Episode 320 Transcript

Hello, it is Rachel, and welcome to episode 320 of your Parenting Long Game. We know that kids with big emotions tend to have disproportionate reactions to things, but sometimes their disproportionate reactions make them seem like they’re spoiled, like they want and even expect the world to revolve around them.

Children with big emotions may complain when their sibling is having a birthday party and getting gifts, even though they just had their own birthday party and got their own gifts.

Or maybe a child with big emotions has a great day, and all they do is complain about the one thing that didn’t go their way, that maybe they didn’t get to sit next to their favorite cousin or whatever they wanted.

Or maybe you give your child something and they just seem to want more and more. You let them stay up late one night once in a while as a treat and then they always want to stay up late. Or you just bought them a new game and they continue to ask for more new games.

This behavior seems so spoiled and entitled. But when I hear that a child has this type of quote unquote spoiled behavior, I really emphasize to parents that, believe it or not, in that moment when your child is acting this way, they’re struggling.

And the way parents react when I tell them that ranges from confusion. A parent will say to me, “Wait, I just bought them a game. How could they be struggling?” Or, “I took them to the zoo with the entire family. They enjoyed the entire day. What could they possibly be struggling with?”

Or, reactions may even be angry with me. They say, “I just bought them the game they wanted. If they want more, they’re not struggling. They’re acting like a spoiled brat!”

So I want to explain this struggle because just like you, I know that raising spoiled, entitled children is sort of obnoxious, and more than that, that doesn’t really help them in the long run.

So I want to explain this struggle so we can manage it. We can use long game parenting strategies to address what’s really going on under the behavior. And I will tell you that all of the things that parents are telling me that their kids are getting are things that they want. But giving them so much of they want actually makes it harder for them when they don’t get what they want. That’s where the struggle comes in.

So, let me give you a couple of examples of this. Set of parents who have three kids, and one of their kids, Jack, often acted spoiled. His mom told me a story about what had happened recently.

They took him to a carnival and spent a few hours there doing anything he wanted. He could have rides, games, food. Now, they also allow the other children to do activities, but the siblings’ activities also made Jack really happy, so he had a really good day. He had a very good time there. When it was time to leave, he started complaining and whining, but he did leave with them.

But once they got home, that’s where his behavior really went downhill. They asked him to brush his teeth, and he whined and complained, and told them that he never got anything he wanted. When they told him it was bedtime, he refused to go to bed, saying he’d go to bed after he played a game on his device.

Now his parents couldn’t believe it. Of course they were angry. They had done so much for him and now he was acting like nothing good had happened all day and that all these things needed to happen because he wanted them to.

. The problem was that Jack had been getting everything he wanted all day long. The rides, the games, the food. Even the things that his siblings were choosing were things that felt good to him. So now his brain was having trouble letting go of that feeling.

Brushing his teeth and going to bed felt bad for him. And not just because they were boring, although that was very hard for him because he had had so much stimulation all day and that’s why he wanted to be on his device again because he’d had so much stimulation and he was trying to keep it going.

But it wasn’t just because it was boring. It was also because he knew that brushing his teeth and going to bed were the end of a day that had felt so good for him. So, he was struggling to maintain that feeling. He didn’t have a lot of practice feeling bad, especially that day, and especially if on a regular basis, they gave him a lot of what he want, so he was avoiding feeling bad.

He wasn’t being a problem, he was having a problem.

Now let’s consider another example of a girl named Sophia. Sophia’s parents told me that she was someone who When they gave her an inch, would try to take a mile. They would let her stay up every once in a while, but then she’d ask to stay up all the time. They’d buy her new shoes or new clothes, and then she’d ask for more new shoes or new clothes. It seemed like she just wanted more, more, more.

And Sofia was also struggling. The problem for Sofia was that she knew that she’d get what she wanted sometimes, and sometimes she didn’t.

But she never knew when it would be. She never knew when her parents were going to say yes. Her parents decided whether to say yes or not based on decisions they were making in their own mind. They were thinking, was this a good time to let her stay up late? What did she have to do the next day? Had she stayed up late a lot lately?

