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.

(00:43):

Hello. Welcome back. We’ve got Dr. Emily Upshur, Dr. Rebecca Hershberg. We’re going to answer some listener questions here on Beyond the Sessions segment of the Securely Attached podcast. Before we do, I just want to make a quick, totally shameless plug to rate and review this podcast. If you love this, if you get any sort of value out of these questions, if you’ve ever sent in a question and had it answered, or if you think maybe, oh, I could never send in a question one, send in your questions. We love your questions, and you can go to the website, drsarahbren.com/podcast. You’ll find a way to submit your questions there, but if you get value out of these question and answer episodes, please share that with us. Write a review and rate the podcast. And we love you now, Dr. Emily, Dr. Rebecca, do you guys want me to read the question we have for today?

Dr. Emily (01:43):

Yes, please.

Dr. Rebecca (01:46):

I’m waiting with bated breath.

Dr. Sarah (01:47):

I know, I know. I am burying the lead I to do that plug. So it says hello. I had an idea for one of the episodes with a parent question. My 3-year-old, okay. They put in parentheses, my three-year-old and three months daughter has been yelling and screaming at me a lot when she doesn’t get what she wants and especially when I don’t understand her. It has gotten intense in the past few weeks. Her articulation is not very clear and we are working on that. But in the meantime, I often don’t know what she’s saying and it upsets her very quickly. We have talked about strategies like saying all the sounds like in speech therapy or finding different words to say the same thing. I have affirmed her feelings of frustration when I don’t understand what she wants to communicate. I have talked to her about how it makes her feel when someone yells at her and how it makes me feel.

(02:38):

But I’m also concerned because I don’t want her to think she’s responsible for my feelings. I have taken your tantrums course, but I see this as distinct from a tantrum. She’s not fully dysregulated, but it seems like she thinks screaming is going to accomplish what she wants and it can turn into a tantrum. I also really don’t like being screamed at even though it’s not about me and I don’t want to show her that she’ll get what she wants if she screams. So how do I help my three-year-old stop screaming at me when I don’t understand her? And apologies if this was covered before. I need to listened to the episode about the three major. By the way, her speech is in the average range. Thank you.

(03:16):

So I feel like this question covers things we have covered, but also things we haven’t covered. Like talking specifically about understanding this very specific thing of getting very frustrated when a kid is not being understood or when they’re very frustrated by a situation, they’re feeling thwarted in some way and they respond by screaming and yelling at the grownup in the space. And that’s very, I feel like that’s a three, four phenomenon. Big time. It can happen earlier and later, but I feel like it happens so much with three and four year olds. But then there’s other piece of this parent is saying, she’s not totally dysregulated, she’s not having a tantrum. She’s just getting really frustrated and yelling and screaming at me. And I kind of feel like that sounds like dysregulation to me. So maybe we want to kind of help this parent understand how to reframe this from a lens of regulated versus dysregulated nervous systems. Those are my thoughts Initially, what do you guys think?

Dr. Rebecca (04:23):

I think if this parent were in my office, I think the first thing I would ask them is what feels right to do in those moments? Because when I hear you read the question, I hear so many parenting buzzwords and words and phrases from the internet and parenting courses, and this parent took your course and your courses excellent. And it provides scientific information and validation. And I have no doubt this person, unlike honestly when we don’t know what course they took, there’s some not great information out there. This parent is clearly a straight student with access to straight A materials and still it can be so overwhelming. And I feel the energy I feel when you read the question is that they are so stuck in their head about this. Is it a tantrum? Is it not a tantrum? If it’s a tantrum, then I would respond in way A, if it’s not a tantrum, I respond, they’ll be, well, what are the characteristics?

(05:24):

Well, I see dysregulation, but I don’t always see dysregulation and I feel like I really don’t like being screamed at, but this isn’t about me. It’s about my kid and I want to tell her it hurts my feelings, but wait, I’m not supposed to do that. They can’t take care. And I want to say, you are getting an A plus. Everything that you mentioned in this question is correct and awesome. And what would happen if you just took a deep breath and responded in a way that was authentic to you and what you probably consensus happening with your kid if you kind of just quieted all the noise in your brain a little bit. And the reason I’m starting there, and it may seem like I’m just talking a lot, is because I just see that so much with my clients that there’s a way in which type A people who are perfectionistic and want to just win parenting sometimes with the best of intentions, lose their instincts.

