, but this feels important. I also try to make it broad and not about that particular child because I don’t want to harm their relationship and I’m sure they can get through this. But it’s very uncomfortable saying that in front of the other parents, who always seem embarrassed. Then they immediately jump to the forced apology. I can’t control them and I don’t want to undermine or question them in front of their kids. But I also don’t appreciate the example being made in front of my kid, their friend forced to stand there in front of them and say something that only makes them feel worse.

Once with a mom friend, I awkwardly blurted out, “If my kid had pushed your kid, I would not expect him to say sorry. We would just talk about what happened. So, no pressure.” They just stared at me stunned. Maybe an entire podcast on navigating parenting differences on the playground?

Okay, so yeah, I totally agree with what this parent says about “I can’t control them and I don’t want to undermine or question them in front of their kids” when they’re forcing the apologies. So yeah, that’s that letting go. People certainly have a right to do things their own way, the way they think is best.

Where I see things a little differently than this parent writing to me is that I don’t believe this will hurt her child at all. Yeah, it’s not an example of what this parent would do, but it’s a fine example out there of what people are doing. And I mean, the whole purpose of our guidance for them is for them to be exposed gradually to the rest of the world. And this is a common way that parents react, into that apology. Because they feel that that’s the right thing to do. All of this is very well-intentioned, right?

But what we know about children is that they process things more slowly than we do. And even we, as adults, when we do something that hurts someone’s feelings or we do something wrong, we’re not always able to snap into an apology. Especially if we feel people jumping on us around what we did. We don’t have that kind of emotional comfort space that we need to be vulnerable, which is what an apology, a true apology, comes from. That vulnerability, that openness, looking at it and saying, Ooh, I’m sorry I did that. That’s not going to just come trippingly off the tongue immediately.

Yet we expect this from children, because a lot of us feel like what people see in our children is going to reflect on us. And so we want them to be better than we are, right? A lot of the time, maybe. But that impulse is actually not going to get us the result that we want. It’s going to make our children feel more distanced from us, less inclined to want to genuinely go to that vulnerable place where apologies come from. It’s going to make them feel like they aren’t trusted, that they can’t really navigate this. That they have our judgment more than they have the support that they need. So I agree with this parent, that’s not an ideal situation for those children to have to do that.

And yeah, we can’t always be there ahead of time to stop the hitting or shoving. That’s not going to be possible. Once we see a child going to that place once, then we can be close by because now we’ve gotten a clue that this child is not managing the situation easily. And we can be there for them, to help. So she says, “My kid is usually just sort of stunned.” Yes. And it’s not even stunned in a scary way. They’re not usually traumatized by it in any way. It’s just Ooh, what just happened? What was that about?

So in that moment of processing, what do they need from us there? They need us to be ready to block so it doesn’t happen again. So, physically there. Ideally calmly there, with confidence that this isn’t going to terrify our child. If we’re terrified or if we’re emotional, then that’s when it gets scarier for them. But on its own, it’s just a puzzling moment, right? And yeah, we want to make sure they’re okay. Usually we can look at them and see, but we might say like, Ooh, did that hurt? Yeah. Are you all right? But try to be careful not to turn this into that I see my child is this sad victim here or something, which can be a projection that we have that’s similar to that projection of being angry at the other child. It’s that mother bear or father bear in us, fiercely protective. But the best way to protect isn’t to let that bear out of us. It’s more protective in a helpful way to be calm, to wait, to really check out our child. Rather than trying to console them or fix something that may not even need fixing. So staying open to, What did they think? And you know, just checking both children out.

And then with the parents doing the apology thing, I would still stay there with my child. Breathing, exhaling. I don’t think it feels worse to our child to have a child do a very likely false type of apology. They’re probably just still in that processing Ooh, what’s going on here? mode. It’s safe for them to be there. And if our child brings it up later, or if we notice them thinking about it, then after the fact, when those children have moved away, that’s when I would say, Wow, their parent really wanted them to say sorry. They really wanted them to say those words to you. Just reflecting what happened, not deciding that this was the right or wrong thing to do. Knowing that the way we are with our child is what has influence on how they feel about themselves, how they feel about the way they’re navigating in the world. It’s always going to take precedence over what other people do. I would love to encourage parents to feel secure in that knowledge, that they do have a lot of power here. And the more we can trust children to navigate with our support, but not trying to direct their thinking, the better.

Okay, so here’s one more:

Hi, Janet. Thanks for all the work you do to help us be better parents.

Our girls are four and six years old and love to get out in town and do fun things. Two weekends in a row, we came across nearly the same challenging situation. Both times we were at a play maze, the kind of maze that is several stories tall and the kids climb through. There are different obstacles and there are slides within it, as well as slides exiting it. They are so happy that they can finally independently go through it and explore and have fun. Usually parents are at the base of the maze unless their kid gets stuck up in the maze and the parent has to go up to rescue them.

Both times we went through –totally different mazes and weekends– my girls encountered a child in the maze who was behaving aggressively towards them. The children (I’m grouping them together now for simplicity), who both times were actually younger than them, pushed them down the slide, reportedly had their hands on their neck, were grabbing onto them without letting go, ramming into them with a cushion block, etc. My girls came down in tears once and came down immediately the next time and reported back to me. But it was already after the fact.

What do we teach them to do when they’re alone, like up in the maze, and a kid is acting aggressively towards them? They came and reported it to us, and we told them to stay with us, but we weren’t sure how they should handle it in the moment. Of course, both times the parents of the children were oblivious to what their child was doing.

Thanks in advance.

Okay, so this sentence stuck out to me: “They’re so happy that they can finally independently go through it and explore and have fun.” So each of these steps to independence, each of these ways that we as parents let go a little to let our child experience more of the world on their own terms. Which, again, this process of development is what our job is all about. My mentor Magda Gerber used to say, “Parenting, it’s this process of letting go. We let go. We let go a little more and a little more, as our child gets to stretch their wings.” So this is a positive experience for these children to have, right?

And unfortunately, they came across some pretty concerning behavior from another child. There’s no way of knowing all the reasons that children would behave like that. But oftentimes it’s about the dynamic and the relationship they have with their parents that they’re taking out on other children. Or they just feel out of control.

So what do we do? How do we help our children when they’re facing those situations? Well, these girls did the absolutely perfect thing. They told their parents right away. And, I mean, this is one of the reasons we never want to judge a child for “tattling,” which is really just reporting. But that can be a trigger for us sometimes, that a child is a tattletale. Maybe we were teased for being a tattletale or that we see that in a negative light. Rather than a communication, I trust my parent. I want to let you know what’s going on with me, that we’ve got to hope is going to last us through our child’s adolescence and teen years and early adulthood and for life, right? That they feel safe to tell us all the things, that we’re not going to say, Oh, don’t be a tattle. Don’t say that stuff.

So anyway, obviously this parent hasn’t done that and the children did the perfect thing, and is there anything else they could do? Well, the second time it happened, she says they came down immediately. Brilliant, right? So they are taking care of themselves. Yes, unfortunately they’re learning these hard lessons that every child isn’t kind, children aren’t always safe to be around, other people aren’t always safe to be around. And when we don’t feel safe, we exit the situation and we report to our parents, to help someone help that child so that it doesn’t keep happening.

This mom says, “Of course, both times the parents of the children were oblivious to what their child was doing.” Well, I hope they were told, and hopefully not judgmentally, just, Oh gosh, this is what your child is doing in there. I’m sure you want to know they’re not being safe inside the maze and they’re upsetting other kids. So if we can do that in a way that isn’t shaming of the parent. Studies actually show that, when you see parents that are being harsh with their kids, maybe physically punishing them, the parent’s dysregulated, shaming their child. We see parents doing these scary things and we want to run in there and save that child, right? What that actually does is it makes the parent feel worse. And then that means the parent is more likely to take out those feelings with that child later, because now we’ve shamed them. So, shaming doesn’t help a child, it doesn’t help a parent, it doesn’t help anybody. And as much as that might be a healthy impulse when we’re angry, that’s not what we want to aim for, if we really want to be a positive force and a positive model for our children.

So the ideal response to those parents that are obviously overwhelmed and not at their best with their child, the ideal is to go up at most and say, Can I give you a hand here? Can I help you with these groceries? Do you want me to help take your child’s hand so we can get you to the car? Help. And in the case of the parents whose children were acting out in the maze, yeah, if we could communicate this is going on, even with empathy, to that parent, that has the best chance of being received in a way that they can help their child and therefore other children like yours as well.

So I know all of this maybe sounds really idealistic and goody-two-shoes and, Oh gosh, you know, what is she expecting? We’re not going to have feelings about these things? And I understand that, and that’s not what I’m expecting. But I’m offering a framework that will not only help you navigate these situations individually, but give your child all those lessons that I know you want them to have. That they’re safe, that independence is this balance of joy and also sometimes scary. It’s a risk that we’re taking, even to interact with another child. But it’s one that they can handle, with our support.

So I thank all these parents for sharing with me. Just know that, yeah, step-by-step, building confidence each time, one step forward, two steps back, forgiving yourselves for being human.

We can do this.

The post Problems With Other People’s Children appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “Stuck in a Pattern of Frustration and Anger”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m going to be sharing my response to an email from a parent who’s upset about what she feels is her deteriorating relationship with her almost three-year-old daughter. She feels like she spends most of their time together struggling to get her girl to cooperate or behave, and then, naturally, getting angry when she doesn’t. This parent really wants to find a healthier dynamic for their relationship.

Okay, here’s the email I received:

Hi, Janet. I have an almost three-year-old daughter and an almost three-month-old son. Since becoming pregnant and then having my son, my bandwidth for interacting with my daughter has lessened so much, which saddens me greatly. We used to have such a close relationship. And while I think we still do, it is tarnished with my lessened patience and losing my temper at times.

Today, for example, we went to the park. Leaving the park has become “a thing” now. It started with me losing my temper one time when she wouldn’t leave when I asked. Now it happens almost always. She runs away when I say we have to leave. I brace for it. Today I told her, “Bye, I’m leaving,” when she wouldn’t come. I did it out of anger and desperation. In hindsight, I realized that kind of threat is manipulative, hurtful, and maybe even scary for her. She was very overtired as it was. She sat down in the wood chips, crying and screaming.

