Episode 338 Transcript
Hello, it is Rachel and welcome to episode 338 of your Parenting Long Game. People who feel things strongly, people with big emotions, tend to have certain things in common. And one of them is that they struggle with transitions. They struggle going from one thing to the next.
Now often once someone is at the next place or doing the next thing, they’re fine, but getting them there can be very dramatic.
So, children with big emotions struggle with being dropped off at school when they’re really young. As they get older, they have trouble leaving the house to go to school, or after school to go to piano practice, or whatever else they have to do.
Trouble with transitions also often looks like drama when they have to go to bed or stop playing to come to the dinner table. If your child has trouble waking up in the morning, believe it or not, that’s a transition that’s hard for them too – transitioning from a sleep state to a wake state.
They may even have trouble transitioning to something they enjoy, like a birthday party. And this one’s probably the most confusing because why wouldn’t they want to go to a birthday party or do something fun? And yet there is still often resistance in this transition.
Now, I’ve talked a couple of times in this podcast about how hard it is for kids to disengage from something that they’re engaged in, why it’s hard for them to stop playing on their device or why when they’re making something or doing something, they want to finish it so badly. And I will link to a couple of episodes in the show notes, but I’m going to talk in this episode about why even when they’re disengaged finally from an activity, some kids still struggle.
And it’s frustrating, right? Because we do have to leave the house or go to practice. They do have to wake up in the morning and we do want them to be able to go to those fun activities that they’re still resisting.
So we feel helpless because we’ve tried all the things to manage this transition with less drama. So for example, if you’ve tried to get your child to leave the house to go to soccer practice or piano practice, and it’s been really dramatic or there’s been resistance, you’ve probably tried things like
…logic, saying things like, “We have to go, it’s time for practice, and we don’t want to be late!
…threatening them, saying to them things like, “If you don’t go to soccer practice or piano practice, you can’t have your device later.”
Sometimes we even beg them, saying, “Please, just come on, let’s go!” Or we bribe them: “If you go, then I’ll buy you something later.”
You may have been angry with them saying, “Stop doing this. Why can’t you just make this a little bit easier?!” And maybe you’ve even ignored what they’re doing – probably because you have other children or other things to do and you can’t focus on them and get the other things done as well!
But none of this works. None of this helps with the transition.
These are not strategies of a Leader Parent that’s going to make you a powerful positive influence. These are actually examples of what I call “band aid” parenting, where we’re just trying to shape the behavior –we’re trying to get our child to do the thing they have to do, to go to soccer practice, go to piano practice.
But it doesn’t address the problem. It doesn’t address why they’re struggling with the transition to begin with. And remember, Long Game parenting and Leadership Parenting strategies are about addressing what’s really going on and giving our kids what they need to be successful.
Now I’m about to tell you what the issue is, what’s really going on, why transitions are so tough. But I also want to remind you that there are show notes for this episode, and on the show notes I include a summary of the episode and some examples of what I’m talking about, and other resources that will support you as you are raising a child with big emotions.
So if you just want to review this episode or take the next step in diffusing drama in your home and fostering long lasting resilience, you can find those resources at rachel-bailey.com/338. But for now I do want to talk about what the issue is, why kids struggle with transition so much.
Because the reality is, the brains of kids with big emotions, kids who feel things strongly, their brains crave status quo. They don’t like to shift from where they are now to something else. No matter what the something else is, even, again, if they know the next thing will be fine, or it will be fun.
This is different from the fact that they’re worried about something bad happening in the next place. This is actually something they’re probably not aware of, calculations that their brain is making.
Their brain wants to stay in the now and here’s why: Brains of those people who feel strongly are “noticing” brains. These brains are very sensitive to what’s happening around it, all of the information it’s receiving at all times through the senses. The brain of someone who is a big feeler is thinking, “What do things look like? What do things smell like? What’s happening over there? What’s happening over there? What do I feel?”
It’s always very in tune with all of the information that it’s taking in, and that can be a very tiring job. It spends a lot of energy trying to take in what’s around it, assessing everything. So once it’s in an environment that it knows it’s okay, it’s already done the assessment, it dreads going to a new environment where it will again have to do a lot of noticing and assessing and evaluating.
So, the present environment, the status quo, where they are, they know this moment is comfortable, there are no threats, so they just want to stay.
Change, even a small one, can be disruptive and it takes energy because it needs to be evaluated. And then the brain is thinking, “When I need to go to the new place, even if it’s a fun birthday party, I have to figure out again what’s going on there.”
Familiarity takes less energy, the present moment takes less energy. Going to a new space, a new place, is going to take a lot and the brain resists that.
Similarly, something about kids with big emotions that you’ve probably experienced is that being flexible does not come easily to them.
They want things to go a certain way, again, because it’s predictable, it’s easy, so whenever they have to make shifts, it takes a lot of energy, not even just to scan what’s happening around them… but also to use their brains to recognize that things not going their way is not a threat.
So when we ask our kids to be flexible to realize that it’s okay that they don’t sit in the same seat where they always sit when they’re going to soccer practice, that actually takes, again, a lot of energy for them to say to themselves, “Well, I really like that seat, But it’s okay because I’ll be able to sit in that seat next week.” That takes a lot of cognitive energy as well.
And one more thing to consider when it comes to their resistance to transitions is what actually happens when they do resist, when they complain that they have to go somewhere.
When they complain that they have to go somewhere or when they aren’t going as fast as we’d like them to do, what do we do? We respond negatively to their behavior. We use logic and begging and threats and anger, telling them all the reasons they just have to go.
So now, on top of all that sensing the brain has to do, and on top of the cognitive flexibility, there’s emotional yuck. Because a child, when they are resisting and struggling, they don’t feel seen, and they don’t feel like they have control, because they’re being told, you have to go, it doesn’t matter how you feel.
