Transcript of “My Child Refuses Independent Play”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

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

Here’s the email I received:

Hi, Janet-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We can do this.

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Transcript of “Raising Mentally Healthy Kids Means Letting Them Grieve”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m going to be talking about a topic that I guess is controversial, and that is this idea of letting children grieve. I know that letting a child feel something can be misconstrued as we’re just ignoring them while they’re sad and we don’t care, and you’re kind of abandoning them emotionally while they’re upset. It’s weird, it’s that word let. And if we exchange it with the word allow, it can have a different connotation, right? It sounds like, oh, this is kind of a privilege. We’re allowing our child to experience an uncomfortable feeling that’s very much a part of life. And letting them express it to us without trying to change it or distract it or cheer them up or tell them they shouldn’t feel that way, they don’t need to feel that way. That’s what I’m going to be talking about today.

Because, like every feeling under the sun and every feeling in the darkness as well, grief and loss are extremely healthy for us to allow ourselves and our children to experience and express fully, to share. And we could say this is especially important for children because they’re in the building stages of emotional health. They’re building the foundation for these capacities to experience every type of feeling and know that it’s healthy, that it passes, they don’t have to be afraid of it. They can have the feeling of being scared, but they don’t have to be afraid of the feeling itself. So it’s important that we try to do this for them, if we believe this. And when we let children feel even these dark feelings like grief and loss, they receive many vital messages: That sadness and loss are healthy, normal, integral to life. And they don’t feel good while we’re in them, but with support, the support of my loved ones, I learn as a child that I can handle them, and they eventually pass.

Most of us didn’t receive these kinds of messages consistently as children, so that makes it even more challenging for us to shift that cycle and give our child something different. That’s healthier, that builds a sense of security, that frees them. Because if I can feel all the hardest emotions to feel, the most uncomfortable ones, I’m free. I can do anything, right? I don’t have to be afraid of life. I don’t have to be afraid of what’s around the corner and worry that I can’t handle it. I’m learning bit by bit, naturally through everyday life, that I can.

Still, even knowing all this and realizing how positive it is, it’s really challenging for us to give this to our children, right? Because none of us want to hear or see our child upset. And the younger the child, the harder this is for us. Even a few seconds of crying, even being on the verge of crying or being sad, we have this instinct to swoop in and try to protect our child from that feeling, thereby giving them this message, Wow, they want to protect me from something. It must be something I can’t handle, that’s too scary.

So you see, that’s the importance of trying to figure this out for ourselves, how we can do this, how we can start to believe in it and frame it for ourselves as this positive, loving thing to do. Which doesn’t make it pleasant, by the way, but it makes it possible. And whether we’re a parent or a grandparent or a paid caregiver, it feels like we’re doing something wrong if the child in our care is upset. So we want to distract them, we want to make them smile, and sometimes we can sort of bring them out of it. We’ll want to do almost anything in our power to put an end to that feeling that’s triggering our child’s tears.

But think about it: Doesn’t our child have a right to, let’s say, if it’s somebody leaving the room that we love, our parent—that’s one of the examples I’m going to be sharing here. We don’t want them to leave the room. We love them so much that we’re sad when they leave. Don’t we have a right to feel like that? Isn’t that a good thing? Doesn’t it show the depth of my love for you, my joy in being with you, that I don’t want you to ever go away from me? That I have feelings when you do? With Magda Gerber’s profound encouragement, I tried hard to embrace this approach with my children, who are now all three adults. I wasn’t perfect at it, by any means. But I could soon see the difference between their much healthier relationship to their emotions and mine, which is still a work in progress.

In one particularly glaring example, my middle child was very close to the dog that we had at the time. Of all three of my children, she was the one that probably most saw this dog as kind of her mascot. She’s a talented artist, and she drew a pen drawing of this dog’s face, this dog’s portrait, and she won an award in middle school for it. She went to college, and I believe it was her first summer coming home from college, and our dog died. Well, first she became paralyzed and then she died. It was very, very difficult, a dramatic, heart-wrenching experience. Not just that she died, but the way that we had to let her go. We were all very sad.

And this daughter, she really kind of fell apart. She was sitting on the floor in the hallway between her bedroom and mine and just couldn’t get up. She was just sobbing, sobbing. And everything in me wanted to come over there and stroke her and grab her and hug her and make her feel better. I was scared. It looked like she might be falling into some deep depression. It was so intense. But everything I knew about this child and about emotional health and what my role was in my child’s feelings: to listen, to hold space for, to be there if she wanted to reach out to hold me or something like that, but not to force myself on her, like I wanted to do. So I sat there next to her for a while, not touching her, just being present. She knew I was there for her. And still, she cried. And eventually I had to get up, and she went on and on. And in her bedroom, on the floor. It seemed like this endless abyss that she was falling into and that I was falling into with her because I was so worried about her.

Well, what happened was after about, I think it was even less than 24 hours, she came out of it. And it wasn’t long after that that she was remembering this dog, and she could laugh at some of the memories. I mean, dogs do bring all this humor into your life as a family. And probably cats do too, I’ve never had a cat. But that’s one of the joys of having a dog for me is they’re funny. They are just so precious and unique and you’re always trying to figure out what’s going on with them. So she had all of these memories, and she was like a different person. She was free, she was light. She had totally moved through it. And I was dumbfounded because I was still going through it in my way. In my slower, not as healthy way, I believe. I was still suffering. And honestly, it took me like a year to get over that dog, or at least several months, before I wasn’t feeling sad about the dog. She moved on. And that showed me so clearly, wow, this is what happens when you’re free to clear your feelings and move through them. It can go away like that. Not always, not with every grief that a child has, not with every child. But I could see the difference. And if I wasn’t already sold at that point, which I was a thousand times over, that did it for me.

And what it reminded me of, too, is that I need to allow myself to feel losses. There’s loss all around us, and I don’t mean to be maudlin, it’s just a sign that we’re living and we’re loving. When my adult children come to visit me, they light my world up, and then they leave and I feel so let down. Not by them, but by the loss of them. I’ll feel myself welling up, and I just try to let myself cry and not distract myself by getting busy on something. Very easy to do with a phone, right? Interestingly, it often happens in my car. I’ve taken my child to the airport or they’ve left and now I’m going out to do some errands, and I’ll be in my car, where I can’t use a tech device or something else as a distraction. And the feelings come up, I’m sad. And it’s okay. I’m going to see them again soon. It just means I love them.

I feel like that when I’m on an outing with a friend or a loved one or any kind of gathering, I feel a little sad when it ends, and sometimes I want to stay too long or I stay up too late because of that. I don’t want to let go. Or even just when everything in my life feels like it’s going really well and I feel ecstatic, there’ll be this little voice of warning reminding me, This is temporary. Now, I don’t recommend that voice at all because that’s a party pooper voice, as far as I’m concerned! But it’s there because I’m preparing myself for a letdown. But again, I don’t recommend that one.

This was actually the very first post I wrote on my blog in fall of 2009. My mother had died a few months before. It’s the very first post I wrote, now there’s something like 400 and something, and then all the podcasts too. All of my content there is free. I wrote this piece that I called Good Grief, and it was about my experience as a teacher in parent-infant classes. We’re all sitting around on the floor in this classroom and we’re observing the children play. And it’s always a fascinating experience for me still, after many, many years of teaching. We encourage the parents to, when they have to go to the bathroom, which is outside of the gated-play-area part of the room, we ask them to try not bringing their child with them and going on their own. And this usually doesn’t happen until the children know us and they know me at least, and they know this place and they know that they’re safe. And they know that their parent will come back because they’ve learned that through the consistency of the parenting that that family’s had.

But what they do—and it’s so beautiful when I think about it, when I’m there in the moment, it doesn’t feel that beautiful—but they get upset a lot of the time. Especially when they’re in that separation anxiety stage, I think it’s eight to 18 months they go through that, where they’re especially sensitive to their parent leaving. They will get upset. And we make sure that the parent tells them that they’re leaving, so they’re not sneaking out. I would never recommend that. Respect is about honesty. We want them to be aware. So the parent says, and makes sure they’re paying attention and they look in their eyes and say, “I’m going to go to the bathroom. I’ll be back.” And then as soon as they get up to leave, often right away the child starts getting upset and the parent I know wants to kind of turn around and run back. But we encourage them to say, “I hear you. Janet’s there for you, or somebody’s there for you, and I’ll be back.” And then the person left with them, which I get the honor of that, gets to practice holding space for that child being there, and it’s very, very hard.

Anyway, I wrote about this in my first blog post. In this case it was a 10-month-old, the example that I used. And this parent walked with trepidation toward the door exiting the parenting class. Then she paused and she asked me, “Should I just go?” And since she’d clearly told her 10-month-old what she was doing, I encouraged her, yes. Then he began to cry. So I approached him and I spoke softly. “Your mom went out. She’s coming back. You didn’t want her to go.” This simple acknowledgement will often calm a child down, but not always. In this case, he sniffled once or twice and then sat patiently, eyes fixed on the door, waiting for his mom to return.

The situation repeated the following week in class. This mom told her son, “I’m going to the bathroom.” And she somewhat tentatively walked out. I mean, that’s another thing we feel, Ohhh, uh-oh. But it’s easier on our child if we are confident, because that instills confidence in them that this isn’t a scary experience. This is a life experience of not getting what we want in that moment, about losing the attention of someone that we adore for a few minutes. And so this time he cried for a seemingly endless minute, I’d say, and I felt the discomfort of everyone in the class, including my own. I offered to pick him up, but he didn’t want that. And so I just stay there, I stay nearby, and I just wait. I imagine myself this witness, this receptacle to something really important that’s happening. That’s how I get through it. Really important, the most loving thing. So then he cried for a bit, then became quiet, sat still for a moment, and then reached for a nearby ball. By the time his mom came back, he was involved in playing. But when he saw her, he cried out to her, because that’s what children often do, right? Hey, you left me! I don’t like that. They’ll often cry more when the parent comes back than they did when the parent was leaving, which is interesting. It’s like they’re saying, Hey, I didn’t give you permission to do that. Don’t ever do that again.

What I realized as I’d been exploring the grief process with my mother and I read this wonderful book, The Grief Recovery Handbook, and then thinking about this experience that’s very common in our classes, I realized this is probably one of the first times they ever experience loss and grief. When their loving parent has to walk away or leave them with another caregiver. In this book The Grief Recovery Handbook, they talk about all the negative messages, the unhelpful messages that we get around grief as adults, still. Oh, keep yourself busy. Don’t think about it. Or, replace the loss. Another door will open. Don’t feel bad. You’ve got to be strong for others. From a very young age, we can get these messages about grief. And what it does is it makes the grief linger even longer and kind of infiltrate into holding us back in other ways in life, undermining our ability to express our feelings, steering us to this incomplete resolution. A lot of explanations around that are in the book. I recommend it.

We can do better for our children by allowing them to have these experiences as they come up. No, we’re not creating them. We’re not trying to train our child to be okay with us leaving by doing this somehow unnaturally. It’s just part of life that sometimes I’m with you. And when I’m with you, I want to be totally with you as much as possible. Sometimes I’m doing my thing and you’re doing yours, there’s those times too. But then there’s times that I leave. I let you know, I’m not sneaking around. You don’t have to worry about me disappearing. I’m always going to tell you, even if you get mad at me. And you have a right to feel those feelings. In fact, I want you to share those with me because that’s a lifetime of you feeling comfortable sharing the hardest things with me: that you’re mad at me, that you’re disappointed in what I did. If we can share that with our parents, we’ve got nothing to fear or to hide.

Another early loss that children deal with is something you’ve heard me talk about a lot: when there’s a new baby born. There’s a sense of loss of that relationship and the family dynamic the way it was. And as parents, we feel that too. I remember feeling that, I don’t know if I’m ready to have another one. I like everything the way it is. And I’m very much the kind of person that I always like everything the way it is, so I don’t like to change things! But life is change, right? And oftentimes parents will say to me, “Well, my child loves the new baby. We’re not having that at all.” But when the parents dig deeper, they find that it may not be directed at the baby, but there’s still some grief there for the preexisting situation. I remember my sister telling me that her son, who’s five years older than his brother, seemed fine, adored the baby brother. But when she brought up, “You know, I wonder if you’re missing all these things we used to do together. We used to go to the park, we used to go to the playground, we would go to lunch together. It’s different now, isn’t it?” And she said for the first time in this experience, the tears came. Even though she’d thought about it that way, she was a little surprised because he hadn’t showed that before. And she was so glad that she acknowledged it, that she helped bring that out into the open so that he could share his grief.

Now I am going to read a question I got in an email from a grandparent that’s around this topic. And it’ll give me the opportunity to give some specific examples for responding to loss and sadness and grief in a way that will help our children to process it in the healthiest manner. Here’s the note:

Hello,

I’m guessing this is not a unique challenge, if a sort of heart-rending one. My 18-month-old grandchild has just started daycare. She had other resources in place, including me. Parents are happy with me caring for her, but wanted something from the daycare experience. I’m not yet clear what. All of that just to say, it’s been hard for me to feel wholehearted in this situation, except for the primary desire for the well-being of the little one. Which all of us share, even if we’re seeing it differently.

My question is about how to talk and be respectful with this grandchild when, though happy to see me at pickup, she’s also sad and confused not to see her parents then. She’ll say, “mama, papa” repeatedly, even while diverting into play and hugs with me. She’s at the age where she truly understands just about all the words, if not yet able to communicate fully with them. Do I just say, “I hear you want to see mama and papa”? Or what? Please help.

I love that this grandparent has reached out and that the whole family has joined in this interest in this little child’s well-being. I mean, what a wonderful nest to be in for that child.

Here’s what I would recommend to this grandparent or anyone going through anything like this or any situation where a child seems to be missing someone, sad about the loss of them. I’ve split this into challenges, because all of this is challenging, right? But here are the specific challenges.

Challenge number one, what we’ve been talking about: perceive this as healthy, positive for this child, even though it doesn’t seem that way. And in this case, it’s so wonderful that this grandparent is self-reflecting that she doesn’t really agree with this decision the parents have made, because that is an important hurdle for her to deal with first. In the interest of the well-being of her child and really the well-being of herself, feeling clear and comfortable about what she’s doing. What I would do is work on coming to terms with or realizing that this isn’t my choice for her, but her parents, who I love and support, and my granddaughter, they need me to feel as comfortable and as settled as possible with this choice that’s been made so that my granddaughter can. Because when we’re ambivalent or unsure about what our child maybe seems upset about, then our child has nowhere for their feelings to land in a safe and solid manner. That’s what they need from us, they need us to be sure. So maybe we’ve made a decision for our child to go to a certain school or a care situation, and maybe we’ll change our mind at some point. But until we have, I would try to bring conviction to that situation so that our child can have a sounding board that’s solid. Because if we’re unsure, if we’re uncomfortable, our child has really very little chance of feeling comfortable with whatever the situation is.

Part of getting to that place of conviction for ourselves might well be, in this case for example, acknowledging and processing my own feelings of sadness and loss about not getting to be the one who gets to spend the day with my grandchild. So once I come to that, as this grandparent, that, Okay, whatever I feel about this decision, it is what it is, and we’re going to go for it, then I would realize that she is going to have feelings probably, because this is a change, this is something new. And there’s loss involved. There’s loss of the kinds of days that she had. There’s loss of some of that time with the parents. There’s a lot of novelty and rising up to deal with new people and new care and people that don’t understand you as well. And it’s a big move. So she needs all the solidity in our support as she can get.

Then, from that place of knowing that her feelings are healthy and normal and positive, and that we are accepting the situation as it is so that she has a chance to, then we want to also realize—and this always was the clincher for me, with other people’s children, with my children, in any situation—know that this is an opportunity for an incredible bonding moment between you. I’ve never stopped being amazed at the bonding power that allowing and supporting a child’s feelings, whatever they are, has. It still blows me away. It’s like this extraordinary gift, this reward that we get for doing this extremely challenging work of holding space, being passive to what is. Trusting and calming ourselves enough to let our child feel, to let the feelings do their healing.

So that’s challenge number one, finding that place of conviction and trust that this is a positive experience, not a fail or something we need to rescue our child from. That’s hard on its own, right?

Two: When we reflect and acknowledge, as this grandparent says, what do I say? We reflect and acknowledge only what we know for sure, which is really just what the child is telling us. We don’t want to make inferences there, jump to conclusions, or make assumptions, because that’s usually more about us and our fears and discomforts. So what this child has said is, “mama, papa” and the grandparent says she repeats this. And the grandparent says, “Do I just say, ‘I hear you want to see mama and papa’?”

If we really get picky about this—and again, the reason to do that is that we can sort of amplify feelings out of our own fear. Oh no, she’s missing her mom and dad, ugh this is bad. It takes us down a road that’s going to make it harder for us to trust and let the feelings be. When we just stay right where she is, not rushing ahead, inferring what she might say, what she might be thinking, or what we imagine the worst that she’s thinking, all she’s saying is, “mama, papa.” So what I recommend saying is what I know for sure, which is, “You’re thinking about mama and papa. You’re telling me what you’re thinking about. Yeah, they didn’t come to get you this time. I did. I got the pleasure.” And then maybe she says it again, and maybe we take that into, “I wonder what they’re doing right now.” But we’re not assuming that she is saying she wants or needs to see them or that she’s feeling sad about them.

