The Kindness of Consequences

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1:38Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Well, this is a treat for me. I'm going to be responding to a response that I received from the parent that I was trying to help last week in the episode called Demanding Stressed and Aggressive, What's Happened to My Gentle Child? Her son has been frustrated, stressed out, explosive, aggressive sometimes. She just had another baby. There's an older sister as well who is also a strong personality like this boy is. But he's the one that's been struggling. My sense was a lot of it may have to do with this huge adjustment in the family of there being a new baby.

2:22because I know how that throws children into a tailspin sometimes. The gist of the advice I offered this parent was I believed that this little boy needed to feel the parent's arms around him figuratively. Yes, you're behaving in all these ways that we're not going to let you behave. We're going to do the best we can to stop you, but we're not against you. We know this isn't your fault. we see you're going through something, and we want to help you stop. So one of the ways I suggested they might try to do that is to have a family meeting, because I thought maybe they could all talk about how she could help them when he's feeling like kind of that explosive mood that makes him want to lash out.

3:09And really, the point of it wasn't about, we're going to find this solution that makes it all smooth and make it all work? Absolutely not, because it's just not going to be smooth during these transitional times when everybody's struggling a bit to make the adjustment. So there's no way it's going to be smooth and he's suddenly going to turn a corner and be this perfect angel. But the point is to give him that message by saying, we're going to all work together to help you in these situations and make it work for all of us. It's just that gesture that will help our children to feel seen, safe, that we're on their team, we're not against them.

3:55Just that alone is usually enough to help the child feel a lot more comfortable and therefore not as reactive in their behavior, not as dysregulated. So I did also suggest that the parent not come rushing in every time that he says he needs her help right now. And a lot of times it was a bit ridiculous that he was demanding that she come to help him make certain projects happen that were really kind of pie in the sky projects anyway. I said, so when children are making these over-the-top requests and demands or any requests that we can't fill, they need to reserve the right to have their feelings about that.

4:36But they need us to just be honest and strong in our response and our boundaries around that and to not take it upon ourselves that we've got to help him do this. This is a very capable child and he doesn't need us to try to make things work for him. So our children can be very convincing, right? Especially when we're worried about them, We're maybe overwhelmed that we have a new baby and these other two children to take care of. And here's our son going off like this. We want to kind of drop everything and try to help him, right? But no, that's not what he needs. He needs us to be able to allow him to share how not okay he is.

5:16And for us to believe that he is okay and he can handle this. Children don't need us to drop everything to help them. It's often more helpful for us to say, you're having a hard time with that. I see that's a really hard thing you're trying to do. I can't come right now, but maybe later after I do these things, you know, whatever we feel to be honest in that way. And I said to this parent in the podcast, it really doesn't matter when this started. And for what reason, the result is the same. Your sweet, gentle boy is still there, but he's struggling mightily and probably feeling somewhat alone in that struggle, which makes it even scarier for him.

5:57It's that feeling alone part that we can fix right away. So we can't fix the rest of this, but we can definitely fix this part where he's feeling alone. And that's why I suggested this parent reach out to him in a way that sees him, that accepts where he is right now, but really wants to help everybody to function better together. And in the last exchange I had with this parent, she said, that sounds amazing and eases my heart. I hope I can communicate all of this to them in a way that makes sense. So then she wrote again to me. She said, they just had an initial conversation and came up with a creative idea.

6:35We'll see if it works. Meaning the two older children just came up with a plan how they could handle getting along together better. And then a couple of days later, the parent wrote, hi, I tried several times this weekend to sit the kids down and talk to them more formally about a plan for safety and what I would need to do for feeding the baby time if things aren't peaceful. But the four-year-old just says, I know, I know, and starts to make loud sounds or cover his ears when I try to talk about it. I can tell he's uncomfortable and worried about it all and gets this fake smile on his face and starts doing things he knows bother us, like making noises with his mouth that cause spit to fly out.

7:17So I don't feel like I was able to get a tangible plan in place. And when the seven-year-old is feeling stubborn, she'd rather hold her ground, get bit or hit, and then cry about it. And if I tell her she was stressing him out, he will say, yeah, you're a bad girl. Like it's justified that he hurt her. I felt so confident in the plan when you initially responded, but implementing hasn't gone as I hoped. I'm in quite a mess, aren't I? This morning I was feeding the baby upon waking up first thing, and my son called from the other room. Of course, I couldn't go, so he came in and started being very loud on purpose.

