It's Never About the Watermelon: What's Really Behind Your Child's Behavior (And What Actually Helps)

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0:48Notice you're limitless. Now open your eyes, go to Monday.com. Start for free and finally breathe. Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today I'm going to be responding to a question from a parent that brings up this challenge that I feel like almost every parent I know has. It's actually a solution to challenges that we face with our kids' behaviors when they seem so unreasonable and maybe emotional. and we're trying to respond in a way that calms them down or just, you know, makes them stop doing that behavior, whatever it is. And there's this one solution that improves the situation almost every time.

1:39It's like right in our face and we want to do everything else but that instinctively. So anyway, not to be too mysterious or confusing, it's this idea of just accepting what our kids are feeling, no matter what it is. That doesn't mean we're accepting the behavior that we're feeding into the behavior that we're letting them disrupt places or, you know, have loud meltdowns in front of everyone on the street. It just means that we're helping them get through that moment from a place of acceptance of their right to feel whatever they're feeling. That's, if we think about it, what we all want from people we're in relationships with or people that care about us.

2:26Just let it be okay for me to feel what I'm feeling. Yeah, maybe it seems ridiculous. Maybe it seems like I'm overreacting, but it's just the way I feel. Can I just feel this way and have it be okay with you. So here's this parent's note. It's sort of an exchange that we had, but she gave a lot of good information that I feel like I can help her centered around this idea, just simply allowing our kids to feel what they're feeling. I think this will help you understand what I'm talking about. Hi, Janet. I've been listening to your podcast and I've been trying to implement boundaries more and follow through with consequences.

3:07Yesterday, for example, my two and a half year old wanted watermelon after dinner and we offered some, but he wanted some pieces cut small and not others. And he didn't like the way I had done it. So he began trying to throw his fork and tip the watermelon. I therefore took the watermelon away and said, throwing the fork is unsafe. And he went into a tantrum with trying to hit me. If I move away so that he cannot hit me, then he will direct that behavior to himself and start hitting his head with his hands. This completely breaks my heart and really stresses me out. What would you suggest doing in this situation?

3:45We've explained in moments of calm that we don't hit others, ourselves, or damage things. He understands these things, I know. And sometimes as I say this, he will then hit his head for a reaction too. Any advice appreciated? So I wrote back. Are there ways you encourage him to vent this frustration? Probably it's not directly due to the watermelon, but more a kind of buildup of toddler angst. He needs to feel safe to be mad. So this isn't a message exchange on Instagram, I think it was. The parent wrote back, thanks for replying. That's really kind of you. And I know you must be so busy. When he's calm, we read emotion books together.

4:28We have posters with different emotions on the walls, and I try to label emotions. I also try to help him label emotions if I notice him struggling with something. Yesterday, for example, he couldn't open his Lego box as soon as he wanted to, so he threw the whole thing down on the ground. I said to him, you were feeling frustrated because you couldn't open it straight away, and next time you can ask for help if you need. We are also expecting a second baby in three weeks, and this kind of behavior has really started to pick up over the last few months. I offered him noodles for dinner, asked if he wanted the noodles cut, and he said yes, so I cut them.

5:07But then he wasn't happy I had cut all of them, and just not that particular bite. And he proceeded to tip the whole bowl over on the table and throw his fork. He then wanted me to get the fork, but would throw it again straight away. I said he needed to get it himself since he threw it, but he wanted only me to get it. He won't even like it if my husband gets it. He also doesn't like it if I wash it. He wants to use that dirty fork. I did give him some longer noodles again, but he tried to tip them again. So I tried to ignore it, and then he tried to hit his hands on his head. At that point, I told him I could tell he was upset, and we don't hurt ourselves, but he can have a cushion if he feels like hitting.

5:50I know sometimes he doesn't feel comfortable talking about emotions, because when I read books and show when characters are feeling sad or upset, he will make silly faces or spit bubbles at the book. He can go from hot to cold in a moment, and as soon as he gets frustrated or something doesn't work out the way he envisioned, he will react like this by throwing or trying to hit me or himself. The other thing is he does go to daycare pretty much full time other than Fridays, which are half days. And I wonder if he struggles with being in that for that long as well. I've realized after listening to your podcasts, he hasn't really had any real consequences to his actions.

6:28We say it's not okay, but usually give the fork food back to him, for example, if it's in the context of mealtimes. We're trying to work on that. So then I responded, I have some thoughts for you that I hope will help. I'm going to share them in a podcast if that's okay. It's something in the way you're looking at this that I think I can help you with. And she wrote back, thank you. That would be really helpful. The other thing to mention, if it's relevant at all to your thoughts, is that I think my son has somehow learned some emotions are bad. When he is calm and we are reading books about feelings, and if I ask if he has ever been sad or angry, he will say no, and only yes if I ask about being happy, excited, or brave.

