Raising Can-Do Kids

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1:53Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Well, today I'm feeling inspired by a reel that I saw on my friend and first Rye teacher, Harry Grebler's Instagram. She's been on this podcast a couple of times. And like I said, she was my very first Rye teacher when I brought my daughter, who's now in her early 30s, to Harry's class as a three-month-old infant. Harry found a video that I guess has been around for a while, but I hadn't seen it, by this African-American model named Dita Howard. Many of you have probably already heard of her. I hadn't. But the video shows her 19-month-old showing great patience as she's working on how to work those little baskets that you get in the market.

2:45You know, not the big ones on wheels, but those little ones. They have two handles that kind of fold off to the sides and you have to try to coordinate them and get them together in your hand. And this is especially hard if these are metal handles. Now, this is something that I struggle with in the market, which is why I usually try to get a big rolling cart, even if I'm just getting a couple of things, because I don't know, I'm just not good at coordinating those handles. but here is a child who's only 19 months old with two of these baskets on the floor of the market and she's working on trying to hold on to both baskets at once, one in each of her hands.

3:29Now this video takes maybe a minute but it's a very very long minute and we really want her to be able to do it and she's working so hard and I've never met a parent that doesn't feel we may not act on it, but that doesn't feel, whoa, I want to help her. I want to make sure she can do this and not be disappointed and not feel like she's failing. And this is really uncomfortable. If you'd like to watch this video, I'm putting a link in the show notes, and also I'll be reposting it on my Instagram. What I want to talk about today is really how to let our children have these experiences that are so precious in terms of them developing their feelings of agency, their self-confidence, their problem-solving abilities, in this case, their motor skills, coordination.

4:26But for me, even more important than those motor skills and coordination skills are the emotional benefits. Knowing that you can work hard on something, struggle, that you won't always succeed, but that it's okay to be in the process. It's okay to be in between. And then sometimes you do succeed. And the wonderful thing about this video, or to me, it's wonderful because it's so telling on how, what a healthy attitude young children have and how we can kind of get in the way of that with our own perceptions and our own feelings and our own discomforts. This little girl, she does this amazing feat after making a concerted effort for, like I said, about a minute, but it seems a whole lot longer.

5:15Then she does it. Her dad, we hear him say, bravo, and laughing and just so happy. And I mean, he didn't do a big, good job thing, but he was excited. And she's like off now to something else. just like I didn't need this big hoopla around this. I'm just doing what's interesting to me. And now I'm on to the next thing. And the next thing was she's getting a box of cereal. So anyway, just the fascinating thing to me and the very telling thing is that she went right on with her work or whatever we want to call it, not doing it to have some big result and be congratulated for it. So Harry shared this video from Dita Howard's page, but maybe she even got it through someone else because it's been around for a while, I guess.

6:07And Harry edited the video with subtitles, and this is what she said. So often when we see a child working hard to accomplish something, we kindly ask if they need help and interrupt them. Do this instead. Wait. So this is over this child that we're seeing, seemingly struggling, but not upset about it at all, right? Just interested in the process, figuring out how it all works. And this is true, right? Because we all, I think, feel this. I'm sure even Harry feels this. Maybe she doesn't. She's been doing this a lot longer than I have even. But we feel like, oh gosh, that sweet child is trying so hard.

6:53and we just want to help. Do you need me to do it, honey? And what we forget is not only that children when they're this age have a very different attitude towards achievement. They're really not going for that. We can influence them that way, of course, when we're going for achievement, but of their own volition, they're just interested. They just want to figure it out and learn how to do it themselves, right? But we're already sort of projecting our goal-oriented mindsets to our child, teaching our child without meaning to that, oh, they got to get this done. And if they don't, that's a problem.

7:34That's going to be uncomfortable. They're going to be too disappointed. They're not going to be able to handle that. And it's not okay to be disappointed or feel like you failed at something or couldn't get it yet, that it's too much of a struggle. All those things young children can teach us are not tragedies, are not negatives. There's this part of life, and then there's the part where you finish things sometimes. There's other parts where you don't. They have this healthy, healthy, healthy attitude, right? It'd be better if we had their attitude instead of unwittingly teaching them ours, which is much more tense, right?

