Category: Family & Parenting

Part of growing up is learning how to handle uncomfortable situations and setbacks. This is how children become confident, independent adults. But overly protective parenting can reactively deliver children from challenging circumstances that help them develop and mature.

Call it what you will—“helicopter,” always hovering; or “lawnmower” or “snowplow” parenting, where Mom or Dad mows down or clears obstacles from their child’s path. These overzealous attempts to protect kids can make it harder for children to build resilience and an all-important sense of being capable.

It’s impossible to protect your child from every negative event or confrontation. After you speak with your child about possible ways to handle specific problems that might arise, give them the benefit of the doubt and let them manage. Don’t assume they can’t handle challenging circumstances.

Children know more than we think; parents need to trust them. A study of toddlers from Edith Cowan University in Western Australia showed that, at this young age, children could already resolve conflict and build confidence when parents recognized and believed in their child’s abilities.

Showing up versus overprotection

Smoothing the path or running interference is distinctly different from and easily confused with showing up for your child. The impact of the latter is hard to overstate, according to psychotherapist Tina Bryson and Daniel Siegel, professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, who co-authored The Power of Showing Up: How Parental Presence Shapes Who Our Kids Become and How Their Brains Get Wired. “One of the very best predictors for how children turn out—in terms of happiness, social and emotional development, leadership skills, meaningful relationships, and even academic and career success—is whether they developed security from having at least one person who showed up for them,” they write. Showing up, however, is not the same as constant watchfulness and protection.

Lenore Skenazy was once labeled the “world’s worst mom” because she let her 9-year-old take the New York subway by himself. It was quite the scandal. The decision could certainly be debated given the dangers a child may encounter navigating the largest transportation system in the largest city in the U.S. But calling what Skenazy did child abuse or similarly coming down on parents who grant children lesser degrees of autonomy has unintended consequences. Parents today may give their kids the freedom to walk home from school or to a store alone, only to have police and social services investigating them because someone reported the parents to authorities.

Skenazy has devoted years to educating parents about the benefits of allowing children age-appropriate freedoms. She noted at the time she was being reviled that she “wanted him to become a person who could make good judgments and live well in this society and the broader world.” She founded the “Free Range Kids” movement in 2008 and the nonprofit Let Grow (letgrow.org/) to “get parents to let their kids go. It’s great for children, but society hasn’t gotten the memo.”

Does your state have a “Reasonable Childhood Independence” law?

Not too long ago, a Georgia mom was arrested for reckless endangerment of her 10-year-old, who walked to the store by himself. Similar cases can be found around the country. Georgia’s governor has since signed a reasonable childhood independence law, which protects parents from being penalized for giving their children age-appropriate independence

In addition to Georgia, Florida, and Missouri, other states passed similar childhood independence laws, joining Utah, Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Virginia, Connecticut, Illinois, and Montana. You can find the related law (or its absence) in your state at letgrow.org/states/.

Skenazy believes that hovering and monitoring a child’s daily activities and protecting him from every mishap or failure is counterproductive and ignores the facts, instead giving in to unrealistic fears. “The facts,” she notes, “run counter to and are salve for parents’ fears.” Children need progressively more independence to grow and develop into healthy adults who are capable of handling increasingly complex challenges.

Allowing kids to play in the woods, problem-solve without a parent interjecting the answer, ride their bike to a friend’s house, and fail and take on new challenges are all part of growing up. Absolutely, as parents, we have to weigh the risks, and sometimes we must say no, suggest an alternate route, or help them find a safer path. But balance and parental restraint are also required to avoid overprotection, which can also cause harm.

When parents go too far in protecting their children, they undermine their ability to manage difficult situations and set them up for greater challenges down the road. By thinking carefully about how you show up for your children—and when you shouldn’t—you’ll be setting them up to one day take the reins themselves.

Copyright @2025 by Susan Newman

Effective discipline can be confusing! It can feel like we’re working so hard to be caring, empathetic, and patient with our kids—and not lose our temper—yet still, the challenging behaviors keep happening. And then when we try to set boundaries, our child has a meltdown that seems to last forever. What are we doing wrong? In this episode of “Unruffled” Janet explores three common reasons our attempts at respectful discipline can end up being ineffective. She suggests nuanced adjustments that can make all the difference. Her recommendations will not only help to simplify our approach (for the win!) but also help our kids to feel safe, seen, and supported, deepening our parent-child bonds.

Transcript of “Discipline Isn’t Working – 3 Common Reasons and What To Do Instead”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m going to be talking about three common reasons that discipline doesn’t work as we hope it will, meaning our responses to our child’s behavior, the way we’re handling it. Why does this keep happening? Why is the behavior maybe getting more pronounced? Why does this feel messy and unclear to me? What’s going on?

I call these common reasons because we’ll all fall into these kinds of responses, at one time or another at least. And besides these being about responses to behaviors, these are also reasons that have to do with feelings, like I’m always talking about here. And that’s because feelings, on some level, drive our behaviors. There are things that we do on automatic, where we’re not thinking about it or feeling like we even want to do that, but we’re just doing them, especially as we get older. But when it comes to children, the behaviors they have, especially the ones that we don’t like so much, are driven by feelings and stress, right? Because that’s how they get dysregulated and lose control. Their system gets overwhelmed.

I was thinking about this today: there’s been such a change in the attitudes about feelings since I first started writing online in 2009. Back then, there was this sense—not so much with the professionals, but parent-to-parent, which was the way blogs were then, they were mostly parents writing about their ideas and their suggestions for each other. And there was this real sense of shaming in the idea that someone’s child was having meltdowns or as a baby was crying, that this meant that the parent was doing something wrong. They weren’t breastfeeding enough, they weren’t carrying their child enough, they weren’t giving them enough connection.

So this evolution has been huge to where we are now, where it seems like everybody’s talking about feelings and how important they are and how to let your child express them. And what often happens when there’s a big evolution like this is that the pendulum swings a little too far in the opposite direction. And I feel like that’s what’s happening now, because it feels like there’s such a focus on feelings that our role seems unclear. It feels like we should be doing so much around this, that it’s so important.

But it’s also life. I think it’s Mooji that said, “Feelings are just visitors. Let them come and go.” And that kind of attitude is really, really healthy for us to have and for us to be teaching our children through our responses. Yeah, this one doesn’t feel good and this one feels great and it’s all normal. It’s not something I’m responsible for making better. It’s not something where I’m worried about you and I’ve got to wait until you get all the way through it and stop everything in my life. It’s this really normal, healthy part of life. So I feel like that’s getting lost in some of the ultra-focus that’s being given to feelings. Which is for the most part, very, very positive, but can give that kind of impression like, Ahh, this is such a big deal!

I guess, of course, there are still circles where there’s this disallowing of feelings and rejecting a child for them. You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit, all of that. I guess there’s even books about that for children, to teach them that this is just something that you control and you don’t let happen. Well, I don’t think I’m getting those kinds of parents because they’re probably not interested in what I’m sharing here, which is really trying to look at the long term as far as our relationship with our children. Do we want to be somebody that they feel comfortable sharing with, that they don’t feel judged for? Or, Just put that one away! I don’t want you to feel that around me. That’s not the kind of relationship of communication that most of us want with our children and that trust and that closeness where they’re going to confide in us. So while that kind of behavior-control stuff maybe seems helpful when kids are younger, it does not build the bond with us and the emotional help that we want our children to have.

Anyway, I just want to acknowledge that that’s still out there, but it seems like a lot of us, or the people in my circles at least, are going maybe too far the opposite way and getting all cluttered about what’s going on with how we’re supposed to react to feelings and what we’re supposed to do.

Here’s the first of the three common reasons that discipline isn’t working: We react to the symptoms rather than addressing what’s behind them. We’re seeing all this behavior in our face. And because our child in so many ways seems so reasonable, it’s hard to realize that this is absolutely not reasonable behavior, this is kooky behavior. And it’s about our child feeling out of control.

I had an exchange with a parent around this on, I think it was Instagram, and I just want to share some of it here:

Hi, Janet-

I love your workbooks and podcast, it got us through a really hard 2.5 to 3.5 stretch. But alas, our four-year-old is driving the house insane. We do have a six-month-old baby, which she was doing okay with, but our beloved dog got sick and had to be put down at the end of March. This was combined with both grandparents being hospitalized, who live with us and she adores. So I know the reasoning, but it has been unbearable. My wife and I have been very ruffled lately, and all your teachings have gone out the window. We also got a nine-month-old dog unexpectedly, which adds to the stress.

She is yelling constantly, defiant, doesn’t listen at all, screams at the dog, the baby, strangers, the grandparents, etc. She’s been rough with the baby (bit her once), physical with the dog, and is back to hitting and newly biting us. She is super smart, borderline gifted, and manipulative. Bedtime now takes two-plus hours, with screaming and yelling and running out of her room. When asked about her behavior, she says she doesn’t know why. Lately I’ve been trying to reintroduce your techniques, with some success. Tonight after going full exorcist demon mode at 9:00 p.m., she admitted in bed that she is sad every day because of the dog dying and misses her.

I really miss my sweet girl and I used to do so well with her. Now I’m yelling at her and I don’t know what to do. I feel so lost daily and like a failure as a parent. She’s so out of control. Please help. She’s a model citizen at pre-K, with no behavior problems.

This family is going through so much and it would be bizarre if the parents were just feeling fine and comfortable and their children were feeling just fine and comfortable. None of them are. And our children are especially affected by us, even more than by these outside factors. Their main influence in terms of how comfortable they are and how settled they feel and how well they’re able to exert self-control is all based on us. Life happens and everything is going on right there, I feel for this family. If this wasn’t all happening like this, I would be really, really surprised.

I wasn’t able to say this to this parent because it was just a quick message exchange and I wanted to cut to the chase. But just to even see that as normal can help us. Well, this is totally expected. We don’t love what’s going on, but it’s totally expected.

What I said back to him, though, was:

Thanks for your kind words. I feel like you nailed it right here: “She is so out of control.” Yes, she’s going through something, feels totally out of control, and I’m certain she doesn’t want to be behaving this way and angering her parents. It can help us to think about how we would help someone we cared about who was in this terribly uncomfortable position, not meaning the things she says and does. We wouldn’t take the person’s behavior reasonably. We’d just try to help them out and minimize any damage they unwittingly do. It doesn’t matter how intelligent she is. In fact, intelligent types are usually even more sensitive to losing control.

Let her yell but keep her protected from the dog, the baby, as much as possible. Can the baby be in a playpen or some other protected space? And can the dog be outside if you’re not there to calmly intervene with the helplessly out of control behavior of your daughter? That’s what will help this to pass, because she’ll feel safer when you realize that she can’t do any better than this and you respond to her from that place of understanding.

The thing that I love about this, the thing that’s so interesting to me, and I know I’ve said it before, is that we know, right? There’s a part of us as parents that knows exactly what’s going on, and yet we still get caught up in kind of taking it personally. Because here’s this really bright girl and she’s doing all this to us. “Cut it out!” we just want to say, right?

So please don’t anyone blame yourself for doing that because that’s just a human, adult reaction that we would have to a child’s behavior. Cut it out, you get what you get, just stop. But that’s where we can get stuck, because we’re not seeing what’s beyond the behavior and we’re not seeing the feelings that are going on that are driving this. Which are, I feel all over the place and I can’t function! And I’m sure these parents are feeling some level of that too, even without their daughter behaving like this. And that is also why she’s behaving like this, if that makes sense. So taking care of ourselves and then perceiving this as, You know what? It’s going to be wild right now. We just have to help her through.

And the interesting thing about what he said about the long two-plus hours it takes to go to bed, when children have that at bedtime, it’s often because they haven’t had enough chance just to vent it throughout the day, whenever it’s come up through our boundaries. We’re not going to let you near the baby right now because you’re too out of control, or whatever we want to say about that. And then she screams. Whatever we’re having a boundary with, she reacts. And right there, she’s moving it through, moving it through, getting these feelings out of her system. Shared safely, because we’re trying to see this as our dear, little, out of control girl. So we’re going to be less likely to yell, we still might yell, but less likely to yell. And if we do yell, “Oh sorry, I’m having a really hard time. I know you’re doing the best you can.”

Then she can share it safely and it won’t build all the way up until bedtime, where now she’s got more feelings to vent and it’s ending up taking so long to go to bed. That’s one of the most common reasons that bedtime gets delayed or that children are having all these emotions around bedtime, like he says she’s having. The buildup throughout the day lands them there, and that doesn’t work for us. So we don’t want that to happen as much as possible. If we could remind ourselves, it’s really good that she’s yelling about all these insignificant things, or it’s good that I set that boundary even though it made her upset. Because that was a reasonable boundary and her sharing how upset she is is a positive thing.

The second reason that we get caught up with behaviors and discipline isn’t working, and this is closely linked to the last one: We say no to the behaviors, but we don’t allow for another way for our child to share their feelings. I don’t have a particular note about this right now, but I get many, many questions from parents where they’re doing this very typical, normal thing where we’re just saying, Nope, I can’t let you. Stop. Don’t do any of these things. But we’re not allowing any way for our child to share the feelings driving that behavior another way.

And this isn’t a complicated thing where we have to figure out what they’re exactly feeling and all that. Not at all. All we need to do is what’s right in front of us. Just seeing, just taking a moment, “Can’t let you do that. I’m going to stop you. You want to keep doing that. You’re really having a hard time stopping yourself.” Just that little mini-reflection right there, where we’re seeing our child and they see us seeing them, has a calming effect. And helps them to realize, My behaviors are not cool. They’re not okay, and my parents are not going to let me do them. But it’s okay to feel like I want to do this. They’re not getting mad at me around that. They’re not telling me you can’t do this behavior and you should never feel like you want to do that behavior. We don’t mean to give kids that message, but that’s the one that they often get when we get very focused on the symptoms. We’re just dealing with symptoms, symptoms, symptoms, and nothing we’re doing is helping with the cause of the behavior. So these are just reminders for us.