7:10When he's upset and I label it, for example, I say, I can see you are upset. He will scream no and get even more mad. At times with his behavior in the moment, it feels as though he's testing my love. For example, if he throws a toy and only wants me to get it back for him. He has become a lot more clingy to me lately, and he will demand that only I take him to the potty, wash his hands, do his bath, put him to sleep. Only I can sit next to him at mealtimes, not his dad, etc. It's becoming harder for me to do some of these things as I can't bend down as easily, and so he will just kick and scream as his dad does some of these tasks.

7:49I'm having a planned C section, and no, I won't be able to lift him up for about six weeks afterwards. So we're just persevering with trying to get him used to his dad, helping him more with tasks that need doing. The other thing he has started doing is throwing things in the potty, like slippers or hair brushes, and finding that funny. Sometimes he throws clean clothes in the bathtub when it has been set up for his bath. I don't really know what kind of consequences would work in these scenarios. He knows it's not the right thing. And with the slippers, when we said we won't be able to use them again, and that was unkind, I could tell he then felt sad about it.

8:25But usually he just laughs and thinks it's funny. Thanks so much for reading these messages. I've felt at such a loss and looking forward to hearing your thoughts. Okay, so stepping back from this, we can sense that this child is definitely going through it, right? He's making demands that are totally unreasonable, that are not about needs. And I would love to reassure this parent that it's not about testing her love. It's more about testing or exploring. Can't I just share how awful I feel? How unsettled I feel? How all over the place I am? I'm not making sense to me either. Just see me where I am and let me share this with you.

9:13and understand or at least accept how I feel. And that's what I was talking about in the beginning of this. It's right there in front of us, but it can be so hard for us to see. For me too, even after a lot of years of practicing it with my kids, with other people's kids, demonstrating it to parents, helping them see this. It's almost like too obvious. We don't want to go there. Or we have doubts somehow that, oh gosh, maybe he really needs me to be the one to pick up the thing, or he's not going to eat anymore if I don't do what he needs. And oh gosh, I can't let him hit himself. I've got to stop him from any way that he's showing these feelings.

9:56That's not in words. That's not maybe the way an adult would share it, which is I'm really upset. Children, they can't do that very easily. because when they are upset, every cell in their body is upset, including the part where their brain can say, I'm upset. It's like they can't even access that. It's what Dan Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson called downstairs brain or what Mona De La Hook calls the red pathway, right? It's just we're on a different path. So when we try to go there as parents, it's almost like we're in a different world from our child, and we're not going to connect. What's going to happen, unfortunately, is our child's going to feel even more scared and alone in what they're feeling, and unacceptable, and wrong.

10:49All of this feeding into those feelings, and therefore that behavior, that out-of-control feeling. In a way, this is really about taking our child's point of view, instead of dealing with the behaviors that are coming at us and trying to fix that behavior and fix that behavior and think of a consequence. So sometimes I do talk about what I call honest consequences in my podcast or in my writing. I talk about how it's so important for us as parents to say, I don't want to do this now. Or, you know, when you talk to me that way, it doesn't make me want to get you something. You know, you're throwing your fork down.

11:31That's showing me that you're not interested in eating this food right now. So we're going to stop sitting here and eating the food. I don't want to sit for this. I don't want you to go into this stuff that's mine, into my handbag or whatever it is. I'm not going to help you open this box when you clearly just really need to be upset about it. So when the behavior gets this unreasonable, it can be an aha for us. Oh, wait, this isn't about Legos or watermelon or forks or that he's enjoying throwing things in the toilet or throwing things in the bathtub. He doesn't genuinely think this is funny.

12:15He's too smart for that. He's too aware for that. But he's saying, look how out there I feel that I'm doing this and I'm doing that. See me and how out there I feel. So the answer for us can be as simple as that. Seeing them and really accepting. Children are layered, nuanced, aware people from the time they're born. They know the difference in making us laugh, doing something that's genuinely funny and doing something and going, ha ha ha, what are you going to do now? Are you going to see me? It's a totally different vibe. They don't think that things that are making us angry are funny. Just the way our friend or partner wouldn't think it's funny to do destructive or negative things that make us angry.

