Episode 362 Transcript
Hello, it is Rachel, and welcome to episode 362 of Your Parenting Long Game.
I have a question for you: Have you ever walked into the room and seen your child so hyper-focused on a game or a YouTube video or building something with Legos that they don’t even notice you walking in… but anytime you ask them to unload the dishwasher, they can’t seem to get that thing done?
They’re too tired. They can’t. It’s impossible.
You’d think that reminding them to unload the dishwasher is like asking them to climb Mount Everest carrying a refrigerator. Yet that same child just spent two hours building a virtual world block by block with full concentration.
I hear parents ask me all the time, “Of my child can focus when they want to, why can’t they do the basic everyday things that they need to?”
And the longer this goes on, the more frustrating it becomes. You start second guessing yourself. You wonder if you’re too lenient or maybe you’re too strict.
You worry, what does this mean for their future? If they can’t handle unloading [00:01:00] the dishwasher, how will they ever handle other things that have to get done in life?
Today I’m going to explain why this happens. And it’s not because your child is lazy or disrespectful, and it’s not even that they don’t care.
What’s going on is related to the way their brain responds to stimulation and discomfort, or what I call Yuck.
Once you understand this, the resistance will make sense and you’ll know what to do to drastically reduce that resistance without nagging or consequences or turning everything into a fight.
Here’s what’s really happening: Your child’s brain isn’t deciding what to do based on importance. It’s deciding based on stimulation.
Because believe it or not, the need for stimulation is a need. And our kids’ brains are very used to getting a lot of stimulation. So when your child is on a screen or doing something exciting, their brain is getting consistent dopamine. (This is the neurotransmitter that tells the brain: Pay attention! This matters! Keep going!)
And it feels really good, and they’re going to seek more and more of it, especially because they’re used to getting a certain amount.
So not getting that amount is incredibly uncomfortable, and the brain is actually saying, This is a bad thing! You need to avoid situations where you are not getting that stimulation or that dopamine!
So if we compare the activities where they’re getting that stimulation to loading the dishwasher… when it comes to unloading the dishwasher, there’s no novelty, no creativity, no sense of immediate reward.
It’s low stimulation, and the brain experiences that as discomfort…not necessarily physical pain, but mental resistance that is just as uncomfortable to them because the brain is trying to get them to stop doing the thing that’s not going to give them enough stimulation.
Let me make this even more relatable. Think about something you resist and how you handle it.
So for me it’s folding laundry. The pile’s still sitting there. I know it will only take [00:03:00] five minutes. I know I will feel better once it’s done, but I can’t seem to get myself to do it. My brain will find anything else to do. Check email, wipe down a countertop that doesn’t even need wiping, suddenly remembering that I’m supposed to order air filters on Amazon.
We all do this and it’s not because we’re lazy. It’s because the task doesn’t provide enough stimulation for the brain to naturally engage, so the brain avoids it. That’s that “Avoider Brain” I’ve talked about before, and it will avoid it even when we logically agree that it needs to be done.
Resistant isn’t always — in fact, it’s rarely — logical.
And if we have a hard time getting through things we know logically we should do, then kids have an even harder time getting through things that we’ve told them that logically they should do.
And children have less dopamine to begin with. They have lower tolerance for discomfort, and they have less ability to self-activate.
So of course they resist, because they don’t know how to fight through that resistance yet. [00:04:00]
And when we don’t understand that, we often use strategies that accidentally make the resistance worse.
We do things like repeating ourselves or nagging, which only adds pressure. It makes the brain feel more discomfort and it doesn’t address the issue that they don’t know how to activate themselves when something isn’t stimulating.
We may also explain why a chore matters, but remember, logic doesn’t activate action.
We may rely on rewards or chore charts, which can work temporarily, but they don’t solve the real issue — the lack of internal activation because they don’t know how to get started.
When something isn’t stimulating, we also rely on consequences, which just create more stress and that shuts down their brain even faster.
In other words, we try to solve activation problems with motivation tools, and that almost never works.
What does work? Well, solving activation issues with activation tools.
So you teach your child that before they do something boring or [00:05:00] uncomfortable, they need to activate their brain. This can take 30 seconds or less and it can completely change how your child is able to do some of these tasks.
Now at first you may want to show them how to activate their brain, but eventually you want to teach them how to do this for themselves.
So let me start by showing them how to activate the brain. You might say something like, “Let’s race the timer and see if we can do this in under 45 seconds.”
Or you may recommend to them that they make a music playlist that they play while they’re loading or unloading the dishwasher.
You may suggest a challenge that if they unload the dishwasher, they have to go through the alphabet naming animals while they’re unloading the dishes.
These actually aren’t gimmicks and they’re not meant to make the task fun.