The third common reason discipline isn’t working: We feel responsible in some way or sad for our child or too uncomfortable for our child to have these feelings. So we want to make them better, instead of just setting the boundary and welcoming our child’s full force of whatever feelings they have. This is my job. And yeah, you can share with me how much you don’t like my choice, how much you disagree. And when you’re doing that, I’m trying to remember as a parent that you’re actually sharing feelings that probably don’t have that much to do with this specific boundary, that are more generalized or more on a theme. Like, you’ve got a six-month-old baby sibling and your parents are really wound up about all these things going on. And you’re not responding well, that’s throwing them off even more.

It’s not about what I was demanding in that moment or what I thought I needed. It’s about these bigger things. But as a parent, we’re still in that other mode where we’re seeing the symptoms, maybe forgetting they’re not coming from a place of reason in our child, so we second-guess ourselves or we doubt ourselves. Oh gosh, maybe I don’t have a right to go to the bathroom by myself or say no to this, or I shouldn’t have. Oh, it hurts her. She needs to do this and that, and I feel bad. And now she’s having this strong reaction. I’ve got to be delicate around that and try to kind of placate her a little bit, calm her down.

The parent that I consulted with in the last episode, called “Struggling with a Strong-Willed Toddler’s Tantrums,” this is what we were talking about, that she thought her job was to teach her child self-regulation on top of everything else. On top of setting a boundary and allowing you to have your feelings, I also have to teach you to control your feelings or calm you down. No, that cannot be our job. And thank you to all the parents who wrote to me and said that that message really hit home from that last podcast. I recommend listening to it if you’re interested, because I get to talk with the parent in person, so we got to have a back and forth.

Again, that’s this whole pendulum swinging so far in this direction that now we have so many jobs as parents and it’s not clear. And we’ve got to help them name the feelings and go through them, and hopefully they won’t feel as strongly next time. It’s unproductive, it’s unhelpful, and it makes it feel like discipline isn’t working. Because our child is getting this message that it’s not completely safe when they go to those dark places or go to those uncomfortable places in themselves. That we don’t think it’s completely safe, that we feel like this is kind of an event. This is something you need help with, this is something I’ve got to invest energy into. It’s not just what happens with young children, which is that their feelings go up and down all over the place, and that’s how it’s supposed to be. The younger the child, the more this will happen. And the more that’s going on in our household, the more this will happen.

It’s tricky, right? Because as parents, we do tend to see, especially when we’re in a stressful time and it feels like everything’s black and white, that either we’re being gentle and so kind, or we’re being rejecting and you get what you get and get over it and you shouldn’t be doing that. But there’s this wonderful middle place that is so helpful to children, that encourages all the things we want to encourage our child to share with us instead of worry about how we’re feeling about their feelings. Even if we’re a little bit uncomfortable, that comes off to our child, unfortunately. They’re so tuned in, right?

So I just want to circle back to this dad on Instagram because he gave a little follow-up. He said:

Thank you. I’ve been trying to just sit with her and let the storm ride over me the last few days, and she seems to be responding better.

I wrote back:

Great, and you don’t even have to sit with her every time. Definitely don’t need to make an event out of every explosion, or any explosion. All that’s needed is acceptance and as much understanding as you can muster that she’s feeling it and going through it.

That’s me trying to quickly explain that sweet spot that we all can find in ourselves. We definitely have it, but we need to practice it. We need to taste it and then we need to practice it. And it can become pretty comfortable. We’re never going to be entirely comfortable when our child is upset and when we’ve been the cause of that, of course. But it starts to become a familiar place and it feels right. And it works, because our child’s upsets are shorter, the difficult behaviors lessen. We see the safety it gives our child when we’re accepting, but we’re not seeing this as a big deal.

Here’s a note about that:

Dear Janet,

I have read your book and followed your podcast with great interest. Your work has been a meaningful part of my parenting journey. In a recent episode, you shared stories from parents who had applied your methodology with their children and experienced peaceful, harmonious outcomes. While I appreciate hearing those success stories, I felt the need to share that my reality as a mother of a six- and four-year-old has been very different.

Since their birth, I have genuinely tried to embody the respectful, attuned approach you teach, yet parenting has remained extremely challenging. For instance, just today my son created a cardboard sword and wanted to bring it with him to his grandparents’. We gently told him the sword would wait for him at home. He became upset and refused to leave. I sat down with him, acknowledged his feelings, expressed curiosity about his creation, and suggested we find a special place for it to wait. Despite this, he remained angry and immobile for 15 minutes, unwilling to budge.

Hearing the recent episode felt surprisingly discouraging. Not because I don’t believe in the method, but because I’m applying it wholeheartedly and still not seeing the kind of ease and harmony described. I think the podcast could benefit from acknowledging that even with committed, aligned efforts, outcomes can be messy, prolonged, and emotionally intense. Without this balance, it can leave parents who are sincerely doing the work feeling like they’re somehow failing, simply because their experiences don’t mirror those in the examples shared.

This parent was so kind. And I just have to say, this made me feel terrible. I mean, this is obviously the opposite of what I’m trying to do, to be discouraging, to make people feel like it’s not typical to have messy, prolonged, emotionally intense situations with our children. It absolutely is.

But after that moment of feeling really disappointed and kind of sad that this parent had that response, it’s amazing how quickly I wanted to just try to help her to maybe get something she wasn’t quite getting. And of course, she just gave me this very small example. And because I’m into this topic so much, it’s like a challenge for me, now I want to help her, to make this easier for her. Not to say at all that all those parents that shared the success stories in that episode, which is called “Discipline That Works — Your Best Responses to Your Kids’ Behaviors.” There were like eight parents that I shared from there, and none of them wrote back to me and said, “By the way, after that success it’s happily ever after and everything’s easy now with my child.” And I doubt that happened with any of them.

The reason I value success stories, the reason they help me and I feel they can help parents, the reason to celebrate these is that we’re getting this taste of what I was talking about earlier, that sweet spot. And the more we can taste that, the more we can find our way back to it. That definitely doesn’t mean it always works or that it always works for us after the success story, it definitely didn’t always work before the success story. It’s always going to be messy and prolonged and hard to have young children, no question. I’m really sorry this parent was left with those feelings. Like I said, the last thing I want is to discourage anyone.

I wrote back to her:

Thank you for reaching out to me and your kind words. I’m so sorry the episode was discouraging to you, that’s the last thing I’d ever want. I would love to try to help you with your challenges, perhaps for a podcast episode, if that would be okay with you. Can you please give me some other examples besides the one with the sword? I have thoughts about that, but more examples would be helpful.

That was a couple of weeks ago and this parent never got back to me, so I’m just going to go with my thoughts about what she shared and see if there’s something here. Because for me, this falls into this idea that we’re doing too much around emotions. And this isn’t to criticize this parent or any of these parents at all, because this is a very nuanced idea, especially in the story this parent’s sharing. Very nuanced. And I’m taking a chance here just sharing my impressions on it. I could be way off, but I’m still going to do it.

She says: “Parenting has remained extremely challenging. For instance, just today my son created a cardboard sword and wanted to bring it with him to his grandparents’. We gently told him the sword would wait for him at home. He became upset and refused to leave.” And this is a six-year-old boy. And then she says: “I sat down with him, acknowledged his feelings, expressed curiosity about his creation, and suggested we find a special place for it to wait. Despite this, he remained angry and immobile for 15 minutes, unwilling to budge.”

So the sense I’m getting here is that this parent was kind of leaning into doing what a lot of us have the instinct to do, especially people like me that are people-pleasers and don’t want to disappoint anyone. Let’s try to make this okay with you. Let’s find a way to make it safe. Let’s talk to you about it. Let’s hear all about this. And if this is what’s happening regularly with boundaries, what I always do is I put myself in the child’s shoes. And I’m feeling like there’s some delicacy around this. It’s a bit touchy to say no to me for something that, if we think about it, it’s really not very reasonable that I made something and rather than enjoy it at home later, I have to bring it to my grandparents’. It’s definitely not a need that a child would have. And even as a desire, it’s kind of, I don’t know, I almost have the sense that her child knew that was a little bit of an inappropriate demand to make, but that this was symbolic of some other things that he’s feeling are going on with him.

And that it would help him more, and definitely help this parent more to not be dealing with such a prolonged episode, for the parents to just lean in and say, “Yeah, you really want to bring that. Gosh, that’s making you so mad. Come on, we’re going to go. But you can yell at us the whole way in the car if you need to.” Keeping it direct and kind and simple and not trying so hard to make it work for him. I doubt he would’ve gone on for the 15 minutes. It would probably be five intense minutes, and maybe a few more in the car. But if parents can have that conviction and that simplicity and honesty, while at the same time welcoming the feelings, You get to share. I’m not afraid of you being mad about something. I don’t see it as a problem or something you can’t handle with our support, then it flashes much more quickly and it’s over.

And our child knows, Hey, I can vent stuff and it’s not a big deal, and I’m not getting all this—I don’t want to say “attention” because there’s so many things put on negative attention and all that, Oh, the kids are just seeking attention. But kids get an impression when there’s so much attention around them having an uncomfortable feeling. They get the impression that it’s not that safe and shouldn’t be normal and comfortable and just acceptable. That there’s a need my parents have to make it better for me. And what that does is it kind of undoes our boundary in the first place because we’re not being decisive, we’re not being confident, and it can tend to create a situation where a child keeps kind of seeking this clearer passage to share.

I don’t even know if that makes sense to anyone but me. This parent, like all the parents I hear from, could not be more caring and thoughtful and loving, and I can feel her working hard just in this example. What I’m suggesting is to do a little less and to trust our children a little more to share all the things they need to share, to know that’s a positive thing for them. There’s nothing negative about it or problematic about it, at all.

That’s my strange, nuanced feedback for this parent. I don’t know if she’s ever going to hear this, but thank you for reaching out to me and being so kind about your constructive criticism. That’s really, really helpful. I always love hearing feedback like that, something I can work with and consider.

This thing about discipline and feelings—this dynamic where we set the boundary, they get to share the feelings, we all move through—we do have to be kind of brave, I feel. Brave and believing in our kids. Believing in their ability to go through life with all the disappointments and the heartbreak and the losses and the anger. They’ve got what it takes, they can do it. And we can do this. It’s so much less complicated than all the messages out there around feelings and behaviors are making it out to be. It’s really quite simple, the dynamic: I see what’s going on. I set the boundary with confidence. I welcome you to share whatever you feel about it, that’s your prerogative. And we go through our day like that.

I really hope some of this helps. And there’s a ton more about this in my No Bad Kids Master Course, and in my book No Bad Kids, which has helped many, many parents turn a corner.

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

This week Janet consults with the single mother of a 2.5-year-old who’s concerned about how she’s handling her daughter’s behaviors. She describes her toddler as strong-willed, smart, intuitive, loving, sweet, and caring, but when she doesn’t get what she wants, she loses it, throwing things, hitting, and screaming. This parent realizes that her daughter’s behavior is developmentally normal and maybe even necessary, but it upsets her, as the model she was raised with was entirely different. “I grew up under the auspices of spare the rod, spoil the child,” she says. “I don’t want that for my baby. I will not be that kind of mom. She deserves better.” Janet makes several observations as to how this parent is already achieving her goals, and offers advice for framing her toddler’s behaviors in a manner that will make it easier for this mom to calm herself and continue nurturing their relationship in a positive direction. 

Transcript of “Struggling with a Strong-Willed Toddler’s Tantrums (A Parent Consultation)”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

I’m looking forward to this one, I love the opportunity to engage with a parent and do a consultation here. Today I have the pleasure of speaking with a mom who reached out to me about her toddler daughter, who sounds quite spirited. Her mother describes her as strong-willed, and she’s been having a lot of tantrums and meltdowns, especially when she doesn’t get her way. And this mom is having a really hard time getting out of the house in the morning with her daughter. She feels overwhelmed, she’s unsure as to how to respond, and it just keeps happening.

So I’m going to get into it with her and find out how I can help, hopefully to make this feel more manageable and give this parent more confidence in the way she’s responding.

Thank you so much for joining me today and being willing to do this.

Parent: No problem. Thank you for offering! Quite a shock, and I appreciate it.

Janet Lansbury: It’s my pleasure. It’s actually my favorite thing to do, talk one-on-one with people because I’m always—I don’t know how many of my podcasts you’ve heard—

Parent: A lot!

Janet Lansbury: Thank you! But I’m always trying to imagine a lot about what’s going on. And I feel like I’ve gotten good at doing that, but it’s never the same as actually getting to ask the person questions and get a response and hear more from them.

I would like to start by reading your original note to me about your issues. Is that okay?

Parent: That sounds great.

Janet Lansbury: Great, okay:

Hi, Janet-

I’m struggling and could really use your help. I’m hoping you can provide me with a way to help my two-and-a-half-year-old daughter and myself. We are a one-parent, one-child family. I chose this path to motherhood. She’s amazing: smart, intuitive, curious, strong-willed, silly, loving, sweet, and caring. All of these traits make her an amazing person. It’s my greatest honor to be a part of shaping how she uses these assets.

In a lot of ways, we are similar. Unfortunately for both of us, the strong-willed trait can lead in the wrong direction. I get that she’s a toddler and testing boundaries is developmentally appropriate and necessary, but it’s pretty bad. If she doesn’t get what she wants when she wants it, she loses her [beep]. And I mean that: throwing things, hitting, screaming at the top of her lungs, making it difficult to move her body (typically out of danger’s way). And it doesn’t matter where we are (grocery store, playground, airport, sidewalk), how well-rested she is, the time of day. It just happens. And not for five or 10 minutes. At least once, it was 47 minutes, I timed it.