8:08We're going to get it done. And if we don't, we get upset. But of course, young children do sometimes get upset. So a lot of people commented when I storied this version that Harry shared with that message that she gave. So often when we see a child working hard to accomplish something, we kindly ask them to help and interrupt them. Instead, do this. Wait. When I shared this, I got a lot of comments back. I got a lot of replies saying, wow, that was great and how wonderful. And then I got one that's reflective of many of the questions that I get from parents, right? And this question is, okay, but what about when they start freaking out from frustration?

8:53That generally happened for me past this age in an older toddler, like three to four. So yeah, what happens when children do start freaking out from frustration, as this parent says? Now, not always, but often this does happen because without meaning to, we've transmitted to them our goal-oriented attitude and our anxiousness towards them being able to finish something. We've done that by just our own feelings. The children are always picking up from us. They look at our face and we're anticipating, we're hoping they're going to get it, they're going to do it, instead of trying to breathe and let go and see it from their natural view, which is, this is another process.

9:39None of us are going to be perfect at that. Yeah, we are going to give kids messages. And they also get frustrated when they're maybe a little tired, they're maybe a little hungry, they're feeling stressed for other reasons, they're just a little dysregulated. So it's not only our influence, but you know, their own stress level and self-regulation that can create that. The one we can really do something about, our attitude, and if we've already gone that direction with our children, I'm going to explain how we can easily dial that back. So that one we can work on. The other one is just something to be aware of as much as we can, that certain situations stress our child out, or that that could be happening.

10:26But either way, I've created a sequence of interventions that I recommend, and I aim to loosely follow in my work with children and with my own children. The goal of these are always to maximize opportunities for children to feel the ownership of their process and accomplishments. Because when children say, help, it's almost always not about them wanting us to come in and do it. This is something they know we can do, but they want to be able to do it. They're working on it because it's something they're interested in doing. So when they say help, it really seldom means you come in and do this for me.

11:10It's usually that they want to own this. They want to accomplish this. They're interested in learning themselves. So here's the sequence that I recommend. The first one, so level one, we could call this, is help by giving emotional support and safety. So when my child says, help, I need help with this. I always say yes. Sure, here I come. I come close. I'm there for my child. I'm paying attention. I'm calm. I don't run over there urgently because I've already gauged this is not an emergency or something. This is not a danger. So I can walk over calmly. Okay, what are you doing? It looks like you're trying to hold those handles.

11:57That is hard, right? It's pretty complicated. So we're just acknowledging, we're reflecting, we're supporting their process. And interestingly, that is often what children really want when they want our help. They just want us to pay attention, to show them support with the perspective that we believe that they can do this, or we believe in them to be where they are right now in this process. We don't need them to do the thing. We're just interested in what they're interested in. So we're not trying to take it further in our minds to like, oh gosh, they got to get this done. I'm not trying to project ahead.

12:40Again, this is hard to do, but even the process of this can be self-calming for us. It's certainly empowering when we realize that we're not so tied into our children's every feeling, that we don't need to fix their feelings and avoid them and ensure that they don't ever have them. That's not our job at all. Our job is to allow them to have all the processes in life, especially the ones they're interested in, and to know that it is what it is. They are where they are, and we can be satisfied with what they're doing right now. That right there is kind of a secret to parent happiness, appreciating what your child's doing right now.

13:21I know that sounds maybe corny or hokey, but it's really true because so often we get stuck in what they're not doing and they're not going to be able to do it and they can't do it yet and these other kids can do it and what are we doing wrong and we worry. We erase in our minds all of the things that our child is doing. So number one, just that emotional support and safety. We're not saying, oh, you can do it, You can do it. We're not even caring if they do it. We certainly don't want to care more than they do if they can do it, which is often what happens is we get carried away and like we're the ones that care about doing it, right?

