Episode 319 Transcript
Hello, it is Rachel and welcome to episode 319 of your Parenting Long Game. As you probably know firsthand when you’re raising a child with big emotions, you’re gonna have to work on a lot of skills with them. They’re gonna have to learn how to improve their ability to handle discomfort. They’re gonna have to learn how to think more flexibly and do things they don’t feel like doing.
But one of the things I hear a lot is that kids don’t like to learn the skills they need to learn. And sometimes even more frustrating, they won’t even talk about situations that didn’t go well.
They even just get upset when we try to revisit situations where they did have a big emotion or a big reaction, so we can’t even talk to them about it, let alone teach them the skills to do better.
And that is very common with kids with big emotions. They don’t want to talk about situations after the fact, especially when they know they didn’t react well. They will, when we bring up these conversations, shut down, or get angry, or upset, or even refuse to talk.
And we see these behaviors, they’re getting angry, or upset, or refusing to talk, and we think, “Now they’re being dramatic again.” and we think, “Now I can’t even bring up situations to teach them. How is this ever going to get better?”
And then we do stop bringing up these topics because when they’re in a good mood, we don’t want to ruin it. And when they’re in a bad mood, we just know it won’t go well. So we don’t talk about these things, but we need to talk about situations that don’t go well.
So let’s shift to long game parenting and talk about what’s going on under their behavior, under their shutting down and anger or upset or refusal to talk when we bring up difficult situations.
There’s always something under negative behavior and it’s almost always some sort of yuck. So what is this yuck exactly that’s causing them to not be open to feedback, to not want to talk about situations?
I want to tell you specifically what is going on and what to do about it, but I also want to remind you that I do have free resources for you on the show notes that go with this episode. You can find the transcript for this episode so you can read it later or give it to someone else to read it. There’s a summary of the episode and other resources that will help you further your parenting long game. All of those resources are in the show notes for this episode at rachel-bailey.com/319.
So let’s go back to the yuck that makes it hard for our kids to hear feedback, talk about emotions, or really revisit any situation that didn’t go well. Now, of course, what’s going on beneath the behavior depends on each unique child, but there are some trends that I’ve seen working with the thousands of kids and families that I have.
And although what’s underneath everything is yuck, but there are differences in kids with big emotions who are more “strong willed,” those who tend to turn their yuck out more, those who tend to be more controlling. And there are differences between them and those kids with big emotions who are more “sensitive,” those who tend to turn their yuck in, those who tend to get really upset if they do anything wrong.
Again, each is going to react poorly if you bring up a situation, but there are different reasons why. So hopefully these reasons, although somewhat generic, will give you a jumping off point to start to understand your child.
So the reason children that we call “strong willed” tend not to want to have these conversations where they’re revisiting their big emotions is that they don’t like to admit they’re wrong. They want to feel in control. They like to have power. That’s what leads to that strong willed behavior. So they don’t want to be vulnerable and they don’t want to talk about situations where they didn’t feel in control. And having to talk about those situations makes them feel even more out of control.
So it brings up a lot of yuck, it turns on their fight or flight response, and one of the most common fight or flight responses is to avoid the thing that’s causing discomfort. So they’ll either fight to get out of the conversation, or they’ll flight and refuse, or they’ll just refuse to talk about it so they can have the power that they’re craving. That’s how they deal with the yuck that comes up when we bring up these conversations in the way that we usually do.
Now the type of children that we tend to call “sensitive,” they may resist these conversations for a slightly different reason. They don’t like to feel like they’ve done something wrong. Making mistakes or not being good at something is very uncomfortable for kids who are more sensitive. They have a window of comfort and it’s a pretty small window of comfort.
And doing something wrong brings them outside of that zone of comfort. It sounds an alarm in their brain. And when they feel like they’ve done something wrong, they’ve made a mistake or they haven’t done something the right way, it sends these huge, uncomfortable feelings that they have a really hard time handling. And again, their fight or flight response then kicks in, and they usually shut down, they refuse to talk, or maybe they turn their yuck in on themselves and say, “I know, I do everything wrong,” and you can’t get through that self talk in order to talk about the situation that happened.
