Transcript of “Handling Our Kids’ Explosive Anger (with Loryn Brantz)”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m looking forward to speaking with a creative force. She’s an author, artist, poet, and director. It’s Loryn Brantz. Loryn has won Emmys for her outstanding achievement in designing and building puppets at Jim Henson’s workshop. She’s the creator of comics and numerous beloved children’s books, including the bestselling series Feminist Baby and It Had To Be You (A Love Poem Your Baby Can See). Our last conversation on Unruffled was about her book Poems of Parenting, which became a New York Times bestseller.

And her new book is my favorite of all because it’s about understanding and responding to our children’s overwhelming emotions. In I Am a Spicy Nugget, Loryn delivers a powerfully helpful and comforting message to parents and kids with her usual grace and humor.

Hi, Loryn.

Loryn Brantz: Hi.

Janet Lansbury: I’m in awe of your new book. I love all your books, but this one could probably be my favorite.

Loryn Brantz: That means so much, all of that coming from you. And I think you’re wonderful too. And you make me smile and I’m so happy to be talking to you again and back on your podcast.

Janet Lansbury: Thank you. Well, I want to talk all about your book and especially framing it around this incredible message that you were able to encapsulate and masterfully explain and demonstrate. I’ve spent hundreds of podcast episodes and blogs just trying to help parents do this because it’s the biggest challenge that we have as parents. And here you wrote a picture book and you totally nailed it. It’s really unfair!

Loryn Brantz: Thank you so much. That means everything, oh my goodness!

Janet Lansbury: This idea of allowing children to have their angry explosions, or this could be a tantrum or a meltdown. But anger is the hardest emotion of all, I believe, for us to accept. And I really want to know about your process, the process behind this book. How you got to this place where you’re able to do this with your children, and what goes on in your mind? What do you tell yourself? How do you bring yourself into that?

Because that’s what we need to know: How do we do this in the moment? How do we really get there? We can know that it’s the right thing even, but we’re still going to struggle when our child is expressing something strong and intense like that. So I really want to hear you share about that, because apparently you do have some experience with this, but you’ve just figured it out. How did you figure it out?

Loryn Brantz: It’s been such a journey. I really feel like me and my husband have been through the gauntlet of parenting. Everything’s just always been so extreme. So my daughter, she gets unregulated very easily and I wanted so badly to help her. And I read everything, tried everything, went to psychologists, specialists. I mean, one particular one gave us advice. The advice she gave us ended up being sort of a breaking point of us realizing that not all the advice we’re getting is going to work for our child and we really need to react to who she is and follow our instincts and tailor them to her.

She was having trouble staying in her bed at night. We had just had her brother, my son, and it triggered something they call “jack in the box syndrome,” where you put the kid in bed and then they just jump out all night. Meanwhile, we have a newborn crying all night. And it was painful. We weren’t sleeping at all, either of us. And it was so, so hard. And we talked to other people, learned so much more. I learned about PDA and all these things.

Janet Lansbury: Can you tell everyone what PDA is?

Loryn Brantz: PDA is pathological demand avoidance. And basically it’s when you ask your kid to put on their shoes, not only is there a normal power struggle of being a child, but their nervous system just short circuits because they feel a bunch of things. Maybe they feel like they’re not able to do it or they’re anxious about it.

And it’s sort of like realizing that anytime your kid is explosive or tantruming, kids don’t want to be like that. When they’re really little, it’s because either there’s some unmet need, like they’re tired or hungry—always, it feels that way. Or if they’re a little older, it’s because they aren’t capable of it. You have to meet them where they’re at.

And we started meeting Dalia where she was at more than I think most people meet their kids where they’re at. She really didn’t like washing her hands, it’s like a sensory thing. So we used hand wipes instead. We just found ways to tailor our lives to it. She just started developing so much better and faster and calmer, and she’s really doing amazing. And our son is doing wonderful too. I think we took that extreme version of what we learned with her and we put that towards my son as well, and it really works. What I mean by extreme is that her emotions are so extreme that we really had to learn how to handle that as parents. And then we took the version of that and brought that to the way we raised our son also. And it helps for both of them, even though they’re very different.

It’s just always knowing who they are and not judging them. I think people don’t realize how badly our children want to please us and they feel so ashamed when they think they’re not. And they don’t express that, they just freak out. Just knowing that the spiraling is coming from a place of them being embarrassed or ashamed, and that’s where that rage comes from, really changes the dynamic of how you deal with it.

Janet Lansbury: Yes. And it can come from other things too, just feeling the sense that they don’t control something or when they’re working so hard to find balance all the time with their extremely rapidly developing brain and body and everything else. It’s like they’re always off-balance. And then as you note, they have this immature self-regulation ability.

You said it perfectly in your email to me when you were describing the book. You wrote: “I really wrote this book as a reminder to parents, including myself, that your kid is not on equal footing with you. They are sweet little spicy nuggets with underdeveloped prefrontal cortexes that are still learning and growing. So before getting too mad, try to see them as clearly as you can and go from there.”

You say that “your child is not on equal footing with you.” It’s this perspective that is really the key to everything, and it’s what I want to talk about here. What you’re seeing there is going to make you feel a certain way. If you’re seeing an angry, intense adult, that maybe brings up someone in your life that is even abusive or whatever, then you’re going to react in a way that’s not going to help your child. Who isn’t anything like that, who is a tiny person that’s deserving of respect like other people, but very underdeveloped in certain ways. So we have to kind of train ourselves to see that and then see the unique sensitivities of each child.

Loryn Brantz: Yes. They’re completely new to planet earth. And it’s like they’re aliens coming to visit. They’re just new, everything’s new. And imagine how hard that must be, especially with their prefrontal cortex not being fully developed and unable to regulate their emotions. I mean, I see my kids with so much empathy and compassion because they’re like little sweet beings.

Janet Lansbury: Right. And they’re in the feelings. They’re always in the middle of the feelings. They’re not standing outside it, at all, ever. They’re not able to do that. They’re just in it and then they’re in the next one and then they’re out of it. There’s a lot of wonderful, inspiring things to learn from them. Like you said, the empathy and all that.

But the challenge for us is, when things aren’t going well, when they aren’t going easily, how do we remind ourselves to go there? So I’m just wondering, in that actual moment when your child’s becoming a spicy nugget—and that drawing that you made, that image of the nugget, I’m in love with that nugget—what goes through your mind? What do you actually do in the moment or feel or tell yourself?

Loryn Brantz: Yes. Well, what you said about being able to be outside of your feelings, I think is what you gain as an adult.That’s something you can do as an adult that they can’t do.

And something that happened alongside raising my daughter and learning to parent her was I was dealing with my own things. I have really severe OCD, I have anxiety, I have all sorts of stuff. So I started meditating a lot. With what was going on in my house, I needed to not be there for her in a way where I was just sort of containing myself like a soda bottle and then not letting it go. I needed to be able to find real inner peace to deal with all of this. Because I feel like she could tell if I’m not actually calm or letting everything go.

So I ended up meditating a lot and reading a gajillion books. The Untethered Soul, I’m obsessed with it, everyone should read it. That was my best parenting book, because I ended up learning how to become the observer of my thoughts and feelings rather than getting swept up in them.

Janet Lansbury: Who’s it by?

Loryn Brantz: It’s by Michael Singer. I guess it’s a self-help book about finding inner peace and radical acceptance. A theme of my life has been realizing what I can control and what I can’t. And as it turns out, I’m pretty sure I can’t control anything. And that includes my daughter’s feelings. I’m not there to control her feelings or change her, of course. I’m just there to make sure that she’s safe and loved as she learns and grows. And I know she’s this incredible person inside and just the sweetest, most loving little person. And that as she gets older, she becomes herself more and more. I’m just here to ride that wave with her.

I get very worked up over world news and all sorts of things that I can’t control. And so learning that, it gets so much bigger. It’s like, I can’t control what’s going on in the world. I can’t control how people feel about me. And I also can’t control my kid’s tantrums. It’s radical acceptance of that, basically. The good and the bad and everything is what it is.

Janet Lansbury: Can I ask what kind of meditation you do?

Loryn Brantz: Well, I did mantra meditation for a long time. Then I kind of just spend time quiet. I’m able to go there a lot, where I just sort of become the observer of my thoughts and feelings. And Gabby Bernstein has an app and she has meditations in it and I use them all the time. They’re great, they’re guided.

Janet Lansbury: I would go even further to say we don’t control our own reactions and reflexes and emotions that come up for us, triggers or whatever, in these situations. It sounds like you’re doing all this preventative work that’s really helpful, with the meditation and everything. And your partner, I guess, helps you have time to be able to do that, right? Because I meditate, but I didn’t start until I was an older person. And I think, gosh, would I have had time to do this when my kids were little? How would I have arranged that?

Loryn Brantz: It’s so important to me that I prioritize it. I do it just for 10 minutes in the morning, after the kids get to school because I don’t have time before. And sometimes if I wake up really early before they get up, I don’t get out of bed, but I’ll put on the meditation. And I do it right before I fall asleep—which, everyone goes to bed at some point. So those are the times I do it and it makes it easier.

Janet Lansbury: And then in the moment, if one of your children is going off, now you’ve had practice. And you’ve written a whole book! I wonder, did writing the book help ground you even more into this way of being around emotions?

Loryn Brantz: Yes. It certainly was fun to encapsulate what it feels like when that happens at my house. I particularly felt strongly about not having the adult intervene because something I’ve learned in my house is that intervention usually makes things worse. Doing less is more. So the grown-up doesn’t help the nugget calm down. She eventually calms down herself because they always do, and that’s when they unpack it and try again next time.

Janet Lansbury: Yes. So you recognize this now as a place that you’re safe to go with her, that you can let her be like this and that it will pass. Both of your kids, I don’t want to just say her. Do you feel like you are a volatile person like that?

Loryn Brantz: No, and neither is my husband. So we are both kind of like, Whoa. No, no, not really. I am very intense. I’m an intense and passionate person, I have strong opinions and this and that. But I don’t think I’m volatile though.

Janet Lansbury: Do you recognize when you’re even angry? Because I don’t until a bit later. And I feel like that is maybe partly my temperament, but also very much that this was totally unacceptable in my household. There were feelings that were fine to have, being sad and crying and all that, but not being angry or pushing up against my parent in any way. And I think I would’ve been a mellow person anyway, intense on the inside, kind of like you, but not somebody that explodes. But I don’t even recognize it. I’ll be crying or I’ll be just upset, and then later I realize, Oh, you were angry! And you have a right to be angry about that! But it’s unrecognizable to me.

Loryn Brantz: Yes. And there’s social conditioning too, with women about anger, and you just kind of end up bottling up so much.

Janet Lansbury: Yes. That’s why your book is so valuable and important. I mean, all your books, but especially this one. They’re all fun for parents to read to their kids, for one thing, but they also have a message for parents. And this one, I feel like if we could look at this every day when our children are young—if we have this intense type of child, not every child is like that—but if we have a child that’s intense and has strong reactions like that, then gosh, the grounding of this, it’s just magical. I feel like you’ve really hit on something so important. Just that reminder could be so, so helpful to parents.

You put it out there. I’ve said it in all these different ways, but I’m a person that talks about parenting and you’re a parent going through it and you’ve shared how it’s done, how you can do it. You both survive it. Your relationship gets only stronger through that. And it’s just this letting go that’s so hard. Like you said, you’re not getting in the way.

Because the thing is, when we try to say anything or do anything, we have to understand that that comes from a place of us being uncomfortable and wanting to make it stop. That’s why it doesn’t work, no matter what we say. Our child has actually gone to a whole different planet, that they don’t control. They don’t want to be there, they don’t know what happened or what’s going on for them. So how can we blame them, logically? And how can we find this place of peace with this?

Loryn Brantz: With my own OCD, I have intrusive thoughts that I can’t control. And it really made me relate more to my kids’ struggles because the impulse control and the explosiveness, I know it’s obviously not controlled. And I’m like, I get that. We know that deep down in our cores, we’re not that. We’re pure love on the inside and this stuff just comes up.

Janet Lansbury: I know I keep going to this, because I feel like this is the meat and what parents really, really need. So there you are, your child’s a spicy nugget, and you know that trying to do something doesn’t help. You know they just need to go there. But what is actually happening for you?

Loryn Brantz: It kind of depends on what the scenario is exactly. If we’re at home and let’s say she pushes her brother, she’s really mad, we’ll be like, “I think you need to cool off.” She kind of stomps around and screams and goes to her room. We just wait. And then I’ll go in there and we’ll have a hug.

Janet Lansbury: But that’s after, when she’s calmed down?

Loryn Brantz: After, yes. “I know you don’t want to hit your brother. We’ll try again next time.” And she does, and she’s gotten so much better with him. We had this really beautiful moment recently where that happened. Kids don’t want to be told to say sorry to each other, so I never really ask her to. But I’ll be like, “How would you feel if he hit you?” and this and that. And she had trouble verbalizing what she was feeling, but she took out her whiteboard and she drew a graph. They do this at school. There’s happy, calm, sad, and angry in the grid, and then she put a big dot under sad. And we were like, Oh, we know she doesn’t want to hurt anybody. She just loses control. And afterwards she shows her love even more. And then the incidents happen less and less. She just knows there’s nothing she can do that would make us not love and respect her.

Janet Lansbury: So you have a lot of practice seeing beyond what’s going on there in those moments and seeing your little girl.

Loryn Brantz: So there’s that version of things, where we wait. And also sometimes we really just have to pick her up and go. If we’re going to be late for an important appointment or something, there’s no other option but to pick her up and go. And I don’t make a scene about it. It’s just like, “Here we go, we’re going.”

The other thing that helps in our household, a huge thing is imaginative play and humor. If I can catch her or my son before an explosion with humor, it’s the best thing we can do. And we have a ton of strategies for leaving the house to make things more fun that work. I’ll open the door and pretend there are invisible animals running out the door and they have to race them. And I’m like, “Are you going to beat the cheetah? Here come the elephants. Go, go, go, let’s go. We’re going to race.” And they start running out the door. Doing conga lines to go to bed. If me and my husband start doing a conga line, the kids can’t resist joining in. That’s been really helpful. I mean, there are just so many.

And Spicy Nugget actually came from a moment like that. My daughter was getting a little worked up about something and I was like, “Are you becoming a spicy nugget? I’m going to dunk you in some cold milk to cool you off.” Which I don’t know, it doesn’t even make sense, but it was funny at the time. And I picked her up and started to gently dunk her on the couch, lift her up and down. And it really broke up the moment, we both thought it was really funny, and it lowered the temperature.

Janet Lansbury: Is it okay if I give a spoiler about the end of the book?

Loryn Brantz: Oh, yes.

Janet Lansbury: Okay. To me, this is everything actually that we need to know. So at the very end of the book, the little girl says, “Wait, what was I mad about again?” After she’s gone through this whole spicy thing and the way that you’ve shown the whole process of her getting to calming down. I think that’s what’s really important about this. Because we’re impatient as parents and we want it just to flow over and stop, but it almost has all these different levels in the book about I have to go there and then I had to go there and then I had to go there. And of course, for every child, it’s specific to them. But so often at the end, it’s so telling, they have no idea what happened or how they got there.

It’s such a brilliant reminder to us that they were not in their body, they were not in relationship with us there. They were off in their own place in that feeling. That’s just what happens. So how can we blame them for that? How can we punish them for that? It’s such a great reminder when they do that at the end. They have no idea, even if they didn’t say it.

Loryn Brantz: They just go back to playing with something.

Janet Lansbury: Yes. They just turn the corner. They’re la la la la la. And we’re kind of a mess, but we have to pick up the pieces. We can’t get enough reminders of this, as far as I’m concerned.

Loryn Brantz: Yes. And I think a lot of it is, I don’t know if this is the right way to say it, but don’t waste your energy during a tantrum. Don’t hurt yourself trying to help your kid. It’s not going to help them. And then you’re going to be so exhausted after that you won’t be able to play and have fun when they’ve totally moved on. Asking questions or trying to reason when they’re not hearing what you’re saying and they’re just totally dysregulated. So just go to your happy place in your head and know that they won’t be like that forever.

Janet Lansbury: Yes. And it’s not even that we have to play with them after or be in a good mood for them. This is just for us. Our own self-care means practicing as much as possible letting go of those feelings that other people have, especially our kids, who are just experiencing everything so vividly. And some people talk about riding the waves with them or whatever. Don’t ride the wave, sit on the beach. Or I like being the anchor, so I’m underwater. I’m just here. I’m not going anywhere, but I’m not trying to do anything to you. I’m letting your wave come and go and do its thing.

Again, I can’t recommend this book highly enough. It’s going to be so much fun for kids to read, so validating and comforting for kids to read, I believe, even if they’re not a person that blows up.

Loryn Brantz: Yes, that’s been the best part so far. A handful of kids I know have read it and they love it. They laugh so much when they’re reading it. They really enjoy it. They want to read it again. One of them now self-identifies as a spicy nugget. She’s my neighbor’s kid and she’s like, “This book is about me, right? You wrote this about me.” I’m like, “Yeah, sure!”

Janet Lansbury: Yes. Normalizing it, making kids feel, Oh, it’s okay to be every side of me. So many things in a short book. Well done. And I wish you all the success. You deserve it.

Loryn Brantz: Thank you so much. I’m so excited about your book.

Janet Lansbury: I am too. I think you’ll find that it took me a lot more words to say what you said easily, but all of this information’s in my book too, along with a lot of other things. Because my book is focused on babies, “Calming the Cries” is the relevant chapter. It’s about all the feelings and it’s about everything we’re talking about and how we can start getting in this groove early to make it easier for us. When our baby’s crying and we know that we’ve done everything to help them feel better and they’re still crying, how should we feel about this? How can we be there for them? Really supporting them, but letting go of that as a parent.

Because when we can get on this track early, it’s so much easier. I’m sure it’s easier for you every time your child becomes a spicy nugget because you’ve practiced, you’ve been to the other side, you know it’s going to end, like you’ve said. And that they were transported to this unreachable place, so you didn’t waste your time and energy trying to reach them there, but waited until they were done and then you’re totally there for them. But it’s a process and I feel we need a lot of practice. As long as I’ve been doing this, it’s still hard for me.

Loryn Brantz: It’s not easy.

Janet Lansbury: Anyway, thank you so much again, Loryn. We’ll be in touch again, I’m sure. And it’s great to have you back on Unruffled, sharing this great book.

Loryn Brantz: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Janet Lansbury: Take care.

I Am a Spicy Nugget is going to be available September 8th, and you can get it wherever you get your books. We’ll also leave a link for you in the show notes.

Thanks so much for listening. We can do this.

My new book is finally finished and available for pre-order. It’s called Baby Person. And I think you’re going to find it unlike any parenting book you’ve ever come across. For one, because this book is about us and the quality of our experience. It’s about how as parents or grandparents or anyone caring for children, you can discover a deeper level of fulfillment. You can have more ease, more joy, and more success day-to-day and in the long term. And at the same time, you’ll be building a lifelong bond with your child that’s steeped in trust, respect, and mutual delight. And if you pre-order now, I have an exclusive podcast thank you gift just for you. You can check it all out on my website, janetlansbury.com.

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Transcript of “Painfully Shy in Public, Spirited at Home (What’s Up with That?)”

My new book is finally finished and available for pre-order! It’s called Baby Person. And I think you’re going to find it unlike any parenting book you’ve ever come across. For one, because this book is about us and the quality of our experience. It’s about how as parents or grandparents or anyone caring for children, you can discover a deeper level of fulfillment. You can have more ease, more joy, and more success day-to-day and in the long term. And at the same time, you’ll be building a lifelong bond with your child that’s steeped in trust, respect, and mutual delight. And if you pre-order now, I have an exclusive podcast thank you gift just for you. You can check it all out here on my website, janetlansbury.com.

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m going to be responding to a parent who’s concerned that her daughter seems to be painfully shy when she’s around other children. Even in her gymnastics class, which she says that she loves, but she’s not very willing to participate. At the same time, this child seems very strong and opinionated at home with her parents. So it’s confusing, right?

Well, this is actually much more common than it might sound. What I’ve learned is that the behavior isn’t indicating what we might think it is, that this child is fearful or painfully shy. I’m going to explain all this and why a child who seems to be a strong-willed person when she’s with her family at home can behave differently in social situations. I’ll also explain how to help them to evolve in those situations, how to help them to get more comfortable and feel more at ease and more able to participate.

I’m excited to get into this and I’ll start with this parent’s note to me:

Hello,

I wanted to thank you for all your help along my parenting journey. My three-and-a-half-year-old daughter is so fun, loud, busy, smart, and opinionated at home. But no one other than me, her dad, and her grandparents would ever know it because she’s painfully shy in every other social setting, even with her cousins or my friend’s children that she has played with many times before. The other kids are excited to see her because they know her and they often seem confused why she’s shy toward them or not answering them.

People always comment in front of her how shy she is. And I hate it, probably because I was a shy kid myself and I didn’t like people calling me shy all the time. I feel so bad for my daughter and I want to help her to be more outgoing or to interact with other kids, but I don’t want to intervene too much either. When we are with other kids, she will mostly play by herself, just sit with me, or quietly ask me to play with her instead of playing with them.

Another example where she is shy is at gymnastics, which we go to every week. She’s always excited to go and tells me she wants to go and goes right into the gym when class starts. She does her stretches with the class. Then she will do the first rotation, say, bars, for example, just fine. But then when she has to transition to the next event, say, beam, she all of a sudden will clam up and won’t move. Sometimes it will be two different coaches at the different events, but she knows both coaches pretty well, as we’ve been doing gymnastics for quite some time now.

The coaches will say, “It’s your turn!” and may offer to hold her hand or help her, etc. But she will just sit there and not say or do anything, almost like she’s frozen or scared, even. Sometimes she might shake her head no. So they will just have another kid go before her and then ask her a few times again if she wants to go. She will sometimes just sit there until the class is over at that point. It’s like once she clams up, she can’t get out of it.

I won’t make a huge deal about it, but I might ask her if she likes gymnastics or if she would rather not do it anymore. She always says she loves it and wants to continue to go.

My question is, how do I handle this? I sometimes let her sit there or sometimes I will try to go in and help her myself, as it is a preschool class where parents watch and are welcome to come in if the child needs us.

She’s going to preschool soon, and I’m nervous she will do this there too and I won’t be there to help her. In general, I would love pointers on how to handle my very shy girl. Most of all, I want her to feel confident and happy and proud of who she is.

As I said, this dichotomy is much more common than we might think. And I wonder if many of you out there have experienced this with your child who seems so—well, I use the term “strong-willed” and to me, that’s a positive thing to say about a child. I know some people have a negative connotation around it, but to me, this is alpha behavior. It is sometimes kind of intense, but it’s these big, bright lights that are very powerful. And they have all the downsides that go with those upsides: they can be a bit opinionated, they can be bossy, they can be loud, they can be big. And like I said, I see that as a positive.

One of the many, many things I’ve learned since I’ve been able to have this incredible experience—I consider it an incredible experience and the only way I could possibly have learned all the things that I’ve learned about children and be able to really see beyond their behavior and understand them and what they need. The way that I’ve done this is by being able to facilitate parent-toddler classes for years and years and years. In those classes, I get to see the children every week. I get to see their dynamic with other kids, with their parents. We get to see how the parents making slight adjustments can make a difference in their child’s comfort in the surroundings and help their child start to open up and participate more.

We can see these different personality types, too. And again, this one is a theme, this child who the parents feel like is so strong at home, and yet when they’re with even their cousins, it’s a different story. Parents worry about them. But I’ve learned not to worry, because what this is is something that can happen in so many different ways to children. It’s children getting stuck in a power position. I mean, it’s not a super comfortable position, but it’s also not sad and painful and fearful. It’s really just kind of a stuck place that kids go to.

You’ve heard me talk about this a lot. It can happen where children get stuck in certain behaviors because they notice those behaviors have power with us. There are a million examples of this, and so many of them have come up on the podcast. Sometimes it’s that we wanted to really stress this message to our child about bodily autonomy, that you need to give your consent before anyone touches you. And kids will get stuck in exploring that power with us, like when we need them to leave a situation or we’re trying to pick them up or stop them from hitting us or anything, they’ll say, “Don’t touch me! You’re touching me! I don’t want you to touch me!”

I remember one time in class, there was this wonderful family and I loved this little girl. She was a power girl, she was a power player. And the mom was very committed to this idea of her child being gender neutral, she wanted to give her child that kind of upbringing. And somehow children, they know. They’re so in tune with us that they figure out what has power with us, and then they get stuck exploring that. So in this one case, this little girl, I felt so bad for the mother because she became the biggest girly princess you could imagine. She became obsessed. Would she have explored that anyway? She probably would have, but it became a thing because the mother was so pained about it.

