Demands, Wild Behavior, and Parent Guilt

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1:02Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Well, today I'm going to be talking about, well, I have three notes from parents here that I want to share with you and give commentary on or give some advice on. I'm also thinking about something lately that really applies to what I'm doing here on this podcast, it's this idea of there being some pat advice, some quick advice that I could give to you or to the parents whose questions I'm going to share today that could just sort of fix the whole situation, understand everything that's going on in that family and the dynamic and how to figure it all out, and that I could possibly do that, especially with three families in one podcast.

1:52It's not possible. And it's important for me to remind myself and remind you that that's not what I'm doing here. I'm not trying to solve these people's issues for them based on something they've written to me. Just this very introductory information that they're giving me about what's going on with them. One thing that reminded me of this is as I'm writing my book, I've been reading a lot of my mentor Magda Gerber's writings. And she said, most of the mothers who come and ask me questions ask me a special question. What do I do when he bites me, she pulls my hair, it's impossible to diaper. And it's very hard to explain because everything that happens has been built up.

2:40It is the consequence of many things. So in order to answer a very simple question, I really would like to know, how does that baby spend his whole waking time? How does the mother feel about the baby? What are the times they spend together? When? And mostly, how? When is the mother happy with the baby? When is the mother most frustrated with the baby? How does she deal with her frustrations? Who's helping her? And all of these facts make a big difference in what I would say, because that is the problem. We don't see the whole, everything we do as a continuum, as a process. We do get fragmented advice.

3:19We read something that appeals to us and we pick it when we want to use it, but it might not be the thing that fits into the context of our whole way of life. A big part of this is to know our goals. What is the parent's goal in the situation? When we know that someone like me could get a little closer to maybe helping you see where you're moving towards your goal and what's getting in the way of that. So I think I'm going to start writing to parents, writing back and saying, what is your goal here? Usually they do ask me a question that pertains to their goal, but oftentimes the goal I believe they're actually seeking is more implied than it is stated, I don't know, I'm probably being really confusing right now, but I just wanted to make this, I guess it's kind of a disclaimer, but it's really to have our expectations in order as we listen to somebody share like I do here, that really the best I can do is help you to take a look at some things that you might not be noticing about the dynamic between you.

4:31and also see where maybe some of the things you're doing are not helping you to achieve what seems to be your goal. The three issues I'm going to share about today, I've sort of guessed a goal that's in a similar theme, at least with all of these. To me, it seems like their goal is to have a comfortable connection with their child in this moment and all the things that are going on at that time, to feel confident about this idea that they're connecting with their child. And that is a wonderful goal that I totally endorse. It's so important. Obviously, it affects everything. That's the whole reason that we're doing this, that we wanted to have kids was to have a positive relationship, an enriching relationship, a lifelong relationship.

5:21So while that may not be the parents' clearly stated goal, That's the goal that I'm going to address in what I offer to these parents. So anyway, here's the first one. Hi, Janet. I'm a mom of three lovely daughters. My twins are almost four and my youngest is one and a half. I love listening to your podcast. It's been helping me hold loving boundaries and become a confident leader for my children. Even so, I'm struggling to understand an issue I have with my older daughters. These two love to be carried. Sometimes I can and do carry them because I enjoy it. For example, if we're headed up the stairs for a rest or bedtime, it can be an opportunity for a special moment of connection with one of them.

6:05Other times it is necessary to carry them. For example, when we need to get to school and they're refusing to get in the car, I say something like, Something's tricky about walking to the car right now, so I'm going to carry you. Other times they whine to be carried around the house, and it drives me nuts when they demand to be carried. I just smile and say, I don't want to do that right now. I allow for their feelings and try to remain a calm presence, but I wonder if carrying them sometimes but not other times is a confusing boundary and makes for an unclear boundary. Another related issue is that they both carry a myriad of things from place to place around the house.

