319. Q&A: Where’s the line between supporting my child and feeding their anxiety?

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):

Hi, welcome back. We are going to answer a listener question here beyond the sessions segment of the securely attached podcast. We’ve got Dr. Emily Upshur here. Hello.

Dr. Emily (00:54):

Hey, good to be here.

Dr. Sarah (00:57):

Okay, this is a question that came in from a parent and they write, I’ve heard you talk in past episodes about scaffolding and how beneficial it is to help kids cross a finish line themselves, but then I’ve also heard you talk about over accommodation and how this can reinforce a child’s anxiety. I am having trouble knowing where the line between these two things is. Can you help clarify when scaffolding goes too far, maybe with some examples of what this might look like in everyday parenting situations. Thanks so much. Loving the podcast.

Dr. Emily (01:33):

Such a good one. What a great question. I love it.

Dr. Sarah (01:37):

Yeah. A really astute, that’s actually a legit confusing. I am glad that she picked up on that because it can feel contradictory and confusing, so I am excited to clarify.

Dr. Emily (01:50):

I love that too. And I think we all have to take a beat even as clinicians and really parse out some of the situations and remind ourselves of the intention too.

Dr. Sarah (02:02):

So for parents who are listening are like, wait, what’s scaffolding? What’s over accommodation? Let’s just orient people to that and then we can talk about the differences and how you can tell, because it’s like a Venn diagram. There are two separate things and they overlap in certain places, so we have to, there’s going to be some spaces where it’s like you’re going to have to make a judgment call. So how would you define scaffolding?

Dr. Emily (02:28):

Scaffolding, I think of as appropriate supports as a parent that you give to your child to help them meet their needs or bridge a little bit of a developmental stretch for them. If something is slightly above what they are able to do, you might give them a little adult brain help or even logistical help. That’s how I think of scaffolding. I think of scaffolding as the building blocks, the sort of step stools we put around our children to help them be successful, meet their needs, and it feels appropriate given their developmental situation, their stage of life.

Dr. Sarah (03:09):

And over accommodation or sometimes even called accommodation would be when we are rescuing them from having to sit in a struggle.

Dr. Emily (03:21):

Discomfort.

Dr. Sarah (03:23):

And helping them avoid feeling something. Now sometimes that’s also needed, right? That’s where I say there’s the gray space where they overlap. I guess tell me when we think about this sort of differentiator.

(03:43):

One thing is if you’re like the same action might be scaffolding and it might be over accommodating. And so that’s I think where the confusion is, right? If my kid is having a lot of separation anxiety when I’m dropping them off at school, if I am walking them in and taking them into the classroom and helping bridge that transition more, that might be scaffolding. If the intention and the actual execution involves slowly peeling it back over time, that’s part of scaffolding by definition, scaffolding is something, it’s a support that’s put in place temporarily with the intention of scaling it back as the child’s skill becomes stronger and needs less scaffolding, whereas an over accommodation tends to actually get more intensive over time. Usually if we are actually truly over accommodating, am my kids anxious about drop-off, and so I’m walking them into the classroom and I’m spending more time in the classroom, it will often look like, and I’m spending more time in the classroom and now they’re asking me to spend time with them in this space and that space and more and more and more places that I’m doing it. So if we’re adding in a lot more, chances are we need to take a beat and say, are we over accommodating because my child is becoming increasingly more dependent on these supports, not less so.

(05:17):

Whereas if we’re scaffolding, the intention is to get them closer to where we think they can go on their own and then slowly pull back. So it might look like I’m going to walk you into your classroom today and then in a couple days I’m going to walk you to the door of the building and then in a couple days I’m going to walk you to the sidewalk and then in a couple days I’m going to stay in the car and you’re going to go. That would be pulling back over time. Does that make sense to you?

Dr. Emily (05:41):

Yeah, that totally makes sense. I love the idea of scaffolding is something that you sort of step down and out of a little bit. Not to say that that looks easy on the outside, your child might have a difficult time with that, but that’s the process. I think what’s tricky is that when we think of an accommodation in over accommodation, an accommodation in a way that’s trickier, I always think the opposite is if my kid would act, typically if I would drop my kid off at school in their classroom and they’re fine, but I have another child I can’t drop off in their classroom, they’re fine. They’re having a lot of separation anxiety. Maybe I’m doing that more because they’re anxious and I’m trying to assuage that anxiety. So I think that it’s also a little tricky, this dance between the parent and the child, something that might be completely scaffolding for one child could be an accommodation for another child or a different one of your children.

