Dr. Sarah (00:02):

Ever wonder what psychologists moms talk about when we get together, whether we’re consulting one another about a challenging case or one of our own kids, or just leaning on each other when parenting feels hard, because trust me, even when we do this for a living, it’s still hard. Joining me each week in these special Thursday shows are two of my closest friends, both moms, both psychologists, they’re the people I call when I need a sounding board. These are our unfiltered answers to your parenting questions. We’re letting you in on the conversations the three of us usually have behind closed doors. This is Securely Attached: Beyond the Sessions.

(00:41):

Okay. Hello? Hi, Dr. Hershberg. How’s it going? Hello?

Dr. Rebecca (00:48):

Hello. It’s going well. Thank you. How are you doing?

Dr. Sarah (00:50):

I’m doing good. I’m doing good. Okay, so you ready for the question that we’re going to respond to this week?

Dr. Rebecca (00:58):

I am ready. Hit me.

Dr. Sarah (00:59):

Yay. Okay, so this mom wrote in and she said, my son is almost three, and I find myself getting angry and frustrated in response to not being able to get him to do what needs to be done. It feels like now that our lives are on a timeline and he has more independence, we’re at a point where I’m asking things of him so we can get out the door to school, to exchanges with his dad, et cetera. I feel myself getting frustrated and have the inclination to use that frustration to get him to do what needs to be done, but I’m sure there is a more regulated way to give him the urgency without relying on his logic, which isn’t developed yet. What are some strategies I can use here instead of anger? Oh, this is good. This touches on so many things. I feel like, well, I want to hear what you think, but I have so many thoughts.

Dr. Rebecca (01:50):

No, I agree. I also want to meet this mom. I feel like she’s already just so insightful about herself and her parenting. I’m like, oh my gosh, you’re like 10 steps ahead already just by asking the question in the way that you did.

Dr. Sarah (02:02):

Right? I’m like, oh, you get a lot of the stuff. I love that she understands that relying on his logic is not an option, is the reliable option because that’s not particularly well developed. I like that she recognizes that one, that she’s noticing that she’s not only getting frustrated, but that she’s using that frustration as kind of a bit of a stick versus carrot in the stick kind of way. I’m getting mad, so don’t do this thing that’s making me mad, which she’s noticing she’s doing, which we all do and it’s good to notice it. So she’s come up with a couple strategies that she recognizes don’t work. Right. Reasoning with a three-year-old doesn’t work that well. Reliably. Using your own anger and frustration as a motivator can sometimes work the short run, it’s not really a reliable strategy in the long run, but she’s got a timeline.

(03:04):

She does have to get out the door. She has to be places. Most of us struggle with this reality, these two clashing realities that we have a real life that has obligations and timelines that lives outside of the context of our relationship with our child. And we have a little kid who does not care about those timelines and obligations and may never, she says, how do I give him a sense of urgency in a more regulated way? I love that she’s thinking about how do I do this from a regulated place? But I almost think the answer unfortunately to your question is, I don’t know that you’re ever going to be able to instill in this child the same sense of urgency you have because the urgency is rooted in understanding of the larger structures that live outside of the home and he’s just not going to get that.

Dr. Rebecca (03:56):

Well, urgency, you can’t have urgency without an understanding of time. And it’s most simple. I mean, he is a three-year-old doesn’t know how to tell time. So even when we say to three-year-olds like, we’re going to be late, we’re going to be late. They don’t know what late is. So I think, yeah, that’s a really important point. I think, there’s so many things I hear. I mean, one is when your child hits three and she’s calling him independent, and it’s so interesting. I have an eight and a 10-year-old and I’m like, no, my kids are independent. And then I’m sure there’s someone with a 15-year-old who’s like, no, my kid. It’s like what I see in a three year-old is yes, you’ve hit this really exciting stage where he can be more independent certainly than one and two. But is there a way that you may also be overestimating the extent to which he can be independent? Because again, it’s very well intentioned. You’re sort of excited and you want to give him autonomy, but he can’t necessarily, among other things as this question indicates, schedule himself, keep himself on a schedule and not get distracted. So it may be one of the things I hear is sort of how much are you tasking your child with doing things by himself that he may just not be able to do that, not the actual things he may be able to put on his pants, let’s say, but can he put on his pants and then his shirt and kind of stay again on this timeline without getting distracted, without needing mom’s attention, without needing some positive praise?