6:43Both girls want to bring their blanket, stuffy, frozen dolls, and water bottle around the house with them wherever they go. It is absurd and their little arms can't carry all of those things on their own. Sometimes it makes sense for me to bring them something, like if I'm going downstairs to get a cup of coffee and they ask me to bring up their water bottle, I'm already going down and can bring something up with my extra hand. Or if they're going to bed and they ask me to bring them their blanket and stuffies. But other times they whine for me to bring something from one side of the room to another or get something they dropped off the back of the couch.

7:21I say, that is something you can do for yourself, trying to keep my tone as casual as possible. But again, their feelings are strong in response and I wonder if my boundary is confusing to them by sometimes bringing them things. Thanks so much if you have time to reply. So yes, this parent brings up this idea of connection and how she's concerned that she's not seeming consistent to her children about the way that she connects with them or what she does for them. And this part is pretty unusual that this method of connecting that she seems to believe strongly in is carrying. And it's so interesting that children have picked that up from her as children do, that this is important.

8:08It's important to this parent. And I'm sure there are memes all around, about children saying, well, she carried me and I felt very connected. And I'm not saying that's not a way to feel connected. It certainly is. But this and another question parents ask me about often, this idea of breastfeeding children into their toddler years and doing this as a way of connection, it can be confusing for us as parents and therefore for our children. Confusing in the sense that we can tend to put so much emphasis on the importance of the connection aspect in these very physical ways to connect, right? These are physical ways to connect.

8:53And parents have often asked me, gosh, what do I do? I'm going to miss this and my child's going to miss this connection they're getting with me from nursing, but I want to wean. I don't want to really be doing this anymore. And the thing is, this is such a surface form of connection, which again, isn't to diss it or say that it's not great for an infant to be able to breastfeed or for us to hold babies skin to skin or carry our children when they need us to carry them. But this isn't a be all and end all for connection. It isn't the best way to connect, in my opinion. It's not the deepest, most rewarding and fulfilling way for children to connect with us.

9:40It's a way that they can connect with us physically where our minds are totally elsewhere sometimes, or we're just going through the motions. So I would like to propose to this parent a different way of looking at this and a different way of looking at how she can connect with her children. I bolded certain things she said here. So she said, for example, if we're headed up the stairs for a rest or bedtime, it can be an opportunity for a special moment of connection with one of them. So there are a lot of special moments we could have of connection that don't have to do with us physically carrying a four-year-old up the stairs, which a lot of us couldn't do anyway or wouldn't want to do.

10:22And as human beings, we have such deep ways of connecting, being open and exposed to each other, being honest with each other, allowing that other person to feel the way that they feel, that acceptance, that presence, that openness towards the other person, this idea of bravely bringing topics up into the open that we kind of both know are going on, but maybe it's not being said. Those are ways of connection that feel very satisfying and real and will build our relationship and one of the ways that we do this way of connecting that is so valuable and so relationship building is through boundaries because when we are asserting our boundaries we're being honest we're saying this is what I'm going to do and we can be in disagreement here it's okay for you to be mad at me here, for you to not like what I've said or the choice I'm making.

11:29So it's not just this idea of connect before you correct. It's the actual giving of boundaries, which I don't really think of it as correcting so much as stating and establishing and being clear about and standing by our boundaries, not just giving it up when our child disagrees, being able to stand as ourselves, to walk in our world with our child in disagreement sometimes. So that's what I would suggest this parent considers reframing. Because it's fine for her to say, I feel like carrying you now and I don't want to carry you then. But what gets in the way is when we doubt that and we feel, uh-oh, I'm not being clear or they're not going to feel connected because I'm not doing this thing that I place a lot of value in for connection.

12:20this way that we've always connected. We're allowed to have boundaries some days that we don't have the other days. That's being human. That's getting to be ourselves in this relationship. And that's what connecting is. That's so important. That's what our kids want from us, for us to be real with them and to be our whole selves and not just be the person that serves them or tries to serve them and then feels bad when they can't. to be proud of our choices is a wonderful thing. So if this parent wants to carry that older child up the stairs, great. But it's just as wonderful to connect by saying, you want me to carry you, and that's what we always did, but no, I'm not going to carry you, my love.