She finally did come. I said, “You can hold my hand or go in the stroller.” As I’m writing this, I realize how much my angry emotion plays into all of this, and even maybe causes her behavior to deteriorate. Anyway, she sat down and wouldn’t walk. She wanted me to hold her. I told her I couldn’t. She said at one point she wanted the stroller, and then refused it. I was physically trying to restrain her into the stroller while she was shrieking. I felt absolutely terrible, I hate having to physically make her do something. It actually hurts me now that she’s fairly big. I ended up roughly pulling her along the grass to where we were going.

This was a low point in my parenting. I ended up crying, which I’m sure was very upsetting to her. It has happened before. A couple of times I told her, “I know you’re really upset that we have to leave,” but it didn’t help much. I was so upset, it was hard to focus on saying these things. I really don’t want to continue this way with my daughter, but once these patterns start, I find it so hard to change them. It also happened with diaper changing, but has improved since I stopped getting angry at her.

I just don’t know how to be calm and confident when I’m so frustrated. Any suggestions for what to do in the park situation and how to create a new pattern where I do not lose my marbles, and she actually complies in a reasonable time when I say we’re leaving? And then just random statements like, “Please don’t put stickers on the couch. You can put them on this, but not that.” I feel like I’m just constantly telling her to not do something. If she doesn’t stop, I usually tell her I will have to help her, but it just feels like I’m spending so much time on her back. No fun.

I know you have a million emails, so if I happen to hear anything back, I will be happily surprised. Thank you.

Okay, so I feel for this parent. This dynamic that she’s gotten into with her daughter, it’s actually pretty common. There are some elements that create this that I recommend this parent takes a look at and deals with at the cause. That’s always the most effective way to address children’s behavior. Just like with anything, we want to heal it at the cause, not just deal with it symptomatically. If we can address and heal what’s behind the behavior, that’s where we’ll see a change. And that’s very important to understand.

So in this situation, first of all, this little girl has a three-month-old sibling, and this tends to be an emotional crisis period for most children. It shows up in different ways for each child. They do have a lot of fear around this situation, around this change and what’s happened to their life. And usually it will need to be expressed by the child in the way that children do this, which is unfortunately through behavior, through limit pushing. And then when the parent is able to calmly and with, ideally, a lot of acceptance of the child’s feelings, push up against that and hold their boundaries, then the child is able to discharge the feelings, to release the feelings. And that could come out angrily. It could come out in a tantrum. It could come out in an overwhelmed flopping to the floor, crying, sadness. It can look a lot of different ways.

So the first thing I would say to this parent is, it sounds like she probably does understand that this is a big element to what’s going on and that she can expect her child to be pushing limits at this time. That is the healthy way that children get their feelings out. And those feelings ideally will feel safe for them to share, even when they show up in these most obnoxious ways. It’s not that we’re going to be joyful that our child is behaving this way and responding so unreasonably, just seeming not to listen, not to follow directions, pushing back at us. But we’re able to see this as a healthy dynamic, a typical dynamic, an expected dynamic, and understand our role in it, which is just to hold these limits and to accept the feelings. And see the feelings, see these desires just to stay at the park. And, like this mother said she did, acknowledging that.

But it sounds like the problem that this parent seems to already understand in herself is that she’s not helping her child to feel safe to land the feelings, because she is getting frustrated and angry when her daughter does these things. Now, there’s certainly nothing unusual or shameful about parents getting frustrated and angry with their children. We all do it, sometimes. But it’s important to understand that this actually creates more discomfort in our child. Therefore, it makes our job even harder because now we’re going to see that every time our child is uncomfortable, there’s going to be more of this kind of behavior because they need to release those feelings of discomfort and fear. So now we’re adding the fear that, from the child’s point of view, Not only do I feel so in a crisis that I’m doing these crazy, impulsive things, but my parents are angry with me. These people that I need to help me in these situations and see where I am and help me early, they’re rejecting me for this. They see me as wrong and bad, and yikes! What that does is it makes feelings that are already very scary and uncomfortable for a child, even more scary, even more overwhelming.

But on our end, the reasons we do get frustrated are that we have this different expectation than the one that will ultimately help us. We maybe have the expectation that our child should be able to leave the park, or our child should be able to not put stickers on the couch when they know they’re not supposed to. Because children are, certainly at three years old, intelligent enough not to do these things. They do understand what we want, so hey, why aren’t they doing it? Because they’re seeking, unconsciously, that boundary. They’re seeking that safe place to push up against so that they can land their feelings. And if we have that kind of outlook as a parent, that kind of perception of the situation, that expectation, that will help us to not get frustrated. There’s still nothing wrong with us if we do, but getting frustrated is perpetuating the problem. So it’s something to go for: a perception that helps us get less frustrated.

Then the other part of this is the way that we actually handle the behavior. It’s my sense that this mother may be waiting way too long to be physical with her child. She comments that she doesn’t like being physical, and yeah, that’s a problem that I hear often. And I really understand, especially if what we know of physicality from a parent was out of anger and frustration. That doesn’t feel good, right? But when we see all physicality as a problem, it really does get in the way, because caring for young children, they need this feeling that we can handle them, no matter what they throw at us. That we’re going to be able to somehow pick them up or get them out of those situations, and that we’re going to be able to help them do things that they’re not able to do. And, ideally, without losing our temper or being rough or being angry.

The way to do that is to first expect it on some level. Expect that there’s going to be this kind of behavior. If we’ve seen it in the past, if we know that our child is in a big transition, like the transition to a new sibling, we want to try to expect it and then see it at the outset when it’s starting. For example, with the stickers on the couch, I wouldn’t even say, “please don’t do that,” because I could see that my child is already doing something that my child knows I don’t want them to do. So instead of telling them something that they already know, I want to notice, Okay, they’re doing some funny business there, so I’m going to calmly make sure that this doesn’t happen. I go over to my child. Mm, you’ve got those stickers, I see. I’m not going to let you do that. And I’m already physically stopping my child right there. That physical limit-setting is what children crave, especially when there’s a baby involved who’s getting a lot of physical care, a lot of touch, a lot of holding and carrying. So for that reason as well, they feel the need for that.

And that’s why it’s so important for parents to perceive this, as much as possible, as positive. A positive, loving exchange when you’re actually doing something that, yes, it’s against your child’s will in that moment, but you’re doing it with love and kindness and confidence. You’re taking that little bear cub and you’re stopping those little paws from doing this or that. And you’re picking them up and taking them out of the park.

And, with the park, she says this has become “a thing.” So yes, see it coming. Anticipate, not in a negative, Oh, here we go again! way, but, Okay, my child’s struggling with this, so I’m going to help. And then go close when it’s time to leave. If possible, we don’t want to signal by saying, “Okay, it’s time to go!” when our child has shown this behavior of having difficulty leaving, because then we’re kind of signaling, All right, we’re going to enter this power struggle now! We’re going to go back to this routine that we’ve had up until now!

Toddlers that have babies at home or younger siblings or other reasons that they have strong feelings, maybe they’re in another kind of big transition, like they’ve just moved or they’re starting a new school or something’s happening with their parents’ relationship– they’re very likely not able to leave the park. It’s those little transitions that do them in. And, as this parent says, she realized her child was overtired. So yeah, it becomes impossible for them. But rather than putting your card out there for her to see, that it’s time to go, from afar, don’t say anything until you’re right up next to her. Okay, it’s time. It’s time for us to go. And now you’ll already have your hand on her shoulder or your arm around her back. Here we go. We’ve got to go now.

And then if you feel any resistance, you move right through it. Confident momentum. If possible, you pick her up, you help her into the stroller. The sooner you do it, the less likely that you’ll be facing a struggle in return. But even if there is a struggle, we want to still keep moving through it as best as we can. Yes, this can be hard sometimes with a bigger child, maybe it even hurts us. But every time we take one of these actions, we’re going to prevent more of this. So we’re actually improving this situation, healing it from happening again, by doing this messy thing. I know it’s not fun, and sometimes it’s not easy, you might get kicked or hit a little bit. But if we do the best we can to move through that, that’s going to save us from this happening a bunch of other times.

It’s going to take this out of becoming “a thing” into becoming a time when a parent puts their arm around you and moves you along with love. Seeing this as positive, seeing this as a loving exchange that our child wants to have with us, needs to have with us. That’s the key to not getting frustrated, not getting upset, not being too rough, or even anything remotely close to abusive. Is it forceful? Yes, forceful with love and kindness. It’s a loving act, and it’s a million times more loving than threatening that we’re going to leave or losing our temper or asking our child more than once, even. If we hear ourselves asking our child to do something or not do something more than once, then usually that means we’re already too late in physically following through with that limit.

But of course, we’re not going to be perfect at this. And, when we realize after the fact that it didn’t work or we weren’t at our best, we got angry, we yelled at our child, we did things we regret. It can be really helpful after this kind of situation, like after the park or whatever, when it didn’t go well, to consider with self-compassion, Huh? Where was I going there in my mind? Why did I get so upset? Exploring this in ourselves, with a lot of love and kindness towards ourselves. We’re all on a journey, and the goal is to make slow progress. Sometimes it’s going to be two steps forward, one step back, or one step forward, two steps back. But we can pat ourselves on the back if our goal is to continue moving forward.

So when this mother says that the little girl sat down and wouldn’t walk, ideally we would want to be there soon enough, and before we talk about leaving the park, so that she doesn’t have that time to sit down and get more set in that kind of power struggle. But if she does, I would still try to get in there right away, pick her up. And if the baby’s there, I would consider having the baby safe in a stroller and not be carrying the baby if that’s possible at that time. Because it can be really hard for a toddler to see the baby right up there next to you, and that’s going to make it more likely that she’s going to have a hard time in that exchange and need to express feelings around it. So just for ourselves, it’s easier if we can be physically available to our toddler, but I realize that’s not always possible. So if we’re not and we have a baby in a carrier, or we need to hold the baby, then just know that we have to be even more confident. And use what I call confident momentum: coming in early, ready to move, expecting that this might be an issue, getting that momentum going. It makes up for physical strength that we might not feel. And some parents have physical issues and they can’t pick their child up every time. Confidence makes up for a lot. When we have that motion going, we don’t need to use as much physical strength. Because we’re in the zone, we’re in this mode that we’re not mad at our child and we’re just going to help them. We’re going to make this happen.