14:00But again, so they've asked for help, emotional support and safety, yes to helping, reflecting what's going on. That's pretty hard, you know, if they're struggling. That's complicated. These I care and I'm here for you kinds of responses are going to be enough more often than we might imagine. And then we'll want to continue providing this kind of support with empathy, but not pity, not feeling sorry for them throughout the rest of these steps. Now, the next step is verbal direction or demonstration. It's not about that we've waited for 30 seconds and they haven't done it, and now we're going to give them a direction.

14:41It's about tuning into where our child is. if our child is getting anxious, you know, starting to maybe get dysregulated, get super frustrated, only then do we want to go to step two, not because we're impatient. So step two, verbal direction or demonstration. So instead of showing this little girl how to pull those handles up together, one in each hand, we might say, oh, maybe if you hold that one in your hand and then bring it up to join that one. Or we could say something even less than that, like maybe keep holding on to that while you're trying to get the other one. Or maybe using two hands to pull it together and then switching to one hand.

15:25I don't know. See, I don't even know how to explain how to do that. But that's all, just some little verbal help. And maybe we're gesticulating as we're doing it, but we're not actually doing the thing for them. So now we're doing that. we're still there with the emotional support, calm and relaxed, trusting that we're safe, our child's safe in this process. No one looks forward to tax season. It sneaks up and suddenly you're hunting for receipts, downloading statements, trying to piece together a year of spending. For most of us, it's the only time we're forced to take a look at our finances.

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18:34Now, let's say our child is getting more intense. Help, help. No, no, I want you to do it. I want you to do it. Really, with the example of the cards, I'm not even sure if I wouldn't at that point realize that my child needs something else, like more of a break, or just needs to leave the market. And maybe I would say, you know, let's get going. You can try that again next time or something. I might even do that depending on what I know about my child, what I'm sensing they're capable of. But let's say that it's a different kind of situation. Like they climbed up on something and they're trying to get down.

19:13And we saw that they climbed up themselves. We know that they could potentially get down, especially if we're spotting them, which I would do if it was at all unsafe. So I'm talking about a climbing structure or a slide, something that they went up on. And now they think they need help getting down. Our child's saying, no, I need help. I'm here. I'm going to keep you safe. What are you trying to do? Oh, go back down that way that you came. Now my child's getting more heated up, let's say. So I'm doing that wait that Harry Grebler mentioned. That's so important in between these steps to wait a little bit.

19:52So I'm waiting. Now I'm going to give the number two, the verbal direction. Hmm, maybe if you put your foot down on this bar right below you, do you see that? There's a bar right there. If you could move one of your feet onto that bar. So if this is an even younger child, I might say less words or say it more slowly. But that's the idea. We're going to give verbal direction. Okay, so now this is when I might go to number three. So number three is assisting in the most minor way possible. One of the ways that we do this in our rye classes is we have these canisters, these jars that have a lid. And sometimes a child is trying to turn the lid and we made the mistake that we didn't kind of put it on loosely so that they could possibly do that because we don't want to put things out in our play area that a child couldn't possibly do.

20:51So we usually loosen it up just a little bit so that they're able to figure that out when we're putting it in their environment. In this case, assisting in the most minor way possible might be, I'll say, let me hold this while you try. And then if I didn't loosen it a little beforehand, I might just surreptitiously just loosen it a little bit. Or we might even tell them, I'm just going to loosen it a little bit. In the case of the climbing structure, maybe that looks like us actually saying, I'm going to help your foot reach this step, just like this. Let me help you reach this. And we're taking their foot and we're just moving it down a little bit so that they can feel that bar underneath them.

21:34So that would be the third step. After one and two didn't seem to be enough, our child is escalating. We want to help them as best we can while still allowing them ownership of this process, not just being the magical people that fix it all for them. Like it's so easy for us to be, right? And kids know that. They know these adults, they can just do everything. I want to be able to do it too. And we want them to have that experience when possible. And again, the struggling part is just as much an experience to them as the completing part, especially if we see it that way. if we're able to try to see it that way when we're with them.