13:11Children know the difference very, very young. So not saying the words you're upset or here's this feeling that you're having, that you're frustrated. I see that. It's not the words that our child needs. It's not the analyzing of their behavior or the sensible response to unsensible behavior. It's help me feel safe in this and that you're going to stop me doing those things by taking my hand. But mainly this act of acknowledging and seeing and accepting and being able to hear that, the full force of that message. I think you've heard me say in this podcast before, if you're a regular listener, it's that 30 % that we want to give our child when they're way up here in their behavior.

14:01and we say, you're upset. I use the analogy, like, what if you were my friend? And when we were meeting, you said, oh gosh, I just got held up at gunpoint. And I said, you're upset. You're frustrated. You're scared. Instead of, whoa, that's really scary. That's what our child needs, that level of emphasis, that 30 % of what their intensity is, to feel okay and safe and seen, not just seen from this objective standpoint, but seen as somebody that cares about you and knows that you wouldn't deliberately do all these things just to make me angry. You're doing them to show me how bad you feel, how uncomfortable you are.

14:50And the more I kind of avoid seeing that or try to deal with it on a behavior level, the less safe you feel in your relationship with me, which is all that kids care about, their relationships with us. Another sign that we can get so caught up in the behavior that we miss connecting with our child's point of view, and this happens so often, you know, the parent offers, well, were having a baby in a few weeks. That is a major, major issue here and probably what is causing this. And yes, it happens when parents are expecting, not just when they've had the baby, it can happen when the baby turns one or one and a half.

15:33It's different for every child, but there's waves of discomfort and fear that come from the mystery of all of this. And everybody's saying, aren't you excited? And sensing my parents distancing herself as this parent says she needs to because she's having a C-section. So she's already kind of shifting and hoping her son will depend more on his dad. And so children are so sensitive and aware. They feel that. They feel, why is she pulling away? It's like as if you're in a romance and you feel this partner kind of distancing themselves a little bit, trying to shift you into depending on other people.

16:17How scary is that? How disconcerting is that? So I'm resistant to the information that goes out about teaching kids to label their emotions. I mean, this is a two and a half year old, but even with a four year old or five year old, the way to help them label emotions is not, in my opinion and experience, pointing out pictures in books and saying, this is sad, this is angry. It's about the real life learning experiences that kids can have with us where we accept, ah, it must be so scary to wonder what's going on and what it's going to be like when this baby comes. It seems like this is really rattling you, understandably.

17:00That's what almost every big brother or big sister feels. It's like, what? I had my parents all to myself. And now I don't even know what it's going to be like, but I feel my parent distancing themselves. That's how we learn what scared feels like from a place of my parents' acceptance and validation and not judging me for that, wanting to see me, wanting to show me that it's totally understandable. And we're still there for you, but yeah, it's totally different. Everything's going to change for a while and I'm not going to be able to pick you up and I'm not going to have as much attention for you.

17:40I mean, I would even put that out there in small ways, upfront honesty instead of this, you know, this veil of like, oh, everything's fine when our child knows it's not fine. Yes, we love them just as much, but it's not going to be the same. So personally, as a parent, I wouldn't do the books and the lessons about feelings. I mean, maybe for an older child that's really having a hard time socially reading other kids' feelings, then that's where that's appropriate. But kids learn through their relationships with us. When it comes to things that are so close to the heart and so vital, like their emotional life, we can't teach that in a book.

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21:15So let's just go over some things and how this will look different for this parent if she's willing to make this shift, which I know is like, I mean, I wouldn't be doing a whole episode about this and probably I've done many episodes about this if it wasn't so hard and counterintuitive. So please be kind to yourselves, forgiving of yourselves, compassionate. Give yourself lots of chances to not get this and not be able to do it before you're brave enough to do it. I mean, talk about brave in that emotion book. It's brave to put the truth out there with our children. It's never the wrong thing to do.

21:55Let's start with the watermelon. This is where she started. He wanted some pieces cut small and not others. So right there, I think I would say, I'll cut them for you or I won't cut them, but I can't do this different size thing. Right there, he melts down. So we're getting it over with quickly instead of going down this path of frustration for us, right? Where, oh, now I'm trying to please him here and now he's throwing his fork. and now I'm picking up his fork and he's throwing it again. We go down these roads because we're trying to avoid a lot of the time that feeling which is what's behind everything and just needs to come out and needs to be seen and needs to be accepted.