Backing that all the way up, just staying where our child is. It’s more challenging than it maybe sounds. And just as the first challenge is so much about our perceptions and feelings, so is this. It’s about what we might be projecting into the situation. And whenever we’re projecting something into the situation, it can interfere with what’s actually going on, and we’re not going to know as much about what’s actually going on. What’s our child really saying there? It’s interesting, right? I find often this very thing, that children will say dada when they’re with mama, or the other way around. And then the parent says, “Oh, don’t worry, he’ll be back,” or “They’re coming back.” Instead, it could just be this really sweet, positive, I’m thinking about that guy, or I’m thinking about that mom that I love. That’s it. And if there’s more, they’ll tell us more or they’ll indicate more. Maybe they’ll cry a little or go unghh. “Sounds like you’re feeling something sad about mama or dada.” That’s where we can go then. And then sometimes children will repeat that.

I’m not saying that’s what’s true in this case, maybe she’s just repeating it because she’s enjoying saying those words and thinking about them. They’re very important people in her life, as is grandma, I’m sure. But she might also be repeating them because she senses this is rattling grandma a little bit, and she’s kind of pursuing that, as children do. What is this vibe I’m getting? That she’s not that comfortable when I say that and she’s trying to reassure me, like something’s wrong. Very subtle stuff, I know. Some people say, why is she making this big deal about all this? I don’t know. I’m a geek about this stuff. What can I say?

Okay, number three, third challenge: Take it as it comes. This grandparent says the little girl “diverts into play and hugs.” So I don’t know if that’s the grandparent trying to divert her, but I sense that maybe this is the little girl diverting into play and hugs, I don’t know. But I wouldn’t divert her so much as just do what I would do naturally, if she was saying mama and papa or not. If that meant play and hugs then I would do that, and maybe it’s the little girl initiating that, I’m not sure. But just know that that’s the way it often goes. And there’s no need to try to get her back on task in talking about mama and dada or talking about that she misses them or something else. That’s not our job. Our job is to trust her process.

Every time we grieve about anything, it’s a different process every time. So trusting this unique process, if she is indeed missing them. And sometimes children are very clear that they are. So we let that be shared for as long as it needs to, if that’s the case. And then if a child moves on, we trust that that’s what they need to do there. And then maybe it flares up again. That can happen, like when a child goes to preschool or to kindergarten and they have to say goodbye to the parent, feelings will just come up. Then the child will get immersed in something else and then they come up again. It’s all good, as my son says. It’s all good. So this could be a process of minutes or a sporadic one of days or weeks or longer. Just encourage it, reflecting back only what your child’s saying.

That’s it, those three things. Simple, not easy. But if we do this, our children can continue to experience loss naturally, learn to deal with loss capably, and know that loss is survivable. And, as I wrote at the end of my post way back when I was starting to blog, “this mindful approach is vital because when we adopt it, far from failing, we are providing the highest level of care . . . and love.” So if that makes sense to you, please know, we can do this.

There’s a whole ton of posts on every topic around parenting, if you want to go to my website and check out topics, or even just do a search online with my name and search words about your topic, I can almost guarantee you that something will come up that I hope will help. And of course, my books No Bad Kids and Elevating Child Care. If you’re like me, you’ll need all the support you can get on these topics. And I really hope that some of mine can be of help.

Thank you again for supporting this podcast. We can do this.

The post Raising Mentally Healthy Kids Means Letting Them Grieve appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Learn more about Janet’s “No Bad Kids Master Course” at: NoBadKidsCourse.com.

Transcript of “My Toddler Won’t Separate or Warm Up to Anyone Else”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m going to be responding to a question from a parent who says that her two-and-a-half-year-old has always had separation anxiety and can’t get comfortable with grandparents, even the child’s father. This little girl gets upset whenever her mother isn’t there to care for her and seems especially anxious around family members that try to engage her or touch her. This parent’s wondering if there’s anything she can do to help her child become more comfortable in these situations and take some of the pressure off this parent, who feels like she’s the only one her daughter will be contented with.

Okay, so here’s the question I received:

Hi, Janet-

Thank you for all the work you do. I have a question about my daughter’s separation anxiety from me (mom) that has seemed to be present since birth.

I’ve always tried to be respectful of her communication. So as an infant, when she showed distress at being held by other family members, I always took her back or, if I had to leave the room, I would let her play on the floor instead of forcing her to be held by somebody else. My mom said that when she seemed upset, I should say, “It’s okay, it’s just grandma.” But I wanted to respect that she didn’t want that physical contact with someone, as we would with an older child who didn’t want to give a hug to a family member. When she was six weeks and I had to go to my postpartum appointment, I left her with my husband and he said that she screamed bloody murder almost the entire time until I returned.

Now, at two-and-a-half, she still has barely ever been left with anyone but me—only for my medical or dental appointments—and she still does not like to be picked up by other family members. She’s very independent when we are at home or in familiar public places like the library, but at family members’ houses if I go to the bathroom she starts crying anxiously for me, even if she was playing independently up until that point. Unlike other children in the family or whom I have worked with, she is never soothed or comforted by other family members, even her dad, and will only accept comforting from me. If she is already happy and comfortable and I am around, that is the only time she can enjoy other adults. And they have to work really hard to be fun or silly or she wants nothing to do with them. She’s definitely more anxious around the family members who have been known to try to pick her up, such as grandma, than the ones who have always given her space.

I guess I’m wondering if I should have allowed her to get used to being held by others when she was an infant. Was she too young for me to employ the rule of not forcing a child to hug anyone she doesn’t want to? But I’ve never seen another baby who is so bothered by being held by others, so I also wonder if it is just her inborn personality.

Thank you.

Okay. While this in its entirety is a very specific issue this parent is having, it’s common for children to be slower to warm up to other people besides their primary caregiver. And that makes sense, right? They’re used to this person, they’re comfortable with this person, and getting comfortable with somebody else outside of this first person they’ve bonded with or are bonding with requires a little stretch for them. It’s a little uncomfortable. And it’s true what this parent says, that some children are more sensitive to this than others and it’s harder for them. They don’t want the touch and smell of that other person or the way that person touches or holds them. It’s unfamiliar.

And I love that this parent was considering that from her child’s birth, it sounds like. She says to me, “I’ve always tried to be respectful of her communication. So as an infant, when she showed distress at being held by other family members, I always took her back.” Because this parent believes that, she believes the truth, which is that a baby deserves the same respect as an older child.

And now her child is two-and-a-half and is still struggling with this. Some of what the issue is is really not something to be concerned about. The fact that her child doesn’t want to be held by people other than her mother, that’s very understandable. But the fact that she can’t be comfortable when her mother leaves the room and she feels, I don’t know if it’s unsafe or that she’s unsure of what other people might do, but the parent can’t get away at all and is kind of trapped. That’s rough, right? When we feel like we can’t get away for a minute without our child expressing displeasure.

And a lot of parents come to me with that issue, saying their child won’t separate, clings to them, what can they do? And it’s really only one thing that I recommend that it sounds like this parent might not be doing, and it’s something that most of us in this situation don’t consider. We miss it, and actually it’s something that we miss in a lot of areas with our children because it’s kind of a brave thing to do. It’s not something that is practiced in our society and it requires this leap of faith.

If you listen here, you’ve heard me talk about this before: really welcoming those feelings. Really welcoming a child to share that discomfort. And that’s kind of the step beyond the wonderful respect that this parent is showing her child, respecting her wishes, not wanting to put her in situations where she shows any discomfort. This is a step even further that’s even more respectful, because what it is is seeing and hearing and welcoming a child to share. That’s the opposite of what is commonly done, which is what this parent says that her mother does, which is, “It’s okay, it’s just grandma.” That’s invalidating, right? Taking our child away or moving them away from that person is thoughtful, and that’s respecting what we are assuming is their wish right then. But the place that I recommend that goes even further is allowing our child to be in that space with their feelings while they have our full support and that we’re acknowledging them.

And this is also a difference that I talk about a lot on this podcast, which is the really important difference between acknowledging and accommodating. When we accommodate, when we say, Oops, you’re crying or you’re showing displeasure with this person, so I’m going to move you away, that is accommodating. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but accommodating tends to keep our child stuck in the discomfort because what it does is it affirms to our child that we see their discomfort as very valid and something that we need to fix, instead of valid and something that they need to express to us. That’s the difference. Both are saying it’s valid, but one is wanting to hear and know about discomfort.

Because this is a precious thing that our child is sharing with us, especially as an infant. I’m telling you something, and because I don’t have the words, this is the way I’m telling you that I’m feeling something here. This is new, this is different. I don’t know this person. I wouldn’t give my child over to someone and then try to acknowledge the feelings my child has while they’re in that person’s arms. I would not take the step of letting this person hold the baby until I had the sense that the baby was saying it was okay. And I’m going to talk about that whole process, but first, I just want to make this overall point that I believe that if this parent started to welcome all these feelings their child is sharing with her as a toddler now, and not be afraid of them and not let them stop her in her tracks or prevent her from going to do the things she needs to do to separate.

And ideally if the person that’s with the child when mom separates, if this is dad or grandma or somebody else if mom’s going to the bathroom, ideally these people will also welcome the feelings. But again, it’s a counterintuitive thing. I wouldn’t expect that people will be able to do that, but that would be the ideal. That dad could say, “Oh gosh, you want your mom so bad. You don’t want me here with you right now. You want to be with mom, right? She’s the one that usually gives you that bath, she’s the one that usually” whatever it is.

To be able to be in that place with our child, unintimidated by the sharing, in fact wanting the sharing—it’s such an opportunity for bonding. I’ve been in this situation with my own children, with other people’s children. That will level you up each time in your closeness if you can be brave and welcome a child to share. This is true with a preschool teacher or a kindergarten teacher or the new caregiver or the old caregiver on a time when the child is just feeling vulnerable and didn’t want the parent to leave that day. The grandparents, the aunts, the uncles, the friends. I’ve seen the bonding effect that bravely welcoming a child’s feelings has. Really welcoming them, not just saying words, “It’s okay to be sad,” but Yeah, I feel you. It’s amazing what this does, but it’s a scary one and it’s still scary for me after all these years. So getting over that hump is very scary.

And you have to believe in it. I mean, maybe what I’m saying here sounds ridiculous and you don’t believe in it and you don’t agree with it. That’s okay, too. This is what I recommend and I know that it works and it helps and it’s what our children need to pass through these different things that they’re going through.

And when this parent says that when her child is around family members, they have to really do a song and dance and a show to be fun or silly to get her attention, that’s not really fair to those adults. I mean, it’s fine that they want to do that, but that’s a lot of work that we don’t need to do. We can be our genuine self with children if we allow them to go through all the feelings that they have about us.

When I have a new child in my class, people coming to the door, they’re holding their baby, and the baby will look at me. And the younger a child is especially, the more they just look at you so openly, right? They’re looking straight into you, and you can kind of read their feelings of, Who are you? Can I trust you? And I always acknowledge that. I’ll say hello to whatever the child’s name is, “Yeah, you don’t know me, you’ve never seen me before, and now you’re coming into this room with me. Who is this lady, right?” I’ll reflect back that vibe that I’m getting from the child and help them to know that it’s really okay with me and it’s valid for them to feel all those things about a new situation and a new person. And I want to encourage that sensitivity in them. That’s why young children are such great learners, because they are so open and sensitive and that’s a good thing. So I want to let them know, “Yes, I’m sure you’re feeling a lot of things. Who’s this lady? Yeah, you’re looking at my hair. Yeah, I have different hair than your mom does.” Whatever it is, I want you to share it with me.

And I’ll do this if I’m going into somebody’s house. I mean, that’s even a more intimate situation that now I’m in your house and I’m sitting with your parent. You don’t know me. Who is this lady talking to your mom? Setting boundaries with you sometimes, if that’s what I’m modeling in that consultation. Who is this person? I don’t expect you to be comfortable with me. I’m brand new to you.

So with this parent, with the family members and the grandparents, I would do this from the very beginning the next time you’re all together. As soon as your child is expressing something about somebody there, “You’re looking at grandma. Are you wondering if she’s going to want to hug you today? Yeah. Well, grandma’s not going to hug you unless you want it, but yeah, I see the way you’re looking at her.” And of course, if grandma could do this too, that would be incredible, but it’s okay, we can still help bridge that for our child. And also we’re kind of modeling for the other adults there that this person has a perspective that’s valid. And the more we allow it, the easier it’ll be for her to pass through it and feel more trust and feel more comfortable with us. That’s how the process looks.

So then I wouldn’t try to entertain her or get her attention. I would encourage everybody to trust that they’re enough. And if you really allow her to be herself and see her and acknowledge her, understand her as she is, where she is in this process, that will help her to want to come to you. And I’ve seen this happen so many times. If we do a big show, then in a way we’re kind of distracting our child from, it’s not a negative thing, but we’re distracting her from those feelings that she has. And we’re performing in a way that we should never need to have to perform with a child. We get to be ourselves in these relationships. That’s what the deepest kind of respect is. Respecting ourselves, respecting our child.

If I had to get up and go to the bathroom and my child may not be comfortable with these people, I’m not expecting her to run up and jump into their arms. I’m asking them not to approach her because I want them to trust that she will come to you if you allow her to be herself. Now I’m going to go to the bathroom, and now she’s upset and she’s screaming, “Oh, you don’t want me to go. You’re not sure about these people, right? Yeah, you’re used to me all the time. It’s hard for me to leave.” I’m saying that as I’m leaving. You can share with us. We want to know. We want to hear about it. I go to the bathroom, I come back, now maybe she’s yelling at me some more. “You didn’t want me to go. Yeah, you’re still sharing with me. You can tell me all those things.” And at her age, she may have some words she’s saying, so just reflect all of them. Nothing to fear here, nothing to fix. It’s freeing, but it’s scary at the same time. So that’s the key that I hope you’ll try.

And when this parent says, “she’s definitely more anxious around the family members who have been known to try to pick her up, such as grandma, than the ones who have always given her space,” you might even bring that out into the open, too. “I know grandma tried to pick you up before and you weren’t sure if you were ready, so now you’re not sure if she’s going to try that again. It’s okay. I talked to grandma and she’s going to wait because she knows that you will want to come be with her at some point when you’re ready.” Just something like that. No secrets here, no unsaid things, no things we’re afraid of, things we’ve got to fix, things we’re worried about. Putting it all out there. The more you do this with your children, the more freedom you’ll feel and the closer you’ll all feel.

It’s like the way sometimes when we can say something to a partner about something we’re unhappy about in the relationship, and the person accepts that or hears it. Maybe they don’t agree with it, but they hear it and they still accept you and seem to still like you and want to be with you. How much more do we love that person after? How much closer do we feel? A lot of us weren’t allowed to express anything remotely negative or not what people wanted to hear and still feel accepted. That’s why it’s so scary, I think that’s one of the reasons. So there’s a lot that this parent can do right now.

I also want to speak to her comment where she said, “I’m wondering if I should have allowed her to get used to being held by others when she was an infant. Was she too young for me to employ the rule of not forcing a child to hug anyone she doesn’t want to? But I’ve never seen another baby who is so bothered by being held by others, so I also wonder if it’s just her inborn personality.” So yes, I agree it is a sign of her inborn personality, that she is on the sensitive side. And I also agree that she shouldn’t have forced her to get used to being held by others when she was an infant. That’s not what this is about. “Was she too young for me to employ the rule of not forcing a child to hug anyone she doesn’t want to?” Absolutely not.

But interestingly, this idea of accepting all feelings that children have, it seems to be becoming almost a mainstream idea, the way there’s so much acceptance and talk about this idea of letting feelings be. And that was not the case five, 10 years ago. So that’s a wonderful thing, right? That we’re realizing that feelings need to flow, and that’s the key to everything: Our child’s behavior being understood and helping them to move through it. And improve their behavior, if we want to see it that way. For them to have emotional fluency, social-emotional intelligence. To feel close to us, to feel wholly accepted. This is wonderful progress that we’re all making. And maybe I’m imagining that it’s becoming mainstream because it’s very much around in my world, but even if it’s a little more in that direction, it’s wonderful.

The interesting thing, though, is that this idea, for most people it starts somewhere in the toddler years, this idea that children have feelings to express and need to express them. It’s still uncommon for people to consider that an infant has this need. And that’s what’s quite different about Magda Gerber’s approach. And one of the things that stuck out for me so strongly when I heard it from her was that even a baby has a right to cry. Now, if we don’t quite think of a baby as a full-fledged human being quite yet, that maybe we think of them as this more simplified state, then we will maybe only be able to imagine that allowing a baby to cry is abandoning them, letting them cry it out, not caring, forcing them to. Not something that we are intimately involved in supporting. So that’s an idea I would like to bring forward here.

