Episode 336 Transcript
Hello, it is Rachel and welcome to episode 336 of your Parenting Long Game. As I teach Leadership Parenting strategies, I focus a lot on influence. And for better or worse, so much of our influence comes from how we communicate with others, whether that’s our kids or with other people.
And today I’m going to talk about something we do when we communicate that negatively impacts our influence almost every single time.
So this is another huge (what I call) “influence leak.” This is an area where you are leaking influence probably every day, maybe even multiple times a day, and may not even be aware of it.
The way we leak influence is when we communicate judgment through our words or our body language, when the other person senses that we are judging them. So here’s what I mean by that.
Let’s say your child left their towel on the floor and you mention it to them. The way you communicate that they need to pick up their towel may be judgmental, Or it may be non judgmental.
So I want you to hear an example of what it would sound like being judgmental, and I want you to pretend you were on the receiving end of this comment.
So a judgmental way of saying this would be something like, “You need to pick the towel up off the floor.” How does that feel when you hear it with that tone?
Or here’s another example. Let’s say your daughter got upset and said something mean to her brother. You would probably say something like this — and I want you to feel what this sounds like – “Why are you being so mean to your brother?” What would that feel like to be on the receiving end?
Or another example. Let’s say your child is coming up to you and you’re in the middle of doing something, but they want your attention. And let’s say your response sounds like this: “What? What do you want?” What does it feel like to be on the receiving end of that?
It probably doesn’t feel so good. But again, we do this over and over.
And there are lots of reasons why we judge. And we can start with a little bit of the science of this.
First, our brains are actually built to judge. There’s so much information coming into our brains, because we actually gather information from all five of our senses all the time to tell us what’s going on in the world. And we’re constantly interpreting the information that we’re getting.
So, because there’s so much information coming in, we have to determine what is important for us to acknowledge and what is not important for us, otherwise we just get overwhelmed. The brain does attempt to filter information and how does it do that? It judges what is important and what is not.
And another reason our brain is wired to judge, is because remember, our primary goal as humans is to stay safe, figuring out things like: Is this situation safe? Is this person that I’m with on my side or against me? Is this person or situation meeting my needs? Or is it depleting my resources?
So our brains are constantly determining, are we safe? Is the situation safe? Is the person I’m with safe? I recently read a statistic that the brain is scanning for safety four times a second. So it’s constantly making these judgments of what is safe and what is not.
And honestly, if a child is leaving a towel on the ground over and over, that is not “safe” in our mind, because we know it’s going to deplete our resources. Your brain is calculating, “Well now I have to do something about this, and I have all these other things on my to do list, and it’s going to take extra time or extra energy or extra brain power…”
To a brain, that doesn’t feel safe and that lack of safety is going to be reflected in our tone, we are going to judge what the other person is doing as bad.
And I will say this too, we are often very resistant to stop judging. We like to reinforce our perspective to show that we are correct. It makes the world more predictable. So it’s very hard to stop judging, and if we go back to this example of a child leaving a towel on the floor, let’s say I told you, “Hey, stop judging your child. Stop caring that they’re leaving their towel on the floor.” Your brain would freak out.
You would probably say to me, “Are you kidding? Stop caring?” And then you would dig deeper into why it’s so important that you care, because it really affects you.
That’s why in my programs I stress to parents that if what your child is doing is a threat to you – if it uses your energy and your resources, or if it’s a threat because it brings up fears about what could happen in the future, if there’s anything your brain can interpret as a threat in your child’s behavior – you’re going to have a very hard time seeing their behavior differently.
And we do have to see their behavior differently. That’s a huge part of Leadership Parenting strategies and long game results. So that’s why if you want to stop judging to increase your influence, you actually have to address what you are going through first.
So remember that our brains are judging all the time based on the information coming in based on whether things are safe or not, and the way we respond to someone…the tone that’s going to come out of our mouth and our body language… it’s going to be judgmental if we think we are right and someone else is wrong.
Now, I’m going to talk about why judgment reduces our influence so much, but first I do want to remind you that I have resources that come with every episode.
I have a summary on the show notes for this episode and every episode. There’s a summary of what I talked about, other free resources, as well as a link to the support I can give you when you’re ready to take the next step.
All of that is on the show notes at Rachel-bailey.com/336 for this episode.
But let’s talk now about the problem that arises when we use a judgmental tone or our kids can sense some sort of judgment. And by the way, we can try to put on an act with our children.
It doesn’t tend to work with them. They sense how we feel because sensing how things are going is one of our kids who is one of our kids’ superpowers. And unfortunately, our judgment is a threat to them and it makes them feel less safe.
You may have even seen this before. You can tell a child who doesn’t have big emotions that they have to pick up their towel, and you may have a judgmental tone to it. And they don’t get offended. They don’t get angry. They don’t feel like they’re the worst kid in the world for forgetting.
