Episode 381 Transcript
Hello, it is Rachel, and welcome to episode 381 of Your Parenting Long Game.
There’s a moment that happens in a lot of homes that we might not be talking about enough, and it’s when there’s a conflict between what we need and our kids are asking us for.
Imagine a time in the day where you’re completely done. Maybe you’ve been working all day. Maybe you’ve been managing sibling conflict and sports schedules and homework and emotions and dishes and emails…all of it…and your body starts giving you signals that you have nothing left in the tank.
But then a child walks in, and suddenly they want to talk, not about brushing teeth or about where their shoes are.
They really want to talk.
Maybe they start telling you about drama with friends, or they suddenly want to share something vulnerable. Maybe they want to tell you every detail about something they’re excited about, and part of you melts a little because you’re thinking, “This is what I want! I want connection with my child.”
But another part of you is quietly panicking because you’re so exhausted that you can barely function.
So now you’re stuck between two very real feelings: “I desperately need a break,” and “I don’t want to shut my child down.”
And when you care about your relationship and your child, telling them, “Not right now” or “I can’t listen right now” can feel emotionally loaded…not because it’s necessarily a bad thing to say, but because your brain starts attaching meaning to it.
It can suddenly feel like you’re rejecting them or you’re missing a once-in-a-lifetime moment, especially if your child doesn’t open up easily.
I was talking to a parent recently who described this perfectly.
Now, she has a little bit of an older child, so this is related to her older child staying up late, but it relates to any situation where your child is trying to connect and you don’t have any energy left to give.
So her daughter, had started opening up more a little bit later at night, and these were beautiful moments.
Her daughter would suddenly share thoughts, ideas, stories, and questions. Sometimes they were deep things. Sometimes they were random things. But this mom could feel her daughter letting her into her world.
At the same time, this mom was exhausted. When she was telling me about it, I could hear the conflict in her voice because she knew she needed rest. But she also said something that I think many parents feel. She said, “What if I miss these moments? What if she stops sharing with me?”
And that fear makes sense. But it’s sort of like this: imagine you’re on a long road trip. Sometimes you’re going to pull over because the view is incredible, and you genuinely want to stay there for a while. But sometimes you’re going to need to keep driving because you know you need rest if you’re going to safely continue the trip tomorrow.
Neither choice is automatically right or wrong. The important thing is why you’re making that choice.
Are you stopping because you truly value the moment or because you’re just terrified that you’ll never see a beautiful view again?
Similarly, if you decide that you want to give your child the attention that they’re asking for in that moment, are you doing that because you’re afraid that you won’t get those moments again, or are you doing that because you know deep down it’s the right thing and that’s what aligns with your values?
The outside behavior can look identical. You stay with your child in that situation, or you leave your child, but internally, what fuels you can be very different.
In either situation, you may be fueled by fear, or you’re fueled by a values-based decision that you are making about what’s best in the moment.
And I think this is where many of us get trapped because most of us are not making a choice in those moments. We’re responding from a place of fear. If we stay, it’s because we’re afraid of not staying, not because staying is truly aligned with our values.
So how do you know?
Being fueled by fear sounds like, “If I say no, they’ll stop opening up,” or, “Good parents should always be available,” or, “If I don’t stay, I’ll damage the relationship,” or, “I don’t want them to feel disappointed or alone.”
When you’re fueled by your values, your decision, it sounds more like, “Connection matters to me. I want to make space for this. I know sleep matters, but right now this feels worth the trade-off.”
Whatever decision you make, neither is right or wrong.
Sometimes you may say, “I need to set a boundary.” Other times you may say, “I’m going to give my child what they need. I’m going to lean into this moment.”
Again, the issue isn’t which decision you make, it’s what’s driving the decision.
Because a parent may stay up later with their child from fear, or they may stay up from love and intention. A parent may end the conversation from a place of resentment, or they may end it from a place of wisdom and self-respect.
And here’s the difference: fear tends to drain us, while values tend to fuel us.
When you’re acting from your values, there’s more clarity, more choice, and interestingly, clarity and choice can create more energy. So if you do choose to be with your child when earlier you felt so exhausted, you may not feel as exhausted and resentful as you would if you made the same decision out of fear.
When you’re thinking things like, “This matters to me,” and, “I’m glad they’re letting me into their world,” and, “I’m choosing this on purpose,” these thoughts and this fuel doesn’t magically erase exhaustion, but it can lessen your exhaustion.
On the other hand, if you are choosing to stay from fear, your brain is more likely to stay locked into, “I’m exhausted, I can’t do this, I shouldn’t have to do this, but I need to do this. What if I don’t do this?”
Those type of Yuck-based thoughts will put you into fight or flight, and you’re going to be so much more depleted.
This is similar to how people can feel completely drained when we’re doing something we resent, but we can be capable of enormous effort when something deeply meaningful is happening.
Values can fuel us in a way that fear cannot.
Now, I hope you hear that it doesn’t mean you should override yourself constantly in the name of connection. Again, when you repeatedly abandon your own needs from guilt or fear, resentment is going to follow, and resentment damages connection far more than telling a child that you can’t listen to them or be with them in that moment.
So sometimes the most aligned choice really is, “I love you and I can’t listen right now.”
And that can be deeply healthy, not because boundaries are inherently better, but because sustainability and what you need, those things matter.
So if you decide you want to set a boundary, and that’s a values-based choice, you can say something like, “I want to hear this. I really do. But I can’t listen right now. Can we talk about it later?”
Or, “This matters to me. Can you remind me later so I can listen to you really well?”
Or, “I love hearing your thoughts. Can you write them down and make sure you don’t forget about them because I want to hear them later.”
That’s not rejection. That’s modeling that relationships can include both connection and limits.
And again, there are going to be times where you are going to decide, “No, I want to stay for this.”
And as long as that choice comes from clarity instead of panic, you don’t have to spend that entire interaction fighting yourself internally. You can support yourself through it: Maybe if it’s later in the day, you grab a blanket. You sit instead of standing. You lower the stimulation. You remind yourself, “I am choosing this.”
The goal is not to become a parent who always says yes, and it’s not to become a parent who rigidly protects their own needs at all costs either. The goal is to become a parent who can notice what matters here, and what is driving my decision? So you can respond from intention instead of fear.
Children don’t need parents who are endlessly available. In fact, that probably teaches them the wrong lesson because others aren’t endlessly available.
They also don’t benefit from parents who disconnect from their own values. They benefit from parents who are thoughtful, intentional, and human, parents who can hold the message both my child matters and I matter, too.
Now there’s another specific situation I hear about a lot from parents where they’re torn between what they think their children need and what they need, and that is when you have a child who focuses often on the negative…when they always notice the thing that went wrong or the thing that could go wrong, or the thing that’s bothering them.
I’m actually doing a free workshop on this topic to talk about how we can give our kids what they need without having to deplete ourselves being a calm, patient, and gentle parent all the time.
This free workshop is called “When Your Child Focuses on the Negative: How to Respond Without Feeding Their Negativity or Making Things Worse.”
The link for that free workshop is in the show notes.
Keep in mind, all of the strategies I teach you are about helping you increase your leadership in parenting and improving your parenting long game for the benefit of your child, but also you and the rest of your family.
Thanks for listening. I’ll see you again soon.
FREE RESOURCE: Does your child have a narrow zone of tolerance?