They are brain-based strategies that increase dopamine so your child actually has the capacity to do what they have to do.
Because kids have to learn that they have to do what they have to do, but we want to work with their brains to get it to [00:06:00] happen, not against their brains.
Now if you’re thinking, “That makes sense. But I need ideas I can use in situations where my child is refusing homework or draining every ounce of my patients at bedtime,” I created a free cheat sheet that gives you more ideas for simple activation strategies you can use to help you do things that are boring, routine, or uncomfortable.
Again, these things can take less than a minute. They require no setup and they’re helpful even if your child has a history of resisting because again, you are working with their brain instead of against it.
You can find that free cheat sheet at Rachel-bailey.com/362.
Now I want to share a quick story about the difference between when a parent used these tools and they didn’t.
So this is a story of a boy named Liam.
Liam is funny, bright, and can spend hours designing worlds in Minecraft, but when it’s time to clean up his room, he freezes.
Here’s what it actually looks like from Liam’s perspective when his parent [00:07:00] asks him to clean.
He’s thinking:
“I hear mom’s voice again, ‘Liam, clean your room,’ and my stomach drops.
I look at the mess and it feels like a mountain. Where do I start? What if I do it wrong? It’s boring. My brain feels like it just shut off. I don’t want to feel this way.
So I say to my mom ‘In a minute!” Mom asks again, my chest feels tight. I know she’s getting mad. I feel bad, but I cannot make my body move.
The more she talks, the worse it gets. My brain won’t let me do what she’s asking, and I know she’s mad.
My brain just keeps telling me to go back to that game. It’s like it wants to do anything but the thing she said. I feel like I’m failing and I just want it all to stop.”
So that’s Liam’s experience when he doesn’t know how to deal with the avoidance in his brain that shut down or meltdown, or even disrespect or defiance you see on the outside is actually panic and discomfort on the inside.
Liam wants to do it, but he [00:08:00] doesn’t have enough stimulation to get started.
His brain is stuck in low power mode. He feels stuck and he doesn’t know how to do anything different. But here’s what it could look like with Liam as his parent teaches him how to use an activation strategy.
So same child, same task, but different brain state this time.
So again, from Liam’s perspective, here’s what he might be thinking:
“This time, Mom walks in and doesn’t tell me to clean my room.
She says, “Okay, Liam, we’re going to clean for five minutes you’re going to be responsible for anything that’s red on the floor, and I’m going to be responsible for anything blue. Don’t take the blue things. That’s my job. Ready? Go.”
Suddenly my brain wakes up. I start grabbing things.
Mom says, “Whoa, you got all the red things already?”
And I feel proud. My body keeps moving. And even after I’ve gotten all of the red things and she mentions getting the yellow things next, it doesn’t feel like a problem. Instead of feeling overwhelmed and bad about myself, I feel capable.
I [00:09:00] don’t need rewards.
I just need this to be engaging enough that my brain stays on it.”
So in that case, the chore didn’t change. Liam didn’t change. What changed was his brain state when his brain was activated. Cooperation followed naturally.
And I want to reiterate the best news of all of this, at least from my perspective as a parent: Once your child learns that they need that stimulation, that activation, we teach them to do this for themselves.
We can even teach older kids to do this. I used to work with teens as an ADHD coach, helping them to do boring things like homework and studying and clean their room. And they learned tasks to engage their brain in these activities as well.
Ultimately when they learn how their brain works, you can say something like, “Hey, it’s time to clean your room,” or “It’s time to study. How are you going to do it this time?”
And in my experience working with thousands of families, I find that kids and teens come up with way better ideas for activation and stimulation than any adult ever does.
I’d say this usually takes [00:10:00] a couple of weeks helping them figure out what does effectively activate or stimulate them, and then you can pass it off to them.
And what happens is they end up feeling capable and confident that they can handle something that before didn’t seem bearable to them.
You’re building their resilience, you’re building their self-esteem because you stopped judging their behavior and addressed what was really going on.
So just keep in mind, your child’s not unmotivated. Their brain just needs activation first. When you stop fighting the resistance, which is just the symptom of their Yuck, and you start working with their wiring, you shift from nagging to leading.
And that’s where confidence — both yours and your child’s — really starts to grow.
This is a Leadership Parenting strategy and that is Long Game parenting.
Now again, if you want more resources, including that cheat sheet with more ideas for activation, you can find that on my website at Rachel-Bailey.com/362.
Thanks for listening and I’ll see you next time.
Free cheat sheet: Helping Kids With Daily Tasks
Free quiz: The “Everyday Routines” Quiz: What’s Your Style?
Other free resources to support you as you’re raising a child with big emotions