Because this parent is certainly right in that she shouldn’t force the baby into someone else’s arms and try to force them to get used to it. But what the parent did, and what most people do is, she just thought, Uh-oh, she’s saying no, so I’m going to avoid this situation. Instead of hearing all the in-between. What’s in between accommodating our baby in the situation and forcing them to be in an uncomfortable situation or leaving them to have uncomfortable feelings or distress. Never ever, ever do we need to do that. The truly respectful, loving place is in between, where we’re curious about what our baby is sharing, and we’re not assuming that we have to fix this, that allowing it is some kind of abandonment or not caring about what our child is feeling. It’s the exact opposite. It’s noticing the nuances of what they’re expressing. And babies cry to express a lot of nuance because they don’t have those words to say yet. Now, obviously, we don’t want the baby to get to a point of deep distress If we can help that.

Here’s the process that I recommend. So here I am, here’s grandma. I’m holding the baby. Grandma says, “I want to hold the baby,” or reaches out for the baby. Of course grandma wants to hold the baby, right? I stop. I maybe gently put my hand on grandma, or I somehow gently block and I turn to my baby in my arms. I make sure the baby can see grandma, and I say, “This is your grandma. She would like to hold you right now. What do you think about that?” And I hold my baby up a little closer towards grandma, and I check it out with my baby. I read her body language, I look in her eyes, I see if she’s showing comfort or trepidation. And if I see any kind of trepidation, I say, “It looks like you’re not sure yet. That’s okay. We can wait.” But then let’s say grandma’s reaching out and my baby starts to cry. “Oh, that’s not making you comfortable, right? This is a different person here. It’s your grandma. You’re going to get to know her very well, but you’re not ready for her to hold you right now.” Something like that.

And what this does is it takes us down a path of acknowledging instead of accommodating. So our child gets this message as early as possible that they’re allowed to have a process of getting comfortable with people. It’s not about you’re either comfortable or you’re not. It’s this in-between. Where are you now? What are you saying? What are you noticing? We can talk about all of it. And I know there’s some people that are going to think, well, how could you do this with an infant? Mostly, they’re people that haven’t ever tried it. So try it, if you want to. Because there is some truth in what this parent’s saying about if she could have allowed her child to start getting used to people earlier. She could have, and that’s the way. Through acknowledging, through being open to and bravely willing to accept and put words to what our child is feeling.

And if we don’t know, we say, “I don’t know. I’m not sure if you’re ready. Hmm.” Maybe grandma reaches out, “Let’s see. Let’s see how this goes.” And then the baby starts crying, “Oh no, it seems like you’re not ready yet. You don’t want grandma to hold you.” And then even with grandma holding her right there, I’m still there in close contact with her, letting her know that if she looks at me with those scared eyes, yes, I’m going to take her back. But it’s possible that she just wants to express, This is so new. This is all brand new. Who is this person? They hold me differently than mom does. Consider that there’s a lot more to what our children feel from the time they’re born than extreme things. Total distress, I can’t handle this!, and Okay, I’m fine with it. When we simplify babies that way, we can both get stuck in these kind of patterns that may have been created here, this very loving way of accommodating. It’s easier to start considering welcoming a child’s feelings as early as possible. And it’s helpful for us too to know that, Oh, there’s nuances here. Every cry isn’t an emergency that I have to fix.

And when I’m caring for my child’s specific needs, they’re crying because they’re hungry or tired, even then we’re of course filling the need, but we’re also acknowledging, “My, you’re in a very big hurry. You want to eat right now while I’m getting my pillow, while I’m getting comfortable. Yeah, it’s so hard to wait sometimes when you’re hungry. I’m glad you’re telling me that. I always want to know what’s going on with you.” Those messages. Or, “Oh gosh, I think you may be getting very tired. We did a lot today.” Or, “This person’s brand new to you. You never saw him before. It seems like you’re saying no, you’re not quite ready for him to be this close right now. Thanks for letting us know.”

That kind of openness goes a very long way. I mean, it lasts all the way through our kids’ adulthood where they can tell us all the hard things, all the uncomfortable things, the things that are happening right now between us, even. It’s powerful because we’re taking care to want to know, instead of giving them that message subtly, lovingly, that we don’t think they can handle this situation at all, even in stages, so we’re going to protect them from it. That’s accommodating. Or telling them, Shh, don’t feel what you’re feeling. It’s okay. It’s just grandma. Don’t feel what you’re feeling. Don’t share what you’re sharing.

If any of this makes sense to you, try it, and please let me know how it goes. And for this parent with a two-and-a-half-year-old or any parent, a parent with a teenager, it’s never, ever too late to start bravely accepting the feelings. Never too late.

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

Thanks so much for listening. We can do this.

The post My Toddler Won’t Separate or Warm Up to Anyone Else appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “Choose Not to Battle with Your Child (Here’s How)”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today I’m responding to an email I received from a parent who feels like she’s constantly battling her almost three-year-old. What I’m going to be talking about, which I think will help this parent and hopefully, other parents as well is navigating where children need us to lead them and put boundaries in place, and where they need us to follow. And understanding these differences is key to making our lives easier as parents, having fewer power struggles or battles, our child is more comfortable and we’re more comfortable.

And another issue in this parent’s note that comes up as an underlying theme is her child’s sensitivity towards separation. So I’ll be talking a little about that as well.

Before I read this email, I want to preface it with a couple of thoughts. First, I want to say that this parent is very obviously like the majority of the parents that reach out to me: a wonderful caring person and parent. The feedback I want to give is not at all in criticism of her, but only to help.

Another thing I want to mention is just to share a little about my process. I receive a lot of notes. I’m very privileged to be in that position with parents needing help. I wish I could help all of them, of course, but that just isn’t possible. What stands out for me, what makes me want to do a podcast around a particular note is if I almost want to have a dialogue with the parent as I’m reading and say, “Oh, if you just try this, it’s going to be so much easier. Oh, I think I can help you here.” If I feel that coming up for me, then that tells me that maybe I have something to say about this issue that could be helpful to this parent or other parents. And that happened to me a lot in this note.

So all of that said, here’s the letter:

Hi, Janet. Help! I feel like I’m constantly fighting my almost-three-year-old. We never went through the terrible twos, but in the last six weeks, I’ve learned what they mean by three-nager. I’m stubborn. So when I say no, which isn’t often, I mean no and, unlike my parents, I’m not going to eventually give in. And he constantly challenges that. When I say it’s time to go, it’s time to go and he constantly challenges that. When I say it’s time to get dressed, it’s time to get dressed and he constantly challenges that. I’m at my wit’s end.

I’m an avid reader. I’ve read so many books on discipline and your methods make the most sense to me. I try to incorporate them into our daily lives, but we’re still butting heads.

We wake up early, 6:00 AM, so he gets breakfast and gets 20 minutes of tablet time while I shower and get dressed. Then he plays for another 20 minutes and I give it another 20 minutes to get out the door by 7:00, but it’s never 7:00. It’s usually 7:15 or later, which is ridiculous given the time we start.

I’ve started giving just the FYI notice, “the train is leaving for school in 10 minutes” and he’ll negotiate.

“Mama say ‘Alexa, four more minutes.'”

So I’ll give him four more minutes and then I’ll ask him if he wants to walk to the changing table or be carried and he’ll run and hide. And then I have to chase him around the house every single day.

Then we finally get him dressed and it’s “do you want to go climb into your car seat or do you want me to help you in?” And he’ll run into the garage and hide. I don’t even open the garage door until he’s buckled in anymore because he’d be halfway down the street if I did.

In the rare instance he does get in the car without being forced, he’ll bypass his car seat and run around the car, running from door to door as I get more and more frustrated every single day.

Before we leave the house, I’ll give him hugs and kisses and then another round or two, and I tell him to have a good day and I’ll see him after school. We have to do this before we leave, as they pick him up directly out of the car at school. But in the last couple of weeks, he started fighting the hugs and kisses. So I’ll go get in the car and then he’ll cry that he didn’t get them, and then when I go to give them, he’ll fight them again. This could happen three or four or more times and put us really behind schedule, but I don’t ever not go back for those hugs kisses because I don’t want him to think I don’t want them.

Needless to say, by the time I drop him off at school by 7:15, 7:30, I’m exhausted and in a terrible mood.

We have a few struggles at night, but not near as many and I have to wonder if it’s because he knows we’re going to be separated while he is at school. He’ll even say things like, “Mama, you came back,” most days when I pick him up like he’s surprised I came back. Yesterday I heard him having a conversation with his stuffed monkey and he told him, “See, I came back.” How can I make him feel secure in that?

Another issue we have is around potty learning. He’s shown interest since right before his second birthday, but he’s had so many adjustments to make since then that we’ve struggled with consistency. He turned two in March. In April he went back to school part-time after being with his nanny full time for eight months. In December, our nanny moved away, and in January, he went back to school full time.

Now that I’m writing this, I have to wonder if some of the behavior issues are because we don’t have our nanny anymore even part-time.

With potty learning, he won’t even try anymore. I ask him if he wants the diaper or the underwear, and he’ll say underwear, and then proceed to go hide and poop in his underwear. He knows he is doing it. He could just as easily go to the potty. What gives? He does the same thing at school though, he has fewer accidents because they put him on the potty on a schedule with the rest of his friends.

I adopted my son as an infant, as a single mom. I know very little about his family history, but I did meet his dad briefly. He had such a great spirit and a great dimpled smile that my son inherited, but it seems he also had a troubled childhood. And from the few minutes we spoke, I picked up that he constantly fought authority because he was strictly disciplined and never challenged mentally.

My son is smart. He has been since he was little and it’s not just me. The social worker who did our home studies picked up on it when he was an infant and his teachers tell me now. And he’s also got a lot of spunk and a ton of spirit and oh so much energy. I try to give him everything I can to foster his intelligence. We read books together every night. We tell stories. We draw pictures and practice writing letters. If he shows interest in anything, I probably go overboard and provide it all. It’s important to me that I help him achieve his potential, especially as an adoptive mom.

Oh, and also somewhere in the back of my mind, I’m thinking if I can help bring out his full potential, give him opportunities, then maybe he won’t fight me/authority when he is older.

We spend a lot of time together. It’s just me and him after all, and we have our little routine. I pick him up from school, he’ll play in the playroom or with our kitties while I fix our dinner, then bath. Then we play for a little while and read books and then off to bed. He’ll often ask me to sleep in his bed for a while, or he’ll ask to sleep in my bed and I often let him. But generally, our evening routine is fairly uneventful.

All this to say, I don’t know what else to do to reassure him and make things a little less challenging. Help. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this novel.

Okay. So there are a lot of great details here — so many universal ideas that parents share with me that they have problems with. So I’m excited to go over this.

The first thing I want to say is going to sound so nitpicky, I know, or fuddy-duddy or something else negative, but I have to say it. I don’t think this parent or any parent helps themself by using words like “terrible twos.” Although she said she never went through terrible twos, she said she’s learned what they mean by “three-nager.” And these are terms that, while harmless in themselves, put images in our mind that are going to mislead us and make us feel more in a power struggle with our child than we need to be. Because we’re seeing young children as this other.

We hear people talk about taming tantrums and taming toddlers as if they’re animals and these wild beasts, and three-nager is seeing a tiny little guy who’s not even three as a teenager with that maturity, with that attitude. I mean, even teenagers underneath the swagger are just sweet, vulnerable kids underneath it all.

But this guy is just an innocent tiny little boy doing exactly what he’s supposed to do at this age and exactly what every parent should on some level welcome children to do, because it’s a great sign.

Reading later in this note that he’s adopted, he’s so comfortable with this mother that he’s pushing back, being more his own person, showing his autonomy and his will, and that what he wants is different than what his mother wants. This is exactly what toddlers need to do to individuate and develop more of their independence and autonomy. But of course, they always want it on their terms, not when we want to separate. They want to be the ones to push us away and that’s how it’s supposed to be.

So seeing that for what it is will help our heart to go out to this child and to want to help him in the areas where he gets stuck and is struggling. But not see him as this scarier older person than he is. He’s very immature emotionally, as he should be at this age.

So getting off that soapbox, then she talks about how he’s constantly challenging her when she says no. When she says it’s time to go he challenges that. When it’s time to get dressed, he challenges that. And what he’s showing in “time to go” and “time to get dressed” is that he is also a very typical child for his age, struggling with transitions.

I talk a lot about that on my podcast because it will help us so much as parents if we can know that transitions are a big, big challenge for young children. Even if they weren’t going through any other kinds of transitions in their life like losing their nanny, starting a new school, moving houses, they are in this ginormous developmental transition and it’s really hard for them to keep their balance and not go off the edge a lot. Every inclination in a child this age, again, the healthy inclination is to say no. Even if they want to say yes, even if they prefer to eat the ice cream cone, they kind of have to say no first. It’s who they are. It’s this very harmless healthy aspect of development.

So she’s getting stuck, as parents do, with trying to get his cooperation at a time when she’s probably least like likely to get it — during a transition. Because this small transition of getting out the door to school can be the tipping point for a child for all the other transitions that they’re feeling. And then she’s absolutely right when she later realizes that separation may be part of this as well.

So why are other transitions that he has not as hard? Well, this one for him is about separation, and what this all means is that he needs a lot of help. What I want to help this parent see is how she can help more getting through the transition and not get caught up in wanting him to lead this, because transitions are an area that children almost always need us to lead. Especially in these toddler years. They need that extra helping hand to get the momentum going and get from point A to point B.

So that’s why he’s challenging her. Not because he wants to be a teenager or even that he doesn’t want to go to school. I think he does, but this is so hard to get from point A to point B. It’s really hard to get going.

One of the things she says here is that she gives him 20 minutes of tablet time… and this is just a small thing, but it stuck out for me because it is a little bit harder for children when what they’re doing is so engaging, like any kind of tech use or screen time. They get pulled in more deeply and it’s harder to stop than playing with toys would be. So it’s just something to look at that she may want to change. She says, while she’s showering and getting dressed, he has the tablet time, and then he plays for another 20 minutes. So at least he’s playing without the tablet after that. So that’s good. Anyway, just for us to understand that that’s something more challenging for him to come out of than just playing with toys. Just for our own information.

Then she says she gives him the notice “train is leaving for school in 10 minutes” and he’ll negotiate.

So if we know that this is a challenging situation, that children need a lot of help with,… the momentum, what I call the confident momentum, they need that from us to get them through the transition, then we won’t open up space for negotiation. Because negotiation is us giving up our leadership to the child.

Now sometimes there’s room for that and maybe there’s room for that even in this if they did it the night before saying, “Let’s work out a plan for tomorrow. We have to get out the door, this is what I’ve got to help you do. What would make it better for you? What would make it easier for you?” That’s the time to negotiate, but not in the moment in the middle of a transition. It will put the brakes on everything because our child is telling us, or showing us, through their behavior in this case pretty clearly, that he can’t handle it. So he can’t be in charge of this.

And then she asks him if he wants to walk to the changing table or be carried. So that’s a great thing to offer him, but maybe not in a transition like this when he’s showing that it’s a struggle. This parent is realizing that because of her own frustration and exhaustion at the end.

And if she’s human, which I imagine she is, she’s not really liking him very much at the end of that. We don’t want to put ourselves in that position if possible, and the way to do that is to see transitions for what they are: big challenges. And to not be afraid on her end to be the bad guy who’s not going to negotiate. We do that with love and a smile, and we’re not angry, but we’re not going to let him negotiate.

Maybe ask him if he wants to climb in the car. But if we see the slightest pause, we’re already ready to be on that, to just give him a little helping hand. “You know what? I’m going to do it this time.” And then maybe we don’t give him the choice sometimes because he really doesn’t need it there when you are in a hurry, trying to get him out the door to a separation situation that he’s showing he’s kind of sensitive to, as a lot of children are.

So if he tries to negotiate saying, “Mama say Alexa four more minutes,” I would say, “Aha, that’s an interesting idea, but no, we’re not going to do that this time. We’ve got to go.”

I’m not getting mad at him for saying that. I’m allowing him to try to negotiate, but I’m not going to come to the table with him, because I understand that he can’t handle that.

Then she says when she asks about the changing table, he runs and hides. So we don’t want to give opportunity for that. If that’s his M.O. or a possibility, don’t give him that option and allow him to be in charge of that. Have your hand behind his back, say, “Okay, now we’re going to change your diaper.” Very confidently. “Here we go.”

And then he tries to run and we already have our hands around him, on his arms, on his shoulders and we’re not going to let him run. “You want to run? Nope. I’ve got to hold onto you.” Not letting him follow his impulse there.

Then she says he finally gets him dressed and she’s asking if he wants to climb in the car or does he want her to help him in. And he runs into the garage and hides again.

Don’t signal that you’re giving him a choice. Don’t offer him a choice, open the door, say, “Okay, now it’s time. We’re going in.”

