Episode 389 Transcript
Hello, it is Rachel, and welcome to episode 389 of Your Parenting Long Game.
If you have a child with big reactions, you’ve probably wondered (maybe even on a daily basis!): How should I react to their big reactions?
Because on one hand, you don’t want your child’s emotions running the show. You don’t want to walk on eggshells, change your decisions because you’re afraid of their reaction, or spend all of your energy trying to make sure your child is okay.
But you also don’t want to become the parent who says, “You’re fine. Get over it.” You know your child really is having a hard time, and telling yourself “they just need to learn to deal with being upset!” doesn’t necessarily make things go better.
So we’re left trying to figure out this really difficult middle ground: How do I care about how my child feels without caring so much about their reaction that it starts controlling me?
And there actually is a way we can care too much about our kids’ reactions and a way we can care too little. Both can make these moments harder, but I’m going to teach you today what the middle ground [00:01:00] looks like and why finding that middle ground gives us much more influence when our kids are struggling.
So let’s back up and talk about the big reactions we may be seeing from our kids. Imagine you tell your child it’s time to turn off their screen, and immediately they react, “No, I’m not done!” Maybe they start negotiating or maybe they yell at you. Maybe they say, “You’re so mean,” or slam something down and stomp upstairs.
Or imagine your child is anxious about going to school. They tell you they don’t want to go. They tell you that their stomach hurts. Maybe they’re crying or begging you not to make them go.
Or maybe your child finds out that their friend can’t come over. Suddenly they’re so mad, nothing you say helps. They tell you it’s the worst day ever.
In all of these situations, in these big reactions, we’re seeing what I call “Yuck behavior.
These reactions are all a sign that they’re in Yuck and they don’t have the skills to be able to manage that Yuck maturely. So what comes out is this behavior or big [00:02:00] reaction.
And many of us, when we see this Yuck behavior, we react to that.
And this is where things get complicated. Because most of us, in reaction to their reaction, tend to move in one of two directions.
The first is we care too much about their reaction. We recognize that this is Yuck behavior, that there’s Yuck underneath, but we care too much that they’re in Yuck. We care too much that they’re uncomfortable.
Something inside of us says, “Oh, no, my child is hurting,” or, “My child is struggling,” and we start worrying about the fact that they’re in Yuck.
And when we’re affected by it, we usually become softer. Maybe we soften the limit and say, “Okay, five more minutes on your device.” Maybe we start explaining, “I know you’re upset, but remember, you already had extra screen time yesterday, and we talked about this.”
Or if we see our child’s anxiety, maybe we reassure them over and over, “You’re going to be fine. I promise. There’s nothing to worry about.” We’re uncomfortable with their discomfort, and we try to [00:03:00] make it go away.
Now, on the other hand, there’s another direction we sometimes take, and we care too little about their reaction. We know they’re in Yuck, but we think they just have to get used to it. And often this happens because we’re exhausted. We’ve explained, we’ve validated, we’ve listened, we’ve been screamed at, and eventually we think, “I’m done.”
So now we care too little about what they’re going through. That sounds more like, “You’re fine,” or, “This is ridiculous,” or, “I’m not talking about this anymore,” or, “Go to your room until you can calm down.”
Or maybe we simply disconnect. We think, “they need to learn that the world doesn’t revolve around their feelings,” and we step back from the situation either physically or emotionally.
(And of course, there is truth to the fact that they need to learn that the world doesn’t revolve around their feelings, but there’s a difference between not fixing someone’s feelings and being so disconnected from them that we’re leaving them alone with feelings they don’t yet have the skills to handle.)
So again, [00:04:00] sometimes we care too much about their Yuck, and sometimes we care too little about their Yuck, and neither one tends to work very well because think about what our kids experience in each situation.
When we care too much about their reaction, the message they pick up isn’t simply, “My parent cares about me.” They also pick up, “Wow, this feeling must be really bad if my parent wants it to stop so badly.” They also sense there’s no one strong enough around to help me through this bad feeling.
And I want you to imagine what this is like. Imagine you’re learning to swim and you’re nervous about going into deeper water. A swimming instructor sees your fear and immediately they get nervous too. They say, “Okay, you know what? You’re right. We shouldn’t put you in the deep water yet.”
And they also say to you, “Are you okay? Do you want to just get out?”
If you see that reaction in an instructor, someone who’s supposed to help you, you’re going to think, “Wait, maybe I really can’t handle this! And that instructor certainly isn’t [00:05:00] going to help me with this. They’re just as nervous as I am.”
Now let’s go to the other extreme. Imagine you’re nervous about going into the deep end and there’s a swim instructor and they say to you, “Oh, you’re fine. Stop reacting like that. Just get in.” Now that reaction where they don’t seem to care that you’re struggling, it isn’t necessarily going to make you less afraid.
Maybe you’re going to jump into the deep end out of fear of that person, but it’s not actually going to make you more confident that you can handle hard things. It’s just going to make you want to avoid that person when you go through hard things.
And this is what can happen with our kids. When we become irritated with their Yuck or emotionally withdrawn because we think they need to deal with it, we don’t help them handle discomfort in the long run. We just make them want to avoid us.
