Devon (00:00):

Really, it comes down to this parenting mindset, right? I think everything we keep talking about is really the detriment of looking at things through an all or nothing lens. Whenever you’re trying to hold all the limits everywhere, especially if you haven’t been holding a ton of limits, you’re going to burn out. But then if we burn out, then we’re like, well give up on that. So now we’re back into the nothing. And so I think a lot of the struggle that we face as parents is really disrupting that cycle of swaying back and forth between this all or nothing mentality.

Dr. Sarah (00:40):

Hi, welcome to Securely Attached. I’m Dr. Sarah Bren, a mom of two and clinical psychologist with over a decade of experience treating patients and helping families build stronger relationships, manage big emotions, and feel more connected. On this podcast, I help parents translate the science of child development and attachment theory into practical strategies that build connection, confidence, and resilience in our kids and in ourselves as both a therapist and a parent. I know firsthand that understanding why our children act the way they do is the key to feeling more grounded and less reactive when things get tough. And few stages test us more than the toddler years. So if you’ve ever found yourself thinking, why is my toddler acting like this? Or wondering whether you’re doing something wrong when your child melts down or refuses to cooperate or digs into a power struggle, this episode is for you.

(01:35):

So joining me today is Devon Kuntzman. She’s a certified coach, toddler expert and the founder of Transforming Toddlerhood. Devon’s new book, also called Transforming Toddlerhood comes out today and it’s such a compassionate, practical guide for navigating the highs and lows of this stage with so much more patience and understanding.

(01:54):

In our conversation, Devon and I talk about what’s really going on beneath these big toddler behaviors and why they’re actually developmentally very normal. We explore how to set kind but firm limits that help children feel safe and secure. Why punishment doesn’t teach skills and what to do instead, it does. And how parents can step out of power struggles without giving up their authority. And most importantly, we talk about how your calm, confident presence is the most powerful parenting tool that you have.

(02:27):

Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Securely Attached podcast. We have Devon Kuntzman here from Transforming Toddlerhood. Welcome to the show.

Devon (02:43):

Thank you so much. I’m so excited to be here today.

Dr. Sarah (02:45):

Yeah, so I’m super excited to dive into this conversation. We are going to talk about all things toddlers and why these early years matter so much and how parents can feel so much more grounded and patient when you are a parenting. But before we get into all of that, you have a book and it’s coming out today. So congratulations.

Devon (03:06):

Thank you so much. I actually have a copy right here. I’m just so excited for this book to finally be out in the world. I mean, not only have I worked on it for a couple of years to get it out into the world, so it’s just a big milestone for me personally, but I know this book is going to change the lives of so many families and really become your quick reference guide for the toddler years.

Dr. Sarah (03:27):

Yeah, I’m really excited for those of you who are listening and not watching. She’s held up her cute book, the Cute Graphics. It’s called Transforming Toddlerhood, which is your whole platform. And let’s just maybe start a little bit about how did you build this platform? How did you get into this work? You have become quite a voice in the world of toddlers, and I’m really excited to have you here to share your wisdom with us.

Devon (03:54):

Thank you. So my story, how I got started, I was, well first I have a degree in psychology with a focus in child development. And after I graduated from college, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do next, but I knew I wanted move to a big city. So I moved to New York City and I was like, okay, what am I going to do? I’m going to be a nanny. I wanted to travel. I wanted to live in a big city. I grew up in Ohio in the countryside. I was ready for something new. So anyways, I was a nanny for many, many years and as a nanny for high profile families all over the world, I really got a really good firsthand education of being with so many different types of toddlerhood and so many different family dynamics. But one thing I noticed to be true across the board is that oftentimes toddlers are trying to communicate with their parents the best way that they could through their behaviors and their tears.

(04:51):

And parents were constantly being frustrated by these behaviors and almost misconstruing what their toddler was trying to communicate with them. So I felt like the communication was going like this and they weren’t really connecting. So through that experience and through my own transformation of rewriting the script on the idea that if a toddler is having good behavior, I was doing a good job, and if they’re having bad behavior, I was doing a bad job. And so once you realize that all behavior is communication, that this little being has a very immature brain and very little life experience that they need to learn all kinds of skills to be successful here, I realized that no one was talking about toddlerhood on Instagram. It was either pregnancy babyhood or kids in general. And toddlerhood is a very challenging developmental period, but also very critical. And there’s also a lot of beauty and joy in it. And so that’s why I started transforming toddlerhood back in 2018 to really dispel the myth that toddlerhood is terrible and to support parents and really understanding toddlers and just creating more confidence in their parenting and connection in their relationships.

