What Parents Get Wrong About the ‘Terrible Twos’ - Devon Kuntzman

0:03Hunter Clarke-Fields:You're listening to the Mindful Mama podcast episode 563. And today we're talking about what parents get wrong about the terrible twos with Devon Kuntzman.

0:16Hunter Clarke-Fields:Welcome to the Mindful Mama podcast. Here it's about becoming a less irritable, more joyful parent. At Mindful Mama, we know that you cannot give what you do not have. And when you have calm and peace within, then you can give it to your parents. your children. I'm your host, Hunter Clark-Fields. I help smart, thoughtful parents stay calm so they can have strong, connected relationships with their children. I've been practicing mindfulness for over 25 years. I'm the creator of the Mindful Parenting course and teacher training, and I'm the author of the international bestseller, Raising Good Humans, Raising Good Humans Every Day, and the Raising Good Humans Guided Journal.

0:55Hunter Clarke-Fields:do you have a two-year-old do you have a toddler are you gonna have one in a little while maybe this episode is for you what am i kidding in fact it's definitely definitely for you i'm talking to devin kunstman founder of transforming toddlerhood and certified parenting coach and we're going to be talking about her new book transforming toddlerhood So this is all about toddlers. And I know when you have toddlers, you need all the help. So if you have friends who have toddlers, send this to them. It will help, I promise. Join me at the table as I talk to Devin Kuntzman.

1:38Hunter Clarke-Fields:Hi, it's Hunter Clark Fields, author of Raising Good Humans. If you've ever thought, I wish I could help other parents the way I've been helped, this is for you. The Mindful Parenting Teacher Certification Program is now open for enrollment. You'll deepen your mindfulness, learn to lead powerful parenting groups, and join a supportive, heart-centered community. Are you ready to make a difference? I only take a very limited number of people into this program, So apply now. Visit mindfulparentingcourse.com slash teach. Well, I'm so glad you can come back to the Mindful Mama podcast. It's great to talk to you.

2:14Hunter Clarke-Fields:And yeah, we were just saying you came on in 2021. I can't believe it. Episode 277 for people. You were talking about toddlers then and now you have a three-year-old. Before we talk about toddlers in general. Three, what's your assessment of the age of three versus two? Because this is like a big debate in the toddler world. It's always framed as like what's worse, but what do you think? Yeah, well, I can say that about two, two and a half weeks after my son turned three, I saw a massive shift in his behavior where he was never interested in pulling things off counters. Now, all of a sudden, he's doing that.

2:54He like just being a little more like kind of like ornery and more independent, wanting to do things by himself, but then also just taking it upon himself to go do some things without telling us. And I was like, oh, yeah, we definitely just entered a whole new stage of independence here.

3:12Hunter Clarke-Fields:Yeah, yeah. All that autonomy stuff. It's so funny. Maybe this is when Maith and Louie, we talk about that we had a joke that we all are like 3 % evil. You know, like everybody's is like at least 3 % evil. And like we'll joke like that's, yo, that's where it's 3 % evil coming out. But maybe this is like three is when you develop your 3 % evil. Yeah, it's so funny because there was definitely just like a really, really clear shift in behavior. I'm like, oh, we're not in twos anymore. Yeah, yeah. It can be really, really different. Okay, so we are going to talk about twos. We're people hear about the twos.

3:52Hunter Clarke-Fields:They hear about the terrible twos. They brace themselves. And I wanted to know, what is the biggest misconception about toddlerhood that you want to change with your new book that is out today? Yay! Yay! Well, gosh, it's so hard to just choose one thing. But I think, like, overarchingly, what I want parents to understand is even though toddlers have a bad reputation and society has coined all these terms like terrible twos, three-nature, all the things. Really, in fact, toddlerhood is a critical developmental period. Yes, it's absolutely challenging and there are many, many ups and downs, but it's also a critical developmental period that really sets the foundation for brain development and resilience for the rest of your child's life.

4:40So it is also a really great opportunity. So if we enter toddlerhood, just bracing ourselves, kind of like white knuckling it, you know, ready for all the bad things that, you know, society is like telling us about, then we start to miss these beautiful moments where your child is having so many firsts. They're learning to walk. They're learning to talk. They're, you know, starting to ride a bike. They are learning so many new things. You get to discover their personality and they have so little life experience and their brains are still maturing. They really are here to learn and grow. And we can have such a massive impact during this time period that we don't want to just white knuckle it and wish it away.

5:32Okay.