(06:27):

And I have some answers to what I think her questions are. And I think, Sarah, you said, I think it is, yes, we can absolutely. And I think we should dive into the substance of it, but I just wanted to comment on that feel that I get from it because I think it’s really common and I think it’s important. And I’m not sure that this parent is as lost as they seem to say they are because my sense is that they’re actually not that lost. They’re just trying to check all the right boxes in a really anxious way and their kid is fine. This is a normal three-year-old behavior. It’s a total drag and there’s no one right way to handle it. And again, we can get into that, but I thought that was an important point to make.

Dr. Emily (07:13):

Yeah, I love the simplicity of that too, Rebecca. Not that it’s simple, not just giving you a hard time. I still talk for 20 minutes, but I think the term I use so often with parents, and I just occurred to me as you were describing this, is sometimes you have to be the container and being the container kind of sucks sometimes. But being, I think you’re absolutely right that this parent, obviously they’re working really hard, they said a lot of really good things that they’re doing that they understand that they’re trying to understand and that they’re acknowledging their own dysregulation or their own feelings about not liking to be screamed at. All of that just tells me, you’re working really hard, you’re doing a really good job, and you might just be doing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing – being a container, hanging on.

Dr. Sarah (08:10):

I feel like you get into a lot of strategies for understanding a lot of the pieces of this question, but at the very end, the question is how do I help my three-year-old stop screaming at me when I don’t understand her? And the really tricky annoying answer is you probably can’t because if your child is being frustrated because they developmentally are at a place where they have an idea in their head, but they’re not able to verbally articulate it in a way that their environment can then understand it and respond accurately, they’re going to feel thwarted. And when a child feels thwarted, they get upset and angry and frustrated. And when a child feels of that feeling at a high enough level, if they hit that 7, 8, 9, 10 on a scale of one to 10, they will get dysregulated. Their impulse control will become less accessible to them.

(09:09):

They will flail, they try to problem solve in ways that are decreasingly effective, and they may very well yell and scream and we could talk about how do I support my kid to stop screaming, but the trajectory of all of it’s going to happen. And then we have to then help address the how do I really get them back to a place of calm? But they’re going to get mad and they’re going to scream partly because of that developmental discrepancy between their ability to know what they want has gotten so much higher. Right? At three, their capacity to understand, oh, I want this. Their awareness of things is high, but their developmental capacity to get what they want is still really low. And that space between my awareness of what I want and my ability to get it is that discrepancy is going to lead to so much frustration at this age. That’s why it’s a really tricky age and why I see so much dysregulation in this age because they’re constantly feeling thwarted. They can’t get well they want.

Dr. Emily (10:22):

Well, strategies right. Sorry, Rebecca.

Dr. Rebecca (10:25):

No, I just was going to say I think that’s right on that discrepancy is a really, really nice way to put it. And they’re still new enough with that feeling and they’re egocentric enough to be like, well, wait if I want this, and I’m only able to understand my own perspective because at three that’s all that my brain can do, then what could possibly be the reason that I can’t get it? It’s like we are in the supermarket. That only exists for me when we leave the supermarket, the supermarket disappears and therefore, why can’t I just have everything that’s here right now? These things don’t actually make sense to them. And most of the time, which is the other thing I tell parents of three-year-olds all the time, if four year olds, most of the time they’re still at an age where mommy or daddy can fix it most of the time, you can meet their needs.

(11:16):

If you are in a healthy family that’s going relatively smoothly with the emphasis on relative. And so there’s also, I think one way that I interpret the yelling that can be comforting to families is can’t you do the thing that you always do, which is make it better? Why aren’t you making it better? You are, mom, you are my superhero. You are my person. You always fix things and yet you’re not fixing this. And it’s almost like not a disappointment in mom, but just learning that there are things that even mom or even dad can’t do. And if you think about it in an existential way, what an important and also heartbreaking lesson like wait, there are things that we can control. There are things that my mom, and as you get older, you learn that lesson again and again and again, but at three, it’s hitting you pretty hard.

