Episode 385 Transcript
Hello, it is Rachel, and welcome to episode 385 of Your Parenting Long Game.
One of the things parents tell me all the time is, “My child is so sweet…until something doesn’t go their way.” Maybe they’re perfectly happy until you say it’s time to turn off their device, or they know exactly how to get dressed, but the second their favorite shirt is dirty, everything falls apart.
And so it’s easy to wonder, “How can my child be so mature and fine and happy one moment and get so upset in the next?”
And the answer is actually pretty simple. It’s not that suddenly they lose their sweetness. It’s that in those moments, their Yuck starts to control their behavior.
Ultimately, your child’s ability to handle hard and uncomfortable situations is about whether they know how to prevent their Yuck from controlling them or not.
Now, as you probably know, “Yuck” is the word I use for any uncomfortable feeling or sensation – disappointment, frustration, embarrassment, anxiety, loneliness, boredom, physical discomfort.
All, all of that I consider Yuck, and when Yuck gets bigger than a child’s capacity to handle it, their behavior shifts. Instead of calmly accepting the word no, they explode. Instead of staying in their room like they’re supposed to, they run into your room. Instead of trying again after making a mistake, they quit.
In these moments, their discomfort has started to control their behavior.
You can think of it like: Yuck has grabbed the steering wheel, and when Yuck is driving, you’re going to see these negative behaviors, moods, or attitudes.
But here’s the really hopeful part. Our goal isn’t to get rid of Yuck. Discomfort is part of life. They need to learn how to handle these feelings.
But we can help our children become stronger than their Yuck, get that steering wheel back so they’re in the driver’s seat and Yuck is not controlling their behavior, mood, or attitude.
Now, before we talk about how to get power back from Yuck, I want to explain why it’s actually difficult to get power back from our Yuck.
Because what happens is when we go into Yuck, our brain senses that as a threat, and our fight or flight response kicks in. And fight or flight is incredibly powerful. It’s supposed to be.
Think about it: If our ancestors were walking through the woods and heard rustling in the bushes, the ones who stopped to calmly analyze whether it was dangerous probably wouldn’t survive as often as the ones whose brains yelled, “Run!”
Fight or flight kept our ancestors alive, and helped them pass on the genes that had a strong fight or flight response.
So the human brain is wired to go into fight very quickly when it senses there might be a potential problem.
That is not a flaw. That’s the way it’s designed.
And if your child is in true danger, you want them to respond quickly and intensely!
The problem is, fight or flight can’t tell the difference between a tiger and having to turn off Minecraft, or between falling off a cliff and being disappointed that your brother got something that you didn’t.
The alarm system works beautifully. It’s just a little overprotective.
So if we don’t intentionally teach children how to regain control, their Yuck will keep making decisions for them.
Now, most of us already know we want to teach our kids better ways to deal with their discomfort.
So we try to teach them how to do this or remind them how to do this in the moment, we may say things like, “Remember what we talked about,” or, “Use your calm down strategy.”
And usually what parents tell me is that either their child won’t even have these conversations, or they’ll have the conversations, but then they won’t use the strategies, or they’ll try some strategies once or twice and say nothing works.
And then we often conclude that there’s nothing we can do about this if our child isn’t open to having these discussions or using these strategies.
But I’m going to have you approach these conversations with your child a little differently.
And the way I want you to think about it is that very likely your child (whether they’re sensitive or strong-willed, or whether they have ADHD or anxiety)… whatever’s going on for them, chances are they really like having power. They like being in charge, in control.
So instead of fighting that, we’re going to use it to our advantage in two ways.
We can teach them about getting power back from Yuck and putting Yuck in the passenger seat. And we’re going to use their desire for power to let them guide this process.
So let me show you what I mean by this. I’m going to start by talking about a child named Ethan, who every time it was time to stop playing video games, used to completely lose it.
He would yell, argue, slam doors. Now afterward, he might feel bad about it, but in the moment, he wasn’t doing anything different.
Usually when we approach kids like Ethan, we’ll say something like, “Hey, it’s not okay to respond that way. You need to learn to control that. Things aren’t always going to go your way.”
But when you do that, you’re telling a child who likes control what they have to do, what they have to change, and immediately you put them into Yuck, and they’re going to get defensive.
But even if they don’t, if we can continue in the conversation and they’re slightly open, we may say something like, “When you’re mad, take deep breaths.”
Now again, we’re telling them what to do instead of letting them be in charge.
And most kids when they feel out of control (because we’ve told them what they shouldn’t be doing or what they should be doing), when we’ve made suggestions of what they should do, most kids at this point shut down.
They won’t have these conversations.
So I’m going to show you another way to approach this.
Now what I’m about to tell you is a little bit generalized because in my programs, I work directly with parents to modify these, to make it work for their family and their children.
But here’s generically what it might look like: Instead of Ethan’s parent telling him that it wasn’t okay how he responded when he had to get off of his device, and instead of suggesting things he should do, they approach him later at another time, not in the middle of when he’s upset, but a little while later.
And his parent, maybe it’s his dad, asks him a question with curiosity. So listen to my tone a little bit as I go through this conversation. He says to Ethan, “Hey, Ethan, can I ask you something?” So you can hear there’s a tone of curiosity, not a tone of, “I’m going to tell you what to do,” but a tone of curiosity, which makes Ethan the expert here.
And then he says to Ethan, “When it’s time to turn off the game, how much does that stink? How much do you hate that on a scale from 1 to 10?”