5:33Hunter Clarke-Fields:You said words like massive impact and critical for development. For like me, when my kids were two, like those kind of words scared the bejesus out of me because I was like, I'm making mistakes left and right. This is, I'm really scared that I'm messing my kid up. And then it's so important. The first three years I'm messing them up for life. Can you tell us what exactly do you mean when you mean critical for development? And like when I was, you know, losing it at my kid, was I messing them up for life because it's so critical for development? Yeah, I love this question, right? Because it can be really hard to hear these things because we're exhausted both physically, mentally, emotionally, and the toddler years can sometimes just feel downright grueling.

6:24And so we have these moments where we lose our temper, we lose our patience, where we We just don't show up as our best selves. And that is part of being human. So while I will say this is a critical developmental period, that the amount of neuropathways and connections being made during these years is just skyrocketing. And what we know about brain science is that, you know, the neuropathways that are being used, they get stronger. The ones that aren't being used, you know, get pruned away. That being said, the brain, I'm sure you talk about this a lot, has neuroplasticity. So the brain can always change.

7:02But what is so important to know is that your child does not need a perfect parent. And I talk about this so much in my book because all the messy moments, our messy moments, our child's messy moments, they're all opportunities for growth and for learning. And if you're willing to be a human parent, to be vulnerable and to learn alongside your child, then you and your child will come out of this on the other side and everything will be okay because it's truly not about being a perfect parent. It's about being a learning and growing parent. Okay.

7:42Hunter Clarke-Fields:So I'm not necessarily messing up my kids as long as there's some repair and things like that. I mean, you talk about this on the toddler side. You talk about how these things that we call bad behavior are actually very developmentally appropriate. And I was wondering if you could share an example where a parent's perspective shift transformed the dynamic of a situation to just shift towards seeing it that way. Yes. I mean, I would even love to just share my own story where, you know, for years, I was a nanny for high profile families all over the world. And I even myself, like there was so much pressure right out in public to have your child, have a child behave, do this, do that.

8:33All the things that I was really wrapped up in this idea that if the child was having good behavior, I was doing a good job. I was successful. If they're having bad behavior, you know, kicking, screaming, crying, hitting, biting, anything like this, then I must be doing a bad job. Child is bad. I'm bad. Everyone's messing up. It's a big problem. But once I started to understand that toddlers communicate with their behavior, that all behavior is communication, so we wanna shift from this idea that my child is bad, rude, mean, manipulative to my child's having a hard time or my child's trying to tell me something and we start getting curious about what's happening beneath the surface of the behavior?

9:22Are they communicating feelings, emotions, needs, desires, what's happening there? We start to like understand, oh my gosh, they're not doing this to me. They're not bad. I am not failing. This is developmentally normal, typical behavior. And it's my job as the adult here to get curious about what's happening beneath the behavior, address those feelings, emotions, and needs. And that's where the true transformation comes in and how we respond. Because when we stop viewing the behavior as bad, we're more likely to respond in a more connected, compassionate way. And then we are going to get further with our child when they feel seen, heard, and understood.

10:09Okay. So do you have an example of something like that when you were able to shift that perspective from that into that? Yes. 10 ,000%. So I just remember this one beautiful day of, you know, gosh, it was just, it was just from when you wake up in the morning, right? Like, have you, I'm sure people listening have had these days, and you probably have too, where you wake up and it's just crying first thing in the morning. Nothing is pleasing them. Nothing is like right, right? The toast is cut wrong. The cup is the wrong color, all the things. And I remember this little kiddo, he hit me. I put him in timeout, and he was so upset and crying so hard.

10:53And I was so upset and on the verge of tears. And that's when I just realized, I was like, oh my gosh, we are just two human beings having a hard time right now. Like he is not trying to hurt me or be bad. He is struggling right now. And I am struggling too to stay calm about it. And once I just realized that we're all human, I was like, oh my gosh. And I like came, I like gave him a big hug. I was like, we can figure this out together. What's going on here? And that was really a turning point in the relationship and where connections started to take, you know, more real estate, it was like really a priority and things just started to shift.

11:35It's amazing what an underrated tool connection is that it's really like the balm that like soothes all the emotions and all of the challenges.

11:51Hunter Clarke-Fields:Stay tuned for more Mindful Mama podcasts right after this break. Tomorrow morning is knocking. Stock your fridge now. How about a creamy mocha frappuccino drink or a sweet vanilla? Smooth caramel, maybe. Or white chocolate mocha. Whichever you choose, delicious coffee awaits. Find Starbucks frappuccino drinks wherever you buy your groceries. I think probably a lot of times it can feel scary to, I mean, I imagine kind of subconsciously it can feel scary to connect, right? If you're feeling under-supported, right, because parents just have so little support in general, you know, as far as the structures of the world and the way things are.