I tried to help the mother understand that this is just a phase, it will pass. And the more you can welcome it, trust her, and let her explore and not feel threatened by this in any way, the sooner it will pass. And sure enough, it did. This can happen with children saying certain words that we are offended by, and then they get stuck going to those words again and again and again. A lot of us have experienced that issue. It’s really a whole gamut of things.

So what I’ve seen happen is these are powerful children and they do often take a bit longer to want to suss a situation out. This little girl wants to come in like a queen, already knowing everything that’s going on, doing it all perfectly. This is the kind of child that fits this model. They don’t want to be the vulnerable one making the wrong move. So they’re waiting, they’re holding on, they’re watching.

And then they feel people trying—especially the most important person, the parent—trying to help them, encourage them to join in and do the things that we want them to do. Our child feels the power in that, and that makes them feel even more stuck in this role of being the one holding it all together and letting other people be so excited to see them. And yet they’re staying internalized about that. They’re not going to give it up, they’re not going to give in to being goofy and enthusiastic too.

So it is not comfortable, like I said, and they are kind of missing out. But on the other hand, they’re also doing this really intelligent thing, which is observing. They’re getting to be the ones to notice what’s going on and what other children are doing and finding that place where they could fit in.

I’m saying all this to encourage this parent and any parent who’s worried about their child’s social skills, their assertiveness with other kids, their outgoingness. I mean, this girl may never be outgoing with other children in that way, and that’s okay. But that strong girl in her is going to come out with the people that she’s comfortable with and she just needs a chance to find her way.

But instead, there’s certain things kind of holding her back. And the main one is the view we have of this child. As parents, we always go to that fear place or that worry place. I mean, I totally relate to that. My children are adults and I still go there. I’ve learned that that’s not the truth very often, but it still comes up for me.

So if we could start to see this differently, start to see this as what I’m convinced it really is, which is a girl just taking her sweet time to do it her way. And that is not painful or shy in a negative, uncomfortable way at all. I mean, I don’t even think it is shy, honestly. It’s just being reserved in that situation because I’m not going to let go of this power that I have. And I’m also going to do it my way. That opinionated girl, she’s having an opinion about whether she wants to do that next gymnastics thing or not. No, I don’t want to do that right now.

And then she feels everybody trying to get her to get her to do it, get her to do it, and that makes it even harder for her to give in. So even if she might have been ready to try it, now she’s less ready to, because the coaches want her to, her mom wants her to, her mom’s coming in and trying to help her, hold her hand. All of that just makes it worse for her. It makes it harder for her to take those risks of trying something that she might not do perfectly or as well as she thinks she should.

Across the board, what kids need most when it comes to their social learning is confidence in themselves and their process. And how do we nurture that? By us having confidence in them and their process, which means trusting. Trusting, allowing it to unfold, not trying to accommodate or coax her out or make it work for her. Honor her strong position as the observer that’s going to stand back and hold her own until she’s ready. That’s a very strong position and point of view to take, and that’s where this girl is.

I’ve seen this a hundred times with kids in my class. Oftentimes they are girls, but not always. I don’t know why that is! But in class, these alpha children will often be right by their parent, maybe they’re even trying to pull their parent to come play with them. And I discourage that; I try to encourage the parent to hold their ground, and that’s what I’m going to encourage this parent to do. I’m about to get to the steps that will help her. But mainly I want to help her understand what’s actually going on here. Because that’s everything, right? The way we see, the way we understand what’s going on with our child, that decides all of our reactions and behaviors and especially decides the most important thing, which is the feelings that we’re emitting that our child is picking up on.

If we’re feeling worried that our child may be scared or painfully shy, our child is feeling that concern coming from us and that’s keeping them stuck. I love how this parent remembers being called shy and how she didn’t like that. So she can start right now by not even thinking of this as shyness, because again, I don’t think it is. I’m convinced it’s a powerful observer that’s going to take her sweet time until she’s ready and not going to let anyone rush her. And the more you try to rush her, the more she’s going to hold on to her position. That is the epitome of strong, right?

This parent says, “The coaches will say, ‘It’s your turn!’ and may offer to hold her hand or help her, etc.” Again, I feel like that’s making it harder for this little girl, not helping her. Then this parent says, “But she will just sit there and not say or do anything, almost like she’s frozen or scared, even.” “Frozen”? Yes, because people are trying to take something from me that I need to hold onto. “Scared, even”? I sincerely doubt it, because there’s nothing this child is saying or doing that’s sounding like she’s afraid to be there. She wants to go, she’s excited to go, she can’t wait to do it when it’s on her terms. But all of a sudden it’s like, I don’t want to make that transition or I’m not sure about it or I’m not sure if I can do that next thing as well or I’m not as used to it or Let me see if everybody’s going to try to draw me out again like they’ve been doing. She’s feeling her mom’s trepidation, maybe. Nope, I’m holding on. Sorry, this is what I’m doing. It’s interesting, right? I love kids, they’re so great, but they can confound us! We take things at face value, and on the outside it does seem like she could be scared or shy or painfully frozen.

This parent says, “It’s like once she clams up, she can’t get out of it.” Yes, it’s a stuck place. How do you break out and take a chance and be vulnerable when this has become your position? It’s very hard. It’s harder for us as adults to say, Okay, I’ll do it when we’re holding onto that opinion. Harder for us to say, Maybe you’re right when we’re holding onto our opinion about something. So imagine how much harder it is for a child, who’s so new to this. All these feelings that are coming up for her in this gymnastics situation, where these expectations are all on her and she doesn’t necessarily want to go along with them. She’s got strong opinions.

And the parent says that she always asks her if she likes it and she always says she loves it and wants to keep going. I mean, there’s so much richness going on for her here. She’s getting to observe all these things. She’s getting all these people falling all over themselves trying to get her to do things. She has all this power, which is a double-edged sword for her. It’s not really that fun, but it’s still a fascinating experience. Certainly a compelling one. It’s definitely not painful.

Let’s talk about what else this parent can do, besides seeing this differently, which is again, the key. And hopefully a relief to this parent or any parent going through something like this, that actually this isn’t something to worry about. It’s just this interesting thing that your child’s gotten caught up in. But she will find her way out if we can actually do things that encourage that, which is the opposite of trying to encourage her to get more involved or be more participatory or whatever it is. Instead, we want to just take all the pressure off that’s coming from us. Which means all the help, all the concern, clear the air of all of that.

We can easily do this once we believe and trust in her. It’s really not that hard. It’s like a letting go, a relief. That’s how she’ll get out of this power loop. She will find her way, she will find her time. It may not be in this series of gymnastics classes or the next one, but it might be in the next social opportunity she has after that.

And if this still seems to be going on by the time she’s about to start preschool, I would let the staff know: It takes her a while, but it’s okay. Don’t try to get her playing. Don’t try to get her joining in. She will do it in her time. Just leave the space open for her. Maybe once in a while they could offer: “Oh, would you like to join?” And if she says no: “Okay.” Really letting go of it. Accepting where she’s at instead of trying to accommodate it and make it work for her somehow.

Letting go and accepting are how this girl is going to “feel confident and happy and proud of who she is.” I think she already is very confident, but she’ll be more able to take risks when we take this cloud of worry away. Again, that cloud is mostly coming from us. We can’t control what the grandparents think or what those cousins think. I mean, they don’t seem worried about it anyway, they’re just happy to see her. We don’t want her to sense our discomfort. The best way to ensure that is we decide to trust her and therefore we’re not uncomfortable about it. We just know it’s going to take a little more time for her to let down her guard and be vulnerable enough to take risks.

Let’s talk about the way this can look once you’ve started to see it that way. First, the cousins. So here come the cousins. Instead of suggesting she play with them or do anything with them, you’re just going to let her know she’s going to see her cousins. Oh, they’re all so excited to see you!, etc. Now there they all are, and you’re not going to do anything to try to make this happen. If she wants to kind of reject the cousins or not join in with them, great.

At the same time, though, don’t accommodate. Don’t be feeling like you need to find something for her to do or play with her yourself or get something going with her as if she’s missing out on something. She’s not missing out on anything by navigating this situation with her cousins.

The instinct this parent had was to say, “I don’t want to intervene too much.” Yes, don’t intervene at all. There’s no need to intervene in a situation like this. Nobody’s getting hurt, right? She’s just taking her sweet time. If she wants to follow you and the other adults around or sit with you, sure, but you’re not going to try to entertain her or occupy her.

Nor are you going to join in what the peers are doing as a way to try to get her to join in too, because you’ve let go of this and you know that kind of pressure would actually work the opposite of how we often think it will. It’s not going to help her to join in if we show her how to do it. No. Instead, that’s just going to show her your discomfort: I’m uncomfortable. This has a lot of power with me. I really want you to be able to do this. Yet that pressure is exactly what’s keeping her stuck!

So, do the opposite. Let go. “Oh, you don’t want to play with them? Okay.” If she quietly asks you to play, say, “Ah, not right now, but you’re welcome to hang with me.” Do everything that you would normally do, talk to the adults. Do the same at gymnastics or in any other situation with her. Find your spot where the parents are sitting. Be a secure base.

And even if other parents are getting up to help their children, I wouldn’t do that. I know a lot of that happens on playgrounds, and maybe in gymnastics class too. But I recommend you don’t do that, because it’s giving children a message that we’re concerned and we don’t think that they’re really capable of doing it themselves. That may not be how we feel inside, but that’s how it’s going to come across.

These are developmentally-appropriate situations in that they’re geared for a child this age. We’re not expecting her to go to a cocktail party with adults and socialize. This is meant for her, it’s all set up around her. So trust your child to be able to participate as they wish to and are ready to, in their way. As long as it’s not hurting anyone, obviously. Sit down. Stay put. Don’t be drawn in. Even if your child wants to have you hold their hand and help them do it, just calmly say, “Oh, you know what? I’m going to stay right here. Yes, I see you want me to come, but this is where I’m comfortable. This is where I’m going to stay. And you could sit here with me as long as you want.”

I used to tell the parents in my class, when you have older kids, you’ll be excited to have your child come sit with you or sit on your lap. Those years don’t last forever, so welcome that. Your child wants to sit on your lap or sit right next to you when they’re in a social situation? Enjoy that!

And that’s how you’ll free them up. Letting go, for the win for both of you. Letting go eases your mind and helps you relax, and it helps free your child up from these stuck places. Trusting, letting go. That’s exactly how we do what this parent wants, which is helping her child “to feel confident and happy and proud of who she is.” Because we’re proud of who she is. Whether she’s sitting with us or she’s out there participating, it’s up to her. We just like being with her. That’s a brilliant message to give your child, and it works, but not on our time, on theirs.

We put so much pressure on ourselves as parents. I think because of the worrying that we do about our child, about every little thing, and then we’ve got to fix it, we’ve got to fix it. None of that is our job. And when we’re only doing our job, which is just being there and supporting them from our parent place, we free them up to do their job, which is navigating all these situations in their way and on their time.

We can do this.

The post Painfully Shy in Public, Spirited at Home (What’s Up with That?) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “Can We Overcome Our Upbringing?”

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Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I have a question from a parent. She’s got a lot of challenges in her upbringing and I won’t pretend that I’m able to address even half of what’s going on with her, but I do have some thoughts for her to consider that I hope will really help. And it’s all about this thing that a lot of us have a hard time with: setting boundaries with respect, being the kind of leader that we want to be, someone who can be gentle because we have that confidence in ourselves.

For a lot of us, and I’m including myself here, it really all comes down to our feelings about boundaries. Do we deserve to have them? And the answer to that is yes, but we may have received a different message growing up. So I’m going to talk about where and how to assert our boundaries and why they’re important. I think a lot of us know why, but I’m going to reiterate that. And I’m also going to talk about what we let go of, which is really the things that we don’t control.

Here’s this parent’s note:

Hello Ms. Lansbury,

I am aware you haven’t enough time to answer questions and address situations. As such, I don’t really expect a response. I’ll write anyway, however, because it may help me sort my thoughts, or maybe you’ll have a spare moment and think “this is the crazy lady I’m going to respond to!”

I’m about halfway through No Bad Kids. I’m enjoying it. It seems reasonable and effective. I’ve previously read The Whole Brain Child and some other parenting books. I think I know what I should do, and I know how I want to be as a mother. But the harder I try, the worse I seem to do. I cannot ever seem to get there.

The problem, I think, is multi-faceted. I’m a naturally high anxiety person, a perfectionist, and a sensitive Pisces. On top of that, I honestly believe I wasn’t raised in such a way to develop my emotional maturity. And while I acknowledge all this, I cannot seem to overcome it.

My mother is a screamer. She also uses guilt trips, the silent treatment, hitting, and what I would deem psychological abuse. I think my sister would wholeheartedly agree. I also believe my mother to be a narcissist, though I’m not a psychologist. And while I understand I’m not her, she is who I learned to parent from. My dad stayed out of her way—she’s no kinder to him than she was to us. I didn’t get married and have kids until my mid-30s, by which time my quick, emotional responses of yelling, lecturing, and using harsh tones were well cemented. I don’t know how to fix it.

I had great ideas when we had our first child (now 5.5). I wanted very little screen time. I wanted very little candy, if any. After having my babies (the second is now 3.5 years), I went back to work. My mother-in-law graciously agreed to watch our babies full time, which was a blessing. My wishes, however, were ignored, and because she was watching them for free, my husband forbade me from pushing anything. Both children watched tv from the time they woke up to the time I got home from work and ate and drank whatever they wanted as far as juice and snacks went. I said I didn’t want any tablets in the house. A tablet was purchased by my in-laws and given to my children. I have since quit and now stay home with them, and every day is a constant battle on screen time.

I have tried giving options, I’ve tried being respectful. I think perhaps I try to reason with them too much. I have such faith in their intelligence that I feel like I should be able to reason with them. But it seems they never listen until I lose my temper and shout. Then I start to lecture. And then I hate myself. I apologize, tell them that’s not proper behavior, and make sure they understand it’s not more acceptable for me to do it than them.

And then my husband also criticizes everything I do. Every word. Every look. Every tone. He walks through the door, and the tension mounts. He’s a fantastic dad, but he counters me constantly, so it makes everything difficult.

How can I overcome my instincts or how I was raised to be a better mother? Am I too late? Have I already caused lasting damage to my girls? I can’t seem to get over this barrier, and I feel worse about it every single day.

Thanks for any advice you have.

As I said before, there’s no way I’m going to be able to address all the issues that this parent has presented and I would never pretend that I could even come close to doing that. I do have some directions I think will help her, though.

First and most importantly, I want to say it’s definitely not too late. It’s never too late. It’s certainly not too late when you have a five-year-old and a three-year-old. Relationships are always in motion. We’re always developing them. That’s true with any kind of relationship. And this relationship that she has with her children that is so precious to her and to each of her two children can grow, can change, can improve if that’s needed.

I feel in this note that this parent is already being very hard on herself. And a lot of the issues she brings up, of course, are things that I hope she might consider addressing with a therapist, if she’s not already doing that. Somebody that can support her much more than I can in a 20-minute podcast. But I do want to support her and anyone listening. Everything here is possible for her to overcome. This is well within her grasp, if she’s able to begin by being kind and patient with herself.

The main message I want to get across to her and to anyone listening is that she deserves boundaries. But sometimes the way that we’re raised as children gives us another message. When this parent says things like she’s a perfectionist, that she has anxiety. Some of us have all these checklists. I have to do this, this, this, and this to be an okay person, to be an acceptable person. I wasn’t given that unconditional feeling that I’m safe, that I’m loved, that I’m accepted, and therefore, I have to be a perfectionist. I have to get all these things done so that I too can be okay. But it’s never quite enough, because we still have to redo those things every day.

For me, sometimes it’s like, I’ve got to do my jogging, I’ve got to do this amount of work, I’ve got to do this, that, or the other to be able to like myself at the end of the day. And I have to say that as you get older, you do get more forgiving. This is probably the best part about getting older. You start to take a look at, What are these “shoulds” that I’ve put on myself? Who did that? I did that to myself, and I can undo that. So that part does get easier, but it’s taken me a long time.

With the kind of harsh upbringing that this woman had, my guess is that she got a clear message that there were a lot of expectations of her and yet she could not make any kind of demand or have an expectation of others or she’d risk their rejection. And that’s really what boundaries are. Saying, I’m doing this because this is what I need to feel comfortable and what, as a parent, I believe is best for you. Therefore, I’m asserting this. And you get to feel however you need to feel about that or want to feel about that. That doesn’t change me expressing and asserting and standing by, holding strong to these boundaries. Again, when this parent grew up with a mother who’s a screamer, uses guilt trips, the silent treatment, hitting, and what this parent says “I would deem psychological abuse”—and I’m sure she’s right about that—there’s no way this parent as a little girl was going to feel like she had a right to stand up for herself.

We hear all these words like self-care and boundaries. It’s all just standing up for ourselves, no matter how the chips fall with other people. That we matter enough to assert what we want. And that’s what kids are really asking of us, because they can’t be mature enough to know how to do these boundaries for themselves. They need us for that.

And there are a lot of indicators in what this parent’s going through that point to her discomfort with asserting her needs and her beliefs about what’s best for her children. That is coming across when she says, “While I understand I’m not her,” meaning her mother, “she is who I learned to parent from.” It also comes across when she says, “My quick emotional responses of yelling, lecturing, and using harsh tones were well cemented.” And even in something else that this parent seems to realize she’s doing too much of: “I think perhaps I try to reason with them too much.”

Lecturing, using harsh tones, reacting emotionally, trying to reason with kids, getting short-tempered when they won’t do it our way, yelling. These are all things that we do when we’re on our back foot. And that’s why they don’t tend to work very well with our children. These come from a defensive place in us. Instead of having a leader that comes in with some semblance of confidence. This is what we’re going to do. You can be mad about it if you feel mad. That doesn’t change it. This is what I’ve decided best for you and best for me at this moment. We’re not caught up in that defensive position.

But we can get caught up in that defensive position because, like in this parent’s case, we don’t feel like we have a right to stand up strong for ourselves or we never learned how to do that as a child. When we did, we may have been emotionally abandoned. So I’m already mad that I’m in this uncomfortable position of having to try to tell you to do something or I’m going to try to talk you into it because I need you to agree with me. And that isn’t setting a boundary, when someone agrees with us. That’s not the challenge of setting a boundary. I mean, we all know that. We don’t need to set a boundary when people agree with us. Setting a boundary is about, It’s okay if you disagree with me, this is still my boundary. But when we’re lecturing, when we’re reasoning, we’re hoping our child will agree with us. And our child picks up on the feeling behind that in us, which is that we don’t want to assert ourselves, that we’re not quite able to be that kind of leader for them. So that is the challenge.

And I think many of us, at least almost all the parents I work with, are challenged by this at some level. This dynamic of, I’m setting a limit of some kind, I’m asserting my boundary. You get to disagree. That doesn’t change my decision. And even if at some point down the road my decision does change, it’s not that you’re changing my decision. I may start to consider, Okay, maybe I need to change my mind. We could do that too. But that ability to change your mind is part of being confident. It’s not like we’re in negotiation. We’re not needing to get your approval. We’re not needing to explain all the reasons why so that you’ll agree. We’re not needing to growl and yell at you. I mean, that may happen anyway. It’s just an instinctive reaction, so don’t blame yourself if you keep falling into that.

But just look at this whole picture: Why am I on my back foot here when I’m this big, mature person? And these are little children who want me to be this big, mature person who’s not on their back foot, who can stand confidently and therefore be gentle and reasonable. Reasonable, but not reasoning with you.

Now let’s talk about the specifics. In this case, I would give them a heads-up ahead of time. Not a warning kind of thing where we’re like, “Tomorrow we’re not going to do this!” but laying it out for them. “I’ve been thinking about this. I know you guys love your tablet. We’re going to take a break from that, I’ve decided. And it might feel really hard. You can get really mad at me about it. That’s okay, bring it on. I’ve decided this is what’s best for you and for our family. So we’re going to do it.” And you take the things and you put them away.

And when you’re making this plan together, you can open it up to them. They’re old enough, especially the five-year-old, to have input when you ask, “What kind of stuff would you guys like to do instead?” And it’s not, “If I give you this, can we take the tablet away?” No, this is setting the limit first. This is what we’re going to do. Is there anything I can do to help this work better for you? That’s how comfortable we want to get to with every boundary.

Again, I don’t expect I’m going to be able to convince this parent that she’s worthy of that in this one podcast, but that’s what I want her to think about. Why not? Why are my kids not worthy of getting a leader that isn’t afraid to be their parent and do what’s best for them?

If you can do this, you’ll see that yes, it’s going to be really messy, gnarly. Everybody’s going to be mad and they’re going to try to talk you out of it and be very reasonable about why they need all those things. And then you can say, “This isn’t changing. All discussion is open, but I’m not going to argue back because this is already decided.” We don’t get mad about them doing their job, which is to resist and have their feelings about it. We have to come from that place of being so settled in our decision.

And this is a really good decision to be settled in. Sometimes it’s easier to say we’re not going to do it for a few days or that we’re not going to do it for these certain hours. The more specific you can be, the easier it will be to stand by it. It’s almost easier for kids to think they’re not going to have it the whole day than to think that they’re going to have it at a certain time. And then they’ll say, “Oh, why not now? Why not now?” It’s still in their brains. They’re not ever able to rest in the idea that it’s not available. So in a way it’s kinder to say we’re taking a week off or whatever and really have that clarity. Scary, right?

I’ve talked to so many parents who have done this and when they had the courage to do it and do it with confidence—that means no lecturing, no need to yell, no need to negotiate or reason with them. Just that firmness that they feel in their whole heart and body that they’re being the most amazing parent right there. Which they are, by the way. Kids are freed up after they have all of this noise about it and try all the things they know, pull on our heartstrings. And you can welcome that too, when you find that place of comfort in being the parent you want to be, which is somebody that can handle a couple of kids and all of their messy feelings.

And you’ll see at some point—just when you think it’s never going to end, keep breathing, keep holding strong, keep believing. You’ll see them turn a corner and you’ll see how freed up they are when they can let go because we were confident and clear and comfortable in ourselves. All these Cs, right? We have to be all these different Cs: confident, clear, comfortable, certain. You’ll see the relief in them. You’ll see them open up to ideas.

Oh, we’re so bored! We don’t know what to do. There’s two of them and they’re going to find something to do together or separate, but probably together. And again, you can brainstorm with them ahead of time. Say, “This is going to happen. Let me know if there’s any materials you want or anything that you think you might want to do. I’m open to it, but I’m not open to discussing whether or not we’re taking the tablets away.” You’re not going to be smiling at first probably, but you’re going to get to where you can do that with a smile. Not a mean smile, but just like, “Yeah, I love you guys. Sorry, but this is the way it’s going to be.” Periods at the end of our sentences.

This is exactly what kids want from us, but they’re never able to tell us that. They will show us if we can wait it out through their gnarly reactions. They will show us, Phew, now I get to be a kid. I don’t have to be trying to control these things. And they can let go of these devices, which, as we all know, are just so addictive. It’s way beyond reason anyway. And when we’re only a little kid, we need help with that. I mean, a lot of us need help with that as adults! But kids need a lot of help with that.

So you’re helping them, you’re rescuing them, you’re giving them a chance to vent a lot of feelings. And the devices, they help us shut down feelings, right? Kids are just learning how to express and feel all the way and move through their own feelings, process them, and that’s getting arrested every time they’re able to just go to a device for that distraction. This parent talks about how she wasn’t raised in such a way to develop her emotional maturity. Devices interfere with that developmental process in a different way than all the psychological warfare that the parent had with her. We don’t want to do that either.

This parent says, “I think perhaps I try to reason with them too much.” I’m sure if she even thinks that, that it’s true. “I have such faith in their intelligence that I feel like I should be able to reason with them.” And sure, that’s true about a lot of things, but not these impulsive things and not when it comes to her setting boundaries. That’s not up for reasonable debate. It can’t be.

She also talks about areas that she doesn’t control that I would encourage her to let go of, which it sounds like she did, like the mother-in-law taking care of the children and doing it her way. It would’ve been nice if the mother-in-law did things the way that this parent asked, but she didn’t. And we’ve got to let go at some point, because if we want this person to care for our children, we kind of have to leave it to them. It makes sense that the parent wouldn’t be that confident to tell her mother-in-law and then she did not have the support of her husband to be strong about it either. So that’s a situation where I wouldn’t even try to have a boundary. I would try to let go and instead use my power where I have it.

Now with the husband coming home and criticizing and countering her and all of that stuff, I’m obviously not a relationship coach and I would never dream of stepping in and advising on any of that. However, this also seems like a place for boundaries. It’s easier to practice setting boundaries with children oftentimes than it is with adults, for me at least. But I would encourage her to say things to her husband. Like when he criticizes her: “That’s not okay to talk to me like that.” Even if this is in front of her daughters, it might be a wonderful thing to show them that it’s not okay to let people talk to you that way. If she could do that, that would be a really healthy place for her to assert herself. Again, not getting all defensive about it, which is on her back foot again, but standing tall and just saying, “No, don’t talk to me like that. That’s not cool.” It’s something to look at.