So again, what all this has in common – whether a child is trying to get power over the situation, or they’re shutting down and being hard on themselves — what all of this has in common is that there’s a discomfort for the child and they go into fight or flight.
Now ideally they’d learn how to handle fight or flight without shutting down or trying to get control, but that’s a skill they have to be open to learning and right now they’re not open to learning that skill.
Fortunately, there is something we can do to edge them closer to being willing to have these conversations, and that is that we can help them feel safer when we bring up situations that didn’t go well. We can teach them, we can give them evidence that they are safe, so their fight or flight response doesn’t even kick in, and they don’t shut down or try to get power or say mean things about themselves, and they can discuss skills they’ll be able to use in the future.
But most of us do not help our kids feel safe in that moment. We make it worse because we start conversations by telling our kids what they did wrong. If we want to revisit a conversation, we’ll say something like, “We have to talk about the way you talked to your father last night.” Or we’ll say, “You can’t just always get upset when we tell you no.” Or we’ll say, “That behavior was just not acceptable.”
But when we start conversations by telling them what they did wrong, it puts their fight or flight response into high gear. They shut down, they deny, they refuse to talk, they say mean things about themselves. We can sense that we’re not getting through because we’re not getting through to them.
But in our defense, of course, we start these conversations with the things that need to change because we are approaching these situations from our own fight or flight response.
We see their initial behavior, whatever it was, the way they talked to their father, the way they got upset when we said no, whatever the behavior is, we saw that as a threat, and we were thinking, “They must stop this behavior. I must get them to stop talking to their father that way, or getting upset every time they hear the word no.”
In our minds, there’s a huge threat if this behavior doesn’t stop. And we do all of this future thinking. We think if they talk to their father like that now, their relationship will be ruined, and they’ll think they can talk to other people like that.
Or we do future thinking and we say, “If they get upset every time we tell them no, they’re always gonna be miserable because life is full of no’s.” So we do this future thinking and it puts us into threat mode and it makes us approach our kids in a way that is not effective.
And it doesn’t help that we often make our measure of success, whether we are a good parent, based on our kids’ behavior. So when we see this negative behavior, we also think, “I’m not doing enough. I’m not a good parent.” That also puts us into fight or flight, and we approach our kids in a way that is not helpful.
Instead of approaching them from a threatened fight or flight state, we need to approach them differently. And I want to start by talking about the tone and energy that we need to have, especially because our kids with big emotions are so impacted by our tone and energy.
The way you need to be when you approach your child, or anyone you want to influence, is both confident and connected. Confidence and connection are the qualities of a powerful positive influence. And these are the qualities that will help your child feel safe enough to have these conversations with you.
So let’s talk about what that looks like. We’ll start with you being connected. One of the best ways to be connected, and here’s a phrase you can borrow, is to start a conversation with, “I was thinking about whatever the situation was, and how it was for you.”
So for example, you could say to a child, “I was thinking about that conversation you and your father had and what it might have been like for you.” So instead of saying, “You can’t talk to your father like that again,” you’re saying, “I was thinking about what that conversation was like from your perspective and what it might have been like for you.”
You are starting in their world instead of with the message you want them to learn.
Another example, instead of approaching your child saying, “You can’t just get upset every time we tell you no,” you want to say, “I was thinking about when we told you that you couldn’t have that game, and what it might have been like from your perspective.”
After that, you truly want to get into their world. You want to think about what it really was like for them. You know that if a child was rude to their dad, then something was going on for them. Your child was feeling out of control, or like someone didn’t care about them, or whatever it was that caused their yuck. Let them know that you see their perspective too.
You are not condoning their behavior. You’re not saying, “Oh, it’s okay that you spoke to your father that way because you were upset.” You’re actually instead helping them feel safe enough to talk about how to change that behavior. You can’t motivate someone to change their behavior by telling them to change their behavior.