Parents sometimes say to me, “Well, I can’t do this. My child’s too strong. Or my child’s too…” It’s not about that we have to use brute force. It’s about our confidence going in knowing that we’re being heroic here helping him do this and saying no to his request for choices or more time and all of that stuff. It’s not as loving to just let him anger us, and frustrate us, and do all these pauses that he really doesn’t want to do either. He’s getting stuck there and we want to help him get unstuck.

We want to help her avoid getting frustrated with him because that doesn’t feel good to her or to him.

So all of these machinations with the diaper changing, and the four more minutes and the I can’t get in the car, I’m going to run around the garage. All of that is like he’s waving a flag saying: I need help. I need leadership here. I can’t do this.

If she could see it that way, that will help her to be the hero.

Then she says before they leave the house, the hugs and kisses, and wow, I could feel how it would be so hard for her to say no to the hugs and kisses. But if she takes a little step back out of that fear that he’s going to feel somehow that she would reject him, or doesn’t love him or want to be affectionate with him. If she could take a step back, she could see that this is quite unreasonable what he’s asking of her.

He’s saying: I don’t want it. I don’t want it. I’m going to fight you. But now when you carry on, now I want it. And then I don’t.

And this is really torture for both of them. It’s not helpful for her to keep that going. It would be more helpful for him and her to say, “Okay, now’s the time for the hugs and kisses.”  And he says, “No,” and say, “Okay, my love, I can’t wait to give them to you when I pick you up.” Then let him be angry about that. Let him vent these feelings that are maybe below the surface here with the separation and just the challenge, the emotional challenge of a transition.

I really hear her that she’s so afraid of giving him those feelings, but I can promise her he will feel relieved that he can vent and that his mother adores him and is being the leader that he needs right here.

Then when she drops him off, I think she’ll be there on time and she will not be exhausted and in a terrible mood. If she can image this as what it is: somebody that needs help, her coming in as the hero, so many little pitfalls he’s opening up for her to fall into and she’s not going to, she’s going to keep moving ahead with confidence.

This idea about the separation is another place that sounds like it’s making it so much harder for her be this confident leader, because it’s like there’s a little uh-oh in her head saying: Oh gosh, he doesn’t feel secure about separation. He’s not sure I’m coming back.

And I don’t believe that’s what’s going on here at all.

It sounds like he is sensitive to separation and that is common with children that are adopted. Even if they’re adopted at birth, they have experienced a separation. What helps them to heal it is not for us to tippy-toe around separations or avoid them or feel sorry for our child whenever we have to have one with him. But it’s actually to face the separations with confidence in yourself, confidence in him, and holding that space for him to share the feelings, whatever they are. And children, as I’ve said many times in this podcast are very, very adept at this. They do it naturally. It will come up in every situation where there’s separation. There’ll be a little more healing.

He’s also had this separation with his nanny. That was a huge realization this parent had as she’s writing the note. Yes, the loss of that nanny, that’s a big deal. This is somebody with whom he’s been intimately connected. So yes, separation, but how does he heal this and feel better? By experiencing it and feeling the feelings around it, which may be her saying no to his request for hugs and kisses after he’s pushed her away all those times. That is his moment that he’s sort of arranged for, unconsciously, where he gets to feel that, and that’s how he’ll get better.

And the fact that he’s playing it out with his toy, that’s what children do as well. And it’s so beautiful when we can see it that clearly. They use play for therapy in a lot of situations, but it’s not often this clear. He’s playing with his monkey the separation and that he will come back. And he’s saying it to his mother. “You came back, you came back.” So it’s not from insecurity that that is coming from. It’s self-therapy.

Then she talks about potty learning. So this is an area we cannot control how he’s moving his bowels or urinating. We can’t control that in any way and we can’t lead that. That’s a place that children need to lead. But children still need boundaries, even in these areas that they need to lead. And the boundary he needs is for his mother to see him, see where he is right now and not give him that option of underwear, because she’s the adult able to see that he’s not ready for that right now. Too many transitions happening. He’s processing a lot of stuff. He can’t do this right now. He will soon, but I wouldn’t make that another area of frustration for both of you, because that will only make it harder for him and for her.

So “he won’t even try anymore.” Right. Just trust that. You could still ask him sometimes if he wants to go and then if he says no, let it go. Accept his answer, let it be. This will pass. He’s in a bit of a grieving mode here with the nanny, maybe, and the other changes: going back to school full time. As this parent notices, he’s thriving in school, but he’s got a lot of feelings about it. And that’s okay. It’s healthy that he’s sharing them and sharing them with his mother who he totally trusts and is obviously very bonded with.

And actually, toilet training is sort of about separation as well. Someone pointed out to me after my podcast, well actually somebody was writing… They thought they were writing to their friend, I guess, because there was a name on there that they were writing to, but they actually wrote it back to me about my toilet learning post that I did last time with the podcast. She kind of criticized me that I was a bit wishy-washy, and I was, in terms of describing the three aspects of development that need to be in place for children to achieve toilet learning. She said it better. So I really appreciated her feedback and I’m going to share it here.

She said, “One, knowing physically the flow of the bladder. Two, emotional, knowing that she is going to feel separation from her insides go down the toilet! And then, three, cognitive understanding of how they are all interwoven.”

So she said it better, those three aspects of development that are needed. But interestingly, the emotional part is separation. So again, this separation theme… he’s really working on this it sounds like, and that’s just so healthy. And all these pieces will fall into place when he’s allowed to process the feelings.

I love what this mom shared about meeting her adopted son’s birth father, and I just want to help her see the part about him constantly fighting authority. She even says it was because he was strictly disciplined and never challenged mentally. So these issues were the result of his upbringing, not the innate traits that he has. So I don’t think she needs to worry the slightest bit that her son will have that and that somehow she has to compensate to help him to succeed and reach his potential, as she says.

I believe that she can trust that he’s got all he needs in her: a nurturing relationship, and that she can trust him to let her know what he wants to work on in terms of books, drawing, and eventually writing letters or reading that he can lead those aspects. And she really can trust that he, like all children, knows what he’s doing better than anybody in terms of his learning and that the best we can do is believe in him, enrich him in the ways that he requests, not push him into things that maybe we think he should be doing or want him to be doing. Really following him there with all the trust in the world that he’s got everything he needs with his relationship with his mother.

Then her last question is: “I don’t know what else to do to reassure him and make things a little less challenging. Help.”

I hope some of these ideas that I’ve shared will reassure her that he doesn’t need reassuring. He just needs her honesty, her leadership when he can’t be the one to do it in these transitions, and her love, which sounds like she has in abundance for him. And when she takes on the leadership role, it will be a lot less challenging. I want her to believe in herself and allow him to share and experience the feelings that he needs to feel.

I really hope some of this helps and thank you again to this parent for trusting me and sending me her note, her novel. And please check some of my other podcasts on my website janetlansbury.com. There are 200-and-something of them at this point and they’re all indexed by subject and category so you should be able to find whatever topic you might be interested in. And I have two books, they’re available at Amazon: No Bad Kids, Toddler Discipline Without Shame and Elevating Child Care, A Guide To Respectful Parenting.  You can get them in eBook at Amazon, Apple, Google Play, or barnesandnoble.com, and in audio at Audible.com. Actually, you can get a free audio copy of either book at Audible by following the link in the liner notes of this podcast.

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

We can do this.

The post Choose Not to Battle with Your Child (Here’s How) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “Sibling Strife – When Your Child Keeps Hating On Her Little Brother”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today, I’m responding to a question from a parent — she has a five-and-a-half-year-old who she says has never recovered from the arrival of her brother, who’s now three and a half. She says since he was born, she’s, “Subjected him to physical violence and verbal taunting which continues to this day.” And she often says she hates him. She’s concerned about her daughter and her son, who she feels is very hurt by this behavior. She says, “Waiting for emotional maturity and impulse control to develop does a disservice to both siblings who are looking to me to provide a compass through the storms.”

This parent is looking for some advice, strategies, anything to help.

Okay. Here’s the note I received:

Hi, Janet. I’ve been following your amazing parenting principles since my oldest daughter, now five-and-a-half was 12 months old. Your respectful parenting philosophy resonates deeply with who I am and who I want to be as a parent and you have honestly saved our family’s sanity at times not to mention our precious relationships.

My daughter is a bright, strong willed child who would not let anyone near her, but me until she was 18 months old. She had severe separation anxiety and was often dysregulated on a hair trigger. Her tantrums, several times a day would last from 45 minutes up to two hours and sometimes left her so exhausted, she would fall asleep on the floor where she had pounded her fist only a moment before.

She has never recovered from the arrival of her brother, now three-and-a-half, when she was 22 months old. Since he was born, she has subjected him to physical violence and verbal taunting, which continues to this day. She often says she hates him.

We’ve tried all your techniques and I’ve poured through all your articles and podcasts for help with this issue. She has been to two child psychologists consecutively who have tried to assist her with managing her emotions appropriately. My blocking interventions are sometimes not quick enough to stop her hands connecting with her brother’s little face or body. I try extremely hard to remain calm and not fuel the behavior saying, “I won’t let you hit, that hurts.” But the bullying behavior persists and persists no matter what I do or say.”

My partner and I have both worked from home since the kids were born, so they see us all the time and both get a lot of one on one attention, even more so now that we are homeschooling due to COVID-19. Her brother is a gentle, loving, and forgiving little boy who sometimes cries to me that, “K hurts me.” It breaks my heart. I am at a loss as this has been going on for years now, and I’m concerned this is doing damage to my son.

When an incident happens, I of course go to my son first to comfort him, but I also look at my miserable older child who is clearly distressed and does not want the mystifying negative feelings she experiences as a result of hurting her brother and upsetting her parents.

I do not believe in inauthentic forced apology, so I wait for her to calm down and then we have a cuddle while I try to reflect back her frustrations with being a big sister and explain that I understand she must feel sad and angry sometimes. We then discuss other ways she could express her anger rather than hitting and unkind words. But she often blocks her ears or runs away at these suggestions.

Both my children are in pain and I need some new strategies. Waiting for emotional maturity and impulse control to develop does a disservice to both siblings who are looking to me to provide a compass through the storms. Any additional advice you could provide would be so gratefully received. Thanks.

Okay. So I hear how hard this parent is trying to help her children get beyond this behavior. This is obviously a very committed parent.

And it also brings up for me the realization that, even with all these details that she’s provided, it is very challenging for me to really visualize how this parent looks in action, interacting with her children. And that is a struggle that I have with written notes, even with phone consultations. I’m still trying to picture what the dynamic between the parent and child actually looks and feels like.

And that’s why my favorite way of all to help parents is to do in person consultations which, of course, are not as convenient and are harder to arrange. But then I can actually see almost immediately what’s going on, and I’m able to help parents make a shift. Sometimes even a video of parents interacting with their children is helpful. And even when I’m talking to parents on the phone, sometimes their child will come and interrupt and I’ll be able to get a glimpse right there of how this parent sets boundaries and responds when their child is wanting them and the parent can’t be there for them. It can be so illuminating.

So having said all that, there are a lot of details here, and I’m going to do my best to intuit what’s going on. But as always, there’s a lot of guesswork and I may not be completely accurate.

What I’m hearing is that her daughter is, to start out with, quite sensitive, right? Strong-willed and sensitive often go together. And this parent says from the beginning, her child would not let anyone near her but this parent until she was 18 months old. She had severe separation anxiety.

So what that tells me is it sounds like this family maybe accommodated these feelings, which is of course, a normal thing to do when you have a child that little and they’re saying, “No, no, no.” I’m going to cry unless this person’s there. It’s understandable to want to make that happen for them.

But what that actually does is prevent the child from processing those feelings. It also communicates to the child that we agree with them, in a sense, that they can’t be okay with anyone else, but us. That may not be what we intend at all, but that’s what children take from it. So it makes those feelings even stronger. Maybe there’s some fear that gets attached to them. If I don’t get what I want, I’m not going to be okay. And so it makes our child even more, in this case, dependent on and needy for her parent.

What I would recommend if possible, with this or any kind of fear or feelings that a child has, is to not try to accommodate it, to continue normally. “Sometimes your other parent is going to be the one to do this with you.” Maybe even: “This other caregiver or your grandparent is going to do it, and you can have strong feelings about that.” We want to hear those. We’re okay with you expressing that. In fact, we want you to express it. We’re not going to change things or try to avoid this in any way.

I’ll often hear from parents who say things like, “My child won’t let me not play with them.” Or, “My child won’t let me ever leave their side or go to the bathroom on my own or stop nursing.” And what that tells me is that the parent is not comfortable with the child having the feelings they need to have around those experiences. The feelings are the healing.

And then severe separation anxiety… So children sometimes go through a period of separation anxiety or stranger anxiety, but this isn’t to be taken as it’s going to traumatize our child if we leave. It’s a sensitivity that they have, usually during this period between around eight months to 15 months. It’s sensitivity as they’re making steps forward in development and maybe walking and they sense some more separation between us. This other part of them wants to hold on and not let us go.

So it’s kind of a push-pull. We want to be sensitive to it, but we don’t want to accommodate it. So we’re not going to take an extra-long amount of time away from our child or do it more often than we need to or want to, but we still have to do it. We still have to separate and let those other people care for our child or whatever it is, or even allow them to be alone for a couple of minutes while we’re doing something.

And then this parent says that her daughter had tantrums several times a day lasting “from 45 minutes up to two hours leaving her so exhausted, she falls asleep sometimes on the floor.” And I don’t know, this is maybe the way the parent remembers it or is presenting it. But if this girl was actually spending hours of the day upset, I would want to check out if there might be physical issues going on there, she might be in pain. She might have sensory issues that we would want to look at for why she’s so dysregulated. So those kinds of things… that maybe this parent did check out. Because that goes beyond the realm of typical, to have a child spending that much of her day in tantrums.

But the typical ones that a child does have, we can help by holding space for them, being a safe person around them, so we’re not getting upset ourselves. We’re seeing this as healthy venting. We’re just keeping our child safe and being the safe presence for her to pass through the storm.

And that’s an experience that’s so helpful and important for children to have. That is how they build resilience. They’re getting all these messages through us basically doing nothing but calming ourselves and being a safe presence, and trusting that it’s okay for our child to go to these places. They’re getting all these messages: Wow, storms come and then they pass. And I’m okay not feeling good all the time. I can have really uncomfortable feelings and they pass. Those are things that children need to learn experientially.

And also these feelings could have been coming up for this child when the parent was expecting her brother. So she was sensing, even at that young age, a little bit of distancing and a little excitement around some change that she can’t really understand or put her finger on, and that’s frightening. So that may have coordinated with her having some of these tantrums. Again, healthy feelings to express and to get out of her body.

And then this baby arrives. Now, she has feelings that children have: loss, fear, betrayal, anger, and rage sometimes. And a lot of it comes down to fear of what they’ve lost in the relationship with their parent. And then that can get validated for them when they start to behave in these ways that are unpleasant for us as parents. Physical violence, as this parents says, verbal taunting, which she probably wasn’t doing at 22 months old, but maybe the physical lashing out. It’s very, very challenging for us as parents to see that for what it is, to see that as a manifestation of our child’s emotionally traumatic experience of losing their parent to this other child and feeling the shift in their relationship.

And for a child that’s intense like this little girl, that’s going to be a very, very strong experience for her. And she’s showing that through the physical acting out. She’s showing that.

So anytime behavior is continuing like this, what we can learn from it as parents is that there’s something my child needs that they aren’t getting yet. And actually what this little girl is doing that’s very, very positive is that she isn’t suppressing it. At least not all of it. She’s still putting it out there.

What we don’t want is for a child to internalize, just feel the shame and bottle the feelings away. But this girl is putting it out there. She hasn’t been frightened into hiding them. And that’s wonderful. That means this parent is handling these situations in a way that isn’t pushing her daughter away.

What I am hearing though, is that this parent is doing a very normal thing that I totally remember. I have three children. So I’ve been through this transition to another child a couple of times. Plus, I, myself am a middle child. So I have that experience as well. What I’m hearing is this parent, she’s shifting between empathizing with her daughter, especially what she says at the end about how her daughter is clearly distressed and does not want the mystifying negative feeling she experiences as a result of hurting her brother. So she’s empathizing, but at the same time, she’s slipping into judging her, which is distancing and doesn’t help us to get what we want, which is our child to stop doing this. Because it creates even more fear and discomfort when a child feels that their parent is judging — the parent is not liking them in these moments that we see her as a bully. This parent has used that word. And that she’s “subjecting him to physical violence and verbal taunting.” Subjecting him sounds very intentional, and what I want to help this parent see is: This poor girl, she’s so uncomfortable that she’s lashing out and acting in a way that she does not want to act.

It’s challenging to be able to stay on our child’s side in this situation, or any situation where they’re behaving in ways that we don’t like, and that make us feel bad about ourselves as parents. It’s invalidating for us to see that go on. It’s scary for us. But as scared as we might be, children are frightened many times over, and lost. So what they need is for us to be that safe presence, gathering them in, bringing them close to us. Maybe not physically, but through our attitude of empathy.