This parent said, “He walks through the door and tension mounts. He’s a fantastic dad, but he counters me constantly so it makes everything difficult.” I don’t know what exactly he’s countering her on, whether it’s rules or things like that, but I would let him know that, since you’re the one home with the children, you’ve made a decision on screens and this is what you’re going to do. I guess if he wants to say in the evenings they can do it, then maybe you let them or maybe you say, “Look, it’s going to be much easier for me if this goes all the way for a few days,” asserting a boundary with her partner as well.

I don’t know if she’s up for that, but the most important thing is that she starts practicing this with her children and she starts thinking about how she was raised to believe that she didn’t deserve something that she absolutely does deserve and that her children need her to feel she deserves. Right there, just considering this, will be the first step to being the kind of parent she wants to be. Being an amazing model for her daughters because she’s being true to herself, starting this relationship with these children on a path to improvement right away.

Actually, the first step might be what this parent started with. She said, “The harder I try, the worse I seem to do. I cannot ever seem to get there.” It’s really easy for us to go into perfectionist mode if we already have that bent and say, I just can’t do it. I can’t do it. I can’t do it. So instead of going into this perfectionist mode as to what she should do, start to think about it, start to believe it. You deserve boundaries. No matter what kind of person you feel like on the inside, you deserve to assert yourself and your wishes and your beliefs as a parent for your children. Don’t take that away from yourself.

I hope this helps, at least a little bit. There’s a ton more in my No Bad Kids Master Course. A lot of support for you, a lot of visualization practices. I spend a lot of the course convincing you that you deserve boundaries, because you do.

We can do this.

The post Can We Overcome Our Upbringing? appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “A Child’s Rocky Transition (Why It Means She’s Doing Her Job)”

My new book is finally finished and available for pre-order! It’s called Baby Person, and I think you’re going to find it unlike any parenting book you’ve ever come across. For one, because this book is about us and the quality of our experience. It’s about how as parents or grandparents or anyone caring for children, you can discover a deeper level of fulfillment. You can have more ease, more joy, and more success day-to-day and in the long term. And at the same time, you’ll be building a lifelong bond with your child that’s steeped in trust, respect, and mutual delight. And if you pre-order now, I have an exclusive podcast thank you gift just for you. You can check it all out on my website, janetlansbury.com.

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m going to be responding to a note I received from a parent. The situation is quite unusual, but so many of the aspects of this are very, very common and easy to misunderstand. So I believe I’m going to be able to offer something here that will help every parent.

Let me just dive into this letter, before I try to explain it:

Hi there, Janet. I’m a stay-at-home mom and I have two toddler boys. One turned three in April and the other will turn two in August. I began obsessing over your work and listening to every podcast around the time I knew I was becoming a mom. Being a mom has been the greatest blessing and privilege of my life. Once I survived two under two, things have gone so smoothly, it’s been amazing.

I guess I decided things weren’t challenging enough, lol! I decided to open an in-home learning group. I have one, two, or three other kiddos Monday through Thursday. Overall, it’s going well and I charge $50 a day per child. It’s been so sweet to see my boys get excited and connect with these other kids and my heart is so full watching them play. I’m certainly not super rigid over naps, but I’ve found that when the kids are all playing, eating, etc. at the same time, they usually nap at the same time, so it helps me stay decently organized. Still, it can of course get pretty wild with up to five toddlers at once, and I’m pretty new to this. I have no early childhood background, all I have is what I’ve learned from you, so thank you.

My question is about a little girl that has been coming regularly. She is two-and-a-half. We are really struggling. She seems to have a very short attention span, she wants to change activities in a matter of seconds. She cries most of the time when she is here. She constantly asks me if I like her and I’ve never given her any reason to think I don’t. I do, I love her. She is sweet and generous and kind when she’s not upset. It’s hard for me to deal with the constant tears. It can start to bother me or make me feel like it’s something I need to fix. As much as I wish I could say it didn’t, I notice it greatly affecting my nervous system. I can hold it together for the kiddos, but once my husband gets home, I either break down or go to bed or take a long bath to relax.

I’m considering talking to her mom and suggesting that she might do better in another environment, like a larger preschool setting or back home with her mom. But before I reached out, I wanted to ask you. I only have her two days a week. She’s an only child with wonderful, loving parents, but they work from home and I think she spends a lot of time on her tablet because of that. Not sure if that is what is contributing or something else. My question is, is there anything I can do about these behaviors, or are my hands tied considering I only have her eight hours twice a week?

And another question is, is it unusual for a child who is only two-and-a-half to be searching for validation? I didn’t know toddlers even knew people did or didn’t like them. My boys are very smart and they tend to hit milestones early, but I’ve noticed that when they play with kids who aren’t treating them well, it makes me sad for them, but they don’t seem to go inward with that at all. And in this case with the little girl, I always treat her with kindness anyway, so I wonder where that comes from. I’m mostly just curious on your thoughts about that. Is that something learned or is it more of a personality trait that’s more common in some kids? Or is it a difference since she’s a girl and I’m just used to boys?

I can’t thank you enough for your work. God bless you.

As I said, this is an unusual situation. And yet so many of us can probably relate to the feeling of wanting to fix feelings when children just seem constantly out of sorts or they’re having a really rough transition like this. We want to make it better, right? That’s natural, that’s loving.

And so even though this parent is doing this wonderful playgroup program, these children are in her care away from their parents for that period of time. So what I have to say here relates to children starting any kind of program, preschool, childcare. There is an adjustment period. The main message I want to get across to this parent is not that she should be okay with this and she shouldn’t want to fix it and all of that. All of that’s natural, that she’s going to feel that way. And of course I want to encourage her that she has the choice to say this isn’t working for her and to really care for herself in that way.

But I also want to encourage her to understand what’s really going on here with this child and how healthy it is. And if she feels up for it, I want to encourage her in the direction of not fixing and trusting what’s going on here. And I’m going to give her every bit of reason that she might consider doing that.

But still, like I said, it’s up to her and obviously I’m not going to try to talk her into something that she’s uncomfortable with. Her comfort matters a lot. She’s doing a very generous thing, not charging very much money for these children to come and be in her care and play. This is, to me, exactly the kind of person I would want my child to be with, somebody that really enjoys the children, that thinks highly of them. She says, “I love her. She’s sweet and generous and kind when she’s not upset.” So this is a person that’s seeing the good in children. And obviously that’s the kind of person we want our child to spend time with when they’re spending time away from us.

So what I see going on here is that this child is doing her job. She’s doing her job adjusting to this situation. Now the way children adjust in transitions often involves a lot of feelings, a lot of crying. I mean, ask Mr. Chazz, ask other people who work in childcare or preschool settings, even kindergartens. Separation from parents and home and being in a new situation is a lot for very young children. It’s a lot for all of us really, but especially for children in these early years, because they’re not as able to understand their needs and they’re not as able to communicate them. While some children do just have the temperaments that manage transition better than others, all children have some kind of adjustment. And I think that this mom knows all this on one level when she’s saying she wishes she wasn’t trying to fix the feelings, but she still feels like doing that.

She writes, “She wants to change activities in a matter of seconds. She cries most of the time when she’s here. She constantly asks me if I like her and I’ve never given her any reason to think I don’t.” So the crying makes a lot of sense. It’s just expressing that feeling of being in this different place and being away from home.

Actually, I’m going to offer an idea that is counterintuitive for most of us. And I was really surprised when I first learned this, but thinking about it, it makes sense. It would help this little girl if she actually could spend more days in this setting. Two days a week for a child this age is not a lot of time to transition. She’s just not having the opportunity to really get comfortable eating and napping and playing in this different setting. It almost feels like a brand new situation to her every time, with all those days in between. So she needs more time there, rather than less, to help her settle into this situation.

That sounds like the opposite of what I would’ve thought, which is that, well, if they’re having a hard time, you do it less and that’s easier on them to just do a little bit, just dip their toe in. But no, for children, they’re just trying to get used to who these people are, how they respond to me. For them, it’s a lot to take in. It would have to be all right with this mom and of course with the parents of the little girl, if they wanted her to maybe spend more time there. And then she will feel more a part of it, not just like this person that dips in once in a while, that doesn’t feel as involved. She will feel more a part of it and likely adapt more readily to the expectations in this setting if she can come more.

I don’t know if that’s an option, but I want to put that out there so that this mom and other parents listening can understand what this is from a child’s point of view. Getting comfortable with even just this person as a secondary attachment figure, which is what we want when our child is in care with another person in these early years. We want them to feel attached to that person, we want them to feel comfortable. This little girl is showing that she feels very comfortable with this mom. The way she’s showing that is by being vulnerable with her, by saying, “Do you like me? Do you like me? Do you like me?”

I have a thought about that. The reason children get stuck in something like that is not because they really need that validation, the way it might be if an adult was doing that. And yes, it is kind of a precocious thing to say for a two-and-a-half-year-old, to think about if people like her. But my guess is this came up at home somehow, that the parents said it about someone or maybe about this girl. I don’t like when you’re doing that or I don’t like you when you do that or something. Somehow this became “a thing” for this little girl. She knows that this is something to, I don’t want to say push on, like she’s trying to test in some really conscious way, because she’s not. But she just can’t stop probing, probing, probing this with this adult in her life. And I don’t know if she does this with her parents at home also, but she’s going to this place that she’s sensing bothers this adult. She’s sensing it’s not comfortable for this mom and that’s why she keeps going to that.

So to get to a little of the what-to-do part, the way to respond to that is just to respond to it with open arms. “Oh, I think you just asked me that, but as a matter of fact, I do and I still do.” Coming from a place of knowing this is something she’s gotten stuck in because of the discomfort she’s felt from me. When she says this, I get a little worried. I get a little annoyed. I have to tell her again and again! What’s going on here? Doesn’t she know I like her? Am I making her feel like I don’t like her? None of that is true, in my opinion. She’s merely pushing on that button of discomfort in this adult, trying to figure it out on some level. So once we know that’s what’s going on, then we can turn a corner on it and not be afraid of it anymore, not be uncomfortable about it. Because it’s just something that she’s figuring out and it’s not this deep-seated need for validation that we might’ve worried it was.

This can look a lot of different ways for children. And I’ve talked a lot on the podcast about how children do that. They know our vulnerabilities. They notice it the very first time that we’re a little bit taken aback. We’re a little bit thrown off by something. We’re not entirely comfortable. And then they have to keep going there.

That can be true with so many kinds of statements that we say to them or things we make a point of with them. Like we say, “Always tell me when you don’t want me to touch you.” And then all of a sudden when our child is acting out and we’re coming close to stop them from doing something harmful or that we don’t want them to do, then they’re like, “You’re touching me! Don’t touch me, don’t touch me!” And then we get alarmed by that, and then they get stuck doing that. I’m just saying that as an example, but there’s so many things that this can happen with. Things that our child senses matter to us, throw us off balance, that we care about, that dial into our concern in some way. That’s what’s going on here.

So we don’t have to worry that we’ve given her a reason to think we don’t like her and all this. And this mom is sure she does like her. She loves her, she said. Trust in that, believe in that, and just feel like, As a matter of fact, I love you. I think you’re amazing. I think you’re great. And then she asks you again a few minutes later and it’s, Yes, still loving you over here! However you want to say it, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that you’re not intimidated by it and you are allowing that to be a really safe thing for her to explore.

The thing about wanting to change activities in a matter of seconds. Yes, she’s unsettled. She’s showing that she’s unsettled. It’s just going to take her a certain amount of time to get settled, but I wouldn’t try to jump to accommodating that for her. Oh, you want to do this? Okay, we’ll do this. Have some activities available that they can engage in and let her flit around from one to the other and don’t worry about that. Some children do flit around, flit around, flit around, flit around. They take whatever time they need, they cry, they’re uncomfortable, and then they finally settle in. On their time, not ours. And again, this would probably happen sooner if the little girl had more time to be there, but she will get there regardless if this parent wants to stick it out.

But again, if that’s kind of getting our attention in a way where we’re like, Oh, we’d better find her something else, and Oh, I don’t want to get that for her, but I have to, let go of that. Let her flit around. I don’t want to compare children to animals, but it just reminds you of the dog turning circles, turning circles, turning circles before they find how they want to lie down. They’re just doing what they need to do to get comfortable.

My overall advice here is to trust this little girl to do her job adjusting. You’re giving her everything she needs: a stable adult who genuinely cares about her, a predictable, safe environment, empathy, care for her. You’re giving her everything she needs. Now it’s time to let go and let her adjust in her way and not try to work with that in some way or fix it. I know this parent knows she doesn’t want to fix it, but I just want to encourage that approach because the more we try to get in there and fix that, the harder it is for the child to relax. Why? Because we’re not relaxed. We’re not entirely sure about them. We are not entirely trusting that they can handle this.

That’s the big shift. If we make it this weekend, it will help us in so many ways as parents. It will help us with any adjustment. Going on a trip, summer vacation, and we’re in this new place and our child is tearful or nothing feels right to them. Instead of trying to fix things and make it all better, let them feel like it’s all wrong and they’re miserable. That’s how children get comfortable.

Now I’m not saying that we should just feel fine when they’re upset. Of course we’re not going to feel fine, but if we put this in perspective, we can get that little bit of emotional distance we need. It’s that safety in ourselves that we need in order to let go of it more, rather than getting sucked in so that we’re riding this rollercoaster of feelings with them.

That’s just something generally as parents we want to try to work on: putting their feelings into perspective. Their feelings are healthy. Their feelings are natural. Their feelings in a change like this make sense. Their feelings almost always have a reason, but the reason isn’t that she doesn’t have enough activities or that she needs more validation. The reason is that she’s kind of grabbing around us to figure out, Can everybody be comfortable and let me do this adjusting thing?

Another question this parent has is: “Is it unusual for a child who’s only two-and-a-half to be searching for validation?” I think that would be unusual and I don’t think that’s what’s going on here. Again, like I said, I think she’s gotten caught up in this thing of, Do you like me? Do you like me?, and that’s become a thing for her. I don’t think she’s asking this with the kind of understanding and genuine need that we might have as an adult if we ask something like that.

Another thing that this mom says is, “I’m considering talking to her mom and suggesting she might do better in another environment, like a larger preschool setting or back home with her mom.” Yes, if this isn’t working for her to the extent that it’s really making her question whether she wants to do this, then she should absolutely trust herself. But I would also say that a larger preschool setting is not what I would recommend for this or any child that’s having a hard time adjusting, because that will be a lot harder and she probably won’t feel as safe to express a lot of this. She’s showing she feels very safe with this adult and I would trust that a smaller environment, especially for a child that’s not three yet, is going to be much easier to adjust to. She’s getting to vent and be a mess in this setting and that is very, very healthy.

And I don’t know if anything has to do with spending a lot of time on a tablet or anything else. All that’s clear here is that she’s very much adjusting to what sounds like a positive, positive situation that this mom is offering. So there’s every reason in the world why we would want to allow her to be able to be there. But the question is whether this mom can find this place of comfort. I believe she can, in this transitional messiness that’s going on, by putting it into perspective.

Otherwise it sounds like this is all going really, really well. And whatever this parent decides, kudos to her. I thank her so much for her kind words in the note, and the fact that she can enjoy a three-year-old and two-year-old child and find it pretty easy is amazing. So this mom has everything she needs to be able to flourish as a parent and to take care of other children, if she chooses to go through the rockiness of it. That’s up to her. I just want to encourage her and everybody out there, whether you have a child that’s adjusting or you’re a childcare professional or early childhood educator with a lot of children who are adjusting, that’s the job that children need us to trust them to do.

We can do this.

The post A Child’s Rocky Transition (Why It Means She’s Doing Her Job) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “Gentle Parenting Is Failing Parents. Here’s Why.”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today I want to broach a topic that is important to so many of us: it’s our parenting. I guess I’m always talking about our parenting, right? But I want to talk specifically about “gentle parenting” and why it seems that so many parents are feeling let down by that approach. They’re feeling that it’s impossible, that it doesn’t work, or that it only works for some children and not other children. What is this all about? I’ve got lots of ideas about what’s going on here and how I think I could help parents understand why gentle parenting is failing them and what to look at here. So, let’s go.

First of all, “gentle parenting,” what does that even really mean? I have actually not been sure, because it’s not a term that I’ve ever used to describe the approach that I recommend. Although it seems that a lot of publications, when they write articles about gentle parenting—it’s been a popular thing the last couple of years, that people want to bash this and say how terrible it is and even people that don’t have kids want to talk about what brats are getting raised from this approach or whatever. And my name is often brought in as somebody that’s teaching this. So I guess it’s kind of important for me to know what it is!

I never really have completely understood how it’s defined. It seems that there are various interpretations of what it actually is. And then there’s also our personal interpretations, what we think an approach is in terms of how we implement it, how it manifests in our interactions with our children. So there’s a lot that’s unclear here for me.

When I was first blogging back in 2009, people were mostly reading articles about parenting, they were reading blogs, and I first heard the term gentle in regard to discipline. It was “gentle discipline.” And that was something that a lot of people who identified as attachment parents would talk about, that their approach to discipline was gentle discipline. And I never really understood exactly what that was either, but it did come off to me at the time, from the feedback I was getting from parents about it, that it seemed a little on the permissive side. That it was also about not really allowing our children to feel disappointed and not getting what they wanted, to try to soften that for them. So that was my first introduction to this idea.

I looked online to be able to do this episode and I found an article on the Brown University Health website by an MD, Dr. Laura H. Dawson. So I’m going to be using her descriptions to talk about the contrast between this gentle parenting approach and what I have found for the last 30 years really works.

But before I get into that, I want to read this very short piece on YPulse (which quotes a longer article in the Wall Street Journal) that was sent to me. It says:

Are Gen Z and Millennial parents already moving away from gentle parenting?
YPulse’s Parenting Report shows gentle parenting—which focuses on open and calm communication—was the top trending approach Gen Z and Millennial parents were trying in 2024. Now, some young parents are reportedly moving away from the soft style and turning towards what the internet calls “FAFO,” short for “F-Around and Find Out.” The new style is “based on the idea that parents can ask and warn, but if a child breaks the rules, mom and dad aren’t standing in the way of the repercussions.” For example, if a child didn’t bring their raincoat when told, their parents will have them walk in the rain. This has come about as gentle parenting gets more and more criticism, even from the young gens who coined it. Some young parents say they prefer the new, more blunt style of consequence learning as it keeps them from “tiptoeing around their children’s feelings,” while others have slowly implemented bits of this approach into their otherwise gentle parenting.

So first what I’m struck with is this idea I’m going to push back on that it’s a good idea to parent with whatever the trend is and not really look into the history of the approach that we’re taking guidance from and understanding what it all stems from and what it really means. And I know as parents, look, we don’t have time. We’re just trying to deal with our children and their behavior and get through this early childhood part especially and have it work for us and for our child. That’s what we all want.

But as I think I’ve said here before, if it’s a parenting trend, I would really question it. That also goes for FAFO parenting, where we’re kind of feeling a little more harsh and it almost sounds like we’re resenting that we’ve been so nice to our children and it hasn’t worked. And now I’m reading something into this, but the way this piece is written, it’s like we’re almost enjoying being mean to our child as payback for all they’ve put us through. And that makes a lot of sense to me, the attraction to that, but I don’t believe that’s going to ultimately get us what we want as parents.

And I’m also getting this feeling just from reading this that here’s this pendulum. We’ve gone so far in this direction, we’ve gone so far in that direction. And neither one of these extremes is getting us what we want, which is just a really nice relationship with our child. A child that behaves and makes us proud and that we love being with most of the time.

But before I get into dissecting this a little bit more, I want to give you my gut reaction to why gentle parenting is failing people. Taken at face value, “gentle” is not a helpful foot for us to put forward as parents. Parenting is actually kind of aspirational, we want to head in a direction that feels positive for us. But if the main point in that direction is gentle, it’s not going to serve us, because gentle is actually more of a trait or a byproduct of being the kind of parent we want to be. Especially when it comes to children’s behaviors and discipline, it’s not the foot we want to put forward, because leading with this idea of being gentle can cause us to stifle ourselves and feel like we need to respond to behavior or manage house rules in a manner that’s so careful and tentative, waiting for our child and explaining and trying to understand everything.

I do have to say that the term that I use, “respectful,” can do that same thing. And I think some people do say gentle, respectful, or whatever. But I like the term “respectful.” That is inspiring to me as something to center my parenting as a whole around. It’s a term that I want to live by with my children because it means being honest and caring and respecting who children are rather than attempting to mold them into who we want them to be. Treating children from the time they’re born as whole and capable people.

And this is still unfortunately an unusual, countercultural thing to do. It’s something that we maybe think to do when kids are older, but not in the beginning, which is arguably when it matters most because this is when our children are new to the world. They’re just learning who they are, where they fit, what love is, and if they’re worthy. And it’s also when they struggle the most to communicate their needs to us. So respect is a term to focus on in the day-to-day, that’s the way I want to be with children.

But, like a lot of you listening and a lot of the parents that come to me and a lot of parents who’ve been in my classes, I’m a softie at heart and I’m not the most confident person, or at least I wasn’t for most of my life. So I, like many of us, need something more powerful than respect, certainly more powerful than gentle to rise into to be a leader for my child when they’re struggling. So that term for me, when children are struggling, when their behavior’s off, for me, that’s “confidence.” Gentle and even respectful can be part of confidence.

When I’m confident, I can be truly gentle from a place of strength. Not because I’m afraid you’re going to react and you’re going to be mad at me, because I already know that you are going to react, because I’m doing something that you don’t want. That’s my job as a parent, I’ve got to be the leader for you. If I’m not the leader for you, you’ve got to be it for yourself, and that’s not respecting your stage of development. That’s not respecting your needs as somebody that’s two, three, four, five, six years old, or even teenaged. You can’t be in charge of this.

So respect is a part of this, but confidence is the descriptor that I try to embody really all the time, but especially when children are having unpleasant, concerning, annoying behaviors, when children are floundering. If there’s no one confident for them to lean on, if all they have to lean on is gentle, that’s really scary, right? They’ve got some wobbly, gentle, mushy leader, which is how I naturally was before my daughter kind of trained me into shape. So confidence is the key, and respectful and gentle all flow from that.

And what do we need to find this confidence in ourselves? I’m going to make a few points here. I actually have seven, but they’re not going to be long ones, I’m going to go through them quickly here. And then I’m going to talk about how this differs from the gentle parenting approach, at least the way it’s been expressed by this MD for the Brown University Health page.

Here are the seven things to consider to find our confidence:

Number one: take a step back. Take a step back and take a look at how tiny your child is. This person that’s so big in our minds, that can be so mean to us, that can seem to be laughing at us when they’re doing awful things. Take a step back and really look.

I’ve probably said this here before, but in my classes we sit on the floor while we’re watching the children play. So these infants and toddlers, they become these big characters to us because we’re observing them. We’re almost like an audience and they’re performers in a way. Although they’re not performing, they’re just getting to be themselves and explore the way they want to explore and engage with other children. And we’re there to set boundaries and keep everybody safe and appropriate. Other than that, we don’t step in, we respect their inner direction. But we come in confidently—and as the facilitator, I demonstrate this in the class—we come in confidently to show how we can stop their behavior so easily. Yes, there is a gentleness to it, but it’s very firm, it’s very confident. But it’s not harsh or mean or punitive. I don’t know any parent that really wants to be those things, I think, in my classes.

So the children seem so huge and like these big characters. They’re funny and they’re interesting and they’re obnoxious and they’re annoying and they test all kinds of things and their emotions are really strong sometimes and all over the place and they seem to overreact and all of these things. But when we take a step back, like sometimes I’ll be leaving the class in my car and I see the parent walking with the child and it’s like this child that seemed so big to me is this itty-bitty little person. And that’s who they are. They’re just these immature little people.

Are we really going to let them make life hard for us? We’re going to have to be so tentative around them, walk on eggshells, make sure they don’t get upset? They’re so small and they need us to be bigger than them. They need us to be more confident than them. And some of them are pretty confident! But those children need us even more to be more confident than them, because they don’t want to get stuck calling the shots and controlling us and not being cared for because we’re leaving them to, in some ways, decide things for themselves.

So take a step back and see how unintimidating this person is. That will give you more confidence.

Number two: get a basic understanding of why children misbehave. This is something I talk about all the time and it’s very, very laid out for you in my No Bad Kids Master Course. All of these things I’m going to talk about today are ideas I go into in depth to really help you understand and internalize it, have it become a part of you that you see things this way. Because once you get that, it never comes undone. It takes a long time to get that for some of us, it’s a process for all of us, but any progress that you make, you don’t unlearn it.