So they keep having all of these bad experiences with transitions, and now transitions in their mind are even more “dangerous” because they know they’re also going to get a reaction from us, and so they become even more resistant to transitions.
So to review those reasons that kids struggle so much with transitions, first, we have the fact that it takes a lot of energy for them to take in new situations, and their brain resists it. We have the fact that cognitive flexibility, soothing themselves during change, takes a lot out of them. And we have the fact that they feel very out of control, and don’t feel seen while they’re having such a hard time.
And if we look at the things we usually do during these transitions, we can see that they don’t address the issue that kids crave familiarity. They don’t address the issue that kids want to save energy. They don’t address the issue that kids want to feel seen and more in control.
If you think about it, does logic give them any of those things, that familiarity, that energy saving, that feeling more in control? No. In fact, in their brains, it’s not logical to go to a new place because it does take a lot of energy.
So, when we tell them we just have to go, that doesn’t give them what they need. When we are threatening them, it doesn’t give them what they need. Threats only make them feel less safe and more resistant. When we are begging them, maybe that gives them a little bit of a feeling of control, of having to spend a lot of energy.
And of course our anger doesn’t help either, because now they’re just focused on defending themselves and digging deeper into their own perspective.
So what do we do instead? I say this all the time. We never just throw our hands up and say, “Okay, forget it. This is too hard.” What we do is we address these reasons for their behavior and for their struggle.
So in Leadership Parenting, there are two things we do as leaders when kids are struggling to help them be successful. One is we reduce some of the struggle if possible. Any unnecessary yuck that they’re experiencing, we can try to reduce. The second thing we do is we teach them to handle the yuck more effectively so that when they are uncomfortable, they don’t just resist.
Now, the long term solution is to do both of these things, and that is what I teach in my programs. But I want to give you right now an example of reducing unnecessary yuck.
And again, the way we do that is we go back to what is causing their yuck in the first place. So remember that they crave familiarity and in order to address this, we give them familiarity in the transition.
We give them something that they don’t have to process, something that they know they will do every time. We can give them a “transition ritual.” That becomes their familiarity.
We can also, in this transition ritual, see them and give them a sense of control.
So I want to give you two examples of what this looks like. One from a family of a four year old and one from a family of a school age child, both of whom were resistant to going to school.
So if we consider first the four year old boy, he resisted going to preschool every day, although his mom heard that once he was there, he was fine. But his mom would try to drop him off. And at first, during drop offs, she was very calm and patient.
But then, the more calm and patient she was, The more she tried to soothe him and the longer she stayed, the longer and longer he wanted her to stay. So I worked with this mom to have her do two things.
First was to bring a transition object from the home. And I asked her to let him choose what this object was going to be, something he chose every day to bring with him to school. And this ended up being a different stuffed animal he brought. Sometimes he brought the same one, but he got to choose which stuffed animal he was going to bring and that was something they did every single day.
They also came up with a goodbye ritual that she could use when she actually dropped him off at school. And after this ritual she would leave even if he was still upset. The key in this ritual was that she knew what she was going to do. She was going to be predictable.
She knew when she was going to say goodbye and she was going to say goodbye in the same way and the same time every single day.
Because her lack of predictability, when he didn’t know how she was going to react, he didn’t know how long she was going to stay, that actually made it scarier for him because now his brain had more to think about. Is she going to stay? Is she going to leave? What’s she going to do? So she became predictable.
And when this little boy knew these two things were going to happen, he knew that he could pick something to focus on as he was transitioning out of the house and into the car, and he knew what was going to happen at school, he started to resist less because this transition, because this transition was becoming more efficient for him, more comfortable for him. And he had more of a sense of control.
Now with the older child, there was also a transition ritual, but this was one where the child felt even more in control because he had a ritual with his mom and his sister where they would play follow the leader, where on certain days he got to be the leader. He told his mom and younger sister what to do, how they would get into the car, and that’s what his brain was focusing on during the transition. So he felt more safe to move to the next space rather than resisting.
He felt a sense of control. He felt a sense of familiarity. He knew what was happening. This game was predictable and it gave him a confidence that he could move to the next place.
(By the way, those of you who are listening and saying, but what about his sister? Did she mind that they were playing follow the leader and he was in charge? I will tell you that she did get to choose the audiobook when the family got in the car, so she felt a sense of control as well.)
So in both cases with these boys who really struggled with transitions, their parents gave them a sense of control and predictability, familiarity, so their brain didn’t resist as much going to the next thing.
Now we can and should teach our kids how to handle the feeling of discomfort because sometimes they’re still going to be uncomfortable, but we want to start with reducing any unnecessary Yuck to begin with.
When we do this, when we focus on what our kids need one step at a time, they are able to slowly become more resilient because instead of just trying to get them to change their behavior, we’re giving them what they need to change their behavior.
We’re addressing the reason and giving them strategies to be successful. In all cases, I always encourage parents to teach their brains how their kids work so kids eventually understand themselves and know what to do when they are struggling. We give them what they need to be the best version of themselves.
We do this by recognizing whenever there is a negative behavior, mood, or attitude, there is something underneath and as leaders we can figure out what it is and give it to our children. We don’t need to use logic and threats and begging and anger.
We need to figure out what is going on. We need to stop seeing their behavior as a threat, figure out what it, and figure out what is going on.
That not only allows our children to be successful, but it also tremendously increases our influence and strengthens our relationship. That is what using Leadership Parenting strategies does. That is Long Game parenting.
Now again, if you want a summary of this episode as well as other resources that will help you as you are raising a child or children with big emotions, you can find that on my website at rachel-bailey.com/338. Thanks for listening. And I’ll see you again soon.
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