But if you use a tone like this with a child with big emotions, you will get a big reaction. And depending on your child, there could be a few reasons why they have such a big reaction. This is why in my programs, I do help you figure out what’s going on for your child.
But I’m going to talk about two reasons why your child may feel really bad when they hear that tone of judgment or even sense your judgment.
The first may be that your tone is a reminder that they messed up and a lot of kids with big emotions do not like to mess up. They’re often very conscientious. I’ve talked about this in previous episodes that I will link to in the show notes. But they’re very conscientious. They want to do everything right, and when they don’t, that is a big threat for them. This then puts them into fight or flight, and they are less likely to do what you ask.
Another reason they may be really affected by your judgment is that maybe they don’t think they messed up. So they’re actually mad at you because they think you’re judging them without understanding that they’re trying to do what you ask and just can’t be successful.
Often this is a sign of a child with poor executive functioning skills. They may try to remember to put their towel away and they simply don’t remember and now they’re getting mad at you for being mad at them for something they can’t successfully do over and over.
Again, these are just two of the reasons. There may be many. But almost all kids with big emotions get very triggered when they feel judged.
So they go into fight or flight, and instead of being influenced by us, instead, they go into protection mode, they try to protect themselves, and they just dig deeper into their perspective.
So if you remind your child judgmentally to pick up their towel and they’re a conscientious child, they’re just going to feel worse about themselves and say, “Oh my gosh, I always mess up. I never do anything right.” And even if you try to tell them it’s not a big deal, it’s just one mistake, they are going to dig deeper because even when you try to reassure them that it’s just one mistake, they’re hearing that there’s just another thing that they’re doing wrong.
Or, if you have a child who becomes defensive and angry because they believe you’re not noticing how hard they’re trying, they dig deeper, and they just get more defensive and say, “But I did try yesterday,” or “Why are you always so mean to me?” They start to point the finger, instead of at themselves, they point it at you.
This is still them trying to protect themselves because they are in fight or flight because they felt judged.
Humans do not respond to judgment well.
I call judgment the kryptonite of communication. And honestly, sometimes I call judgment the kryptonite of relationships. My guess is that you can think of at least one relationship where someone else judging you has affected your ability to feel safe around them. To want to be around them. To share with them. And to be influenced by them.
So what do we do in these situations? As you know, we never just throw our hands up and give up. What we do is we understand that when we are judging someone else, we are seeing the situation through our world, from our point of view.
Because our brain is focused on keeping us safe, and when we’re focused on our own safety, it’s very hard to think about someone else’s perspective. That is the way we are wired.
The good news is that as humans we are not just on autopilot all the time.
We can recognize this and do something different, and a simple strategy to make a huge change is to shift from judgment (where you are seeing a situation from your perspective)to curiosity.
From “Ugh, why is my child not picking up their towel after I’ve told them so many times?” which is your perspective and dripping with judgment to, “Wait a second, why ARE they doing that?”
So you’re switching from, “Why are they DOING that?” To, “Why ARE they doing that?” The implication of, “Why ARE they doing that?” is that you care about what is going on for them. You are seeing it from their world.
And when you start to see something from someone else’s world, you are much less likely to judge them. There’s something that I’ve taught in the past called the chapter exercise. And the chapter exercise helps you get into the world of your child.
It would allow you to answer the question, “Well, why is my child leaving, leaving their towel on the floor?”
For example, a child’s chapter could be, when they’re leaving the towel on the floor, “I know I’m supposed to put my towel away, my parents do remind me enough, but I always forget, I’m always more focused on what I’ll be doing later, or on what my friends and I were talking about before. I’m not focused on my towel. I’m not, I’m not paying attention to where I’m putting it down.”
Now of course, every child’s chapter, their point of view, is going be different, but there are very common reasons that kids don’t do the tasks we want them to do, why they don’t put their towel away, or do their homework, or clean up after themselves. Often when they’re not getting tasks done, it’s related to some executive functioning strategy that they haven’t mastered.
And I’ve worked with a lot of children who don’t put their towel or their clothes away, and what’s happening is their attention is not on that towel. Honestly, they don’t notice where they are dropping their towel. They are thinking of something else.
That’s why a towel or other piece of clothing could end up right next to their hamper but not in it… because they’re not even noticing the towel, the piece of clothing or the hamper.
But here’s what happens when you shift to curiosity, when you say, “Hmm, why is my child doing that?” and you recognize the reason: You can teach them strategies to compensate for the fact that they’re not noticing.
In just a minute, I’m going to tell you a short story of a family who worked on something very similar, a child who wasn’t turning off light switches when they left the room.
But before I get there, I want to just say this. There’s always a reason that a child does what they’re doing.
And when we don’t recognize that, we stay stuck in our own world, we become judgmental, and we lose our influence. So I always help parents figure out why children are doing what they’re doing in my programs. But if you can’t figure it out, and this is what I tell them too, just assume best intention.