Understanding the why makes this behavior so much less intimidating, so much less worrisome. We’ll give it so much less energy when we understand that our child has lost it there on some level. Even if they look quite composed, they’ve lost the plot and they just need us to help. Stop them, guide them, occasionally carry them out of some place or carry them towards us, remove the object from their hand that they’re not using safely. In a sense, rescue them from making us angry at them, preventing that from happening. When we see behavior for what it really is, that it’s not so conscious and intentional and that it’s somehow directed meanly towards us and that our children dislike us or that they never understood the rules to begin with or that they’re going to be like this forever and ever. Those are all unhelpful places we can go as parents that will prevent us from feeling the confidence that we deserve to feel. When we see what’s really there, we can proceed with confidence.

Number three: understand and accept this basic dynamic: we set a boundary and they get to feel however they feel about it. Whether it’s taking an object away, stopping our child, taking their hands, saying, “It’s time to go now,” and they get to feel however they feel about our boundary.

That way we’re ready for their feelings. We know that part of what’s going on here is that there were some feelings bursting out of them and they started to act that way because of it. So when we stop them, when we help them, they’re going to blast us. We don’t stop and wait for that if we’re in motion, we help move them along. We also don’t try to make it better. We know that that’s part of the deal a lot of the time and that’s part of what was in there in the first place that made our child behave that way. So the more that we can make peace with this idea of letting feelings be and being okay with them, the more confident we will be.

Number four: understand that cooperative tasks aren’t as definitive as other boundaries. Cooperative tasks are the ones that I call caregiving tasks, which are cleaning up, maybe bringing their plate to the table if they’re a bit older, combing their hair, bedtime rituals. We can have consequences like, “I can’t read now, but I will lie here and give you a hug and say goodnight. And you can be very mad at me when I leave.” These cooperative tasks, they take extra confidence and respect on our part. We have the confidence to sometimes let go, cut our losses. “Okay, here, just do one little swipe across your teeth. And now one across the bottom. Perfect, let’s go.”

Number five: embrace the messiness of it all. It’s not neat and tidy. Young children have a lot of feelings that they express all day about all kinds of things. And even the happy, joyous, excited feelings, those can be the most stressful of all for them, right? We’re having this wonderful holiday party or their birthday and their behavior is off and How dare they? We’ve gone to all this trouble. Because they’re excited and it’s really hard for them to control their impulses and these feelings that they have inside. So it’s going to be messy no matter what. And the more we can embrace that for ourselves and not expect that we’re going to be perfect, far from it. It means we’re doing it right when we make mistakes and we have regrets.

And guess what? We can do this thing where we make peace later, where we come clean, where we say to our child, I did that and I don’t love that I did that. I was too tired and you were not listening and you didn’t want to do it and I couldn’t deal and I yelled. That wasn’t okay of me and I’m sorry. So once we know we can do that, what’s not to feel confident about, right?

Number six: consider moments where you felt it working. We’ve all had moments, even if we feel like we’re terrible at setting boundaries or we don’t get this thing, that we never know what we’re doing, that we always lose it. We’ve all had moments where it did work. So consider, what was going on for you then? Were you more sure of yourself? I’m guessing you were. Why? Did you feel decisive? Did you feel capable? Was it that the boundary felt clearer to you? Was it that there was nobody watching you, so you felt like you could take a risk to be confident and not fear that your child would have a reaction? Whatever it was, whatever elements you can identify that helped you there, create them around every boundary for yourself.

A lot of parents have said to me in the past that they feel really confident about certain safety boundaries, like holding their child’s hand in the parking lot. We’re not going to let go. Maybe it’s something else that you feel really, really sure about. Well, that feeling in you is what children need for every kind of boundary.

And again, I’m not talking about these boundaries like brushing your teeth where we’re going to force something into your mouth. We’re going to have much more flexible boundaries in those cooperative cases.

But in all these other ones, whether it’s my child wants to wear my dress or my shoes or go into my handbag or stay longer at the party and I can see their behavior’s already looking a little off. And this is something that happens when children’s behavior starts to go off. It starts to tip that direction and it very seldom untips, so we really want to try to get on that right away when we can. That’s when to go into holding-hands-in-the-parking-lot mode, or whatever was in those boundaries that worked for you in those moments where you felt that taste of confidence. Whatever that was, put that into all these other boundaries so that you can approach them all with that confidence. So you can practice that confidence, because we all need a lot of practice at it.

And what happens when we practice it is it becomes a part of us, and it affects everything else in our lives. Imagine the freedom of knowing somebody can be mad at you and you’re still going to hold onto your decision. There’s nothing to fear here. Because that’s the other thing: as leaders with confidence, we can change our mind too. So we want to go into it with confidence if possible, but then if we think about it and we change our mind, we can say, “I was thinking about it and yes, you can have some grapes before dinner. That’s fine with me. I know I said no, but I changed my mind.” We don’t have to make a big explanation. Confidence will set us free.

Trying to be gentle, even just trying to be respectful all the time, it’s like we’re tamping down something in us that is going to explode. And we’re going to end up yelling and then we’re going to feel bad about ourselves and feeling bad about ourselves makes it impossible to be confident. And then our gentleness comes even more from a place of weakness. It doesn’t help us.

Number seven: know that if you’re even 50% of the time aiming in this direction, you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be in your process. It is a process. This is a relationship and a relationship is a process. It’s always developing. It’s always moving. So just aim yourself in the direction of confidence and respect. Yes, gentle’s in there somewhere too, but it’s not the focus. It will start to feel very good.

I want to touch a little on what this article said just to help you see the contrast. It’s called “Gentle Parenting: What It Is, How It Can Help, and Possible Drawbacks,” by Dr. Laura H. Dawson. According to the article, here are some of the aspects of gentle parenting:

Parent as teacher
Parents help their children in identifying emotions and understanding conflicts. For example, during a tantrum, a parent might state “you look frustrated.” They might verbalize “you are having so much fun playing and don’t want to go to bed even though it’s bedtime.” Parents also serve as teachers by modeling behaviors of kindness, empathy and self-discipline. Sometimes that means sitting quietly with a child or offering a hug when the child’s behavior appears out of control. Everyday parenting presents many opportunities for practice of these principles.

So, if I were a child and during a tantrum my parent said, “You look frustrated,” that is going to make me 10 times more frustrated. In fact, that makes me want to hit the parent, I hate to say. I’m falling apart here! “You look frustrated.” That’s us trying to follow a direction of say the feeling, and this is not going to help. Studies show that talking to children during tantrums makes the tantrum last longer. And that makes sense because why does this person need to talk to me right now? Talking is about the parent’s need. They’re doing what they think they’re supposed to do, nothing to do with what I need as a child. Imagine being upset and your friend is like, “You look frustrated.” I don’t need you to tell me that I look frustrated!

A part of this that I do believe is helpful is “parents also serve as teachers by modeling behaviors of kindness, empathy and self-discipline.” Yes. And that is not just gentle parenting, that’s every parent, always. Everything we do as parents is modeling for our kids, no matter what kind of parenting we do. If we’re doing F around and find out parenting, then we’re modeling that tough, kind of vengeful-sounding, I hate to say, attitude.

Another aspect of gentle parenting, according to the article:

Appropriate developmental expectations
A key component to a parent’s ability to act with empathy is understanding of developmental expectations. Broad emotional swings in young children and pushing boundaries in older children are seen as appropriate. Recognizing biting and kicking as normal toddler behaviors and door slamming as expected teenage behavior allows for empathy in parents and respect for their child, no matter where they are in development.

So I don’t think you’re going to think about respecting your child when they’re slamming the door in your face, but yes, otherwise this again shouldn’t just be gentle parenting. Understanding the why of behavior and what we can expect is going to help any kind of parent, no matter how you identify.

And if you don’t, if you’re just getting mad at kids and judging them and telling them they’re bad and shaming them for doing these things that many children do, then chances are you may be putting a wedge between you and your child. Which nobody wants, right? So I agree that understanding appropriate developmental expectations is really important.

Next:

Avoiding punishments and behavioral rewards
Contrary to many other styles of parenting, punishments are not a part of gentle parenting. They are seen as unnecessary, disruptive to the parent-child bond, and as training children to an external reward rather than to their own internal emotional and moral compass. Similarly, behavioral rewards are discouraged. A child should never be encouraged to behave for the purpose of influencing their parents’ feelings (“stop that because you’re making me sad”). Instead, parents strive to connect with their children, help them understand their distress, empathize with that distress, and propose alternate action. “You were mad, so you threw your toy at your sister. But throwing your toy could hurt your sister. Let’s think of some other things we can do when we’re feeling mad that wouldn’t hurt anyone or anything else.” To reinforce positive behaviors, parents will highlight a positive feeling or outcome, such as “you must feel proud that you made it to the potty and kept your underwear dry.”

Okay, so in the first case with, You’re mad, you threw your toy at your sister, what else can we do? All of that is actually doing the opposite of what this writer just said to do. They said to understand developmental expectations, but now you’re going into this whole reasonable dialogue about what your child could do instead of this impulsive thing they did. So you’re trying to address with reason something that is a typical impulsive behavior, that really isn’t about reason at all. And this doesn’t mean that there aren’t other things your child could do, but it doesn’t work to say all these words about something that was an impulsive action.

Imagine ourselves in a similar situation: we grabbed for chocolate when we were on a diet and our friends saw us and they said, “Oh, you shouldn’t eat that chocolate. What else could you do, Janet, when you feel like getting chocolate? Because chocolate isn’t good for you and it makes you unhealthy” or whatever. I mean, it’s a disconnecting response. So if that is indeed how people are interpreting gentle parenting, it’s understandable to me that that does not work.
And here’s another example of way too much talking about something that children just need us to step in and help them with: developing boundaries. The writer says:

Developing boundaries
Flexibility is a crucial component to gentle parenting, and equally important is parents’ ability to hold clear and firm boundaries. The key to holding boundaries in gentle parenting is to incorporate empathy, respect, and understanding. “I can understand why you don’t want to go to bed when you are having such a good time playing. But getting enough sleep is very important, and it’s time for you to get ready for bed. Which parts of the bedtime routine would you like to do yourself and which parts shall I help with?”

So that doesn’t sound to me like two people really talking and it’s way too much explaining about something that children just need help with. Instead, I would recommend approaching this in a more genuine and authentic way between you, like, “It’s hard to stop. It’s bedtime now, my love. Let’s go. Here, I’ll do this. Do you want to do that?” Just something that’s real and authentic.

The author also says that “Gentle parents are encouraged to revisit and repair when exchanges with their children are far from gentle.” So that’s wonderful. “When all is said and done, children should feel that their parents are on their side.” Yes. If that’s not true in the parenting approach that we’re choosing, that children are feeling on our side, that’s disconnection. Again, most of us didn’t have children just to have a wedge between us where our children feel like we’re on the other team and we’re kind of against them.

The author asks, “How can gentle parenting help?” and she writes that “This parenting strategy places the relationship as the crux of everything.” So it’s not this parenting strategy, it’s that the relationship with our child is actually the crux of everything. It’s the crux of their behavior, it’s the crux of their self-confidence, our enjoyment of life with children, their feelings about themselves, their ability to reach their potential. The whole point of having children is about the relationship. So if we’re using an approach that doesn’t place relationship at the crux of everything, then we’re going to go in a distancing, disconnecting direction with our kids. And that will unfortunately show up in their behavior, their feelings about themselves as they grow, their ability to function, their mental health. There’s no positive to that.

The author then considers “possible drawbacks of gentle parenting”:

Time and energy intensive
Contrasting to a more authoritarian style of parenting (“my way or the highway”), gentle parenting requires significant time and energy to execute. Parents must have patience to allow emotions to unfold, time to communicate with children what they observe and energy to express empathy and problem solving.

Okay, none of that takes any more time than giving a behavior chart or a punishment or a bribe. It takes less time because no, we’re not going to give these long, reasonable dialogues about behaviors like is suggested in this article. No, we’re not going to wait while our child gets mad at us because we had to take them from the park, so now we’re in the parking lot waiting. Or we’re in the car and we’re not going to go anywhere because our child is upset. Or we’re not going to make dinner because our child had a hard time at the end of the day and they’re really grumpy. No, we’re going to carry on with acceptance and letting feelings be. And yes, empathizing if we can, but it’s more about acceptance, full acceptance. You get to feel how you want to feel. I’m doing my part here by taking care of you. And I do try to understand, but it’s not going to change me or what I do, including slowing me down.

This is a major misunderstanding of my recommendations. And maybe that is what gentle parenting is, but if so, then that’s one of the big reasons why it doesn’t work. We’re going to be exhausted if we’re giving all this extra time to softening ourselves in our approach and being so kind and understanding about every emotion and “let’s talk about why you won’t put your trash in the trash can or why you spit at me, let’s discuss it.” I mean, no, of course that’s not going to work.

Another possible drawback:

High parental investment
Gentle parenting assumes a parent’s aptitude for understanding and synthesizing their child’s emotional state, even though most parents have no formal training in child psychology.

No. All we need to do, if there’s a moment to really acknowledge it, like if our child’s looking at us with tears on their face, we don’t have to understand the depth of all their emotions and all the complexities. We just say, “I see you, my love, and I’m here.” Something, anything, reflecting back what we’re seeing. That’s all.

So wow, all this work that gentle parenting is perhaps putting on people or people are putting on themselves, of course it’s not going to work for us.

The author considers another possible drawback:

Overemphasis on self
Critics argue that constant attention to one’s own emotional state could interfere with the development of empathy. Without practice, children of gentle parents may find it more difficult to adapt and adjust in the face of discomforts or adversity that is not accommodating to their emotions.

100% no. The whole idea of allowing emotions is because they can have emotions while we’re still moving on with life. They’re having emotions because we’ve said we’re going to do this anyway or this is a no or whatever that is. It’s not about, Oh, let me see how you really feel and let’s talk about it. Absolutely not. It makes a lot of sense that gentle parenting isn’t working for people if this is what it’s really about. None of that would work for anyone I know and it would make people want to get mad at their kids and start threatening them.

And then she ends by saying:

There is no one-size-fits-all in parenting. Gentle parenting is one approach that prioritizes the relationship between parent and child, for benefit immediately and in the future.

So I’m actually going to push back on that too, and I know a lot of you will disagree with me, including a lot of other parent advisors, that there’s no one-size-fits-all in parenting. I believe that: tuning into our children, allowing them to have their feelings, being confident leaders that respect them, that can be gentle and not harsh and mean and cruel, that understand that the relationship is the crux of everything, all of that is one-size-fits-all parenting. I’ve never seen a child for whom this approach doesn’t work and I’ve been working with children for 30 years.

So we could argue that. But what I want to offer you is hope and maybe relief that you don’t need to go to some other extreme, to some harsh place to make your child behave better. What will probably help is for you to work towards this idea of confident leadership through the seven points that I described here:

1. Take a step back and get perspective on this little teeny child you have that’s getting you all worked up, making life feel so hard for you. You can handle them.

2. Get a basic sense of why children misbehave. That makes it so much less intimidating.

3. Understand and accept the basic dynamic of I set a boundary and that my child gets to feel however they need to feel about it. We’re okay with them having whatever feelings they have. We’re not going to let them act on them unsafely, but they can have them.

4. Understand that cooperative tasks aren’t as definitive as other boundaries. These take extra confidence and respect, which means the confidence to let go and sometimes cut to the chase and cut your losses.

5. Embrace the messiness of it all, including the messiness of us in this role. That’s how it’s supposed to be. That means you’re doing it right. Make peace later.

6. Consider moments when you felt it working. What was going on for you then? Were you more sure of yourself? Maybe you felt more decisive and capable. Why? Imagine every boundary that way. You can always change your mind later.

7. Know that if you’re even 50% of the time aiming in this direction, you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be in your process. It is a process, as is every relationship. Just keep going.

We can do this.

For a great deal more help, please check out my No Bad Kids Course! It’s all right here for you: http://nobadkidscourse.com

The post Gentle Parenting Is Failing Parents. Here’s Why. appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “Being Authentic When It Feels Mean”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m going to be addressing an email I got from a parent. Her subject line is, “Being authentic when it feels mean.” And her question is particularly about that, but so many other things are also coming up in this that are very helpful for us to understand so we can get clarity on what our children need from us when their behavior is off, when they’re doing things that we don’t want them to do. How do we respond and how do we understand this better so that we can respond in a way that really does address the need behind the behavior?

Some details that are going to come up in this are the words we say. In this case, I want to help this parent see that she’s saying way too many words and that’s not helping her. In fact, it only ends up helping us to feel more impatient and more annoyed and more angry because we’re putting out so much effort trying to explain ourselves to our children, explain what’s going on. And it doesn’t help them because it usually gives too much power, too much interest to what they’re doing. It’s like we’re telling a whole story about something that is just an impulsive action on their part, something that we don’t want to give a lot of attention to. We don’t want to ignore it either, because that also gives it a lot of attention, oddly enough, because children feel that too.

And all of this comes under the heading of something that can help us all to work on: really understanding our child’s perspective, how they’re seeing the situation. I have some thoughts on that, without knowing this child specifically, but to help this parent and anyone listening understand the kind of messages kids get when we react or act in certain ways.

All of this is also about, of course, what authenticity really means with our children. This is something that I value. Everything that I share is about developing this authentic relationship with our kids, because it’s this lifelong gift that we give ourselves and our child. That we can be ourselves, that we can enjoy them as who they are, and that they are authentic with other people. Young children are very authentic, babies are very authentic. But we learn to mask our emotions and behave in ways that aren’t really being true to ourselves, without even knowing it, because we so much want our parents’ acceptance.

Okay, I know I’m saying a whole lot of stuff, but now I’d just like to read the note:

Hi Janet,

Firstly, thank you for your work. As someone who never connected well with babies or toddlers I’ve felt so much more confident, competent and connected using your approach with my 2 children (3 years and 9 months old). There’s one area though that I struggle with a lot and I can’t find any previous blog or podcast of yours that clicks with me about it.

I work a lot with my therapist on trying to feel my feelings and work through them. As someone who was shown as a kid that having emotions was not welcome, I’m constantly trying to identify and allow my feelings rather than pushing them down. I worry though that showing feelings I have strongly (particularly anger, which I think is a crutch emotion that I lean on to avoid feeling the root emotion) is damaging to my kids.

It may be easier if I share an example. My 3 year old son often does things that make me angry and annoyed, not because I’m not seeing his point of view or am taking it personally or because he’s a particularly annoying kid. I just think I’m the sort of person who gets annoyed and angry quite easily. Those emotions are (unfortunately) readily available for me. He’ll quickly move on after the annoying or angering action, which could be something like throwing things around that I’ve just been tidying, not in anger, just for fun. At the time I’ll say something like “I won’t let you throw these things around because I’ve just been tidying them and I want the house neat. I’m going to move them away from you.” He’ll seem fine with this, move on and then not long after say “I want a hug on the couch.” But I don’t feel like giving him a hug on the couch because I’m still annoyed that he’s making my day more difficult. Is it wrong to say “I don’t really want to hug you right now because I’m annoyed with you, I didn’t like it when you threw the things around and made the house untidy”? Because that’s what I want to say! And giving him a hug on the couch when I feel that way seems really inauthentic and not allowing me to feel the annoyed feelings.

It’s hard to describe exactly but I’m struggling to set the boundaries I want (like, I don’t want to hug you on the couch right now because I feel grumpy) because they make me feel like a bad person and I worry that it will make my son feel like I only like him and want to hang out with or hug him when he’s “good.” Hugging him when I don’t want to feels inauthentic, and I don’t think it sets a good example for consent and bodily autonomy. How can I be authentic when being authentic feels mean. I’m not withholding to punish him, I just really don’t feel like it in that moment. But it feels like too much of my own baggage to be putting on a 3 year old! Your input would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Again, there’s so many topics within this parent’s note that I want to help her on, and I’ll admit I get kind of overwhelmed because I could probably do like a five-hour podcast on this, but nobody wants that! So I’ve bolded certain parts of her note as areas that I want to address.

First I bolded, “As someone who was shown as a kid that having emotions was not welcome, I’m constantly trying to identify and allow my feelings rather than pushing them down.” How many of us were raised feeling that having emotions was not welcome? I would say probably at least half of us, if not more. So this is a very valid issue that a lot of us are trying to overcome.

And this parent also says that showing feelings strongly, particularly anger, which she thinks is a crutch emotion that she leans on to avoid feeling the root emotion, is damaging to her kids. Just to throw this out there, I’m not a therapist and obviously I don’t know this parent very well at all, but I’m sure she’s spot on, because she sounds very intuitive about a lot of things going on here and obviously if she’s been working on this, she understands quite a bit. So I would guess the root emotion is fear and that’s the fear getting tapped into of losing her parents’ regard for her, the rejection of her parents, of feeling like a bad child because they didn’t like the way that we express this feeling. They’ve just told us no and we’ve gotten upset.

As a young child, it’s so frightening when our parents are not happy with us. Our parents are our whole world. They set the tone for everything and what they think about us is what we feel about ourselves. And if they’re disappointed in us, if they’re even annoyed with us, it’s scary. There’s no way that we can feel comfortable in that as a child when it’s like our whole world feels against us. Not that these parents were against her or that she’s against her child when she’s annoyed, but that’s how it can feel to a child. So it’s huge, right? And yet at the same time, this parent wants to be authentic. I’m going to talk about how that can work.

This mom says she worries that showing the feelings she has strongly is damaging to her kids. I wouldn’t jump to that it’s damaging, because it’s always mendable, these riffs or these feelings that our children have in our relationship, this fear that they have. We can always redeem that, we can always make that better. But this parent is right in that it’s scary for her kids and it’s painful for her kids, it’s really uncomfortable. So that’s a conundrum, right? We have these feelings, we want to be able to express them, but they’re scary for our child. How do we deal with that?

Then this parent gives the example where her three-year-old is doing something like “throwing things around that I’ve just been tidying, not in anger, just for fun.” Here’s where I want to help this parent understand her child even better. Children don’t enjoy making us annoyed and they don’t do things like this for fun. Our children are highly aware. From the moment they’re born, they are soaking everything up, and there’s no way in the world that our child is just having a good time doing something that they’re very aware is upsetting to us.

It’s very easy as parents to underestimate children’s awareness because of the fact that they don’t verbalize everything that they’re aware of, or even anything close to that. They’re not able to do that. But babies are aware of our moods and our feelings. Even in the womb, there’s studies showing that babies feel our emotions. We underestimate their awareness typically, and we overestimate their ability to control their behaviors. So it’s not that he thinks that’s fun and that’s a good thing to do and that he didn’t notice that his mom just made the house all tidy. It’s that he’s stuck doing this thing again that he knows is going to bug his mother.

Why is he getting stuck in that? Because he’s getting this reaction out of his mother that’s really uncomfortable. And he’s also stuck in that perhaps because he’s got a nine-month-old sibling, and this sibling is now starting to crawl around maybe. He’s still dealing with this transition in his life of having to share his mom with this baby who’s taking so much of his mom’s energy and time and affection. That’s scary.

When children are scared, that’s a big reason that they get impulsive and then it’s like they keep going to that thing that they need us to work on. This is all unconscious of course, but it’s like, Work on this. Look, I’m doing this stuff. I’m throwing this stuff around. See me. See that I’m not comfortable and I’m doing this impulsive thing. I mean, it’s still going to be annoying no matter what, but it’s far more annoying if we think our child is just having fun doing something that makes our life harder. That increases the annoyance level many, many times over, right?

What I want to offer this parent is to see that he’s reaching out with this behavior. He’s saying, Hey, look! Help! I’m doing this kooky stuff that I know you don’t like. I keep falling into this trap again and again, and your reaction is scary. I need a more comfortable reaction from you. I need something that sees me. That will help this parent to feel less annoyed about this and more kind of, “Oh whoops, what’s going on, buddy? You’re throwing stuff. I’m not going to let you do that. Are you feeling a little out of sorts? Come here. Stick by me while I do this, that, or the other.” It brings out a whole different feeling in us when we can see the pain in that and the kind of alarm in that behavior, the message, the flag, the help. It’s still annoying that he has to go to that, but it’s less annoying when we focus on what’s really going on there for him.

I’m going to say it yet again—I feel like a broken record—but at least 80% of the questions parents share with me are about this behavior that suddenly started happening when the parent was expecting the sibling or the sibling was there or the sibling was getting towards the end of that first year, where they become more of a person to our older child, more of a threat, more of a rival, less of what they could imagine was a blob (although we know that it’s a person from the beginning). They don’t have control over this person suddenly, who can move all around and get into their stuff. It’s terrifying, right? It can be.

And they need to share that with somebody, with their parent. The way I do that as a kid, unfortunately, is through behavior. I’m not articulate and understanding of my feelings enough to tell you, “I’m really scared about this baby. Look what’s going on,” so I do it like this. We don’t need to dive in right there and talk about the baby with him or anything else, just to know that for ourselves so that we can feel less annoyed. Because this parent and all of us deserve to feel authentic with our kids as much as possible, or at least not feel inauthentic.

