Episode 378 Transcript
Hello, it is Rachel and welcome to episode 378 of Your Parenting Long Game.
Today I’m going to talk about something really frustrating: Where you set a limit or a boundary or an expectation with your child – you tell them no – and they continue to argue. They keep trying to push.
So maybe you say no, that they can’t go to their friend’s house today because you’d already scheduled something…or they can’t have a game that they wanted …and your child just keeps going and pushing.
They say, “Why?” or “But listen…” or “That’s not fair!” or “You always….”
You’re standing there thinking, “Why are we still talking about this?”
And let’s be honest, it feels like they’re trying to wear you down or they’re being disrespectful or they just won’t accept your answer.
Some of that may be true, but here’s more going on in that situation that you really need to know about if you want to handle it more effectively.
So let’s look at a situation like this first through your perspective.
When you set this limit or expectation, you’re doing it for a reason. They can’t go to their friend’s house because you already have plans that can’t change (and you never told them that they could go in the first place!).
Or you’re telling them they can’t have a game because maybe they just got a lot of presents for their birthday, or their behavior tends to deteriorate when they play games like that.
So you have a good reason for setting this limit.
You’ve thought it through, you’ve given your answer, and maybe you’ve even explained it to your child already.
So then continuing the conversation again feels pointless and disrespectful and exhausting. And of course all that is going to put you into Yuck.
That all makes sense.
But I want to look at this from a child’s side too, so you can see what’s really going on.
When they keep pushing, they’re not just thinking, “Maybe if I push, they’ll give in.” That thought is probably there, but there’s a specific reason it’s there. It’s because in that moment when they hear no, they’re experiencing a spike of incredible discomfort or Yuck.
They have all this frenetic energy inside and they can’t settle themselves down, and they can’t stop pushing because of all this uncomfortable energy.
Here’s what basically happens: Their discomfort when they realize they’re not getting the thing they wanted… it spikes.
They’re feeling all of this disappointment and loss of control and frustration, and that discomfort creates pressure in their body. It feels agitating and urgent, and it’s hard for them to hold that feeling.
(We know what that feels like when we reach our capacity as well. It’s really uncomfortable!)
And they try to release that pressure through arguing with you and re-explaining why they should get what they want.
So the arguing isn’t just about getting you to change your mind, it’s about their attempt to try to get that discomfort out of their body.
That’s why, even though they know the answer is no, they still keep going. They don’t just want a different answer. They can’t process the feeling of your answer.
They think the only solution to get rid of this discomfort is to get you to give in. That’s why they keep going.
They’re overwhelmed, dysregulated, and all of it is extremely uncomfortable.
And just like if they were incredibly hungry, they’d seek for an answer of food and push until they got it.
When they’re emotionally uncomfortable, they’ll seek the answer that they think is going to provide them with relief.
And this is why our responses when they keep pushing don’t really work.
Because usually we’ll try a few different things.
We might try to shut it down saying things like, “We’re done talking about this.”
And of course it’s okay to say that, but that’s not going to change their reaction because their discomfort is still there.
They still haven’t felt any relief, and in fact, they feel more discomfort because now the conversation’s been cut off and they have no power to do anything about it.
Or our reaction may be to explain more. We may say, “Here’s why you can’t go to your friend’s house or have that game…”
And again, it’s fine to explain your reasoning, it won’t change a child’s reaction because you’re basically telling them why they should stop being upset. That creates more internal pressure for them, and they’re going to push harder to relieve that feeling.
We may also, in those moments, get pulled into their emotional intensity, getting upset with them because they keep pushing and increasing our discomfort.
Now we’ve joined with their dysregulation, and that certainly doesn’t solve the problem that their discomfort is driving the show in that moment.
So if you’ve tried all those things, you tried to shut it down, you tried to explain more, you get sucked in and it’s not working, it’s because what’s beneath their behavior hasn’t been addressed yet.
That means that instead of the goal being to get them to stop pushing, the goal should be to teach them to handle discomfort after hearing, “no.”
Ultimately this will stop when they learn how to tolerate discomfort. That’s why in my programs, one of the main focuses is on teaching kids to tolerate discomfort… and learning how to tolerate it ourselves.