So that’s how I would break this pattern. By being physical right away, by using confident momentum, and definitely not expecting that words are going to be enough. They’re just not. Our words don’t have that much power with a child that has reasons to want to dig their heels in. So I would say a lot less and expect to do more and do it a lot earlier. Not getting to that stage of telling her to do something, and then if she doesn’t stop, now I have to tell her, “I’m going to help you.” It will work better if she just helps her right away, without signaling it. And at this time in this child’s life, for whatever reason—in this case, there’s a good reason, the transition to the baby. But for whatever reason, she’s showing that she does need help right at the outset of these behaviors. And then this parent will see that she’s not going to be spending so much time on her daughter’s back. There may be periods where it feels like she’s constantly moving her daughter through or stopping her daughter from this or that, but it will all pass much sooner if she can move through with confidence as a leader. Perceiving this as loving, knowing that this is what children want. I hope that helps.

And there’s much more help on the way because … 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.

Thanks so much for listening. We can do this.

The post Stuck in a Pattern of Frustration and Anger appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Educator Ashley Causey-Golden was drawn to Montessori principles but felt something missing that she longed to provide: cultural relevancy. She wondered, “What would it look like to create a Montessori space that uplifted, affirmed, celebrated Black children?” Fulfilling this desire has been a journey of discovery and grace (with a lot of mistakes along the way). Ashley’s ultimate success gave her the courage to pursue another passion: nature education. As the co-founder of Gather Forest School and creator of Afrocentric Montessori, Ashley has a wealth of experience to share with all families and educators interested in nurturing our children’s spirit, sense of community, and connection to the natural world.

Transcript of “Nurturing a Deeper Connection to Nature and Heritage (with Ashley Causey-Golden)”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today I have an awesome guest: educator, Ashley Causey-Golden. She founded Afrocentric Montessori, which blends Afrikan principles into Montessori education. And she’s the co-creator of Gather Forest School, which offers a totally outdoor learning experience with the mission to guide children in their lifelong relationships with the natural world. She’s also the mother of a toddler and she’s actually hiding out in the closet to be able to record with me today.

Ashley has a lot of wisdom and experience to share and I’m really excited to have her here.

Hello Ashley, welcome to Unruffled. Thank you so much for being here.

Ashley Causey-Golden:  I’m excited.

Janet Lansbury:  Thank you. It’s so great to reconnect with you. I really wanted to share your work. It’s so inspiring and uplifting and really life-changing and I wanted to share it with my listeners here on Unruffled. Could you talk a little about how you got into this, the work that you’re doing now, how you got on this path?

Ashley Causey-Golden:  Yes, because it definitely wasn’t a straight path.

So my background is in elementary and special ed and when I was doing my teaching internship it just didn’t connect with me teaching within the public schools. I was always asking questions about race and equity and my professors were just like: “You know what? You should go to graduate school. You can get those answers met there.” And so when I went to Columbia’s Teacher’s College, I worked at Hollingworth and that actually was the first time I was in a classroom that was focused on aesthetics, discovery, that was child led.

Janet Lansbury:  Can you talk about what that is?

Ashley Causey-Golden:  It was Montessori inspired, a little bit of Reggio Emilia, a little bit of Waldorf. It was a mixed ideology practice, definitely child led. We did have themes that we explored with the children. But let’s say the theme we’re exploring are trees for three weeks… If the children get really into it and start getting more to the nuances, those three weeks might turn into a month or two. So we really looked at children stretch our own imagination and we just made sure the environment was prepared for the children each day.

And I came from scripted lesson plans. That’s the world I came from. Then I came here, I was like Wow, this is exciting! And then I instantly thought about how would this look like for black children? So that question was in the back of my mind throughout everything.

After leaving Hollingworth, I was like, I need a job <laugh>. So then I went into the charter network and that also was very eye-opening to me. I’m not here to say there’s anything bad about charter schools, but for me I just felt like there wasn’t enough grace for parents, especially for the Black parents who were trusting that charter network. We came in with our own preconceived notions, right? Children falling behind, some children coming to school, not having a full meal… All of these things were like preconceived notions

Janet Lansbury: That the school had about families, you mean?

Ashley Causey-Golden:  Also what we as educators, as workers in the space also had about families. Because it was a very savior-like mentality. Like, if we’re not doing this for the kids, who’s going to do it for the kids? That kind of mindset.

Janet Lansbury:  Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Ashley Causey-Golden:  And so I just really wanted to understand, because I didn’t have kids at that time. I worked with children but I didn’t know what it felt like to be a parent.

So I actually got into birth work, and being in the room with families with birthing women, it’s like a light bulb went off. I was like, oh, they care about their children, like the light, the love that oozes from the body when the child is born. I was like, oh okay. That’s when for me, grace became part of the equation when it came to education, and it was less about theory, less about doing it right all the time. I thought, oh we just need to be practical. It just needs to make sense. And then after working with families and being a doula, I was like, oh okay, let’s make it practical and realistic and not that the sky is falling

Janet Lansbury:  And really connected with people’s experience, right? It sounds like you identified with those birthing mothers and you realized this is about connecting and being supportive to individuals.

Ashley Causey-Golden:  Yes. Working with them to get them what they need. And sometimes that school was what they needed and sometimes there are actually other ways that were better suited for the child and their family. Just being honest and real with families and students.

And that experience led me to fall into Montessori in a way, because the practices and the theory of Montessori aligned. But I didn’t know why it aligned. You can read about something or hear something and it just clicks and that’s how Montessori was for me. It was a very respectful ideology that I was like Ah, I wanna learn more about it.

But as I got into the world of Montessori, again I was wondering about Black children because it was Uber-white. My instructors was white, the schools that I worked at predominantly white, the children that I was serving, predominantly white. And I just wanted more. 

How can I learn more about Montessori but also be true to my own identity and culture?

So after my stint at the charter school, I actually went to Brooklyn to work at to Seneca Montessori School and Seneca is a truly a hundred percent Black space. Everything that’s brought into the classroom needs to be represented of Black culture. So when I first started working there, it was a huge mind shift, because I actually never worked in this space that was, one, a hundred percent Black, and two, pro-black and very firm in that value.

Janet Lansbury:  What was different about that? Like what are some of the details? Because one thing I would love to help parents get from this podcast is how to bring their culture into their children’s education, whether that’s at home or in a center. What are some of the things that you do to make it richer culturally and help them feel more of their identity in the classroom?

Ashley Causey-Golden:  So for us, we had to do a deep dive with in the continent of Africa. So we had to look at each country and study each country in terms not just the flag, but in terms of food, clothes, music, language. On a higher education level, yes I could pull books, articles, but I’m working with three, four and five-year-olds. So I couldn’t find easy principles or even information that was broken down to a level that a child could understand. So a lot of things I was typing out, writing out, freehand drawing for the classroom.

We celebrated the major holidays that are relevant within Black culture, which was really fun because we were able to bring in elders from the community to help us with those celebrations. So, I talked to families. It can start very simple. Like you can bring in books but also touch into your community and see what’s available for you to visit, to see. Intergenerational education is key. So are there any elders in the community that you can bring in. Food is another wonderful touchpoint. Music. So I was able to bring those touchpoints into the classroom that actually made parents interested. They’re like, “Hey, my child came home talking about this and I never thought about it but I used to make this with my grandma.” It started larger conversations.

Janet Lansbury:  Wonderful. That’s so encouraging, right? For the parents to embrace more of their history and their culture and bring that alive for children. Everybody benefits from that, right?

Ashley Causey-Golden:  They do. And I will say I do find that sometimes there is so much hesitancy to wanting to do it quote, unquote, “right,” that the ball never gets started. We never get started on it because we’re always reading, we’re always buying another book, always researching so we can get it “right” so our children can be politically correct and make sure they don’t hurt anyone’s feelings. And that’s draining. It’s draining and it’s daunting when you’re a parent and you have so much on your plate already. I’m just like, “y’all, let’s just make it make sense, to be honest.”

And it is messy. There are so many times I have said the wrong thing, put my foot in my mouth, offended, and then that’s where grace comes in, and apologies, just letting go of the ego of I’m going to be right all the time, because I’m not.

I feel like when you take your dive and you just start, it gets easier along the way, it becomes more freeing where it is actually second nature. Now you’re like: hmm, I’m curious about this. I don’t have to have it all together <laugh> before I say something.

Janet Lansbury:  Can you give a specific example of that?

Ashley Causey-Golden:  Of having it all together before I say something?

Janet Lansbury:  <laugh> Well what you had to look up or what you thought you had to look up.

Ashley Causey-Golden:  Yeah, so we just moved out of Native American Heritage Month and for me that was a huge area that I actually did not know much about. My trajectory within schooling was very traditional. I still remember my kindergarten, we were doing pilgrims and Indian play.

Janet Lansbury:  Oh my kids too. I have the pictures and they’re mortified now, you know?

Ashley Causey-Golden:  Yeah, I know this might be embarrassing to say, but I was in my mid-twenties, I’m cringing, I was in grad school before I realized: oh a lot of the lesson plans I did during my teacher program were wrong. And this time around I checked out books, I listened to pronunciations of tribes. Children asked questions where I’m like, “I don’t know, let’s look it up.” We still have students who believe that Native American and indigenous people still lived in teepees. And so it was like, wait, let’s just jump into it and talk about it. And it became more frank.

When I tell you that was very like cringeworthy to me — things that you learned about yourself and things that you did were like wrong <laugh>, you’re always like, I don’t want anybody to know or I don’t want to step back in that trap. And now I feel like yeah, I did all of that. I got really messy. But it’s freeing in a way saying yeah, I learned that way but now I want to do something different. I want to do something better.

There are so many other voices talking about their history and culture that I don’t have to spend hours researching on my own. There are so many voices out there today that I can listen from and share.

Janet Lansbury:  And find that you do relate to, you know, every kind of person.

And also you’re modeling for these children. I’m thinking as you’re talking, you’re modeling how to be an open-minded, self forgiving a lifelong learner, which is the only way you can be a lifelong learner is to be self forgiving, staying open. Because just as you said about all the things that people are afraid to step into because they might not do it perfectly or get it right, get it politically correct, you know, that’s how we close off to learning and that’s the opposite of what we want to teach children, right from when they’re little.