(05:20):

He may not be able to do that yet. And so one thing I would ask is have you taken away all supervision? And if so, is there a way to think about that more thoughtfully? I think this is an age where I often recommend that parents get the time timer. I hate the name of, but kind of that visual timer brand where, I mean, it doesn’t have to be that brand, but where you pull out, if you’re going to pull out 15 minutes, it would be a right angle of red and then you see it shrink. And so kids, that gives them a sense of look, it gives them a sense of time visually or a sand timer that the dentists often give so that they can actually understand the passage of time. And then I think as we’ve talked about on this podcast before, but just what can you set up ahead of time?

(06:12):

What can you front load? Is there a system? Is there a structures Are there, if you know have a difficult transition coming up the next morning, can you pick out what the kid is wearing the night before? Can you make a visual chart of the things he has to do in the morning that you then check off together? Can you give a lot of positive attention and specific praise while cutting down on the negative attention that might actually be taking more time? And your kid may be, your kid may not want to go where you’re going, which is the other thing to look at is I adjusted a podcast about transitions with someone, and it’s sort of like most of the time kids have a pretty easy time transitioning to ice cream or screen time. It’s often they have a hard time transitioning to something they don’t want to transition to. And so it’s not just about how do you get them to do the things, it’s how do you get them to learn how to tolerate that they have to do something they don’t necessarily want to do or that they have to say goodbye to you and separate from you. Whatever the thing is I think is important to look at too.

Dr. Sarah (07:29):

And it’s actually in my mind, it’s not just get them to do the thing they don’t want to do, but oftentimes it’s twofold. First they have to usually stop doing something they want to do and then to start doing something they don’t want to do. And so it’s like it’s actually too aversive tasks we are asking them to tolerate. So an antidote to that though often is to pair pleasant tasks with less desired tasks. And there’s kind of a difference, I think, to bribing than it is to this sort of paired reward too. I think in the moment when we’re stressed and we’re realizing, oh my God, there’s negative two minutes to get out of the door on time, and then we start to panic and we say, I need you to do this. If you do this, I will give you this thing. That is a reactive strategy.

(08:25):

It’s a strategy and oftentimes it works. And I actually don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with it either to be clear, but the kid doesn’t know about it ahead of time. So it’s not teaching the child, to your point, Rebecca, how do we set a kid up to over time build the skill of planning out a transition to something less desirable? So sometimes in the moment we can pull out a bribe and that’s fine, but skills don’t generally get built for the child in that scenario. If however, we set the child up in advance, so we’re saying like, Hey, we’re going to practice getting into the car on time in the mornings. And I know that’s tricky because sometimes that means we have to do a lot of things that take a lot of time and sometimes we don’t want to do them. We have to get our dressed for the day and we have to go downstairs and eat breakfast and then we have to, whatever other tasks have to have, get our shoes on and go sit in the car and buckle up.

(09:35):

So we can talk about sometimes you don’t want to get dressed and maybe your jammies are really cozy and taking them off is cold or you don’t want to. So we can think about ways to make it more comfortable. What’s the aversion perhaps? And getting in your kids’ view or lens and try to look at it from their perspective. I know my kids don’t getting dressed in the morning because at least my son has told me he is like his jammies are too cozy and he doesn’t like to take them off because he doesn’t want to put on hard clothes. And so he’s had a lot more say in his clothing, he’s clothes that he’s, clothes that he thinks are comfortable and clothes that he thinks are cool that excite him. And so then picking them out feels a little bit more enjoyable for him. That’s not going to solve it every day, but it’s little elements that we can enhance.