So again, we don’t want to swing in those extreme directions. We don’t want to communicate, “Your feelings are so dangerous that I need to fix them,” and we don’t want to communicate, “Your feelings are so unacceptable that I’m going to imply that those feelings [00:06:00] need to go away, or I’m going to imply that I don’t want to be around you when you have them.”
What we want to communicate is something different.
So let’s go back to that swim instructor example. Imagine there’s a swim instructor who sees that you’re scared and respects why you’re scared, but they’re not bothered by it. They stay close. They don’t rush you, but they also don’t treat your fear as evidence that you can’t do it.
Their presence and their energy communicates, “I see that you’re scared, and that makes sense, so I’m right here. I also know you’re capable of this, and I’m going to push you a little bit.”
That is confidence and connection at the same time. In this case, in this case, they’re literally swimming near you demonstrating their connection. But you can sense, their confidence that you and they can handle the situation.
So again, we want confidence and we want connection. Confidence means you see that they’re in Yuck and you don’t need the Yuck to go away. You don’t need the feeling to [00:07:00] disappear, because you know they can survive disappointment. They can tolerate frustration. They can be in a state of anxiety without it needing to immediately stop.
And connection means that you respect what they’re going through, that something about the situation is hard.
So let’s look at some practical examples of confidence and connection.
Let’s say your child says, “You’re the worst parent ever.”
Caring too much about their reaction would be explaining why you’re doing what you’re doing, or being submissive and giving them more time if that’s what they want. It’s about trying to fix the Yuck right away.
Caring too little might sound like, “Whatever, be mad. You still need to get off of your device.”
Confidence plus connection is something like, “Yeah, you really wanted more time now.” And by the way, often you’re not going to say those words. In fact, some kids get more frustrated when you say the words, “You wanted more time.” Because they hate validation. Confidence and connection don’t come from your words, so you really don’t have to say very [00:08:00] much. They come from your tone and your energy.
So you can think in your mind that your child really wanted more time. You don’t necessarily have to say that to them. You can think: “I understand your reaction. I respect your reaction, but your reaction doesn’t control the situation.”
So you remain connected, you remain confident, and you commit to your limit. You don’t need them to agree with the limit in order to feel confident setting it. You don’t need their reaction to stop, and you don’t need to disconnect from them in order to be strong enough to follow through.
Now, the same thing applies to anxiety. Let’s say your child says, “I can’t go. I can’t do it. Please don’t make me go.”
Caring too much might lead you to reassure endlessly or remove them from the uncomfortable situation.
Caring too little might lead you to say, “You’re going. Stop making such a big deal about it.”
But confident and connected sounds or feels something like this: “Something about this feels really hard. I’ll be here through this with you. We’ll get through [00:09:00] it together, and we are doing it.”
Now, notice what you’re not promising. You’re not promising that they won’t feel anxious. You’re not promising that they’ll like what happens. You’re not promising that they’ll be comfortable. What you’re communicating is much more powerful than that. You’re communicating discomfort is survivable.
And it is so natural to try to get it to stop when they’re anxious or frustrated.
And caring a lot about this struggle can look very effective in the short term: You give the extra screen time, and the screaming stops. You let your child stay home, and the anxiety drops. You solve the problem, and your child feels better. So your brain says, “Good, that worked.”
But what really happened? You didn’t necessarily increase your child’s ability to handle discomfort, you just removed the discomfort.
And if that becomes the pattern, your child starts to believe they can’t handle discomfort, and then you’re dealing with these big reactions over and over and over.
And on the other side, caring too little can also seem [00:10:00] temporarily effective. Maybe when you distance yourself in those moments, your child stops talking about their feelings and they stop having these big reactions. Maybe they go upstairs or the argument ends. But being quiet in these moments of struggle isn’t the same thing as resilience.
All your child is learning is, “My big feelings push people away.” So then they start to hide their big feelings or fear their big feelings.
So again, the goal isn’t “make my child feel better” and it isn’t “make my child deal with this alone.” It’s “help my child experience discomfort in my presence and show them that I’m not threatened by it.”
So one of the main things you want to think about in the moment when your child is having a big reaction is not actually their reaction.
It’s how you’re reacting to their reaction.
So when your child has this big reaction, instead of saying, “How can I stop it?” or “How can I get away from this?” ask yourself, “How can I show them that I can handle their discomfort without becoming anxious or without [00:11:00] becoming angry?”
Because the opposite of anxiety is confidence. The opposite of anger is connection. That’s how you get to this place of confidence and connection.
And when your confident, connected response becomes your measure of success, you stop needing your child to calm down in order to feel like you handled it well. You can know you handled it well because you didn’t let it control you. You didn’t get sucked in, and you didn’t pull away.
And what your kids learn is, “My feelings can get really big without becoming dangerous. Someone can love me without fixing everything for me. Someone can be firm with me without rejecting me.”
And they also learn, “I don’t have to like what’s happening in order to handle what’s happening.”
This is how they learn to handle the discomfort of friends not doing things they want…how they learn to handle the discomfort of not making the school play when they want to…how they handle the discomfort of having a boss [00:12:00] who’s difficult.
They learn they can trust themselves when feelings get hard. That’s why the sweet spot is about being confident and being connected.
It’s about caring deeply about your child without becoming responsible for their reaction.
You’re connected enough to stay with them, and you’re confident enough not to rescue them.
That is Leadership Parenting and that is your parenting long game. Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you next time.
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