7:54My husband took him back to his room and closed the door so they were both inside. He immediately started claiming that dad hurt him, which he says anytime we need to physically move him to another place. That's a tricky one because when you're trying to hold on to a flailing, strong four-year-old, you have to hold on sort of tight and sometimes move quickly to stop him from hurting someone. Up until recently, I would have considered myself a great mom. I spend every waking minute, and the ones I should be sleeping, thinking about how to be the best mom to raise resilient, thoughtful, fulfilled kids.

8:29And when we decided to have another baby, our son was a sweet and gentle three-year-old, and we could have never imagined this phase. He's truly so smart, hard to even explain how cool his mind works and how creatively, and I'm heartbroken at how he's struggling. So she shared all that with me through my written response to her. And then I guess she heard the podcast. I just listened to the podcast episode. It was wonderful. I'm so grateful you took the time to respond to me and create the podcast episode. Three days ago, when I sent those other messages, I was listening to other recent podcast episodes and trying to focus in on aggressive behavior, which got me back to looking on your website.

9:11and I decided to buy the No Bad Kids Master Course. Janet, I can't tell you, it's been life-changing already. The way it's broken down and the printouts led me to a very important realization. We were getting boundaries and discipline all wrong. We were not being confident leaders or using honest consequences. For some reason, I had this idea that any consequences were bad. And so our son was just so lost and so powerful in his role in our house. He'd jump on his sister aggressively while watching a show together or spit out food at dinner, and we would tell him we didn't like it, but there was no actual consequence.

9:51After the course and your suggestions in our message exchange, I've realized that I haven't been a leader. I've been loving and compassionate and responsive to behavior, but not clear, certain, and comfortable, and not stepping up with boundaries and discipline for actions that are unacceptable. unsafe, etc. It's been three days since I realized this and the change is already incredible. I can see our four-year-old's real smile, silly loving nature, happiness for the day in the morning, and so much less aggression. And this is because I've had more and clearer boundaries, not been afraid to say no, cleared his meal from the dinner table when he repeatedly wouldn't sit in his chair and eat peacefully.

10:38I can see his relief in my confidence and leadership and comfort with his frustration and big feelings. I don't know how I didn't pick this up in all of the podcast episodes I've listened to, the importance of pairing the letting them vent the feelings part with the actual discipline part. But now it's clicked for me and it's truly life-changing. Thank you so very much. So I hope this doesn't sound like I'm doing all this to advertise my course. I guess you'll have to believe me that I'm not. What I want to advertise or what I want to share and encourage is for everybody listening, especially if you're struggling, to consider if you're willing to let go of your child having a negative response to the choices that you make.

11:30Because this is a place where so many of us, myself included, get stuck. And while I touched on it in my podcast last week to this parent, it wasn't what I was really focusing on, maybe as much as she needed me to. So that just shows how, you know, imperfect I am in my responses and in my understanding of what's going on, based on written exchanges with people. But I did try to express how important it was that she not give in to him while she also accepted him. I want to talk a little about honest consequences because this topic is kind of a tricky one to understand. It's a little bit nuanced the way I see it.

12:19The way people normally talk about consequences is I'm going to give them a consequence or I'm going to use a consequence. When I talk about honest consequences, it's not us trying to give something, you know, as a synonym for punishment or some tactic. It's not for us to use as a way to punish our child or make them stop doing the behavior. The way it works best is if it's simply reflective of our personal boundaries, our wants and needs, us taking care of ourselves and taking care of our family the way that we need to. So it's not something that we pull out of a bag, here's a consequence to make you stop doing this.

13:10It's really about what am I going to put up with here? And so it's very specific to that situation. It's a logical consequence to the action. Logical consequence is another good word, but I use honest. That's my word because it's even more about our relationship and us personally and not like some toolbox that we're pulling out to try to make it work. That never works as well because parenting is always going to be about a relationship. And when we approach it that way, connecting as two people that need to get along with each other and understand each other better, that's when it works. For example, she talked about clearing his meal from the dinner table when he repeatedly wouldn't sit in his chair and eat peacefully, right?