22:34So we could just get this over with right from the beginning by being reasonable ourselves and caring for ourselves and being like, you know what, this is what I'm going to do. I'm not willing to do this whole dance for you to eat watermelon. Watermelon is a treat. I'm not saying to say all these words, but to think of it like, ah, you want me to do like fancy stuff with a watermelon? I mean, that's not a need for him, right? That's just a want. That's not really the want. The want is to be able to express frustration when children are asking for these silly things. So don't buy into it. Don't go down that path where it gets worse and worse and worse.

23:12So I wouldn't even go to the rest of this. I would stop it right there at the beginning. That's more loving to ourselves and to our child, to not go down this path of increased frustration, more ridiculous unreasonableness. We can't help but start resenting our child when we do that, right? And think that they're just the biggest meanie. But it's because we're trying to avoid something that that happens. So we're not taking care of ourselves. So taking care of ourselves is taking care of our child. Taking care of ourselves by standing up for what we're willing to do. So he started hitting himself with his hands.

23:50So he's not going to seriously hurt himself by hitting it with his hands, but we don't need to let it get that far. If somehow he goes to that directly or whatever, because that's what he's seen us react to. And that's where he's seen that he's effectively getting his message across that everything's not okay. Then just do the mildest thing. Instead of saying, you can go hit this, something very objective and reasonable, right? But that's not where he is. Then we're on a totally different pathway. We're in a totally different world. We're not going to connect with him there. So we want to say, oh, you're so mad.

24:25You're hitting yourself. It's so frustrating. And maybe we're just surreptitiously kind of holding his forearm a little so that he can't hit himself too hard if we need to, but mostly we don't need to. And what's better is for us to really see that and not be trying to stop something that really we have very little control over, which is how he treats himself. Yeah, we can put our hand up and block when he's hitting us. But right there, we also want to see you feel like hitting me and you're so mad about this watermelon thing or the fork or everything. And I wonder if this is how you're feeling right now.

25:02It's really out of control. It seems like you're scared. And you know what? We're here for you. So definitely not saying all of those words, but those are the messages we want to get across. And that's why I said to her, are there ways you encourage him to vent this frustration? He needs to feel safe to be mad. It seems like that there haven't been ways for him safely and feeling accepted rather than redirected or corrected. There haven't been ways for him to do that. And that's why it's continuing. So in a way, this is so simple, right? Just let the feelings be, just accept them, agree with his right to feel the way he feels, stop him from doing the big stuff that you can stop.

25:46Don't buy into these trains of frustration that we get on. I said to him, you were feeling frustrated because you couldn't open it straight away. And next time you can ask for help if you need. So right there too, there's a little like, okay, this is how you're feeling and here's what you can do to not feel that way next time. So I'm telling you without telling you, really, it's not okay to feel like that. You should do something to avoid that. And that's a very adult conscious, reasonable way of thinking, right? That doesn't really work that well for us either. Sometimes we just want to express how unreasonable we feel, but it definitely doesn't work with children.

26:25So then that all got out of control, tipping the bowl. And yeah, he doesn't feel comfortable talking about emotions because kids don't want to talk about emotions in that way when they sense that we're trying to teach them lessons. And here's how you should express this. And you should say that you're this or that, instead of having it be in every cell of your body, the way young children feel. And really, kids just need to have it in every cell of their body in a way that's healthier than what we do as adults. It's much more genuine. It's much more authentic. It's much freer. And you know what, they pass through the feelings a lot quicker if we can accept them because they're so expressive of them.

27:05So you can go from hot to cold in a moment. Yeah, he's just tipping off into those feelings at any moment. And yeah, the being at child care, that adds a certain stress that children have to kind of hold it together while they're away from us. This isn't to say that it's wrong or harmful for him at all. But it's just what happens at school or at care is that kids can't be as free with their emotions. They do conform to that usually. And so this buildup, it's like an explosion. Now I got to share it with my parents and I just need to land it with them safely. And then I can feel better. Surely there'll be more explosions, but each time my parent really accepts and sees and tells me through their behavior and their attitude that it's really okay to feel the way I feel, that helps to ease my fears that are adding to all the other fears of the situation.

28:04The fear that I'm just out of control and you guys don't accept me. The screaming, the getting mad, that's the gold right there. I know probably people hate when I say that, but that is how this is going to pass. The more he can get that out of his body. This is where kids kind of need us to have that therapist hat on and see that there's a lot they need to vent. And then being honest with him about this parent situation. And yeah, you're noticing I can't bend down and that's hard. And so daddy's going to need to do this, but yeah, you really want me and this whole thing's so scary. So when dad's doing it and he's upset about that, that's a wonderful moment of you're holding your boundary, but you're welcoming the part that has to go with every boundary really as parents for it to be successful is that you get to disagree with this boundary.