This happens every single morning when it’s time to get ready for daycare/preschool. Every step is a fight. Taking her PJs off, changing her pull-up, wiping her down, dressing her, brushing her teeth, washing her face, shoes, coat, car seat. Oh, by the way, she loves school. We get out of the car and she walks in like she owns the place, saying “Good morning!” and giving hugs and high fives. It’s so cute, and infuriating!

I give her options in the morning. This shirt or this one? The purple or the green toothbrush? These shoes or these? Doesn’t matter. I need help getting to her before the storm arrives. How do I stop it before it starts?

I’ve been telling myself recently that the tantrums have nothing to do with me and that I just need to make sure she’s in a safe space and let her get it out. But I’m struggling. I’m having a hard time regulating through the bloodcurdling screams (no tears), body-throwing fits. Everyone keeps telling me it’s just that age. Is that really all I have to work with? She has not been diagnosed with any neurodivergence. I’ve talked to her teachers at school, her babysitter, and the occasional auntie, and no one else has this problem with her.

I grew up under the auspices of “spare the rod, spoil the child.” I don’t want that for my baby. I will not be that kind of mom. She deserves better. Help me, please.

I just want to say: that right there is amazing, that you want to shift this cycle that you grew up with. And very brave. And like many of us, you don’t know exactly how to do it. It’s not just this smooth thing that you can flow into. Kudos to you for being willing and committed to doing that.

Parent: Thank you.

Janet Lansbury: Here’s what I wrote back:

I’m so sorry to hear you’re having these issues. I would love to try to help.

Do you have a sense of what might be causing her upsets? Do you think this is purely due to her not getting something specific in the moment? Usually there’s something else going on and the minor disappointments are triggering it. One bit of advice I have is to not give her a lot of choices in these situations when she’s already getting wound up.

Also, could you describe how you’re feeling and responding at these times? Not happily, I’m sure! I’m going to try to help. It will be okay.

And then you wrote back to me, explaining all these stressors that you have going on in your life, that you’re not responding well, you end up frustrated and overwhelmed, that your responses aren’t necessarily consistent.

And then you said:

Some days I explain I know she’s upset as I continue to brush her teeth, put her shoes on, whatever it is. And some days I yell out of frustration, especially when she spits (like I said, not responding well). Other days I make sure she’s physically safe and try to ignore until she stops. Those days she asks for a hug when she’s done.

The day I sent you the original email while I was on the train going to pick her up, she had a 42-minute meltdown when we got home because I wouldn’t turn on a show. And it was a doozy. Instead of engaging, I sat on the couch, put my feet up, and watched YouTube videos on my phone. When she was done, she asked for a hug. Since that one, the storms are shorter. Did I fix something? How do I fix myself to remember to always respond this way?

In general, I’m struggling with motherhood. I’m inherently nurturing and empathetic, plus the firstborn daughter of a single mother in a family of five kids. I thought this would be natural for me. This part is not my daughter’s fault. She’s perfect, even with the storm.

Wow. So you are a single mother, you’re going through a lot of stressful things, you’re trying to shift a cycle that you really didn’t have a model for. And you have my favorite kind of child: strong-willed. Delightful, they’re winners in this world. They’re not going to let anybody mess with them. I think it’s a great thing.

But it’s so interesting, this thing of her only doing this with you, right?

Parent: Yes. Sometimes I feel like she was sent here to destroy me. And then I have friends that are like, baby girl, she was not sent here. You pulled her into this world on purpose. This is a choice. She’s wonderful, but I have no control over her, which I’ve made my peace with. But then I also don’t know how to motivate her to act differently, and I don’t even know if that’s possible at two-and-a-half.

But typically after the storm, after I give her a hug, I’m just like, “You were really angry. What was wrong?” And she really can’t articulate that, but I’ll say to her, “What do we do when we’re mad? We say, ‘I’m mad!’ And then we take deep breaths.” And so this is a mantra I have been repeating multiple times a day for several weeks now, thinking that eventually she will be able to.

I’m hoping I’m helping. I don’t know, I’m making this stuff up as I go along. Which is also very hard, because I don’t know any other way.

Janet Lansbury: And I think that’s a good instinct that you have. What I really want to get to first, though, is what I appreciated. The last thing that you wrote to me about this was: “I will say, one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do is teach her how to regulate her emotions while learning to regulate my own.” You’ve taken on an impossible job right there. That really can’t be our job, in my opinion, because it doesn’t work and it’s not up to us to do. So you’ve taken on the job of not only regulating your own emotions, but teaching her how to regulate her emotions. And it’s just too much effort for us, we’re not going to be able to do both. We’re not going to be able to properly regulate our emotions and also feel like we have this responsibility to teach her how to regulate hers.

She will regulate hers mostly based on us being able to regulate ours. Just that modeling and that experience, and then through maturity. And also really through your whole perception of what’s going on in these situations, which is this girl who’s got all this power, and as much as she can put that to the positive and be this wonderful kid that she is, there’s also the other side of that coin that she has to express. Because it’s just the way these kids roll, it’s like the yin-yang of them. They’re putting out all this power and energy, this tiny person that she is, and then she needs to explode with equal force.

That’s why when you did ignore her completely, and I wrote back to you about that part and just offered a tiny adjustment to that, but that’s why that seemed to work. Because you weren’t getting involved in something that was essentially just her needing to explode. You weren’t putting your energy, putting your emotion, putting your wish to make it better and fix it, into that at all. And that allowed her the clear space to be able to just do what she needs to do, which is explode and get it out.

Parent: Yeah, it did. And I read your email where you said next time give her positive feedback, nonverbal, that what she’s doing is okay, but also don’t engage and let her take care of it. And that has worked significantly. They are shorter, but then also there’s more space in between the storms, as I like to call them. And I don’t know how much of that is your expert advice, which is probably most of it, and how much of it is just giving her the space to work through it.

It’s hard. And I’m trying to figure out, Why is it so hard? These are the things she’s supposed to do. Why are you so triggered by this? And I think it’s the idea that this wasn’t something I was able to do as a child. Trying to let her do it because I know it’s important, but also not feel like I’m being a pushover or I’m not doing what I’m supposed to be doing to “raise a good girl.”

Janet Lansbury: Yes, that’s exactly the challenge right there. For you to know that your stuff is your past and that it’s not what you want to do, which you already know, but that has an effect on you. And one of the effects is not just that everything in you is telling you this is not okay, it’s actually the child in you reconnecting with those feelings that you had, the fears that you had when your parents reacted to you with the rod or whatever. You’re getting in touch with that through your daughter.

And that’s what makes it hard for us. It’s not just this knowing part of us that was consciously thinking, parents should be like this and all that. It’s the part of us that felt so vulnerable and scared. That can be so uncomfortable to reconnect with when our child is going there. That’s the triggering part. Not what our parents did, but what we felt.

Parent: So how do I fix that? How do I fix myself so that when she does things that are developmentally appropriate that I don’t have such a difficult time letting her walk her own path?

Janet Lansbury: Well, even this idea of fixing ourselves and your interpretation of what I gave you, which was mostly just spot on, but just that you said “have a positive attitude.” And that’s not what I said. Even that I feel like is too much work. Like, how can you have a positive attitude when your child’s doing that? No one’s going to have a positive attitude! And the more you’re asking so much of yourself, the harder this is going to be.

And that’s why my main note to you was, in regard to what you said about that you had to teach her to regulate her emotions, that you felt that was part of your job or you sensed that was part of your job, this thing of “fixing,” of making things happen that are so out of your control, is going to make it so much more overwhelming. And make you feel so much more powerless and maybe scared in these situations.

So let’s simplify your job. Let’s take it all the way back in regard to your own past. And this is just a lifelong process, it’s not like you’re going to do this and then it’s going to be done. There are people that you can work with that will help with this. I’m not one of them, but there are people that can help you. But it’s really just a process of you remembering that, Oh, okay, here’s me and that hurt. And really being able to connect with that person in you. Ideally not in the moment with your daughter. Accepting that that’s going to happen, but also working on it in your own time. Just saying, Man, that was really awful.

And this doesn’t mean you don’t love your parents or they didn’t love you. Quite the opposite. It just means those were the tools that they used and it really hurts you and it was not acceptable, but it’s the best they could do or whatever. But really being able to connect with that part of you and accept, rather than fix. We can’t fix it. All we can do is let ourselves feel it and own it as our experience that, yes, our child is going to set off.

And then the part about her is for you to, in these moments, find a way. And if that means watching videos on YouTube for now, watch videos on YouTube. Whatever it takes for you to breathe, for you to say, Okay, here’s this little girl in me getting scared and bugged by this. That’s me. And this is my daughter and she’s doing a normal thing. All those things that you know objectively, but that you don’t really feel in the moment. So you’re just getting into that acceptance mode.

And that’s why I said to you that what would work even better was not to have a positive attitude, don’t put that on me! 🙂

Parent: Because that is impossible.

Janet Lansbury: Yes. I mean, you’re just going wild on yourself with what you’re asking of yourself.

What I actually said was, “What I think would work even better for you is to find that place where you can be accepting, rather than ignoring completely.” And like I said, it’s a lifelong thing to find this place in you. But the more you practice with this mindset, the more comfortable that place becomes. Really letting go and letting her have the right to explode over even the smallest, weirdest things. In other words, normalizing this dynamic for yourself. Because this is the kind of girl you got and maybe this was the kind of little girl you were, and that’s why you were so rejected and punished and hurt for being that. So it kind of muted your power that you have. You have all this at your disposal still, but you just bought into, as we all do as kids, the judgments and the badness of it. Believing maybe you needed to be fixed, maybe there was something wrong with you. But there wasn’t.

Parent: There’s nothing wrong with her. Yeah, she’s perfect,

Janet Lansbury: Right. Well, she’s you.

Parent: Yes. We were having a moment together one day, and at the same moment we looked at each other and we rolled our eyes at each other. And she’s two! I was like, Oh my gosh, I am raising myself. This is happening.

I grew up in a culture where your children misbehaving in public was an indication of the parenting. And so one of the storms she had was in a grocery store. Everything was fine until it was time to leave and she wanted some candy bar or something. And of course you can’t have it, because you’re two. And she lost it. So I was like, fine, you just need to get her in the cart so you can get her to the car. And she was using her body to fight me. And I just felt like there were all of these women, probably my aunts and my mom, in this grocery store looking at me, judging. How do you let that girl act like that out in public? You’re not doing your job. I don’t know if that makes sense.

Janet Lansbury: Yes.

Parent: My therapist was like, are you sure you’re not imagining that? And I was like, probably! Maybe I was imagining it, but that was my reality in the moment.

Janet Lansbury: Yes, that’s just the judgment vibe coming down on you, too.

Parent: Yes.

Janet Lansbury: Probably there were maybe two people like that, and there were probably four that had kids that were like, Oh yeah, I’ve been there. But you did the perfect thing. You got her out of there so she didn’t have to make a display of herself that she doesn’t want to make. It’s like, if I flipped out somewhere, you would help me if you cared about me. You’d get me out of there. You wouldn’t yell at me like, “Janet! What the heck are you doing?” You’d be like, “Whoa, what happened here?”

Parent: “Come follow me, follow me.”

Janet Lansbury: Right. “Come on, we’re getting out of here, hun. You’ve lost it.” Ideally it gets to the place where it just brings up your curiosity of like, Oh gosh, I wonder what happened there. And then usually we figure it out at some point like, Oh yeah, she didn’t eat enough or she wasn’t hungry when the food was there. She’s too tired or she’s too stimulated. If this is after her school or her care, then that’s going to be a lot for her. Usually we can figure it out.

But we don’t have to figure it out. All we have to know is that she’s rising to the occasion, she’s firing on all cylinders. She’s going to melt with the person that she feels safest with and adores, and that’s you. You guys have a great connection. That’s clear.

Parent: Yeah, we do. We do. I want to make sure that as I am helping her grow, that I’m doing everything that I’m supposed to be doing so that she can be the person that she is meant to be and not the carbon copy of me. I want her to be herself and I want to make sure that she is being raised and not just growing, that’s something my grandmother used to say. But the only way I know how to do that is the way that it was done to me, and that’s not the way. So I needed your help to find resources for a different way to do it.

Janet Lansbury: Yes. I think honestly, she’s only two-and-a-half. You’ve done it. You’ve done what you wanted to do, in my opinion, reading all of this and engaging with you, you’ve done this. Perfectly? No, nobody does. But you’ve given her something completely different from what you got from the beginning. You’ve already accomplished this. So much of that is already done here. The way that you even rolled your eyes at each other and she feels you’re her person. You probably didn’t feel that about your parents. You wanted them to be and you loved them, but—

Parent: Did I love them? Yes. Did I feel like my mom was my person? I did not. I felt like my grandmother was in a lot of ways. Our relationship was different, it probably had to be. But yeah, my daughter has me and she knows it and I know it. And I’m so ready to go to brunch with her as a 12-year-old and hear about what’s happening with these girls at school or maybe these boys at school. Yeah, it’s going to be a great time.

Janet Lansbury: It’s all going to happen. I mean, honestly, you’ve already done it. You really have.

Parent: Thank you.

Janet Lansbury: So, job well done. Now from here, let’s take care of you. Not put all this pressure on yourself to make all these things happen that are not in your control at all, like when she self-regulates, at what time. And I’m sure there’s times she’s very self-regulated, right?

Parent: Yeah.

