Connecting with Kids Shouldn't Be a Performance

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1:47Thank you so much to all of you who've pre-ordered baby person. As you may know, if you order from BookSoup, you'll receive a signed copy. I'll leave the link for that in the show notes.

2:01Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today I'm going to be talking about what it really means to connect with and build bonds with our children, and also how this relates to the interactions that our friends and relatives have with our children, how they can connect with our children more successfully. We all know that as the holidays are coming up soon, this can be an issue. I've found that there's a lot of misconceptions about what connection means, and I had them myself once for sure. The thing is, because our children are people, right from the time they're born, they are aware people.

2:43Connecting can feel so much easier and more organic and genuine than I think a lot of us realize. So that's what I'm going to get into today and a lot of the ways that we misconnect as well. And that brings me to this note that I received that gave me the idea to talk about this today. Here's this parent's question. Good morning, Janet. I was wondering if you could offer some guidance on how to handle an ongoing issue with my mom. I have a very intelligent 17-month-old. He knows his shapes and colors, is speaking in sentences, knows a little bit of Spanish, can identify dinosaurs by name, etc.

3:25We are very proud of him and his love for learning new things. However, when he's around my mom, which is often, she constantly wants him to, quote, perform, asking him to repeat things, say things he has learned, do things. If he doesn't do something like clap, she will grab his arms and make him do it. It makes my husband and I uncomfortable. And lately, my son has stopped giving her what she wants, and she will play, kick him in the butt with her foot. I've asked her not to do that. and if he doesn't respond, it's usually because he's concentrating on something else. She will interrupt him or ignore his requests to get him to perform.

4:06She and I have had a few talks about other things she does that I don't agree with, so now when I make suggestions or comments, she rolls her eyes like a child being reprimanded. I don't want to seem like a constantly complaining or controlling mom, but I also don't love that my son is being used as amusement or like a trophy. Any suggestions? And so yes, as you can imagine, I have a lot of suggestions. I have suggestions that this parent doesn't seem to need about how to connect. And I also have suggestions for how to intervene in situations like these, where a parent or relative or someone that is around our child a lot is doing things that we don't agree with.

4:54So where should I begin? First, let's talk about how common this is, this idea that connecting with children, especially young children, babies and toddlers, and this toddler sounds actually quite precocious in all the things that he knows and is doing, how we can commonly think that it's about a performance. to connect with them is to get them to react to us, get them to imitate us. This is very common with babies where we're trying to get them to make the sounds that we're making. There are a lot of things that are much subtler than what's going on in this scenario that we do because we feel like young children are very limited in their ability to connect with us in a deep and organic way.

5:45So we kind of go for these outside things. And this goes both ways. We try to connect with children that way and getting them to perform. And often we try to connect by performing ourselves rather than being ourselves. I talk about this a lot in my upcoming book, Baby Person, all the things that I did before I really understood that babies are people to try to make contact. dancing for them, entertaining them, trying to get them to laugh. These various surface ways of connecting that were actually pretty exhausting for me. And the rewards were very minimal, right? And temporary. Oh, I got her to smile.

6:29I got her to laugh. Maybe I got them to repeat something I was doing, repeat something I was saying. They were a little bit older, but it didn't really feel like we were connecting on a deep level. It was all very surface. So we do this and it's so benign in most instances. It's so benign. It's just not really connecting as we could. And it's not going to be as rewarding. Like when we say, where's your nose? Show me your this, show me your that. And our toddler smiles. Maybe they like it because we're liking it and they're getting our attention. And sure, that's great. But are they feeling seen?

7:10Are we feeling seen? No, it's this fast food kind of connecting that isn't going to help us bond with that child. It isn't going to give us all the things that we want. You don't hear me talking a lot about shoulds on this podcast, because I don't think of stuff that I'm talking about as a should. I think of it as a path, a direction. Sometimes it's the road less traveled, but none of it is a should. But I do really feel a should about this, that connecting should never mean performing. We shouldn't need to be performative, and neither should our child. And I did write down some reasons here to share with you, some of which I've already covered a little bit.

7:57One, it's not a real and true way of connecting. Two, it encourages inauthenticity. Because whatever we do with children is teaching them something. And that's teaching them that connecting is about us having to perform rather than be ourselves, feeling like we're enough just to be with each other. Three, therefore, it's a waste of our effort and energy. And parents, we can't afford to waste our efforts and energy. And as I noticed, and I again talk about in my book, I was exhausted when I was trying to connect with my friend's new baby in a way that was entertaining her and getting her to laugh and smile.