“Sometimes you get so mad at him, right? Just everything he does, you don’t like. But this is not okay, you know that. I’m going to stop you. I can’t let you do that stuff.” That’s the way that I would acknowledge her feelings, very in the moment like that.

And instead of saying, “I won’t let you hit, that hurts”… Yes, I would say that the first time maybe, or the first couple of times. But right now, the important thing is “I won’t let you.” I’m going to stop you whenever you do this stuff. Don’t worry. I’ve got you. I’ve got your back. You’re safe with me. That kind of subtext.

I’m not saying to say all those words, necessarily. But even this thing of “that hurts,” they don’t need to keep being reminded of that. And I was practicing saying it for some reason, “that hurts, that hurts.” It’s actually very hard to say that without being a little angry or annoyed. It’s hard to say those words like, “Oh, that hurts, I can’t let you.”

So maybe the words are even almost the same, but the attitude of this girl needs my help, she’s still stuck in this, and I want to join with her and show her that I’m there for her. And what will help both of her children is to feel more of that sense of security and self-confidence, because when children feel that, then they usually act out of the best part of themselves. When they feel accepted by us, when they feel we’ve got their back — that they are safe when they’re doing these wrong things that we don’t want them to do, we’re not judging them, we want to help them stop, we want to help them not continue this.

The way that we respond to the younger child matters a lot as well, for two reasons:

One is for that younger child to feel confident in the situation.

Number two, because the older child is witnessing and experiencing us responding to the younger child. And the way that we do that gives our older child messages.

The common thing to do is rush into rescue that younger child. That’s understandable, right? We see somebody seeming to be victimized and our heart goes out to them and we feel sorry for them, and we want to comfort them and make it all better. But that actually doesn’t help that younger child as much as us stepping it back so that we’re not projecting all of this pity and that you need to be rescued. And this is so sad what just happened.

It’s so easy to project in these situations onto both children that this person is a bully, and this one is a victim. We want to be really careful about that.

Instead, you come in, you try to stop your older daughter. So, “Oops, I can’t let you do that.”

And then you’re looking at your son and he’s looking sad or he’s looking, maybe not that sad, just a little baffled. Whatever he’s showing you, take a moment to take that in. Don’t rush over. Give him a chance to come to you, if he needs you. Staying neutral is more helpful to both children because they don’t feel judged. They don’t feel either pitied: You poor thing. You can’t handle this, and this is crushing you. And: You’re just a mean brat.

So if we see that our son is very badly hurt and it’s an emergency, that’s when I would go all the way up to him. And I still probably wouldn’t even pick him up, because we swoop in to pick him up… that’s a normal thing that happens with the younger child. Then he feels helpless and the older child feels like a real rat, right? All their worst fears are being confirmed, that I’m the bad guy now and my parents eyes and love this guy better. That’s exactly where the behavior is coming from, those feelings.

When we judge, it might feel like a very small thing we’re doing, but it can have a huge impact. And that’s why so many of us as adults maybe have difficult relationships with our siblings, still. It doesn’t have to be that way. There’s a lot that we can do as parents to shift this. And it’s all about judgment, actually, when we see these conflicts happening and how we treat each child around the conflict. So this is something we can do at any time. Change the messaging by working on what we’re seeing and then acting out of that perception.

This younger guy, he may be more capable than we give him credit for. You can be there with all the empathy in the world for both of them and at the same time, neutral and receptive.

Let’s go to some specifics here. This mother says, “So I wait for her to calm down and then we have a cuddle while I try to reflect back her frustrations with being a big sister and explain that I understand she must feel sad and angry sometimes.” So that’s good. Even better just to be open to it in the moment (I know that’s hard) and not to make a lesson around it, even talking too much about it.

It’s just like… she slipped. Her impulses got the better of her, and she went there. She went to that fear place, that rage place. It’s not something that we really need to go over of why that happened. It’s always better just to be open to it in the moment.

Then when this parent says, “We discuss other ways she could express her anger rather than hitting and unkind words.” She says, “She often blocks her ears or runs away these suggestions.”

So yeah, that’s always a sign that the child feels judged. I mean, I can relate to that. I don’t want to hear it. You’re going through this and it’s just making me feel worse and worse and it’s not helping bring anything. If I could have done those things, I would have. I actually know I wasn’t supposed to hit. I know I wasn’t supposed to call those names, but I did it. I slipped and I don’t want to hear you talking about it.

I can relate to that.

So that’s a sign that she’s feeling judged. You’re seeing her as somebody that just needs to hear, again, that she’s not supposed to do those things. And that’s seeing her as more mature emotionally than she is, way more mature — seeing that she can be on top of these feelings, which she just can’t right now. She’s showing you that she can’t. She needs help. Right now, she can’t make a different choice in those moments. She’s not even making a choice. It’s just coming over her.

Then I would actually let go of the thing about the words right now because — one at a time, right now. I would just focus on the physical behavior that’s harmful. Because a lot of the time, the younger child sees through those words more than we realize, sees the unhappy child saying that, sees that this is what she does. They don’t often take on those words as labels that they believe about themselves. Especially if the parents are not treating them in that way. They don’t really take those words to heart. What they see is that this person is angry. This other person that I love, my sister, is losing it.

Verbalizing the words can be a healthier way of her expressing herself and preferable to hitting and hurting him. For a child her age, over the age of three or four, words are how she’s going to do it. Finding those words that just say exactly how she feels that help her get that fear out, help her get that anger out.

It’s not like you’re going to love those words, but I would let go of that and just help her with the hitting right now, while you’re going to help do some re-messaging here.

So, I know these aren’t exactly strategies as much as perception, but that’s what matters most, the way that we see. And the way that we see will dictate the way we actually feel. So we’re not pretending that we’re okay with it. We see it for what it is, which is: Oh, that poor girl. She needs my help stopping her.

And this guy, he’s kind of gotten into this victim thing with her. And I want to empower him a little more by doing less so that he can express more and share more with me.

If he says these things like, “K hurts me…”  She says, “It breaks my heart.” And that’s a little bit of her projecting here. Maybe that she’s failing in this. She’s absolutely not, in my opinion. And even though this has been going on, she can work on this and make a change very quickly.

If he says, “It hurts me,” or if she says something about him, just take in the feelings. Respond, “Oh, that hurt. What does it feel like?” You want to know about those feelings. You want him to share those feelings instead of letting them stab you and bring you down. Those are incredible openers that children give us for connection and intimacy.

I hope some of this helps.

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

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

Thanks again for listening. We can do this.

The post Sibling Strife – When Your Child Keeps Hating On Her Little Brother appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “3 Hints for Parents Working at Home”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today, I’m going to offer some ideas to help make working at home work better. I’ve received several questions about this recently, and I know that working at home is in many ways a privilege that a lot of parents don’t have. But even parents that work outside the home have to do work at home sometimes — housework or computer work, paying bills and things like that. So hopefully these ideas will help those families too.

Okay. So I’m actually going to read two notes that I received about working at home, and I’ll call them Family One and Family Two. Here’s Family One:

Hi, Janet. First off, I love your podcast and the RIE approach to childcare. I’m having a challenge that I imagine I’m not alone in right now and I would so value your insight. We finally got little bit of childcare help during these crazy COVID times, a very responsible, socially distancing high schooler is coming over two mornings a week to play with our two and a half year old while my husband and I work. I am now working from home a hundred percent and he alternates a bit going to the office and being at home. The challenge is that anytime our son isn’t getting what he wants or is upset for any reason and he is fairly mercurial in his moods, he comes upstairs to find me.

We have a gate at the top of the stairs and I’m working in the bedroom with the doors shut beyond that. But I just don’t really know the best way to approach this when I hear him yelling, Mommy, mommy,’ and the babysitter, doing her best to provide alternatives, distract, anything. I end up coming out to manage and refocus the situation, but it interrupts my workflow and undermines her authority, I think. But ignoring him feels disrespectful too. I’m just not sure what the best strategy is and would love your thoughts on the matter. Thanks.

All right. And here’s family two:

Hi, Janet. I’ve read several posts and books of yours but I’m still struggling. My three-and-a-half-year-old son is having difficulties with my husband working from home since April. My son has significant tantrums about why daddy has to work. My husband tries to stay in his office but often comes out for a break or to join us for a meal or play when he can. This is fantastic for the family but adds to the repeated daily tantrums about, ‘Where is daddy and why can’t he play?’ I try acknowledging his feelings of sadness and let him cry while repeating, “You’re sad, you miss daddy. Daddy is working.”Nothing seems to work, and I really can’t take the tantrums anymore every time he sees or hears him. This has been going on for months and doesn’t seem to have an end in sight with fall school work plans at home. Can you please offer any advice? Thanks so much.

Okay, so I want to talk about two important ways to facilitate working at home. The first one is: (1) the power of routine.

I’ve recently taken time off from doing phone consultations so that I can focus on some other work projects I have, but I’ve been continuing with a few long-time clients, and this one mom just had her third baby. And she was telling me on the phone the other day that she thinks I need to do a podcast all about scheduling, the power of scheduling, because she has discovered this recently and it’s changed everything for her. She and her husband both work and they live in an urban area and she had a maternity leave which is just about to end so she was home for a while. They only just recently were able to get their childcare person back. So they are privileged to have childcare.

But what this mom noticed was that when she was just there with the children on her own and then with the new baby even, she realized that having a schedule for the day was a godsend. It was the key to making naps work, to her children being better able to cope with the challenges of the day and to do all the things that she needed to do. Within reason. I mean, everybody’s noticing something that some of us noticed a long time ago and that’s that things aren’t smooth when you have children. And the more we expect them to be, the more difficult it can be for us, because our frustration tolerance is going to be lower and we’re going to be disappointed when the day invariably falls apart and surprises us and children don’t do what we want them to do or expect them to do.

But this parent found… She said in the old days, when her nanny was there, her children seemed to take their naps and do the things they needed to do. But with her in her husband on the weekends, it would always be kind of a a struggle. And that’s because they had a lot of outings planned and things they wanted to do and they did not follow a routine.

There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but it just can make life harder. And when you do work at home and have those stretches of time to get things right, or even if you are a stay-at-home parent and you need to get things done, it is so helpful to be able to know that you will probably have this break coming up where your child is self-directing their play and doesn’t need you, even when they’re awake. So it not only works better for us that we have a rhythm for the things that we want to accomplish during a day, but our child is so empowered.

I have a post called “Empowering Our Babies With Rituals,” and it talks about, even with infants (or especially with infants), that rhythm that we find with them, and then stick to. This isn’t some schedule that we impose on a child that we’re deciding. It’s based on their needs and the rhythm that supports them — what they like to do when they first wake up, which is maybe have something to eat, or if they’re a baby, nursing or bottle feeding. So this isn’t something arbitrary we impose into our lives as parents, but rather something that we sensitively develop in accordance with our child’s rhythms.

And then as soon as possible, we communicate this routine to our child, beginning with babies. We say in the morning, “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. After we change your diaper, we’ll go to your play space.”

For this mother that I had the phone consultation with, she said that her son who was in kindergarten last year, and it was online, she would have this time in the morning, first thing after breakfast, where he would do his “work.” I don’t know what it was exactly, assignments given by the teacher. And even her younger son, who is only a toddler, he would do something at that time that was more focused at a table. I don’t know if he was drawing or what he was doing, but they had that time that was “schoolwork.” And then they would play at home and then they would have lunch and naps and then maybe have an outing at the park. I didn’t really get into all those details with her, but she was so sold on this. It had changed her life so much and made her life so much easier. Especially with a newborn baby, she felt that this was supporting her so much and she could see how her two sons were thriving with this schedule.

So this routine where our child knows, and then we communicate with them, about what happens each day. Some people even like to do a visual schedule where they draw pictures and they can show the child on a chart, “Now we’re going to do this and now we’re going to do that.” That’s probably the only kind of chart I like for children. And what this is is a story that we tell our child that they get to live out each day and feel confident about, feel sure of, even the parts of it that maybe they don’t like as much, the part where they have to wash their hands before meals, and we all go do that together. They are able to feel more cooperative when they are empowered to know: This is what’s going to happen next. This story that I’ve heard is going to repeat itself. I know what’s going to happen in my world.

The world is so overwhelming to young children. They don’t have much control over anything, but through this schedule, this routine, they feel a sense of control, that they are on top of it.

And so where I would take this with parents working from home… Well, first of all, a lot of parents rebel against routines. They do not like having schedules. And I understand that. I think I’m that kind of person naturally. So I had to realize how important it was for my children and how important it was for me to know that I was going to, most of the time, get this nap time period where I could really focus and lose myself in something. I had to be convinced of this (and I think this parent I was speaking to did as well), to realize that that is more important than me getting to be spontaneous and take the kids and do whatever I want to do with them each day.

And we can still do that once in a while. In fact, giving our children that routine helps them to be more flexible when we break it once in a while. It’s a little counterintuitive. And my mentor Magda Gerber used to speak about this, that we might believe that if we take babies everywhere with us and don’t have a schedule that they will be more adaptable. But she said, “Actually no, it’s the opposite. It’s the child that is secure in their routine, has that little bit of control in their life, that is the child that can break the routine with more confidence.”

So yes, we are trading off that fun idea of getting to do whatever we want when we want it with our children and whatever mood strikes us. But the trade-off is worth it. And as this parent I just spoke with said, it’s been night and day for her.

What that also means for parents working at home is that that, even though we can pop out and say hi and that maybe feels really nice to us to be able to do that, it’s going to be harder for our child to not know and to be waiting: Oh, at any moment, my parents might be available.

And schedules aren’t about being on the clock so much as a sequence of events. So if my child knows that after their play time, then I’m out there to help with lunch, or maybe I’m not, maybe my partner is. Developing that consistency will help children not to be distracted by the idea that they might possibly have us at any moment — and so they’ve got to ask for that and wait for that and yell about that maybe, and feel uncomfortable around that. Therefore, not being able to sink into the play that’s so productive for them.

So that is something I would say to both of these families. And maybe this Family Number One is already doing this. It sounds like family Number Two isn’t because “Daddy’s been able to get together for a meal or play when he can,” this parent says. So while that seems like a plus, it’s getting in the way. It’s making it harder for their boy to let go of Daddy. So that is probably the most important bit of advice I would give to that second family.

Both of these families, it sounds like, are having a harder time with the second important idea that I want to share, which is something that if you’ve listened to this podcast, you’ve heard me talk about many, many, many times, maybe in almost every podcast: (2) letting the feelings be. And even more than just letting them be, I would actually encourage them. And this is the exact opposite of the way most of us are naturally wired.

We see our child who we adore, we see their feelings as a big problem that we have to fix instead of the most important thing they could share with us, the most important part of them for us to welcome. Because what children want most is to be seen and understood and allowed to be themselves, all sides of themselves. Which doesn’t mean that we allow them to have destructive behavior of any kind. We stop that. But the feelings behind that behavior, those need to be acceptable to us.

So in this first note, the parent says she has this high schooler that’s coming over two mornings a week and that any time her son isn’t getting what he wants or is upset for any reason, and he’s fairly mercurial in his moods, she doesn’t say how old he is, but I’m picturing a toddler, especially the “mercurial in his moods” part. It’s just a classic toddler thing. “He comes upstairs to find me,” she says. “We have a gate at the top of the stairs and I’m working with the bedroom door shut. He’s yelling, ‘Mommy, mommy,’ and the babysitter’s doing her best to provide alternatives, distract, anything.”

So what the babysitter is doing is the reaction that most of us would naturally have. She’s not comfortable with the feelings. And of course, this can be especially true when it’s someone else caring for our child, because they might worry that the parent is too uncomfortable, and therefore the caregiver has to make this go away for the parent to feel better. This is a high school student, but even for experienced caregivers, it is very hard to let a child grieve not getting what they want from the parent in a particular moment or not getting what they want, period. But this is exactly what this child needs to be able to do. And the more that we try to distract or give alternatives… It’s like us as adults trying to share something with someone, how upset we are, and they’re distracting and giving us alternatives. Children are no different in this way. They have the same need to express and have it be okay that they feel what they feel.

But what I would do as this parent is I would let the babysitter know that it’s not only okay with you, but that what you want for your child is for them to be able to be so mournful that their parent is on the other side of a door. It’s okay. That’s loving somebody. That’s adoring someone. It’s not going to hurt that child to feel those things. In fact, it will help them to feel better if we can support that. And he needs somebody to support it. So the babysitter can support it.

And then even the mother, if she feels like she needs to, she can say from the other side of that door, she can say, “Oh gosh, that is hard, isn’t it? I can’t wait to see you at lunchtime. In the meantime, thank you for sharing this with me. Thank you for sharing your feelings. I agree with you that this is hard for you. I want you to tell me about that as long as you need to, I still need to do my work.”

Instead of trying to make this disappear, make it better, make it go away… because it will keep coming back if we try to make it go away. That’s the thing.