Ashley Causey-Golden:  Oh yes. To be open and accepting. And I do have in the back of my mind and I’m totally aware of, it’s a real thing about being called out. It’s a real thing about being blacklisted. Those are real things but if we think about how we’re teaching the next generation, how we’re teaching our children… I try not to let those concerns and those fears limit my work. That’s just a part of the reality that we live in. People live off soundbites, <laugh>, yeah people live off soundbites, snapshots Instagram captions

Janet Lansbury:  And they can read into it a really extreme thing too, you know, because it’s just… If all you’re giving is a sound bite, you know the meaning is is lost and kind of corrupted.

So yeah, I mean, what you’re doing is so, so freeing and you’re giving people permission to do that too.  And you know, definitely white people, well I can’t speak for everyone but I definitely feel that: oh gosh I am going to say it wrong, I’m going to do it wrong. And and I have. I have done it wrong plenty of times but we keep trying, you know, we just keep learning and trying and doing better and that’s really all any of us can do.

Ashley Causey-Golden:  That’s it. Keep showing up.

Janet Lansbury:  The other area that I really wanted to dive into with you is the nature education, because for me it’s like the ultimate, the idea of like going to a nature school sounds so incredible and I wanted to hear a little about that. And also how parents in urban environments or home environments where there’s no outside yard can bring nature into their children’s lives, if you have any ideas about that,

Ashley Causey-Golden:  To have nature and to be in nature doesn’t mean that you’re hiking in the forest every day. It can be just walking in your community. It could be bringing plants inside your home, having plants accessible.  If you have animals, that’s a part of nature too. But it is really teaching children: how can I coexist with Mother Earth?  Because yes, it’s freeing for children to run around, it’s freeing to also just exist, but we also were teaching children: “How do you care for the trees? How do you care for plants, animals?” I’m talking also about earthworms and insects and spiders. Things that you kind of step on and crush because you’re scared of them or you run for them. Things that people are like ugh, it’s just a bug. We’re really teaching children that every, every essence is important to the grand scheme of things. Even the mosquito. Everything is important to the greater picture. And so that’s what working and being in nature has taught me.

Janet Lansbury:  And so what do you do when a child stomps on a bug?

Ashley Causey-Golden:  We actually had to sit a child down today about harming earthworms. We remind children that even the ant, mosquito, fly earthworm, we’re in their home. We are visiting their home for these four hours. Just like you wouldn’t want someone to come into your home and squash you, hit you, pull you apart. We have to keep that same mindset when we are in these animals home.

Some children, even myself, I’m not even going to exclude myself, I am afraid of bees, spiders. You won’t see me walk deep into the woods cause I don’t do well with spiders. I said, “If you’re scared of these things, make space, let’s not tear down a spiders web, because it takes spiders many, many days to make these homes. If you are afraid, let’s not go down that path, or we’ll walk around.”

So some of our children take it very much to heart when another classmate sometimes intentionally or unintentionally harms the animal. Now, my co-founder Shelby and myself, we actually don’t have to say much because the children actually step in and like ask questions like, “Hey why did you do that?” And then they problem-solve like, “You could have did this, this, this, this or this” <laugh> “before you actually stepped on this animal.”

So it is expanding children’s ability to empathize and think about how are we co-living? How are we sharing this space?

Janet Lansbury:  That’s so cool.

And what do you do then when it’s really, really cold or boiling hot? Don’t the children complain? .

Ashley Causey-Golden: Yes. So your listeners have probably heard “clothing is everything.” Clothing helps keep your body warm. Certain clothing helps keep your body cool. But sometimes you’re just hot and many times I’m just cold as well. So we will sing, try to do hand work, we try to do something to activate the mind.

I will say our children move their body a lot more than Shelby and I. So a lot of the time when I’m super cold, it’s because I’m not moving my body enough to generate heat. But the children will find ways to get their bodies warm again.

If the plans that Shelby and I have don’t work out like: “oh let’s do this, let’s do that,” they’re like: “Nah, we actually want to play tag.” We’re like, “cool,” because they’re moving their bodies.

On days that it is pouring down rainy we will find shelter.

Janet Lansbury:  So you don’t actually have an indoor space?

Ashley Causey-Golden:  We don’t.

Janet Lansbury:  Cool. That’s so brave of you <laugh>. You don’t close the school if it’s pouring rain? Wait, does it snow there? No. You’re in the… Where are you?

Ashley Causey-Golden: In Atlanta. No snow, thank goodness.

Janet Lansbury:  But do you have rain days or days when you close the school because the weather’s just too much?

Ashley Causey-Golden:  We will close if it is lightning. Let’s say we’re outside and it’s rainy and we hear on the forecast (since we’re constantly checking our phones on days that it’s rainy), we will let parents know ahead of time that we need to close early because lightning’s coming around 11 o’clock. And so parents who picked their children up early.

Where we’re co-located, we do have an indoor space but we only used that indoor space when it’s heavy rains. If it’s drizzling, we’re all fine. Two weeks ago it was about 30-ish degrees and it was pouring rain. So we did spend an hour inside reading doing community circle for us to warm up our bodies but also to just take a break from the pouring rain. And so by the time we went back outside it was drizzling, the kids were playing, no one was thinking about going back inside. But in that brief moment of that heavy rain we’re like, we just need some relief <laugh>. And to speak for myself, I needed some relief. 

Janet Lansbury:  Yes, I do think we feel it worse than the children. Sometimes their bodies just work better too. Besides the fact that they’re moving a lot, their engines are newer, they’re a little fresher than mine for sure.

So what’s an example of a curriculum that you would have for your day? Is it totally child led or do you do the, the Reggio Emilia thing of gathering from them what they want to explore further and then you go with that? How do you do it?

Ashley Causey-Golden:  We have a mixture, a Montessori-Waldorf flow but it is sprinkled with Reggio Emilia. So we do have a rhythm for the day where we have our community circle, we have lesson time, nature exploration time, snack. We might have a daily activity which is based in nature. Then we have lunch and then it’s time to say farewell.

And so when we have our work cycle we do align it to the Georgia State standards. We use the standards just as a guide because many of our families are homeschooling families or wish to homeschool. So we try to align ourself with what parents need. A lot of them are new to homeschooling. We have a few that been doing it for a while so they use us more as a a place for their child to be social. But for those who are new to homeschooling, we always remind families about the state standards, to use it as an alignment. But we’re not regulated like a traditional school who will go strictly by standards.

Janet Lansbury:  And what grade do you go up to or what year?

Ashley Causey-Golden:  Yeah, three and our oldest is nine.

Janet Lansbury:  And are you sort of increasing it as you go or you decided to stop there at that age?

Ashley Causey-Golden:  We’re such a tight-knit community so I don’t see much turnover. where we will just keep having that same aged people. I think we’re going to increase it as we go.

What is so refreshing about Gather is that we get to know the strengths of our students and we get to know what they’re interested in and that helps us prepare what’s going to be at community circle. It helps us prepare what’s going to be given during the work cycle. And that’s why I’m able to bring in some Montessori elements to help teach those ideas. It’s nice that we have that flexibility that we’re not solely using one curriculum. We’re able to just flow with the different needs of our students.

Janet Lansbury:  That’s great. But going back to your curriculum, what’s an example of nature exploration? Is that children doing what they want or is that guided?

Ashley Causey-Golden:  It’s two-pronged. Yes, children do what they want and it’s also guided. So before we go into morning circle, we let the children do nature exploration and that’s free play. So we have some children who will like to dig, children like to find rocks or fossils. Some children like to run and move their bodies. We allow children to climb on trees. They each get to do what they choose.

After we do community circle and set the expectation for the day… We’re learning about animal habitats. So everything after community circle is more guided or what we could call structure. So if we’re doing our watercolor station, children are finding items in nature that the animals will use as habitat and then they’re recreating that using watercolor. Or we’re finding native trees in Georgia, so they’re finding leaves that they can write about in their journal. So it’s still in nature but it’s much more guided in structure than what it looks like in the beginning of the day.

Janet Lansbury:  Ah, that sounds so idyllic to me.

What are some big mistakes that you’ve made where you learned, oh gosh this doesn’t work. Or have there been things like that that come to mind?

Ashley Causey-Golden:  It does. Because idyllic is a beautiful word to use for this environment, I also want to be realistic when parents are listening to this because some parents would be extremely skeptical. How are they learning math? How are they reading? Those are really big questions too. And I will say that the biggest learning curve I learned about our community co-running Gather is how we serve children. I strongly believe that children should be in the environment where they have some elements of the natural world. I’m not saying that you have to be outside all day or even six hours a day, but I do believe children need to be tied to some aspect of the natural world.

But there also needs to be a balance cause a lot of our families are layering what we’re doing at Gather within their home. So they are doing the math, the reading, the science on top of what we’re doing.

Families who have this idea of the school should do everything: the school should teach my child, the school should do the social and emotional work and when the child comes home, we’re just doing routines. You get snack, rest a little bit, dinner’s prepared, bedtime routine and then we start again. I will say Gather is not a best fit for a family who operates that way. This is really a place where we are partnering with parents who are also doing some of the work at home. So that was the biggest learning curve. I think as parents, as loved ones, we do want the best, we want the best for our children. I think there are very few people who’ll be like, nah, I wanna give my child just 30%.

Janet Lansbury:  Right? Mediocre, mediocre education for my child.

Ashley Causey-Golden:  Doing the best for our child just looks different based on what we have and what our needs are.

Janet Lansbury:  Of course. You shared this quote from Queen Taese, is that how you pronounce her name? 

Ashley Causey-Golden: Yeah, Taese.

Janet Lansbury:  Queen Taese, on your Instagram page. And it stuck out to me:

“Your life is a curriculum and you need to take ownership of that, whether your child attends public private charter school or is homeschooled.”

Yes. And that feels very true. You know, even to when you have adult children like I do. The gatherings, the way that you connect with them and continue to engage with them and be with them and your relationship is… you’re teaching, you’re teaching relationships, you’re teaching what it’s like to be adults, together with what it’s like to be an older adult. Yes. You’re teaching how your career or your life goals keep maybe changing and you know, it is so rich, the whole experience, and to have that understanding that all of a child’s life is learning, it’s not just what they go to Gather school for.