14:03So we're offering food to our family. And obviously, we want him to eat. But if he's showing us he can't eat and have decent behavior at the table, then we don't have to put up with trying to make it work for him. In fact, that's not a good message to give him, that we just so can't stand up to you that we're letting you basically disrespect all of us and make our mealtime unpleasant and make us feel resentful that we've offered this to you. So it's not a tit for tat. It's not using something to get a result. It's just us being in a relationship, not putting up with behavior that doesn't work for us.

14:49And we know our child can do better. Maybe not in that moment. Therefore, they're not ready to be sitting and eating with us right then. So that's a logical consequence, but it's also just an honest consequence. as is when we say, you know, if you can't be calm with me when I'm feeding the baby, I'm going to have to go in this room and close the door. Not because I'm mad at you, not because I'm punishing you or want to make a point, but because this is what I need to do. I'm taking care of myself and taking care of this baby, which was one of my big responsibilities right now. It's so easy for us out of all of our love and care and what we think respectful is, where maybe we feel we're being more respectful if we just let our child do all these things and we just do our best to always be there.

15:41That's not respectful because that's not respecting ourselves. And if we don't respect ourselves, then we can't really respect our child and vice versa. So in a way, I feel like everything that I've tried to share, at least on this topic of behavior and boundaries. It's this one hump that we have to get over most of us. We are working so hard to be sensitive and respectful and care about our child's feelings and all of that, that we're too afraid to have common sense rules that we stick to. They are part of caring for us and our family. And it means being what I used to think was, and I talk about this in the master course a lot, our perception of our job.

16:34I used to feel I was being such a meanie, such a bad guy. My child says, oh, help me do this project right now. It's not convenient for me. I would rather be doing this other thing I was doing, or maybe I want to feed the baby and I don't want him to be asking me these things, but I don't want to say know. That puts a child in this position, as this parent so insightfully realized, to have way too much power. How scary is it to be such a power player in your home when you're only four years old? And they can't tell us this. That's the hard part. They can't say, hey, help me feel a little more like a kid here.

17:15You're giving me too much power. Generally, they're not going to tell us this. They're just going to say, I need you more than ever. And now I need you every second of the day because you haven't been giving me boundaries, but I can't tell you that part. I need you. I need you. I need you all the time. And I don't like this and I don't like that. And I get to behave like this. And right, it's a trap that we could fall into and hard to see our way out of. And again, that's why so many of my episodes are around this topic. We all have to find our way to this point of leadership with our children where we're confident and comfortable in our role, not hangdog or tentative, but really looking out for ourselves and our child that way.

18:00Maybe even taking what we thought loving our child was and turning that on its head because it's not loving to be giving up so much of our leadership to our child. It just feels nicer in the moment sometimes until we start going, I hate my job. I hate being a parent. I don't like my child anymore because I'm trying so hard to please them. And it's not working because that's not what they're really needing. So anyway, that's my soapbox about that. I love that this parent found her way to that. And we all have our own process to it. I'm so glad that my course was able to help her see her way through.

18:39And I really hope that lasts. So this is what I said back to her. I'm so thrilled that you're having this result. and so very, very, very grateful you took a chance on the course and shared your success with me. I just saw your previous note. And what came up for me when you said he was saying, I know, I know. And this is when she was trying to make a family plan with him. And she wanted to talk about it with them more formally. And she said, he said, I know, I know. So what came up for me when he was saying, I know, I know, is that somehow the way this discussion was coming out, he still felt a little blamed more than understood because kids don't respond defensively like that or push us away like that unless they still feel that edge of, we don't like the way you're behaving.

19:31And obviously we don't like the way he's been behaving, but what he needs is us to switch that a little bit to, you know, you're having a rough time and I see that and all we want to do is help you. And to really mean that. So it's not about the words, it's about that we've opened our heart to, he's just not able to handle all these feelings he's having right now. He needs more of our help. He needs more of our nesting, which also means these boundaries that give him comfort. So I said, maybe it was him feeling a little too much power and responsibility as you weren't setting limits with quite enough confidence for him.

20:12The stronger the children, the stronger they need us to be. Unfortunately, I learned this the hard way with my child. I'm absolutely over the moon for your wonderful response. Please keep me posted. It definitely doesn't have to be all good news. And then I asked her if I could share her notes again. and she said, yes, please share with others. It's making such a difference. Since I've been holding these boundaries and welcoming his feelings to them, he is noticeably less stressed. Mealtimes are completely different in just a couple of days and he wakes up happier and asked me to help him make a book if I have time after I'm done getting ready.