13:07We're going to walk together. Come. I put my hand behind my child's back. I take their hand. Let's go, my sad girl. Well, sometimes I disappoint you. I know. You don't like all my choices. I'm not saying to say all those words. I'm just trying to describe a comfort in being ourselves with our children and connecting that way. I have the sense that the parent is much more invested in this carrying thing than the children are. And the children are like, all right, this seems really important. Where are the boundaries here? Are there boundaries here? And that seems much clearer to me where they're whining that they want to be carried around the house.

13:46Apparently that it drives her nuts. I can understand that, right? But it's driving her nuts because she's kind of feeling guilty about it, I think, or feeling like, oh, no, I'm not connecting or I've been confusing or something. She's not comfortable in setting her boundary there. And then when they say they want her to bring them things and they want her to carry things from across the room, pick up things that they drop over the couch. I mean, here's where it's getting kind of extreme, right? We can get so tied into this idea of connection, however we've defined it, or someone told us we should define it that way, maybe.

14:24We got this impression. We've invested so much in it ourselves that now we're feeling bad about not picking up something our child drops on the floor in front of us or is two steps away and our child wants us to get it for them. Bring that real connection back by being honest. Instead of saying that's something you can do for yourself, which is pretty obvious, right? I would say, interesting, you want me to pick that thing up right there. I'm not going to pick that up for you, but what's going on with that? And letting them get mad, letting them let go of this feeling they've gotten caught up in where they have so much power because these loads that we carry, in this case physically, but figuratively as parents, oh gosh, I have to do this.

15:15I have to connect. This has to go this certain way, or I'm not being a good parent. All these things that we tell ourselves, I'm not connecting. I'm being confusing by standing up for what I don't want to feel like doing right there. We carry these loads, right? And then our child has to kind of carry a load with us, this load of power that they feel to try to push us and push us. And they don't want to keep doing that, but they're trying to find where it ends. They're trying to find where does my mom get real honest with me and see what's going on here. And that's where this whole family is going to feel more connected.

15:56It's not going to be light and easy and smiley, probably. There's going to be a lot of feelings and demands around it from these children till they're really clear, oh, okay, she's not afraid of our feelings. That's when they get comfortable. That's when they feel enormous relief. So again, as I said in the beginning, I don't expect this to be a quick fix, but just a different way of looking at your goal here, figuring out your goal here, first of all, and realizing that if it is about connection or if that's one of the goals, that there are better ways to connect, much better ways that are easier for you, that feel natural, that are as fulfilling for you as they are for your child, that feel authentic and will build your relationship, moving it forward.

16:48Okay, here's another story this parent wrote in their subject line, not a success story. This is not a success story. I'm guessing you won't be able to respond, but I found it therapeutic to write and decided to descend it anyway. This fall, I opened a preschool on our property and my four-year-old attends. It's been a very tricky transition for him as expected. In the beginning of the year, I found it easier to be with his emotions, but he's gotten increasingly unsafe. Hitting, pushing, screaming, etc. He sometimes screams at me, my co-teacher, or other kids. He's pretty avoidant, silly during transitions.

17:26He runs away and hides under tables when it's time to get ready to go outside, transition to lunch or rest time, and often enlists others to do the same. I will calmly say I'd love to play tag outside, but I won't chase you in the classroom. I'm not really sure how to respond. It often excites the classroom and leads to other kids hiding or resisting getting dressed, etc. He says things at lunch like stupid head, idiot, dumb. The volume of his upsets has become increasingly difficult for me to remain neutral and calm through. I know that our response and lack of trust at this point is fueling the behavior.