Ashley Causey-Golden:  That is key. It changes. We all go through seasons. We all go through changes, and I wish that I could sprinkle fairy dust on all parents to realize that things change. Children change styles of learning, styles of parenting sometime change and that’s all okay.

Some of our families I know for a fact Gather is perfect. Can I say that Gather will be a perfect fit for that same family 2, 3, 4 years from now? I can’t, because the child might need something new, something else that another environment can provide for. And that’s okay.

I think sometimes we get so rooted in a certain philosophy or ideal that we totally miss the child who is in front of us. And we also silence our needs too. As parents, as adults, we put our needs on the back burner when it’s just seeing shift and change and that’s okay.

Janet Lansbury:  Exactly. This is also answering my other question which is: what positive things have you learned or what kind of secrets have you learned about education?

Ashley Causey-Golden:  Being able to walk with parents but not being too invested in the decisions that they make. I don’t know if that’s clear, but what I mean is- 

Janet Lansbury:  Totally clear.

Ashley Causey-Golden: Okay.

Janet Lansbury:  As somebody that works with parents, totally clear. And as a parent myself, yeah. I mean that’s the thing about parenting, everybody gets to make those choices and they’re not going to make the choices that you would make for them maybe, you know? And that’s how it has to be. That’s the beautiful part of it: they’re developing their own relationship with their child.

Ashley Causey-Golden:  That’s it. And I think that has been the greatest lesson: that parents are going to make their own decision and that’s okay. And I can still be the individual I am, the teacher, all of the things that I am. And still also being in community with those families and be of like mind and finding those spaces. I think at year one, when we first started, we wanted do everything right. We wanted to be everything to every parent. I remember making those calls, trying to get people to like come to Gather <laugh>. That was, I want to say stressful. But they were like: “What are y’all doing outside? How is my child learning anything?”

“They will,” we promised. We wanted to meet every parent’s need or desire and it was just too much. It was too much. And so that’s the secret I learned, just letting go. Saying, “this is what we offer, this is what we can provide your child.” And just leaving that on the table. “And if you want to join us, we’d love to have you. If you’re like ah, this isn’t for me. That’s great. You can still communicate with us online. We have community events. If you would like to stop in, we would love to have you.”

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah. I think being very confident like that “this is what we offer and it may not be right for you.”

When my children were in preschool, there were big problems going on with a couple of the local preschools in that parents really wanted them to teach more academics very early on. And the schools were feeling pressured by that. And some of them succumbed to that because they had to please the parents. And you know, I was trying to support the early childhood educators. “It’s okay if people don’t want what you have, but believe in what you have.”

Ashley Causey-Golden:  Yes. Believe in what you have. And parents can like mirror that back and believe in how you are parenting your child. Because it is incredibly hard when we live in such a society that everything is outward facing. It seems like you are looking into everyone’s home seeing what they’re doing and, of course, everyone’s only showing the glamorized version

Janet Lansbury: <laugh> Right, where they got it “right,” 

Ashley Causey-Golden:  But it is so hard to be like, I am doing this right? It’s always like a question mark. I need the validation from someone outside of my own mind. Yeah,

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah. When in fact there’s actually no right way <laugh>. I mean that’s the secret too. As somebody with older children, I can say there’s no right way. It’s a journey. You’re learning all the time. Your child is changing, you’re getting surprised and seeing that what fit before doesn’t fit. It’s just life. It’s a journey. There’s no end.

Ashley Causey-Golden:  Yes.

Janet Lansbury: You have found something that inspires you. And I love how you said, I don’t know if this was on your Instagram or on your your website, which is by the way, Afrocentric Montessori, you said, “I keep asking myself the question, what would it look like to create a Montessori space that uplifted, affirmed, celebrated Black children?” And that’s what inspires you. That’s what you wanted to offer. That and the nature education, which is also incredible. And you know, I’m sure there may even be Black families that don’t necessarily want that.

Ashley Causey-Golden:  We were pressed against the wall for many Black families who were just like, “my kid’s not going to be running around outside when they can be reading, writing above grade level. I want my child to excel beyond their age.”

Oh, you hear my little one.

Janet Lansbury:  I do <laugh>.

Ashley Causey-Golden:  <laugh>.

Janet Lansbury: Anthony, hey, your mom was hiding in the closet. How crazy is that?

Ashley Causey-Golden: He’s on my lap now so he’s fine.

Janet Lansbury:  She’s in the closet. What’s your mom doing in the closet? Talking to some lady in the computer. How could she do that?

Ashley Causey-Golden:  So now he’s happy. He’s like, ah, reunited.

Janet Lansbury:  Well we should probably end, but you know, I could talk to you all day. I just love hearing about your work. It’s really inspiring. It’s just bringing back a lot of memories for me about the early years with my children as well and the choices that we’ve had to make and how imperfect it all was. And thank you for all you do. 

And again, Ashley has an Instagram page, Afrocentric Montessori, and also one for the Gather Forest School.

Ashley Causey-Golden:  Thank you for inviting me. And also <laugh> allowing my little one to join.

Janet Lansbury:  That’s my favorite thing. Bye, Anthony.

Ashley Causey-Golden:  Oh, he’s waving to you.

Janet Lansbury:  Oh, nice. Okay, take care. And we’ll talk soon.

The post Nurturing a Deeper Connection to Nature and Heritage (with Ashley Causey-Golden) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

We may not always agree with the parenting styles of our relatives and friends, and that’s okay. Get-togethers can still be enjoyable, positive social experiences for us and for our kids. In this episode, Janet offers her perspective on some of the common challenges that arise in gatherings with friends, family, and in public situations with other kids and parents. Her suggestions include:

• How to set ourselves up for success
• Being proactive, rather than reactive
• Effective interventions with other parents’ children (as well as our own)

Transcript of “Navigating Get-Togethers with Relatives, Friends, and Their Kids” 

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today I’m going to be speaking to some of the common scenarios that parents share with me, and that I’ve experienced myself with family gatherings where there are relatives, friends, other children, and even just people that you might see in the park. How do we handle children’s behavior in these situations and intervene with the adults as well? This is a big, big topic. There are a lot of variables. I wish I could cover everything, and I’m not going to be able to. That’s already frustrating me, but I’m going to do my best to talk about some of the most common issues and how to respond to them effectively.

Okay, so I guess I’ll start by offering some guidelines, and I’m sure these guidelines are going to get me talking about details. What do we want to do when we’re going to be gathering with other families, other children, or maybe just adult relatives? We want to do something that I often talk about and that’s:

The post Navigating Get-Togethers with Relatives, Friends, and Their Kids appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

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

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

Okay, here’s the note I received:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Accepting, acknowledging, encouraging, trusting.

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

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

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

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

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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.

Transcript of “The Best Way to Encourage Toddler Manners”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today, I’m responding to a question I received on Instagram about a toddler who is not saying hello and goodbye to adults, and this parent wants to encourage that. She’s getting concerned now because he has started not only refusing to say hello or goodbye, but shouting out things to people that are saying hello or goodbye to him. So I’m going to offer some suggestions that I hope are helpful, not only for this specific situation, but that also reflect the essence of the respectful approach that I teach and clarify what I mean when I talk about raising our children with respect, and trust, and empathy.

Here’s the message I received:

Hi, Janet. I wanted to ask a question. I’m not sure if you’ve answered it before. Our two-and-a-half-year-old son doesn’t seem to want to say hello or goodbye to adults, which is something I’m trying to model and encourage. He won’t say hello or goodbye to people in our building when they say hello to him. And at school, which he loves and runs inside to, he won’t say goodbye to his teacher. I made the mistake of saying, ‘Bye-bye teacher. Now it’s your turn to say it’. Now, every time he says, ‘It’s not my turn!’ I would even be fine if he ignored people, but when someone says hello, sometimes he’ll yell back, ‘No talk to me! No say that!’ Any advice?

Okay, so actually I was quite inspired by this note and I realized that I have a lot of advice, or I have a lot of things to say about this topic, even so much that I decided to join TikTok and I did a couple of videos about this, because I thought that it would be helpful for me to demonstrate what to do when you are in a situation where your child is not saying hello and the adults seem to be pushing for that to happen. So if you are on that platform, you may want to check that out.

The first thing I want to talk about is the beginning of what she says. She says, “Our two-and-a-half-year-old son doesn’t seem to want to say hello or goodbye to adults.” So one of the keys to respectful parenting, or really any kind of effective parenting, is to understand the why. Why doesn’t he want to say hello or goodbye to adults? Why do we think he wouldn’t want to do that?

Well, what we know about young children is that they do not have the same kind of filters that we have as adults. They are much more sensitive, vulnerable, wide open. So these things that we take for granted as adults, that we’re going to say, “Hi, how are you? Oh, I’m fine”, and maybe we don’t really mean I’m fine, but we say it, children don’t have that glib response. They’re actually much more honest than that. They’re taking in this person and their energy, and it’s a lot for them to say hello at this age. It’s a lot for them to put themselves out there that way because it is a vulnerable moment for them. They don’t have this down.

So knowing this — that it’s really a big deal for a child to respond to someone, especially someone they don’t know very well or maybe a total stranger to them — what they need is a lot of our trust and our ease around this so that they can feel the safety to do what seems to us as a very small thing. Just say, hi and what’s the big deal? When they say hi, they really mean it and they’re really connecting soul to soul with this person.

One of my favorite things Magda Gerber used to say, referring to the way a baby or toddler looks at us, she would say, “There are three kinds of people who will look at you that way, a lover, an insane person, and a baby.” That openness, that showing their soul that children do, and that intensity. So what encourages children is, again, this whole feeling of safety: My parents trust me. They’re comfortable with however I handle this. They’re not feeling impatient. They’re not projecting discomfort and tension into the situation. They need that trust and they will do it. I promise you, they will.

Then there are certain times when they’re actually rightfully not feeling comfortable with that person. Maybe the person is too pushy, they’re too demanding. And that’s a wonderful sensitivity that we actually want our children to have, that intuitiveness about people, so that they don’t let the wrong people into their life. Obviously that’s very, very important.