Janet Lansbury: Her whole thing about going to school and Hey, everybody! Yeah, here I am! It’s like, the exciting girl came, you’re going to have fun today because this person’s here. But that person needs to vent as soon as they leave the premises or before. It’s going to be all bets off for the rest of the day on those days. And then on your weekends, just try not to plan too much. Get the errands done you need to do or whatever, but you don’t need to plan special activities. She needs to rest.

Parent: And I learned that, I had to go through that. I was like, oh, if I just keep her engaged, brain development, all of the stuff. But what I learned is that having swimming and a playdate on Saturday and then gymnastics and church on Sunday, it was just too much. I’d had our weekends completely timed and structured. It was too much for both of us. And so on the weekends we do gymnastics, that’s all we do, and the rest of the time we just kind of hang out with each other. We might do a playdate, but it’s not as involved.

Janet Lansbury: This is really important because this is an important element of what’s going on with her and something you could do to make your life easier. Because every one of those activities, they all have expectations with each of them. They have frames that a child has to go into, to this frame and that frame with those people and these expectations and these activities, in this particular scenario. It’s so much pressure. We don’t realize that because to us, it might just be fun and stimulating, but that’s so much for her when she’s already going to school and care and doing all of that. Every time she has to get in the car and go somewhere, it’s a little bit of pressure.

Parent: And I should have known that, because we have very similar personalities. We went through about four or five months where we were super-scheduled and no one was happy and it was supposed to be happy. And then one weekend I was like, We are doing nothing this weekend. We’re not going to gymnastics. We’re not going to church. It helped that the weather wasn’t great. And it was a good weekend. And I was like, okay, fine, we need to cut some of these things out because it’s too much. And so I think that helped. I don’t know that I noticed a difference in the storm, but it definitely made a difference for me. So I’m assuming if I’m not as stressed, then she also isn’t. I think we’re working with each other here, I’m assuming.

Janet Lansbury: Yes, you’re working with each other. You’re learning from each other. And even though she’s still going to have the storms because she’s this type of girl and she’s in that childcare. Has she been at it a long time, the same one?

Parent: Relatively. She’s been there since August, which is when she first started going to daycare.

Janet Lansbury: Oh, that’s not very long at all. So this is a huge challenge she’s rising to. It’s hard for us to see it that way sometimes, but to be this A+ girl in that setting, that’s enormous. For a child that’s got a sensitive, intense temperament like this especially, but for any child, it’s a lot. So that right there is a lot. And she’s going to have storms naturally just from that, the letdown from that, the balance for that. And then anything else you add on could bring more. Even if it sounds so fun and wonderful, if it’s something structured even a little bit, that’s going to be maybe positive but also stressful. We could relate, like maybe we gave a speech or did something that was really stressful for us. And we feel really good about it and it was a positive thing, but now we’re stressed out.

Parent: Yeah. The day is over, I’m done. I’ve done everything I’m supposed to do today, I’m doing nothing else. And her way of doing that is her storm. That is a really helpful, helpful perspective.

Janet Lansbury: Good. And we’re stressed out before the speech, too. And that’s why you’re having such a hard time in the mornings, because she’s already pumping up for this challenge in her day. That’s why I would still normalize this. But you can cut it off at the pass a little by anticipating that she has a hard time in the mornings, and so therefore don’t be asking her what color toothbrush. If you want to do that the day before, sure. That might work, or she might be too tired then too if it’s the night before. But in the morning, just make those choices for her and kind of close the gaps.

I call it “confident momentum.” So you might give her a moment, “Do you want to wear this or this? Oh, neither one? Okay, you know what? We’re just going to wear this.” And you can do it very lovingly and in an even kind of upbeat way if you’re prepared for it. But if you’re giving her the choice and then she’s kind of wavering and then starting to lose her emotional self-control, now it’s going to be really hard for you to keep the momentum going.

Parent: That’s a really helpful way to look at it. She is preparing for the speech and then she’s having the letdown of the same event, and so she needs time to even out before and after.

Janet Lansbury: And it’s not even really time, you don’t have to stop and wait for her. It’s more this sense that you’re going to be carrying her through the morning. Because you do have an agenda, you’ve got to get out the door. In the afternoon, that’s where you can just sort of let it go. Hold your boundaries and not let her hurt anything or hurt you, but just kind of let it go and let it be the way it is. But in the morning, it’s going to be more of you carrying her when she can’t move forward herself. And even if it looks like she can, knowing that this is really hard for her.

Parent: That is really helpful. It’s a great way to frame it. Because in the morning I’m like, are you kidding me right now? But just make it happen so we can keep this train moving to get out the door. One morning I was like, Would you like some fruit snacks? Do you want some sugar in a bag? Yes? Okay, great, take these fruit snacks and let’s get in the car because we’ve got to go.

Janet Lansbury: Yes, but that’s about the biggest choice you want to give her right then. Because every time you’re waiting for her to make a choice or putting her in that position, it’s like, have you ever been in a time, maybe you just had a baby or you were in a very overwhelmed time, and you just want your friend to tell you what restaurant she’s going to take you to? You don’t want to decide. I can relate to it because as I’ve said on this podcast many times, I wish I had someone just saying, “Okay, put these pants on, Janet. And put this top on, these shoes. Let’s help you get out the door.”

Parent: Yeah, that’s helpful. I’ve definitely been like, just tell me where we’re eating and then we can just go eat there. I don’t need to be a part of this process.

Janet Lansbury: Yes.

Parent: Thank you, Janet. I appreciate that.

Janet Lansbury: But a lot of people confuse my thing of letting the feelings be and just letting her feel rocky about the whole morning and everything with, Oh, now I have to stop and wait 40 minutes to get her in the car. How’s that going to work? And again, that’s the opposite of what helps. They’re waiting for us to help them, and we’re waiting for them to help us.

Parent: We’re putting the pressure on them.

Janet Lansbury: Yes. We’re putting pressure on them by kind of saying, Okay, we’re going to wait until you’re ready. Instead of, You know what? We’re getting out of here. I know it’s hard for you today. Having all of these at the same time is what makes us even stronger: You get to feel like a mess; I’m here to help get you through this mess; I’m not mad at you for feeling like a mess. That can help us if we’re prepared for that. And so you’re going to need energy for that part in the morning. You are going to need a certain kind of energy for that.

Parent: Yeah. I try to prepare myself. I get up before her and get myself together so that by the time it’s time for me to wake her up, I am ready to face the day. I am armed with what I need to get us out the door. Some mornings better than others.

Janet Lansbury: Yes, get that momentum going. That’s good that you feel like that. And just don’t fall into, I’m supposed to help her learn to self-regulate. And then she’s not self-regulating and now we’re feeling bad about ourselves, we’re not doing something right. That’s something that’s going to make it harder for us to have that momentum and that confidence that kids need from us in those times when we’re moving her forward too much. Because that isn’t your job anyway. Your job is to do exactly what you’re doing and not try to help her breathe and all that. I mean, you can offer, Aah, let’s just breathe now, or something, but I wouldn’t put that on your job description that this is something you’re supposed to do. She will learn this naturally by you normalizing for yourself her going through her ups and downs.

Parent: Yeah, she’s a firecracker. And I guess with that firecracker comes fire and I just need to make my peace, be okay with the fact that this is something that she needs to do to make it through the day. This is her release valve.

Janet Lansbury: So you’re not trying to put out the fire. You’re not trying to even lessen the fire in any way.

Parent: That is a completely different spin on what I’ve been seeing from her and how I’ve been trying to manage it. It’s like, no, it’s not yours to manage. You are here to bear witness and to let her go through what she needs to go through.

Janet Lansbury: And take care of yourself. Care for that little girl in you.

Parent: Take care of myself.

Janet Lansbury: Which you can do at the same time, because you don’t even have to bear witness in this active way. Bearing witness could be being on your phone, but it would work better for her to get the message if you could just do the thing I was saying about nodding your head, breathing, letting go of it yourself. Let this fire burn, it’s a safe fire. Because I think even bearing witnesses, I feel a little effort in that. I want you to stop.

Parent: It is hard to be like, your job right now is to do nothing.

Janet Lansbury: Exactly. And take care of yourself. How about that? Your job is to be good to you.

Parent: That’s not nothing.

Janet Lansbury: Or just to let you be you. How about that? Something more passive. Let you be you and calm yourself, knowing that you’re safe and she’s safe. And I’m glad that you have a therapist so you can work with her on the parts that are getting touched off, getting in touch with that little girl not getting what she needed.

Parent: Yeah. I’m a fan of therapy, but I’ve been taking it a lot more seriously since I’ve become a mom. Because I’m like, my job is to make sure that this little girl is not in therapy at 45 years old saying that I didn’t do the right thing for her.

 

Janet Lansbury: You’ve already done that. That job is done. It’s often a nice thing to go to therapy, I don’t see anything wrong with it. But she’s not going to be saying, “My mom did the wrong thing.”

 

Parent: It’s such a huge responsibility and blessing. I was 42 when I got pregnant, 43 when I had her. And so the stakes just feel so big. I didn’t realize I was a perfectionist before I had her. I definitely know it now, and it’s not working in my favor because it’s impossible. It’s impossible.

 

Janet Lansbury: It’s impossible the way you’ve set it up, but honestly, I’ve never talked to anyone more capable than you. You are a good parent. You’re a great parent.

 

Parent: Thank you, I appreciate that.

 

Janet Lansbury: And I hope you’ll believe that.

Parent: In six months I’m going to send you another email and I’ll be like, Janet, guess what happened? Actually, in six weeks I’m going to send you an email and I’m going to say, Janet, guess what happened? This little girl did X, Y, Z, and you know what I did? Nothing. I did nothing, and I didn’t even have to think about it. And then finally I was like, wait, you just did nothing. You didn’t second-guess yourself, you didn’t try to fix the problem for her, you didn’t get upset. You just let the world continue to spin on its axis.

 

Janet Lansbury: Yes. Knowing that she’s doing what she needs to do there and sharing it with the person that she needs to share it with. You can be that person.

 

Parent: The person that she loves the most. Yeah. Because it always feels that way, like, Oh yeah, of course you love me. You love me.

 

Janet Lansbury: Yeah, she does. I mean, that’s why she is just not doing that out there in the world. That’s the exact model that you want, that she can go to school and be that rockstar person and then—

 

Parent: Be safe at home with mommy.

 

Janet Lansbury: Yes.

 

Parent: Yeah, a hundred percent. A hundred percent. Thank you. I appreciate that. As a matter of fact, I’m going to go get her now and see what happens this evening, knowing that I’m armed with a process and more information than I had before we had this phone call. Thank you so much, I appreciate it.

 

Janet Lansbury: It’s my absolute pleasure. Please give her a hug for me. Once she’s calmed down, that is!

 

Parent: I will. Have a good afternoon.

 

Janet Lansbury: You too. Thank you so much.

 

Parent: Bye.

 

Janet Lansbury: Bye.

Bossiness. Toy taking. Unkind words. Hitting. Behaviors like these are particularly common between siblings but can happen with peers as well, and they’re frustrating and disturbing for us to witness. How to we address them? Separate the warring factions? Issue a mandate? Negotiate a settlement? Perhaps just let it play out? In this episode, a parent writes that her four-year-old loves his 2.5-year-old sister dearly, but “he is insanely jealous, obsessed with having the same or more than her, whether it’s food, toys, Easter eggs, crayons… It seemed like a phase, but it’s become an obsession.” This mom describes all the strategies she’s tried to deal with her son’s behavior, but to no avail. After considering the causes and conditions of this boy’s behavior, Janet offers a respectful approach she believes help alleviate the situation for all. 

Transcript of “How to Handle Our Kids’ Obsessive Jealousy”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m going to be responding to a parent who’s worried about her son’s obsessive jealousy. He’s jealous of his sibling. And I’m going to offer her a few bits of feedback based on what she shared with me and some ideas that I think will really help her and help her son. But I just want to say that I’m really offering one major suggestion here, that will not only help with our children’s rivalry when we have more than one child and the older one often is having a hard time with the younger one and maybe not treating them as we want them to, and it can be very distressing.

But this idea I’m going to share also applies to almost every situation with children, because it’s just something that we often forget to do. And it’s usually less than we think we need to do. Maybe that’s why we forget about it: it’s actually easier and simpler than the kinds of things that we try to do to help kids with behaviors generally, where we want to empathize with them and comfort them, help them to feel better when we’ve set a boundary. Or we might want to talk them out of something they’re doing. And a lot of these things, of course, we do reflexively, so we’re not even thinking about it.

Yet if we could just simplify this for ourselves to this one idea, it can make everything so much clearer for us and make it one step easier for us to stay calm and centered in any situation with kids, whether they’re defying us in certain ways, whether we’re seeing them act out with their sibling in ways that we don’t like, whether they’re saying things to us that are unkind.

This one idea: acceptance. Just acceptance of a point of view, a feeling; not behavior, not we’re just letting you do whatever you want. But we’re accepting what’s behind the behavior, accepting that they want to do the behavior, because that’s the part of us that nobody can change, right? Somebody can help us change our behavior, they can stop us from doing certain things. They can’t change us wanting to do that. But if we can share those thoughts and feelings, that point of view, with somebody we trust and love, and have them accept that, that makes it so much easier for us to feel relief, feel better about it. We’re still going to have those feelings that we want to hurt our sibling or yell in our parent’s face or do all of that. But it’s easier for us to actually not follow through on it because we feel safer, calmer, better ourselves, as the child.