Sophia didn’t know when she was going to get a yes, so she’d ask every single time, hoping that this was the one time it would work and she’d get that thing that she wanted. And when she didn’t, it felt really bad because she had had some hope that maybe she would get it.

And, like other kids with big emotions, including Jack from the last example, Sophia struggled a lot during the day. Sophia didn’t like loud noises, but she had a brother who was loud all of the time. So she was in sensory overload and uncomfortable a lot of the day, every day. Her parents also argued normally, like most couples do, and Sophia really felt the tension when they argued, and that took its toll on her.

That happens very often with kids with big emotions. They feel the energy when people aren’t getting along. Because she did frequently experience discomfort, she did crave things that felt good. And again, because she had proof that she would get those things sometimes, she’d push and push until her parents would give in. She tried every time so that she could get that good feeling again.

Now in both cases, Jack and Sophia’s parents are giving them what they want, not what they need. And giving them so much of what they want, makes kids continue to crave those temporary good feelings. And that is the difference, by the way, between giving kids what they want and giving them what they need.

A want feels good to someone in the moment, temporarily. But that feeling tends to go away quickly. That’s why they feel good when they get sugar and candy and to be on their devices and to have a rule broken. It feels good temporarily, but that feeling goes away quickly. Meeting children’s needs, to be honest, does not feel that good for them in the moment, but it has longer lasting positive results.

So Jack, whose parents took him to the carnival, wants those rides and those games and that food. It feels good in the moment, but that’s not what he needs. And Sophia wants her parents to let her stay up or buy her things as often as possible, because that feels good for her in the moment, so she’ll push. But her parents giving her what she wants, that is not what she needs.

Now, if we’re being honest, giving kids what they want is often what we want in the moment because it gives us a temporary good feeling. Seeing Jack so happy at the carnival felt good to his parents in that moment.

It definitely felt better than setting limits and telling him that he couldn’t go on a certain ride or couldn’t have a certain food, which, honestly, would be better for Jack in the long run, but it might have created a scene in the short run. It wouldn’t have felt good in that moment.

And, for Sophia’s parents, seeing their daughter happy when they said that she could stay up late or have a new pair of shoes, it felt good to them in the moment. Whereas maintaining a limit doesn’t necessarily feel good, especially when we’re busy, we don’t want to deal with their big reactions, so we’re looking for that temporary good feeling.

Which is exactly what our kids are doing as well.

So I’m going to give you an example in a moment of what Jack and Sophia’s parents could have given them so that they had what they needed, not what they wanted. But I want to reiterate quite simply how you know if you’re giving your child what they want or what they need. And it really is pretty simple. You just have to ask yourself, will whatever I’m giving them or saying yes to, will this feel good in the short run? And chances are if you’re giving them what they want, the answer is yes.

Then you ask, will this help them in the long run? If the answer is no, chances are you’re meeting a want, not a need.

And a lot of parents will say to me, I am depositing into my child, but often what they’re saying is I’m giving my child what they want. Because what a child wants is what feels good in the moment, but probably isn’t going to feel great later. They want us to be less strict with our boundaries, or to buy them things because those things feel good in the moment. Wants are quick wins. They’re intense and they’re short lived. Again, meeting our kids needs often doesn’t feel that good in the moment for them or for us.

Now the other thing to know is that parents who give kids what they want are less of a powerful positive influence. A powerful positive influence will set firm limits and boundaries, even when it doesn’t feel good in the moment. And they’ll set these limits and boundaries with both confidence and connection. When we’re strong with our limits and we’re confident and we’re connected, our kids may not be happy with us, but we’re making them feel safer.

When we give them what they want, they may see us as nice.

Now think about it. I’m sure there’s been someone in your life who’s been really nice to you. Maybe when you were a child they bought you stuff. Maybe as an adult you’ve had someone in your life who gives you what you want or always gives in to you.

