When we hear our children say things like, “I don’t want to play with her” or “that’s my toy” it’s easy for us to feel flooded and want to shut down the situations with comments like, “that’s not very nice” or “you need to share.”
But peer rejection is a normal and healthy part of development. While it may take some work for us to calm our own fight or flight response so we can be open to this, it can be helpful to try to lean in and open up a dialogue with our children in these instances so that we may build their compassion, empathy and social awareness.
Joining me today is the co-founder of our practice, Upshur Bren Psychology Group, Dr. Emily Upshur. We’ll dive deep into many of the ways we can do this with our young children, offering you tools and thought provoking prompts—whether your child is the aggressor or the recipient—to help you and your child navigate peer rejection.
Dr. Emily (00:00):
That’s really how we prevent bullying and breeding bullies, right? Is to like take accountability for our piece of it and set a boundary for the other side.
Dr. Sarah (00:16):
One of the best things we can do as adults is help our children see the world in shades of gray rather than black and white. Rejection is a normal part of life. Whether our young child is doing the rejecting and making us cringe, or they’re being rejected, which can have us seeing red or feeling heartbroken. Knowing how to handle peer rejection, which is an inevitable part of development, provides us with the opportunity to help our child learn important life lessons and build their empathy, resilience, and critical thinking skills. Here today. To answer a listener’s question about how to navigate this tricky situation is Dr. Emily Upshur. If you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, you know Emily. She is the co-founder of our joint practice, Upshur Bren Psychology Group, in Pelham, New York. And she’s also the mother of three, so she has a wealth of knowledge and experience in this subject.
(01:12):
Hi, I’m Dr. Sarah Bren, a clinical psychologist and mom of two. In this podcast, I’ve taken all of my clinical experience, current research on brain science and child psychology, and the insights I’ve gained on my own parenting journey and distilled everything down into easy to understand and actionable parenting insights. So you can tune out the noise and tune into your own authentic parenting voice with confidence and calm. This is Securely Attached.
(01:50):
Hello, welcome back to the podcast, Dr. Emily Upshur.
Dr. Emily (01:53):
Hi. So good to be here again.
Dr. Sarah (01:56):
So you are here because we have another listener question. This listener wrote that she’s wondering if we’ve ever talked before or can talk about rejection and how to deal with it, specifically when a kid rejects another kid, how to navigate that and deal with it emotionally.
Dr. Emily (02:13):
Yeah, I mean, I, you know, this happens so often, right? And I think we, the, an important piece of what I think we would like to talk about today is like both sides of this, right? Being rejected and also maybe being the one who’s rejecting, right? The kid’s rejecting, I think the tenants are the same. You sort of, the fundamental underlying values here are really similar because what we’re trying to do is sort of, you know, of course validate our child’s feeling and the what’s happened in, in the moment, right? But in that same token, I think it’s really important to think about the environment, what happened here, right? Can we, can we sort of stand in the other person’s shoes? Can we sort of do a little bit of what we call reflective functioning? Like, that person hit you and that’s not okay, and that must feel really rotten. I wonder what was going on with them, right? Or I wonder what happened right before, you know, and did something occur during those situations? We call those the ABCs, right? The antied behaviors and consequences of things. So I guess my main goal here as a first line is to be curious, right? To not close off my parent. Like to not get into my parenting zone of like, what happened, something happened to you, or, you know, you did something.
Dr. Sarah (03:34):
Yeah, it’s our mama bear or papa bear can come out in those moments for sure.
Dr. Emily (03:39):
Right. And when that comes out, I think we end up closing down conversations rather than opening them up. So I think our main goal here is to open up conversations and to remain curious so we can really figure out the nuance of this, right? It’s, they can be much, they’re often and almost always are much more complex than what’s presented to us by our, you know, our kids.
Dr. Sarah (04:00):
Yes, I agree. And I think you bring up a really good point. And it, I think sometimes, like you’re saying, our, our mama bear, papa bear instincts will kick in, or just our fear, like, someone hurt my kid, or someone made my kid feel bad, or my kid hurt someone else or made another kid feel bad, like, oh my gosh, I have to like crack down on that or what’s wrong? Like, it, it, we, we can very easily panic in that moment. I think that’s a very reasonable feeling that can overcome us. So I think I always sort of recommend starting with, for just your own parent self to say, I’m gonna take a breath. I’m gonna get a tiny little bit of space here. I’m gonna sort of and model that too for my kid, right? Ugh, this is tough. Let’s think about this.