Assume that your child is doing the best that they can. This is what you want people to do for you. If you are not doing something the way someone else wants you to, or if you are thinking differently than the way someone wants you to think, you would want them to assume best intention for you, even if they couldn’t figure out why.
Assuming best intention reduces judgment, and it increases your influence. So even if you don’t know, “hmm, why are they doing that?”, You can say, “I’m not sure, but I know there’s a reason and I need to approach them with that energy.”
So again, I want to wrap up with a story about a family that I worked with. And like I said, the issue was that their child was not turning off the light switch when they left the room.
So I’m going to name this child Monica. So Monica not turning off the light switches was actually causing a disproportionate amount of drama. And that’s because it wasn’t just about the light switch. Because Monica’s dad had reminded her over and over to turn off the light switch and she kept not listening to him.
So he felt like he was being disrespected. He said to me, “Rachel, I know she has the capacity to turn off a light switch. She’s just not listening to me.”
He didn’t realize, he didn’t realize that her ability to turn off the light switch was completely separate from her ability and that she wasn’t thinking about what she was doing when she walked out of a room.
Now Monica’s mom knew that there was some issue, but she didn’t know what the issue was, but she felt very in the middle between her husband and her daughter because they were fighting a lot over this.
And so this became a very big drama. Again, it wasn’t just about the light switch. It was about the fact that Monica’s dad felt disrespected, Monica’s mom felt torn, and she didn’t like the tension in their home because of issues like this.
So both Monica’s mom and dad were very judgmental. They were trying to get her to change, saying things like, “Why can’t you remember?” And “Come on, it’s just a light switch. We’ve told you so many times!”
They were being very judgmental, and this was because of their desire to make the situation better.
It was also because of a desire to meet their own needs. Monica’s dad did care about the light switch being turned off, but he also had a need to feel respected. Monica’s mom had a need to feel less tension. So their judgment came from how the situation impacted them, not from what Monica needed to be successful.
So we talked about the fact that what Monica needed in this situation was something called an external cue. Something that would remind her to turn off that light switch because she wasn’t paying attention to the light switch when she left the room.
That’s why interestingly, when they first started to remind her to turn off the light switch, she went back and did it. But after a while, their tone became more judgmental because it took a toll on them to have to remind her all the time and they wanted her to be able to do it on their own.
So their brains sensed it as a threat that she wasn’t listening. They became more judgmental. And then she became more resistant to turning the light switch off. So we knew at this point there was too much judgment for them to be her external cue.
So I taught them to work with Monica, and she came up with her own external cue. She started with a visual cue. This was a note she put right above the light switch that would remind her to turn it off.
And that worked for about four or five days, and then it stopped working. We talked about the fact that the novelty was starting to wear off. So Monica put up a different note. It looked different. It started to catch her attention. But then again, it started to wear off as well.
So we switched then because I never give up and I never let parents give up. Because I knew her needs still hadn’t been fully met and I don’t give up until we meet a child’s needs.
So then she switched to an auditory cue. And the auditory cue was an alarm that went off that reminded her that if she hadn’t turned the light switch off, she needed to go back and do it.
She actually ended up changing the noise in the alarm. But the key is that she did it. She went back and turned the light switch off when she didn’t remember. It met her need for a non-judgmental reminder. The music wasn’t judging her, the music was just reminding her because it didn’t take a toll on them.The music was just reminding her, and then she was successful.
Now, again, this is so much more than a light switch being turned on and off.
When her parents switched from judgment to curiosity, she felt like they cared as much about her as they did about getting her to turn the light switch off. Then she felt safer with them. She, started to realize, “Oh, wait, my parents can help me when I’m struggling versus my parents are going to judge me when I’m struggling.”
And ultimately, this helped Monica really understand herself and that often she did need external cues to be successful in some of these tasks where she just wasn’t paying attention to what she was doing.
And this is why it is so important for us to recognize our judgment and when possible — you’re not going to be able to do this all the time, but when possible – shift from judgment to either curiosity or assuming best intentions. It’s a very different energy you approach your child with when you are curious and when you are assuming best intention.
And what it does when we make that shift is it increases our influence. Our kids are more willing to listen to us and listen to the strategies we want to teach them.
It allows kids to be the best version of themselves because we are teaching them what they need to be successful.
And when we switch from judgment to curiosity or assuming best intention, it does become easier on us because we don’t have to worry as much about our kids because they’re doing what they’re supposed to do. We feel less guilty because the interactions don’t quickly go downhill. And we have more energy because we’re not wasting it on all of the drama.
So shifting out of the judgment zone is a Leadership Parenting strategy. That is long game parenting.
Now remember, if you want a summary of this episode as well as references to other podcast episodes I’ve done in the past on a similar topic, or if you want to take the next step and get more help, links to everything you need will be on the show notes for this episode at Rachel-bailey.com/336.
Thanks for listening and I’ll see you again soon.
FREE LIVE Parenting “Power Hour”