Dr. Sarah (06:08):

I love that and I love that. I mean that is think born out of those early years in the social media sphere of helping parents understand with developmentally appropriate information. I think there’s a big difference. I think there’s a lot of, for lack of a better term, mom, influencers out there that are, and many are well really well intentioned. They’re sharing their experience and they’re trying to be helpful. And I think there’s grown out of this wave a massive amount of overwhelming content, just overwhelming quantity of parenting content that I’m guilty of contributing to. We all this catch 22 of I want to teach people the accurate information. And so you have to put it in these spaces and then parents get really overwhelmed. And I think what I like about your work and what I try to do in my work and give people information that’s valid developmentally, scientifically, psychologically informed, but in a way that also helps them know this is not a one size fits all. This isn’t the one way to do it. This, if you don’t do this, you’re doing it wrong. It’s about individualizing and attunement and listening to you becoming an intuitive partner with your kid. And that I think is what you do is pretty important and I appreciate it.

Devon (07:44):

Thank you. I really agree with this because for so many years I’ve had parents every day writing in dms or on comments of my posts like, oh, I’m so guilty of this, or, oh, I just want to know the right way to respond here. And I always write back, I’m like, you are not guilty. You are a human being who’s doing the best they can in this moment. And so I’m like, let’s just reframe this right away. And there’s more than one way to handle a situation. There’s not one right way. And that part of what I’ve been doing at transforming Toddlerhood and thinking about developmentally smart parenting is the idea of getting to know your child where they are at personally developmentally, and then looking at how you can align your parenting practices with where your child’s at.

Dr. Sarah (08:33):

Yeah. So you talk about developmentally smart parenting. We were having this conversation before we hit record, but there’s always terms out there for what it is that we are doing and what we’re not doing, and just how do you navigate that? I know it’s hard. There’s just a million terms for different types. I’ve never heard we’re this weird point in life where there’s a lexicon of parenting styles. There’s never been before.

Devon (09:05):

Yes.

Dr. Sarah (09:07):

And I am sure it’s confusing for a lot of people because one person’s talking about one thing and using the exact same name as this other person who was talking about something totally different. Like someone saying it’s gentle parenting and someone saying, no, that’s permissive parenting. And someone saying, no, that’s authoritative parenting. And how do you explain this? How do you think about the way you teach parents to connect with their kids?

Devon (09:33):

Yes. Well, I think that it’s a really important conversation to have because it can be overwhelming because there are all of these terms and there’s not necessarily definitions that are cohesive and concise that everyone agrees upon inside of these terms. And I think the biggest challenge when you’re looking at all of this is that when we say things like gentle parenting or positive parenting, oftentimes we start thinking without really knowing the whole story is that, oh, that must mean that my child needs to be happy or there can’t be tears or face hardship. And so I think that’s one of the biggest misconceptions with all of these terms is this idea that, oh, well, we have to make sure for my child to be emotionally healthy, we have to make sure my child’s always happy. And I think that that’s where gentle parenting and positive parenting might get misconstrued.

(10:33):

And so that’s why I really started talking about developmentally smart parenting because we want to align our parenting practice with the child’s development, but inside of that, we know that children need limits. They also need someone to take their feelings, emotions, and needs into account. They also need to learn skills, but they need limits. So when we set clear firm yet kind limits, then what we’re doing here is we’re creating a container for our child to flourish inside of. But when you set a limit, your child might get upset. And I think it really comes down to this fear of upsetting kids because we don’t like to, it’s hard to watch your child be upset. It’s hard to listen to a tantrum. And so I think that that fear of ruining our kids or making them upset leads to this lack of setting limits, which leads to all of these terms getting jumbled.

Dr. Sarah (11:29):

And I think truly when labels of types of parenting aside, because I think the reality is is parents kind of shift and kind of weave in and out of different kinds of parenting styles depending on their bandwidth.

Devon (11:45):

Exactly.

Dr. Sarah (11:46):

I know, and I’m going to use the terms permissive parenting, authoritative parenting and authoritarian parenting just to illustrate this, because at the end of the day, that’s what we’re all talking about to some degree.