(04:44):
Let’s slow it down. I always suggest slowing it down and even just say, Hey, let’s slow things down and take a look at what happened here. Huh? You’re saying, and then I would use a lot of narration rather than interpretation, right? So, ugh, you’re telling me that you were at the playground and this kid said you can’t play with us, and then he, you know, kind of pushed you away and walked away. That probably didn’t feel good, right? So I’m narrating the things I’m hearing, I’m not passing judgment on, I’m just trying to like get an objective read on the things and then I’m sort of kind of trying to connect with my child’s emotional experience. I bet that didn’t feel good. I’m sorry that happened to you, right? So I can, I can sort of have this objective read on things, narrating, putting things into a story, making sense of it, validating their emotional experience.
(05:39):
And then there’s that curiosity. I wonder what was going on for them. I wonder what was happening, what was going on before, you know, So then you go kind of, you’re zooming out, you’re going, you’re repressing rewind, trying to help your kid create context. You know, this is a building block of empathy, right? Trying to understand what’s going on the other person’s mind when they do something that doesn’t feel good to us, versus immediately assigning them the role of the villain. Like it’s, you know, they are the aggressor and I am the victim. I think we can get trapped if we go that route with our kids. You know?
Dr. Emily (06:12):
And our kids can get trapped, right? Cause they’ll cut. They might as they get older, come out of a situation like that saying, it wasn’t my fault. This is what happened. Right? So I think getting out of those binary holds, right? Of like black and white thinking and things that we know to be tricky for kids to really take ownership of their side of things or to tolerate the distress that they might have done. Something to contribute to the interpersonal dynamic. We sort of know that as adults, as we zoom back and I love like slow down, right? We can take a better look at like, well this is a little trickier than just you’re wrong and he’s right or he’s wrong and you’re right, right there. That can, there can be some like, you know, I think it’s always important to set some for boundaries about violence, right? So we we’re, we’re a hundred percent not advocating that you ignore that or downplay that. There can be very firm boundaries around that, but that’s not where the story should end. Right. We should zoom out a little bit. And I like the idea of like, you know, being really zoomed in and the motions and then maybe zoom out and look at the sort of the context and what’s happening.
Dr. Sarah (07:17):
Yeah. And I think too, like going into this idea of like, we don’t have to take sides, right? We can very much support our child and their emotional, you know, safety while not being very quick to be like, I don’t like the way they behave. That was mean. That’s not an okay thing to do. Like obviously you could say like, hitting is not okay. I wonder what was going on for him that he felt so out of control.
Dr. Emily (07:47):
Yeah. And I think like, this is a tricky piece and I, but I think it’s so valuable is really accountability. Like personal accountability. I think when we teach children, you know, to, in your example to say like, you know, hitting is never okay and violence isn’t okay and you really should have a boundary around that. But if I pull back a little, I’m thinking what happened right before this? Like, were you, you know, like I can just say for my own kids I’m like, were you being a bit of a scotch? Like, were you a little bit, you know, were you poking the bear a little or did, did you maybe think it was unkind or, or maybe like, maybe it was hard for that kid cause you kept winning and you weren’t being a nice winner. You know, like, I think there are ways that we can both validate and, and make a boundary around the inappropriate behavior, but also, you know, maintain a little bit of the accountability for the dynamic.
(08:37):
And that’s really how we prevent bullying and reading bullies, right. Is to like, take accountability for our piece of it and set a boundary for the other side. Right. Right. And I think that that’s actually really hard as a parent when something, when you feel your child has quote unquote been wronged to say like, my ki my kid had a role in this. Even a slight tiny, teeny tiny one. Yeah. you know, cuz we really, we really think, and when we get it, you know, into that sort of like protector mode, it’s harder to be more nuanced in that way.
Dr. Sarah (09:10):
Right. And I’ll say like, there are certainly sometimes where like there’s no, you did nothing. Like I have watched my son out of absolutely nowhere just push my daughter down and she didn’t do anything like her just being a human being in his space was enough to, you know, set him off. And so in those situations I do say like, you know, I think he’s having a really hard time. How are you? And I attend to her. So like I do, I, especially with siblings, cuz you’re usually there, you’re usually like, you can catch it like on the playground or getting a secondhand story. It’s harder to know like, Mm, there’s gotta be more to this story. And I think there’s also things we said for not always being like, I don’t know that I believe you. There’s more to this story. Like I, we wanna really like let our kid know like, hey, you’re what you’re telling me I hear and I’m gonna take it at face value.