18:02My co-teacher's training is to intervene before things escalate so she intervenes with children before I would, but at this point with my son, we both feel on guard constantly. I've been thinking about how you say trust in their ability to solve conflict, and most of the time I'm not feeling trusting of him. Some days I feel like I don't know what to do with him, which I know is an unsettling feeling for him. My classroom, not only with him, has gotten further away from this core philosophy of trusting the children and feels pretty chaotic. At this point, I'm not sure how to restore it. I also know I'm putting a pressure expectation on him that isn't fair.

18:41It feels embarrassing for me to have parents view this behavior or hear from their kids about his pushing, yelling, etc. I know my response to him is different from how I respond to other kids. I recognize that isn't fair for him, but at this point, I'm not sure how to hold him accountable and set limits without keeping everyone safe. If you've read all this, thank you. Okay, so this is a totally different concern, right? And also kind of an unusual one. I mean, not that many parents decide to start a preschool in their home. But here I sense also that this parent's goal is to, well, she wants to trust all the children, but I feel like she's misinterpreting what I'm meaning when I bring up trust in children.

19:25So there are things that we want to trust our children to navigate, right? Like social situations, like their play and problem solving with materials, building their skills in that way. But they can only do that in this atmosphere of boundaries, in this atmosphere where we're not trusting them to lead, that you need us to lead. And that's around the structure and boundaries that give them the safety they need to be trusted to do their job, which is all that learning through play and social interaction, navigating all of that. They can't do it without us giving them that foundation of safety and boundaries.

20:13And that is also how these two are not connecting at all right now in this atmosphere. Maybe they are at home when she gets home, but she's probably really annoyed at her child when she gets home, right? I would be when he's making everything impossible for her. She has this really challenging goal that she's made for herself, and he's making it completely impossible. This is a very, very hard situation for children. I hear from a lot of parents, and I know them personally, who have programs where they're either the teacher or they're running the program, and their child is in the program. And it is a very challenging situation.

20:55The only way it can work, in my opinion, is by working on connection in the way that I'm talking about in this episode. That honesty, those boundaries, bringing out into the open things that aren't being talked about. So in this case, the big one is I would have a powwow with this boy or several of them, like maybe a few every day, starting in the morning before you go, after it's all done each day. Wow, this is really, really hard for you, isn't it? It's hard for me too, because you're there, you're my kid. I really want to hang out with you. And now I've got all these other kids to take care of.

21:41That's got to feel really, really hard for you when you see your mom. And I'm not paying attention to you. I'm paying attention to all these other things. Ah, no wonder you want to flail around and you're having a hard time listening when it's time to transition. You don't want to do it. What can I do to help make this easier? And it's not even that part, though, where we're going to get this master plan. He's going to give us these great ideas and he's going to come up with how to fix this. it's putting it out there really almost symbolically to indicate, I see you. You're totally right to be feeling the things you're feeling.

22:20I accept that wholeheartedly. And yet we're in this situation. So how could we manage this? And again, not expecting to get those answers. It's really more about those first three things that our child needs, that acceptance, that honesty, that bringing out into the open all the things that are under the surface that are going on where we're feeling uncomfortable, he's feeling uncomfortable. In life, we're conditioned, so many of us, I know I am, that we don't talk about those things. We just try to get through it and we don't mention all these feelings that are going on. Well, as adults, maybe we've gotten used to that, but for kids, it just builds and builds and builds on the discomfort.

23:04They feel alone in what they're feeling, that there's something wrong with them for what they're feeling, that everyone's blaming them for the way they're acting on their feelings, but no one's connecting with them. But yeah, this is rough stuff. This is more than just having a play date for a few hours with a few friends over, right? Getting in all your stuff or getting in your house and your mom, you're not just sharing her, but it's like she's not your mom anymore, but she's right there. And this is like all day long. He's totally dysregulated and undone in this. So what I would really go to is this honesty and seeing him and accepting him, starting with that.