Devon (11:57):

Well, those are the terms that have the scientific research behind them, right?

Dr. Sarah (12:02):

They’re the operationalized terms. And I know when I am dialing it in, which I definitely definitely do on low band with days, I might be pretty permissive. And then when I am being really permissive and I do need my kid to do something, I’ll be like, now do it. Do it, do it, do it, do it, do it. And then I flip once I hit my limit to authoritarian parenting where I’m like, if you don’t do it, there is no dessert tonight. I’m taking this away. I do that a hundred percent. And I think it’s human to do that. I think that it’s often for me, a sign to myself that I’m either low resourced energetically or I’m not accessing my skills because I’ve studied this for a long time. I have a big toolbox. Do I always have access to it? No, but for a lot of parents, it’s also that there isn’t toolbox. There’s nothing in the toolbox other than permit until you threaten. And I know you have lots to say on this. So can we talk a little bit about discipline and setting limits and what are some misconceptions that you see that parents are taking to heart and then finding themselves kind of stuck or feeling like they’re not doing it right or they feel like they’re ineffective, that they as a parent feel ineffective?

Devon (13:26):

Yeah, absolutely. So when we’re talking about these terminologies, I have a whole chapter dedicated to our parenting role, and I’ve named the authoritarian type of parenting as the controlling commander, which is on one end of the spectrum and then the permissive style, the permissive pushover. And we’re all going to be on that continuum from time to time. And our goal is to kind of jump off of that continuum to what I call the confident leader and guide, which is that authoritative type of parenting. And I think that the biggest misconception, because we’ve seen a lot of, oftentimes the way we were raised was with a parent who falls into that more controlling commander role, which is kind of my way or the highway type of mentality. And so oftentimes we confuse discipline with punishment. We think that discipline is synonymous with punishments. And so because of that, we start asking ourselves, when a child has a behavior, and spoiler alert, many of the behaviors that drive us nuts during toddlerhood are actually very developmentally appropriate.

(14:36):

It doesn’t mean you have to condone them and you can’t teach them better skills and you can’t set limits, but they’re also very typical for that age group. But oftentimes when we’re faced with these types of behaviors like hitting, biting tantrums, throwing all the things we ask ourselves, what punishment does my child need to learn their lesson versus what skill does my child need to be more successful here? Because a lot of the behaviors that toddlers have are them trying to get their needs met or express their feelings and emotions or just their lack of skills. And in the end, we don’t want to punish a child for having a lack of skills. We want to work on teaching them skills so they can be successful.

Dr. Sarah (15:23):

And the end of the day, even the parent that’s sitting there saying, what punishment do I give my child so that they learn not to do this anymore? Nine times out of 10 is coming from a place of I just want my child to learn to be successful. And this is the framework I am aware of. It’s like the limits of my awareness. It’s not the limits of my love, compassion, desire for goodness for my kid, it’s that I am at my ceiling in terms of like, there’s got to be something I can do in this moment that will get them to never do this again.

(16:01):

And unfortunately, just what we know about child development, and we know about brain development, we know about regulation skills. Most 2, 3, 4, five-year-olds just don’t have the capacity. One, they don’t have the capacity to learn anything. No one, not even us, has the capacity to learn anything when we are dysregulated because by definition, dysregulation co-occur with the learning part of our brain, the thinking part of our brain, the prefrontal cortex being offline. So if we can’t be in control of ourself in the moment, we also cannot learn anything new. So I think parents also think they think that discipline, or to your point, punishment will teach their kid, and that’s the only tool I have access to in this hot, messy, awful moment. But the reality is I think we need to just take learning off the table in the hot moments. There’s no teaching to be done. If you want to teach your kid to do something different next time, you got to give yourself permission to just wait, use different strategies now in the moment and then come back and teach your kid not in the moment moments.

Devon (17:22):

I think that’s a common misconception, and I think this is also where parents get really frustrated and where they’re like, oh, this just doesn’t work, right, because they’re trying to teach a skill. Maybe it’s a calming skill, maybe it’s like a breathing skill or something. They’re trying to teach children skills in what I call the heat of the moment when their child is completely dysregulated and then they’re like, ah, this doesn’t work. It’s not working. And it’s like, oh, because that’s not the moment when your child actually can learn, as you were saying. And so just by shifting to this idea of teaching skills in the calm moments, practicing strengthening those skills, as your child grows, they’re going to start recalling them in the challenging moments. But the challenging moment is definitely not the place to start out. It’s just going to lead to a lot more frustration for everyone in that moment.