(09:59):
And also there can be more things going on even if we don’t even realize it. Right? Maybe you didn’t even notice, or maybe he’s having a really bad day, but this idea that we don’t immediately say there’s a side and a wrong, there’s a right side and a wrong side and you’re on the right side and they’re on the wrong side. I think that just helps to create this sense of like, nuance and nuance is a really tricky and developmentally advanced thing for young kids. And so the more opportunities we can sort of teach them nuance, the better, you know? Yeah. It’s, it’s something that has to be learned and modeled and practiced. So these are like opportunities to take nuance. And also I do think, you know, taking strong sides when a kid ha and a friend have an altercation can bite us in the butt as parents, Right. Because then our kids might get back in sync with that friend and then now they don’t wanna talk to us about that friend because we, we went off about how much we didn’t like that kid and we never really liked the way they treat you. And I don’t think that he’s a very good friend and, you know, I think we can kind of, we, we don’t wanna alienate our kids from feeling like they can return to a relationship.
Dr. Emily (11:09):
Yeah. I think that’s a great, great point. And I think the other piece that’s sort of similar to that is it doesn’t help when your kids on the other side of it, right? Yes. That sort of helps. It, it sort of, it hinders and it makes it more difficult, you know, for you to sort of stand that stake, that stand on the ground. And then I do think as a parent you feel a lot of shame, right? Because you maybe you’ve never had been on the other side of that Right. Or, you know, so I think it really does sort of imbue much more empathy and sort of understanding and really the end goal being better conflict resolution. Right? Right. So that’s really like, I think we have to zoom out to that what’s our end goal here? Our end goal is that our child knows how to navigate this better. Not that they don’t that, that they act perfectly all the time. Right? Right. Again, it’s sort of what we talk about with emotions. Like, it’s not that we don’t say like, you can’t be angry, but we do say you can’t hit. Right. Right. It’s not that we say the emotion is bad, it’s the behavior around it that we need to have appropriate. And it’s the same thing in this situation. Right.
Dr. Sarah (12:09):
I also think it’s very important kind of this idea that like, for whether it’s our kid is the, the person who received the rejection or the aggression or our kid is the person who who delivered it, is this idea that we wanna teach all the kids involved. That our behaviors don’t make a person. So like, I engaged in a bad behavior, I made a bad choice, I lost my cool or someone else did that we’re all still good people and that we might be having a hard time and having a difficult time kind of being in control of what we say or do in that moment. And I think when we hold that standard for the kid that did it to our kid and we hold that standard for our own kid when they do it to someone else like that, there’s very much, there’s a ton of value in that as like just developing healthy humans to build a society of like empathy and being able to say, Hey, you know what? You did something that wasn’t nice, but you’re not a mean person.
Dr. Emily (13:05):
Yeah. I’m, I’m like I say that maybe a million times a day in my own family, right? Like, I don’t like how you behaved, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like you. Right. Or your behavior was not okay, but that doesn’t mean you’re not a good kid, right? Yeah. Like, you’re a good kid who did a bad thing or said a bad word. Right. You’re not a bad kid. And I think that that’s so I think you’re right, like parenting traps when you of like, that’s a bad kid or they can’t play with my kid anymore. Right. That’s because that’s out of our like knee jerk fear reaction. And I think it’s so important to check that right before we, our face with our child.
Dr. Sarah (13:42):
And I think if we, if we do get in that trap, not only does it put us in a trap, but it can also inadvertently communicate to our own child. Okay. When I do behaviors like that, I’m also bad.
Dr. Emily (13:51):
Right.
Dr. Sarah (13:52):
So it’s like we kind of have to watch how judgmental we are of certain behaviors and try to like look under, just like we want, like we talk about this all the time in this podcast is like when your kid is doing something, you know, problematic to look underneath the behavior. And we kind of wanna offer that same grace too the kids that our kids are interacting with, you know, and model for our child how to do that. Right? Oh gosh, he must have really been having a hard time. I know he hit you and what, you know, like it’s okay to say I will not let you hit me. But also I wonder why he did that must have been having a hard time. So there’s that empathy.