(06:44):

And I think that that’s really tricky. And the other piece I always say is, I had a clinical case this week and the child, I’m going to de-identify completely, but the child was saying, I’m too scared to ask my teacher for help at school. I think they’re going to get mad at me. The parents were like, so we decided to help them with their homework at home. Did we over accommodate? I was like, no, that’s not an overa. You can always parent your child, help your child with homework. What would be an over accommodation is if you said You don’t have to ask your teacher, don’t ask your teacher, I’ll talk to your teacher for you and make sure you feel comfortable. What you’re trying to reduce with an over accommodation is not having them feel discomfort. So what you’re saying to them is it’s hard to ask your teacher questions and you might feel like they might get mad at you. Maybe they even do. I don’t know. That could be true. You know what? I know you can handle that feeling versus saying, as a parent, I’m not going to help you figure out that homework more. That’s not an over accommodation. You can help them with the homework, but you don’t want to accommodate them not having to tolerate the discomfort in school. You want to help them build that and not over accommodate that.

Dr. Sarah (08:09):

Is that helpful? Yes. I think that’s super helpful. If you were to not do this thing, would your child be feeling distress or would your child be absolutely crumbling and unable to deal with it with the resources that they have?

Dr. Emily (08:32):

And to me, that piece is the over accommodation and appropriate scaffolding is helping your kid with multiplication if it’s hard for them. Okay. Right. That piece is scaffolding.

Dr. Sarah (08:44):

Right? I also think it’s helpful to think of scaffolding as we are building a skill. So if you are building a skill, then typically in over accommodating, we’re avoiding the need to build a skill. So I’m trying to think of an example of that. If you have a kid who’s feeling really anxious around bigger crowds of kids, a lot of kids have trouble on playgrounds, too many kids, they’re unpredictable, navigating those, especially much younger kids like three, four that can be really, they want to avoid those kind of more chaotic, unpredictable peer scenes, right? Navigating social dynamics where there’s a lot of different components coming at you is a skill and I don’t expect a child to be able to do that without some supports.

(09:52):

So I might help a child who’s anxious in these crowded bigger scenes work on smaller social settings first, a play date, a one-on-one play date, or going to the playground at times when maybe there’s only one or two kids. But with the goal of helping them build the skill to tolerate social dynamics in more increasingly larger and more complex settings over accommodating would be I am going to help you avoid situations where you might have to build that skill. So we don’t go to play, we don’t go to big parties, we don’t do the birthday parties, and now you might not do the birthday parties at first in the scaffolding, but you’re going to slowly build up to that because that is the function of we’re trying to build that skill. Whereas if you are over accommodating, it’s like, oh no, we just don’t do those things. We’re not going to helping our child avoid settings where they might have to work on those skills because it is distress inducing to have to build those skills.

Dr. Emily (10:54):

I like the idea of avoiding working on the skills is an over accommodation, right? Because that might even look like I’ll go to the birthday but my mom will stay or dad will stay there the whole time. You’re still not allowing your child to build those skills of independence, integration being around multiple people. So I think that’s a really nice way to parse those things out. Are you not helping your child? Are you doing something inadvertently because we’re just parenting, we’re doing our best here to almost protect your child from those uncomfortable feelings that’s required in growth. If you can think in your own life, if you’ve ever grown without it being a little bit uncomfortable or painful, I think that’s the kind of thing. We don’t want it to be too, too much, but we do want to stretch that. And scaffolding sort of helps you bit by bit kind of systematically and what I’m hearing you say, which is true, it’s like with a bit of a plan, address those more anxious.

Dr. Sarah (11:55):

That is another distinction. Scaffolding usually has a plan, whereas over accommodation is usually kind of reactive to the moment. Okay. Ah, we were freaking out. I’m going to freak out. We okay, let’s avoid that.

Dr. Emily (12:09):

Yeah.

Dr. Sarah (12:10):

It’s okay. Stop. We don’t have to do that. But one other thing I’m thinking about because I was like, oh, where do I over accommodate and where do I scaffold my own kids? And one thing I was thinking about is that sometimes we are going to do the exact same behavior and with the same kid and at different times it’s going to be scaffolding versus over accommodation. I’ll explain what I mean. So for example, my daughter’s working on reading and she struggles sometimes with frustration tolerance. That’s an achilles heel for her. She’s working on that. And so when we’re pairing practicing a skill, that’s also frustrating. That experience is paired for her a lot, right? She is working on reading and she’s working on tolerating frustration and she gets frustrated when she reads a lot. So we see those two skills smash into each other a lot when we’re reading because I am thinking about her frustration tolerance skill before I’m thinking about her reading skill.

(13:22):

That’s my priority in this situation. I’m tracking her bandwidth to be able to stretch and I’m going to make choices based on what I think her bandwidth is on whether or not I scaffold her or I just say, Ooh, I’m scaffolding reading, or I’m scaffolding frustration tolerance. So what that might look like is in the morning we’re hanging out, she’s just gotten up, she’s got a lot of energy, she’s in a good mood, she has more energetic resources to self-regulate. She might be able to tolerate frustration more and she’s working on a worksheet for school and she’s struggling with a word and she wants me to help tell her what it’s in that situation. I might say, well, let’s sound it out. And she might be able to tolerate that. If I do that exact same strategy at night when we’re getting ready for bed and she’s tired and it’s been a long day and she’s had to do a lot of energetic, she’s running on empty and she’s reading something and she can’t figure out how to spell a word and she wants me to say it for her, I’m not going to scaffold her reading in that moment because if I say sound it out, she will be unable to tolerate, she’ll lose it, right?