Dr. Sarah (18:17):

So what can parents do in the moment, in the heat of the moment, what are useful tools in that moment?

Devon (18:24):

Yeah. Well, the things that I like to talk about in the heat of the moment start by establishing safety, and that is physical safety first. So making sure you’re safe, your child’s not hitting you. If they are, you put them down, you get some distance between the two of you, even if you have to put a pillow, something, but you’re establishing that physical safety, your child’s not going to roll off the couch when they’re having a tantrum going to split their head open. So you establish that physical safety, you tell yourself, this is not an emergency. I am safe, my child is safe. And then you can start working on the emotional safety piece, which is grounding yourself, maybe validating your own experience and feelings, maybe reframing, going from putting labels on the behavior to just noticing the behavior that’s happening and really starting to calm yourself and just reframe how you’re looking at things.

(19:22):

And then from there, oftentimes connection can be supportive, depends on your child and how upset they are. You need to know is there going to be some physical connection? Do they need a hug? Do they need you nearby? Is it emotional connection? Are you giving them some validation? Are you getting curious about what’s going on for them? And then setting limits and following through on them. If your child’s upset, it’s important to continue following through on the limit. And then this is what’s so hard, sometimes less is more. You just have to create some space and weight. If you’ve established safety, you’re grounding yourself, you’ve used some connection, you’re upholding the limits that you set Now, we cannot force a child to accept the limit. We can’t force them to accept it and all of that crying, those big behaviors, that’s them working through it to get to the point where they can accept it. And that space between them getting upset and accepting the reality can feel like five hours that sometimes it’s only five minutes or 10 minutes, and so it’s hard to just sit there and hold space for that or even to move forward with what you’re doing and come back and check on your child if needed.

Dr. Sarah (20:39):

Yeah, I call that riding the wave sometimes the only tool in our toolbox, I’ll talk about it in terms of a scale like a thermometer, right? Zero to 10, 8, 9, 10. We have very limited access to very few tools work at this point, kind of just the ones that I agree with, all the ones that you named, and I really think at 10 out of 10, other than established safety, you ride the wave, you got to let it, it’s going to peak and it’s going to ebb, and I think it’s helpful to teach kids this in the cool moments that I have a kid who get the space between them not accepting the limit and them accepting the limit really was sometimes five hours or it was definitely 40 minutes. It was not five minutes. Sometimes if I was blessed with a good day that day, but it could be 40 minutes for sure, more hour and a half, which that’s a really long time for your kid to be in a acutely dysregulated state.

(21:49):

It’s a really long time as a parent to be in that state of stress and overwhelm probably your own fight or flight. And so I remember whenever my kid would, they’d peak and they would ebb and there’d be a moment where it was like they switched, they fell back into themselves, and when that would happen, you could really tell it was a really clear, she crossed a threshold and that’s when she could tolerate connection in that heat. There was no, if I tried to touch her, if I tried to talk to her, it wasn’t going to do anything, but once she came back into herself and could tolerate connection, one of the first things I would always say is like, oh, that feeling came and it went, you’re okay. We’re here. It’s done. I think that’s the teaching piece, and for us as parents and for the kids to understand these things, they come in a wave, they peak and then they ebb. They don’t stay forever.

Devon (22:57):

I totally agree. This is why I created what I call the recipe for effective discipline, that it’s creating connection, setting limits and falling through and teaching skills. That’s the recipe. And just like when you’re baking, say you’re baking a cupcake or something, if we only focus on limits, then we’re really going into that authoritarian parenting role and the controlling commander, and it’s challenging because we’re not leaving the space for teaching the skills, which I love that example, right? Because teaching skills, we think it could sound daunting maybe, but it can be very simple. That phrase you said is very simple, like teaching a child that feelings are not facts. They’re just like the weather, they come and go like, oh, you felt that feeling and now it’s gone. That’s an learning skill for a child to learn. And so it doesn’t have to be overly complicated, but that’s why I like having all three of those be present and that’s how you bake the cupcake.

Dr. Sarah (23:59):

I like that. I think you talk too about power because I feel like, okay…

Devon (24:05):

Yes.