Here’s the interchange I had with a parent in, I think it was Instagram messages:

Janet, you’re one of only a few voices I listen to when it comes to how to parent my spirited boy. I was hoping you might need some content inspiration because I’d love some advice. He’s four years old, his sister is two-and-a-half years. He is insanely jealous. Loves her dearly, but is obsessed with having the same or more than her. Whether it’s food, toys, Easter eggs, crayons, he obsessively rushes over to see what she has first, to make sure he has more. He will swindle things off of her and trick her to ensure he ends up better off than her. He will harass her until he gets his way.

It seemed like a phase, but it’s become an obsession. He loses his ability to enjoy these simple things because it ends up becoming about what his sister has and why can’t he have the same or more, leading to tantrums and fighting.

If you had any insights, I would absolutely love to hear. I’m guessing it is probably something many parents will resonate with, or maybe it’s just us. Love your work. Thank you.

I wrote back to her:

Hi, how lovely of you to reach out. I think that’s a great idea for an episode. Would you mind giving me a bit more information as to how you handle these situations?

And this mom wrote back to me:

Thank you. I’m so grateful.

Well, we have just had a shocking morning, so perfect timing. My son had taken these little dog toys off his sister, leaving her with none. (They should have had four each.) When I tried to give her share back to her, he got very angry. So I took him into his room as he kicked and screamed, and I held him or wrestled with him to stop him running back to his sister to take hers. This went on for about 10 minutes. He really did not like me holding him, kept screaming for me to let him go, but I don’t know what else to do. I ended up taking his four toys away and saying he can have them when he is calm. He went looking for them, still very angry, but he seems to have calmed now.

Usually his sister will give in and give him what he wants to keep the peace. But I’m trying to make a stand, as hard as it is.

I wrote back:

Oh gosh. I’m sorry, that sounds like a not fun morning for you. How was your daughter doing throughout this? And generally, how does she react when she’s giving in, etc.?

And she wrote back:

My daughter was in the room with us just doing her own thing. Not fazed, as this reaction isn’t out of character. She’s an exceptional communicator. If he takes something from her, she will yell in protest and I will intervene. Usually we can negotiate an outcome they’re both happy with, but sometimes, like yesterday, it spirals. Sometimes these negotiations drag on and my daughter moves on and will say, “Here you go” or “Of course you can have it,” enabling the behavior, but also showing kindness.

They play well together mostly. They are very cliquey, want to do most things together, definitely are each other’s best friend. He looks out for her and can share, but naturally wants to control the play. This doesn’t often bother my daughter, who doesn’t really know any different. She’s still very happy to play with him and will sometimes even take his side, even when we’re trying to defend her from whatever he has just taken from her.

Then I wrote back:

Oh my gosh, this: “She’s still very happy to play with him and will sometimes even take his side, even when we’re trying to defend her from whatever he has just taken from her.” Very, very common, and so interesting, right? I’m excited to respond in full for a podcast episode. Thank you so much for all of this. It’s helpful to me and hopefully will help others.

So her daughter’s reaction is very interesting, right? And her daughter’s whole take on this is very interesting.

Here’s what can happen, though, as parents. We see this behavior we don’t like, and then we see that it’s become, as this parent says, an obsession. So when something becomes an obsession like this, when a child seems really stuck in a certain kind of behavior, it usually means that our responses or our lack of a certain response that our child needs is fueling this behavior somehow.

Now, I say this not to blame parents or that we should bag on ourselves and feel bad about things when our child has this kind of behavior. Actually, it really doesn’t have that much to do with us in itself. The good news about this realization that we probably are fueling it in the way that we’re responding or not responding is that this is a power that we have. Maybe there’s something more we can do. It doesn’t mean that what we are doing is wrong or that we should feel bad about it. It just means there’s something different or more that we can do that will really help our child to get unstuck out of this obsession.

That is this note that I want to give in this podcast today: accepting the point of view of the child. And maybe this parent has done this in some ways, but she didn’t share it with me, so I don’t know. But it’s normal for us as parents to overlook that and just say, “Hey, what are you doing there? You’re not being nice. Be good to your sister,” or “This isn’t fair. You’re taking her stuff!” When, as this parent realizes, he’s insanely jealous.

Now, I’m always so interested because I think I get confused about jealousy versus envy. Maybe you all understand it, but I confuse those two a lot. And so I actually did a search on the difference between jealousy and envy, just to make sure I was getting it right in this case. And the perspectives I was led to were really spot-on for this.

Here’s one, this is by William and Mary Morris in the Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage, Second Edition, 1985. “There are three different ways in which ‘jealous’ can be used. The most common is where the meaning is ‘fearful of losing attention.’ Another broad sense is ‘possessive or protective.’ Third usage is in the sense of envious, as of another person because of his or her belongings, abilities, or achievements.

So the first one is spot-on, right? Where the meaning is “fearful of losing attention.” That’s what happens when we have a second or third or fourth child. The other children who are already there can get this irrational fear—well, it’s actually a rational fear, because they are going to lose some attention, the attention that is now going to their sibling. It doesn’t mean that they’re losing any of our love or high regard or anything else, but they are losing attention. So they’re losing, and that doesn’t feel good.

This other explanation was from Theodore M. Bernstein from The Careful Writer, 1965. Wow, these are pretty old. “One might almost say that these two words are used as if they were interchangeable. The words are scarcely synonymous, however. ‘Envy’ means discontented longing for someone else’s advantages. ‘Jealousy’ means unpleasant suspicion or apprehension of rivalship.”

So in this case, I think we could say that this child, and a lot of siblings, feel both envy and jealousy. Because envy is discontented longing for someone else’s advantages. And that younger child has the advantage of being the younger one, being the littler one that we’re going to naturally want to defend as parents or take the side of. And also they have the advantage that they came into life already sharing their parent’s attention, and they didn’t have to make that adjustment. So we could be envious as a sibling about that. And then also the jealousy, which is the unpleasant suspicion or apprehension of a rival. Yes, we feel in competition with that child for attention.

I’m a younger and an older sibling, so I feel like I can relate to both. And I was also someone that I felt like was very much defended by my parent. My parent would step in and seemingly take my side a lot of the time. That actually didn’t help me as much as one might think, and I wish that she hadn’t. I mean, that’s my own point of view, but I think this little girl is showing that she doesn’t need her mother to step in as much as she’s doing or in the way that she’s doing.

But again, not to criticize this parent. I want to help give her a perspective that, when she embraces it, will give her son more of a feeling of safety. This feeling of jealousy will always probably be there or be there for a long time, but it will stop being an obsession once this parent can be more accepting of what’s going on with him, instead of just trying to deal with it.

That’s the thing: as parents, we don’t have that much time, we don’t have that much energy. So we just try to deal with it, we try to fix it, to make the child stop. But it keeps happening, so then we have to find another way. And that other way is seeing the bigger picture and realizing that every child has a valid point of view that at least makes sense to them and is reflective of their comfort level at any given time. And we also don’t have the power to change it, just as we don’t have the power to change our own feelings. And since we can’t change the feelings, all we can do is accept them. That acceptance alone helps the feeling to lose its strength. I think it’s Dan Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson who said “name it to tame it.” That can definitely help us with our own feelings and with our child’s. And we don’t have to get them to name it, but it will help us to be able to name it and accept it and allow our child to feel it.

And then from that viewpoint of acceptance, helping them with their behavior. In a way that will look like we’re doing a lot less because we’re doing it from a place of not being alarmed and angry at our son for acting like this. We’re doing it from a place of getting why he’s acting like this and just trying to help him out. Because it doesn’t feel good to him to be doing that, to be stuck in wanting all this stuff. I mean, gosh, I can even relate to the panic of that. How awful that feels to be obsessed about anything, especially about stuff. You’re always counting and figuring and it’s never enough. So let’s help this poor guy stop feeling like this!

And here’s how I would do that. The biggest piece, of course, is this acceptance piece. Yes, he’s jealous. It makes sense, it’s par for the course for older siblings. Sometimes children will go to the extent where as soon as they see that child, they just want to hit him. And he’s not doing that, but he’s doing this other thing of trying to seize control in an area where he doesn’t have control. He doesn’t have control of the fact that his sibling is there. He really likes her, too. He cares for her. He sounds like a great big brother, actually. But he can’t control that she’s younger and seems more vulnerable and that she took all this attention away and that he has to share everything with her now.

And that he’s kind of doing this stuff that’s making him the villain here a lot of the time. It’d be hard not to think like that as a parent. Here’s this girl with this sweet, great communication, and so giving that she just lets him have things. She’s got her little angel halo on, right? And he’s got the horns on. It’s hard not to see it that way. But I feel sorry for the child that’s not looking like the angel. And I just know from my own experience, learning this the hard way with my children, the angel is participating. And they are being strong in the relationship, they’re not victims. They don’t want to be victims and it doesn’t help them when we see them that way, that one is the aggressor and one is the victim.

And taking a big step back, let’s look, what is this about? Things, stuff. This little girl who’s two-and-a-half, her position is so much stronger than his. It’s certainly a lot more comfortable. Her position is, This is stuff. I don’t care about it. And yes, her parent says “she will yell in protest and I will intervene.” So she’s yelling in protest, that’s strong too. Like, Hey, look what you’re doing! And she may also be doing this because it gets her parent running in. But nothing that this parent shares gives me the impression that her daughter is distressed, that her daughter feels a loss of all these things that he takes from her. Other than the yelling, which one could interpret as her being alarmed, she seems totally okay with all of this.

And I’m sure there are people out there thinking, How can you let this child act this way? And I’m not going to let him act this way. But the thing is, what will get him to stop and what will get them both what they want, which is to love each other and have arguments and have conflicts that they can resolve? This two-year-old, she already knows how to do this stuff. I don’t think she’s giving things up out of fear, I’m not getting that impression at all. And I’ve seen this enough times to know that the child doesn’t. And like this parent said about the horrible morning she had, “she’s not fazed, as this reaction isn’t out of character.” So she knows about all of these histrionics and things that go on with her brother, and it doesn’t surprise her when he goes off because this is what he’s been doing. And this is the guy she knows and she knows he’s not in deep pain when he’s getting upset about these things. That he’s expressing this dynamic that’s been going on for a while, but it’s nothing that she needs to fear.

Anyway, I know there are people probably thinking that I’m saying, just let it all happen and let the younger child deal with it, and maybe he’s going to start abusing her in other ways. And it’s actually the opposite. When we can intervene more calmly, which I’m going to explain how to do, and understand both children’s perspectives a little better, getting out of our adult head of He’s stealing! We just can’t let him do this. This is a terrible thing!, then he calms, he feels safe. He can handle more of these feelings of jealousy that will come and go for him, maybe throughout his life, about his sister. He will have more room to love her when he feels safe in terms of the acceptance that his parents have for him. That’s what every child wants, that’s what we all want as humans. You don’t have to empathize. You don’t have to feel sorry for me. Just accept.

Because the children that end up going into really dark places in terms of the way they treat their siblings, those are the children that are feeling overwhelmed by the judgments and the shame and the distance and the lack of acceptance from their parents. Hurt people hurt people, we’ve all heard that one. So what will help him to stop in the short term will also prevent this from getting any more serious in the long term.

Now let’s look at exactly what this is. “He is insanely jealous. Loves her dearly, but is obsessed with having the same or more than her.” Gosh, that just makes my head hurt, thinking about having to figure that out all the time. I can’t enjoy any of the things I have because I’m only comparing all the time. She said, “Whether it’s food, toys, Easter eggs, crayons, he obsessively rushes over to see what she has first to make sure he has more.” So I can feel as a typical parent that I’m really annoyed right away that he’s doing that, right? Ugh, this is so icky that my child is so obsessive about how much stuff and comparing and all that. It’s not attractive behavior, we can admit that to ourselves.

But from there, I would find my way to, Oh gosh, poor guy. That doesn’t feel good. Because it feels awful to be trying to do that. He’s not enjoying any of this, any of the food or the toys or the Easter eggs or the crayons. He can’t, when it’s all about focusing on who has more and making sure he has more and that that’s somehow going to make him feel better, but then it doesn’t. It never makes him feel better, it only makes him feel worse, especially when his parents don’t like what he’s doing.

“He will swindle things off her and trick her to ensure he ends up better off than her.” That’s mean, right? It seems like mean behavior. “He will harass her until he gets his way. It seemed like a phase, but it’s become an obsession. He loses his ability to enjoy these simple things because it ends up becoming about what his sister has and why can’t he have the same or more, leading to tantrums and fighting.”

So what I would recommend is noticing. “Oh gosh, you want everything she has, and you want to make sure you have more. Ah, that doesn’t feel good, right?” Acknowledging something like that, if it feels right to say anything then. But I would also try to leave more space for your two-and-a-half-year-old, who seems quite capable to handle this herself. Because when it escalates into the tantrums and the fighting, that’s usually because our child is feeling our two cents. They’re feeling our judgments, they’re feeling it in what we’re saying or doing.

When this parent was able to share with me what she’s saying and doing, she said that they had this shocking morning with these little dog toys. He took these toys off his sister, leaving her with none, and then the parent tried to give her share back to her. So I don’t recommend intervening to that extent. There is a way that she could stop this, not perfectly, but that would help him to not escalate like that. And would also help him to get the message that, yeah, it’s not that cool what he’s doing. And she also knows he’s going through this thing, that he has this obsession and it’s taken over him and it doesn’t feel good to him, and she wants to help him with that.

Let’s say she sees that he’s taken all the toys away, and maybe the sister yells. And she comes by, not rushing in, but she comes by like, Whoa, you’ve got all those now. You didn’t want her to have any of them. You just wanted to have them all, that felt better to you. If you could acknowledge with that kind of non-judgmental I’m sorry you feel this way, bud, that’s not fun attitude, instead of trying to pretend that we have that attitude when we don’t. If we’re not able to feel accepting of him, then it’s better not to say anything. But if we can, that’s where we want to get to eventually. Where we’re not making this big fuss about putting it all back and undoing what he’s done. We’re just calling his attention to it, we’re kind of opening it up as a little issue that’s going on here.