I mean think about it. If you had a boss who is trying to change your behavior, and they just came up to you, criticized your behavior without considering your perspective or what was going on for you, what would you do? Would that motivate you all of a sudden to change? Or would you get more defensive and shut down even more or get even angrier?
Humans are motivated by someone wanting to work on a problem together, by someone who shows us they have our backs. So connection is about showing your child that you see them and you care about their point of view.
Well, what about the confidence piece? So many people think that confident means mean.
And that’s not the case. Confidence certainly means that you’re firm. You can use a tone to show that it is unacceptable to talk to their father like that. But it also means that you’re firm and regulated. It means that you’re not in a state of doubt. It means that you know everything is going to be okay, so you don’t have to approach your child guns a blazing.
So once you connect and really get into their world, then you can be confident and set a limit by saying something like, “It’s not okay to talk to dad like that.” There’s the firm piece, and you can hear in my voice that it’s firm.
Then you can say, “…and I want to figure this out with you. We will work on this until your behavior changes, because it’s not okay to talk to him like that. But I want to help you figure this out, and I know you will.”
There’s confidence. You are setting the limit. You are saying this is not acceptable. You’re firm, you’re regulated, and there’s no doubt that you as a parent have that your child can eventually get there. When they feel our faith in them, when they feel we are on the same side, but we’re also not giving in, that’s when they feel safe.
Confidence and connection equals safety for a child. Confidence and connection equals influence. If you’re missing connection, they don’t feel safe enough to talk to you. And if you’re missing confidence, they don’t feel like they need to take you seriously or talk to you. Or your anxiety, especially if you’re doubting yourself, is going to make them more anxious and they’ll be focused on staying safe rather than wanting to change.
Now going back to what I was saying before, it’s going to be very hard to be confident and connected if you see your child’s behavior as a threat. If you’re doing all of that future thinking, thinking about all of the things that will go wrong if you don’t fix this right now.
And if you’re doubting yourself as a parent or thinking of all the things you’re doing wrong or they’re doing wrong, you will go into fight or flight. And when you’re in fight or flight, you can’t access the part of the brain that allows you to be confident and connected.
So even when you’re addressing a child’s behavior that they’re being mean to their father …or they get upset when you say no… or they’re not able to handle it when you bring up situations… even though you’re addressing behaviors, you have to think beyond their behavior. You have to consider what’s under their behavior and you have to be confident that it is something you can handle together.
You have to know that it is not a threat. And the truth is, it is not a threat. Their behavior comes down to the same thing over and over. They have a lot of yuck and they don’t have skills. In order to teach them the skills, you have to reduce their yuck and stop seeing their behavior as a threat so they can stop seeing you as a threat.
When you’re able to realize that their behavior isn’t a threat, that it’s just that they have yuck and you have the power to help them feel safe. You have the power to step back and be a leader rather than an enforcer who makes them do something. You have the power to be someone who’s with them instead of trying to make them do something. This is when you are more of an influence. This is when they’re open to talking about things and to learning new skills.
You probably know through experience that kids do want to do well. They don’t want to get in trouble or have people mad at them. They want someone to help them with their yuck and someone to teach them skills. They just have to feel that we are the person who’s able to do that with them.
So when you give them what they need, when you stop seeing this as a threat, when you become more confident in yourself and connected to them, You will reduce their yuck. Their nervous system will no longer be on high alert and they can learn new skills.
They’ll also feel better about themselves because they don’t feel like you’re judging their behavior. They feel like you’re there [00:14:00] with them and understand them and want to help them do better. And they feel better about us because they have proof that we can look beyond their behavior, see them, and give them what they need.
That is long game parenting.
Now I am here to help you with this. I have lots of resources to help you. You can find some free resources as well as other resources that will help you improve your parenting long game and know exactly how to take step by step action to see your kids, give them what they need and be more confident and connected yourself. Resources for you are on the show notes for this episode at rachel-bailey.com/319. Thanks for listening, and I will see you again soon.