So coming from a place of encouragement: “Yeah, you can share all that. I want you to. Tell me more.”

Instead of: I’m acknowledging your feelings so now you can stop. Because that’s where we might take this idea of acknowledging. Well, this is supposed to fix it if I just say this, so I’m just going to say it that way. I’m still uncomfortable. I’m still wanting you to stop. We have to really trust the emotions. It’s so hard. I know.

And I loved what Magda used to say. “Babies have a right to cry.” Children have a right to say they don’t like something. Let’s empower them to do that and show them that they’re safe to do that and that we welcome it with open arms.

So when this mother says that “I end up coming out to manage and refocus the situation,” that sounds like another way of her trying to fix it somehow and make it better.

Which again might work for a moment, but it’s not going to work in the bigger picture as this parent is discovering. As she says, “It interrupts my workflow and undermines the high schooler’s authority.” That’s right. But I would give the high schooler the permission and the instruction, also acknowledging with her how hard it is: “Yes, it’s really, really hard to hear him, but this is what I want you to try to do. Let him grieve.”

And you know what that also does? It will bond him to this caregiver, which is exactly what we want for our children when they have other caregivers. We want them to develop secondary attachments with them. It does wonders for a child’s confidence to know that they have people beyond their parents that they can trust. And I have experienced this so many times with other people’s children that were in classes with me or that I even just came to consult with for a couple of hours. Trust is built when we bravely encourage those uncomfortable feelings, it’s almost like an instant bonding taking us to another level in our relationship with the child. In the moment, it can feel so mean, right? It feels nicer to distract you and get you to stop. But that’s not the truth. The truth is that it is the most loving, generous, heroic thing that we can do.

So with this second family, it sounds like she’s on the right track but she’s not quite there. When she says she’s trying, “I try acknowledging his feelings of sadness and let him cry.” That tells me that, and I could be wrong, of course, because I don’t have a lot of information here, but that tells me that she’s maybe trying to acknowledge as a way to try to make it better instead of to really and truly all the way welcome the feelings about daddy. Even if he saw daddy one minute before, or with this other family, his mother played with him for an hour, and now two seconds later, he’s still feeling like this. So we might want to say, “Well, mom was just with you,” or, “You were just with daddy. You’re going to see him in a minute.” That reasonable way that we see things as adults. But the child feels the feelings anyway. So we need to trust and allow it all the way, ideally.

Children are very dramatic in these ways. They go all the way with things. I love that about them. The passion, right? The passion for this dad. I mean, how wonderful that the dad is so adored by his son! It’s okay to feel that, it’s safe.

But in the middle of the feelings, she calls these tantrums, that’s when I especially wouldn’t talk too much, because your child isn’t hearing it. All they’re feeling is pushback. Again, we may not even know we’re doing this, but they’re feeling you pushing back against what they’re expressing. I would wait. I would let your shoulders drop. Just maybe nod your head. Think acceptance. Think let the feelings be. It’s okay. Tell yourself that. Relax, breathe, know that this will pass, the waves always pass eventually.

And it will happen much less if I let it happen all the way. If I don’t push back on it at all. That’s how children clear feelings and are able to move out of them. It’s really the only way that a young child can do this.

So I know this parent says she can’t take the tantrums anymore. And I do understand that. I would spend some time thinking and focusing and meditating on letting them be, and the power of them to bond you, the power of him expressing feelings to make him feel better, to be able to function better. It’s a big load that children carry around sometimes when they can’t share their feelings all the way. We can relieve children of that load, but it takes reframing and it takes courage and patience and acceptance — letting go of fixing and doing and making it better.

So again, I would have Daddy come out at routine times just to make this a lot easier for her son. That is a kind of fix that will help. And then when he does have to say goodbye to daddy, let it rip, let him do it. Let him feel that all the way, in your loving, safe presence.

A lot of times when we feel like: I can’t take the tantrums anymore, it’s because we’ve put this pressure on ourselves that this is a problem that we have to fix. So then, yes, tantrums feel like this frustrating experience, like we’re failing.

Of course they’re going to bother us because it’s our baby. When my adult children are upset, it’s unbearable to me on one level, but I’ve learned how important it is for them and for me to allow them that space. So take this burden off your shoulders, take this burden off the high schooler’s shoulders of having to see this as a problem or a responsibility that they have to do something about. They really don’t.

And one more tip I want to share quickly is that when you can be with your child during the day, (3) be fully present without distraction. It’s very difficult for children to let go of us ever if they never really have us all the way. And these ideas will help work of any kind at home flow better. And actually everything flow better for young children.

So I hope some of that helps.

For more, 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 also get them in ebook at Amazon, Apple, Google Play, or Barnes and Noble, 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 3 Hints for Parents Working at Home appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “Helping Parent-Child Relationships Thrive During Long Separations and Transitions (Live Consultation)”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. How’s everybody doing? I’m thinking of all of you at this difficult time.

Today, I’m doing something brand new for the podcast. I’m going to be consulting with the parent of a three-year-old. This parent emailed me with concerns about an impending separation, potentially a long one, and certain life transitions that her family is facing. Separating from our children, even for short periods, can be heart wrenching, whether it’s for their first days at preschool, or a weekend trip with our partner, or a friend or, as in the case with this family, an extensive period of work-related travel. I thought this might be a good opportunity to cover some of the common emotions that children express, and our own feelings when faced with separation.

Janet:   Hi there.

Parent:  Hi Janet.

Janet:   How are you doing?

Parent:  Well, I think these are crazy times for all of us.

Janet:  Absolutely.

What I usually like to do is… I mean, this is your time and your call, first of all, to talk about what you think is important, but I recommend starting with what feels like the biggest concern right now. And if we start from there then we can kind of work our way through other concerns and see how I can help, hopefully.

Parent:  Sure. So one of the things that I’ve learned from your work and have internalized is the importance of our relationships with our children in terms of providing them with stability as the foundation for the rest of their growth. And so my concern is, as I mentioned in my email that both my husband and I are active duty military officers, and we each have a deployment on the horizon. So I’m just looking for your advice on how to best prepare her for those situations ahead of time. And then also reintegration.

The first thing that we’ll have is my husband, who, he already travels quite a bit for work as it is. So she’s used to him coming and going. But she is almost three now and she’s become more curious about when he leaves, where he is, what he’s doing. And she’ll say things like… that she is frustrated or she’s disappointed that he’s not there when she wakes up.

But we’re typically able to move on from those things pretty quickly because they’re a matter of course. But my husband is deploying this Summer for three months and this will be the longest period of time that he’s been away from her since she was six weeks old and he deployed then. How do I prepare her for that? When do I start preparing her for that?

And then is there any way that we can actually maintain or grow their relationship while he’s gone? And then any tips that you have for their re-integration. So that’s kind of the first thing that’s coming up.

Janet:   When is he leaving?

Parent:  We’re expecting July.

Janet:  Okay. So I would wait until three weeks to a month before, unless there’s talk about it from you or friends or other members of your family. If there is, I would definitely bring it out into the open. You know, children are very sensitive and aware. They have radar for what’s going on, especially with their parents. It’s better to put it out there for her, so it’s not this mystery, which is more disconcerting than the reality for children.

Like you said, the relationship is so important and that we have a relationship that’s steeped in trust, which means that we’re honest with you. We don’t try to whitewash things and pretend everything’s fine and you shouldn’t have any feelings about it. We put it out there honestly with what this is going to look like. So we don’t have to tell her what she’s going to feel or what anyone’s going to feel, but the more concrete things that will affect her life, the fact that he’ll be leaving for an extended time.

One thing that I would recommend is what we used to use in the olden days: a real calendar, a big wall calendar, so she can see the days. Something visual for her to get some sense of what that passage of time is really like, and have some autonomy in it, maybe choosing the type of calendar she likes and then being the one to make checks or put in things for the different days — when you’re going to FaceTime. Or it could be about everything in her life.

So yeah, I would say, “Dad usually goes for shorter trips. This is going to be a longer trip and it may be hard to have him so far away for such a long time.” And I would even say, “It’s going to be hard for me because I’m going to miss him.” Just very open, direct talk about this.

How is she with FaceTime? Does she like it? Because some children don’t like those things so much. It’s tough for them to be patient about it.

Parent:  So because we are military, we live away from most of our immediate family and so she does spend a good amount of time Face-Timing with grandparents and extended family, but she’s a toddler, so she only is going to be attentive for a certain period of time. And so when I’m away, which is much more rare than my husband, I just like to watch her. I don’t have an expectation that she and I are going to have a conversation or that she’s going to sit still. I’ll just say to whoever’s holding the phone, “Just point it in her general direction and she’ll come back around and tell me something or show me something as she goes. ” Is much for me as it is for her when I’m away.

Janet:  Probably even more for us than for them. I love the way that you’re handling that. That sounds perfect, that you’re not having expectation that she’s going to be able to sit and find that very engaging. Young children don’t tend to do that. In the old days, again, we had the telephone. If we were away, we would want to hear our child’s voice. But for a child, that was just not very satisfying, to have somebody that’s there but not there.

I wanted to ask you how she brings up things like, “I’m frustrated,” or “I miss daddy.” Or whatever. How does that come about? Because one thing we want to do is be careful not to read too much into her mentions of daddy and take it to a deeper place than it might be. So I’m just curious how that comes up when she says, “I’m frustrated.”

Parent:  Part of our morning routine that she goes around the house and says a very sprightly good morning to everyone. She wakes up and her dad isn’t there, she’ll say, “Where’s daddy?” And I’ll say, “Oh, he’s in Florida.” And she’ll say, “Oh, I’m upset.” Or, ” I’m disappointed.” And remember, like I said, we pretty quickly move on from those things. Like I’ll just say, “Oh, you’re upset he’s not here. You’re feeling, you’re feeling disappointed.” And then we move on.

Janet:  Does she show that she’s upset or does she just say the words?

Parent:  I mean it’s really more verbal. She does not linger on it. She will continue on about her way. We’ve never seen a big emotional response or a tantrum and I know that sometimes those feelings can come out in other ways.

Janet:  Right. That comes out in other ways and that’s where the feelings actually come. So her saying those things… I just find it interesting because sometimes we’re the ones that suggest those words. We might say, “Is that upsetting for you?” Or, “Are you feeling frustrated?” And then she’s, in a sense, repeating back what the parent has suggested about feelings.

Parent:  I mean that is entirely possible. I am definitely guilty. Well, in a positive way, I’ve always tried to articulate her feelings in line with your guidance from the time that she was an infant and she would express something. I would say, “Oh, it seems like you are… (insert the emotion that I think she’s feeling). So we have always done that and then it’s entirely possible that at some earlier time I said, “Oh, I bet you’re disappointed your dad’s not here.” And so she may well be regurgitating that.

Janet:  Yeah. So don’t feel guilty about it. This is just information to know for ourselves — that maybe she’s not really that upset. Maybe she’s just kind of weighing in.

It doesn’t sound like you’re doing this, but what can happen is a child will say, “Where’s daddy.” And the parent a little bit in their emotions lurches forward to, uh-oh she’s upset about daddy, instead of just staying behind our child in that sense, and just reflecting back what we know for sure, which is, “Oh, you’re thinking about daddy right now, or where he is. Let me see. I think he might be here and this is what he might be doing right now because it’s lunchtime where daddy is so he may be having lunch now.”

Children are very curious and they just want to know the information. When children are used to things like daddy’s not here, they do adapt to those ideas and they aren’t stressed about them every day. Especially when we’ve put it out there so honestly, as you are doing and will do. So there’s really nothing to fear.

Parent:  That’s incredibly reassuring.

Janet:  Good. Well, it’s the truth, I believe.

And I had an idea that it would be nice to do the old fashioned thing of letters. Do you ever do that?

Parent:  Oh yeah.

Janet:   I think that’s just so much-

Parent:  Sorry, I don’t. My daughter sends letters to our extended family or pictures. I haven’t written a letter to my husband in probably 10 years.

Janet:  It’s just much more tangible for a child to have that thing they can hold in their hand. And of course there’s other great aspects to this like learning about letters and writing and not that you’re going to be ‘teaching her’ in overt way, but just the fact that you would sit down together and maybe you have that on your calendar that, “Here’s the day that we write a letter.” Something that you do together and then asking her like, “Should we take a picture or is there a picture of something that you did this week that you want to share?” And you could even bring something. “Here’s a bit of sand from the beach we went to.” Or, I don’t know… “Here’s a leaf that I found.” You could really have fun with that.

So giving her that sense of participation and ownership in what’s going on and that autonomy of being able to decide things. It’s a fun, educational and emotionally rewarding experience to have all those elements come together. And then daddy sends letters back and you get to read those and imagine what he’s doing and it’s just a richer way than a FaceTime to feel connected and to feel like you’re sharing your life with somebody.

Parent:   I used to send care packages, and part of the reason I don’t do it anymore, it’s because Amazon delivers everywhere so he can really get whatever he needs where he’s going. But perhaps that’s something that my daughter and I can do where we pick out things that we think… I could ask her, “What do you think the daddy would like to eat?” Or, “What do you think that daddy would like to read?” And we can pick some of those things out together and put it in a little box and send with her pictures and her letters.

Janet:  That’s a brilliant idea.

Parent:   Yeah.

Janet:   So what else?

Parent:  So what about as he prepares to come home? I imagine that preparing her for that will be much the same as when he’s getting ready to leave, we’ll maybe have the calendar going and we can do a countdown. Maybe pick a special outfit and do things like that to get her excited about his return. But I also think that she grows so much every day. She might be a slightly different child by the time that he comes home. So any suggestions for how we can use the transition and re-integrating him into the routine that she and I have established and even helping him become acquainted with the little girl who’s maybe a little bit more grown in different than he remembers?

Janet:  Yeah. So I would be careful not to put any big expectation… Now I’m thinking of her end of things and how she’s going to feel… When you said, “Pick out the dress.” That sounds really, really sweet on one hand. But on the other hand, I wonder if it’s making a little bit of a pressure situation for something that might be anticlimactic at that point in the way that they actually meet again. For children, it can take a little while to get comfortable when they haven’t seen somebody for a while. So we don’t want to rush that. We want to give her the time and not put all this expectation.

So I think I would address that with this honest, open, concrete way of speaking with her about it. Also, inviting her participation again, “Where would you like to be when he comes?” “What would you like to wear?” Maybe. Without putting any charge on it, if you can.

You can say, “I’m really excited for daddy.” But I wouldn’t assume that she’s going to be excited. Hopefully he doesn’t assume that either, because it’s a lot of things when you haven’t seen someone for a long time and you’re that little and your emotions are all out on your chest. Your whole body’s feeling your emotions. It can be embarrassing. It can make you feel shy. It can be scary. It can be uncomfortable in a lot of ways. So I would be open to it being whatever it is.

Parent:  Yeah, that’s a really great point. The only time he’s deployed since we’ve had our daughter was when she was very, very little. I mean, she was still an infant. So in the past it’s been like the prom for me, right? Getting ready and being excited. And so that’s a good perspective to have that that might not be how she feels. I think both of us are probably going to have to actively work toward anticipating that and being accepting of that.

Janet:   I think that’s great. And you know how children sometimes cry when people sing Happy Birthday to them on their birthday, or they run away? All that buildup, excitement and then they feel on the spot… And, I don’t know, I can relate to it as an introverted person myself, I can relate to the awkwardness of it and the whole range of emotion.

So the best thing you could do, and I’m sure you will do, is to approach this in a way that is very accepting of however she feels about it and not taking it personally and not taking it as any sign that she doesn’t love her dad or isn’t excited to see her dad. Excitement is one of the emotions, I’m sure, but there are a lot of others as well. And those might be the ones that come forth first.

You use the word “anticipation” and that for children is very uncomfortable in a lot of ways. Anticipation… Like have you ever had the experience where you said, “Oh, this afternoon we’re going to have these friends over, you’re going to see grandma.” Or something, and then she can’t take a nap?

Parent:  Yeah.

Janet:  Yeah. So these things that we can kind of compartmentalize as like: I’m really excited about this. But I can still go on with my life, for children it takes over their whole body.

So for you and her dad, I would be looking forward. And I would go into this with confidence knowing that, yes, she loves her dad and there’s nothing that he can do to change that at this point. She loves him. She may not feel as at ease with him when she hasn’t seen him for a while, but she loves him. Knowing that, we can just be open to whatever this sweet girl does and how she takes it. But not, “Come here and give me a big hug.” I would be like, “Oh, I’m so happy to see you.” And, have your arms open for a hug if she wants to, but then accept whatever it is.

Parent:  Yeah, those are really great reminders. I can’t say that I would have… I can’t say it would have occurred to me to throttle back. You see the movies, you expect a big open arm hug and things like that, but you’re right, that might not be a realistic expectation. So I’m glad that you mentioned that.

Janet:  I think for an older child it might be more of a realistic expectation. But for somebody that’s so in the moment — they’re very self centered at that age. They’re supposed to be. All this development is happening and they need to be self centered and have their world kind of be around them.