Dr. Sarah (24:06):

Tolerating our kids big dysregulated emotions or dysregulated behaviors, that’s a skill in and of itself just to understand, okay, this is developmentally appropriate. I can only do what I can do and I’m not going to try to do something I can’t do in this moment. There’s a lot of radical acceptance and understanding, having developmentally realistic expectations of our kid and then that kind of plays out in how we discipline or set limits how we tolerate their dysregulation. I think an area that is so tricky for parents is this sort of power struggle, getting kids to cooperate, getting kids to do the thing we need them to do because that can be so interruptive to the flow of life, and I’m sure you get it all the time, but parents, sometimes I just need to do, I need to move them through the day we have to do something. I can’t just sit for four hours as they melt it out.

Devon (25:09):

Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s so uncomfortable because it’s kind of that in-between space, which I call the nagging negotiator. So in between the controlling commander and the permissive pushover and that in-between space is the nagging negotiator where the parent and the child are vying for control here, and that’s what a power struggle is. And when we get sucked into that power struggle, you just really feel this, you feel this sense of urgency right to win. We go into our stress response too, so we’re pushing against our child, but the problem is, is our toddlers don’t have the brain maturation to step out of a power struggle. They’re wired to be in a power struggle. They’re trying to show they their own independent person and no longer an extension of you, but when we get sucked into that emotional rollercoaster with them and we’re locked in that power struggle, we have to remember that it takes two people to be in a power struggle.

(26:06):

And if you’re waiting for your child to drop out of that power struggle and be like, okay, just kidding, you’re going to be there for a long time. But on the other hand, you don’t want to just drop out and be like, fine, do whatever you want. I can’t because that’s the way we’re back in the permissive place. So what I feel like is really the key is just first remembering, okay, there’s nothing to win here because in parenting you’re not trying to win over your child and that it takes two people to be in a power struggle. So how do you step back in an empowered way? And so that might look like, say that it’s your toddler doesn’t want to get dressed, and so it might look like saying something like, here are your clothes. I’m going to go start breakfast, and you can come down when you get dressed or you can come to the kitchen when you get dressed or something like this.

(26:58):

So you’re still upholding the limit of what you’re trying to do, but you’re also stepping out of it. And then your toddler’s probably going to follow you because they don’t like being away from you as much as they want to push against you, but then they want to be right with you. They have all these competing needs and then that’s when you grab them and you grab it and then the clothes and you might be like, oh, do you want to put on your pants? Or do you want to put on your shirt first and maybe give them a choice within your boundaries. There’s a lot of different tools that you can use when and then choices, things like this to start moving through the power struggle and getting to the other side. But oftentimes it requires us as the adult to cognitively decide we’re going to move forward. Instead of just sitting there waiting on your child to make the choice to move forward, you’re going to be waiting a long time.

Dr. Sarah (27:46):

Yeah, I think that’s such an important point. And this I think maps very nicely onto your idea of developmentally smart parenting. Being aware of where your child is in development like a two or 3-year-old, they have unlimited stamina to hold that rope, but they don’t have the capacity to put the rope down.

(28:08):

So it’s like, which kid do want to, who are you working with? You aren’t going to win if your goal is to get them to put the rope down first. So the negotiating and the coercing and it doesn’t work, not picking up the rope, which feels so antithetical to all the things we’ve been taught explicitly and intrinsically as parents of you are responsible for getting your kid to do things and you don’t want to give up your authority and you don’t want to undermine your authority, and then they’re going to rule the roost. And once you set a limit, you can never unset that limit because then you’re backing down and I’m like, there are so many ways to put down the rope without damaging your child’s respect for your authority.

Devon (29:03):

I couldn’t agree more, but the challenge is it takes so much, but put down that rope, which is also why it’s almost like comical when we’re not in the middle of a stress response that we would expect a toddler to have this ability with their immature brains when it’s literally so hard for us to have that amount of self-control to put down the rope because it’s really, really hard. And that’s why coming back to this idea of establishing the physical and emotional safety I just feel like is so important because when we start disrupting our stress response and giving ourselves a little bit of time before we respond, it gets to be easier to put down that route of practice.

Dr. Sarah (29:44):

Which actually makes me think of another important little piece for the power struggle thing is for the take the clothing tolerated dress in the morning example, in a really nice scenario, you say, alright, I’m going to go downstairs and you can come when you’re ready and then they follow you and you say, alright, I got the clothes. Which one do you want to do pants or shirt? And they’re like pants because now I’m just focused on you got them to drop the rope basically by pivoting. However, there’s a lot of scenarios where they still haven’t dropped the rope, they didn’t drop it that fast, and I think you have to give yourself a lot of permission. This is where that urgency thing you were talking about comes in. You have to stop buying into that little voice in her head that’s saying there’s urgency. There’s urgency.