This mom says she says, “I won’t let you throw these things around because I’ve just been tidying them and I want the house neat. I’m going to move them away from you.” All of that is so much energy she’s putting into this explanation and these words that aren’t necessary. Because I can guarantee that certainly by three years old he knows she doesn’t want him to throw these things around, that she’s just been tidying them, he saw that, and that she wants the house neat, that she doesn’t want things thrown around.

“I’m going to move them away from you.” That would be something to show, not tell, and just to help him with. “Oops, all right, let’s put these away. I can’t let you do that.” It’s not an explanation of you need me to tell you why this is not a nice thing to do. Our children already know that. So when we’re using up our energy that way, that’s going to make it harder for us to be unannoyed and to see our child’s perspective.

Then she says, “He’ll seem fine with this, move on and then not long after say ‘I want a hug on the couch.’ But I don’t feel like giving him a hug on the couch because I’m still annoyed that he’s making my day more difficult.” Right, so I hope I’ve helped this parent understand a little more why her boy is getting stuck in this behavior and that it’s really not as intentional and it’s definitely not fun as it seems.

And then she says, “Is it wrong to say ‘I don’t really want to hug you right now because I’m annoyed with you, I didn’t like it when you threw the things around and made the house untidy’?” Again, this is getting into all this explanation of things that he already knows. Hopefully she’s going to work on being less annoyed and more understanding of what’s going on here, but she may still be annoyed. I mean, it is annoying behavior, like I said. She doesn’t need to tell him that. He already knows that too.

When we see how vulnerable our child’s behavior is, the vulnerability behind it, it can help us to rise into this bigger part of ourself. This is a little tiny guy doing little stupid things, right? He’s a tiny, immature child and he’s showing us feelings in this really, really immature way. Annoying way, sure, but are we going to let this get to us? This parent can rise above this while still being in tune with herself and her emotions, which is what she really wants, right?

So if she doesn’t want to hug him, first of all, let’s understand why he wants to hug: because he’s frightened. He wants his mom to come back to the other mom that liked him again and he’s trying to fix this. But that doesn’t mean that his mom is in the mood to do that and that’s okay. She can just say, “I’m not going to hug right now, sweetie, but I love you. I’m going to hug you when I can.” Because she does love him. Even if she’s annoyed, she loves him. She doesn’t have to get into that she’s all annoyed and why. He senses why, he just needs to know that they’re going to go on and it’s going to be okay between them. He doesn’t need that hug.

And that’s where this mom can avoid being inauthentic and saying, “Okay, I’m going to hug you,” and then giving him some hug that she doesn’t feel. That wouldn’t feel good to him anyway, right? It’s much better not to do that, we want our insides to match our outsides. But when we understand our child’s point of view, how all this works for them, how all this affects them, then we can feel less annoyed enough to not have to grrr back at him. We can rise into that higher part of ourselves.

Again, I’m not saying this like this parent should do this and be all perfect and everybody should feel like that. I’m not. I’m just talking about the direction we want to go in, where we want to head, and to believe in yourself that this is possible. It’s possible to see your child for what’s going on right now and where he is.

So yes, I’m agreeing with this parent’s wish not to hug, but I would just say she doesn’t need to delve into it so much with him. Because what is he going to do with that? Oh, she’s annoyed. She doesn’t want to hug me. That’s just going to make him feel less comfortable and therefore more likely to behave impulsively. Unfortunately, it works that way: the more uncomfortable our child is because we’re not feeling safe to them, the more of this behavior we’re going to see. It’s not fair, but that’s how it works. And this parent, and every parent, has the power to do this when they understand their child’s perspective, when we can step into our child’s shoes.

This parent then says, “It’s hard to describe exactly but I’m struggling to set the boundaries I want (like, I don’t want to hug you on the couch right now because I feel grumpy) because they make me feel like a bad person and I worry that it will make my son feel like I only like him and want to hang out with or hug him when he’s ‘good.'” This is where this parent is maybe putting this whole onus on herself around this, that now she’s supposed to want to hug him, and if she doesn’t want to hug him then she’s hurting him and not giving him the right message. She can not want to hug him and, like I said, I wouldn’t hug him if she’s not feeling like hugging him. I don’t recommend doing that because that is usually far more uncomfortable for our child than for us to say, “I’m not going to hug you right now, sweetie, but I love you. We’re going to hug a lot later.” You can postpone that reconnecting moment.

One thing that I really, really hope this parent and everyone listening does is to normalize this for yourself, that yes, you are going to feel annoyed and edgy. And we don’t have to get into it, explain it all to our child, but we can identify it for ourselves. Like this parent, she’s got so much self-reflective ability to know she just gets annoyed really easily as a person. So her own triggers are putting her in that position, and that’s something to own in herself right now and to forgive. But she doesn’t need to let him into this adult struggle she’s having. She can just let him know, “I’m not feeling it right now, but we’ll do it later. You know I always love you no matter what.” Maybe saying something like that would help her to feel like she can have a boundary there and still feel like a very good person.

In fact, she’s the best kind of person, because she’s being honest. She is going to repair with him when she feels ready to. When she’s able to digest this a little more and go, Gosh, he’s still doing this behavior because of the way I’ve reacted to it and that’s been scary for him. It’s going to take him a while to calm down.

And it may take other times where she does sit with him and is able to say, “This thing with having the baby is really, really hard for kids. What does it feel like for you?” Whatever he says, whatever complaints he has. Some children don’t complain about the baby at all, they have other things. But whatever other annoying things he’s saying or doing, reflect on those with him. “You don’t want the baby getting into your stuff,” or, “You don’t like that the baby has any toys, do you? You want all of them for yourself.” That doesn’t mean we’re letting him control all the toys that belong to the baby, but we’re not judging him for feeling that way. I don’t know if that applies here at all, but that’s an example of other ways that she can help him share the feelings as they come. Because again, it’s really impossible for children this age to articulate these feelings that they have.

So this thing about setting a boundary, she can do it. There’s no need to say because I’m grumpy and I’m this and that. That’s just going to fuel his discomfort even more. It’s not necessary. We don’t tell everybody in our lives everything. Unloading is not what authenticity is. Authenticity with kids is not doing the tricks and the strategies and the “Where’s Jessica?” or whatever. Those things are what’s inauthentic. Or making a big, Oh yes, let’s hug! while I’m really mad at you. Imagine how that feels to a child. They need our outsides to match our insides. That’s authenticity, honesty with them about things that are going on between us. But we don’t have to tell them every feeling that comes up for us.

This parent’s instinct not to hug when she’s annoyed is very, very positive. And she doesn’t need to worry that he will get the message that she only wants to hang out with him when he’s good as long as she doesn’t get into, Well, it’s because I’m grumpy and you’re making me grumpy. Even if she doesn’t say “you’re making me grumpy,” he knows full well that he made her grumpy. So I’m hoping I can help you feel less grumpy and that when you are grumpy, you don’t have to get into it with him.

Reflect on some of these things I’ve talked about in terms of his point of view. This parent already says that she relates to his point of view. Well, hopefully this is more information that, once you’ve digested and you’ve gotten over your hump of being annoyed, maybe empathize a little with what’s going on with him. You can always come back to him and say, “You know what? I’m hugsville right now. Let’s hug!” And maybe he’ll reject you then, who knows, but you can hear that too and know that that’s another way of him expressing the feelings. “Okay, if you don’t want to hug, you don’t have to. I’m going to be here for a few more minutes, just available. You don’t have to hug me this time.”

This parent says, “It feels like too much of my own baggage to be putting on a 3 year old!” She really does understand this on so many levels and I think it’s heroic and incredible that any parent is working on these triggers. That’s the work she’s doing, out of love for her child and herself. That will pay off, that combined with the understanding of where he’s coming from.

That’s my input. I believe in this parent. I want to encourage her and empower her to feel she can totally set her boundaries with respect, with honesty, with authenticity, and without it creating fear for either one of them. And I really thank her for reaching out to me.

There’s a whole lot more help for understanding our children’s point of view and their behaviors, what’s behind their behaviors, what they need from us, and to be able to embody our role in a way that gives us that confidence that we need to be authentic in my No Bad Kids Master Course. You can check it out at nobadkidscourse.com. And for a light read, my book No Bad Kids. And of course, this podcast. There have been many episodes about everything under the sun to do with raising our children in their early years. So check it out!

Thanks to all of you for listening. We can do this.

The post Being Authentic When It Feels Mean appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “When Daily Tasks Turn Into Daily Battles: Transitions, Conflict, and Real Connection”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m going to be responding to a parent I had an exchange with, I think it was in Facebook Messages. She’s struggling with her child’s resistance to transitions in general and tasks that are often part of transitions, like getting dressed, combing hair, taking a bath, brushing teeth. And it’s really getting this parent down because she wants to connect positively with her child and her child to feel that trust between them and she’s worried that she’s undermining that with these struggles that they have on an almost daily basis, it seems, with transitions.

I have a lot of thoughts for this parent that I really hope will help her—and anyone listening—clarifying some really, really important things about what connection really means, about what respecting our child really means, and how conflict and connection can actually happen together. And that’s a relief, right? We don’t have to choose one over the other. We can face conflicts with our child in a very connected, honest way.

Here’s this parent’s note:

I’ve been listening to your podcast for years and it’s given me so much relief and confidence as a mother. I’m a single mom to a sweet, affectionate, social butterfly, beautifully bossy five-year-old who will start first grade this fall. Her father is minimally involved. My mom is my main support and, as a nurse, I work a lot more than I would like.

While I always imagined a slower, more peaceful family life, our reality is often busy and demanding. She has to navigate many transitions that are often inconsistent, especially in terms of the co-parenting situation. I often do not know when or how that will go. Even so, I want us to move through these years feeling connected and secure if possible.

The struggle I keep running into is around daily tasks. Since about age three, my daughter has strongly resisted getting dressed, brushing her hair, bathing, and brushing her teeth. I’ve tried timers, countdown, a game we play called “Get Dressed Race” to make it fun, silly getting-dressed games, reward charts, and punishments. I often say, “I see you don’t want to get dressed right now. Let me help you.” What starts as a simple transition can turn into an hour-long battle, with both of us ending up overwhelmed and the task often still unfinished.

Over the years I’ve tried to approach this through an Unruffled lens: less pressure, more connection, acceptance, and leadership. But lately I’m wondering if I’m missing something. Her resistance doesn’t seem to be improving with age and sometimes it almost feels like she’s compelled to fight these transitions even when she wants to move on with her day.

How do we know when a child needs more support moving through discomfort versus when a parent needs to hold a firmer boundary? Is it possible to be so focused on staying connected and respectful that we inadvertently get stuck in a pattern that isn’t helping our child grow? I would love any insight you might have. I adore my daughter and truly want to help her develop the skills she needs to navigate life while preserving our relationship. Thank you for everything you do.

Then I wrote back:

Hi! I’m thinking I could maybe address your concern on my podcast. I have a question, though. Can you describe your thoughts around this idea of “connection”? What does that mean to you? What does it look like? What does all of this mean to you: “less pressure, more connection, acceptance, and leadership”?

And here’s what she wrote back:

Thank you for getting back to me, Janet.

When I think about being connected and unruffled, “less pressure, more connection, acceptance, and leadership” means feeling confident in my role while being on the same team as my daughter. I want to communicate in a way that respects her, shows that her voice matters, and teaches her that she deserves respect so we can move through life with confidence.

At the same time, life still requires us to do things that are hard, uncomfortable, or simply non-negotiable, and I sometimes struggle to know where that balance is. I often notice that my own negative self-talk echoes the messages I absorbed growing up. As a millennial, a lot of parenting was rooted in stuffing uncomfortable emotions and correcting behavior. While there was plenty of love, struggles were often approached through a behavior-focused lens. I want to give my daughter a different inner voice that is encouraging and compassionate even when things are hard.

Yet these moments around transitions seem to bring up exactly the patterns I don’t want to repeat because we both genuinely get stuck. I think part of what makes this so hard is that I’m not just parenting my daughter, I’m also trying to rethink a lot of what I’ve learned about parenting. Sometimes I find myself second-guessing both myself and these principles at times. But truly when I take a moment and recenter with your podcast, it’s like I find my voice as a mother again and honestly, almost immediately things aren’t as hard.

Thank you.

Thank you to this parent! That was very encouraging, that my podcast helps her that way. But what I appreciate so much more about this note, especially this last response, is the care and thoughtfulness and insight that this parent has. It’s pretty extraordinary. I wrote back to her: “This is beautiful what you’ve written here. You are a wonderful mom. I think/hope I can clear up some things for you to help guide your way. You already have everything else you need.”

That’s what I felt reading this note. I felt, wow, this parent already understands so much about what’s going on here and that’s more than half the battle. And then there are a couple of things that she talks about that I feel like I can help give her more clarity on. And by doing so, give her all the confidence that she needs to handle these situations.

First I want to backtrack to the path that she’s taken so far in responding to these behaviors. At the same time, I want to help her and everyone understand how much sense it makes that this child is struggling in transitions. I mean, it makes sense for all children because they’re in such an internal transition of growth in these early years. Then when there’s a transition like the parents’ separation, children often comment when they’re old enough to, that when their parents are divorced or separated, the most difficult part for them is the going back and forth, having two different homes, two different lives, having parents that are in two different places. And this doesn’t mean we should feel bad if we’re in that situation, only that it will help us to come into parenting with more confidence when we know that this is very typical behavior that this child is showing.

And the fact that she’s going into first grade and she’s this social butterfly and sounds extremely confident, she’s “beautifully bossy”—I mean, I personally love that kind of child—sweet, affectionate. And going into first grade, that’s a big transition right there. But it seems like this little girl’s handling all of that, her outside life, beautifully and that is a testament to this parent and the way that she’s handled things and the genuine connection and love and trust that these two have together. So she’s already done all the hard things and here’s what I think is holding her back and keeping both of them stuck, as this parent says, in these uncomfortable transitions.

The first is that rather than handling these situations with connection and confidence, she’s doing what a lot of us want to do: resorting to these strategies that actually get in the way of us connecting honestly, person to person. That’s the timers, the countdowns, the games we play, the reward charts, the punishments especially. All of those things are kind of outside fixes rather than getting the practice that we need and that our child needs from us, really, that we’re being real right now together. This is what’s in front of us. We have to do this. You don’t want to do it, not at all. This is a big old drag. You don’t like this.

Whatever you’re saying, again, the words don’t matter, but really, really allowing those feelings to be. Because what your daughter’s sharing here, what children share in these moments, is not that brushing their teeth is the most painful, horrible thing or that getting dressed is this giant, awful thing. It feels overwhelming right then because they’re filled with the deeper feelings of having to face these transitions. So these are just the little outside things. They’re not what’s really going on, which is that this girl is saying, I need to be a mess with transitions. This is where it’s coming out. Can you gather me through these overwhelmed feelings? Can you stay confident in the face of my overwhelmed feelings? And that’s the hard part, right?

This isn’t to say that those other strategies or tactics or whatever don’t ever work in the moment, but I don’t think punishments work at all because it gives us the opposite of connection with our child. And I know this parent doesn’t want to be doing that, I’m sure. Reward charts, where we’re kind of gaming our child and they feel that, they know that it’s us trying to make it happen without really dealing with it and really connecting with them. And the games work best when they genuinely come from us feeling on top of this. If these are just things that we’re trying because we just want to make this work, that’s going to bring us down. That’s going to make us feel more tired, more uncomfortable, especially when it doesn’t work, less honest in the relationship and more like we’re having to perform.

What I want to say here every single time is that we never need to perform as parents. It should never need to feel like a performance. It can always be us as our real selves, relating to our child as their real, honest selves. Even when it’s hard, even when it’s overwhelming, that’s what works. That’s the through line through all of this that helps our child to not get stuck in these situations and for us not to get us stuck. Because there can’t be a power struggle when we’re not trying to pull the wool over them in some way, push them through. Instead, we’re facing what’s going on. We’re welcoming what’s going on. We’re still going to help our child get from point A to point B. We’re going to do it with the power and strength that we have when we’re being our real selves, not resorting to the tricks or the little games or whatever. And they get to be as overwhelmed as they need to be.

Because here’s the interesting thing and why it’s so wonderful, or at least for me, it’s so helpful for this parent to share about her experience and this setup that’s so common. I mean, how many of us come to parenting with this sense that we don’t have the experience to stay in connection when there’s conflict? We were only connected with when we put those feelings away and our behavior was pleasing. That’s when we were able to connect with our parent, not at any other time. But it’s at these other times when connection can be so powerful and help us through with our relationship not only intact after every one of these conflicts, but even stronger.

This parent says: “I often notice that my own negative self-talk echoes the messages I absorbed growing up. As a millennial, a lot of parenting was rooted in stuffing uncomfortable emotions and correcting behavior. While there was plenty of love, struggles were often approached through a behavior-focused lens.” So without meaning to, and in a much kinder, gentler way, this parent has kind of been repeating that, or at least that’s what she was doing in the past. But all of those things that she was trying are ways of avoiding our child’s uncomfortable emotions and really just trying to fix the behavior. So it’s a kind, loving way of doing it, but it’s giving the same message of, I’m not comfortable with you sharing these overwhelmed feelings you have in these very minor transitions and tasks. I’m not comfortable with you being overwhelmed. I need to just make this go well.

Now, that’s understandable! This is how we all feel and we all want it that way. But it will help this parent to take a look at that and see that that’s why none of that’s really working, ultimately. It may have worked a couple times here and there, but it’s not helping this parent be on the path that she’s expressed so eloquently that she wants to be on with her daughter: respect, connection, encouraging her daughter’s voice, showing her she deserves respect so she can move through life with confidence, which she’s already doing. We want to continue that, right?

But at the same time, as this parent said, “Life still requires us to do things that are hard, uncomfortable, or simply non-negotiable, and I sometimes struggle to know where that balance is.” So again, it’s not a balance. These are one and the same. Respecting her, showing her her voice matters and teaching her she deserves respect, having that quality connection with her that helps her keep moving through life with confidence and their relationship moving forward with confidence can also teach our kids that they need to do things that are hard, uncomfortable, or simply non-negotiable.

In fact, this teaches it better, because the message we want to give them is that when it’s hard, uncomfortable, or simply non-negotiable, we’re there to help you through. And you can be a mess during that. In fact, we want you to share every bit of that with us. We’re not going to let it discourage us. We’re not going to let it rattle our confidence. We’re still going to be that leader for you. In fact, this is what we expect to happen because we know that you’re sparkling in life right now and that means you need somebody to be that other side with. I want to be that person for you. I’m not afraid of that.

Now I realize it’s easy for me to say this and a lot of people out there are probably disagreeing and just saying, Just give her an answer of what she should do, Janet! You always want us to work on our perspective and how we’re seeing things and how we’re understanding things. Well, there’s a reason for that and that’s because no matter what I or anyone might suggest this parent does, it won’t work the way she wants it to without her confidence in facing these situations, her belief in herself that this is connection and she can do this as her real self. She doesn’t need those games and fix-its. She can express things that she’s expressed in this note directly to her daughter. Like when she’s struggling to get dressed or whatever: “Ugh, this is life, right? We have to do these things and it’s a big old drag. Cry about it with me and let me help you pick up the pieces here.”

This parent said she doesn’t always know in advance when the daughter has to make a transition. I mean, that’s hard for the parent and it’s also very hard for the child. If this bubbly girl was accepting all of this disruption without having a lot of feelings about it, that would be strange, right? When we expect the mess, we can meet the situation knowing there’s nothing we can’t handle here.

Yes, there will be times when we let things slide. “You know what? We don’t need to comb your hair. Let’s just do it like this,” or “I’ll just put a ponytail on.” There’ll be other times when we say, “Okay, now we’ve really, really got to do this, honey.” But since we’ve been practicing this honesty and this acceptance of our child, that will work too. Because what our child wants from us in these situations is the real us. They don’t want the jolly us, the gamey us. They want somebody that really sees them, really accepts them, and can be honest about, “Look, unfortunately we’ve got to go. This has been your life, that you have to pick up and go and pick up and go. And it’s so hard.” I don’t know if this parent has had that kind of conversation with her daughter. I would encourage her to, because the more she can open up and allow her daughter to open up, the safer both of them will feel and the deeper their connection will be.

She’ll find she gets less stuck when her agenda isn’t to avoid, which I sense is what’s going on here, because she feels like either we have a big, awful conflict or we avoid it somehow. But this parent can handle the conflict. She can be in it with her and still be the leader and still be respectful and still even be kind, but be honest and say, “Look, we’ve got to go and I really need your help here, my darling.” And we try to remind ourselves not to push back on all the complaints and the whines, because it’s all good. This parent doesn’t need to worry that this is connection and that’s not. It’s all connection.

This parent said when she thinks about being connected and unruffled, it means confident in her role while being on the same team as her daughter. So this parent is very confident, she said, in some ways, but not in this part. And maybe she also feels, I don’t know, sometimes when parents separate or get divorced, there’s guilt around that. No. This parent has every single thing she needs, except a little more confidence. Because she sees that this is all really, really positive when her child is acting like this. It’s inconvenient, yes. It’s loud, maybe. Yes, it slows things down sometimes, but don’t let it slow things down too much. You’ll find you have more strength with what I call confident momentum the more you give in. It’s like the strength we have when we’re allowing those waves to pass by rather than trying to stop them. There’s so much power in letting go and letting the feelings be. It’s scary, but it gives you strength.

And yes, maybe there’ll be things that she misses, things that don’t work out as planned. We won’t have a perfect bath every time, sometimes we can have a quick shower. What matters is the dynamic and how you approach it, how you feel about it, because that’s what kids feel. When kids get stuck in something, it’s often because they’re not quite getting something they need from that, so they have to keep trying unconsciously. And I believe she’s not quite getting this feeling that it’s okay for her to be a mess. So rather than trying to override her feelings or avoid them or punish them, bring it on. It’s safe. There’s nothing to feel intimidated about here.

This parent said, “what starts as a simple transition can turn into an hour-long battle.” Yes, because, without meaning to, we’re pushing up against the feelings or trying to avoid them or override them. It’s like a storm that we’re trying to stop. It’s a frustrating experience that takes way too much time, much more time than it does to really lean in with confidence and enough momentum, just in your attitude, to do your best to make it work.

And the worst that happens is you’re late or she doesn’t get her hair perfectly brushed that day or brush her teeth that one day. But even when those things happen, just think what she can learn there. She can learn, Hey, my mom is on my team. My mom is not intimidated. My mom holds a limit in that she’s doing her best to get me through. I’m getting what I need then, as this child. And then while I still may have feelings that build up, it won’t happen as much. They won’t take as long because I know we’re a team and my mom can meet this with confidence too and be that leader that can contain what’s going on with me. Not take it on herself, like she did something wrong. It’s quite the opposite. She’s doing the most loving, brave, honest, powerful thing. Kids sense that.

I hope this parent can proceed with confidence. I know, we gain the confidence when it works! But in this case, it works because we gain the confidence. This parent can be confident knowing that by hook or by crook, she’s going to get through each of these transitions and tasks, or maybe there’ll be some she lets go for that day. But not only can she connect and be respectful by being her whole self, that’s really the only true way to connect.

Just getting back to this parent’s original questions: “How do we know when a child needs more support moving through discomfort versus when a parent needs to hold a firmer boundary?” I don’t know how we can hold a really firm boundary with something like a transition or a caregiving activity or a personal task like brushing hair, getting dressed. This isn’t something where we can hold a very firm boundary because it’s not something that works when we force it, when we hold our child down or tie them to a chair and brush their hair. That’s not going to work for us. These kinds of situations take something different. They take that finesse, that give and take where yes, we’re firm in that we’re going to do this, but we’re not going to force it. We want to work in teamwork with our child.

But the thing is, when we’re doing that and even when we’re holding a firm boundary around other things that we can hold firm boundaries on, we do want to hold ourselves firmly in terms of our confidence, knowing that when we hold that boundary, that’s how our child gets supported moving through discomfort. This ideal dynamic that we want to practice, and that the timers and countdowns won’t help us practice, is allowing our child to move through their feelings while we’re holding the boundary. That’s how it works. And that’s why it’s such a time of connection, because we’re saying, We’ve got to do this and I’m going to help make this happen, but at the same time we’re also saying, You really don’t want to do this and this is not fun. It’s so hard on you to have to keep making these changes, move all your stuff and sleep in another place. Whatever our child is saying, whatever our child is expressing, accept and acknowledge that, fully. Empathize with it if you can. That’s helping our child move through the feeling and it’s the same thing as holding a boundary, often.

And this parent says, “Is it possible to be so focused on staying connected and respectful that we inadvertently get stuck in a pattern that isn’t helping our child grow?” Yes, but only if we are defining or understanding being connected and respectful as moments when we’re laughing together with our child or avoiding them feeling uncomfortable somehow and just waiting for them to give us permission to help them out the door. The definition of connection and respectful is you get to be who you are and I get to be who I am. I’m the leader here that you need to help you, and part of that is allowing you to feel all the things. That’s as connected as we’re ever going to be with our child.