I think those movies are more about older kids. But yeah, for you two to have your expectations realistic is going to help. So that you’re not let down and you’re not discouraged, and that her dad doesn’t feel less confident about proceeding with her.

And then, I would just take it slow with him not pushing the physicality, and knowing that it might take a little time to get back into being so demonstrative and everything.

What I’ve learned through all the work with Magda Gerber is that, those caregiving times are the golden times for connecting. And caregiving times with a child her age is the meals. Just being there, not having distractions, not having a cell phone. I would have him start putting that all away for these periods of time throughout the day, when he’s available to her, that is.  If he’s working, or you’re working, you can’t do that if you need to make business phone calls. But as much as possible, prioritizing those times so that, you’re using those naturally intimate connecting times to build the trust back.

Parent:  I love that. And I think like most children, our daughter really thrived off of routine and knowing what is going to happen. I mean, as you mentioned, she asks 1,000,001 question a day and wants to know where everyone is and what they’re doing and why. And so especially with her having those set routines… We do eat dinner together as a family every night, we read two books, we do the bath, we pick out clothes for the next day. I mean these are things that she knows are going to happen and she’s excited about them and it certainly makes me feel bonded with her to begin every day in that special way and then also end every night by putting her to bed in that way.

Janet:  That’s great. And then when her dad is home, does he do any of those things with her?

Parent:  I mentioned in my email, I think this may change as she gets older and they have more shared interests and they spend more time together. I think right now I am definitely the preferred parent and I perform most of those caregiving rituals. He does, but it’s not on a set basis. The expectation is that I’ll give her her bath and I’ll do her bedtime routine. And so the time that they spend together is impromptu. Right? So playing a game together on the floor or taking the dog for a walk and things like that, less caregiving and more play focused.

Janet:   That routine is wonderful. You’re absolutely right. It empowers her. It helps her feel on top of her world — more confident — and children thrive in those situations. So absolutely.

But when you say preferred… Ideally, that doesn’t mean that you see it as a need, but as a choice that she’s making in that moment. Taking the dog for a walk and playing together is great too.  But for him to have the opportunity to do some of those even more bonding experiences would be helpful for their developing bond and for building more trust with him too.

And the way that would look is I would let her know in advance, not in a warning way, but just, “Oh by the way, dad is going to be the one to give you your bath tonight.” And then she says, “No, I want mommy.” And you would say, “Ah yeah, I know you want me to do it. We usually do it. We’re the ones that do that together. But daddy wants a turn and we’re going to give him a turn to do that.” Then allowing for the protest. And him, if he can, meeting that situation with confidence. Even if it’s rocky, allowing that to be and not be intimidated by it.

Because it can be that she just wants it her way and in this case it’s really okay for her to not get her first choice. Almost especially if she cries, actually, it will open up their relationship to much more trust and a deeper connection.

When you can share that somebody’s not your first choice and they’re willing to hear that and they still stick with you… That’s such a beautiful moment to have with somebody as a child. They feel like they can share so many feelings with you as they grow. They can share that they didn’t like what you did, it embarrassed them. They can share that they’re mad at you for being away so long and not being there when there was Daddy’s Day at school or something.

They can be kind of pushing you away, but you stay there. And that that is the way children share that I missed you and you weren’t there and it’s uncomfortable getting to know you again. That’s exactly how they share it — through yelling at you or being upset that they wanted mommy and they got daddy.

So it takes us going into this really high place in ourselves to be able to do that as a dad. Even as the preferred parent, it’s hard to trust that that’s okay. But the other parent really needs us to do that and not come in if there’s crying and go, “Okay, I’ll do it. I’ll do it.” Undermining that other parent. So it takes both of you being heroes. Heroes that see the bigger picture.

Children are always in the moment. “This is what I want right now.” As adults, as their parents, we get to be the ones that see the bigger picture. We see beyond that she just wants ice cream right now, but we know that’s not healthy for her.

So being that parent in those situations will help him to get back in sync with her, believe it or not, even though it’s going to feel messy and hard in those moments maybe.

Parent:  That’s great advice.

And then the other thing that I want to talk about, as we mentioned, my husband’s deployment is the one coming up most quickly, but next Spring I’m also supposed to deploy for six months. This certainly would be the longest period of time with she and has spent a part. And the beauty of this particular assignment is that it is stateside and there’s potential that I might actually be able to bring her with me, so long as I can make sure that I have childcare, like a live-in nanny or a grandparent who is able to be there. I need to be responsive to work and I essentially needed to be available at all time.

So it sounds like a dream come true, but I wanted to get your thoughts because I am also concerned about the disruption of moving her to a new location. Again, in the absence of her father because he would not be able to come with us, introducing her to a new caregiver and then moving her home in six months.

Janet:   Right. I think those adaptations are well worth her being able to be with her primary caregiver, which is you. So you’re the primary attachment figure and it’s going to be harder for her to be away from you than her dad right now.

Parent:  Okay. That was what I thought initially. That was what I felt in my gut. My husband and I are very grateful for every opportunity the military has given us, including this one. But we’ve also, since we had her, maintained that we will take every assignment and every opportunity one by one and determine what is in the best interest of her. And I am at this point eligible to separate from the military if I wanted to. So this is just something that we’ve been weighing on — whether or not to continue my career of military service even though it will cause perhaps disruption and discomfort to her because military service is not a choice that she made.

Janet:   Right. Well, you’re very unselfish in the way you’re thinking about this, considering her in this way. But yes, for a child there’ll be some stress involved in it, but not nearly the amount that being away from you would be. Not that she couldn’t handle that either, but weighing it, yeah, it will be much easier for her. She’ll be much more comfortable if she could still be with you.

Parent:  Yeah. So I think that either I will bring her with me or I will step away from my military career for the time being and just focus on her and focus on our family and not take that next assignment or that deployment. Because I… Again, this sometimes it was about me as a parent and less about her as a child, or at least equally about me. I can’t imagine spending that length of time away from her.

Janet:  Right. And she’s still very young. So if she was seven or eight it might be easier because, again, children can compartmentalize things in their mind: My mother does still love me and I can’t be with her now, but I’ll be with her.  It’s a little bit easier as they get older. It’s never easy, but she’s still at a very early time and development, and if you can make this work to not be away from her, I absolutely would. I would prioritize that.

And then I would address it the same way we were talking about her dad leaving and these other things that you’ll be very concrete about it. “This is what we’re doing and this is who’s going to be there. This is what our day’s going to look like.” And some people do make a book of all the things that she’s going to get to do so she can enjoy reading that story with you.

And now she knows that this and that is going to happen. And so she comes into it with this confidence of knowing and then she gets to see: Yes. Oh, there’s what that ends up feeling like and that. So it’s again, a very confidence building experience.

So yeah, I would do that and not say, “This is going to be great and you’re really going to like this new caregiver.” And all those things that we want to do because we really want it to be okay for them. Most parents, we just want them to be fine and to be okay. But they’ve got a right to be however they are about it. Just like with her dad returning, they’ve got a right to be themselves. And that’s what we want anyway. We want to meet her as herself, not some person that she thinks she has to pretend to be. So yeah, you can do that.

Parent:   Okay. I love that.

Janet:  And is there anything else?

Parent:   These are the things that have been weighing on my shoulders. Like you said, having a parent gone for any length of time is probably not comfortable, but doing what I can to help her understand what’s going on with her father being gone… And then just really contemplating how we handle my deployment and whether or not she comes with me, and making that as comfortable for her as we can. And you’ve given me a lot of reassurance in my gut, which is that she needs to be with her mom.

Janet:   Oh good. Yes. So this thing about comfort… Children do learn when there’s some stress, a certain amount of stress. So this whole situation with her dad, she can learn a lot from that. And I don’t even know that she would be stressed, again, if she’s used to that: this is my relationship with my dad — he’s gone a lot and then he comes back. Children normalize that for themselves. But if there was some stress, there’s learning that happens through writing those letters and through the uncomfortable feelings and all that. But then there’s a point where the stress gets more overwhelming, then there’s less learning. And less ability to function and that’s the difference in your family right now between your husband being gone and you being away from her.

Parent:  You know, sometimes I can forget that there are hundreds of thousands of military families that have endured these challenges before we have, and many, many of the children who come from military families are incredibly well adjusted and very resilient and very adaptable as a result of having had those experiences at a young age.

Janet:   Yes, and then the other part of that is… because now you’re making me feel like I really want to add this… If you did leave her, she would be okay. What you would want to happen… If her dad’s not there either, you would want to, as much as possible, foster the development of a secondary attachment figure, which would be whoever her primary caregiver ends up being — her grandparent, if that was the caregiver or another relative. Sometimes, understandably, the parent might get threatened by the relationship that child has with this other person. And I don’t think you would, because you’re so generous in your thoughts about your daughter and what’s best for her. But that happens on all different levels. Even with people that work full time and just aren’t home day to day. But that’s what you want: somebody that they feel deep trust and love for. That’s going to help your child to thrive.

It’s very healthy for children to develop more attachment figures than just their parents. It’s a gift to be able to bond with other people as well.

So just putting it out there that you want your child to bond with that person that’s going to care for them. That’s the best thing that could happen. And if you come home and they seem to be more comfortable with that person, it’s really okay for all the reasons that you and I talked about in regard to her dad coming home. It’s really okay. You will find your way back to each other.

Anyway, just wanted to add that because you brought to mind that other people may not have this ability that you do to make a choice.

Parent:  Right. Yeah, absolutely. Well, Janet, I could not be more appreciative of your time. I’m just such a fan of your work. It has so influenced my relationship with my daughter and the way that I see her and I think my happiness as a parent, there is truly no one else that I could feel comfortable receiving this advice from than you.

Janet:  Thank you so much. And thank you again for sharing your journey with other parents. It’s brave of you and generous of you, so thank you so much. I have no doubts about you handling all of this. I think even before we talked. Because you already get it. So just keep up the wonderful work with your dear girl.

Parent:  Thank you, Janet.

If you liked the format of these recorded consultations there are 6 more at sessionsaudio.com. There’s a description of each recording and you can download them individually or as a set for under $20. That’s sessionsaudio.com.

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, where they’re particularly popular, at Audible.com.

Take care now. We can do this.

The post Helping Parent-Child Relationships Thrive During Long Separations and Transitions (Live Consultation) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “What to Do About Your Clingy Child”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today I have a question from a parent who describes her two-and-a-half-year-old as having severe clinginess. When she gets home from work each night, he pounces immediately, demands that she play with him and he won’t let her do anything she needs to do for herself, even taking her shoes off. So, this mother’s looking for a little advice.

Okay, here’s the email I received:

“Hello, Janet. First off, I love your work. Thank you so much for all you do. My two-and-a-half-year-old has recently become so clingy that it has been causing a lot of frustration and exhaustion in our home, and often leads to major tantrums. I’m struggling with what to do. When I get home from work at around 5:30, my little one is usually already home with my partner, who picks him up around 4:00 P.M.

My son is often waiting by the door and insists that I sit down right away to play with him. He doesn’t want me to set my bags down or take my shoes off. If I say I have to use the restroom or put some things away or really anything other than sit right down with him, it often leads to a tantrum. If I do sit right down and play with him, after a while, sometimes an hour, I try to get up to make dinner or eat the dinner my partner made. This causes a tantrum. He will often refuse to eat dinner and as was the case last night, will sometimes stand next to me and scream while I try to eat mine, even pulling on my hands or clothing to go back and play with him in the living room.

He also refuses to let my partner play with him, and wants me to only do things for him in our day to day. He will only occasionally allow daddy to get him his milk or dress him and I’m feeling stretched thin. My partner and I both work full time, and we often only see our son for an hour or two before and after work. I worry that our working so much is causing the severe clinginess. I’m at a loss for what to do.”

Okay, well I want to thank this parent for her kind words and I hope to, in this podcast, give her a lot of reassurance and help her to reframe what’s going on here.

So, children don’t need us to be stay home parents. If we work outside of the house and they go to a care situation or have someone care for them at home, they can accept that. But what they do need is for us to be comfortable with and certain of our life decisions. What this parent says at the end of this note, for me, kind of puts a tone on the whole thing… that she’s worried.

She’s worried that working so much is causing the clinginess. She’s maybe feeling guilty around that. And because of that, she’s giving up her leadership to her two-and-a-half-year-old. We can’t be the confident leaders that our children need if we’re coming from a place of guilt or worry.

So the first thing… if I was working with this parent, the first thing I would help her to see is that it’s really okay that she and her partner have made these choices they’ve made — to work. I’m sure they have a positive care situation for their son. Maybe at some point they’ll change their minds. But, for now, these are the choices that they’ve made. And their son needs them to feel confident in this situation.

What I’m seeing in this note is not a clingy child so much as a parent who is too uncomfortable to be the leader — to have boundaries and set the limits she needs to set. Again, underneath that has to be: We’re really comfortable with what we’ve decided. And that’s true if we are taking our child to childcare or to school and we don’t feel confident in that environment. It makes it so hard for children to separate from us, understandably, because we’re not even sure about it. How are they going to be able to embrace this situation if we’re not even sure?

The other part of this reframing that I’m talking about is understanding that a child that’s going to a care situation or to a school, even if it’s just for a few hours (and this sounds like it might be a pretty long day if he’s getting picked up at 4:00), he is going to be completely exhausted. I would expect that he will be a mess at the end of each day. Unfortunately, these are the hours that the parent has with him and it’s going to be rough because, children, it takes them so much energy to be in these care situations, to be away from their parents, to be in groups of children with people that don’t know them as well as their parents do. It is stressful. That doesn’t mean it’s bad, but it drains every bit of energy out of them.

It’s a common thing that we, of course, want to come home at the end of the day and have some nice time with our child before they go to bed. But that’s not what children are going to give us and that’s not what they need sometimes. Oftentimes, they need to share or spill all the stress of their day. And that looks like tantrums. That looks like whining. That looks like complete meltdowns, sometimes. That’s okay. That’s this backhanded compliment that we get as the people who are closest to our children, the most trusted people, the people they can let down every bit of their guard with. They don’t have to be at their best with us. Thank goodness that they have us for that.

So what I would expect, again, coming home, or even if I was a stay home parent and I was picking up my child from somewhere they’d been for several hours, I would expect a child who might get stuck demanding a lot of things that are unreasonable like this parent describes. And we’ll go into those step-by-step so we can see another way to handle them.

He’s going to be fragile emotionally, a lot of whining, a lot of discomfort coming out. That’s what I would expect.

So if this parent can, first, feel confident that the decision she’s making for her family are just fine, and then understand what’s reasonable to expect from a young child at the end of the day, she can perceive this completely differently. And she can perceive it in a way that frees her up to be the leader her son is asking for. Not directly, but that’s what he’s asking for here when she says that he’s waiting by the door, and he insists that she sit right down to play with him. He doesn’t want her to set her bags down or take her shoes off, and if she has to go to the restroom that often leads to a tantrum. Even if she plays with him for an hour, she can’t get up to make dinner.

He’s actually kind of begging for her to release him of this tight, controlling thing that he’s getting stuck doing because she’s trying to avoid the feelings that he’s expressing. Instead of welcoming them — welcoming the storm –knowing that this is quality time at the end of the day for almost every child this age, actually, no matter what choices the parents have made.

From what this parent describes, he seems very, very overwhelmed. He just needs to be able to cry and scream and stomp his feet or whatever he does, however he expresses it, as long as it’s safe. He needs to do that and have them be ready for it. So I would embrace the storm. And I would plan for it just as we would for an actual storm — prepared mentally for this to happen. And not even dreading it, because ideally she’ll normalize it for herself, understand that it’s healthy. It really, really is.

But she’s got to take care of herself. So when she comes in and there’s this guy right by the door, she still needs to take a moment. Maybe that means saying, “Oh, it’s so great to see you, my dear. I will be with you in a moment. I’m going to go take my shoes off or change my clothes.” Or do whatever she needs to do. And while she’s doing that, he’s going to be already storming, loudly protesting this. But she has to hold her own, with empathy for him, but not melting herself, doing what she needs to do to get herself ready for the storm. I would close the door on him if you need to, if he’s grabbing at you and you have to do some self care when you come home, when you make this transition.

We do need to take whatever time that we need to get comfortable. Why? Because we’re much less likely to be able to do our job at that time, which is allowing and welcoming the storm, if we’re feeling uncomfortable and grumpy and not at our best. So whatever moment she needs to take.

One thing I would consider in this situation, because she says it’s already 5:30 when she’s coming home… even that is on the late side for a child to have dinner. I would consider dinner is the first thing that happens when she comes home, or maybe it even happens before she comes home, for him.

I know that there’s a lot of advice around family meals. Yes, family meals are really important, but what’s more important is that a child doesn’t get overly hungry or too tired to be able to eat. Tiredness tends to override hunger for children. When they’re too tired, all bets are off in terms of eating. So weeknights might not be family meal nights. A child this age isn’t quite going to blossom in a family meal yet. That’s going to happen maybe starting age four, where they can really be there, more than just want to eat their food and get on with it.