This also has the benefit for the two-and-a-half-year-old of not assuming she’s a victim here and trying to fix it for her. Knowing that she’s very capable of being involved in this conflict in an active way, not as somebody who we’re just rescuing in some way. That instead, maybe they could work something out that wouldn’t be your way of resolving it, but that would resolve it. Because this really isn’t about us, it’s about those two and their relationship. The more we try to get involved in that, the less opportunity they have to develop their relationship, and that’s what we want them to do.

So opening this up a little bit more by just commenting, “Oh whoa, you wanted all the things and now she doesn’t have any, and you’ve got them.” I’m not feeling terribly sorry for anyone, I’m not feeling mad at anyone. I’m noticing and I’m accepting and acknowledging what’s going on. From there, then we’re leaving space for them to do a number of things. He might even give it back to her in a little while, who knows? He’s getting caught up not only in the stuff, but in how this pushes us away. And he doesn’t want to push us away, but it’s like he’s just repeating and repeating and repeating something that he’s gotten stuck in. And the result is uncomfortable, but he keeps going there. It’s like any of us that has a bad habit or an obsession that’s not helping us to be healthier or feel better, but we keep doing it.

We can help to ease that cycle, or stop it even, by not playing into it ourselves with that same behavior that we’ve been doing. Which is, Stop doing this. You can’t do that. That’s not nice. Let me give it back to her. You won’t give it back, so now I’ve got to tackle you and make sure she gets it back because a terribly wrong thing has just happened. But we’re seeing it differently than even our two-and-a-half-year-old a lot of the time, and it’s really not about us. So I would consider all those things. I would consider that this really is between the two of them, and I’m just here to kind of mediate and help but not be the judge and jury here. You want this? Oh gosh, he got those away, huh? You really want to take those. And you were going to play with all of those, mister? What’s going on with you? I mean, we can be involved in this wonderful way if we refrain from going in there with our judgment feet first.

So she tried to give her share back and he got really angry, so she took him to his room and he kicked and screamed and she had to hold him and wrestle him. Yes, that’s kind of where we go when we see this through an adult lens. Which is really good to have a lot of the time, children can’t see into the future like adults do. They need us to help them to eat healthy because that matters for their bodies. They need us to see the bigger picture in a lot of ways. But when it comes to conflict and relationships, we want to be where the children are at because that’s where we can really help them. And not over-intervene or intervene in a manner that continues obsessions, which I know this parent doesn’t want to do.

So she ended up taking his toys away and saying he can have them when he’s calm. And if she really felt strongly that she couldn’t let him have those toys, she could still take them in a way that wasn’t judgmental. Where she opens her hands and says, “Do you want to give those back to me? I know it’s hard, but I don’t think you want to be this guy that keeps doing this, do you? It doesn’t feel good.” And then maybe he would or he wouldn’t, but he’d have a chance of doing it then because he doesn’t feel threatened and judged.

Then she says, “Usually his sister will give in and give him what he wants to keep the peace. But I’m trying to make a stand, as hard as it is.” And I understand this parent’s stand. Of course she doesn’t want him to take things off his sister. But that’s a symptom, it’s not the issue. The issue is he just feels really, really jealous and needs a lot of space for that to be heard and accepted and okay with us. And if she was able to do that just in these specifics, “You want all of them, of course you do!” And, “Oh gosh, she has more than you and now you’ve got to get more. Whew, and now you have to count it all and figure it out. That can’t feel too good, honey.” Being on his side that way. Being on both of their sides that way, because that will help her daughter too.

I think they sound quite capable of figuring this out for themselves and will probably do it. He’ll probably give things up more readily if we’re not even involved, because it seems like a lot of the obsession is about his relationship with the parents, not with the sister. It’s about the attention that he’s getting.

She says, “Sometimes these negotiations drag on and my daughter moves on and will say, ‘Here you go’ or ‘Of course you can have it,’ enabling the behavior, but also showing kindness.” So I wouldn’t consider that enabling the behavior. I would consider that actually helping to resolve the behavior, because she’s showing him, Hey, I’m on your side. I don’t really want to fight about this stuff. It’s not worth it to me. And as I said before, that’s a really, really strong position that I would want to encourage. Not that she has to give things up, but that she’s not threatened or bothered by this behavior about stuff.

But then this parent says something that just really hits home, because I went through this with my children. And I’m sure you’ve probably heard me mention it in a podcast before, I may have. She says:

They play well together mostly. They are very cliquey, want to do most things together, definitely are each other’s best friend. He looks out for her and can share, but naturally wants to control the play. This doesn’t often bother my daughter, who doesn’t really know any different. She’s still very happy to play with him and will sometimes even take his side, even when we’re trying to defend her from whatever he has just taken from her.

One of my children was very, very argumentative with her brother, and he’s four years younger. It was this constant picking on him, picking on him, picking on him. I knew to kind of let it go because he really wasn’t bothered. He was a strong kid, he wasn’t crushed by it. He was playing into it, I’m sure. He knew just how to get to her and bother her, and he did plenty of his own mischief with her. He would know how to push her buttons, it was a great way to get her attention. Magda Gerber had prepared me for staying out of sibling stuff as much as possible. And then I saw it with my own eyes and it made sense, because there’s going to be this rivalry, this jealousy.

But then one day it was just on and on and on, and I was in the room. I didn’t come in the room for it, but I was there and it was right in front of me. Just picking on him and picking on him and picking on him. And I said, “Enough!” And of course my son, the younger one, said, “Stay out of it, mom.” So there you go, that’s what this story reminded me of. The two-and-a half-year-old is taking her brother’s side when her parents are getting in there and trying to defend her from whatever he’s just taken from her. It’s almost like she’s saying, Come on guys, what’s the big deal? It happens. So what? And what a beautiful attitude that is, that we want to encourage, right? These children, they will teach us this overall message to just accept your kid’s behavior and come at it from that side. You can help them.

Maybe if we’re already there and it’s happening, then we just, instead of saying, “Oh no, give that back! You can’t have that,” we’re saying, “Oops, no, I’m not going to let you take more. I’m going to stop you.” And I’m blocking you from doing it, or I’m holding your hand. “You’ve got four of those and she’s got one left, and we’re just going to let her keep that one.” So there are ways that you can stop him, but if it’s already happened, I wouldn’t make a big show of getting in there and wrestling it all back and then having your daughter think, It’s just stuff, I didn’t care.

Minimal intervention from that place of understanding they’re both capable. He’s capable of stopping and giving it back to her if he feels the emotional space and safety to do that, space from us and our feelings. Or she might do it, just solidifying their relationship. And it could be a really positive thing if we weren’t there feeling really mad at him and all that judgment that, again, is so normal for us. But what’s really going on is a guy that doesn’t feel good about what’s happening and doesn’t want to be obsessed and doesn’t want to be stuck in this nitpicking. So let’s save him from that.

I really hope some of this helps. And thanks so much to this parent for reaching out to me and being so honest about everything. Like all of you guys are, I get the most wonderful notes. Thank you to everybody for listening.

And by the way, this podcast feels especially appropriate as one to remind you that my No Bad Kids Master Course is available. I give a lot of demonstrations in there of intervening in situations where children are hurting each other or taking from each other. And you should check it out at nobadkidscourse.com.

We can do this.

Despite changing norms around family planning and parenthood, the stereotype that “two children make a family” remains deeply entrenched, with many families saying it is still their preference. Yet, birth rates in the U.S. and other countries continue to decline, approaching record lows, according to the CDC.

The disconnect between family perspectives and actual day-to-day choices reveals a deeper issue: Raising children in America has become a financial decision and, for many, impractical and logistically overwhelming. The dip in births concerns economists because the significant drop means uncertainty in our economic and social future.

To combat the decline, governments in many developed countries offer varying cash bonuses; the current US presidential administration is considering offering Americans a $5,000 payment for adding a child to their family. Although a “baby boom” would theoretically aid the economy and reduce concerns about future shortages in the labor force as the population ages, an actual uptick in births is unlikely.

The Baby Boom Solution Myth

To counter aging populations and plummeting birth rates, and to stabilize economic futures, other countries have offered substantial financial incentives, cash bonuses, or tax breaks to couples having more children. Hungary had a policy that eliminated personal income tax for women having children before age 30, and for those who have four or more children.

South Korea tried a more unique attempt by starting a blind-date program with the intention of fostering relationships that lead to marriage and babies. And in more desperate attempts to promote a baby boom, Italy and the city of Copenhagen used scare campaigns reminding women of their biological clocks and the “dangers” of postponing childbirth. None of these approaches were received well.

Regardless of curated messaging or perks offered, policies aimed at promoting a baby boom are widely unsuccessful because they don’t address the broader, lifelong costs of parenting.

Raising a Child Keeps Getting Pricier

In the U.S., the cost of pregnancy and delivery alone can range from several thousand dollars to more than $20,000, depending on location and delivery method. And that’s just the beginning of the outlays. An analysis from USAFacts estimated that the average cost of raising a child in the U.S. from birth through age 17 increased by 16% since 1960. On average, it now costs more than $300,000 to raise a child to age 18 in a middle-income household.

Housing makes up the largest share of those expenses, followed by food, childcare costs, and healthcare. Childcare can rival the cost of a mortgage. A one-time $5,000 bonus from the U.S. government might offer short-term relief, but it doesn’t scratch the surface of the long-term commitments associated with childbearing and raising children. The U.S. remains one of the only wealthy nations that doesn’t guarantee paid parental leave, making those early months of parenthood even more precarious and difficult.

More to the Story

Financial stress is just one part of the story driving the smaller family trend.

Many women focus on building careers and feeling secure in their jobs before starting a family. They tend to be in work environments that lack flexible work policies. Despite strides in gender equality, caregiving continues to be a role that falls largely on mothers, making the professional costs of parenting disproportionally high for women.

A 2025 survey reported by The Times revealed that a high percentage of women from Gen Z and millennial cohorts believe that motherhood can negatively impact their careers and self-confidence. And there are real reasons for those beliefs: A recent article in the Financial Times highlighted that despite women’s advancements in education and careers, having a child often leads to career stagnation due to persistent gender norms and expectations.

This tension isn’t just about income or opportunity, it’s about identity. Many women fear what motherhood may do to their sense of self, both in and out of the workplace. A study published in the Journal of Child and Family Studies found that perceived conflict between professional and maternal identities can significantly impact a women’s well-being, self-esteem, and life satisfaction.

Add that to mounting anxiety about climate change, and uncertainty over politics and economic futures, and it’s no surprise that many people of childbearing age are choosing to have fewer children, one child, or no children.

What Really Supports Families

While cash incentives may grab headlines and offer temporary relief, they don’t address the bigger picture. Policymakers need to think beyond a one-time bonus and start investing in structural changes like paid parental leave, workplace flexibility, affordable childcare access, and healthcare reform.

Raising children is more than a personal decision; it’s a social investment. And for many parents, how many children to have is weighed heavily against financial realities and lack or presence of a supportive infrastructure.

The idea of a baby bonus might feel like a solution at first glance, but for most parents, it doesn’t come close to addressing the total financial picture or the day-to-day struggles of raising children. If you were given the option of a baby bonus, tax relief, or other perks, would it incentivize you to have a child or to have more children?

Loryn Brantz is an Emmy-winning author, illustrator, and mom of two, who once built puppets for Sesame Street. Loryn joined Janet on a previous episode of “Unruffled” to talk about parenting a child with disabilities, sharing the joys and challenges of her journey with honesty and her signature warmth and wit. Her new book “Poems of Parenting” is a funny, touching, and totally relatable collection about her ups and downs raising kids, the awkward and sometimes difficult moments she’s come to cherish, and ultimately how she’s come to embrace her role as a parent.

Transcript of “3 Ways to Lift Your Parenting Spirits (with Loryn Brantz)”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

My guest today is a person who could be hugely intimidating if she weren’t so kind and down to earth: Loryn Brantz. She’s an uber-talented young mom of two children who’s also an author and illustrator. She was a builder and designer at Jim Henson’s workshop, creating props and puppets for PBS and Sesame Street. And for the latter, she won two Emmy awards for outstanding achievement in costume design and styling. She’s also created successful webcomics and a series of delightful board books for children that I’ve been collecting for my future grandchildren.

Loryn joined me on the podcast a couple of years ago for the episode “It Had to Be You — The Struggles and Joys of Raising a Child with Disabilities,” where we discussed the unique challenges she was facing parenting her first child. And Loryn’s latest work is Poems of Parenting, which is a book of short, insightful, amusing, incredibly relatable poems. It’s at the top of my gift recommendations for Mother’s Day or Father’s Day or any day. We’re going to talk all about why the perspectives in this book resonate and how they can help us to rise out of the everyday doldrums and frustrations, let’s be honest, of raising kids.

So here she is. Hi there, Loryn.

Loryn Brantz: Hi.

Janet Lansbury: I had so much fun with you the last time. First of all, we’re going to talk about your book. I’ve always been a fan of you, but this book is really, really special. I also wanted to find out what it’s like now with two children. Two children with different challenges, or maybe one has less challenges than the other. How do you manage that? How are you managing that?

Loryn Brantz: How am I managing it? I’m pretty tired, but I’m good. It has been different having a second child with very different needs. Sorry, I can hear them right now. I thought I’d have a quiet place to do this.

Janet Lansbury: Well, you should bring them on if they want to be in this.

Loryn Brantz: They want to be on it, probably!

Janet Lansbury: I love that. That’s my favorite thing, to have children in the podcast.