I realize this is an unfamiliar groove for that parent to be in, as it is for all of us. That’s why it takes so much practice. That’s why I would encourage her to not only be thinking about all this and what she’s seeing going on here, but also to let go of the charts and the tricks and have a conversation with her daughter. Depending on how much of this she’s been doing, just very openly saying, “Look, we’ve tried all these things. I don’t want to do that anymore. I just want to be with you and help you when I know these are things that are really, really hard for you.” And yes, they’re small things, and we could see it that way, Why is she making such a big deal about small things? But they represent, as they always do with kids, deeper things that she really needs to share with her precious mom.

I really hope this makes sense. I encourage this parent and all parents to believe in themselves and believe in this idea of messy, messy connection. Because that is what’s real and true a lot of the time, unfortunately.

Thank you so much for listening. We can do this.

The post When Daily Tasks Turn Into Daily Battles: Transitions, Conflict, and Real Connection appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “Peer Play. Using Our Power to Help Kids Thrive Socially”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m going to be responding to three different messages I received from parents. They seem very different. You’re going to hear one about how respectful parenting approaches bullying. You’re going to hear another one, the subject line in this parent’s email was “Help! Pretend play disaster.” And then finally, a very brief one that came in on Instagram when I did a Q&A reach-out. That one simply asks about “Helping a reserved three-year-old be comfortable around other people?”

I want to thank all of these parents for reaching out to me and to talk about the through line in all of these, which is helping our kids to succeed in social situations. Helping them develop their social skills, helping them play with others well and connect with others. Many of you know that the relationship that we’re building with our child is a model for them for other relationships that they’re going to engage in. So a lot of the social skills that we teach, we teach directly through the way that we interact with our child. This makes sense to us, right? If we’re kind to our child, our child learns kindness. If we’re generous, they learn generosity. If we’re gracious and thank them, then they learn to feel gracious. They can bask in those experiences that we give them through our modeling.

But often when our children seem to be in some way struggling socially, as in all these situations that I’m going to bring up today, it’s often because this process isn’t as direct as we might think it is, in terms of we model it and they just do it, or we teach them how to play with other kids and so they’re just able to do it. It’s not direct instruction. Most of parenting, I guess, is not direct instruction, but especially these very nuanced skills that kids need to learn experientially.

There are two other ways besides our modeling that we could support our kids to learn to be with other people and how to relate to them successfully. One is the way that we assert our boundaries with our child and follow through with that. The other is maybe one of the hardest things for us as parents, which is to trust our child’s process.

Mostly I’m going to be talking about those two ideas—boundaries and trusting our child’s process—and how we actually have a very strong influence on our children’s development of social skills through not only modeling, but also through boundaries and trust. What that looks like, and also how understanding our power can help us. Because oftentimes when our kids are struggling, there is something that we can tweak in our relationship with our children and the way that we’re handling boundaries and trust. So it’s not only understanding our power, but it’s knowing how that means we can actually help them.

Whenever I talk about how much power we have to influence our children, sometimes when we’re feeling insecure as parents, we maybe take that as blame, like, Oh, everything’s our fault. And it’s not true. There aren’t a lot of books about this, how to do this, there isn’t a lot of information. And many of us are forging a path to a respectful and authoritative approach that maybe we didn’t receive as children. It’s forging new territory, so don’t expect that you’re supposed to know all these things. But try to give yourself grace so you can be open to looking at where you might be able to help your child over these humps.

Here’s the first one, titled “Help! Pretend play disaster”:

Hi, Janet-

Your work saved my parenting journey when my first was 18 months and starting to show anxiety. Thank you. I’m in a pickle on this one.

Four-year-old loves pretend play and lives 80% of the day in character. She doesn’t do much screen time if that’s helpful. This is coming mostly from books, podcast stories, and Tonies. The pickle: She loves to direct play and she constantly says, “Okay, you are Anna. You say X, Y, Z, then I do X, Y, Z.” But the problem is, if you say even a word off, she stops you and starts over. Again and again. I’ve tried to explain every way that I can think of that this isn’t fun. I’ve tried to model just playing together in character, but that’s not what she wants. She seems to really not understand why this isn’t fun for the other person playing.

It’s one thing with her dad and I, but the problem is with friends. This has spilled over to most of her interactions with friends. She has a lot of close friendships, neighbors and a core group she has known since she was six months. She gets so angry or sad when friends don’t say exactly what she’s asking them to. Sometimes she can move on and play their games, but very often this ends in tears. I can tell the friends are annoyed or want to play but just don’t understand her very specific directions.

I thought the best thing was to let it play out with her friends, and them rejecting this kind of play would be hard, but she would move on. It’s been a year and that’s not happening. What am I doing wrong? What am I not seeing?

Additional info: I’m a full-time parent with two little girls, four and one. This started well before the baby was born, but of course could be related? I’m at a loss.

The main thing I want to help this parent understand is how important her boundaries are in setting her child up for success with other children. And this is true with a lot of the notes that I receive. It can be easy to fall into, Oh, isn’t this wonderful? My child is so imaginative and they’re creating these games. And maybe we’ve heard a lot about how we’re supposed to play with our child, how when our child comes home from school and they say, Play with me!, that we’re supposed to do that.

But there are a couple of signs here, even without the way this is affecting this girl with her friends, there are a couple of things that we can look at as parents to remind ourselves that when something seems so unreasonable in terms of the way we’re playing with our child or engaging with our child or what they’re asking of us, then there’s a very good chance that what our child is really asking for is for us to have a reasonable boundary.

Again, it can be easy to get kind of lost in this as parents, especially if we do have an approach where we respect and trust our child and we want to encourage them, of course. But when we’re trying to participate with them and then they’re being so exacting and it seems impossible to please them even though we’re playing with them, that’s something to look at. A lot of times children will just go further and further and further into the ridiculousness of a demand on us, and that’s sort of where this has gone here.

These are things to look at, like, Why am I giving my child so much power over me, that they’re telling me what to do and I’m trying to live up to what they want? I’m not saying it should be the other way around either, to be a respectful parent, but this is almost always our child not needing us to play with them this way. We can get caught up in thinking that, but underneath it all, they’re wanting us to actually set the boundary and just let them be mad at us, let them be frustrated, let them be angry or sad or whatever that looks like. Because those feelings often represent other feelings.

It’s not like our child would get so disappointed that people can’t play in her stringent way that she’s asking them to. It’s other things that she’s already feeling, and children have this healthy instinct to push, push, push so that they can let go of all those feelings that have to do with, well, who knows what else. Maybe the rivalry with her sibling, who’s now one, which does tend to be a time when children feel threatened by that. I don’t know, I can’t say entirely. I can say that’s a common reason, but it could just be a lot of other things. Four is what I sort of think of as a “pushing out” age, where they’re seeing where the boundaries are as they’re pushing even more to individuate from us. Just needing to be able to express those out-of-control feelings, all the areas that they don’t control in life, which are a lot.

So this is one we can help this child with. We don’t let her control us and the way we’re talking and the way we’re playing with her, if we’re nice enough to want to play with her. And I would not make that my job, to play with my child. My job is to give focused attention in spurts throughout the day, to create a safe home where my child can flourish and do the play that she’s doing, which is wonderful play in itself. I believe she’s seeking boundaries around how far we’re going to go with this. And like I said, I would take it all the way back to, This isn’t my job, this is her pretend stuff.

And we can see here how this is affecting her friendships, because we’re the model for these relationships. And if we’re not asserting those boundaries, then our child has to seek them elsewhere. And I don’t think she really wants her friends to do everything she wants them to say or do either, underneath it all. But she’s getting stuck in this mode of, This is the only way I know how to play with people.

We can adjust that so easily by just being aware of this and what’s going on, and by taking a look at our own feelings. Hey, this feels weird. I’m uncomfortable. I can’t please her. What am I doing? And that’s a really good place to go as parents, to take note of, This isn’t fun for me. This is uncomfortable. That almost always means we need to stick up for ourselves and set a reasonable boundary, take care of our needs in the relationship. Which is such beautiful modeling for our child because now they’re learning, Oh, other people don’t do everything you want them to do. We can teach them that through just our own reasonable care for ourselves and listening to that voice of discomfort in us.

But here’s the thing, most of us do this thing where we want to try just explaining it. Don’t you know this isn’t fun? And I believe underneath it all, she does know. And I don’t think she’s having fun either. She knows that we’re not having fun when we’re getting caught up in this trying-to-please-her thing. There’s a boundary missing. We’re the adult model of relationships and she’s the child who is supposed to have all kinds of unreasonable demands sometimes to find out where she stands with us and other people, and also to be able to release all these feelings of uncomfortable power and control and the frustrations that are in her, and maybe the fear that’s in her and the sadness.

This parent used the word “sadness” when she talked about her with her friends, “angry or sad.” Well, under anger is usually fear and sadness. So we want her to get to express that the way that she knows how, which is to express it through other things, through play and then us setting reasonable boundaries.

This parent says, “It’s one thing with her dad and I, but the problem is with friends.” Yes, but the thing is that you and her dad are representing relationships with friends. You’re showing her the way. This is why it’s so important for us to have reasonable boundaries and take care of ourselves because, as this parent noticed:

This has spilled over to most of her interactions with friends. She gets so angry or sad when friends don’t say exactly what she’s asking them to. Sometimes she can move on and play their games, but very often it ends in tears. I can tell the friends are annoyed or want to play but just don’t understand her very specific directions.

And I think the friends probably do understand some of her directions, but they just don’t want to play that way. As this parent noticed, it’s not fun. And children often do sense that that child who’s trying to control everybody and direct everybody isn’t really having fun either. So this is where we can help her so much.

This parent said: “I thought the best thing was to let it play out with her friends, and them rejecting this kind of play would be hard, but she would move on.” I think eventually she will, even without the parent helping her with what I call the “homework” of, Hey, where is the root of this? It’s in my relationship with my child. So we can help her so much here, so that she doesn’t have to keep struggling. She’ll have a much better chance of succeeding with her friends if we can allow her the normal rejections from us of, “No, I don’t want to play that way.” We’re not rejecting her personally, we’re not shaming her. We’re just rejecting that offer to play in her prescribed, over-the-top way.

And then with the people she’s safest with, her parents, she can express all the feelings to the hilt. It’s harder to express that with friends. We’re that safe place where she can learn that sometimes you get what you want with people and other times they have their own wishes. That’s what I would help this parent to see, and I feel like the parents will make a huge change quickly when they can do this.

The next message I want to talk about is titled: “How does respectful parenting approach bullying?”:

Hi, Janet-

I listen to your podcast, and I really appreciated two recent episodes, on playground scenarios and how to deal with grandparents. These episodes were great because they address situations that involve other people, not just the parent-child relationship, as does the issue I would love for you to address on a future episode: how does respectful parenting approach bullying and other unkind social dynamics between kids?

My older daughter is 4.5. Recently, when we are at the playground with friends, the other girls she is playing with will leave her out. They will pretend she’s a monster and run away screaming, or do things that they know will upset her, or just leave her out of their games. They are all a year ahead of her in preschool, and there is a gap in social-emotional development. When playing 1:1 she has good friendships with these girls, but she is an easy target in a group dynamic.

Generally speaking, I am in favor of letting kids work out their own conflicts, and I am there for my daughter to vent about how she is feeling and to offer her alternatives when playing with these girls is not pleasant. The other parents are noticing this dynamic as well, and are beginning to intervene, and we have discussed how we all feel uncertain about how best to manage the situation. Yesterday, the dad of one of the other girls told her that she has to play with my daughter too or they’re going home. This worked for a while! She took my daughter by the hand, explained this rule to the other girls, and my daughter had a great time being included. 

 Are there other interventions that are more aligned with respectful parenting? Is the respectful thing for me to do for my daughter to find other places to play without this group of girls?

I would appreciate your thoughts both from the perspective of my and my child, but also from the perspective of the other parents, as they are open to ideas. Thanks.

Well, what a lovely group of parents that they want to help with this situation. First, I feel like so much of this is about our perceptions of what’s going on. Because this parent gave the subject line about bullying, I just want to touch on that for a second, that if she’s jumping to this idea that her child is being bullied in this situation, that is not a realistic or helpful perception of what’s going on, in my opinion. This word gets thrown around a lot these days, “bullying,” and I don’t think it applies to children this age at all. It’s quite different from children excluding another child like this. She says they make her the monster and all that, but it’s not like this pervasive picking on her and attacking her as a bully would. So I would try not to think of it that way and to cast my child as a victim.

I would also look at that they’re in the grade ahead of her in preschool. As children get older that maybe isn’t such a huge difference, but in preschool, a spread of a year of age is a big difference. And as this parent said, their social-emotional development is at a different place than this little girl’s is. So it makes a lot of sense that these girls kind of feel like they’re on a different wavelength and that their way of playing together could easily exclude somebody younger. I would go into a situation like this really not expecting that my child is going to be able to play with these girls when they’re all together. Yes, one-on-one is a different thing, but in this group dynamic, that’s going to be a challenging one.

This parent is doing this job of allowing her daughter to vent about how she’s feeling and to offer her alternatives when playing with these girls is not pleasant. But I think I would set this up more for her to understand—and maybe this parent has done this—that these girls are older, so one-on-one it could work for them to play with you, but as a group that is going to be hard. And then rather than being the one to find other things for her to play, “offering her alternatives when playing with these girls is not pleasant,” I wouldn’t even try to fix that for her. I would really allow her to navigate this and share the feelings with you.

But what can happen is we feel sorry for our child and we want to, just a little bit, try to fix what’s going on. I mean, this parent sounds like she’s at least 75% with the attitude of allowing her to work out her own conflicts, but she’s also seeing this as a problem, as are all the parents there. Instead of, Hey, this is a challenging situation, but maybe this little girl can handle it in her own way. Maybe handling it means I’m not even going to try playing with them. Maybe it means I’m going to try, but it’s not going to work out.

But it’s that investment that we sometimes have in our heart going out to our children. I mean, everybody feels like this. We don’t want her to get rejected, we want it to all work. And we can get to where we’re feeling sorry for our child in this situation and maybe we’re even projecting our own background into that. It’s really hard not to project and feel sorry for a child in this situation, when she’s trying to do this really challenging thing that shouldn’t be easy at all and probably shouldn’t work.

If she wants to try it, we can best support her by trusting her to figure it out her way and then being there if she wants to vent. But not acknowledging all of that in a way that’s pitying at all or that we see this as a problem. And the dad helping by getting the other girl to play, there was certainly nothing wrong with that, it was a sweet gesture, but also that isn’t going to help this little girl to find her way, that an adult came in and tried to fix it for her, seeing this as a problem. I actually wouldn’t see this as a problem at all.

And you can make it so that it’s a choice. Do you want to go there? I think it’s going to be all the girls there and they might not play with you today. Do you want to do it? And then if our child says yes, we trust that. That helps them to navigate this from a place of strength, therefore probably be able to see more clearly and even make better choices in the moment in terms of how to engage. It still may not work, but this is where our influence, again, could be so positive if we trust her and trust the realities of the situation and trust the other girls too. Not try to push something to happen because we aren’t comfortable with it and our child isn’t comfortable with it.

Learning isn’t comfortable and, as both these families seem to realize, rejection is a really important experience to learn from. What works with other kids? What doesn’t work with other kids? In the case of that first story, What works with my parent if I want their attention? What doesn’t work with my parent?

And that’s where the trust comes in there in that scenario, trusting that it’s okay for this girl to feel rejected in her way of playing with us. Rejection, exclusion, as in this second case, failing in our attempts to engage. Those are all important life experiences that children can learn from and build confidence from, if we can see it all as positive learning.

This parent asks, “Are there other interventions that are more aligned with respectful parenting?” What’s aligned with respectful parenting is maybe just the intervention of helping my child have reasonable expectations and then not intervening further, trusting my child to have their own process.

And with that, I just want to get to this shorter one because it’s very different, but yet what will help this child is the same thing. The question on Instagram was:

“Helping a reserved three-year-old be comfortable around other people?”

The answer is in trusting them to find their own way to feeling comfortable around other people by not pushing them, by not coaxing them to be comfortable, by not trying to make it happen as if this is a problem to fix or a weakness they need us to help them overcome.

Instead, this is a path that a child is on, and some children just take longer or they only feel comfortable when it’s a certain way. That’s not for us to manage. That’s for our child to navigate with the confidence that our trust gives them in themselves. So if they want to sit with us in a social situation, we let them sit with us. If they want us to follow them around while they’re doing things, that I would say no to. I’ll be here. I’ll be comfortable. I’ll have a boundary. I’ll take care of myself, and I trust you to do what you’re ready to do.

So I wouldn’t prompt, I wouldn’t coax, I wouldn’t try to manage this in any way. Because when we do those things, kids feel it. They know, just like when the dad helped the older child play with the little girl. It didn’t help them want to play with her more; it didn’t make her feel more confident in getting to play with them. There was nothing wrong with the gesture, but it wasn’t going to help them all grow together, except maybe to remind those older girls that the younger one could be fun to be with. Kids learn this best when it’s really on their terms.

And that’s hard to do! I mean, when children aren’t comfortable with other people or it’s not working with other people, every parent wants to, on some level, fix it. But that’s what gets in their way, and ours. What we can do is address what’s going on in the relationship between us. Which in that first case was about boundaries; in these other two cases, it’s really much more about trust. Kids aren’t on our timetable, unfortunately.

I really hope some of this helps. I’m sure there’s many more questions that these ideas I’m sharing today are bringing up for you, so please ask them. And again, thank you to these parents for reaching out. This is all within your grasp. You can help your child more than you might think, but maybe not in the ways that we generally think.

Thank you all so much for listening. We can do this.

The post Peer Play. Using Our Power to Help Kids Thrive Socially appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “Why Parents Need RIE (with Melani Ladygo)”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

As some of you may know, the parenting approach I teach is inspired by the teachings of infant expert Magda Gerber and the nonprofit educational organization she founded, Resources for Infant Educarers, commonly referred to as RIE, R-I-E. The RIE classes I attended over 30 years ago with my firstborn had a profound effect on my perceptions of babies, the art of childcare, and life, really. And I had the privilege of training one-on-one with Magda, as well as spending many hours at her feet, literally, while my daughter played on her floor and I was able to soak up her every word. I cherish those memories.

Over the years, I’ve been asked by parents and early childhood professionals to explain and define RIE, but it’s such a nuanced approach that it’s impossible, for me at least, to sum it up in just a few words. So I thought, who better to give an overview of the RIE approach than Melani Ladygo, who is RIE’s executive director. She’s also a longtime RIE associate and currently teaches RIE parent-infant and -toddler classes in her home.

I’m a huge fan of Melani. I love the way she embodies the respect that Magda taught us. So I’m thrilled that Melani agreed to join me today to help clarify and crystallize her experience with RIE, and all the benefits.

Hi, Melani.

Melani Ladygo: Hi, Janet.

Janet Lansbury: Thank you so much for finally being on this podcast. I’ve been wanting you on for a very long time.

Melani Ladygo: I am so incredibly thrilled to be here and honored that you asked me.

Janet Lansbury: One of the things I want to take advantage of now that I have you here is this idea of the “elevator pitch” for RIE, for what this approach really is. As you know, and I know from being on the board of directors for years, it’s a challenge to find a succinct way to express a philosophy or way of being that’s so rich and important to all of us. I was wondering how you generally do that.

Melani Ladygo: I feel like when I first learned about RIE, the whole reason I took that first course—which was called “RIE I” then and now is called RIE Foundations—the whole reason I took it is because I wanted to be able to do exactly that, to say, “This is what RIE is.” And I took this rich 60-hour course with all these other passionate people that were in early childhood, and I got to the end and I felt so filled up and I still could not say what it was.

I really think it was the years that I spent working in the office as the person who would answer the phone, or I used to say I was the educarer at educarer@rie.org. And I really got practice in talking to people about it and saying what it is. It kind of changes every time, depending on who I’m talking to, but essentially RIE is an organization that teaches parents and professionals how to have respectful, reciprocal relationships with babies and toddlers, children zero to two.

And the more I talk about it, the more I realize that RIE is—well, the name of it itself is Resources for Infant Educarers, and that’s a big mouthful, but it simply means that the organization itself is meant to be a resource for what Magda Gerber called an infant educarer. And she called it that because we care while we educate and we educate while we care. So the organization is meant to be a resource for people who practice this educaring approach.

Janet Lansbury: Or who want to develop that kind of relationship with their child, a lifelong relationship that begins at birth. They want to be able to bond and they want that trust between them and that respect. I originally thought, before I discovered this approach, I thought that bond and respect was something that happens later, when they’re talking and you can do things together and play together in a way that to me meant playing together, which is just where they’re able to participate in the way that you’d expect it to be more mutual.

But then what RIE taught me, or what I learned in that first RIE class with my three-month-old and just observing her, was that she had all these thoughts and all of these ideas and all this stuff going on inside her that I had not realized could possibly exist in a baby. And I wanted to know about that. I wanted to discover that person and get to know her and bond with her. Really, I wasn’t even thinking about bonding with her. I was just thinking how I really want to know more about what’s going on inside the mind of this person.

And that was the first time I realized she was a person. I mean, I would’ve thought that if somebody asked me, but to really see that, that somebody’s got their own thing going on that isn’t just you feeding into them, you stimulating them and them responding. It’s actually them having things coming out of themselves. And that was just fascinating to me. I wanted to know everything about it, I wanted to know how to make this keep happening where I get to see this. And that became my invitation to learning about all these things that were just life-changing.

Melani Ladygo: That is the perfect example, because I think when I say “a respectful, reciprocal relationship,” people are kind of like, What is that? And that’s exactly what that is. Having a respectful relationship with you is, I want to know about you. I want to know what’s going on with you and I want to share what’s going on with me. I’m curious about you. I don’t want to impose things, I want to let things flow. And that’s exactly what you found in that first class, that you are curious about this person and you want to let them unfold and share themselves with you. And it can start at the very, very beginning. I mean, that’s the elevator pitch, so thank you.

Janet Lansbury: Well, I wanted to hear what made you want to take that course. That’s what I’m interested in.

Melani Ladygo: I first started being interested in young babies because I took a child development course and I learned about brain development. And it’s kind of like you said, if someone had asked you if she was a person, you’d be like, Well, yeah. And that’s how I felt about brain development. It was like, Well, of course babies aren’t mini-adults and their brains develop and change over time. But when I realized how much their brains change and how that impacts their behavior and how that could impact a parent’s relationship with their child, I thought, This is what I want to do. I want to teach parents about this.

And I was a baby myself, I was not even 20. And so I thought, let me go back to school, let me learn about child development, and I’ll work in a childcare center so that I can have some “real life” experience working with babies.

As luck would have it, I landed in this infant program that was very RIE-influenced. All the teachers in my classroom had taken that training, the toddler directors, the infant toddler directors had taken it, even the center director had taken this training. And I walked into this room with 12 babies and felt peaceful, and it was kind of surprising to me how peaceful it felt. I slowly started to work there and every now and then I would start to get a little bit of a correction, like a child would start to cry and I’d start to jostle them, “It’s okay, it’s okay.” And someone would come over to me and just say very gently, “It’s okay that she’s crying. We’re here with her.”

There was a time that this baby was climbing up a slide. She was trying to go up that incline and her feet kept slipping, so I came up behind her and I just kind of put my hands under each of her feet so she could push up. And she got all the way up to the top and she had this big smile on her face and I had a big smile on my face. A teacher came down and sat next to me and said, “I saw what you did there.” And I was like, “Yeah, maybe this wasn’t a good thing.” And she said, “No, it was wonderful, but how do you think she’s going to feel the next time she tries to go up that slide and you aren’t there? She didn’t know you were helping her, so she thought she did it by herself, but she really did it with you.” And it kind of got me thinking about the baby’s experience. And she said, “Did she look frustrated? Did she look like she was having a hard time?” And I realized, no, she wasn’t asking for help.

So I started to get curious. I would say, “Well, how did you learn of this? What is this? What is this approach that we’re doing? Why can’t I distract a crying baby? Why can’t I help her climb?” And they would say, “Well, it’s RIE.” And I was like, okay, I really want to know what this is. So they said, “Well, go take the training.” And so I went to Silver Lake and I met for weeks and weeks with a group of people that were passionate about RIE and about early education. And I felt filled up and I felt so excited and I felt like I understood it.

But like I said, at the end of that time, I still couldn’t say exactly what RIE was. I just knew that I was seeing babies in a different way and it felt really good.

Janet Lansbury: I think you spoke to something in your description of your time at the childcare center that is exactly it. It’s that the baby has a point of view, the child has a point of view. And it sounds like the carers were communicating to you, without you maybe even exactly knowing why that seemed different and interesting to you, but it was like they were kind of speaking for the baby. And that’s like what I saw in my daughter, that she had her own point of view there. And that really also could be something of an elevator pitch, that a baby has a valid point of view that’s worth considering and taking interest in and wanting them to express to us as much as possible, so that they can share it, so that they can feel seen.