(30:32):

Get them to drop the rope quickly. It’s like it’s also totally okay to say, I’m going to go downstairs and get breakfast, come down when you’re ready. And then when they follow you with no clothes and you say you don’t say anything because they’re still holding onto that rope and you can just feel their yuck. And so you just grab the clothes, you don’t say anything, you just go down to the kitchen and you don’t even talk about the clothes. Clothes for a little while. There’s no rush. I mean, let’s be honest, I live in a house where there’s always a rush in the morning, but I don’t mean sometimes there’s a chronological rush, but there isn’t a parenting rush, like the urgency piece, you’re not failing if you don’t get this right. You’re not failing if you put them in the car in their pajamas either.

Devon (31:14):

10000%.

Dr. Sarah (31:19):

And this I think goes to your point of you need to be paying attention to your kid and where they are at because you might have a kid who can drop the rope just because you walked out of the room and they got distracted by that and was like, no, I just really want to be with you. I’ll put on the clothes. Which is fine. You might also have a kid who holds that rope for a really long time and you have to be okay with saying, let’s go have breakfast. Let’s fill up your belly. Let’s have some fun. I’m going to help us pivot out of this space of holding ropes. And then when they’re got a little food in their stomach, they’ve had a little break and some space from this rope pulling moment with you and their body’s in a different place. I think getting them to move into clothing is so much different at that point. So it’s like it’s also okay if it takes a really long time. So you revisit the thing that initially provoked the power struggle.

(32:19):

Devon and I have been talking a lot about power struggles, and you’ll hear us dive even deeper into that in just a minute, but I wanted to pop in quickly to tell you about a free resource that I created that I think you’re really going to love if this conversation is resonating with you. It’s a 60 minute on-demand video workshop called From Battles to Bonding: Overcoming Power Struggles. In it, I’ll help you understand why the strategies you’ve been using to avoid or win a power struggle often backfire and why they probably always will. You’ll learn what actually causes power struggles, how to break out of that frustrating cycle, and how to map out your child’s challenging behaviors so you can start building a personalized toolbox of strategies that really fit your child and your family. This is not about quick fixes or winning the battle, it’s about creating more cooperation, connection and confidence in your parenting relationship with your kid. You can get instant access to this free workshop right now by clicking the link in the episode description or by heading to dr sarah bren.com/power struggles. Okay, now let’s get back to my conversation with Devon.

Devon (33:32):

It just brings me to the idea of why the connection piece is so important because one way to create connection is through curiosity and even within ourselves, we don’t even have to say anything out loud. We can just actually just get curious in our own heads about what’s happening here, right? Because if we know that behaviors, communication and it’s communicating your child’s feelings and emotions, their level of brain maturation, what’s happening with their sensory system, their basic needs like hunger, tiredness, need for connection, their developmental needs, having a sense of control, feeling capable, all of these things, when you start getting curious, okay, well what’s the real thing this behavior is trying to tell me? Then we can start. And so in that time where you’re talking about not bringing it back up, it’s a great time to get curious because then you can actually start addressing some of those things that might’ve caused the power struggle in the first place.

(34:24):

Do they not want to get dressed because they don’t want to separate because you’re going to work or they’re going to preschool or something like that? Are they actually really hungry and your child truly just needs to eat food before they can put on clothes and cooperate in that way? You get to think about, okay, what is this behavior really trying to tell you? Because you’re toddler, there’s not doing this to be bad, to make you mad, to make you late, to make your life difficult. So the sooner you realize that and start getting curious, that’s where the true transformation happens for both yourself and your kid.

Dr. Sarah (34:58):

Yeah, because I was thinking, I was like, what was my kid’s reason? And it could be so it could change by the day. Totally. What I got curious about why my kids weren’t putting their clothes on in the morning, actually both of them, it was both very, I mean obviously some days it was different reasons. Some days it was because they were just in a grumpy mood, but they also hated putting on, they’re both super sensitive to sheets or clothes feeling cold on their skin.

Devon (35:29):

I was just thinking the sensory system.