But what can happen is maybe we’re not understanding how different our child is from us as adults in this manner, how in their innocence and sensitivity this isn’t an easy thing to do, just to say that one word. And so we try to prompt, or maybe we’re just uncomfortable that this other person is expecting something and we’ve got to please them, so we’re prompting our child or we’re coaxing them. And then we’re feeling disappointed that they’re not performing as we hoped they would. That’s understandable, too, but it doesn’t help us get what we want, which is for our child to have genuine good manners. Not just my child is saying the words.

And any feeling of pressure that a child has or any of us have, doesn’t help us to perform, doesn’t help us to be at our best, especially in these vulnerable situations.

For example, I still feel like this… I could be typing something on my computer and my child, not someone intimidating, one of my children, they are adults now but they’re not intimidating, they’re not judging me, they’re coming over to look over my shoulder for some reason. I’ve asked them to or they’re there, and all of a sudden I can’t type anymore. How crazy is that? I’m making all these mistakes that I wouldn’t have made. I get a little frazzled. I know I’m probably more sensitive than the average adult, maybe more childlike in that way, but I feel that. I totally feel that. So if my parent really wants me to do something, they’re there watching and I know that all the attention is on me right now, it’s not going to be easy to do something as risky as sharing myself with this person, saying hello.

I think the difficulty that we face as parents, one of the difficulties, is that there is this old school way of thinking that maybe our parents had, or our parents’ parents: we teach manners directly and we make our child say, hi. That’s our job, so that they’ll be able to grow up and have manners.

But that’s not the way it works. And this parent already understands that. It sounds like she’s been very subtle about the whole thing, because she does understand that she mostly wants to model that that’s the best way to encourage.

Manners are a blossoming that children have. And what they need from us is to nurture the environment for them to blossom in their time. We trust that the blossoming will happen. It’s a delicate process. It’s an unfolding that children will do if they have that nurturing and that trust and that modeling that we are friendly to people, that we are warm to people, and that we have empathy for our child. That’s the modeling that’s often most important in this. We understand them. They feel we’re on their side in that moment, that we accept who they are.

It’s growing up with those feelings inside that makes for the most genuinely well-mannered people. So it’s a more subtle process than what many believe. It’s very, very common to believe that we teach children, and that’s how we make it happen. But teaching and learning work differently. And as Magda Gerber said, “Be careful what you teach, it may interfere with what they’re learning.” We have to understand how children actually learn.

So now, what do we do when it’s gotten away from us a little, as in this example, where now our child feels uncomfortable? That discomfort of: my parent wanting me to say it, and I was disappointing her and I just couldn’t quite do it then for whatever reason.

This parent is obviously very well-intentioned, very gentle. It’s not about that. This could happen to the best of us. But now he’s getting triggered back into this every time he’s in that situation. He’s anticipating that it’s going to happen again. He’s getting triggered back into that discomfort every time, to the point that he’s even sort of lashing out at people. “Don’t talk to me. Don’t say that.” You’re putting me in this situation again. It’s an uncomfortable situation for me.

So this is impulsive. This is a sign of discomfort. And the way to handle it is to do all the things that I’ve been talking about: understand where he’s coming from, stay on his side. Take off the pressure, it doesn’t help our child. Really trusting.

And yes, other people are going to maybe pressure us. But if we want what we want, which is the manners, we have to prioritize our child’s comfort and know that other people don’t understand child development and they don’t understand my child the way that I do. We understand where he’s coming from, and that the last thing we want is to put our own pressure or emotions into the situation. We trust that our child will do this in time.

Whew, what a relief when we can trust, right? It’s scary. But when we actually embrace that, it takes the pressure off of us.

And no, everybody is not going to understand. Everybody we come across is not going to understand children and how this works. That’s okay. One of the things I try to do with parents is help them to do what this approach did for me, which is build that inner core of confidence in what you’re doing. Conviction. It’s amazing how other people’s insensitivities and, really, ignorance about children, it just falls away when you do this. And we can do it so kindly.

So we’re taking off the pressure. But in this case, I would also have a little talk with my child, because I want to reframe this for him, acknowledge and express to him that I was a little pushy about it. I am sorry that I made him uncomfortable, and I totally trust that he’s going to do that when he’s ready. And, “I’m there for you, and I know other people sort of want something, sometimes, but you don’t have to say it. I know you will when you feel comfortable. You’ll do that.”

So some semblance of that conversation.

I would also say, “But it does hurt people’s feelings when you yell ‘don’t talk to me, don’t do that.’ I understand why you’re doing that because this has become an uncomfortable situation for you, but please don’t, because it does hurt people’s feelings. And I promise I’m not going to try to get you to say goodbye anymore or say hi to people. I promise.” And then really follow through with that. It may not change it immediately. There may be a little lag where he’s still pushing people away. But if you do this re-messaging with your whole attitude and the way that you are in this situation, it will work. He will stop doing that.

Here’s another way that we can relate to how children feel… So this whole thing started, it sounds like, with that he won’t say goodbye to his teacher. And she says she made the mistake of saying… I mean, this is a small mistake that a lot of people make, but I wonder if there are other times where she’s feeling really uncomfortable that he’s not saying hello? And then maybe she’s not saying anything about that, but he’s picking up on her feelings. This sounds like a very sensitive, intuitive guy.

But how many of us, as adults, like to say goodbye? And she says, he loves his school, “which he loves and runs inside to.” He loves this place. He probably loves his teacher. It’s a wonderful time for him, but saying goodbye… I know so many adults that avoid saying goodbye when it’s charged like this, when they have emotions around it.

Think of all the parties that we… Well, now we don’t go to parties, but when we used to go to parties, think of all the times that we left without saying goodbye because we just didn’t want to have that little moment with somebody and interrupt them. It’s easier just to leave.

So it makes sense that this is hard for young children who are even more open, their hearts are on their sleeves in all situations. I mean, that’s one of the incredibly charming, lovely things about being with children is they put it all out there. So that makes sense. When we can see this, when we can see our child’s point of view, it’s so much easier to stay on their side and to handle situations in a way that helps them to blossom, helps them to flourish. Then we’re so surprised when we hear this genuine, thank you, or hi, or I’m sorry, or even goodbye.

And then the last thing she says here is, “It would even be fine if he ignored people.” But that’s the thing too is, I mean, we might think that, or the other person might even think they’re being ignored, but it’s actually quite the opposite. They’re not ignoring. They’re overwhelmed because they’re taking this person in.

And oftentimes when I’m with parents, maybe they’re in my class or people I know, or maybe people I don’t know that well, sometimes they’ll say to their child, “Say goodbye, say goodbye” or “Say hi, say hi” And if there’s a gentle way to say it, I’ll say to the child or the parent, “I see you, you are saying hi to me. I see.” Because children will do that. They will greet you with their eyes, with their countenance. You can feel it. I try to reassure the parent that I’m getting all I need here, actually getting more than enough. Your child is being real with me and taking me in and saying hello in the way they’re able to right now.

So I really hope some of this helps. I also have another written piece on this topic called “Hi, Bye, and Thank You.” And with that, I’ll say, hi, bye, and thank you. So grateful to all of you for listening.

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

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

The post The Best Way to Encourage Toddler Manners appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today, I’m responding to a note I received about incidences where our child gets hurt by another child. And in this case, her child got very upset, not because of the incident, but because of the responses to it from other people. So I’m going to speak specifically to that, and also generalize this topic and offer some basic guidelines for responding when a child is hurt. It could be something that happens on their own, an accident, or they trip or they fall, or it is instigated by another child. I’ll be sharing some thoughts to keep in mind when these things happen, so that we can respond in a way that helps our child process the experience and receive the messages about themselves and their lives that we want them to receive.

Alrighty, now here’s the note:

“Hello, Janet. Hope you’re well. My son is almost two and your advice has been so helpful to us.

I’ve had a few experiences recently with another child pushing or hitting my son when I’m not close enough to prevent it. I’m watching him from no more than five feet away, which seems close at the time, but so far when something happens. As I’m watching his face and body language after the incident, he seems a little shocked but fine. However, the adults who are closer to him will quickly react, rushing to his side saying things like, ‘Are you okay?’ This is happening while I’m coming towards him and by the time I’m there with him, he’s so upset and emotional. It just happens so fast.

I can tell that it’s the reactions from the adults that have really upset and scared him. I basically just pick him up and let him cry until he’s done because I’m not sure what else to do. I hope to prevent this from happening again by being closer, but it’s so hard to guarantee that I will always be able to prevent incidents like this and I can’t control other people’s reactions. My question for you is, in those instances, after the pushing and reactions have already happened, would you handle the situation any differently? Any thoughts you have, I would be honored to hear. We appreciate you.”

Okay, so thanks for all those kind words of appreciation. I love this mother’s instincts. It sounds like she is observing, tuning in, and really seeing her child, so she’s getting a very accurate perception of what’s going on with him.

We have to remember that children take in situations much more slowly than we do, because they don’t have that easy frame of reference for what happened. They’re just learning about everything in their world and what goes on.

And I’m sure she’s correct in that maybe at first he is, she says shocked, but shocked is even too strong a word for what children feel. Sometimes it’s just surprised. They are startled. So, something happened, ouch. But it sounds like it didn’t hurt a lot. And then he’s absorbing adults who out of their concern, these instincts people have are positive of course, but they’re rushing in indicating to him that something upsetting just happened and that’s kind of scary. All this energy around him, like something went very wrong there. So then he’s responding to that and getting upset. So, yes, this mother is spot on in what she sees here.

The only thing about this experience that I might adjust a little for this parent is where she says she basically just picks him up and lets him cry until he’s done because she’s not sure what else to do. If these people were very close and hovering around him, yes, I might pick him up, but I recommend always being careful about picking up, because when we swoop a child up, it can indicate to them that we see this as an emergency as well, that we see something they need to be rescued from. So I wouldn’t do that unless people were so close and in his face that, really, that’s the only way I can extricate him and help him to process and have a moment around this.

What I might do if I didn’t feel I needed to pick him up right away is, on my knees next to him or squatting down, say something like, “Wow, yeah. There’s lots of people concerned about you right here.” And I would be looking at him acknowledging that, open to his feelings, that he has a right to have and needs to express. I would just be there for him to let him share it with me, while I’m also acknowledging what’s going on and his feelings around it.

But if everybody was really all over him and I couldn’t get any space there with him, then I would pick him up and say, “Let’s go over here. I want to bring you closer.” And then we would go wherever was comfortable. Then I would, at that point, do that acknowledging to whatever feelings he had.