Dr. Emily (12:15):

And I think there’s a gap between your skills. That’s sort where I was getting at before, right? I actually think this parent is asking, saying, Sarah, you were mentioning this with maybe a little earlier, is this a tantrum or is my child manipulating me unquote? Right. I think there’s a piece of this that’s a question about ality, right? Is she dysregulated and out of control and I feel empathy for her, or is she trying to get me to do something because figured out that I don’t like to be screamed at, and so I will do it. I want the screaming to stop. I sort of hear that in this question. And frankly, if it’s not in this question, I hear it a million times in my office. What is the screaming about? And I think to your point, Sarah, it’s all still dysregulation or a lack of skill or lagging skill or a developmentally appropriate lagging skill that the parent doesn’t understand. And so to me, I think distinguishing between is she having a tantrum or is she screaming volitionally? She’s learned that that gets the end result she wants. It’s almost not the question to ask. It’s more how can we calm the system to help her build skills that helps her get her needs met with better success.

Dr. Sarah (13:36):

Yeah, a hundred percent. And Rebecca, I think what you said could help inform what we do want to do. If I’m going to go through this thought process that Emily just presented, which is, oh, I’m asking the wrong question. I actually have to say it’s not like, is this a tantrum and so then I do this or is this dysregulation? So then I do this. Is she manipulating? So then I do this, it’s like, oh, what is the source? Right? The source is the frustration. And because I understand now because Rebecca painted this beautiful picture of their developmental landscape and their inner how the thing disappeared and you are the fixer. And if you can speak to that as the parent in the moment, instead of getting distracted by the red herring of the You didn’t understand, you didn’t give me the thing. It’s like, I’m not going to give you the thing you’re screaming.

(14:36):

I’m going to really talk to you about screaming right now. That’s distraction. I think if we can say, Ugh, you want me to be able to fix this feeling and I can’t get it, I think more validating. That’s like the thing we want to validate beyond. I can’t understand you. I know that’s so hard when I can’t understand you or you want this thing and you can’t have, it’s like the deeper pain and rage is you aren’t fixing the thing that turns this feeling off for me. And I think that helps us to be like, I don’t know, not lost in the sauce with the kid because today you can’t understand me tomorrow. You didn’t give me the thing I want the next day. It’s the banana. It got peeled the wrong way. It doesn’t matter what the thing is when they’re mad at us and it doesn’t feel rational to us because we’re so much more rational than they are to just kind of go to that. You want me to help take this feeling away and I can’t. That’s so hard. And then I wouldn’t say a whole lot more because they’re not going to take a whole lot in now anyway because just their prefrontal cortex is offline. And you can say, here’s the piece about screaming. You can try to set a limit on screaming, but it’s one of those behaviors that I put in the category of, so not in our physical control, you cannot set an actual physical boundary or limit on screaming.

(16:10):

So what else goes in that bucket is eating and eating, sleeping and pooping, sleeping and peeing and pooping or spitting. Sometimes this comes up a lot with kids spit because you can’t stop them from spitting. You might want to but you physically can’t. So with those kinds of things where we can’t really control it, I feel like the more we can avoid getting again in the weeds about you are not allowed to scream, you have to stop screaming. That’s not, but that can set up a boundary around what you will tolerate and what you can do. Not trying to control their starting or stopping of a behavior, but to say, oh, if you are going to scream at me, I’m going to go in the other room. It hurts my ears. I’m not going to stay and listen if you scream at me right now. So you can modify your behaviors to help them understand where the boundaries are. That’s usually more effective than trying to get them to stop something when they’re mad and have no breaks that you actually have no control over Hitting is different. You can say, I will not let you hit. I will physically stop you from hitting.

Dr. Rebecca (17:26):

It’s also okay to say to your kid, I don’t like being screamed at. And again, which is not to say that again, it’s important okay to say that, but also to have a realistic expectation. Your three-year-old is not going to be like, oh my bad. I thought that was awesome and that you love. And the very motivation might be because you don’t it and they’re angry that you’re not swooping in to fix it. But I just want to highlight for a moment that idea that every time you let yourself play a role in this conversation with your child, that you are making them take care of your feelings. As again, back to my buzzword thing, if you started to cry when your child was screaming at you, and by the way, some listeners may have, it happens, none of this is about all or nothing, but if you start to cry and say, oh my gosh, you’re so mean.

(18:19):

Why are you yelling at me? My feelings are so hurt. That’s really kind of a misattuned developmental response. And that might be something that leads to confusion around who’s taking care of whose feelings full. And if you say to your child, that doesn’t make me feel good when you yell like that, and so I’m going to go walk over there, I don’t like it. That’s about a statement that has nothing to do with implying that they are your caretaker or that it’s not their mean. These small soundbites that get misunderstood and then misapplied are such a problem in so many ways because they lead to so much.