Dr. Emily (14:32):
Yeah. Or what could he have done differently? Right. Like there is a teaching moment in that other side too. Right?
Dr. Sarah (14:37):
Right. Cause our kid will find themselves in that same place. Our kids will be aggressive and reject others. And I actually think, just to put a big umbrella over this, that like, this is developmentally normal behavior for young kids. Young kids reject one another, they fight with one another, they even hit one another. Obviously we wanna help them not do that, but they’re going to, or they’re going to have the urge to, and that that is actually just part of growing up and learning to kind of develop inhibition skills. And that’s something that comes with a much more developed frontal lobe. And that they, they can’t always inhibit an impulse. And so when we, when we, when we sort of vilify a certain behavior as a, as a sign of a bad person, we run the risk of our child feeling like a bad person when they invariably do the same thing. And like kids do play around with this, they play around with their power, they play around with being exclude, excluding other kids and inviting other kids. Like it’s, it’s, it’s a rough it’s a rough kind of learning experience. It’s, it’s, it’s painful to watch, but it does happen and it kind of needs to happen.
Dr. Emily (15:49):
Yeah. And I, and I, and I I agree totally. I think it’s much more important to unpack the situation so that we don’t just say stuff like, you know, so and so hit you and that was wrong. And don’t you ever do that either, Right. So that, that creates, like, I think to your point that I think is a nice and under talked about point, which is that illusion of perfection. Like no child, that’s a lot of pressure, right? I can’t do this, I can’t do that. Right. And rather than let’s unpack this, what else could he have done? What else could you have done? What are the skills that we can help you build to not have it reach this you know, like tip of the iceberg, right? Like, how can we short circuit this sooner on the chain of events so that we can give you skills to, to have this go in a better direction.
Dr. Sarah (16:35):
Right? Which still houses all of this conversation in what we do, not who we are. Right? Like, okay, this happened. What else could we do in a situation like this? How could we respond differently? We’re always just in response to something. We’re human beings responding to stimuli at the end of the day. We do everything for a reason. Yeah. It may not be obvious to the other person what our reasons are because we have subjective experiences, but we are compelled to respond to things. So when kids hit, there’s a reason. And I’m not saying it’s in a good reason, I’m not saying it’s an acceptable reason, but there is a reason it didn’t just fall out the sky. Yeah. And so helping our kids understand that there’s context, context is so important.
Dr. Emily (17:19):
Yeah. And some regulation along the way.
Dr. Sarah (17:21):
Absolutely.
Dr. Emily (17:22):
And I think the other piece that I sort of would add to that, which is maybe dovetails a little bit into this, is, is there a way to sort of like, with your son set of boundary in a more appropriate way, right? Like, is there a way to kindly quote unquote reject someone, you know, like that’s like how do we gracefully handle, you know, not wanting to play with somebody or needing to set your own boundary. And look, we as adults struggle with this. So, you know, it can be very difficult to figure out how to do it with kids, but I think that’s our goal, right? Is to be able to sort of increase our communication and our self-regulation skills during those moments.
Dr. Sarah (18:02):
I do think like giving kids concrete skills to be able to set boundaries, because I often think when kids are rejecting one another or in aggression with one another, it’s usually often, especially with young kids, it’s not to be mean. It’s usually because they’ve run out enough of, of a way to say they need something different. So like, you know, this comes up a lot. My house with my kids, like my son will yell at my daughter, be like, get outta my room. I don’t wanna play with you. Yeah. And you know, I could go in and say, Hey, you need to be nice to your sister and you need to let her play with you. Yeah. Or I could say, Huh, I think you need space. What is a way that you could ask for space in a more kind way? Yeah. Could you do this? Could you do this? Could you do this? And so it’s like, I actually have to give my child a little permission, had that autonomy and to say, No, I don’t wanna play with you. But how can we teach them to say no kindly in a way that’s more socially sophisticated. And it doesn’t leave another child feeling as rejected.