12:38Hunter Clarke-Fields:If you're feeling under-supported, maybe you're feeling emotional, you're feeling overwhelmed by this kid who's also woke up and is having a bad day and is feeling overwhelmed. And, you know, I can imagine that it's, you know, to connect means to connect also with yourself, right? To connect with what's happening with you in that moment and to connect with feelings that are uncomfortable maybe or scarier that you don't want to look at. Like I'm maybe unhappy in this moment. I may be struggling as a parent. Maybe I don't like being a parent right now. And it's maybe frightening to look at those things.

13:22Hunter Clarke-Fields:So in some ways, the idea of like outwardly controlling the behavior or just making, having some technique to make your child do this thing feels safer in some way than like actually kind of getting present with whatever is happening with us in that moment. Even though we may know, we may read your books, they may read my book, right? I read all these books and say like, oh, it's connection. Yes. And in our good moments, we're there. We're with it. We know we resonate with that truth. And then in those hard moments, it's just hard to, it can be hard to connect with that vulnerable part of ourselves.

14:08Oh, yes, absolutely. I mean, this is also what comes back to this idea of, you know, society having the labels of like terrible two, three major, right? Because there's, for the most part, we're just taught to not accept the full spectrum of emotions, right? Like we're conditioned to that from a pretty young age that we want to try to like hold close the quote unquote like good emotions and shove away or get rid of the bad emotions. And so this plays out in parenting in so many different ways, not only with how we view our child's behavior, but how we view ourselves as parents and caregivers and even how willing we are to even be present with our own feelings, emotions, and needs.

14:55And it can feel scary to be really vulnerable in that way. Absolutely.

15:03Hunter Clarke-Fields:That's interesting. It's food for thought for kind of thinking about like that. Is that, you know, for the listener, like, is that connection to my kid? Is that, do I have a hesitancy about connection with myself? You know, that's an interesting, something to gnaw on. But I also want to get us into some things that are more along the lines of a little bit into tips and tricks for those tough moments, right? Like sometimes when we're in those tough moments, you know, a lot of times parents want to set the limits and you're like, oh, I'm out of ideas. And so it's it's you're into bribes, threats or yelling.

15:47Hunter Clarke-Fields:So what's one go to script from your book that parents can start using today to give them a little shortcut? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, I think one thing that I talk about a lot in my book is your role versus your child's role in setting limits. And I always say that we have three jobs and the child has three jobs. It's our job to set the limit and it's their job to test it because toddlers are going to test limits because they're developmentally wired to exert their will and become their own person. And it's our job to follow through on the limits that we set. And then it's their job to have a reaction to it when they realize that their sense of control is being challenged because others don't have a lot of control over their lives, but because they're trying to become their own individual, they crave a sense of control.

16:37And then it's our job to really support their big feelings and emotions, and it's their job to accept the limit. And so just knowing everyone's role is really important in success and setting limits. And then when we take that out into, you know, the real world and we're parenting our kids, one interesting thing that I see around setting limits is that posing limits as a question. And I've done this many times and it backfires most of the time where we say something like, do you want to take a bath? and instead of saying do you want to take a bath because we're posing this as like a yes or no question even though what we mean to say is it's bath time right so what we want to say instead is a statement something like it's bath time and then perhaps we want to give them a choice like do you want to have bubbles or do you want to have a color bath or do you want to piggyback ride or do you want to race me or something like this.

17:42And so we can give them a sense of control within our boundaries in other ways. But when we set a limit or we try to give a directive to our child and we pose it as a question, then oftentimes we're going to get an answer that we don't like, especially because toddlers are developmentally wired to say no right now as they're trying to become their own person.

18:04Hunter Clarke-Fields:Okay. All right. So don't ask the question, do you want to go to the park? Do you want a snack? Do you want, you know? Yeah. Unless you're okay with no. If you're okay with the answer being no, then great. But if no wasn't an option, don't make it be an option. I mean, that's smart. I mean, and that's good communication for anyone in your life. Like if you were talking to a friend, and sometimes I encourage people to like, you know, kind of put some of your language through a friend filter. Like, would you ask them if they want to do something when it, you know, like that's not how you would talk to a friend, you know, if there wasn't a choice, we'd say, oh, okay, we got to go rather than do you want to do this, right?

18:48Hunter Clarke-Fields:You would, that would be a legit question if you're asking a question. That's kind of like a permissive style, isn't it? Maybe if we were asking a lot of questions of your toddler, you might be sliding into some more permissiveness. Yeah, you know, it's challenging because you want to give your child a sense of control because when we're meeting that developmental need to have a sense of control, things are going to go more smoothly. But at the same time, we have to make sure that it's within our boundaries. So if we find that a child has too much power, and then that's when we're really sliding into this permissive place of permissiveness because the child actually has too much power and then they don't know what to do with it.