Dr. Rebecca (10:41):

And what I hear in that, just to interrupt for a second, is giving him some autonomy too. It’s figuring out where in this, because it can definitely feel like at these high demand times, your kid has no control. It’s like, you got to do this, you got to do this, you got to do this, and then we got to do this. And I’ve come up with a schedule and I’ve come up with a list of things we need to do. It sounds like what you’ve done really skillfully on the front end is figure out where can I build in some autonomy for him so that he feels more in control in some of those moments. And when we feel more in control, we’re more likely to be compliant. We don’t feel like being compliant with other people’s demands is just about following orders. We feel like it’s kind of a give and take relationship, which can help.

Dr. Sarah (11:23):

And it still, I mean, he still doesn’t like to take off his pajamas to put on clothes that are not warm.

Dr. Rebecca (11:30):

He does. I hate taking off my pajamas.

Dr. Sarah (11:32):

I know. And even I’ve literally been like, fine, let’s get dressed the night before. That way when you wake up, they’re really warm and cozy.

Dr. Rebecca (11:42):

Yeah. Well, the other thing is to think about, I mean, I love that because what I was going to say is to think about are there battles that you don’t need to fight? I’ve worked with a lot of families who live in New York City and it’s like what would happen if they put their shoes on in the elevator? What if that’s okay? Or they don’t have to get into the stroller until they get to the lobby, or if you don’t live in the city, it would be something like put their shoes on in the car. Just like there are ways to realize that you yourself might be being rigid and to be able to take certain tasks and be a little bit more flexible with ’em.

(12:24):

And then there’s always, at this age, I think so many games and race it, we race, I’m going to get dressed at the same time as you. Let’s see. You can put our pants on first. Let’s see. Or this was an age with my kids where I did a lot of, I’m going to close my eyes and there’s no possible way that I’m going to be able to hear you getting into the car and buckling your seat. There’s no way you can do that without me hearing it. And then they would start to do it and I would hear it and I would say, come on guys. I meant right now. I can’t believe you’re still not doing it. And they’re giggling and giggling. I mean all of that stuff when your kid is three still works that they’re pulling one over on you, that they’re winning a race. Let’s each make funny animal noises while we, I mean being creative in that way, which can feel so difficult because you’re exhausted. But if you can start that kind of thing before tensions are running high and before you’re ready to kind of like you said before, you’re ready to say like, oh my gosh, get in the car for the love of God and I’ll give you a lollipop before it gets to that point. If you can just introduce the whole next 20 minutes as something fun and try to do it that way.

Dr. Sarah (13:39):

Yeah, I have definitely, getting clothes on in my house is often, and it has been for a long time. It’s got a lot better now because older. But it helps that my daughter loves getting dressed because she loves to put together outfits. My son is like, I don’t want to take my warm cozy jammies off. So every option sucks for me in that moment so that he’s harder. But even her, sometimes I would go downstairs, I’d be like, fine, we don’t need to get dressed. Let’s just go downstairs in our pajamas. Everybody downstairs. Once we got downstairs, it was a little bit closer to the door, but I would bring their clothes down and I would lay them out in a line pants, then shirt, then a sweatshirt, and then socks if that was the weather, whatever. And I would lay them out like a train.

(14:32):

And the game was, you have to hop. You have hop from one thing, get it on, hop to the next, get it hop hopscotch kind of. And they loved that. And then that wore out its appeal. So then we changed it up and it was a freeze dance game, but there was a gamification of getting ready. And I think that’s, yeah, it’s definitely more upfront work and I can’t do it when I’m stressed and feeling like there’s a time crunch. But when I build in time for that, because I know it’s going to be, I’m either going to pay for it upfront and it’ll be paying for it with play or I’m going to pay for it on the backend because I’m going to be pay for it, paying for it by screaming at everybody. I guess I’d rather spend my energy playing. So that’s always been helpful specifically around getting kids to get out the door. And you also have to understand that you have to keep the novelty. You can’t just expect one game to last forever, and it will always be your go-to game. You kind of have to keep it fresh.