(14:48):

And so I’m choosing to scaffold tolerance at another time and scaffold reading at another time. So I’m just saying, I’m trying to think of an example where you don’t always have to be consistent all the time. Sometimes you got to read your kid and understand what they can handle being stretched on in that moment, and that’s not over accommodating at night. When I say, I’ll just tell you the word, I don’t think that’s over accommodating. If I always said, I’ll just tell you the word, I don’t want you to freak out at me, that would be over accommodating. But when I’m being judicious about when I do it by taking in other factors and other variables and how much my kid can be stretched at that given moment, then that is I think an appropriate accommodation or maybe a scaffold.

Dr. Emily (15:37):

Yeah. The thing I was going to say is that I think also as parents we can fall into the trap of over accommodating because it’s easier. So another example of the difference between scaffolding and over accommodating is can my kids make their beds in the morning? Yes. Do I feel like fighting with them every morning similarly about making their beds? Not always is that over accommodating? Probably there’s a little bit of the shortcut of parent overwhelmed parents that leads to over accommodations and I think it’s really helpful to slow down and be able to look at what you’re doing, how intentional it is. And I do think that sort of demand accumulation that you’re talking about and being parsimonious about when you stretch and scaffold versus when you just accommodate, because I would say the same about a morning routine in my house. It is not a time to stretch demand.

(16:34):

It is really, the mornings are hard. I don’t have time. I go to work. I don’t have time to have a potentially unpredictable situation happen or stretch or scaffold in a morning routine with three kids. So I think having parent parental choice, but increasing mindfulness, do I have time to scaffold right now? Should I just, maybe that’s another time. Maybe I do that later. To your point, as long as you’re not over accommodating all the time or just throwing that out, just saying, I can’t do this all the time, and you are choosing to scaffold and stretch and sort of do that a little bit spread out. I think that that is a really important mindful tactic for parents.

Dr. Sarah (17:18):

Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s a super important point, and I actually see this a lot when parents learn about accommodating or over accommodating and they realize, okay, I need to stop doing that. A lot of times I see parents just pull all the accommodations that they’re doing across the board and then what happens is the week they do that, it’s just chaos because they’re getting into constant fights with their kids about all the things that they’re not doing anymore that their kid is expecting them to do and their kids feeling the distress a lot in all these different places and settings and times of day. And of course that’s super overwhelming for the kids. It’s super overwhelming for the parents. And so then they just say whether they realize it because they just say, I am not doing this anymore. Or they just start to, they’re burnt out and so they just start going back into their old habits and then it just doesn’t work.

(18:13):

I am a big fan of picking one accommodation or one over accommodation at a time, and this is very space supportive parenting for anxious childhood emotions. You map out your accommodations, they call it accommodations, but we’re talking about over accommodations. They’re the same in this conversation. You map out your accommodations, you figure out one target at a time, and it’s got to be something that is easy for you to realistically shift. And it’s something that happens regularly enough that you shifting it is going to actually materially change something for your family system for it’s got to be happening frequently enough that there’s going to be some learning from it because it’s not happening once a month and it’s like, okay, it’s got to happen multiple times a week for it to be a good accommodation to pull, you’ve got to be motivated as a parent to get to the other side of not having to do the thing, right? I don’t like I’m motivated to not have to do this thing anymore.

(19:19):

And then you create a very detailed plan, you plan it out. You say, okay, how am I going to stop doing this thing? What is that actually going to look like in real life? I troubleshoot things that might go wrong. I stress test it, right? Like, well, what happens if the kid responds this way? What’s my plan then? Okay, what happens if it goes to a level 10 response? What’s my plan then? And once you have a good plan and it feels executable, then you pull the accommodation and you understand it might result in a lot of distress in that one setting for you and your child for a little bit of time and you stick to the plan anyway, tolerating the big pushback you might be getting. Oftentimes it’s not nearly as bad as we think it’s going to be, but sometimes it can be. And then eventually everyone gets used to this new way of being and then you can come back and look at your list of accommodations and say, is there anything else I want to try pulling next? But you don’t do it all at once because it’s just too much. It’s overwhelming for parents, and then it’s hard to keep going. Then you kind of feel like it becomes all or nothing and it quickly becomes nothing.

Dr. Emily (20:31):

Yeah, those are all good points.

Dr. Sarah (20:35):

Yeah. So I hope that answers this question. I think it’s an important distinction. It can be blurry, so I really appreciate you sending them this question and letting us clarify. So please keep sending in your questions. We absolutely love hearing from you guys. You guys ask, you guys ask really thought provoking things and we love how we love how smart our listeners are and how much you care about parenting and doing it right or good enough.

Dr. Emily (21:06):

That’s right.

Dr. Sarah (21:06):

Don’t got to be perfect. Thanks Emily.

Dr. Emily (21:10):

Alright, good to be here.

Dr. Sarah (21:13):

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.