8:41And I just couldn't sustain that. Four, it's not fulfilling. It doesn't make us feel closer or connected or seen as ourselves. It's not moving our relationship forward in any kind of direction of trust. Five, we could say it's subtly demeaning. It's demeaning to our child to make them have to perform, to sustain our attention and make us interested in them, make us want to smile and engage with them. Why should they have to perform for us? So those are the reasons I feel like connecting should never have to be about performing. But the main one is it doesn't work for what we really want. And now I'm going to talk about what does.

9:28And then I will get into how this parent can handle the situation she's in. So how do we connect with kids? How do we connect with any other human being? Most of us have realized that it's not about doing and what we're putting out there so much as it's about receiving them, paying attention, listening, being interested in them. I haven't heard this said for a long time, but I remember I've never forgotten hearing that the reason certain people are very charismatic to us is not because of how they're acting and what they're putting out there. It's because they are sincerely interested and paying attention to us.

10:13That's what we're drawn to. especially as children, because it's harder for them to assert themselves and put themselves out there and know what to do or what to say to try to connect with someone. They need us to tune into the subtleties of what they're interested in, what their expressions seem to say, who they are. So it was very interesting for me to read in a book by a very well-known psychologist, and I would say somebody considered a parenting expert. This person is a grandparent now, and they were saying how it was just impossible to connect with this one toddler grandchild, that they just thought this child doesn't have chemistry with them.

11:04They just can't connect. It was impossible. And I can't remember exactly how this was expressed in the book, but right away, I had the clear sense that this grandparent was trying so hard, trying to get a game going, trying to get the child, I'm not saying to perform, but working it, you know, trying to connect rather than, I swear this works with every single child from infancy onward, observe, listen, receive, pay attention. And when you talk to this child, talk from that place of being receptive to them. So we're perceiving children as people. I mean, I'm talking about a baby here too, which I know is a big leap for most of us and certainly was for me at first for a long time, perceiving them as people with depth, with talents, with interests, with a point of view that's very real and valid and worth wanting to know more about.

12:13So we then can comment on what we see. Oh, you're looking over there. Did you hear the dog barking? Or you seem really interested in those blocks. I see the way you're putting them together, the way you're arranging them, not saying something just, to pretend that we're interested, but really taking an interest. Kids feel the difference when we're saying, oh, look, good job, rather than, wow, that took a while. And I saw you were really thinking about which block to put on top of the other. And you wanted to put the round one on. And it rolled off. This can be so comfortable and natural for us because, first of all, it starts with, we don't need to say anything.

12:55Kids feel when we're just taking them in and paying attention. and that's actually when they want to come towards us or engage with us. They feel that trust and how settled we are, how comfortable we are being with them. We're not trying and we're not expecting them to try to please us or do a show for us in some way to capture our attention. They have it. They have it just by being them. So I would say this definitely isn't mainstream, this way of thinking, but it's so much easier and so much more relaxing and richer and deeper. And it works to give us all the things that we want when we're trying to connect.

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16:11So now, what can this parent or any parent, What can we do when a family member or even our partner is not seeing what we're seeing or has a different way? Well, what we can do is actually connect with them too. That might mean seeing beyond the ugh of this behavior to look how hard this parent is working to try to be what she considers a good grandparent. That's what we might be seeing there. But then how do we let go of the fear that this is not good for our child? The way we can let go of it is to know that children, they're way more aware than we might realize. They see that this is my grandparent.

17:02This isn't the way my parents are with me. This is the way this certain person is. so it's not reflecting on their feelings about themselves. They really are able to reflect it back to that's this person kind of awkwardly trying to engage with me. Maybe they don't know that the grandparent is trying to engage with them, but they see that this is this one person. And while we as parents are so powerful and influential and the things we do, children do take on themselves a lot more, but not so much with grandparents. Even if they're around a lot, children can start to put that in context of this is my relationship with that person.