20:52It would be so helpful to hear some more examples of the right way to use confidence with limits and discipline slash boundaries when a child might be hurting a sibling, demanding attention from a parent, insisting on having several different breakfast foods, threatening bad behavior or hurting if parents or siblings don't comply with wishes, etc. The course covers this stuff with great strategies, but it's so helpful to hear examples of ways to handle more of the common struggles parents might encounter. Just a thought. So yes, I would love to give more examples of how that could look and feel in all these situations.

21:30So she said to use confidence with limits and discipline when a child might be hurting a sibling. So there they do need physical help. If we see it starting, I wouldn't just be on it in a split second, but really trying for that comfortable leader approach, which is not rushing in like everything's an emergency because it isn't, but seeing it and coming over up, can you stop yourself? And as I say this, maybe I'm walking over if I can, if my arms are full or I'm with the baby, then I don't just say like, oh, could you be careful there? Not intense, not excitable, something that feels leader. I see you, I notice you, I wanna help you stop what you're doing.

22:18Maybe I can't do it right now. If I can get over there, then I'll be like, oh, come on, let's give her a break or what's going on here, you two? And the way to be able to have those kinds of responses is again, to expect these kinds of behaviors when a child has been showing us they are having a hard time right now in this passage of life. We don't need to know the reason, but we see it's happening. So while this is going on, we want to be ready for these things are gonna happen and we don't need to rush in like they're emergencies because they're not. You know, his sister is seven and sounds like from what this parent is saying that she really can handle herself better than she might want to let us believe.

23:04But what happens with children is when they're used to us intervening and blaming and kind of taking sides that way, which is really natural to do, they get caught up in the drama of that of like, oh, my brother's being so mean. He's such a bully. And then he says, my sister's bad. If you could go in with this attitude that they're doing what they're doing, it's normal sibling stuff. Neither one of them is the bad guy. They're both getting caught up in a dynamic in their relationship. No one's a victim. No one's a villain here. We just want to help them work it out as best we can. And the best way to do that is to not get caught up in it with all our emotions.

23:44Again, it's feeling yourself embody that power that you have as their leader, as the adult. They're little kids, even a seven-year-old, even a 10-year-old or a 12-year-old. They're kids. They're very convincing. They're very intelligent. They're very strong a lot of the time and confident and assertive and aggressive and all of that sometimes, but they're still little kids. That's something we want to remind ourselves of. So demanding attention from a parent is the second one she asked about. demanding attention from a parent, right? We hold our ground. You're trying to demand my attention. I'm not going to ignore you, but I'm not going to be able to give you my attention right now.

24:29Maybe if it goes on and on, I finally look and go, oh, you're still trying to get my attention. This is when I can give it to you after I do these things. But you can demand if you need to demand. And if that means hurting somebody, then having that unpowerful response is the key. Again, Not running over, don't do that, don't do that, stop, stop. The problem isn't giving them attention, it's giving them that kind of attention that's urgent, that gets in our way, gets in their way, because it doesn't make them feel as safe in our nest. So having what I've called in the past a ho-hum response, we're not letting it change us, we're still the confident leader.

25:11Yeah, you're trying to get attention in these weird ways. Come on, honey. You know better than that. You don't need to do that with me. I'm going to be there for you soon. Taking control that way, it feels so good when you start to get this in your body. It will bring confidence to every area of your life. I love a good family trip as much as anyone, but travel right now is no joke. Flights, hotels, gas, rental cars, it adds up fast. So my goal this year is simple. Plan a trip that fits our budget and avoid that moment when reality shows up in the form of a credit card bill. Monarch is the personal finance app that tracks everything.

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27:19Okay, insisting on having several different breakfast foods. I know we can get caught up in that, but that's really, that's one of those we're looking out for ourselves. Here's what we have for being really honest. Here's what I'm offering. You can have this or this. Whatever's comfortable for us, whatever works for us. And they want something else. They want to demand something else. I'm not going to do that. You don't have to eat anything. Being able to hold our ground, not with tension and anger and, you know, you're not going to take this away from me. That would be stooping to their level.