Then when he seemed to recover, that’s when I might say, “I saw what happened. Another child came by and pushed.” And if I had seen where that came from, I might say, “It seemed like you were in his way or her way,” or “It seemed like they were running around and they’d pushed. I don’t know why.” Or “It seemed like they wanted the toy that you had so they hit you.” I would give that information if I had it, so that my child could have a chance to understand what happened here.

Interestingly, children actually do seem to understand that other children sometimes hit and push, because they have those impulses themselves. This is what I’ve noticed working with groups of toddlers for many years. And they forgive, because they can, on some level, empathize with that.

And that’s not to say that I would expect my child to do that, but I wouldn’t come from a place of saying, “That child is bad,” although what he did is wrong — blaming that child, demonizing that child. Because what that can do is actually make our child feel: Oh, there’s a lot of judgment going on here and when I do those things, I’m going to be seen as bad or wrong instead of a child with an impulse that got away from him or her.

So these are all reasons for us to dial back and try to regulate our own emotions around these incidents.

There are a lot of reasons that we might react more emotionally, like these people around this child did. Maybe we see young children as very helpless. We don’t see a capable person there. Or maybe we’ve just had a really rough day and if this happens to our child, especially, it’s like the last straw. It just hurts us and it triggers something in us. Or it could be that we want to show that we care and we feel that that’s the best way to do it. Or if it was our child that did something wrong, we feel guilty and so we’re kind of overdoing it.

All those things make sense and they happen, but these projections and emotional responses that we have are something to look at. So that we can give our child messages of basic competence, a feeling that he is safe in the world. Yes, we’ll be there to protect, but he doesn’t need to be rescued and overprotected.

Again, this parent who wrote this note to me has very, very healthy instincts, and that’s because she is, it sounds like, a practiced observer. And that’s one of the many reasons observation is such an important practice for parents. It gives us a chance to understand a situation and clear away our own projections around it and judgments around it, which I’ll get in the way of understanding it.

So now I want to offer some basic guidelines for, as I said, any incident where our child gets hurt, even just a little bit hurt, falls down, et cetera.

First of all, we’re going to (1) move close to prevent more from happening to keep our child safe. So if that child that pushed was still there, now I’m ready to block it.

Just as this parent wasn’t right on her child, I don’t recommend being right on top of children. Giving them that distance that they seem to want, allowing them to move away from us in a situation and choose to be that confident explorer leaving their secure base, that’s important to trust.

So no, we’re not going to be right on top of our child. If we see that there’s some action around that might end up hurting our child or we see a child who seems very dysregulated that might be harmful, yes, then we would move closer for sure. And if our child is using equipment that they never used and they’re climbing, we want to be there, ready to spot as needed. But this parent’s instinct around that was right.

So sometimes I hear from parents who have unfortunately misinterpreted this advice as: I’m not supposed to do anything and so I just hang back and let my child work it out or gets hurt. That’s absolutely not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about being very observant, not sitting back and just letting things be, but seeing it clearly, and coming into the situation from a place of attunement. And definitely keeping my child safe and the other child safe.

So we’re going to move close and the speed at which we move is going to be based on the urgency of the situation. In this situation that this parent describes, it sounds like he was going to be kept safe because those adults were around him. So my sense would be not to add my own urgency to the situation by running in, because he had enough of that urgent energy around him for sure. And it wasn’t an emergency situation where I needed come in and keep him safe right away. So I would walk in, I would stride in to where he was.

As his mother says, we can’t control what other people do, but we can control what we’re adding to the situation and as the parents, we are the most powerful for sure. So what we feel is going to be felt by our child. Other people can get him wound up, but at least that’s not going to be coming from us.

So we move close. That’s number one.

Number two, (2) we tune in and we take our cues from him. What do we see on his face? If a child falls, let’s say they may not even need us to go in if they’re just tripping and falling down, so we might check him out, check her out, from whatever distance we’re at. What kind of expression am I seeing there? Did this hurt badly or was it just a surprise? What am I seeing here? Taking my own worries out of the picture, if I can. Just seeing.

There, I might say, “Whoa, I saw that. You fell. Are you okay?” I’m going to tune in. I’m going to acknowledge if my child was crying or if I saw that it was a bigger fall: “Ouch. It looks like that hurt.” And now I’m going to be coming closer. My goal is to be responsive rather than reactive.

The third thing I would do is (3) acknowledge whatever feelings my child has. In this case with the adults around him, he’s upset. I would say, “Yeah, I see there’s lots of people around you. They’re concerned.”

Or if he was reacting to being hit or pushed and he was getting upset around that, then I would say, “Oh ouch, you got hit. That really hurts.”

I might ask if he’s okay, but I’m not trying to talk my child out of their feelings or tell him he’s okay. Getting to cry about something or be upset about something, it helps us to feel better and move through it. Feelings are healing.

And then the fourth step that I recommend is where (4) we say what we know, and this is when our child is starting to calm down on his own. So he’s able to hear this. And this is also another reason not to swoop children up out of situations when they fall down because then my child has totally disconnected from what just happened. They’ve just been rescued into this other place. They don’t even know how they got there or what happened and they can’t learn anything from that. But when our child is starting to calm down, we can say, “Ah, this step,” and we’re pointing to it. “You didn’t see that.” Or, “It looks like you tripped on that stick there and that made you fall. Ouch. That really hurt, huh?”

And you’ll see children when you’ve responded this way, even infants that aren’t using expressive language will look back and point at what happened. It’s really interesting. And it helps children to, of course, understand what just happened, get that clarity and feel empowered by that knowledge. It helps them to recover and to feel more confident generally about everything they do.

So that little moment of going over what happened, just a moment, always trying to stay tuned in to how our child feels about it.

If our child feels like it’s nothing and he’s just moving on, then we don’t want to hold on and make a bigger deal out of that. Let’s say he trips and he just gets up and keeps walking and doesn’t even look at us, we’re not going to call attention to that. Again, it’s that tuning in to our child. What do we see? What is he looking to us for? Does he want to share an experience with us?

So those are the four basic guidelines.

There is another one, though, when children do this marvelous thing that we can take the wrong message from sometimes as parents. A child will sometimes want to keep going over an incident. Even a child again who doesn’t have that much expressive language. Let’s say it was a woman who was having this strong reaction to him getting hurt by the other child. Then he might say, “Lady scared.” Something that indicates to us that he’s talking about that.

And what I meant about parents sometimes getting the wrong impression is that it can seem to us like, “Oh, yikes, he’s traumatized. He’s so upset about this still.” Even if our child doesn’t seem upset in that moment, we can get scared by that. As parents were always prone to worry, we just are. But if we can see that as such healthy processing that our child is doing that’s helping them to learn from this experience and totally leave it behind and get everything he needs out of it, then we can respond in a way that helps that process, which would be going over it as many times as our child wants, responsively.

So he says, “Lady?” and we say, “Ah, yes, I think you’re talking about that lady that seemed very concerned about you. She seemed very upset about the whole situation and she was concerned about you.”

So I can speak the truth. I don’t have to pretend that this wasn’t a big deal to him or that it was fine and she shouldn’t have done that. I’m going to give my child those messages through my reaction that I didn’t feel that was a big deal for him. I’m not going to say that to him, but that was what I demonstrated through the way I responded. My walk closer to him, accepting whatever he was feeling, I was indicating that this wasn’t a big deal. That was something I felt he could handle with my support.

So he got that message, but now he wants to talk about the things that he’s still trying to understand and that’s incredible. You’ll see children doing this all the time. Sometimes they want to go over how they fell or why that other child pushed them, which we don’t really know, probably. But we can say if our child really seems to want to know more about that, we can say, “Sometimes when we don’t feel happy inside, we push and we hit. We don’t want to do those things, but we do them.” So it’s not our process. It’s our child’s, but we can be the ones there to give the most empowering messages.

I have a post about this on my website called “When Our Child is Hurt by Another” and it even gets into when your child is talking about something that happened at school or at someone’s house, how to respond to that. You can read the piece if you’re interested, but here’s what I say about the affirming messages that we want our child to receive, and our child can receive, from these experiences:

• Uncomfortable things happen, but I’ll be okay.
• My parents understand that kids make mistakes, and they forgive. They don’t label us “good” or “bad.”
• I can share difficult feelings and explore situations with my parents without them getting upset.
• They listen to and trust me. They give me ideas for handling situations, but they never tell me what to feel.

I hope some of that helps.

For more, 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. As a matter of fact, 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. We can do this.

The post The Most Helpful Response When Your Child Gets Hurt (4 Guidelines) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “Resolving A Toddler’s Aggressive Behavior (Hitting, Pushing, Hair Pulling)”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I have a question about a child who is pulling hair and the parent’s having difficulties trying to figure out why her child is doing this and how to help. And the advice I share will also apply to hitting, pushing, even biting, these other impulsive behaviors that young children sometimes have.

Here’s the note I received:

“Hi, Janet. I hope you see my white flag amongst all your messages, as I’m so desperate for help. My smart, brave, and extremely sensitive two-year-old is going through a really bad stage of pulling hair. This has been going on for about three months now, and I really don’t know what to do. I’m a regular listener of your podcast and have an AMA. I’m a Montessori teacher with an intense passion for gentle, respectful parenting. I’ve tried your strategies of going down to her level and firmly saying, ‘Hair pulling hurts,’ then making sure to give the child who is hurt comfort, and role-modeling to my daughter how to be gentle.

There doesn’t seem to be a trigger anymore. She will run up to any child and just pull their hair. She can go from playing alongside a peer to being extremely violent in a second. I’ve left all my mum and baby groups within 10 minutes of getting there, as she can easily pull almost 10 children’s hair in this time. I’m exhausted and have become extremely depressed and isolated because of this. I feel parents are judging me and not wanting to spend time with us.

She has started nursery for two mornings a week, but she’s not showing any of this behavior there. We have not had any big changes, either, so I’m really confused as to why this is happening. Any help will be massively appreciated. Thank you very much.”

Okay, so, what I want to try to do in this podcast is help this parent, and maybe other parents, to understand the difference between our perspective on a situation like this and our child’s. Because the key to responding in a way that helps our child pass through this behavior stage is to understand their perspective and then respond from that understanding, giving our child what our child actually needs in these moments.