Dr. Rebecca (15:46):

Absolutely. And you can also have, you can think of them the night before and have five in your back pocket. And that’s the other thing is parents will say, how can you be that creative in the moment? And first of all, it’s practice. I actually do think that’s a muscle that if you work on it gets easier, but also take some downtime and be like, okay, there’s the hopping game. There’s the pretend to be your favorite animal game. You can come up with other ones that you then have at your disposal.

Dr. Sarah (16:14):

And once you have games that your kid has played before, you literally could put them on pieces of paper in a jar and have your kid pick the game. You can construct a lot of layers to this creativity for sure. But the more you construct it with your kid, the more buy-in they have, the more it doesn’t feel like, okay, this is just mom trying to get me to do the thing I don’t want to do. I see right through you. It’s more like, no, we’ve co-created this fun morning ritual that we have that we like to do together, and we’re all a part of it. And it takes on a different form. It’s less about I’m just putting a bow on my coercion to my child. And it’s actually, no, we’ve actually co-constructed this fun ritual that means something to all of us, and it’s special now, which I think actually is ultimately so much more valuable in the long run than just building out different ways to kind of get our kids to do stuff. It’s great when they do that too. It’s great when these activities provide that double duty of it increases cooperation. But if that’s our only goal, I think they tend to read that.

Dr. Rebecca (17:37):

Well, I think it’s short-term goal, long-term goal, short-term goal or short term, medium short term goal is get my kid out the door faster, a medium goal, have mornings not feel like a nightmare and actually feel sort of pleasant and long-term goal is build up the connectedness and strong relationship I have with my kid.

Dr. Sarah (17:55):

I love that. Yes. Way to simplify parenting in soundbite. Isn’t it true? And all of those goals are valid.

Dr. Rebecca (18:06):

Exactly. And they all have their specific time and place.

Dr. Sarah (18:09):

Totally. Well, I hope this gives, I know that this mom and many parents listening have kids who do not share their sense of urgency. I think that’s developmentally just reality for most parents to realize that yes, we can overpower our kids to follow our sense of urgency. I’m sure most of us were parented by parents who can use that capacity to overpower us, to get us to do the things that, how many parents have you talked to Rebecca in your practice who were like, well, this was how I could never do the things my kids do when I was growing up?

Dr. Rebecca (18:55):

Of course, always. I mean, that gets into the much bigger question of is it which I get a lot of my kid doesn’t seem to be afraid of me at all, and is that okay? I’m really glad that they’re not afraid of me big picture wise, but I kind of want them to be just a tiny little bit more afraid of me. And it’s a much longer conversation. But essentially, I think it’s important to name the truth, which is that, yeah, life on a day-to-day basis would be easier if you run a military school and your kids are afraid of you. There is no question that getting out the door will be easier. And there’s a tremendous trade off when it comes to mental health and anxiety and all the rest, which is why it’s no longer recommended. But I think pretending that it’s not easier on some level isn’t truthful. And so it’s an important conversation.

Dr. Sarah (19:57):

And even I fully agree with you that the kind of extreme taking it all the way to the extreme of, well, if they don’t listen really, then it needs to be about a fear-based approach to get them to do it. But even in a much grayer middle space of even for example, this mom saying, I get frustrated because I can’t get him to do what he needs to do. I can’t get him to listen to me. I can’t get him to follow my instructions and I don’t want him to be scared of me in order to follow my instructions. But there is still a belief that kids should follow the instruction of the parent, and that’s our goal. And ultimately we have to figure out all these creative ways to get them to do what we want them to do. And that’s frustrating for a lot of parents, and I really understand that because I think if we believe that the goal of parenting is to get our kids to follow our directions, then having to play all these games feels kind of like we’re really dancing around the truth of the matter, which is, you just need to listen to me.