Melani Ladygo: It’s interesting that you say that about being seen, it’s exactly that. Because you do end up giving this elevator pitch here and there throughout your life. And during COVID, I taught these RIE parent-infant classes outside, to do it in kind of a safer way. And I was teaching a lot of classes because parents were, especially during that time, really looking for connection and support. I was teaching like six days a week.

So I was going to the grocery store and buying a lot of bananas. Because if you’ve been in a parent-infant class, you know that pretty much the snack that we usually serve is bananas. And I was going to this grocery store pretty regularly and only buying bananas. And finally, one of the checkers asked me like, “Okay, what’s up with the bananas? Why are you here three or four times?” And so I said, “Oh, it’s for this class that I teach.” She’s like, “What kind of class?” I was like, “Well, it’s this class where I help parents slow down and let children figure things out on their own and really help parents really see their children.”

And two checkers over, there’s this gentleman who kind of slammed his hand down on the register and said, “I wish my parents had taken that class. They need it right now.” And that’s an adult, right? And it’s exactly that: We all want to be seen. We all have a point of view. Even young babies want to be seen.

Janet Lansbury: Yes. They don’t know they want to be seen, but to be able to invite them into the world being seen is incredible. And then that only continues. It’s like once we see them, we can’t really unsee them, I’ve found, as people. I mean, it took me a long time to really get it, get it that, Oooh, that’s really a person. But once I did, you can’t go back. It’s so interesting. Every baby you see, you’re seeing into them.

And one thing I really wanted to talk with you about, actually you brought it up when we first connected about doing this together: This is for parents. This sounds like we’re talking about how to do the best thing for babies, but what this is really about, and why I share it so passionately, is for us. Because when we see the person in our baby, then we get to be seen by them as ourselves. We get to be ourselves. We don’t have to say the right things and do the right things and be this perfect parent that maybe we saw on Instagram or what we think we’re supposed to be. We get to be a whole person too in the way that we engage with our baby and have boundaries.

Obviously we have to give up a lot to be able to care for the needs of a baby, but we’re doing it as ourselves. We’re not having to go in there and quiet them down and jack them up again to get excited. We can really engage with them in a way that’s so comfortable and easy, and therefore we end up engaging with them a lot more than we might if we thought we had to do it in some performative way. To me, that’s the beauty of this, how it changes our experience. Not only making it easier because we’re letting our child do all these things that we thought we had to do for them, like get them up the slide, get them to calm down. We thought those were our jobs. And when we let go of a lot of those things and are able to be present and receptive to who this person is, it just takes this whole load of work off of our plates.

Melani Ladygo: It so, so does. When I first started working at that childcare center, I was only working six hours a day. I was a super part-time person and I found myself going to the office saying, “Hey, if you need anybody working extra hours . . .” And I didn’t really have time, I was going to school, but it felt so good to be in the classroom. It felt so good to be with children in that way.

Just last week, I had some people come and observe one of my classes. And it was actually kind of a chaotic class because I have a beautiful space where I teach out of my home and I have a lovely play space that opens out onto a deck. We usually take advantage of that full space, but the week these people came, it was raining and we had the door closed. So I had seven very active toddlers in a space that’s about half of the space they were used to having. And it was a busy class, children were climbing and sliding and throwing balls and actually moving a little furniture here and there. They were sharing toys, taking toys. It was busy, but it wasn’t stressful. All of the parents were able to just sit back and simply watch and maybe have a little conversation on the side here and there.

We wrapped class and before even the last parent had left the space, my observers were like, “The parents are so relaxed. Did you see they were climbing to the top of that piece of equipment? How was that safe? How did they feel calm?” They just said, “What a gift to parents to be able to just sit back and have confidence in their children’s abilities.” And I talked about how it’s not that we just suddenly landed here, it’s a process. I walked them through how parents slowly start to develop this muscle of trust by observing their children and looking at them as they struggle through something or as they attempt something they’ve never done before. You’re still going to come close, but you’re going to let them do it. And the more you start to see how capable they are, the more you can relax and have that trust.

I truly believe that is the biggest gift that RIE gives to parents and to children, that trusting relationship and that peacefulness that you can find. Not all the time, but it’s your baseline.

Janet Lansbury: It’s your baseline, exactly. It’s that peace that you felt when you first walked into that childcare center and saw the babies and it was almost jarring to you. Why are people not working so hard trying to keep everybody happy? Because it’s like we’re reunderstanding happiness, what that is. And happiness for babies is being allowed to be where they are in development and be able to be kind of struggling to do things that they may not achieve that time or the next time, but one day they will. And to know that that’s not a negative thing. To be able to see when a child is working on something, how positive that experience is. It’s not just positive that they got to the end and solved it, but that they’re able to be in the middle of it.

Getting comfortable with that as a parent, which is no small thing, it takes us all the way through life with our child. I could say with children as adults, it takes you all the way through the college applications and the career decisions and the disappointments and the heartbreak of relationships. And it helps you help your child through all of these situations and gives them this sense that life isn’t always easy and sometimes it’s very hard. It doesn’t feel good when you’re in the middle of that sometimes, but you’re going to be okay. We could tell kids that until we’re blue in the face, but they have to experience that.

Melani Ladygo: Yes. And the connection, it’s being seen in your struggle. You don’t have to be rescued from your struggle, but just having someone see and acknowledge it and say it’s okay. I mean, I had that exact experience as an adult just a few weeks ago. Someone asked about something I’ve been struggling with and I said, “I really don’t know.” And they said, “It’s okay.” And it was like a little crack opened up in my heart because it’s like, right, I don’t have to have it all figured out.

That kind of goes back to what you said about what it gives to us as adults when we practice this. Watching a baby struggle and not get there and sometimes they struggle and there is no angst, right? They’re just like that baby that was going up the slide. She was just working on a problem and she hadn’t ascribed any kind of angst or worry to it. So it’s kind of like a reflection for myself: Not every problem needs to be quite so stressful.

Janet Lansbury: Yes. And I would say for the baby, that wasn’t even a problem. That was just the situation in front of them that was interesting. They were just exploring a situation that they were in. As parents or adults we frame it as, Oh, there’s a problem and hopefully they’ll find the answer and they’re worried, and all these things that we project. I mean, I’m guilty of all of this still, but I catch myself now. I’m able to hear those voices and go, Okay, that’s you, but let’s really see where they’re at with this. And when they do get upset and cry, oftentimes it’s very much about them being tired or something else when they’re very little. They’re learning that they can manage things and that we are there and that we support where they are right now, as much as we try to do that.

I just wanted to get back to one thing you said about it’s not always easy though, because it definitely isn’t. I mean, being a parent or working at a childcare center, it’s very draining and exhausting, physically and emotionally and everything else. But imagine if we could also find areas of our day that refuel us, allowing us more of that peace. That’s the observation part of this, where you’re seeing and you’re enjoying the challenge of accepting and appreciating where your child is on a particular day, or maybe you are seeing them achieve something they’ve been working on. And all of these things that to me would’ve been unnoticeable, not something to cherish, they become little wins in the day that kind of get you through a lot of the other stuff or help make it a little more palatable.

But there’s still going to be days when it’s just impossible and hard to be unruffled and all of those things.

Melani Ladygo: Yes. I definitely say that this work makes parenting or being with children easier, but this is human relationships and we all get tired and we all get overwhelmed and we all have days, babies included, where things just aren’t clicking the way they need to click and we don’t always stay in connection. But when you have this framework to fall back on, there’s more opportunities to catch those moments because you’re looking for them.

Janet Lansbury: And just to be able to admit you’re in the struggle. I mean, this is one of the things I started doing with my children. If there would be a diaper change or something that was just seeming impossible and they were pushing back and it just wasn’t working and I was trying to do all the things, be respectful and slow it down and let them be a part of it, and they just weren’t having it. And just being able to say, which I did from time to time, “This is really a disaster! We are just not working together here. This is awful. What’s going on?” But to be able to throw your hands up and go, All right, sometimes we’re just not going to get along very well.

Melani Ladygo: That’s such a real thing, and it’s a reset. It’s like a discharge for you and it’s authentic with them. I think it kind of brings you both back to the moment of connection. And then maybe it’ll work, the diaper change will flow after that, maybe not, but you’ve had that moment of connection.

Janet Lansbury: Yes. You’ve put it out there and you’ve released yourself of this thing of, Oh, I’ve got to pull it together and I’ve got to get this working, and all that tension that we do to ourselves because we think that’s our job. But our job is to be ourselves, our job is to let our babies be themselves and give ourselves permission to be who we are. I loved Magda Gerber’s thing of, it’s two in the morning and you’re going in for that feeding or your toddler woke up and was having a bad dream. You don’t have to come in perky, you get to be your tired, grumpy self. You don’t want to try to take it out on them, but we get to be exhausted and Ugh, what is it?

Melani Ladygo: Just like how you would be in any other authentic relationship, right? If you have a houseguest who’s like, “I need this and I need that!” You’re not going to go in, “Here you go!” You might be like, “What is it this time?” And just be real. It’s two in the morning, man. Here’s your water.

Janet Lansbury: Yes!

Melani Ladygo: When you said free to be ourselves, I think about the reflection a lot of parents have about the impulses that come up for themselves. And the thing that RIE gives you is the opportunity to pause and choose, do you want to react or respond? Because a lot of our reactions are kind of knee-jerk from the way we were raised or the way society tells you that we should be with other people.

I’ll never forget this one mom, she had a really powerful daughter and her daughter knew her mind, she knew what she wanted to do and how she wanted to do it. And her mom loved that, except for when she got in the rocking boat and wouldn’t let anybody else in the rocking boat. She wanted to be in that boat by herself. And it’s built for multiple children, so that mom had the hardest time with her daughter saying no to other children getting in the boat. I talked to her about it and I said, “It’s perfectly fair for her to want to be in the boat by herself. I would want to be in the boat by myself sometimes too. And we want her to be able to notice what that no is doing to other people.”

After a couple of times of this, I noticed that she was crying a little bit. We talked about it and she said, “I realized I feel like I always give up what I want when someone else wants it and I don’t want that for my child. I want my child to decide that if I want to be the only person in the boat, I want to feel comfortable being that only person in the boat. And not feel like just because someone else is saying I want it too, that I have to automatically just acquiesce and let someone else in the boat.” Yes, I want you to be someone who’s out in the world who’s kind and who shares, but I also want you to be someone who can take care of your own needs.

Janet Lansbury: Yes, that makes a lot of sense. I don’t think I would keep the other kids away though. I mean-

Melani Ladygo: No, I didn’t keep the other kids away.

Janet Lansbury: Yes, I would be there spotting. First of all, I can totally understand wanting to be in the rocking boat alone because somebody moves it every time you’re just trying to get balanced in it and then somebody else changes that. You’re not going to feel any kind of sense of control. But I think very much allowing that point of view and encouraging that point of view, I would still allow the children to decide for themselves if they want to go up against that. And if they do, I’m not going to let her push them off, I’m going to have my hand there so she can’t hurt them or physically keep them from getting in. For me, the idea is that, Yes, your point of view is valid, and so are these other children that want to get on. I’m not going to help them on, I’m not going to help you hold onto it, but I’m going to allow the children and you to figure that out, with me there keeping everybody safe.

Melani Ladygo: Just keeping everybody safe, and sometimes translating. “I hear you saying no, and I hear you saying you really want to get in the boat with her. I hear that and I see their space. No, I’m not going to let you push. You can keep telling her no, it’s okay.”

Janet Lansbury: Yes, but you’re neutral. That’s the hard thing. I think that’s the hard thing for parents, especially if it’s their child. If their child is one of the two children, how hard is it to be neutral? But that’s what we get to practice with this approach. And it helps with siblings, it makes all the difference with siblings loving each other, getting along with each other, that they don’t feel that we’ve made one into a villain and one into a victim in any situation or that we’re more on somebody else’s side.

Melani Ladygo: Because if you do come in and you litigate that, if you’re like, “There’s space for two and I’m going to hold the boat and this person can get in,” then you are putting a judgment on it and you’re arbitrating it. And instead, what we’re doing is teaching children to be RIE with other children. We’re letting them see the experience that the other person is having, because that is where true sharing is going to happen. For you to be a truly empathetic and generous person, you have to understand what it feels like to be selfish a little bit because, spoiler alert, being selfish doesn’t really feel that good. When you’re the only one in the boat and you’re protecting that boat and nobody else can get in, you’re not enjoying the boat.

Janet Lansbury: Or maybe if they get in and then you say, Well, I’m going to get out, then the people that were so insistent on getting in feel like, Well, this really isn’t that fun when she’s not telling us not to get in here. So everybody’s learning something about how to be in relationships. I mean, that’s why we get the children together in these classes.

And most people don’t have this kind of opportunity, I just have to say, most people do not have these communities, these like-minded people available for playgroups. Parents are maybe working outside the home all day and they can’t give their child these experiences of getting to socialize in a way where there aren’t other parents judging them and feeling like they need to do a certain thing. And I think that is hard.

But what this whole approach gives us is, well, it gives us first the understanding that our relationship with our child is by far the most important teacher of social intelligence and that we have complete control over, at least on our end, how we’re navigating that. And then what we learn from these classes and what we can bring to parents that aren’t able to be in a situation like that is that your child is very capable of social exploring and problem-solving. Maybe there are places you can allow them to do this and they can do it with their sibling, as long as they have us to keep them safe.

Melani Ladygo: That is the thing. And the number one question is, How do I do this when I go to the park? How do I do this with my friend when they come over? My answer is, depending on your comfort level, try. Say, “Well, let’s see what happens.” Or, “I’m watching this and I wonder what she’ll do. I wonder what will happen if we kind of just let them work this out.” Sometimes, maybe most of the time unfortunately, you’re going to get somebody who looks at you like, You are 100% crazy. I need to teach my kid to share and this is what’s going to happen. But you might get someone who pauses back and recognizes, Oh, I could do this in a slightly different way. That’s how you can start to grow your network of people.

It’s low-stakes, only do it when you feel comfortable. But I’ve definitely had people who knew nothing about RIE, but had an interaction like that at a playdate or in a park and said, Oh, I want to know more about that, because they see it out in the world. I think that’s what we need more of, people modeling this in little interactions.

Janet Lansbury: Definitely. One thing I used to do a lot, and it actually helped me build confidence in myself with this approach with my children, is that I would just go up and be what I call the “buddyguard.” I’d just be up next to my child to make sure my child’s not taking something away from this other child or whatever. But I would interpret like we do in class, with my hand there to block things. “Oh, you really want what he’s using and you want to keep that for yourself. Of course, you brought that here.” Just doing that thing of being neutral and allowing the children to experience the conflict.

And oftentimes what happens is they do find a solution. It’s not the one we would find for them where we’d say, “Okay, give them a turn and now you do it.” Oftentimes nobody wants it and they both go off and do something else or they’re interested in following each other or maybe the child does give it to the other child or your child decides that they see something else interesting to do. They find their ways of resolving it. And a lot of times it is the way that actually brings them both more together, in my experience. But not always! I think we have to be open to everything. I mean, that’s the whole thing of letting kids problem-solve, is that it’s a big surprise how it works out every time. You can’t dictate it.

Melani Ladygo: Yes, you’re right. It works out more often than you would expect, but it’s not foolproof. We all make mistakes in our relationships, and especially young children are going to make a lot of mistakes because they’re learning and they’re processing and their brains are developing. It’s so not a hands-off approach. It’s such an approach where you are really present and keeping boundaries, but also not solving.

Janet Lansbury: Yes. And what you find is that it does end up benefiting you, because you have a child that’s more confident going into situations and solving all kinds of problems.

Melani Ladygo: Yes. The thing about that childcare center that I worked at, it was in a pretty affluent place. It was from birth to school age. And it was so interesting to me because when children were ready to enter the “real world” of school from this childcare center, they went in many different directions. There were some that went to very progressive schools, there are some that went to very traditional schools, some that went to very rigid and academic schools, some did unschooling. But the feedback that we would get from all of these different types of schools, it didn’t matter, was they were like, Oh, we are always so glad to get a child from this program. Because what this program was really focused on was exactly that, letting children figure out how to be in relationship with other children.

Because children, when their brains are ready for those academics, they need to have the social pieces kind of worked out. And that’s what RIE really helps children do in those early years. But honestly, that’s what we all need in all of our lives, is the social pieces worked out so that we can survive and thrive.

Janet Lansbury: 100%, yes. Well, while you’re on this podcast, I know there are early childhood educators that listen and people that want to start programs, in-home childcare or center-based childcare, and maybe they’d like to attend the RIE Conference online, which is coming up in just a few weeks. And if you use the code Unruffled, you can get $50 off your registration.

Melani Ladygo: Absolutely. It’s a really wonderful opportunity to dip your toe into all things RIE. Because unlike our courses, where we’re going to teach you exactly what the approach is, what happens at the conference is you get to really see all the many, many different ways that this work can be applied. So you really get to see how does it work in a classroom? We have one workshop about how do you offer free play but also be in alignment with any ECE documentation standards? And we’ve got how do you solve conflict with RIE and through play? It’s just like a smorgasbord of hearing the different ways people can put this work into practice.

Janet Lansbury: Yes, I always think of it as similar to a smorgasbord, maybe it’s the same thing, but I think of it like a banquet that you could feast on as a parent and as a professional in childcare. It’s all there for you. And it’s like, wow, you do feel very satiated at the end because it’s about us, it’s about us and our children, so there’s always a ton to explore. The theme this year is play and you have Peter Gray as the main speaker, which should be phenomenal.

Melani Ladygo: I sat down to read his book knowing that he was going to be coming. And I don’t have a lot of time to sit down and read, but I got through half of his book in one sitting because I saw so many threads. Just like Magda said in one of RIE’s films, Seeing Infants with New Eyes, she said when she’s talking about this approach to professionals, they say, “Well, what you’re doing makes so much sense. I do it with a five-year-old or a four-year-old or maybe a two-and-a-half-year-old as long as the child could speak. I just wouldn’t think about doing it with infants.” When I read Peter’s book, it was like, Oh my gosh, you are practicing RIE with older children. So it’s really exciting to see that throughline.

Janet Lansbury: Yes.

Melani Ladygo: The other thing that I tell people, especially people who are not in a place where they have a class that they can go to, where you feel like you’re practicing this at home by yourself, it does offer a really awesome community. It’s just wonderful to be around other like-minded people that get it. And so even if you’re coming online, just connecting and just seeing that there is a wider world out there of people who see babies the way you do.

Janet Lansbury: I think we’re all struggling for that sense of community. I mean, even before the pandemic, but certainly since then, it seems like it’s still hard to feel as connected to people and this is another way to do that.

Melani Ladygo: Love it.

Janet Lansbury: Again, everybody, if you want to go to the RIE site, rie.org, and register for the conference, you could get $50 off with the code Unruffled. And I hope it’s a huge success. Until then, let’s say goodbye and hopefully talk again very soon.

Melani Ladygo: I would love to. Thank you so much for this opportunity.

Janet Lansbury: Thank you, Melani.

You can learn and enjoy more from Melani Ladygo through her articles at MelaniLadygo.com

The post Why Parents Need RIE (with Melani Ladygo) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “Making a Successful Transition to Preschool (with Mr. Chazz)”

Mr. Chazz has been dubbed “America’s favorite teacher” for good reason. He has a magical way of gaining the trust of kids and adults, inspiring all of us with his charm and his humor. He’s humble, which is refreshing and disarming. And what I appreciate even more about Mr. Chazz is his passion and commitment to the work of understanding how to care for children and to motivate them to be at their best. Mr. Chazz has built an enormous, engaged following on TikTok, Instagram, and through his podcast, “Learning Curve with Mr. Chazz,” and it’s an understatement to say that this is well-deserved. I can’t recommend him highly enough and I’m proud to call him a friend.

Today, I’ve asked Mr. Chazz to share about his latest venture, the creation of a learning and childcare center called Birdhouse, that is surely going to be a model for many more of its kind. I’m also hoping Mr. Chazz will help us understand how to make the transition to preschool or a care center a positive experience for us and our child.

So, here he is! Hi, Mr. Chazz.

Mr. Chazz: Hello, Janet Lansbury.

Janet Lansbury: You know I love talking with you. I think we talked several months ago, but I don’t know, it seems like it’s been too long, so I’m excited to be able to catch up with you here. Especially at this time, because this is when children are starting back up to school, or starting for the first time, some of them. And you have this huge project that you’ve accomplished where you’ve opened your own school, and I want to hear all about that. Specifically, I thought you might talk about what you are doing, what your school’s program is for helping the children to adjust, and how parents can aid in that process at home or in the actual drop-off situation.

Mr. Chazz: Yes, there’s almost two parts of what I can share. One part is the ideal world that I am trying to create with my school in Brooklyn, and then there’s also the reality of most childcare facilities that exist and how to navigate those sometimes not-so-ideal situations.

Janet Lansbury: Have you ever worked in some of those—because I know you’ve worked in a lot of other situations that got you to this point of being able to open your own—were you also in situations where you didn’t feel like it was an ideal transition process?

Mr. Chazz: Yes, I think 99% of childcare centers, the way they do the transition is not ideal. We often do things for the convenience of the adult rather than what’s best for the child or the teachers or even the family unit. I would even back that up and say it is often the convenience of meeting these awesome responsibilities that we often have as grown-ups. So I’m excited to dive into how to navigate the center-based, I’m excited to dive into how I believe we can start to shift and change in early childhood.

Janet Lansbury: That’s great because I feel like a lot of those people listen here as well, and I know that that is where a lot of changes need to be made on that level with early childhood programs. Maybe we should start with hearing about what you’re trying to achieve with your school, and we can talk about how that’s helping to ameliorate some of the issues that you saw going on or have experienced going on in other programs.

Mr. Chazz: First, because I am a teacher myself, I’m going to start with the teachers and then I’m going to answer the question that you were really asking in the beginning about transitions. How we’re doing it differently, and also how to navigate your more traditional early childhood program that you’re going to.

So first at Birdhouse, which is the in-home childcare facility in Brooklyn, the head teacher gets to live upstairs in the school. That way they don’t have to pay rent, so teachers don’t feel like they’re in their own survival state. They can really lend their prefrontal lobes and really care for the children because they feel cared for and they’re not in a survival state. Any parent can very much relate that it is much harder to care for children when you are not cared for yourself.

Janet Lansbury: I think another reason that is helpful, not just helpful personally to those teachers, but to the program itself and to the success of the program, is that you’re encouraging a feeling of commitment to being a teacher there. We know that in that field there’s a high turnover with people working in care centers for younger children, because maybe they’re not feeling cared for and they’re not getting paid as much as they should get paid, probably. And therefore they don’t have that consistency for the children, for the families. So that’s a really good way of ensuring that people are dedicated and will stay.

Mr. Chazz: Yes, I mean, what a novel idea. So that is one of the things that I’ve always believed, that just by taking care of teachers, you’re taking care of children and you’re taking care of parents. Because the children need the consistency and the parents also want it too. I could talk about Birdhouse all day, but I’m more than happy to jump back on topic.

This conversation started off with us talking about how to transition into school and how we do transitions here and also how you can do transitions in more traditional settings where they don’t necessarily allow you to come into the space as much.

Janet Lansbury: I would love to hear your thoughts about that. You have such a depth of experience.

Mr. Chazz: What I will say is this idea of drop-off and pick-up, seeing in traditional centers how often we kind of drop children off like Amazon packages and we’re just like, Okay, you’re here! and parents are trying to just dart out the door. It’s often a very emotional situation. And not that it’s not going to be emotional, but just I wanted to honor that moment of (1) separation from the parent, but also (2) the connection that they’re arriving to in their school family at Birdhouse. Instead of it being this quick drop-off and pick-up, we wanted to focus more on the connection aspect of all of this. So we have shifted the language to “arrival” and “reunion.”

Now, it’s not just a language change, it also comes with a change in how we are approaching this. The arrival time is a time where they come in, they help their children wash their hands, they connect, it’s all focused on integrating them into the classroom and connecting a little bit more. And yes, this takes more time than a quick little drop-off, shoving them in the classroom and then darting out, but I find that this is a way for them to really feel safe and connected and more easily jump into the learning and the play and everything else that we have to offer.

Janet Lansbury: So do you suggest they do some kind of activity that’s preparatory, like washing hands or something that’s connected like that? What’s the plan that you actually give parents for what to do?

Mr. Chazz: Thank you for asking. They come in, I have a little visual of what the plan is so that the children know and also the parents know. Coming in there can be a lot of distractions, so that visual can be helpful because there are a lot of steps. First we have a moment of connection, and the little visual of that is a picture of me because they always come in and see me. Usually it’s a high-five or a hug or a fist bump, and as it’s progressed, it’s become more and more individualized to each child. Each child has their own way they like to connect when they come in. And if they don’t want to connect, they can pass and they don’t have to connect, it’s not something that I’m going to force them to do.