Dr. Emily (19:02):
Yeah. I mean like, look, we do this all the time as adults, right? Like we say white lies all the time, and then we, like, you don’t want our children to lie. Right? Like, that’s a graceful way of getting out of a dinner that you don’t wanna go to is to say, I’m very tired or I have another engagement. Right. Kids don’t have those skills and they don’t have that repertoire of experience to know how to gracefully get out of a social situation even if it’s appropriate. Right. Right. Even the most appropriate way. This happens a lot with play dates, I think. And that’s an important piece that is common. You know? You know, I don’t wanna play with this kid, but I kind of wanna play with this kid, but how do I address that? You know? And, and I think we might not know the answer right. As the grown up and talking it through and being collaborative with our, with our, with our children about how to best preserve the relationships Right. And be kind, but also establish our boundaries is really important. And maybe we have to do that together. Like maybe we figure that out together with our kids.
Dr. Sarah (19:59):
Yeah. And I think as parents sometimes we get kind of stuck in this place where we wanna throw the baby out with bathwater. Like if our kids says, I don’t really wanna play with that girl, but I really wanna play with this girl. We’ll be like, you’re, that’s mean, you know, you can’t exclude. Right. Excluding people is mean and we don’t do that. And I get the urge to do that. I mean, I think every mom who’s ever been a kid who got excluded by a girl growing up really wants to sort of say, you can’t be that mean girl. Right? That’s a terrifying idea in our mind that we could have a child who’s the mean kid. And so we and very understandably can get very like, I gotta shut that down right now. The thing is, if I believe our objective in that moment is to help our child to be the kind kid, right?
(20:42):
So we have to understand that this bit of a long game here, if you just shut down the quote unquote mean behavior without helping them understand that there’s a wish underneath that. Right. The wish might be I wanna play with that kid. I like that kid that feels good to play with that kid. To go there or even to say the wish might be to not play with that other kid and that that’s also okay. So we want to acknowledge our children’s agency and give them some permission to have it to say you, I think what I’m hearing you say is that you really like playing with this girl and maybe it doesn’t feel as good to play with this girl. Okay. I understand that. That makes sense. And you’re allowed to have that wish. Right? I wonder how we could invite somebody without making the other person feel left out.
(21:34):
What would you do in this situation? What would feel good to you if you were the, or like what would it feel like for you to be the person who didn’t get invited? How would that, how do you think that would feel? Yeah. Okay. Well, do we want you, There’s ways that you can have a conversation without immediately shutting it down as mean. And again, I think this goes back to like, not labeling the child, but labeling the behavior. Ugh. You know what? I think that might leave someone feeling a little left out. Let’s think about a way that we can solve that problem together. Do you wanna have a special playdate with this friend that you want? Because, and then at your birthday party, we’re gonna invite everybody, you know, like if they, maybe it’s like, I don’t wanna invite them to my birthday party. Well, why don’t we have a playdate with this person that feels really special to you and, and then at your birthday party we’ll include everybody or something. But like, I think you kind of have to get collaborative with your kid and not just shut it down.
Dr. Emily (22:25):
I, I totally agree. And I also think like a little bit of a tricky little thing that comes up is that kids are super concrete and fickle, right? So they might not wanna play with someone one day, but the next day they really wanna play with someone or they have a scheduled play date with one kid that same day and then they change their mind, Right? Cuz the shinier thing comes on the, you know, so I think it’s, I think it’s really is very nuanced, right? Like we want our kids to have agency but we also want them to tolerate, you know, that maybe they, maybe if they committed to having a playdate with somebody, they’re gonna have a play date with that person. Like how do we navigate that and not be rejecting in the moment? How do we help them to sort of get through that, tolerating, like in that exact moment they change their mind, but maybe you’ll get to the other side really quickly, you know? Yeah. There’s a lot in that that I think is really important for us to sort of be not, again, like not in that overprotective parent mode, not face value, right? Yeah. Like sort of take it all a little bit, slow it down, take it with a grain of salt, narrate what’s happening, you know, so that we can help them navigate those situations in a better manner.
Dr. Sarah (23:32):
Yeah. I mean we really have to kind of be our most skillful selves in these moments because we kind of have to model for them, how do we hold space for all these sides? There is no right answer. There’s not one right or wrong thing. So we have to kind of weigh the different options and see how they would feel to us and maybe to somebody else. Like, and I think these are for like maybe older kids, right? Like I’m thinking the 5, 6, 7, 8 to like upwards set. I think for really little kids, you know, my three year old often will say she’s not three yet. God, my two and a half year old will say, you know, I don’t wanna play with her. She’s not my friend. I’m not gonna get into a whole really nuanced conversation about how it might, I might, but I might reflect back.