22:14So then the final step, step four, if we're still in it with them and they're still seeming stuck and they're getting more and more upset and we've waited a little and the whole time we're offering that support and reflection of like, oh gosh, you're trying that and that's still hard and you really want to do it, right? You want to be able to do this. The fourth step is actually doing it for them, which we'll sometimes want to do, especially if this is about a caregiving activity, like the way they're trying to use their spoon or get something to eat. I mean, then we might almost go straight to four and help them do that.

22:50Or if they're getting dressed or undressed, we'll maybe advance all the way through these steps to four, where we're saying, okay, let me do that. These buttons are hard, aren't they? Even then, though, we might hold our child's hand in our hand so that we're doing it with them. giving them a chance to learn how to do it so that maybe the next time they could come closer to doing it themselves. Or not. We try not to be invested in those things. That's what's behind all of this, is that we don't want to be invested, especially more than our child is, which we tend to be as adults, in the outcome.

23:27So maybe it's something about getting dressed. Maybe it's that they really want to cut something with these scissors. and we've tried explaining and helping them just a little bit. And now we're going to actually hold their hand in ours and help them cut. So we want to save those for when that really seems necessary. Because again, a lot of the times our kids are just too tired to keep going. And then I'm a believer in let them quit because that's when we'll really notice, oh, it was us that needed them to do the thing. just let them quit if they want to quit and they'll try again another time.

24:08That's what kids do. But if we're always giving them the message that we swoop in and magically make it all work for them, then it's harder for them, right? Then they do get more frustrated. They maybe expect more of themselves in the way of accomplishment and they get a little away from that healthy outlook that they naturally have to not expect things to be easy, to not expect things to be done or done properly or finished or, you know, to get the goal. I wish I was more like them, honestly, and I try to be, but they inspire me. And this parent, Dita Howard, that posted this incredible video with her and her partner just trusting their child that way to have an experience like that.

24:54This was her caption on the video. She wrote, learning to be patient from my 19 month old. That's right. They teach us patience, perseverance, being in the moment, that process is as interesting as finished product. They can teach us so many wonderful things if we can calm ourselves enough to allow them to and to give them that space and those opportunities that they need and try to stay out of their way. But with all the care and support in the world, none of this is about just ignore them and make them have to work it out. It's about us caring enough to want to give them an experience that's for them, not for us.

25:38So it's a very generous thing that we can do, but does require our patience and our faith in our kids. So back to this parent's question, what do I do when my child's freaking out and ask for help? Try those four steps. First, emotional support and safety. Yes to help. Yep, I'm here. I'm going to keep you safe. What are you trying to do? That looks hard. You're working hard on it. We don't have to do a lot of talking. It's really the way that we're bringing our presence to the situation. So that's number one. Number two, verbal direction or demonstration. Number three, assisting in the most minor, minor way possible, doing the smallest thing.

26:20And then for, if we need to, doing it for them. So we're never putting pressure on them to try to do something. We're staying two steps behind them, allowing them to have an experience, trusting them to have an experience, but being there as someone they can feel supported by. And if we are trying to dial this back because we've gone ahead and done the thing for our child in the past. I always believe in copping to that. So saying, oh yes, I know that I usually do that part for you, or I did that part for you last time, but it seems like you want to try to do this for yourself. So I'm going to let you.

27:00And then the really, really hard part is wait, right? Just like Harry said, wait when they're expressing frustration, wait when they're getting a little impatient, whining, letting those feelings be, supporting them in that. Yeah, it is frustrating when you want to do something. It's not working the way you want it to, right? Always trying to allow it to be theirs. So I go through all of these steps and show how they apply in lots of different situations. And that's why this is fresh in my mind in my book that I'm just in the process of editing right now. Baby person, I'm so excited. It's going to be out in August or September of this year, and there'll be pre-orders pretty soon.

27:49And I really hope this book is helpful to you. And I hope this episode has been helpful to you in helping your child feel supported in their process. Thank you so much for listening. And again, thanks to Dita Howard for your inspiring video and to Harry for bringing her message to it as well. We can do this.