The next picture has a picture of their hook and their cubby, and so the child puts their stuff away on the hook or their cubby or sometimes the parent helps them.

The next visual is they take off their shoes, because we’re in New York and the thought of us playing in the same shoes that we’re stomping around all of New York in just doesn’t feel sanitary enough for me. So they take off their shoes, they walk in across the play space, and then I have little shoe prints where they put their shoes right on the shoe print. Again, visuals are so helpful for helping children and parents know what to do. And then the parents help them wash their hands.

Before the parent leaves, there is a moment of connection that we encourage all the parents to have. Now that can be different for each child. It could be a hug, hug-kiss, it can be a little game that they play, but there’s a moment of connection before the parent leaves. The parent can leave whenever they like, they’re not forced to stay, but they’re also invited to stay during our circle time. So sometimes parents can stay and they stay for circle time.

Now, there is a time where all the parents are expected to leave. And our routine, what we do is we have a goodbye song for the parents. So that is our arrival that is a little bit different than the traditional. Most programs won’t allow you to really stay, they do want a drop-off. They want you to come in, maybe help wash your child’s hands, and then they’re kind of kicking you out of the classroom.

Another thing that we do is we allow parents to come a week or two ahead of time and come in and arrive and do some circle time with us so the child can get connected with the space and also get more connected with us. So if the child does have a hard time when the parent leaves, they have a safe person to go to. It’s really hard to help that child work through the big emotions of separating from their parent if they’re not already connected with you, if they’re not already safe with you. We know that, so we build those connections beforehand.

Janet Lansbury: So you have a program all summer, you’re there the whole year?

Mr. Chazz: All year, we’re year-round.

Janet Lansbury: Okay. So they can come in with their child and enjoy the program and meet the people. And they can stay the whole day, the parents?

Mr. Chazz: We usually just have them come in for just the arrival time, 9 to 9:30, where they’re arriving. They can see other people coming in, they can see how the other children say goodbye to their parents, so they can kind of make the connection that this is part of the routine. And they can also start to get excited about the things in our space, but mostly feel connected and safe with—we call them safekeepers, not teachers—with the safekeepers in our space. And it makes such a difference.

Even with all this lead-up, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that when parents leave that the child doesn’t sometimes cry. The difference is that the child cries and they often come to us for comfort and safety and we’re able to help them work through that because they already feel safe and connected with us. We already might have some strategies that we use to get them into play, we kind of know how they like to play. So it’s a lot easier for them to co-regulate and get to a place where they are regulated enough to play and have fun and build connections with their school family.

Janet Lansbury: So you’ve also met them, the teachers have met the child, and the parent presumably, but the child one-on-one as they’re coming into the classroom to watch and observe and get to check it out. Then how are they connecting with the teacher, or the safekeeper?

Mr. Chazz: When a child is first coming into the space, especially with their parent, they are very cautious, they’re looking. We avoid trying to pressure the child because if we go too fast too quickly, it can create a feeling of uncertainty and like, Oh, this person is trying to get me to do something and I’m not quite ready yet. They really need to know that we will meet them where they’re at, at their pace. I look for little moments of things that they’re interested in that they want to play, and then I notice those things too. I might go and grab something that they’re noticing so they can feel seen and understood and hand them a toy. If they do start to talk and say something, I make sure that I notice that. It’s these little moments we look for, just these windows of playing and as soon as I see them peek through the window, I’m there to kind of open the window so that they can go and explore their curiosity. Those moments of them feeling seen also helps create that safety and that connection.

Janet Lansbury: That’s powerful. So you’re helping the other teachers know these things? I mean, you’re obviously quite gifted, so I doubt everyone that wants to work with children has your instincts, but you’re able to express that to the other teachers?

Mr. Chazz: Another great thing that we have here is that we have cameras. We don’t use cameras to, I caught you doing something you’re not supposed to do! I’ve been in environments where cameras were used that way. Instead, we use cameras as reflection, as really powerful learning opportunities. Often I will go back if there was a moment I think would be helpful for my other safekeepers to see, I’m able to go back to that time and send it to our little group chat that we have and we have these conversations about it. And I did hire people who are already looking from the child’s perspective, already wanting to learn.

Not to say that my safekeepers are perfect and I’m definitely not perfect either, and I make mistakes. And those are also things that we record and I share so that they can also feel safe making those mistakes. Maybe they thought the child was open to play and they tried something, they went a little too fast. That’s okay, that’s something that we can all reflect on. And then there’s always another opportunity to try.

Janet Lansbury: Because I think what a lot of people don’t understand, parents or teachers or grandparents or anyone, when they want to connect with a child we have this idea that it’s about, Let me do something to entertain you or show you something, instead of just allowing that child to show you. Just being quieter and more receptive and letting them show you by where they’re looking, what they’re interested in, and then just reflecting on that. It’s that being receptive instead of putting action out there to try to connect that I think we can so misunderstand. Mostly because we underestimate little kids and babies, what they have going on inside. So instead of noticing that and wanting to help them feel seen and connect with them that way on their terms, which always works, we’re putting effort out there to try to have them connect in a way that we think works. And we waste a lot of energy that way.

Mr. Chazz: We do. And then we get frustrated when we’re not connecting with them, when we’re missing that connection. And yes, thank you for pointing that out, that sometimes just being still and just noticing what they’re noticing and responding to that is the most powerful way to connect, especially with young kids. And even think about how you feel for yourself when someone is noticing what you’re thinking about too. It creates such a bridge to feeling seen that just makes you feel like, Ahhh, this person gets me.

Janet Lansbury: Yes. And I like them. It’s like somebody said, what is charisma? It’s actually when somebody is interested in you. Those are the people we think have charisma, the people that are open to and interested in other people.

I remember going on dates when I was younger, a lot younger, and you’d go out with someone that was just talking about themself and trying to impress you and you’d just be like, Did I even exist? afterwards. I wasn’t even there, really, you feel like afterwards. And then there’s other people that are sincerely interested in you and those are the people you want to see again, obviously.

Mr. Chazz: Right, so true.

Janet Lansbury: You explained how it looks like when it doesn’t quite work, that a child still has feelings when the parent leaves. I was also thinking, what if a parent needs to be somewhere on time and they can’t stay and the child kind of wants them to stay and then they see other parents staying? That can be kind of hard sometimes. What do you do then? I guess you probably just acknowledge what you see them noticing?

Mr. Chazz: Yes, this is a continuous conversation that I have with my safekeepers and also with the parents, because it’s hard on all sides, right? It’s hard for the parent sometimes to leave if you see your child crying and feel the weight of that and you’re just like, I don’t want to leave a crying child. And sometimes a parent might feel like, Okay, I’m just going to stay here until they stop crying, but the child just wants to keep them there. And even for the teacher, it can be that some parents are staying, right? There’s all these parents here and then we have this crying child who’s upset. Does this make us look bad that this child is crying and we’re not able to immediately get them to stop crying? This is something that happens, but it’s always a powerful learning opportunity conversation to have.

Janet Lansbury: Yes.

Mr. Chazz: There are going to be times where some parents can stay and some parents can go and they’re seeing the other parent and that’s going to bring up some big feelings and some big disappointment. And that’s okay. This doesn’t happen often, but things happen at home and there’s a lot of variables here, but there’s been a child crying up until all the other parents left. The child was by the door and we kind of continued life as life was. The child was really upset and clearly wanted his mom to stay. And we know this child, the child didn’t want to be physically touched or hugged or anything like that, but the child also didn’t want to feel completely alone. So we had a teacher kind of over there, checking in on the child and letting them know that, Hey, I’m here. But also not using a lot of words, really a lot of body language, maybe some words in the beginning. Letting the child know, If you need a hug, I’m here. But mostly just kind of being around the child, being available for the child, and the other teacher running the other parts of the classroom.

We did a whole circle time and the child cried throughout the entire circle time. During circle time, one of the children noticed, they said, “So-and-so’s crying.” And that was a powerful moment and we acknowledged it. We didn’t say, “Yeah, just ignore him. Just ignore him.” We said, “Yes, so-and-so is having a hard time. He’s feeling sad because he’s really wanting his mom and he’s really missing his mom. Let’s all take a deep breath for so-and-so.” So we all took a deep breath for this child who was having a hard time.

In this moment where this child was having a hard time and really missing mom and really experiencing disappointment, the other children were learning how to regulate themselves. Because emotions are contagious. Ooh, I’ve got a feeling like there’s some big emotions going on over there. What can we do to help? We can breathe and we can send loving energy to the child. Not only does this help the other child, but it also helps us regulate in that moment. So this child having a hard time was actually a very powerful learning experience for the children.

Now, there were other parents that were around too and I think they were hearing it. No parent actually said anything, but they got to see how we could regulate through the big emotions too. And so even in that, we are also teaching the parents on big emotions happening, that we don’t have to have this big reaction and how we can regulate through and how we can support a child.

Once all the parents left and we said bye-bye, parents, the child then went over to, I don’t know, I think he went over to me and gave me a hug and regulated that way. He was able to kind of jump into the play and then the rest of the day was normal. Now most days the children are able to say bye to their parents and they’re fine. They go, there’s maybe a moment of crying for five or 10 seconds and then they’re good. But this was a day that was a particularly more difficult day.

I share that story, and not just the story of when everything is going great, because I also want to communicate to any early childhood professional or any parent out there that even in those hard moments, as long as we have a helpful mindset, as long as we have our skills and our regulation and we’re seeing it in a helpful way, that these aren’t bad moments. These are powerful learning opportunities for the child and for really anyone who’s around. It could even be powerful learning opportunities for us.

Janet Lansbury: Oh my gosh, yes, a hundred percent. I’ve been able to do that kind of demonstration in parent-toddler classes and parent-infant classes, and it’s exactly what you said. I’m kind of thinking like, Oh gosh, do they think I’m not doing enough to try to get this child to stop or to distract them? But they see at the end that the way a child finishes when they’re finally done with that, it’s so peaceful and you can almost see that they’re lighter, that they’ve offloaded something that’s been weighing them down and could even be a buildup from days of something, stimulation or energy or feelings. And just how beautiful that is.

It’s really hard to explain because as human beings, we just want to do something to fix the child and make it better. It’s just so in us to do that. So for people to actually get a demonstration like that is very powerful. It gives them permission to not do anything, to really just receive it and allow it to be and allow it to be shared.

Mr. Chazz: Yes, thanks for bringing up that part. Ooh, am I being judged for the way that I’m handling this child that’s crying? Because we’re not sitting right there next to him or giving him a hug, will they think that we’re neglecting this child and will they think that we don’t give their child enough when their child is having a hard time too? And all these thoughts for me, they come and they go. I let them go because at this point I’m confident in what I’m doing, so it’s easier for me to let those thoughts go. But I do think that’s an important acknowledgement. And I think even as a parent, when you’re in public, when you’re parenting in public, that that’s also an important thing to acknowledge. You can notice those thoughts and let them go and just know you’re doing what’s best for your child.

And just like you can let those thoughts come and go, you can let those feelings that the child is feeling come and go. They’re here right now, but they’re also going to go as well.

One last thing I’m going to say about the long crying, just another perspective shift that may or may not be helpful: that is an exhausting thing to do. Children do not want to throw themselves on the ground and cry for long periods of time. You try to do what you see your child doing when they’re having a hard time for as long as they’re doing it, and you’ll see how exhausting it is. Maybe the light at the end of the tunnel for you is that because they’re using so much energy, one, obviously they’re not trying to give you a hard time, but two, maybe there’s a nap at the end of the tunnel.

Janet Lansbury: That’s a really good point. And I feel like sometimes with children too, it’s not just the end of the tunnel. It was almost the beginning of the tunnel, that they were just too tired from whatever’s going on at home or they just came back from vacation. And maybe they could face this situation when they weren’t feeling as they do, but that day—it’s just like me when I don’t get enough sleep—they can’t handle it and so they go there. So that can even be part of the cause.

And I think for parents also, it’s important to know that we didn’t make that happen by needing to leave our child or needing to separate or whatever we did. We didn’t make that happen, it’s not our fault that they’re doing that. It’s something that’s probably built up in them that they really need to clear out. And we can help them to do what their body wants them to do, what they instinctively know how to do.

Mr. Chazz: I want to dig deep on that, because we always want to find fault. We put ourselves at fault, the child at fault, or someone at fault. And instead of playing the blame game, just recognize that it just is. You had to go to work. They felt sad or disappointed. They were hoping that you stayed longer. Now they are upset and they’re crying. It just is. We don’t have to judge it even as good or bad. It’s just that things can happen.

Now, if we’re really intentional, this can be a helpful learning opportunity, and if we’re not really intentional and if we’re really reactive or we’re just reacting from our body, then we can turn what is into a bad moment. But it all is dependent on the caregiver and where we’re at with it. Not to say that you, the caregiver, are at fault, but just to recognize that you might have less resources in your body, you may not be able to keep it together because you got less sleep last night or you’ve been traveling and you’re jet-lagged, right? You’re going through your own stuff.

Avoid placing blame on yourself or anyone else. Recognize that it just is. And that we have the power to decide if this is going to be something that’s helpful and positive and a learning experience or something that is hurtful and negative and might be something that we have to heal from.

Janet Lansbury: I really love that expression, I don’t know who made it up, but: This moment feels like this. This is just how this moment is. Allowing things to be what they are in that moment and not trying to fight it or take blame for it. Just allowing yourself to be in it and learn from it, moment by moment. I don’t know, maybe that sounds too esoteric.

On that note about us, the caregivers and the parents, I wanted to just go back for a second to this idea, is it called a visual calendar? What you were saying for parents that don’t have a school like Birdhouse, which is going to be most of us, we don’t have this kind of environment that you’re curating here and that you’ve created. The reason I bring that up is because I feel like it’s helpful to the child to see the step-by-step in a transition, and it’s equally helpful to us because we can feel more settled that we’ve done our part of the bargain. Will our child always accept it? Oh, you did your part. Sure, great! No, they won’t. But it helps us to not be skulking off, feeling terrible about our child having a feeling about something that’s not a happy one. Instead we feel like, Okay, we did the plan, so we’ve done our part and the rest needed to happen.

Mr. Chazz: Just a little visual routine. I mean, a little visual routine card that’s left-to-right saying what you do when you come in. And the kids look for that too. Introducing it, I point to each thing like, Oh, you’re here. The first thing we do is we greet each other and say hello. So I talk them through it at first. And then after about a week or so they’re coming in and we automatically greet each other and then kind of pointing, Oh look, what’s next? And they’re going to it. Next week, they come in and they’re looking at it and like, Oh, I did this. Now I do this. Now I do this. And then it’s less even the parent prompting them to do the next thing.

Janet Lansbury: Yes, they’re on top of it and they love that feeling. Even if it’s something like washing their hands, I get to go wash my hands now! It feels good.

Mr. Chazz: And when they get distracted, because we have greeters, they all kind of greet the children when they come in, we do a little wave, whatever they feel comfortable with. So there is often a distraction. But it’s easy for us to go back to the visual and be like, Oh, look what’s next. And then they can say, Oh, take off my shoes, and now they’re more a part of the process and there’s less friction there.

So that’s one big thing that I’ve put out there as a teacher, but you could also make it for your own child and do that if that helps your child. If you find that your child often does get distracted or has a hard time following what the routine is, and they want to do all the things that are not in their routine first. That’s one thing.

Another thing that a parent is doing is they came into the space and they’re taking pictures of Birdhouse and they’re making a little book of it. They are talking about the schedule of the day and the different things that are in Birdhouse, to get the child excited about playing at Birdhouse and all the things that they’re going to want to do. It’s really helpful to just help children visualize what they’re going to do. And sometimes words are not enough. Often words are not enough, so pictures are very, very helpful for that.

The other thing is if you can have them come in and spend some time in the classroom. Some programs will allow that, some programs might not allow that, but it’s definitely worth an ask. That’s something that could be helpful.

Now also I would roleplay. Before you get to the school, roleplaying what that whole routine is going to look like. And this is a time where you can break out your little routine card if you’re making it. You can go through the routine and just play arriving to school and what that’s all going to look like. You’re going to have little stuffed animals as the other kids, pretend to wash your hands and everything. And then also pretend to leave, but have a playful way that you do each of those little transition moments and definitely have a playful connecting way that you say goodbye and practice that.

It’s kind of like the practice before the game. It’s going to be harder to execute the play if it’s my first time ever seeing the play or hearing the play. Rather than if I’ve been rehearsing the play over and over and over again, even in an emotional moment, it’ll be easier for me to know what to do next. Not to say it’s going to happen perfectly, but those are some strategies that will reduce the friction of the arrival.

Janet Lansbury: I love that. I’ve always told parents, no matter what grade their child is in, to try to give them the lay of the land and talk about the schedule. But I think playing it out is a really great idea. And I would only add that sometimes it gets the kids excited when they know what’s going to happen and can visualize it, but other times it might not get them as excited, but maybe they can even express some of that to you ahead of time. Like, I don’t like that I have to take a nap!, or whatever. Do you guys have a nap at your school?

Mr. Chazz: We do have a nap.

Janet Lansbury: I am just imagining something that the child is like, no, and then just like, “Oh, you don’t want that part. Maybe there’s a plan we can make for how you can handle that.” So I’m just saying, it doesn’t have to be that we tell them the plan and now they’re all excited. We definitely don’t want to try to get them excited, because they always see through that, don’t they? It’s like, Why is she selling this so hard to me? It’s got to really suck. So really being prepared that it’s okay. It’s great to give them the lay of the land and what’s going to happen and it fuels them, it gives them confidence going in. But they’re not always going to be excited about every part of it, and that’s okay. It is better to be honest and to be open to, Well, maybe I’m going to ask a teacher about that. Maybe there’s something else you can do during that, or whatever.

Mr. Chazz: Yes, that’s such a great nuance part of the point. Because often things come up in play more than in an actual situation. A lot of times the actual situation can be sometimes so overwhelming that even if they have a lot of words to communicate, it’s harder for them to come up with the words and to communicate and they can get more in themselves. But when we’re kind of playing the situation out, they often feel safer to express those things. And then you can problem-solve ahead of time or maybe talk to the teacher about, Hey, they’re having a little bit of a hard time. Then the teacher also knows that this might be something that is a challenge for this child, and maybe the teacher has an idea of how to support them in this difficult moment. So you can collaborate there too.

What I also say to all the parents out there listening, especially in a center where there’s so many kids, the first month, your teachers are still just really getting to know your child. Every child comes with their own set of codes, their own personality, their own ways they like to do things, their own routines that they have at home that are different from school. And the teacher, especially if they’re getting all the children at once, the first month they’re just trying to figure all that stuff out. I always ask my parents to send a picture of the family. I always have their cubby set up and I have a picture of their family, so first-day sadness and feels, we can bring that picture down. But also I like to know, what does your child like to play with? Is there anything that would be helpful?

Nap time is another big thing too. Some children, right at a certain time, they’re out, but some children take a little bit longer time to nap, and some children, patting their backs helps them go to sleep. Every single child during nap time, they have a different way that they like to go to sleep. And those are all just little things that we as teachers are figuring out.

So for me, there’s never too much detail. If a parent sends me just a long list of things about their kids, I appreciate it. I might forget some of it, but if something is going on with their child around nap time, like, Oh wait, I remember they said something about nap time. Let me go back to my notes. Oh, she has a stuffed animal and the reason why she’s freaking out right now is because she doesn’t have her bunny and she goes to sleep with bunny every single day of her life and we forgot to put bunny out. Oops, we’re still learning.

Janet Lansbury: That’s helpful for the parents to expect and to understand that the teachers have this challenge of learning all of the kids, learning about who they are, and that it does take time. It wouldn’t take as much time with one child, but with a group of them, it definitely does.

Mr. Chazz: Correct. And the larger the group size, the more time it’s going to take to be attuned. Like we were talking about earlier, just noticing what the child is looking at and noticing it with them, and maybe even just looking at something or pointing at something or grabbing something. It’s hard to notice what three children are looking at at the same time and having that moment with three children at the same time, right?

Janet Lansbury: And then when they’re in a really big group where there’s more than 12 in the room or in an adjoining room and it’s so noisy and so stimulating, then they probably spend a month just flying around with all the children and not really being centered in themselves for a long time, I would think. It’s harder for them to find their center when they’re just so excited about everything that’s going on, picking up all the energy of all these different people, and that could be challenging.

Mr. Chazz: For sure. But I also want to say that I made the choice to go back into the classroom. It’s not something that I had to do, to be honest. I’ve been doing a lot of speaking.

Janet Lansbury: I remember, I know, I’m totally aware of this. I remember when you first got the opportunity to do this and how excited you were.

Mr. Chazz: And my choice to go into the classroom as opposed to traveling and speaking, there’s a lot more emotional labor involved in being in the classroom. It is a lot of work. I’ve done the coaching in the classroom, I’ve done the speaking across the country, and there’s absolutely nothing more rewarding than being with my kids day in and day out and supporting them and practicing my skills and supporting the parents and teaching the parents. It’s the difference between going a mile wide versus a mile deep.

And I just wanted to shout this out into the void. Maybe someone might hear me and just know that this teaching job that we’re doing, as difficult as it is and how much you give and how much emotional labor is involved in it, I personally wouldn’t trade it for anything. And there’s nothing more rewarding than this. I love teaching the teachers, but there’s nothing more rewarding than being in the classroom and teaching the children.

Janet Lansbury: I feel that, I feel that so much. Since I’ve been writing my book now and doing the various things I’ve been doing, I haven’t been teaching, and I really, really miss that. Because like you said, it’s so deep, the ups and downs and all the feelings and carrying everyone’s emotions, trying not to really carry them as much, but feeling them, the parents, the children. And you learn so much. You just keep learning, there’s no end to the learning that you do. The children teach you so many things, the important things in life, I feel like. So yes, I feel the same. I don’t do what you do, but I totally, totally get what you’re saying.

Mr. Chazz: I just wanted to say this to the teachers out there, from someone who’s in it with you and who is going in the classroom day in and day out. I know that it’s hard. There’s some days that I absolutely do not want to wake up from my bed. I’m lucky that I have a little bit less of a commute because I work downstairs. But take some moments to just appreciate the little moments. That’s been something that’s been really helpful for my own self-care. Me wanting to go back in the classroom every day is really taking those moments to just appreciate the little moments of like, Oh, there was a child the other day who was really upset and he was really having a hard time, and he was hitting me and trying to bite me and was having these really big emotions. And I couldn’t really figure out how to get to him. I knew what he needed, but I didn’t know how to actually help him feel understood. I knew that this child needed to feel understood, but I couldn’t figure out how to get there with him. But when I put the words to what he was feeling, it shifted his whole body language and he was in a place where he was much more able to collaborate and cooperate with what we were doing. And then when he shifted, then he was able to choose some of the skills or some of the strategies that we talked about. He picked his feeling buddies of what he was feeling and we worked through the feeling and he welcomed his sadness, he welcomed his disappointment, and then was able to make a choice of what was able to help him.

That moment is something that I am still appreciating and is what honestly springboarded me up from my bed this morning to get me back into the classroom. Try to appreciate those moments where things do go really well, where all the hard work that you’ve put in, where you see it come out of them, focus on that too. I think these moments happen all across our early childhood centers, I don’t think that we notice them enough.

Janet Lansbury: And parents too, to feel that, to know, Hey, I didn’t lose it when my child was losing it. That is awesome. To be able to celebrate that instead of feeling like, Phew, I got through that and I’m terrible.

Mr. Chazz: And that gives us energy to continue doing this very difficult job that we have as a parent or as an early childhood professional. And what it also does is it makes it more likely that there’s going to be more of those moments because we have more of a belief within ourselves that those difficult moments, those really powerful learning moments, can still happen from that moment. And when we’re able to keep that belief, we’re able to create more.

Janet Lansbury: Well said.

Mr. Chazz: And I think that also goes into, tying it with the school transitions, that even our belief that our child can do this and our child can handle the moment of separation when you do have to leave or go to work and they are really upset, that belief that they can handle that sad as long as there’s a teacher on the other end who is thinking about how to help a child feel safe, connected, and understood. When you leave, they’ll have a safe place to land. And even though it might be difficult, it’s something that they can handle.

Janet Lansbury: And not only can handle, but it’s healing. If we think about it, kids are in love with us. How would we expect them to just, Bye, see you! I don’t care. Of course they’re going to have feelings about that. They’re saying goodbye to their loved one. It’s a nice thing that they love us that much. It’s not a weakness in them, it’s a strength.

Mr. Chazz: Yes. They’re loving deeply and they have a strong connection with their number one and their number two person in the world. It makes sense.

Janet Lansbury: Thank you so much, Mr. Chazz, for taking time out of your long days and sharing with us.

Mr. Chazz: It’s always a pleasure talking to you, and I never know where the conversation’s going to go, and I always just love riffing off of you. Got to do more in the future.

Janet Lansbury: For sure. Bye, Mr. Chazz.

Mr. Chazz: Bye.

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