Don't Play Along With Annoying Behavior

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1:38Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today I'm going to be responding to a question from a parent, or a lot of questions from a parent. She's new to my podcast, and, well, I can certainly relate to some of the feelings that she shares. And I think that a lot of people out there will too, because what it is, is sometimes we can get into this rhythm with our child that's just not working. And we don't know how to get out of it in terms of the way that we're handling their behavior. What am I doing that's contributing to this? And really, this parent's question is about boundaries. So hopefully I can offer her some thoughts that will help her to break out of this pattern that's developed.

2:25Okay, so here's the note I received. Hi, Janet. I'm new to your podcast. I came across it recently as a puzzle piece to everything that's been going on with my now five and a half year old daughter. She is the love of my life, but I've struggled on and off with her since infancy for a variety of reasons. I could bring up many questions, but here are the two I most want to raise today. What advice do you have for parents when it comes to setting good boundaries? I've been stepping in more lately when my daughter's taking me to the mat. For example, she's been kicking her legs and shaking her upper body in a fit if her seatbelt is giving her the slightest bit of trouble, real or perceived.

3:08Now I just say, I see you're upset, but I'm not going to let you do that. If you can't do it right now, I'm going to do it myself. There are other things she does, though, that are playful, but all too often go sideways. This morning, she decided to crab walk down the stairs and to turn it into a race, and then got mad when I had finished walking to the bottom because then she'd lost the race. I simply told her that she can't turn anything into a race without the other person's consent, and it was time to eat breakfast. It goes on and on, and I get tired and annoyed. Any advice to stay energized, playful, but also to set boundaries?

3:48I think the way I handled this morning was okay, but I also know that she probably would benefit for me to more often invite her play and silliness. Had I been able to switch my mindset immediately from let's go to breakfast to okay, let's race down the stairs, she would have happily moved along and we both would have won. Half of the time I don't even get what she wants until the moment has passed. I get tired of trying to, quote, do the right thing in her play. And then I tend even more to the side of, mommy isn't going to do that right now. Let's go. What do you think parents should expect in terms of their child being able to reason, to cultivate healthy perspectives, and to exercise self-control of their voices and bodies, even when they don't feel like it?

4:36My daughter has been acting out more for the better part of a year now, probably at least in part due to attending preschool more days per week, and the addition of her baby sister, who is now 17 months old. Seeing as how she was four and a half to five and a half years this past year, I tried to coach her through things much, much more than I ever would have had she been younger. I felt my job as a parent was, in part, anyway, not letting her get away with melting down over nonsensical things, like the fact that she has to take off her shoes before taking her pants off. Recently, when she's five and a half years old, I would boil down what I thought was the important takeaway about the situation, communicate that to her, and expect her to still do all of the things she's capable of doing, like getting undressed.

5:26Recently, though, I've changed courses to see what it looks like to just say, I'm sorry you're upset, but I'm not going to allow you to scream at me about it and refuse a solution. So I'm going to take care of that for you. Then I just do whatever the thing is and expect her to move on and even change the subject for her. After about a week of this, our relationship seems better, thank God. However, I feel completely perplexed as to when my daughter is going to grow up and enjoy doing things for herself again, as well as gain a healthy and happy perspective in which she's not seeing everything as the end of the world.

6:03Will she ever stop testing me? Or is she just going to keep on seeing how much I can withstand? If the latter, how do I maintain a vision of her that she actually does care for me and is becoming concerned with the interests of others and growing in the ability to keep herself in check in healthy ways? Thank you so much if you find time for any sort of a response. If not, I understand. end. So I appreciate this parent taking a chance and reaching out to me. Sometimes when I read the notes that parents send me, I get almost like an emotional feeling around it. I'm sort of feeling it beyond the words.

6:44And what I felt when I read this, and even just now reading it again, is this heaviness that this parent is putting so much responsibility on herself. She's being hard on herself. And she's expecting so much that she's supposed to manage and make sure happens for her child. And it's all on her. And I truly believe that is the basis for the trouble that she's having, which doesn't seem fair, right? Because we feel like that because of what's going on. But that feeling of heaviness about everything is why it's going on. Because children are at the very least kind of mystified by this power they have over us to have us be taking things they do so seriously, or, you know, rethinking them and going over them and discussing them.