Dr. Sarah (35:29):

Taking their warm jammies off and slipping into the cold cotton pants or whatever.

Devon (35:35):

Right.

Dr. Sarah (35:36):

So when I got them to go in the kitchen and eat breakfast and move around and warm up a little bit, and then they were like, I don’t want this hot pajama on, and then they were more open to putting on their clothes. Life got easier when it came to power struggles around getting dressed. So it’s like sometimes it’s not what you think sometimes it’s just really kind of looking at it through your kids’ eyes.

Devon (36:00):

Yeah, maybe it’s about a sense of control. That’s another great one. So maybe it’s like your child really just needs to have a feeling like they have a say in their morning. So maybe it’s them choosing the order of what’s happening. Maybe they’re choosing to get dressed before breakfast or after breakfast. Maybe after breakfast is better because now you don’t have to do a second change because they got breakfast all over. My husband and I constantly debate if we should dress our kid before or after breakfast.

Dr. Sarah (36:28):

There’s some practicality there too, but I’m like, we can, we’re allowed as parents to work with our kids to do things unconventional order, do things in unconventional orders. I just think sometimes there’s a picking of your battles that needs to happen that I just want all parents to feel empowered to be like, I’m picking my battle, and then also I’m going to change my mind in the moment. And can you talk about that? Because I think I find that parents sometimes feel like they’ve painted themselves into a corner. They said, you have to do this, and then now they’re like, how do I disengage from the power struggle without screwing myself later? And I think that’s a myth we’re telling ourselves. I really don’t believe that that’s true, but…

Devon (37:15):

Yeah, I mean definitely. Okay, so first of all, I think it comes down to consistency. So oftentimes we think consistency means right? We do something the same way all the time, perfection, because we’re always in this all or nothing mentality, but I like to define consistency as more often than not, but it’s predictable that we’re going to do X, Y, Z. So now we apply it to a situation where we said something and then we need to go back on it. If you’re not constantly backpedaling, backpedaling once or twice randomly is not going to change the state of the world because you are showing up consistently, predictably in a certain way, and that’s what has been established with your child. However, if you’re backpedaling, every time your child grumps at you, it’s not quite a tantrum, but they’re like grumping at you or staring to whine, cry a little bit like that. Then if you’re consistently giving in more often than not, then that’s where the challenge comes in. So it’s really about looking at, okay, where are you creating consistency?

Dr. Sarah (38:27):

Yeah, I think that’s really important. I think the consistency piece, the permission to say, I’m trying to think of an example of where this comes up a lot because what I’ll also tell parents to do is look at the moments that you are having power struggles. Map ’em out. I’ll actually have parents track for a week.

(38:47):

And invariably there are patterns and they’re unique to each family system, but is it always at nighttime? Is it always in the morning or is it always around a transition or is it around switching from a preferred activity to a less preferred activity? Or is it just because you said so? It’s the defiance piece. I just need to say no to anything you say to me because I need to feel powerful. And is it around siblings? Is it around mom? Is it around dad or whatever? Look for the patterns and then pick one pattern that you’re recognizing to address so that you have the bandwidth as the parent to say, I’m going to set this limit. I’m going to hold this limit very consistently for a little while because, and if I’m trying to hold every limit across all these different patterns and domains and whatever, I’m going to do it for a day or two until I burn out, and then I’m going to stop doing all of them. So it’s like, no, you pick one, you hold that limit, you hold it no matter how much your child loses their absolute mind at you because you held it until that sort of slows and that acceptance piece comes in. And they could be acceptance over days until they are like, all right, she’s not going to budge on this one.

Devon (40:10):

It really comes back to this. I guess the biggest thing really, it comes down to this parenting mindset because I think everything we keep talking about is really the detriment of looking at things through an all or nothing lens.

(40:25):

Because in your example, whenever you’re trying to hold all the limits everywhere, especially if you haven’t been holding a ton of limits, you’re going to burn out. But then if we burn out, then we’re like, well give up on that. So now we’re back into the nothing. And so I think a lot of the struggle that we face as parents is really disrupting that cycle of swaying back and forth between this all or nothing mentality, which is also the same pendulum as the controlling commander and the permissive pushover, right? It’s like all control or no control. And so I think that’s really one of the biggest challenges that we face as parents and caregivers. Just seems like a theme of this conversation.