I’m going to tell you if you want these situations to stop happening so much, we have to teach discomfort tolerance strategies.
In the meantime though, before they’ve mastered these skills, you don’t want to try to get them to stop. Your goal is not to win or to convince or to try to stop their words immediately.
Instead, first, you want to let them, let some of that pressure out, let them complain or ask for more.
It doesn’t mean you’re going to give in to them. It just means that that pressure is building up and building up and building up, and it needs to be released.
So you can say something as simple as, “Tell me what you think,” or “Tell me why you’re so annoyed,” or “It makes a lot of sense why you’d want this” or “You’ve got a lot to say about this and I’m willing to listen.”
Again, that doesn’t mean you are giving in.
What you’re doing is you’re allowing the release of pressure inside without necessarily changing the outcome, and what a child learns is the outcome doesn’t have to change for me to start to feel better.
The problem is usually when they’re trying to release the pressure of their complaints or their pushing, we make the pressure bigger by arguing back or trying to get it to stop.
So again, first step is just to let them complain.
The second step is to hold the boundary, but without adding more negative energy. So you just want it to be simple and steady saying, “We’re sticking with the plan,” or “The answer is no,” or “We’re going to stay with this.” No long explanations, no emotional escalation.
And here’s the key and the ideal goal: You want to have less frustration with them, knowing that this is just a symptom that they don’t know how to tolerate discomfort maturely yet.
All you have to do is follow through with less frustration and more steadiness, because yes, while they do want you to give in, that’s not what you’re going to do.
The second best thing is for you to stay steady instead of jumping into their intensity and chaos.
When they’re drowning in an emotion, they want to know someone is standing on the dock and can guide them back to safety.
So again, what this comes down to in the moment is let them let this out and maintain your boundary. The key is that you don’t see their reaction as a threat. Because seeing it as a threat is what pulls you in so that you’re drowning with them in this emotional intensity.
So here’s a quick example: If your child says, “But you never let me…” or “This is so unfair!” or “Just listen!”, all you have to say is “Go ahead. I’ll listen and let them talk.”
At some point you can say, “I hear you. You’ve got good points.” And then you can pause and say, “We’re still sticking with the plan.”
They may still push again or repeat themselves. That doesn’t mean it’s not working. It just means the pressure they’re feeling inside has not fully come down yet.
So if you think about what’s really going on, I like to put all of this into an “of course-because-since” since statement. OF COURSE your child keeps arguing BECAUSE hearing no creates a surge of discomfort they don’t know how to handle.
And SINCE you’re not going to give in, they need space to travel the yuck curve in the moment.
And then outside of the moment, you want to teach them strategies to handle their discomfort more maturely. That’s what I teach parents how to do inside of my programs, especially the program, “Confident When It’s Hard.”
Because if you don’t have these skills or you don’t know how to teach these skills, you might need some help. And that’s what I’m here for.
In the meantime though, the next time your child won’t stop arguing, instead of thinking, “Why are they doing this?!”
You can think, “This is what it looks like when their discomfort is bigger than their ability to handle it. It’s just their discomfort overflowing.”
And that’s something you can actually help them with, and all you need to do is not see it as a threat.
It’s true that not all kids struggle with discomfort in the same way. Some may push back, some may explode quickly. Other kids may shut down or avoid or seem fine until they’re suddenly not.
All of these though are ways that they’re expressing discomfort.
And what can really help is understanding your child’s zone of tolerance, how much tolerance they actually have.
And so I have a resource that’s free… it’s called the Zone of Tolerance assessment. It’s a quick way to help you see how much discomfort your child can handle, what happens when they go outside of that range, and what that means for you and how you respond in those moments.
Because once you can see what’s going on under the arguing, you can stop second guessing yourself. You can stop trying things that don’t work, and you can actually start helping your child build the skills that they’re missing.
That means this isn’t happening as much in the first place.
These are leadership parenting strategies, and that is your parenting long game.
To find the zone of tolerance assessment or to learn more about programs where I can help you build both your and your child’s tolerance, Check out the show notes where I always have more resources for you.
You can find at Rachel-bailey.com/378.
Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you next time.