We hear all this advice, family meals, family meals, and now we want to make that happen with a one-year-old or a two-year-old, and it doesn’t really serve their needs at that point, necessarily. If it works for you, great. But as my mentor, Magda Gerber used to say, “Children this age are ready to eat, but they’re not ready to dine,” which is what family meals are about. Maybe breakfast can be more of a family meal.

So when she says that he doesn’t let her do this or that, it’s not about him not letting her. It’s about not letting herself be ruled by a two-year-old who really just needs to explode and vent with his mother.

The more that she releases her leadership to him, the harder it is for him, the more tension he has to absorb, and he gets stuck in this little man controlling everybody place that is much more uncomfortable for him than being able to let go and let it out.

Let’s talk about how this is going to look step-by-step:

Let’s say that he has eaten and he wants her to come sit down right now and play. So he says, “No, don’t set your bags down or take your shoes off!” As the parent, I would say, “Wow, you don’t want me to do that. You really don’t like it when I take care of myself when I get home. But I must. I’m going to do this. Yes, you can tell me how much you don’t like it, my dear.”

Not just saying words but really meaning that, because I see this as so normal and healthy and expected, and that’s what’s going to come across to my child. Not the certain words that I say, but the fact that I welcome him to disagree with me, with these choices that I’m making as the leader.

And now he says I can’t go to the restroom or put things away or do anything other than sit right down with him. “You want me there! I hear you. I can’t wait to be there with you. I am going to do this first. I know that’s not what you want. I hear that.”

While I’m moving. I’m not stopping everything and getting stuck in ambivalence. I’m moving on. I’ve got my own confident momentum, but the whole way through I’m welcoming him. And if he’s grabbing at me physically, I’m going to take his hands, move him and move away as best I can. And maybe I’ll let him grab onto my leg while I’m putting my shoes on. But I’m going to keep confidently moving forward, empathizing at the same time. But not in the slightest bit feeling like I’m doing something wrong here, not feeling bad for him. In fact, feeling glad that he’s getting this opportunity to yell about me going to the bathroom or taking my shoes off when it’s really about him and his day. I’m just the one he’s sharing it with.

Then now she is ready. I understand he’s probably a mess and he’s on the floor or screaming. I would sit on the floor with him wherever you’ve stationed yourself for him to play. And I would just wait at that point, and breathe. And again, focus on: let the feelings be, feelings are healing. He’s got a right and actually this is what I want him to do — share this with somebody. And I want to be that somebody. Turning this pretty much 180 degrees from the way this parent is seeing it right now — that the tantrum is the problem and she’s got to avoid that and these are landmines that she has to avoid. No, these are healthy, healthy venting moments that he can have.

And then maybe she isn’t able to be there for an hour. It’s not the amount of time so much as that, when she’s there, she’s really there for him. And this is true for all of us as parents. There’s no phone in the picture at that point. After you’ve checked in and done that little self care in the bathroom that you need to do, then the phone goes away. It’s not there ready to interrupt you at any moment.

I know I hear from parents a lot that, “Well, this is no different than other days when there were TV or other things that distracted parents.” But actually this is different. What this is, is something that can interrupt at any moment, and that feeling as a child that you never own your parent’s attention completely. That it could always be taken away at any time by the sound of a text message or a phone call. That’s what’s different about these tech devices that we have today from other distractions that parents have always had in the past.

So, put it away and then be with him. And even if it was for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, that’s okay. Again, feeling good about your choices. And you and your partner as the leaders, deciding priorities and what you can do with open arms.

Because the other thing that happens when a parent gets stuck getting controlled by a young child is that she can’t enjoy playing with him. She can’t enjoy anything, because she’s kind of like a caged animal. She couldn’t take care of herself. She couldn’t go to the bathroom, and she’s stuck with this guy. And that’s who he’s got with him for his quality time. She doesn’t want to be that person, I’m sure. She wants to be somebody that’s: Okay. You yelled at me all the time, but I saw that as what you needed to do. I got myself together and now I’m here and I can’t wait to be with you. If you want to cry, you can cry. Whatever you need to do, I’m here 100% available to you. There’s no one else in my life right now. I’m all yours and I’m happy to be here. For whatever amount of time this parent decides that she can feel that way.

Then if she’s hungry… don’t spend an hour and then be too hungry and now you’re going to be in a struggle. We’re going to be grumpy parents if we’re not taking care of ourselves first. That’s the self care. We’ve got to be on top of it.

And then she says, he stands and screams next to her while she tries to eat. I would try to let go of that, because the more you let go of that and the more you’ve wanted him to share these things from the beginning, the less likely it’s going to keep going on and going on.

But in the beginning, if this parent decides to make these changes, then yeah, there’s going to be some trying out and seeing if his mother is going to be okay when he screams while she’s eating, or going to the bathroom. And again, this isn’t conscious that he’s doing this mean test on her. It’s just what children do, because they really need to know it’s safe for them to feel these things, and that their parent believes that. And that’s true in all situations where the parent has faltered a little.

While she’s eating, if he’s pulling on her hands or her clothing to go back and play, she has to release herself. She has to put her hand towards him to hold him off, and be as comfortable doing this as she possibly can, so that it will stop the next time. This isn’t a situation where she’s going to release control to him. She is going to hold her own.

And I would say something like, “You want me to play while I’m eating. Ah, yes, I hear you my dear. It’s so hard just to let me eat.” Then I would eat a little bit and just let whatever it is go on, and then every so often, “You’re still wanting me to play. I will come play as soon as I eat,” if you are going to play. “And I will look forward to that. I hear how it’s so hard for you.” Empathizing from a place of strength in herself, confidence in herself. And the base of all of that is confidence in her life choices. She’s doing the right thing.

She says he also refuses to let her partner play with him, and “he wants me to only do things for him in our day to day.” Again, that can’t be his choice. It has to be her choice what she’s going to do with him, and her partner’s choice what he’s going to do with him. Whatever feelings come through of disappointment or frustration with those decisions, bring them on. Let them come through. Don’t give in: “Oh, okay, he wants me to put this water in his glass.” I mean, that’s how ridiculous it can get, and we can get caught up in it if we’re, again, coming from that guilt place. Seeing our child’s feelings as signs that we’re doing something wrong when it’s actually the opposite.

So if he shares it with daddy, if he shares it with his mom, wonderful.

I have at least a couple of podcasts and posts about being the preferred parent, and this is what it’s about. Being that parent that isn’t the preferred parent is heroic, because that’s where you’re saying, “Oh, I’m not your favorite right now, but I’m still going to do this with you. You can yell at me. You can be upset if you need to be with me. It’s safe for you to do that. I want to hear how disappointed you are that you got me instead of your mom.” Because we know it’s not personal. It’s actually often about that that mom isn’t establishing her boundaries as well or that dad.

So I would look at all of this as freeing your son up, releasing him from being this tight Mr. Control, letting the feelings come out so that he can relax and be a little child, knowing that his parents have got this down, that they can do this. They know they can, and they’re not intimidated. It’s not harming him, as this parent is concerned that she might. It’s freeing him.

So I really hope that helps. I know this is challenging.

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

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

Thanks again for listening. We can do this.

The post What to Do About Your Clingy Child appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Instead of being coddled and pitied, our clingier children (like all children) need to be empowered to express their strong feelings and points of view. A brief, casual message exchange I had with Carey reiterated the importance of this perception and approach.

Carey: Hello! I am in desperate need of some advice. My 17-month-old has always had trouble separating from me. Lately, even when I try to pick up the house, vacuum, etc. he follows me around crying, wanting to be picked up. I’ve tried handling this by talking to him and telling him we will play when I finish. I’ve tried involving him by giving him his own rag, asking him to help me push the vacuum, etc. I really could use some advice because I feel like I’m failing as a parent. I want him to be secure enough to play on his own at times without being stressed out.

Me: It really needs to be okay with you that he’s mad about you not paying attention. That means being confident in carrying on with what you do — not trying to fix him or make it better — and acknowledging every couple of minutes: “You don’t want me to run the vacuum! I hear that!” Acknowledge and hear him as a person sharing his strong demands and opinions rather than perceiving him as a helpless, needy boy.

Carey: Thank you so much for answering. Even though I didn’t think I was trying to “fix” him, I guess I actually was. Today he cried while I was fixing lunch, and I just did what you said. For dinner, he played in the family room with my daughter and didn’t whine for me once! I really appreciate your response.

Me: Wow, that’s very cool that you were able to change your view so quickly and had such immediate results. Kudos to you for that!

Carey: I really think I was treating him like he couldn’t handle these situations. I’m going to keep at it. I’m sure he’s going to keep having these moments, but with time I know it will really help. Thank you for showing me another way. I don’t always know what words to use with him while he’s so upset. Today during lunch and dinner I just calmly repeated what you said. I kept waiting for him to start hanging from me screaming, and he never did. He hasn’t done that in several months!

Me: Yes, knowing he can handle this is essential. As far as words, all I would say is what you know for certain: “Sounds like you’re saying a big NO to me doing this right now.” It’s safest not to get into “sad,” which communicates you’re feeling sorry for him and not seeing him as capable of being in vehement disagreement with you. It empowers him when you perceive him in a strong way.  He’s got a right not to like it. You are the leader doing what you need and want to do.

Carey: This makes so much sense to me, but it is a completely different way from how I was thinking. My extended family, mom, and mother-in-law define him as “needy,” “dramatic,” etc. I was the same way as a child, and looking back I was treated like I was weak and couldn’t handle things. I have dealt with a lot of insecurities as an adult and absolutely don’t want my child to feel this way. I think it’s imperative I start now with him. I love how he is. He feels every emotion in a big way, which means he shows love in a big way, too. I don’t want to change that!

I share more about setting limits with respect in my book, No Bad Kids: Toddler Discipline Without Shame

The post Separating (with Confidence) from Your Clinging Child appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “Helping a Child Adjust to Two Households or Other Changes in Care”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today I am responding to an email from a stepparent, who wants to be the best parent she can be for her stepchild, and the stepchild is dealing with some very different households, going back and forth, different kinds of parenting, different kinds of care. But before you decide that this doesn’t relate to you, please know that this advice I’m about to share should also pertain to children who spend time in daycare or in the care of relatives and have to switch back and forth between different kinds of care, also children who’ve been traveling and had their routines sort of upended and have to readjust, even celebrations over the holidays that children might need to wind down from.

Here’s the letter I received:

“Hi, Janet. Thank you. I find your work both fascinating and practical. It has changed my partner’s and my lives, enabled us to become better parents towards our three and a half year old son. We’re a blended family, being that my partner is the biological father and I am the stepmother. We are in a situation of 50/50 equal care with our boys’ mom as the result of consent orders. I just wanted to put it out there that I would find it extremely helpful to have some articles or practical tips, stories, centered around blended families and navigating some of these situations as best as possible in the child’s interest, particularly where one or more parent is not open to communication or collaboration around parenting and connecting the two households, such as in our situation, where at least one parent is unwell or blatantly unwilling to accept co-parenting.

As you can imagine, this creates a very confusing climate for the child, who’s already in an overwhelming developmental stage, but then lives in two worlds, which cannot communicate with one another. I’m sure my situation is very common and that a lot of stepparents would love to feel more included and connected in their wish to be the best parents they can be with some specific tools to address these unique challenges for such a young age group. Thanks again.”

Okay. So, first of all, I of course love this parent’s desire to do the best by her stepchild. So, this is not going to really be about using any specific tools for this situation, as much as it is about understanding our children’s experience in these situations, and understanding their needs, and then being the person or persons in their life that can help fulfill those needs. What this means is understanding that, yes, children are very adaptable. They can handle situations that are different, and less comfortable, and new, but there is a price that they pay, and that price is stress and emotions that need to be shared, need to be released for the child to be able to make these transitions in a healthy fashion.

This parent doesn’t go into detail about what’s going on for her child in this other home where he’s with his biological mother, but what I would suggest, in any situation similar to this (like all the ones I mentioned earlier), is that we, first of all, prepare our child as best we can, letting them know, without judgment on what’s going on in these other situations, without any judgment on those people or the way that they handle things, because that doesn’t help our child. It doesn’t help our child to feel that we don’t have 100% confidence in them to handle the situation. Really we’re the ones they’re looking to for that assurance. That’s got to be the bottom line, that we feel that our child can handle this experience, so tearing it down and complaining about it to our child is really not going to help.

What will help is to explain simply what we know, and I would do this if a child was starting a new school or any situation that’s new like this, even going to a play date in a place where he or she hasn’t been before. This is what I know about this place and what’s going to happen. You’re going to go there. Your mother will pick you up in her car. Then you’re going to hang out with them. These other people I think might be there. And if this parent, if she says they don’t have the communication, which makes it harder obviously to know what’s going to happen, so we just share what we know, very honestly, and again, without judging the situation. We trust children to make their own judgments. That can be hard to do, but it’s important.

We’ve set our child up as best we can. We make the transition with confidence on our end. They will be all right. Telling ourselves that. If there are any feelings around the child making this transition, we welcome them. “You’re having a hard time saying goodbye.” We see it as positive always that our child is sharing, not as a big, Uh-oh. This is bad. This makes me feel terrible. That doesn’t help our child. I understand those are normal reactions, and it’s hard not to feel that way, but truly in the most ideal situations children might have feelings about transitions to express, especially in these early years, where their whole bodies and their minds are in a big transition. So, trust that it’s positive. Trust that it’s okay.

However it goes, and it could be very messy, just proceed with confidence, a lot of acknowledgement, a lot of wanting to hear the feelings. And being that receptive parent to a child’s emotions is actually very passive. We may acknowledge once. We may validate what they’re feeling in a few words, and then just stop. Just breathe. Just relax. Perceive it as positive and let it wash over you, not seeping into you, not making you feel responsible or needing to fix or stop it in any way or slow it down, just letting it go.

You know, I talked about there’s a price to be paid, but I would actually see this as a gift, a gift to us and a gift to our child, that we can be the person that understands, and allows, and even encourages their stress, however it shows up.

With young children, the feelings often don’t show up blatantly and openly in an obvious way that’s easier for us to understand. They’re more likely to show up as testing behavior, unreasonable behavior, resistance, fragile emotions around a lot of things that don’t seem to have anything to do with this transition they’ve made. That’s what I would look for. That’s where I would remind yourself, this is good. This is positive. This is my child venting. This is a gift that I get to be this person that understands, and that means not being soft on limits, but really holding them firmly, you know, in that unruffled way that we try to set them and hold them, understanding that those limits are often what will help our child to vent and express.

They need to push up against a comfortable parent setting a clear limit to be able to melt down or discharge in whatever way that they do. It can be sort of bit by bit, or it can be big meltdowns. Every process is unique, and it’s really hard to remember when your child just seems to be acting crazy or just not nice, and you want to say, “Hey. What’s going on? Why are you doing that?”, to remember that, oh, this is probably to do with the stress that my child needs to release.

The fact that this parent says there’s no communication between the households, that’s going to make for more intense stress and emotions from the child. This child is living in two worlds. That’s hard, and the other world may be one where emotions aren’t welcome, where there’s a lot of scolding or punishing, a lot of fear. All we can do is be that person that understands, and accepts, and even encourages. Children are so receptive to stimulation, and people, and all the energy wherever they go, that even without this situation, they live in two, or three, or four worlds. You know, everywhere they go is a new world to them. They’re soaking it all up. They’re taking it all in.

While this may be an especially stressful world for this child, this is not an unusual situation, in terms of children needing to adjust to different environments, and different types of care, and different people, and different energy, so understanding our child’s experience is different from feeling sorry for them, and wanting to walk on eggshells, and tiptoe around, and make everything nice for them. That isn’t helpful. What’s helpful is to have a bring it on attitude about those feelings. “Yeah. You really don’t like that. You don’t want that, and I know you want to do this, and I’m saying no. I hear you. You don’t like that.”

Showing our child that we accept by actually accepting, that’s the only way we can do it. We have to actually see it as positive, and healthy, and want our child to share it.

Being this safe landing place for our child’s emotions is being the best parent any of us could be.

I’ve worked with parents that became the stepparent when the child was a lot older, and even then I would say the same thing. When that child is pushing you away, slamming the door, going to their room, that teenager or that nine year old, I would be the one that very gently peeks in and says, It’s fine if you don’t want me here, but I just want you to know that I’m always going to be there. I want to hear how mad you are at us. It’s really fine with me.”

It’s a gift to be that person, and we all have the opportunity.

So I hope that’s helpful.

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

Also I have an exclusive audio series, Sessions. There are five individual recordings of consultations I’ve had with parents where they agree to be recorded and we discuss all their parenting issues. We have a back and forth that for me is very helpful in exploring their topics and finding solutions. These are available by going to sessionsaudio.com and you can read a description of each episode and order them individually or get them all about three hours of audio for just under $20.

Thanks for listening. We can do this.

The post Helping a Child Adjust to Two Households or Other Changes in Care appeared first on Janet Lansbury.