7:41And it's not comfortable for them when they feel like they can sort of bring us down. It's not that they want to bring us down, but they want to understand that and unconsciously see if they can help us to get over this. Because another thing I see in this note is something that you don't hear me say a lot here because I love young children and I don't like when people disrespect them, it doesn't feel good to me. At the same time, I know that they can be so obnoxious and annoying. And as parents, I believe that will help us to accept that. Accept that, yeah, they do all these annoying, obnoxious things, and it's okay if we're not charmed by them.

8:30It's okay if we don't want to play along with them. That's something to listen to and not try to, oh gosh, now I need to play because she wants to probably walk down the stairs when I just want to go get breakfast. And then maybe slightly beating ourselves up for that. Well, I should have been playful with her. That would have been better. She was inviting me to play and all that. I think children are beyond that, especially at this age. She wasn't inviting her parent to play. she was inviting her parent to see her as just a harmless, sometimes obnoxious child, doing her silly childlike things and then having strong reactions about it too, because it's like she found a little way to vent here.

9:17I'm going to go down the stairs like a crab. Now my mom isn't going to go along with it with me. So she won and now I'm upset. It's not fake upset, but it's like, all right, there's a valve for me to vent. It's a positive thing. It's what she needed to do when she set this thing up. She didn't need her parent to start grabbing with her or whatever, but her parent didn't feel like that. And she would know for sure if the parent was in that frame of mind herself. Yeah, she could have done that, but there's nothing wrong with being ourselves and not wanting to do it the way our child's doing it. This is also kind of a reason that I take playful parenting ideas with a grain of salt, because they can add another pressure to us.

10:04Yeah, of course they work, but they only work because we're feeling playful and light and unruffled in the situation. We can be those things without hopping like a bunny or crawling like a

10:20and say like, oh, there you go. Oh, you lost. Oh, no, this is terrible. What a bummer. As we're moving to the breakfast table. And that kind of attitude will make her not do these things as any kind of a test anymore. It will cause her to only do these things when she's feeling genuinely playful. So I'm not saying the child isn't also feeling playful, but a part of her playfulness, this child's playfulness is this kind of testing, or it's more like fishing, like, how serious are you going to take this thing I'm doing? How much are you going to feel heavy about this and feel bad about yourself about this?

11:01And then therefore respond to me coming from that feeling, which, you know, this parent said, I simply told her that she can't turn anything into a race without the person's consent. And it was time to eat breakfast. So yeah, had this very reasonable response that her daughter is already well aware of that she couldn't make her parent consent to a race right there just because she was doing it. It's just, I guess it's hard for me to say this because I also want the parent to really trust herself and be so much kinder to herself. But that kind of response is heavier handed than what our child wants and needs from us year, which is, whoa, oh gosh, the crab didn't win the race.

11:47Or nothing if we're really feeling kind of just grumpy about it or something. If we're not at that place where we can even see it for what it is, then it's better just not to say anything and just shrug your shoulders when she's upset about it and say, come on, let's go get some breakfast. That didn't go your way or whatever. but not taking the bait. That's another analogy you hear me using a lot. And to this parent or other parents that are new to this podcast, again, kids aren't consciously baiting us because they want to be mean and they don't love us completely, which they do. It's just this need to explore what is the heaviness here?

12:31Why are my whims and childlike feelings such a big deal and the way that I'm acting on them. Also, my behavior. So in this other case, the first example that this parent gave, she said she's been kicking her legs and shaking her upper body in a fit if her seat belt is giving her the slightest bit of trouble, real or perceived. Yeah, so this parent even knows it could be perceived. But even if it's real, her daughter knows this is just a seat belt. It's no big deal. Her parent can help her. She's getting into the drama of it. She's acting there. She's getting all pumped up about it. Again, because unconsciously, it's like doing this big show, are you going to take it seriously?