23:51And then for all the children, not just him, but for all the children, this idea that we can trust them in this situation to navigate it, We can't trust them until we have this solid structure in place. So I would work with the teachers on how you're going to do things, how you're following through in a way that helps the kids feel safe. Maybe your son could have a little room that he can go to or a corner, not as a punishment, but a cozy place that's just his in the home or nearby where he can go. but everything from that place of I see you and this is hard I agree with you you're so right to be feeling what you're feeling and we just want to help and being able to share that with you is going to move mountains in terms of his behavior so between that and the structure that all the children need when you know kids are saying we're going to hide under tables we don't get involved in that.

24:51That doesn't excite us. We'll just say, okay, here we're opening the doors and we're going to come out here and then we're all going to play a game out here. We're going to do something. So it's a program of attraction where you're not demanding that kids do things that you can't force them to do, but you are comfortably saying, okay, I'm sure you'll come out when you're ready. We're out here right now and having safe surroundings so that you can feel comfortable in that. But what gives kids the most safety of all is that connection, that sense of being seen and understood and accepted for where they are.

25:31This parent said, I know that our response and lack of trust at this point is fueling the behavior. I don't think it's the lack of trust that's fueling the behavior. I think it's the lack of feeling seen and having his needs taken care of, which is He needs me to have him right next to me, holding his hand maybe. He may need me to keep making eye contact with him and nodding my head like, I see you, buddy. Yeah, this is rough. What do you need? That attitude. When he doesn't have that, when he feels like the daughter's wanting to have their stuff carried around in the last parent's note, it's that feeling of like, I'm holding on to all this power.

26:13Or I've become the disruptive kid here or the problem child in this situation. And nobody knows what to do with me. He's feeling all of that power because it sounds like this parent is a little bit trying to trust and trying to make it better for him. Instead of finding ways to have those clear boundaries, like, you know, if you can't come outside, you can stay in there. But I'm going to ask you to be in your little room there, your area over there. I mean, all of that is a really big conversation and I would want to come look at their program, watch their day. I'm curious about, I know my response to him is different from how I respond to other kids.

26:53So that isn't necessary for her response to be different to him than other kids. I don't know what that looks like, but yeah, that gives a question mark to me about how she's responding to him and other kids. Ideally, every child there is getting the same sensitivity and respect and attunement to their needs and that we feel confident as leaders with all of them. The grounding power of that connection that he can feel when this parent brings it all out in the open and talks about it with him, even though he may not talk back about it, but goes over all the scenarios. Oh, when that child did that, and then that seemed like it was hard for you.

27:31And yeah, this is a lot. This is a lot. So this mom says, at this point with my son, we both feel on guard. constantly. My co-teacher's training is to intervene before things escalate, so she intervenes with children before I would. I'm not sure what that's looking like, but that feeling of being on guard constantly, imagine if we're feeling that discomfort, how impossible it is for this child to be settled. And that's just something I would look at. Why are we in this position where we're on guard constantly? What are we afraid of? I'd need to know a lot more about that. But those are things when I see those from a child's point of view, I see, oh, yikes, they're not comfortable.

28:17I don't have anything solid going on here. And I feel alone in how wild I feel. So this is a different way of seeing the kind of connection he needs. It's not a trust connection. Oh, we trust you to behave well and handle this situation. It's bringing in that honesty and opening up space for him to feel the way he feels.

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29:29he is my entire world and I try to give everything I can to be the best parent I could be. I used to think I was a good parent. I was hyper-focused on him ever since he was born. I didn't do a ton for myself. I was responsive, respectful, patient. We spent a ton of time outside and I really, really loved it all. I compressed my work hours to three days so I could spend lots of time with him and felt lucky for this time together. People commented on how great our bond is and how wonderful of a boy he is. But the last two years have been hard. A bad fall resulting in two elbow surgeries and an elbow that will never fully recover, challenges at work, then two miscarriages last year, and now the monthly emotional roller coaster of am I or not pregnant this month?