Episode 368 Transcript
Hello, it is Rachel and welcome to episode 368 of Your Parenting Long Game.
Although these days I run more groups than have one-on-one sessions, I still do meet with a small number of one-on-one clients, and after our sessions I always send them notes to reiterate what we discussed. Well, I’ve been going through some of my past notes lately, and I realize there’s some really valuable snippets that other parents like you might benefit from too.
And while my sessions are obviously confidential, what I’m teaching isn’t confidential, so I figured I’d share some little bits of value as a quick win… or even a quick reminder when life makes it easy to forget some of these strategies that I’ll talk about. So here’s a little piece from notes I shared with one of my clients.
I said: “Remember, your daughter needs parents who are both confident and connected.
‘Confident’ means that you are firm in your limits and you don’t question or doubt your ability to handle resistance when those limits are set. Without confidence and firm limits, kids don’t feel safe.
‘Connected’ means that you care about how your limits affect her, and you give her strategies to be successful. If you miss connection, your daughter will think her feelings when she comes across that limit are bad and she’ll feel worse about herself.”
So again, the main idea here is that if we want to become a powerful, positive influence with our children, we need to balance confidence and connection.
One without the other is not enough to be that powerful, positive influence.
And I find that I repeat this note to clients very often because we tend to either be one or the other, or we swing back and forth between confident and connected.
So let’s talk about what this note actually looks like in real life.
And I’m going to start with what it looks like when a parent leans really hard into that confidence piece, but misses connection.
So a parent who’s really confident but maybe not connected is really trying to be strong. They’re trying to be clear. They’re trying not to give in.
So if a child is upset, they’ll say, “You’re fine,” or “This isn’t a big deal.” Or if a child is resistant to doing what they’re asked, they’ll say, “We’re not talking about this anymore,” or “You just need to do it.”
But here’s what you may not realize: If you are really heavy on the confidence, but not the connection, a child doesn’t think, “Hey, my parent is being strong and confident and capable.” What they’re sensing is, “How I’m feeling is wrong,” or “Something is wrong with me for feeling this way,” or “I hate feelings.”
And that’s when kids internalize, “I’m too sensitive,” or “I should avoid hard things,” or “My feelings cause problems.”
They may also, by the way, feel bad about us. Instead of thinking “My parent is strong and confident and capable,” they may also think “My parent is a jerk.”
Or they may think, “Oh, my parent thinks they can tell me what to do. We’ll see about that!”
Confidence without connection is not enough because with our strength, our kids’ behavior may stop temporarily, but the cost is how our children see themselves and how they view us, and that actually reduces our influence.
Now let’s flip and consider when parents lean hard into connection, but miss the confidence piece. This is the parent who deeply cares about their child. This may be you if you deeply care about your child’s feelings, you validate, you explain you comfort, but your limits are soft. Maybe they’re inconsistent or negotiable in the moment.
So you may say something like, “I know this is hard, so maybe we don’t have to do this right now,” or “If you’re worried, let’s just do this another time.” So you’re not pushing them to do the hard thing. You’re not pushing them to be in uncomfortable situations.
And again, it’s with such good intention. But when confidence and firm limits are missing and all you’re doing is connecting, kids actually don’t feel relieved. They feel less safe because a child’s nervous system is constantly asking, “Is someone strong enough to lead me through this?” And and their nervous system is asking, “Should I always avoid this type of thing? Is it really dangerous?”
In fact, when I was a therapist, I once had an older teen who was pretty insightful say to me, when his parents weren’t really setting firm limits with him, he said, “Rachel, if my parents can’t stand up to me, how can they stand up for me?”
When we don’t set those firm limits and we’re only kind and validating to our kids, they don’t believe we’re strong and they don’t feel as safe. When our confidence is unclear, their anxiety increases.
Then you’ll often see more resistance, more negotiating, more emotional intensity. They’ll also have less trust in themselves and in us. Again, that will decrease our influence.
So we need to be able to balance that confidence with that connection because sensitive, intense kids or anxious kids, they don’t need an “either/or.” They need both.
They need confidence, meaning we believe, “I can handle this as your parent,” and they need connection where we show your experience matters to me.
So let me make this concrete what it looks like in the moment to balance both. Instead of saying, “You are fine, just do it” or, “I know it’s hard. Okay, forget it. Let’s not do this,” it sounds more like, “Something about this is uncomfortable and we’ll still get through it. I’m here to help you get through it.”
Or, “I care that this is hard, and the limit is still staying. Let’s talk about what we can do to make it less bad.”
Or, “I won’t change what I expect. But I do want to understand what’s making it hard. And if you want, we can talk about ways to get through that.”
So notice the limit didn’t disappear, and at the same time the child’s experience isn’t dismissed. The parent stays anchored, recognizes the hard, and offers strategies for the hard so the child can learn to trust them and ultimately trust themselves to handle hard things. This is the combination that builds safety and self-trust.
So if you’re listening and you’re thinking, “Well, I do one of these really well, and the other one falls apart when things get intense,” you are like most parents. Most of us lean to one side, not both, and we go back and forth often depending on our own mood.
But remember, our connection without our confidence does increase our kids’ anxiety. Our confidence without connection leads to shame and self-doubt.
Now, of course, if you want to improve in one area, even if you want to find that balance, I have lots of resources for you.
In fact, if you want to learn how to do this in a situation that’s full of drama, I have a live event where I’m leading small groups — no more than five people — to create personalized plans to diffuse drama by balancing your confidence and your connection. You use these strategies to diffuse disrespect towards others, or meltdowns or shutdowns, or any other drama in your home.
This event is called “When Emotions Control your Home: Build your Plan to Calm Emotional Storms (When Nothing Seems to Work).”
And you leave this event with a plan to become that powerful positive influence who can cool situations off much more quickly and easily.
So if you’re tired of fighting bedtime battles or morning or resistance in the morning, or just big reactions in general, it’s a great place to start the shift. You can find all the details about that event in the show notes at Rachel-bailey.com/368.
In the meantime, thanks for listening and I’ll see you again soon.
Free resources to support you as you’re raising children with big emotions