Think about how you feel about them. You probably are grateful for the stuff that they bought you or the things that they do for you, but would that be who you would turn to to stand up for you? Or to keep you safe, to protect you when things are difficult? Probably not.

Humans crave someone who is strong and confident in order to feel safe. So again a powerful positive influence is really focused on giving a child what they need.

So what is it that children really need? And I will be honest that it depends on the child and in my programs I work with parents to figure out what their kids need, even if they have multiple kids.

But I want to go back to Jack and Sophia and one thing that would have helped both of them to act less entitled. And that one thing is predictable limits and boundaries. Of course all kids crave good feelings, but when they don’t know what good feelings are coming, especially when kids are struggling in other areas, which a lot of our kids with big emotions are, they’re going to try to get those good feelings any way they can, hoping this is the one time that we’re going to give into them and give them what feels good in that moment.

And then they get really upset when we don’t give in, and that’s what looks like entitled behavior. Now of course this doesn’t mean we can’t give them anything they want, but when we give them what they want, it’s much easier to let them know ahead of time when these wants are coming, and to make sure they don’t expect them during other times.

So when Sophia knows when she gets to stay up late, maybe it’s every Saturday night. And when she knows she doesn’t get it any other time, she’ll demand it less because her brain will know, “I can try to get it, but it’s not going to happen. The only time I get to stay up late is every Saturday night.” And when Jack knows that he can only choose every third game at the carnival, and his parents follow that pattern over and over, he’ll stop asking, his brain will crave it less, and he’ll be able to handle it when he doesn’t get it because he knew to expect that.

Now, it’s hard for us to be predictable, to set predictable limits. A lot of parents when I tell them that say, I’m too busy, I’m too tired, or I don’t know what’s going to happen. Life can be chaotic. But often when we say that, we’re also then setting limits based on what we want. That short term, easy, good, positive feeling.

Because it’s easier for us to make decisions on the fly. But that’s another example of making decisions or craving what is easier, not what’s better. So we’re just doing, again, the same thing that our kids are doing.

We want to make sure we’re giving our kids what they need, but that may mean that our kids are temporarily uncomfortable and we are temporarily uncomfortable. Because predictability is not something that our kids are asking for on their holiday wish list. They don’t feel good in the short run. We don’t get a, “Hey, thanks Mom. Hey, thanks dad for being predictable.”

But when their life is predictable, they feel safer. They get used to the fact that life isn’t always going to go their way. Again, something like being predictable doesn’t feel as good for us in the moment because sometimes it’s harder for us to enforce that limit in the moment than just giving in.

And at the same time, it’s what needs to happen, so kids act less entitled, and we are more of an influence and they feel safer in life.

And when we give our kids what they need, whether it’s predictability, whatever your child needs, you end up raising a child who doesn’t push as much. So they’re not asking for more games or more time on screens. They’re not complaining about the one thing they didn’t get on an amazing day because they knew how things were going to go.

And when you give kids what they need, whether it’s predictability or whatever your child needs, you raise children who have internalized the foundation of safety. That means they don’t have to find all of these quick win ways, the games and the screens and the gifts and the sugar and the food.

They don’t need to crave these things in order to feel good. Those are all short term, temporary feel good things. When we are predictable, when we give our kids what they need, they feel good overall.

And when we give our kids what they need, whether that’s just predictability or whatever else your children need, you raise children who can handle the feelings that arise when things don’t go their way.

That means instead of demanding more to try to cope with this feeling, they can comfort themselves and move on. This is what happens when we give our kids what they need, not what they want.

When we as parents learn how to not look for that quick, feel good feeling in the moment, when we allow for temporary discomfort, even for ourselves, everything changes. That is long game parenting.

If you want to figure out what it is your child does need and learn how to handle their reactions so you are giving them what they need instead of what they want, I do have some resources for you on the show notes for this episode. Those are all aligned with long game parenting because the long game method is all about giving our kids what they need in order to be resilient and confident.

Find those resources on my show notes at rachel-bailey.com/320. Thanks for listening. I’ll see you again soon.

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