So he is asking Ethan what his experience is like. Now, very likely Ethan is going to say a very high number, ’cause he doesn’t like getting off of his device.
Now, at that point, his dad doesn’t say, “Well, you have to learn to manage that.”
Instead, he’s remembering that Ethan likes power and control. So he’s starting in Ethan’s world, inviting complaints.
Already Ethan, is going to be less defensive when he’s approached that way, because he’s being listened to rather than lectured. He’s being consulted rather than convinced.
Now, again, very likely Ethan’s going to say, “Well, I hate it at a level 10 or nine or eight,” or something pretty high,
So his dad simply asks, “Would you like to make that feeling less uncomfortable? Would you like to turn it down from a nine to a seven?”
Now again, notice something. He’s being curious. He’s letting Ethan make the decision. He’s showing Ethan he can turn down the intensity of that feeling a little bit.
He’s asking Ethan if he wants less discomfort.
And then he leaves it up to Ethan to decide. The truth is, most kids, especially those who feel really strongly, do want less discomfort.
They don’t want to be told to change their behavior.
Now, let’s say Ethan says, no, he doesn’t want to turn it down, which is common.
His dad can just say, “Okay, let me know if you change your mind.” The ball is still in Ethan’s court.
Now, if Ethan says yes, he wants to know how to turn it down, Ethan’s dad can approach it like this: He can say, “Well, different things work for different people to turn that intensity down. Some strategies are going to bring you from a nine to an eight. Some will bring you from a nine to a seven, from a nine to a six. Let’s test some and you can see which work better and worse.”
You’re ultimately asking your child to rank these strategies relative to each other, because if you say, “Let’s see which work and which don’t,” they’re going to say none of them work.
When they rank relative to each other, we can get an idea of what type of strategy works better and worse for your child.
Now the idea here, though, is that Ethan’s dad is not saying, “Here’s what you need to do.” He’s saying, “You get to experiment.”
Now Ethan is the scientist. He’s in charge.
So to calm himself down in those moments so Yuck isn’t in charge, maybe he tries listening to music or shooting baskets for two minutes. Maybe he’s squeezing a stress ball or wrapping himself in a blanket.
It doesn’t matter which strategy Ethan chooses first. The important part is Ethan is ranking them. He’s deciding. He’s keeping score. He’s evaluating which strategy takes him from a 10 or a nine to a seven or a six.
He has power over the process. He’s not the passive recipient of mom or dad’s ideas.
And because he’s bought into this process a little and said, “Yes, I do want to know,” he’s more motivated to actually figure it out.
Now, you might be thinking, “My child wouldn’t even agree to that conversation. My child would be the one that says, ‘No, I don’t want to figure out how to do this.'”
Chances are you’re right. You’ve probably had this experience before.
They’re not interested, at least not today, and that’s okay.
When I was a therapist, I worked with the most resistant kids, and sometimes it took them weeks to months to finally say, “Yep, I’m ready to learn how to turn down the intensity of my Yuck, I’m ready to learn how to put Yuck in the passenger seat instead of the driver’s seat.”
But I knew when a child resisted, I didn’t need to panic, and I don’t want you to panic either, because here’s something that’s true about kids with big emotions:
They want to avoid the biggest pain. Right now, the discomfort of learning something new is probably bigger than the discomfort their reactions are causing them, so they don’t want to change.
But eventually, children become tired of feeling out of control. They’re starting to recognize that their Yuck has so much power, and they don’t want that anymore. They’re also often tired of the shame they feel inside because they’re reacting in ways that they themselves know aren’t the best.
They also become tired of ruining play dates, tired of fighting with siblings, tired of feeling embarrassed afterward. And suddenly, and that’s when the pain of staying the same is bigger than the discomfort of trying something new.
Especially when they know they get to guide these experiments, they get to be in charge. It’s not you telling them what to do.
And especially when they know the result is that they’re going to feel more in control, more powerful, that’s when their motivation shifts. That’s when your children become ready. So if your child says no today, don’t force it.
Just keep planting seeds every once in a while. Casually bring it up.
Because readiness usually does come when they feel safe and they know they are in charge of this process.
Now, at the end of the day, there’s something you’ve probably noticed. This isn’t really just about the calming strategies. We’re teaching children something bigger: We’re teaching them you don’t have to do whatever Yuck tells you to do, and you can be in charge of this process.
We’re telling them, “Your Yuck might be loud, it might feel powerful, it might feel like it’s taking over sometimes, but little by little you can learn how to take your power back… and you can be in charge as you do that.”
And knowing that they can get control over their Yuck response is a lesson they’ll use long after they’ve outgrown bedtime battles or screen time arguments or sibling fights, because one day it’ll help them when they’re nervous before a job interview, or heartbroken after a breakup, or overwhelmed at college, or frustrated at work.
That’s really what we’re building, and we’re working with them to get there instead of against them.
Now, I will mention that this process might take longer if you have a child with a narrow zone of tolerance, if you have a child who really struggles with discomfort.
I have a resource for you to help you figure out if your child does have a narrow zone of tolerance. And what to think about if that is the case.
You can find that free resource and others on the show notes for this episode at rachel-bailey.com/385.
Because I’m always here to give you strategies to build your parenting long game.
Thanks for listening. I’ll see you again soon.
FREE RESOURCE: Does your child have a narrow zone of tolerance?