Loryn Brantz: Actually I had planned this, the timing. We live in a pretty small apartment, so no one really gets to do anything alone. And I planned this because I thought my son wakes up and I usually need to hold him for a while, so he knows I’m there and this or that. Then I can kind of pass him off to my mom or husband. But he hasn’t woken up from his nap yet, so he’s going to wake up and I’m not going to be available. So we have this whole plan with pretzels and we’ll see how it goes and see if he’s okay with me not being there when he gets up for a little bit.

Janet Lansbury: The pretzel plan. Well, if it doesn’t work, feel free to bring him in. I’m serious. I can talk to him. And how old is he now?

Loryn Brantz: He’s two-and-a-half and he is very chatty.

Janet Lansbury: Already? Wow.

Loryn Brantz: He’s very sweet. And I think some kids feel like you have the amount of more kids and other kids are easier. And my daughter is like maybe having five kids at once and my son is like having half a kid because he’s just so easy. So it’s like having five and a half kids.

Janet Lansbury: Five and a half. That’s a good number!

Loryn Brantz: Yes, I don’t want any more. I’m all done.

Janet Lansbury: Okay. Well, somebody said to me once, these parents that were my age, but they had I think already five kids or something and I didn’t have any kids yet, or maybe I had one. And I remember I said, How do you do it with all those kids? And the dad said, Well, one child takes up every minute of your time and energy. Two children take up every minute of your time and energy. You get the point. It’s like, well, it’s still going to take up every bit of your time and energy whether you have one or five. So I thought that was an interesting perspective.

Loryn Brantz: True, true.

Janet Lansbury: So your book, let’s talk a little about how it came about. I just have to say, it’s so impressive. I don’t know how you managed to do all of those things, these wonderful illustrations, your poetry. Did you say you did it during downtimes or when you were exhausted or in the middle of the night? What was the story again?

Loryn Brantz: It was kind of like an explosion out of me, this book. It was cool because I can remember exactly when I thought of it. My whole family, we were all sick, we all had terrible colds, flus, whatever. Nobody was sleeping. And I was working a lot too, so totally delirious, stretched way too thin. And I had finally gotten my son to sleep, or so I thought, and I went to my room and got into bed and I was like, Ah, finally. I had taken some NyQuil, I was ready to rest, and I started scrolling, looking at photos of him. As one does, because he’s so cute, and Dalia. Then I heard him cry out for me and my first instinct was like, Oh my gosh, shut up. Shut your baby face. I can’t do this right now. And that’s when I thought of the first poem, “Photos of You.” And I didn’t go and get him, I actually wrote the poem. And he resettled himself, which was nice.

And that night I thought of like 50 poems, I just couldn’t stop writing them. From there, honestly, I couldn’t focus. I was thinking of so many poems all the time and I couldn’t focus in meetings. And I decided it was time to really take a step back from everything else and try to follow my dream of being a full-time writer and focus on this book and parenting, and that’s what I did.

Janet Lansbury: Wow. Well, you do an amazing job of it. I wonder if maybe I should take NyQuil while I’m writing. Maybe that will free me from the judges in my head that are getting in the way. I was thinking that when I heard a little of your story, I was thinking, gosh, maybe there’s a freedom in being totally at your wit’s end, so exhausted. There is kind of this emancipation from the bosses in our head or whatever the voice is, telling us that we have to do this and we have to do that, and it’s got to be right and it’s got to be good. You really took advantage of that energy.

Loryn Brantz: I agree. I feel like when you’re just so exhausted, it’s like meditation: anything that gets you away from the voice in your head and more in your seat of consciousness, if you will.

Janet Lansbury: Yes. One thing I wanted to bring up because I thought it would be a really good, helpful message for everybody is that there are these different themes in your poems that I found. I always like to look at things and kind of make connections between one thing and another. And I noticed that there’s these wonderful, uplifting messages that you offer. And there’s three categories that I like, that I feel even if somebody didn’t read your book, they could benefit from these uplifting ways of being and thinking.

The first one is we talk so much about self-compassion and that’s such an important thing that we try to give that to ourselves. And I know I struggle with that. But it is sort of conceptual, self-compassion. And the way I’m translating it, based on your poems inspiring this thought in me, is as giving ourselves permission. Giving ourselves permission is something that’s more in the here and now, that we can consider doing. For example, in your book, it’s giving yourself permission to break the routine and celebrate. I’m going to read one of the poems that reminds me of that. It’s called “Tiny Bestie”:

Let’s cancel our plans

And put small toys in a line

Let’s cancel our plans

And stretch out some slime

Let’s cancel our plans

And go to our local bakery

Iced coffee for me

Cake pop for you

Me and my fave

Tiny bestie

I just love that thought of seizing the moment to celebrate and just give ourselves permission to let go of all these “shoulds” that we have going for us.

Loryn Brantz: That poem’s definitely inspired by my daughter. I mean, she specifically slowed me down in a lot of ways, even just physically because it took her a long time to walk and she had the walker and everything. And I think any toddler will slow you down. When we go down the street, we just really take it all in and all these little moments become so special. And we live near a Starbucks, she’ll get the cake pop, I get the iced coffee. It’s such a special mommy-daughter date and we can do it anytime.

Janet Lansbury: Yes, so you both benefit from the celebration of it. Just like, We’re going to just do this because we want to and why not? And you also have one about letting yourself be flabby and just a floppy, flabby mom.

Loryn Brantz: Do you want me to read it?

Janet Lansbury: Yes.

Loryn Brantz: Okay:

Mom Joy

Almost forty

Finally realize

what my body is for

It’s not for you

it’s not for them

My children come close, but not even then

It’s really for me

To carry my brain

Which holds more than expected

Stroll around Target

Solve big problems

Do nothing

Soft fleshy mush

Watch out everyone

Here comes my tush

Janet Lansbury: You just capture so many feelings and little moments that I resonate with completely as the mom of, well, my kids are older now, but it just brings me back to all the bittersweet aspects of it. And I just love, again, this permission that you encourage giving ourselves with the little celebration at the end of the day, of the champagne, all of those things. It’s so important to wake up every morning and say, What can I give myself permission to do today?

Loryn Brantz: True. What’s my little treat today? That one poem about putting one of the berries you buy for your kids in your drink at the end of the day. My son saw that I do that, and now he’s just constantly trying to put fruit in anything I drink. Anytime he has a fruit and I have a glass of water or anything, he’s plopping it in. He’s like, oh, put a strawberry in your water.

Janet Lansbury: That’s nice. And that’s another thing, that when we do these things like give ourselves permission and have these special rituals that are ours that we like and maybe nobody else wants it that way, but we do. And then our child gets to enjoy that and give permission to themselves as well, feel like that’s a part of being an adult. A lot of times they get this opinion of adults as it’s this boring thing where you’re always doing stuff for other people. Just another reason to let ourselves enjoy.

The second theme—I have three—the second theme I wanted to bring up is this idea of time traveling into the future. Now, a lot of times we might tend to do that in this worry fashion, like, Oh my gosh, my child is going to be like this because they’re doing this right now and They’re never going to share anything with anyone or They’re going to be hitting people or all of those scary things. So I definitely don’t recommend doing it when it’s coming from a fear place. But this idea that this too shall pass, which of course can help us get through a lot of things. Because it really does pass, even though it feels like it’s never going to pass and we’re never going to be free. Well, we’re never going to be free! I have adult children. We’re never going to be free completely, but we’re going to be a lot freer.

But this way that you have in your writing of zooming ahead and looking back at the silliness of this moment, I feel like it’s really helpful for us to do. Like the poem that you have, for example, about breastfeeding. You say:

Sometimes when I breastfeed

I look down

and think

Wow

This will be a full-grown adult someday

That’s really

Really

really weird

It’s called “Really Really Really Weird.” And you drew a picture of an adult sitting on your lap. Not breastfeeding, but sitting on your lap.

Loryn Brantz: That is one of my favorite ones. And I wanted that drawing to be the cover. The publisher was like, no, that’s really too weird. Yes, it’s funny though.

Janet Lansbury: That ability to do that, that you could kind of leave your body and look back on your life. That can be very healing and just really important, getting that perspective. There’s another one where there’s all the baby clothes and you’re saying, I’m with all these baby clothes. I’m stacking all these little tiny clothes. What is that going to be like, looking back on that? I think it’s really important.

Loryn Brantz: Yes. I’m really, really into mindfulness and meditation and being as present as I can. And I think the more present you are, the more you know how fleeting everything is. And I think that brings a lot to these poems, being mindful of what’s going on while I’m parenting.

Janet Lansbury: Yes, you’re mindful and then in these instances you’re also looking at yourself from the future, though. It’s interesting. Looking at your future, but not in a scary way, in an interested wonder kind of way.

Loryn Brantz: This might all get edited out, but it’s definitely opening a can of worms, talking about time travel with me. Because I’m very interested in it. I meditate a lot and something I realized when I was doing that was a feeling, just an intuition I had was that I know time isn’t linear, but I think when you meditate a lot, you feel that more. And I ended up getting really into reading about Einstein and physics and block universe theory and how everything that exists already exists. As a human, we experience, like, nothing. We only experience 0.0002% of what’s happening. Time is like a building and we’re like elevators experiencing it as we go, but really it’s all already there. Which is the way a lot of theories are, and that’s the feeling I get. And that’s just something I feel really in tune to, the presence of all time. Which probably sounds a little bananas, but I just love it.

Janet Lansbury: Not to me, I’m totally with you. And I’ve had very compelling things happen, that I won’t get into here, where I know that I “predicted the future” in that room that I was in that happened seven, eight years later. I mean something pretty traumatic. But in a way there was comfort in that idea of, oh gosh, time is not linear. I feel like that’s the opposite of linear, what you’re saying and what I believe, that it’s all there all the time.

Loryn Brantz: My baby book, It Had to Be You, I feel like that feeling of it had to be your child and when things feel like it’s meant to be, it’s because it kind of already exists and you’re just experiencing it in a linear way. That’s kind of, I think, where that feeling comes from.

Janet Lansbury: The reason I picked up on it and said this is because it does come through in what you’re writing, that you see that way, and I feel it is comforting. For me, because I’m a bit older than you, I sometimes think, Oh gosh, I look really old in the mirror. And then I think this actually isn’t comforting! But then I think, I’m going to look back and think how great I looked.

Loryn Brantz: It’s true, that is true. Every year I’ve tried to tell myself that and I’m like, gosh. Like most women, I had eating disorders in my early twenties, teenage years, and luckily I am almost 40 and I finally get it. I’m enjoying aging, I think it’s great. I feel very lucky.

Janet Lansbury: That’s great. Yes, I enjoy many aspects of it, the self-acceptance, feeling my place in the world, feeling comfortable with who I am in ways that I never did. But there are just some other physical, boring things, like having sleep be hard and all those kinds of things that I miss. But yes, it is what it is. And I just love this idea that we can zoom all around with our children.

And this is the third thing I was going to mention: seeing the humor in all the ridiculousness and the irony of this time when our children are little. That you really, really capture in this book.

Loryn Brantz: Thank you.

Janet Lansbury: The first one that you wrote for this, “Photos of You”:

Late at night

I look at photos of my kids

They are so cute

So precious

So pure

I hear a cry in the dark

And I think

Omg shut up I’m trying to look

At photos of you

It reminds me of when I finally had someone to help me with my first baby and I could get out of the house and do something. I would find myself in some baby shop looking at baby clothes.

Loryn Brantz: Oh my gosh, I know. Every time since I’ve had kids, if I have a minute to shop for myself, which is never, I’m like, Ooh wait, look at the kids section. Look at that little sparkly skirt. It’s so hard.

Janet Lansbury: You just can’t get them out of your head, and so even your relaxing time when you’re away, you’re not away. You’re enjoying them.

Loryn Brantz: I’m glad you said that because that’s definitely something I’m hoping this book brings to people is seeing as much humor as they can in the chaos that is having small kids. I mean, sometimes things get so chaotic. We’re just trying to leave the house and one kid’s tantruming, the other kid’s doing who knows what, and me and my husband, we just look at each other and start laughing. What is even happening? We’re both really gentle, calm people and our kids will be going off the wall, both of them screaming about something. And you can’t help but laugh, because what is even happening right now?

Janet Lansbury: There’s so many moments like that where you’re just like, is this really happening? Again, it’s getting that perspective, which you’re so good at. Stepping back and going, Our house has become this other thing. This is it.

Loryn Brantz: This is it. That’s something I say to myself whenever everything’s however it is, I just say to myself, This is it, baby. This is it. This is your life. Good, bad, however. This is it.

Janet Lansbury: You have a poem about Mother’s Day that to me has so many layers in it. And I totally related to it and just again, it’s an example of the honesty in this book:

I never knew

when I served breakfast in bed

what was really going on

in my mother’s head

Now I know better

Now that I’m Mom

The crumbly toast

and spilling juice

is actually kind of stressful

But she was still happy

even if it wasn’t

really

  so

    restful

 

Loryn Brantz: I have such fond memories of bringing my mom breakfast in bed on Mother’s Day. We did it every year. She had this little table thing and we’d all climb on the bed and she’d try to eat. And I really had no idea what it was like until I was Mom. I mean, this poem is exactly that, but my kids bring me breakfast in bed now and it is not relaxing at all. It’s really adorable, but oh my gosh, they get in the bed, they’re eating it, with the juices spilling, the bed bounces, there’s crumbs everywhere. And I’m like, Thank you so much. I love this relaxing treat of not making breakfast. It is really sweet, but different than I imagined it from my mom’s perspective as a kid.

Janet Lansbury: And can’t we all just eat down in the kitchen?

Loryn Brantz: Maybe a restaurant!