13:17But because this parent is already feeling so wrong that she's not playing and she's got this relationship with her daughter and if this has been going on for a long time, yeah, it does wear on us. It starts to affect our confidence, right? In every area in engaging with our child. We're not connecting in the way that we want to connect. And we blame ourselves, right? But the thing is, she's trying to connect on this adult serious level in a way that her daughter isn't, at least right now. Maybe sometimes she is, but not when she's doing these behaviors. So this parent said, I see you're upset, but I'm not going to let you do that.

13:57If you can't do it right now, I'm going to do it myself. So I recommend not saying any of that and just doing it for her. I'm assuming this is when she's trying to put on her seatbelt, not during the car ride, in which case I would just ignore it and just say, what's going on back there or something. The place that I would recommend this parent tries to get to is, whoa, that's not working out for you. Here we go. Click. not investing more in trying to teach her that that's wrong and she shouldn't do that and her parent's not going to take that kind of behavior. Just show. Less telling, less talking about it.

14:37Just show her you're there, you're going to handle it. It's not a big deal. And the only way we can again be like that, you always hear me saying this, it's not by pretending, it's by really seeing what's going on here, which is, yeah, she's out of sorts sometimes. She's not at her best, this little girl. She's all over the place. But she's gotten caught up in trying to check out why her parent is taking her so hard, taking her so heavily. She says, will she ever stop testing me? Or is she just going to keep on seeing how much I can withstand? Again, this isn't this child checking out the parent's endurance.

15:16It's the child checking out the parent's perception of her, of the child and her behavior. Instead of seeing it as this momentary, silly, okay, obnoxious stuff, everything's a lesson and I got to tell her and I got to show her and this is a problem. And if we could release all of that, then our child will be getting what she needs. because that's what she's testing if we want to call it testing. It's that exploring that children do. And what she's exploring is what is the big deal? Why is my big, strong, mature, wonderful parent who I adore, why is she getting so wound up by the stuff that I'm doing right now?

16:02When I'm just feeling goofy, I'm feeling, you know, I've got feelings I want to share, whatever it is. My parent is taking this so heavily. So yeah, that will stop as soon as this parent stops worrying about it, basically. So then the parent says, how do I maintain a vision of her that she actually does care for me and is becoming concerned with the interests of others and growing in the ability to keep herself in check in healthy ways? This girl has all of that. I can almost guarantee it. All of those things are on track. Right now, there's something going on between her and her mother that maybe got exacerbated after her sister was born.

16:43But it's certainly not reflective of how much she cares about her mother. She cares deeply about her mother. I'm absolutely sure of that. And as far as becoming concerned with the interests of others and growing and the ability to keep herself in check in healthy ways, so she knows how to keep herself in check. There's something overpowering here that she's trying to figure out. But I bet there's a lot of other times when she keeps herself in check. So it's not like she doesn't know how to do that. It's just not the vibe between her and her mother right now. And it can be. Like, that's just around the corner.

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19:05So this parent said, I know she would probably benefit for me to more often invite her play and silliness. Don't invite it or disinvite it. Just allow it. See it for what it is. Don't get caught up in it. If she needs help through it, help her through it in terms of the seatbelt. And then the other one she's talking about, about pulling her pants off with her shoes still on. So yeah, help her out of it if you can, but you don't have to pretend you're having fun when you're not having fun. That's not what kids want from us. In fact, it kind of weirds them out when we're trying to play and there's this undertone or we're doing anything that doesn't match what they sense that we're really feeling.

19:48kids are so intuitive this way. This is a good thing, right? We don't have to do tactics. We don't have to do play strategies. We don't have to be anything we're not. And we don't have to see them as just so much fun when they're being unfun, annoying children. No, we get to be ourselves in full ownership of our adult minds and bodies and our adult perceptions to see, oh gosh, she's doing this stuff again. Well, that's probably because she's gotten these heavy reactions out of me. And I don't mean heavy, like this parent's being unkind or harsh or anything, but it's just heavy when we say, you know, I have to do this.

20:31If you can't do it, I'm going to do it. That's heavier than we need to be. That's more invested than we need to be, or that our child wants us to be. And again, this is because this parent is taking on all these things. Oh, no, I got to make sure she cares about other people. I'm worried about that, that she can keep herself in check in healthy ways, that she really loves me, that she knows that she shouldn't take her pants off over her shoes. And here she says, recently, though, I've changed courses to see what it looks like just to say, I'm sorry, you're upset, but I'm not going to allow you to scream at me about it and refuse a solution.