19:32And then their behavior is going to snowball because actually setting limits helps young children feel safe and have a sense of security, even though they're going to push back on them. But at the same time, it's really supportive for them to have that sense of security and to know where the limit is. And that's one reason why they're always testing them.

19:54Hunter Clarke-Fields:Yeah, I like the way you break that down into three parts. Like our job is to set the limit and follow through. this is like let's like underline and highlight that and follow through and then support their feelings when they have a reaction to it I think that makes so much sense it's not just you set the limit and then your job is done that's kind of like when it starts in some ways yes that's the very beginning of it I think that's like one of the biggest mistakes we might make with setting limits is that you know when we set a limit and just expect a child to follow through just because we set a limit just isn't really taking their development into account and their capabilities.

20:38And so it's important that, and that goes into another conversation of having developmentally realistic expectations for your child, but it's just super important to know that, yes, the first step, just the beginning, is setting the limit.

20:54Hunter Clarke-Fields:Yeah, yeah. Yeah. When we think about setting a limit, probably the inevitable reaction, the classic, the feared, the dun, dun, dun, here it comes reaction is the tantrum, the toddler tantrum, right? So in your experience, what's the most common mistake parents make during a tantrum and what should they do instead? Yeah, I always I post this on Instagram often this idea that, you know, tantrums are not the time to use logic and explanations, expect your child to answer questions, try to negotiate with them to shame or punish them to make it stop or to just ignore your child. And so these are like the common mistakes that parents make.

21:40And we know why they do. I mean, we have all been there in these moments because it's really hard to be faced with your kid's big emotions. It's hard to see your child upset. It's hard to be bombarded with the screaming and crying when you might not be at your best in that moment. And so I think the biggest thing that I want parents to know around tantrums is that you are not a bad parent. and your child is not a bad child for having a tantrum. And tantrums are just a release. My good friend, Patty Whipler, she always calls them an emotional poop. It's just releasing what's no longer needed. There's nothing bad or wrong or anything that needs fixed around a tantrum.

22:21And I think that that is the most important thing to know and embrace. And once you start kind of bringing some humor into it, right, and say, oh, this is just an emotional poop, We can just feel a little bit lighter about it and then just realize that as long as our child's physically safe, like they're not going to fall off the couch, they're not going to hit their head on, you know, like a tile floor or something like this. So as long as they're safe, we just need to focus on grounding ourselves.

22:48Hunter Clarke-Fields:Yeah. So our child can then move through those feelings and emotions and then come back to their emotional equilibrium. Bram, I feel like in tantrums, oftentimes less is really more in those moments. Yeah, yeah. That's exactly what I say is like, there's not much to do. It's happening, right? The poop is happening. Great metaphor. She's got to hook up with Chris Willard, but the feelings are like farts. Yes. Oh my gosh. Yes. That would be so great. I guess the one thing that I do like tell parents that they can do is this, this idea of trying not to get stuck, like just waiting forever for your child to maybe move on from the tantrum that sometimes if we move forward, kids are going to be more likely to move forward.

23:37And what I mean by that is like this example, my son really loves mango bars and he wanted a mango bar and I'm like, okay, we already had one. We're not having another. And he was really upset. He didn't want to go eat his food. He wanted another mango bar. So he was standing at the pantry crying and I was standing there with him, you know, upholding the limit, holding space for his feelings. And then I realized that, gosh, this kid still has some type of hope that I'm just going to cave in and give him this mango bar. So I just walked across the room, turned on some music, pulled out his train set and set his plate on the floor beside me.

24:13and then after like a minute and a half which felt like 10 minutes but you know it was only probably you know a little over a minute he came over sat down wiped his eyes and started eating his food and we built a train track and so you know it's just so it's so important to just understand that sometimes when we can be the leader kids will follow our lead yeah there's

24:39Hunter Clarke-Fields:there's um you what you're describing in some ways is like the there's a space in some ways for validation right but it may not be in that moment right like what you're saying is less and more is more and maybe we can talk a little bit about the difference between validation of feelings and then also when validation might be kind of egging kids on and things like that how do how can parents kind of tell this difference in those situations? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that it's getting to know your child, knowing where you're at in your parenting journey. If there's like an area where like maybe you've started, like you weren't setting a limit in one place and now you've started to set a limit there, there's a good chance your child's going to have some type of hope that this limit's going to change and go back to how it was before.