In regard to the strategy that this parent is using, she said, “I’ve tried your strategies of going down to her level and firmly saying, ‘Hair pulling hurts.'” I’m not sure why she’s associating this with me, but actually that would not be my advice. I would advise something a little more connected, which would be, “I can’t let you,” and I would be careful about firmness. I even have a post called “Stop Being So Stern,” and it explains why a stern or firm confrontation like that can actually create more discomfort for our child and more dysregulation.

Now, I’m of course not saying that we shouldn’t have firm limits and set them confidently. Absolutely. But firm, for parents, sometimes connotes raising our voice a bit, saying it a bit harshly or sternly, and we need to be careful around that, in my experience. I’ll explain why through these two perspectives.

As adults, as parents or teachers, we see our child doing a behavior and we, of course, want to let them know that’s not okay and they need to stop. If we do that, and yet our child continues to do that behavior, we’re of course going to get frustrated and we might repeat that stern correction, because from our point of view, it feels like: You’re not understanding this. I need you to understand that this is not okay, so I’m going to say it again and I’m going to say it firmly and maybe more firmly each time, because you’re not getting it and I need you to get this.

That’s a very understandable perspective that we have as adults, because we have a fully developed prefrontal cortex and we tend to see these situations from a place of reason. She must not be getting it. She must not be understanding that this is a no.

From our child’s perspective, here’s how this can go. Now, this mother says that her child has started nursery for two mornings a week. For a sensitive two-year-old… and she calls her an extremely sensitive two-year-old… that is a huge transition. It’s a lot. The wonderful news here is that her daughter is not showing the behavior when she’s at nursery. Isn’t that interesting? What does that mean?

That indicates that this is a feeling and a behavior that she’s sharing with her mother. It’s probably related to the stress from this major transition she’s making in starting nursery. But it may have become a pattern in their relationship. The way these behaviors usually start is an impulse a child has, and hair is interesting for a young child. Often infants will even do this. They pull our hair, so this child discovered that got a reaction. Of course we’re naturally going to have an instinctive reaction to pain, if we’re caught by surprise, but if we continue to be reactive around that kind of behavior, then this experiment or impulse, this expression of an emotion, now becomes, for the child, something that also stirs something disconcerting in her parent or the adult caring for her.

For young children, who look up to us, when we get off balance around a behavior that they have… Maybe we’re even puzzled. We don’t even know how we’re supposed to react. When children experience that from these gods that they look up to, it throws them off-balance. It makes them a little more uncomfortable than they were before they did it, and it can be sort of curious to them, in a disconcerting way, and this is when people will say that sometimes their child will smile. That isn’t a comfortable smile. You might want to check out the podcast I did with Mona Delahooke, because we go into that idea a little more thoroughly, that sometimes children smile and that would seem to indicate that they’re enjoying hurting us. What does that mean? It’s actually another sign of embarrassment or discomfort that our child has.

So, they have this behavior, they see that it gets this uncomfortable reaction out of their parent, so when they’re in another social situation, which is always a little bit stressful for children this age, then they’re immediately going there: Ah, I’ve got to do this again and see what my parent’s going to do.

It’s all very unconscious. It’s not thought-out deliberate behavior. It’s a pattern that develops in the relationship between the parent and child. Children are pretty incredible this way, that they naturally want to work on us, on some level. They want us to get a handle on the fact that they’re going to have a lot of impulsive behavior, and they need us to stay on their side and help them stop rather than telling them they need to stop. They don’t have the skills or the self-control to be able to stop themselves. They really don’t.

So, when this parent says “hair pulling hurts” and then she’s making sure to give the child who is hurt comfort and role-modeling to her daughter how to be gentle, I am sure her daughter knows how to be gentle, because she’s demonstrating that she can be in a group situation with other children and not have these behaviors. So, this isn’t about, “I need to teach my daughter something that she doesn’t know.” It’s about, “I need to help my child, protect my child and protect other children, in a way that lets my child know this is something I can handle, and I’m going to help them. When they’re showing me that they can’t stop themselves and they’re acting impulsively, I’m going to be there to help.” That safety in our relationship that children need to feel to be at their best.

Giving these moments of “hair pulling hurts” and then giving the child who’s hurt comfort and role-modeling, all of that is making a little bit too much of a story around this behavior. It’s getting made into a little event instead of just stopping her, just being what I call her “buddy-guard,” hanging out next to her comfortably so that when I see that hand going up, I can gently put my hand on hers and stop her.

So, when this parent says there doesn’t seem to be a trigger anymore, I wonder what the trigger might have been the first time. It might’ve been the parent said no to something, and her daughter expressed her disagreement by pulling her hair, but now the trigger is actually being in those situations with her mother where this has happened, and unconsciously needing to replay, on some level, I believe, hoping that this can get resolved, that her parent can make less of a deal out of it and just stop her.

So, getting into how to fix this kind of behavior… the way we handle the behaviors when they happen to us first, which is usually the way this goes, matters a lot. The very first time our baby hits us or pulls our hair or bites us, yes, we might have an instinctive reaction. “Ouch!” But then ideally we would learn, “My child has a impulse to do that.” Usually it’s because they’re responding to a no, or there’s some other emotion in them that isn’t getting released, another way that we’re not acknowledging, or it can just be, again, “This is interesting. I want to pull this hair.”

So, we show our child, right there, “Oops. Nope, not going to let you do that.” We physically move their hand away. We block them if their hand is going up to us. If they’re sitting on our lap or we’re carrying them and they’re behaving in that way, we put them down. “Oh, I can’t hold you when you’re doing that. That hurts me.” We, ideally, will be modeling gentleness right there. So, it’s not so much modeling after that matters. It’s actually how we model in the moment of the behavior.

I realize that’s hard to do. What helps us to do it is understanding our child’s point of view, that these are innocent behaviors. They are not bad signs or terrible flaws in our children. Almost every child does some of these behaviors, and sometimes it persists, and even then, it’s not even necessarily that we’re doing something wrong. It’s just something our child is working through. It can be a sensitivity to social stress, for some children that are very sensitive. If a child comes too close, it doesn’t feel comfortable. If there’s too many children and too much noise, too much stimulation, they’re going to hit or bite or pull hair.

So, stopping our child when they first do this to us might sound something like, “Ouch. I can’t let you. That hurts,” keeping our response firm in terms of: This is a definite no. I’m sure of myself that this is not something I’m going to allow, but I’m staying your safe parent. I’m not creating more stress by responding harshly. I’m normalizing your impulse to do this for myself, so that I can feel on top of it and not threatened by it.

And my feelings will always come through no matter what I say or what I do with my child. So, that’s how we can help prevent these behaviors from taking hold.

Oftentimes in the RIE classes that I teach, an infant or a young toddler will be interested in touching children’s hair, and that often means pulling it a little too hard. We have a baby doll there that has hair so that we can say, not making a big point of “Don’t do this, do this,” but offering, “You know, if you want to pull hair, this hair is safe to pull. You can pull the doll’s hair. I can’t let you pull his hair.”

Firmness from a person as overwhelmingly powerful to a child as we are can be very matter-of-fact, and ideally will be gentle, even, and comfortable, helping to deescalate rather than escalate.

Where this parent is now, here’s what I would do… After really considering her daughter’s perspective, understanding that starting a care situation is an enormous transition and the fact that she’s succeeding there is wonderful, but that also means she is going to have less energy for another kind of social situation, or anything else that she has to do. It’s going to take all of her energy and emotional regulation abilities to step up to that situation. So, I would balance that with a lot of low-key time, especially for a sensitive child. Not other activities, not other play dates on those days. If you want to do one of those things on another day when she’s not in care, like on a weekend, then go into that realizing your child is still in resting mode and may not have the energy to be in that situation, and if she continues the hair pulling, that’s what she’s saying.

It’s not that this is a failure on this parent’s part that she needs to feel bad about. It’s just: Uh-oh. My child can’t be here. She’s not up for this. That’s what I would take from that situation.

As parents, we always tend to blame ourselves and then that self-judgment ends up getting projected onto our child, and then we just create more stuff that we feel bad about. But no, that’s not what’s going on here. The mum and baby groups might be too much for this child at this point. When she gets more comfortable in the care situation, maybe she can do more of those, but it is a lot.

At this point, I would be what I call buddy-guarding her, which is if you’ve decided you need to do this or that it might be a good idea to be in this group situation or with your friends, you just hang out next to your child, especially when she’s approaching other children, and your hand is there ready, not nervously, ideally, but very, very comfortably. That’s the only way to be a buddy-guard, the point being that I’m close enough so that I can easily stop anything my child might do with her hands, and I’m having that safe, deescalated vibe next to my child so that I’m not contributing to that possibility of the impulse.

Then, when my child does reach out… Let’s say that she gets there before I have a chance. Even though I’m close, I got distracted, I looked away, or I was tentative and she did that. Then I would give a very small response with a note to self: She may not be able to handle this situation, but either way she needs me to be on this, she needs more help. I would say, “Oh, I can’t let you do that,” and I would open her hand immediately and take it off, not roughly, but that I would do firmly, right away, not hesitating, expecting she’s going to be able to stop herself because pulling hair hurts. She knows that, but she can’t stop herself.

So, I would hold her hand away and be as relaxed as I possibly can. I might say, “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to stop you.” And I might say to the other child, “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to stop her.” And then whatever that child is expressing, I would acknowledge, “Oh, that really hurt. That was upsetting for you.” But I don’t want to give more power to the behavior in any way, so I don’t want to glare angrily at my child. I don’t want to overdo the comforting of this other child. Just being responsive. Again, realizing that this might not work today for her.

And then if I have to leave, I might say, “You know, I think you’re letting me know that you’re tired or you can’t do this.” And obviously that’s not ideal when you’ve made a plan with your friends. But when you see more from your child’s perspective, I think you’ll be able to pick and choose these situations for her and choose the ones where she has the best chance of succeeding, meaning she’s very rested, you’ve got her back. She will be able to exhale and feel safer, and children feeling safe in our relationship is the key to them succeeding in any situation.

So, I hope some of that helps.

Also, 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. As a matter of fact, 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 Resolving a Toddler’s Aggressive Behavior (Hitting, Pushing, Hair Pulling) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.