(21:08):

Not you need to be afraid of me, but you need to listen to me. And the reality is, and this is a bit of a paradigm shift, but is our parenting job, is it defined by our ability to get our kids to listen to us? I don’t actually think it is, and I do think most parents have been taught that it is.

Dr. Rebecca (21:35):

But I think that’s where we go back to my pithy little summary of our goals because it is very much my goal tomorrow morning at eight 15, it’s okay to be able to hold both. My number one goal of parenting is not that my kids listen to me. It’s that my kids grow up to be resilient, confident, happy, healthy, whatever adjectives you want to insert there and that we have a connected relationship built on trust and blah, blah, blah. That doesn’t make it any less important that I figure out how to get them to listen to me when it’s important that they do. Because I do understand to go back to the beginning of this conversation, the larger picture whereby they do have to go to the doctor or we do have to go to school or, so I think it’s not so much that one paradigm has replaced the other as much as the first paradigm still exists, it’s just much littler than we realized. And there’s this whole other paradigm that has expanded beyond it, and we can hold both.

Dr. Sarah (22:36):

Definitely. And yeah, I think it’s important. I’m not saying our kids don’t have to listen to us. They do. We need them to listen to us. We need them to listen to us so we can keep them safe and keep them healthy and move them through the schedule of the day. And that is important. That is our job for sure. But our worth as a parent, and this is where I think what I mean, I think a lot of parents believe that their parenting is only as good as their child’s ability to listen to them, and then they feel like they’re failing when their kids don’t. And I think, yes, we ultimately do need our kids to listen to us, but not because it makes us a good or bad parent if we can figure out a way to get our kids to listen to us, but because it’s really hard to keep them safe if they don’t listen to us.

(23:23):

And sometimes we just have to just put them in the car kicking and screaming or say, Nope, we’re turning this off. Now whether you don’t have to like it, but I’m going to do it, but that’s what I need to do, not what my kid needs to do. Getting your kid to volitionally cooperate with you is a skill that takes a lot of time and developmental maturity to be able to do that. Like we said, that they have to inhibit the pleasant thing they’re doing and start doing something they don’t want to do. That’s really hard. Until they can do that, we sometimes have to decide for them, and if we set a limit, they don’t really need to cooperate in order for us to hold that limit. We just have to follow through and move them along, even though it might get really messy and ugly. I think. I guess what I’m trying to, that’s sort of the distinction I’m trying to make that it’s not like we don’t have to get them to do things, but we have to be the one that does it for, we have to usher them through that, not just expect them to say, okay.

Dr. Rebecca (24:39):

Right. I agree.

Dr. Sarah (24:43):

Yeah, it’s just really tricky because we do have an agenda. Of course we do. And to your point, we have layered agendas, bigger and bigger goals. But I do think, my hope is that this episode will give parents some really concrete strategies to use to encourage cooperation and also permission that they don’t have to cooperate for you to hold the boundary. If it’s time to go, it can still be time to go, even if they aren’t ready and waiting at the door with their shoes on and their bag packed and a smile on their face, sometimes it’s going to be a little messier and that’s okay.

Dr. Rebecca (25:20):

Absolu,tely hear hear.

Dr. Sarah (25:23):

All right. Talk to you soon.

Dr. Rebecca (25:25):

Bye.

Dr. Sarah (25:27):Thank you so much for listening. As you can hear, parenting is not one size fits all. It’s nuanced and it’s complicated. So I really hope that this series where we’re answering your questions really helps you to cut through some of the noise and find out what works best for you and your unique child. If you have a burning parenting question, something you’re struggling to navigate or a topic you really want us to shed light on or share research about, we want to know, go to drsarahbren.com/question to send in anything that you want, Rebecca, Emily, and me to answer in Securely Attached: Beyond the Sessions. That’s drsarahbren.com/question. And check back for a brand new securely attached next Tuesday. And until then, don’t be a stranger.