Dr. Sarah (41:07):

Totally. And it’s like, I don’t know. I mean, we could get into how that even exists, but I feel like we are parenting in a world that still has deep roots, generational, intergenerational roots in very authoritarian approaches to child rearing. Very puritanical, very rigid, all or nothing ways of being that we’ve, I think almost all of our society has agreed to have moved beyond, and yet we hold it inside of us from the generational transmission of these things. So it’s complicated, but I also don’t want parents to think that it’s not changeable, but I also want them to understand why it’s so triggering. We really think deep in our being that we’re failing if our kids are not well-behaved. And the reality is regulating behavior is a very sophisticated cognitive capacity that just doesn’t happen in early childhood, at least not consistently and reliably.

Devon (42:27):

Yeah. Yes, absolutely. Our kids are the opposite of that consistency, predictability that we were just talking about. It’s so true, and that’s why I spend a really big part of my book. I mean, I have one whole section of my book called the Toddler Explained, where I talk about what are realistic expectations? How do you decode behavior? What’s happening in the brain? What’s happening in the sensory system? What the heck is discipline in light of all of this? And then how do we create that developmentally smart discipline? What are those components? And it’s so important to recalibrate ourselves in that area. And there’s a lot of different aspects that go into it. And I talk about all that before I talk about any of the specific challenges like tantrums and whining and screen time and separation anxiety and bath time, and all the things that happen in toddlerhood. And so I just want parents to know that we’re doing really important work, and we’re doing work that’s challenging and takes a lot of effort. So just go easy on yourself and give yourself the benefit of the doubt. Give your child the benefit of the doubt because you’re a human being, and so as your child, and there’s just going to be ups and downs, and that doesn’t mean anything about you or your child.

Dr. Sarah (43:47):

And then I think the beneficial fallout of moving into that headspace is that you aren’t parenting from a place of threat If you really do believe and come to feel in your body that I’ve got this, my kids got this, these behaviors aren’t a referendum on who I am, who they are, what our relationship is, then all of a sudden everything feels a little bit less terrifying. The stakes feel lower, and it’s like, which also calms us down. And so we have more emotional bandwidth in the moment to sit in this wake of lava spewing in their volcanic eruption, right? Like, oh, I always tell parents like, don’t dissect lava if they say they hate you or get away from me, or I’m not inviting you to my birthday party, or all the things, or don’t pick up those words and respond to them as anything other than lava. Like, oh, you’re just feeling so much right now. I think parents, when you have that experience of sitting in front of your child who is absolutely erupting and you don’t have a fight or flight response or maybe just a low level, this is really physiologically very overstimulating, but I’m not registering this as danger. That’s a threshold you cross as a parent that changes the game.

Devon (45:29):

Yeah, I, and that’s the thing, it’s like with establishing the physical safety, that’s why it’s so important to say, this is not an emergency because you’ve actually checked, and then you can tell your brain that’s perceiving these threats that’s like, wait, I’m perceiving a threat that there’s actually not a real threat here. And so every time you start feeling that overwhelming urge of urgency, it is a clue to the fact that you’re actually just in a stress response. And that’s actually the time to drop the rope, not take action, to really turn within. And that urgency sure is a trickster that’s trying to trip us up there.

Dr. Sarah (46:13):

I mean, it’s evolutionarily based, right? It to help us. It’s trying to keep us and alive, but it doesn’t, it’s not accurate all the time.

Devon (46:22):

But that’s what we’re up against. And that’s why it’s so hard because we’re literally up against ingrained automatic evolutionary responses that we have to really work through and work on rewiring how we respond. And that is something that takes time. So having realistic expectations for yourself too as a parent and caregiver, it’s just as important as having those realistic expectations for your toddler.

Dr. Sarah (46:48):

Yeah, we’re all humans.

Devon (46:50):

True.

Dr. Sarah (46:50):

The little ones and the big ones.

Devon (46:52):

All of us.

Dr. Sarah (46:53):

I know if people want to get your book, find you, follow your work, where should we link to in our show notes?

Devon (47:02):

Yeah, absolutely. Well, my new book is available on Amazon, or you can go to transformingtoddlerhood.com/book and you can find it also at all major retailers. And everything for me is transforming. So you can find me on Instagram, find my website, and I love connecting with everyone.

Dr. Sarah (47:22):

Thank you so much, Devon. This was a really fun conversation.

Devon (47:28):

I’m really excited about that. Thank you. I really loved it. Thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Sarah (47:37):

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