21:09So we have no power there to not allow her to scream or refuse a solution. Really, those are things we can't control. And to try to make that into something, again, is not going to help us get where we want to be. She says, so I'm going to take care of that for you. So just like with the seatbelt, just do it. Do it with, whoops, this is not happening right now for you. All right, here we go. Something much less serious. She said, then I just do whatever the thing is and expect her to move on or even change the subject for her. We don't need to change the subject for her if we're seeing it for what it is, which is this momentary kooky thing that she's doing because it's gotten this heavy response from us.

21:54So now we're not going to give it a heavy response. We've moved on and we don't have to try to help her to move on too. So yeah, again, here's that heavy load this parent has taken on. Heavy, heavy, heavy load. And it's almost impossible, again, to feel unruffled and to take these things not seriously when we've kind of internalized so many issues that we're holding on to here, so many responsibilities, feeling that we can't do this when this parent totally can. I know she can. It's a heavy, heavy load taking on that I'm not going to let you scream about something and refuse a solution when we have no power over that.

22:32So yeah, just do what the rest of this parent said. then I just do whatever the thing is and expect her to move on or even change the subject for her. So yeah, you don't even have to expect her to move on. Just let her move on by you moving on. You're not going to let these things get to you anymore. You're going to see them for what they are. You know, I think another worry this parent may have, and she doesn't express it though, is something common we always hear, right? Our child's behavior is a bid for connection. Well, that's true. But it's not a bid for, oh, you've got to be a crab with me, or you've got to see me having this intense struggle with my seatbelt when I'm five and a half.

23:15I'm just having such a hard time with this thing. Don't connect in that heaviness. Connect with the immature child that you love that's acting kooky right now. Just see that person. So it's a bid for connection in terms of see what's really going on here. And that, yeah, I'm way more capable than I'm showing a lot of the time. But that's because I don't get why this has such power with you. So I wish that was more clarified when we hear that statement that it's not that I have to have this really lovely connection that's so deep. It's more like, all right, I see a goofball here. I'm not going to let that put any pressure on me to do anything.

23:57I'm just going to take care of what I need to take care of, which is, you know, we got to get going in the car. Here we go. I'm going to snap you in. That's hard for you sometimes, apparently. So this parent said that when she just did whatever the thing was, including with the pants, I guess, after about a week of this, our relationship seems better. Thank God. Yeah, so it feels better because we just got on with it and did it. it'll feel even better when we can get on with it and do it without all the talk around it, without trying to make a lesson out of it, with just really seeing it for, again, what it is, which is just this annoying, obnoxious moment our child is having that's not worthy of my heavy response.

24:44So let go more of all the silly things she's going to do. It'll get much better when we see it for what it is, not giving it our energy, not putting energy into the trying to explain and talk about it and let her know it's not okay and all that stuff. That's all energy that is only going to keep us weighed down. So let it go. Let it ride out when she has feelings. Don't try to do anything with it. Help her with the behavior. Let it go so she can know that she matters, but all this behavior doesn't matter to you very much because you're giving yourself a break about it, knowing that you have a wonderful relationship with her underneath this, and you just need a little help shedding some of the heaviness that's getting between you.

25:36And getting back to this parent's question, that's setting boundaries. It's setting personal boundaries about what I'm going to give my time and energy to, to the serious side of you that really needs to talk to me or share with me. Not this one. That's what self-care is too in our boundaries. It's like, I'm not going to get into the weeds of all this stuff. So anyway, I do think this parent would benefit from my course or from my book, No Bad Kids. If she hasn't read that yet, that's available everywhere. It's got something like 5 ,000 something reviews on Amazon. A lot of people have been reportedly helped by it.

26:18And then the course, if you want a deeper dive, the No Bad Kids Master Course at nobadkidscourse.com or just maybe listening to more of my podcasts, going to my website where I still have a whole catalog of articles for you, free to read. There's no paywall because you deserve, we all deserve to lighten our load so we can enjoy this time. We can do this.

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