Dr. Emily (19:05):

I could not agree with you more. I think actually parental personal boundaries are really important. And again, to your really eloquent point, Rebecca, there are ways that it’s not okay. I want to be really clear about that, but I almost feel that there’s been a bit of an overcorrection. You’re allowed as a parent to set a boundary and express a discontent with an interpersonal interaction that’s not healthy and it might be developmentally appropriate.

Dr. Rebecca (19:36):

Exactly. And you can still hold an appropriate developmental expectation of the impact of that. Exactly. And also the other question that comes around, and we can do an episode on this and we probably already have, is that when we say something like, Sarah, you just very appropriately and eloquently said, you can say, I’m going to walk away or I’m going to go in the other room. Clients will say to me, but then won’t my child think that I abandon them when they’re in distress? And it’s like, no. Again, these are really subtle and important distinctions.

Dr. Emily (20:12):

Yeah, I agree. And I also think you have to know what your, as we always say, it’s very complicated, the whole context and the whole scenario is, so I think if this mom seems, if I’m to postulate, it seems like really attuned and pretty securely attached to her child, right? So saying, I don’t like it when you yell like that because it’s not helping you get your needs met. And it’s just having us get into this icky interaction even for a three-year-old doing that with body language and like, Ugh, this is tough, but it’s not working out the way you wanted it to, and you keep this other way and I think I’m going to stop it because I’m the parent and I’m going to sort of help you by me disengaging in that that’s not abandoning, right? I think that that feels very different than sort of the example that you articulated earlier, Rebecca. So I think, again, back from my, I say to parents often modeling personal boundaries is a really appropriate parenting intervention. And sort of stating what is allowed is also a helpful thing to do in that moment. You can go upstairs, you can stomp your feet, you can do X, Y, and Z to help express your feelings. That other way isn’t working for me. That’s okay.

Dr. Sarah (21:37):

So let’s recap really quick. One, we want to normalize some of these behaviors for this stage development because they are really developmentally appropriate and we can understand ’em in the context of this phase of development where they’ve got access to this awareness, but they don’t have the skills to get what they want. You are their superhero and they’re used to you fixing these problems and they’re confused and frustrated, and that’s just going to come with the territory for a while. The discrepancy will get smaller and smaller and smaller as they get older. Two, just kind of thinking in terms of how are we delivering the different kinds of boundaries and what do we have control over, what do we not? And understanding when my kid gets 10 out of 10 mad, they are going to scream, my goal isn’t really to stop that from happening.

(22:28):

My goal is just to get them to not be 10 out of 10 to bring them back down. And we talked about a lot of different ways that we can do that. And then finally, I think there’s this really important piece of, as parents said, I don’t like being screamed at, even though it’s not about me. It’s like, no, it is allowed to be about you. You are in a relationship with your child and you are two people in relation with one another, and it is totally appropriate and healthy and effective to help a child learn. Oh, when you yell, that impacts me. That’s different than saying it is your job to manage my feelings and take care of me emotionally. It’s just let’s distinguish between those two things. You are in fact your ability to have boundaries and communicate them to your child and have preferences and things that you don’t like or that upset you are very healthy and good to communicate that teaches them that they have an impact in the world and that’s going to help them understand to develop these skills. So I hope this is helpful. I understand this can be frustrating to hear because it’s not actually giving you, we’re answering your question, but by not answering your question, by giving you a different question and giving you the answer to that. So I hope that’s not frustrating.

Dr. Rebecca (23:48):

Which is what we do. It’s just how we roll. I mean, come on, we’re right on ground right now. When do we not do that? We’re on brand.

Dr. Sarah (23:54):

But you’re doing an amazing job too. I just really feel like that needs to be said as the end. You are rocking this us and just keep going. They will get older. It will get easier.

Dr. Rebecca (24:10):

And harder.

Dr. Sarah (24:10):

And harder.

Dr. Rebecca (24:11):

We can end on the easier part.

Dr. Sarah (24:13):

Yeah, save that. We’ll save that for later, spoiler. Alright, thank you guys.

Dr. Rebecca (24:19):

Thank you.

Dr. Emily (24:20):

Bye.

Dr. Sarah (24:22):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.