17:48I agree with these parents that this isn't the ideal grandparent relationship that we want for our child. But really, we have such little control over what other people do. The best thing we can do, in my opinion, is to let go of them. Let go, let them do their thing, and model the behavior that we hope that they'll emulate. In the parent-child classes that I've taught for years and years, we teach mostly by modeling. We are the ones intervening with the children when there's a conflict or helping when a child seems to be struggling. We ask the parents to relax while they're there and enjoy observing what's going on with the children.

18:32And so we're able to model. And that's a wonderful way to teach because it's unthreatening to people. They don't feel called out, attacked, like this grandpa rolling her eyes. Oh, I'm the bad one here, kind of feeling stuck in that role. It's the best chance we have to show them something. And so in this case, this mom can both connect with her parent, connect with her child in a real way, and model. And this is how that might look. When she asks him to repeat things or demonstrate what he's learned, if he does it, let it go. See that he's sort of trying to go along with what this grandparent wants, but that this is not going to harm him or make him feel that he has to perform for people generally.

19:27As long as the parents aren't doing this, he will see it as a thing going on with his grandmother. But if he doesn't do it, like the parents said, now he's starting to stop giving her what she wants and she will play kick him in the butt with her foot. Instead of telling her she shouldn't do this or shouldn't do that, I would, if anything, just reflect back. If your son looks at you like, oh gosh, what's grandma doing? That would be my cue to say, grandma really likes when you do the things that she asks you to do. She's really into that. If you can say that without sarcasm, if you can say that just a matter of fact, this is what you're seeing there.

20:09Not coming from a judgmental place. I know it's hard, but that's the key. Just reflecting on what's going on, helping your son interpret what's happening here. And by doing so, helping your mother in a nonjudgmental way, seeing herself and what she's doing and how this is affecting her grandson. Because I can guarantee she wants to have a great relationship with her grandson. That's all any grandparent wants, especially someone that's around a lot. So we want to help her by just helping her see by reflecting with our child and reflecting back with her if there's an opening for that. Reflecting back to her, it's frustrating when he doesn't want to do what you ask.

20:57You want to see him doing these things. It's important to you being that non-judgmental moderator of what's going on, seeing her and seeing him. And this parent says, I've asked her not to do that. And if he doesn't respond, it's usually because he's concentrating on something else. So that's another thing that you can acknowledge or reflect on. It looks like grandma wants you to do something, but you're doing this right now. You're kind of into this. That opens a little bit of a door for grandma to see, oh, he's doing something that's actually equally valid, if not more valid than him performing for me.

21:35Oh, this is a person with a point of view and interests that I kind of want to know about that are valuable. It's these little windows that we can open by connecting respectfully with both of them. She says she will interrupt him or ignore his request to get him to perform. So right there, you can moderate. You want him to do this. And then to your son, And you want to do that. There's some conflict here. That will help much more than this mom making suggestions or comments that make the grandparent roll her eyes like a child being reprimanded. She has a valid point of view too. She's just not seeing his.

22:17And we can help her do that by just calmly, respectfully pointing it out and trusting where it goes from there. That's the hard part, right? And this parent says, I don't want to seem like a constantly complaining or controlling mom, but I also don't love that my son is being used as amusement or like a trophy, right? But we can't control how other people see our child. That's just unfortunately one of those welcome to parenting moments. The wonderful thing here that's really a testament to all these parents are doing with their child, the way they're raising him, is that he's standing up for himself.

22:54That's a great thing. He's not allowing himself to be used as amusement or a trophy. He's already got that lesson. He's already got that note. How great is that? And that you can continue to support by saying, you don't want to do what grandma's saying and to grandma, and you really want him to. Hmm, what are you two going to do about this? So this parent asked if I had any suggestions. So those are my suggestions. Back off trying to teach your mother and correct her as to what you want her to do. Instead, connect, reflect, trust them to navigate their relationship, just helping your son to interpret and helping her to interpret what's going on by what sometimes is known as sportscasting, but it's really just acknowledging and doing it when your child looks at you, when the moment feels like a reflection could help.

23:50So we're not just doing it to do it. we're doing it from a place of absorbing and receiving the situation. And again, by responding to the situation that way, we're helping both our child and our parent feel connected to each other and to us. And that's the beginning of learning for everybody. I hope that doesn't seem like a tall order. It'll actually be a lot more relaxing once this parent is able to let go and trust her child a little more, this will be a comfortable groove she can be in, I hope. And I believe in this parent. Thanks so much to everybody for listening. We can do this.

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