Janet Lansbury: But the effort is so sweet and like you said, you just want to kind of be performative and make it all work for them. Wait, who is this for? Here’s a really honest message to give our friends and family about parenting. It’s called “Weekends”:

Do not tell me

 

You hope

my weekend

is restful

Do not tell me

You hope

I recharge

Tell me

you hope

 I survive

 

Loryn Brantz: Yes, weekends are brutal. You leave work on Friday and everyone’s like, “Have a restful weekend!” And you’re like, Um, I’m going to be getting up at 5:00 AM both days and it’s going to be nonstop. I feel like Sunday late afternoon is the hardest. We put on movies now, but when my kids were littler, when Dalia was little and we didn’t have movie time and we were just pushing through, it is hard.

Janet Lansbury: It definitely needs to be rebranded when we have children, weekends and holidays and traveling together.

Loryn Brantz: And then Monday morning they go to school and you’re like, ahhh. It is the most relaxing part of your week.

Janet Lansbury: For sure, and there’s no shame in that at all, obviously. I feel it’s obvious, but maybe it isn’t to some people, that they feel that way.

Loryn Brantz: I should probably feel more shame. They are a lot. I love them so much, but they are.

Janet Lansbury: It’s clear that you love them so much in this. And this is actually what I wanted to say, that the main reason I love this book, that I think it’s so unique and special, is that somehow you manage to do this really incredible thing. And I can’t honestly recall anyone else being able to manage this. And that is sharing so honestly about how difficult children can be, bluntly and with humor, but without in any way demeaning them, without laughing at them, at their expense. This is so rare. Maybe you know what’s out there. You capture how impossible kids can be, but there’s always this love for them underneath. So I’m applauding here, quietly.

Loryn Brantz: Thank you. I really do, I respect my kids a lot, so it just wouldn’t come out that way. They’re little people, and I love them. I’m so proud of them and everything they do, with Dalia, and I’m glad that comes through in the book.

Janet Lansbury: It totally does, and again, it’s a really hard line. It seems to be hard because other people that are being funny about children and parenting tend to go over that line into something that doesn’t seem respectful to me. Then I’m accused of not having a sense of humor. But that’s why I love your book, because you really capture the actual humor with the love that’s there and never disrespecting them. Because they are a vulnerable population, they can’t talk back to all these things that we say. And besides that, I feel like it’s not helpful to us as parents when we get into that thing of othering our children or perceiving them as drunken adults or whatever those comparisons can be that are for humor. It doesn’t help us. It makes it harder for us to join and connect with them in the ways they need us to when they are having those screaming fits or they’re doing other things that we don’t want them to do or just exhausting us. So we’re not doing ourselves any favors either.

Loryn Brantz: Yes, it’s true. I always remind myself that me and my husband, we’re on the same team. We’re on the same team when everything’s crazy. And you and your child are on the same team too. They don’t want to be having a tantrum, they’re so innately good. And whenever there’s crazy dysregulated behavior, this or that—especially with my daughter’s disability, she has a lot of emotional dysregulation and impulse control issues. I know she doesn’t want to do that and be like that, and we have to work together to get her out of that and to have her grow out of that. And she’s getting there, she’s growing and learning, and it’s not like she is trying to hurt me or the family.

Janet Lansbury: Of course not.

Loryn Brantz: She’s just dysregulated, and a toddler or a kid.

Janet Lansbury: Yes. And maybe that’s a little easier for you to recognize when you know that she has disabilities. Maybe that makes it easier, I don’t know.

Loryn Brantz: Yes, I think that that does make a difference. She is also very clever and all of these things, so sometimes I forget that she has disabilities and I have to remind myself.

Janet Lansbury: There’s a range with all children and while it may be harder to see with a typically developing child, but there’s always a reason. And the reason is never that they want to be doing that and they’re trying to get at us or hurt us in any way or offend us. I mean, that’s the last thing that any child would do.

Loryn Brantz: My son, he’s two-and-a-half and he has these tantrums, but he just wants to be able to do stuff himself and can’t yet, or he wants some sort of control over his life, which he doesn’t have much of right now. And I see where he’s coming from and I just sort of be there for him through it. I don’t know, just get through it. He’s so little, it’s kind of adorable.

Janet Lansbury: How does he handle the tendency to get dysregulated that his sister has? Does that come up?

Loryn Brantz: He is a very happy kid. And one of the first things he started saying a lot was, “Sister’s angry, sister’s angry.” And we’re like, yes. And it is hard because we want him to grow up in a calm household, so we usually try to move him away from the situation, but it is really hard. He doesn’t seem to react to it that much right now other than pointing out that she’s angry. And he’s so little, he’ll just kind of laugh. He doesn’t seem to be really understanding it or have a big reaction. One time she took my phone and threw it and he was like, “Mommy’s phone!” and was so upset and I was like, it’s okay. I don’t know, it’s something we’re learning as we go. And they have a lot of sweet moments too, but yes, it’s hard. We try to protect him from it.

Janet Lansbury: And I think also the empathy that you have for your daughter around it, that’s what he’s picking up on, that you’re not too dysregulated. That’s what he’s basing his sense of safety on.

Loryn Brantz: Yes, he seems to feel very safe.

Janet Lansbury: Yes, I’m sure he does.

Loryn Brantz: Both kids do.

Janet Lansbury: Yes, you’re doing a wonderful job. I have a couple more that I just wanted to read. This one that I really relate to, and it comes into all three of those categories that I was talking about: giving ourselves permission, the time traveling, and seeing humor in the ridiculous and the irony of things. It’s called “Mom Fashion”:

Crocs and socks

Baggy jumper

Hair in knots

No regrets

you still look hot

Mom fashion

      Is just fine

Take that picture

aged like wine

      If you don’t

    You will regret

Not having photos

from

   this

  time

 

Loryn Brantz: I really need to take more pictures because I look back and there’s barely any, I’m always the one taking the picture of course. And then the pictures of me, I’m like, Wow, I look like a dishrag. But I will look back on it fondly and you’ve got to take those pictures. Kind of like what we were talking about, recognizing that every age you are, you’re going to look back and be like, Wow, I looked really good then. Why didn’t I appreciate it?

Janet Lansbury: That’s right. Okay, and for one more, I want to read this. I feel this so much. I mean, it could make me cry right now thinking about it. This feeling of how excited we are for our kids to just spread their wings and how exciting that is. And this is another thing about trying to be mindful and enjoy what’s right now, because we get so excited about them doing the next thing. And of course we want to be a part of that. And then there’s this thing called preschool, where we really want to be a fly on the wall, or I did. But anyway, this is what you said:

Your Days

The little photos I get

During the day

featuring you

Excited for

Bits of string

Ripped paper and things

Circle time sitting

Singing and snacks

Dancing

Backpacks

Are the best thing

I’ve

ever

Ever

seen

 

Loryn Brantz: Yes, those pictures are everything. Oops, we’ve got a child here. Do you want to come say hi? Come say hi and then go back.

Janet Lansbury: I’m Janet. I’m having a nice talk with your mom about all the sweet work she does and those pictures she draws. What do you think of those? They’re pretty good, right?

Dalia: Yes.

Loryn Brantz: Dalia actually loves to draw too.

Janet Lansbury: Lovely to meet you, Dalia.

Loryn Brantz: I’ll come out soon, okay?

Janet Lansbury: Yes, we’re going to sign off. Thank you for letting us talk.

Loryn Brantz: Oh, here comes the other one. Okay, I’ll be out soon.

Janet Lansbury: Well, I’m going to let you go. I just want to say that I picture many more volumes of this book.

Loryn Brantz: Thank you. I am working on the second one. I’m just going to grab Ronan. He can sit with me, it’s okay.

Janet Lansbury: I love it. The more, the merrier.

Loryn Brantz: I just wanted to say about that one poem that you just read. It was inspired by a photo from Dalia’s class where they had put netting on the wall and all the kids had little bits of string and they were putting it through the holes. And they looked so excited and it was just the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. It’s just little bits of string and fabric, but the world is new, everything feels so magical for them. I just love pictures from school, seeing them be independent.

Janet Lansbury: And just wondering what it feels like to be them right there and all the things that are going on. Because they’re not going to come home and report, unfortunately! Well, we did this and we did that. They’re okay, and then they come home and just blast us.

Loryn Brantz: Yes, let it all out. My daughter is queen of—what’s it called?—constraint collapse. She’s really, really great at school and really keeps it together and it’s hard on her, and then she comes home and just lets loose.

Janet Lansbury: It makes sense. And I think the more we can kind of welcome that and put it in perspective for ourselves, the easier it’s all going to be. Just letting her go for it, but it’s tough.

Well, thank you so much for everything, Loryn.

Loryn Brantz: Thank you for having me.

Janet Lansbury: And everybody should buy your book, especially for maybe a Mother’s Day gift or a Father’s Day gift, because it really captures all these moments that even as a parent of adults you can resonate with and make you feel that we’re not alone. These feelings are something that we all share as parents.

Loryn Brantz: That is something I’m hoping people get from this book too. You’re not alone. It is so hard. It’s magical, but so hard.

Janet Lansbury: And it’s okay to feel whatever you feel about it. I love that. Thank you so much, Loryn.

Loryn Brantz: Thank you.

Janet Lansbury: We’ll talk again soon, I hope. But in the meantime, I hope you’re enjoying all the success and giving yourself lots of permission.

Loryn Brantz: Thank you.

Janet Lansbury: Bye.

Loryn Brantz: Bye.

One of my closest friends frequently talks about wishing she could have a “do-over” as a parent. Her grown children are highly accomplished—two are lawyers, and another is the CEO of a corporation. Despite their achievements, however, my friend is convinced that she made mistakes by monitoring and overemphasizing academic and athletic success. Raising my only child, I was similarly intent on getting parenting “right,” but as most of us know, it is exceedingly difficult to avoid our culture’s achievement trap.

We may mean well but still pressure our children to follow the path that we think best for them. In so doing, we exert more influence and pressure than we realize—all in the name of wanting to be a supportive, involved parent.

When Jennifer Breheny Wallace was conducting research for her book, Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic — and What We Can Do About It, she asked 6,500 parents to react to this statement: “I wish today’s childhood was less stressful for my kids.” Eighty-seven percent of parents agreed or strongly agreed.

A lot of parents start to form expectations for their kids before they’re born. While the child is developing in the womb, a parent might notice they’re very active and predict that the child is going to be a serious athlete. Or, feeling movement while playing a song, an expectant mother might think that the child will one day be a concert pianist. Parents hope their kids will be able to capitalize on their talents or succeed in some area. The expectation can be so high that it spikes anxiety levels in both parents and children.

“Where achievement becomes toxic is when we tangle up our entire sense of self and value with our achievements,” Wallace explains. “When you have to achieve in order to matter.” Parents can run into trouble, and raise children who struggle with their sense of self, by pushing them in directions they don’t want to go. The drive to raise “star” children can backfire.

Youngsters can feel intense pressure early—like when they start school—to be in the fastest reading group, score soccer goals or excel in myriad other ways in the classroom, the arts, and on the playing field. The well-documented high levels of anxiety and depression in teens and elevated drug and alcohol use and abuse are a few of the many negative outcomes resulting from achievement pressure gone awry.

You might think that economic security—having a roof overhead, food to eat, and a middle class or higher income—buffers a child from the ill effects of all that pressure. But studies by Suniyar Luthar, the late Columbia University professor of psychology and a resilience researcher, show otherwise.

“What we’ve found is that kids in high-achieving, relatively affluent communities are reporting higher levels of substance use than inner-city kids and levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms are also commensurate—if not greater,” Luthar noted.

One study she led reports that rates of substance abuse remain high among upper-middle-class kids as they enter early adulthood.

It’s not only parents, but also teachers and peers—especially where social media makes comparisons all too easy—who push children to strive. With a few changes in thinking and approach, however, parents can help lessen the pressure children feel to achieve while learning who they are and identifying their unique interests.

Escaping the Achievement Trap

Every child can’t attend a top-rated college, be a celebrity, or invent the next wildly successful app or must-have product. By moderating lofty notions, you can provide an environment for your children that avoids putting unnecessary pressure on them to succeed.

Whatever your child’s age, now is a good time to reassess and modify your approach. Here are a few ways to do that:

• Focus your energy on supporting your child’s interests and desires, not on what you wanted for yourself or fantasized about for your child.
• Delight in their accomplishments even when they are different from yours, and minimize and accept shortcomings as they surface.
• Emphasize their positive qualities—their enthusiasm, warmth, reliability, and concern for others. In short, celebrate their very being and nature, rather than their “wins” or individual accomplishments.
• Engage in family projects or fun outings where the sole focus is on having a good time.
• Share your values as a parent and family, and make living by these values a priority. If achievement and the drive to succeed supersedes or undermines these values, it’s time to take a step back and change course. (Easier said than done, of course, but how you operate—not what you say—is what kids internalize.)
• Spend agenda-less time getting to know your children. For example, take walks together after the day is done or catch up over family meals—dig in to learn more about what they enjoy, where they’re challenged, and how they’re doing.

Shifting Your Focus

The challenge is to see your child as an individual separate from you who has their own ideas.

Caring for children, explains psychology professor and author Alison Gopnik in her book The Gardener and the Carpenter, “shouldn’t be directed toward the goal of sculpting a child into a particular kind of adult…Children are incontrovertibly and undeniably messy,” and they are different from their parents and other children.

They also need to feel valued, that they matter for who they are, not measured by their accomplishments. This is critical for their mental health and well-being. Wallace suggests following Luthar’s advice: “Minimize criticism. Prioritize affection.”

That’s one reliable path to escape the achievement culture we live in and get parenting “right.”

Copyright @2025 Susan Newman

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