(24:20):
Ouch. Maybe that didn’t feel good her to hear that. Yeah. I wonder what else we could say. And I think this goes back for very little kids, sort of at the root of this is really giving them assertiveness skills. I, I always talk about this cuz it drove me bonkers, but I had like, like my very, when my kids were very little, like their very young daycare classroom, the teachers would teach them to say no thank you when they got hit. And it drove me nuts because I was like, I don’t want my kid to say no thank you when they get hit. I want my kid to say, no I don’t like that. Or no, that’s not okay to touch me. Like, I want my kid to be able to be firm. I you say no thank you when someone offers you Brussels sprouts, right?
(25:01):
Like, I want my kids to have manners and be able to say, no thank you. I don’t want that. That’s not for me. I don’t want my kids saying no thank you. When someone is hitting them, I want them to be able to distinguish that that’s something that requires firmness and conviction and clarity in their tone right? And giving little kids the agency to say no strongly and teach them when that’s appropriate and how to do it helps them to be less rejecting of other kids when they’re older because they’re actually able to like assert their boundaries. And it’s usually kids who, who feel like their boundaries are being encroached upon are the ones that usually will do like the aggressive behavior or the rejecting behavior cuz they’re, they are feeling trapped and they, they’ll get more aggressive in how they protect their, their space.
Dr. Emily (25:49):
Yeah. No, I think that that’s a really good point. And I also think if, if we do treat, teach that at an earlier, at an earlier age, we sort of also get the potential of stopping the behavior. Like if the child, like in a scenario where a child takes a toy from another child and then the child hits the child, Right? If we can, if we can teach assertiveness, we can say, no, don’t take my toy. You know, that might prevent the hitting, right? Like Right. And or if you can say, no, don’t hit me. You know, like, I, I guess it, it could even, it just provides opportunities for there to be, you know, more appropriate interactions or
Dr. Sarah (26:25):
Absolutely. Yes. I think teaching assertiveness skills to the aggressive child is probably the most important, Right. Because they’re being aggressive because they’re not able to assert their need. Right. You took a toy from me and I can’t say I was playing with that. Give it back to me now. So I hit, Cause that’s my, that’s my physical version of that, of those words. Yeah. But if we can teach a child to have the words, we can mitigate the, the aggressive communication of I want that toy back. Sure. and also it goes into this place of like, how do we, where’s our role in all of this, right? Like, yeah. Do we swoop in and rescue and say, No, no, no, they’re playing with that. Give that back share your toys. Or do we say, Oh, I see you took that toy from her.
(27:13):
She seems upset. I wonder what you guys are gonna do. Right? Like, we don’t have to, if we constantly step in and solve the problem and set the, set everything straight, we’re sort of taking away this opportunity for these very young kids to learn to navigate this stuff so that when they are older, they’ve got some social skills, they’ve got some interpersonal conflict resolution skills, they can say, Oh, I didn’t like that and now I have to figure out a way to get my toy back. Or I have to figure out a way to ask this person to play with me. Or I have to figure out a person to ask for. I have to figure out a way to ask this person for more space.
Dr. Emily (27:55):
I mean, I think this is a great topic and I think as younger kids, I love laying the foundation for this, right? Like we are, we are trying to invest, but like, let’s say you’re a parent, have a little bit of an older kid and, and you know, who, you know, our earlier years we, we weren’t doing these fundamental things or we tried our best and, and that’s totally okay. You’re still not lost, you know? I think, you know, I think that’s so important if we can still teach these skills at older ages as well.
Dr. Sarah (28:20):
Yeah. And teach
Dr. Emily (28:21):
Children how to navigate them and it, and they change, right. Like their needs and how it’s expressed totally changes. So I think, you know, in a future episode, taking care of sort of discussing a little bit of the older elementary, maybe even early middle school years and how to do conflict resolution or sort of deal with rejection is a big piece of this too.
Dr. Sarah (28:42):
Yes. We should totally, let’s do a follow up episode where we talk a little bit about how to apply some of these same ideas to the older kids because it gets way harder and way more complicated as they get older and this stuff doesn’t go away.
Dr. Emily (28:55):
Yep. Big pigs, big kids, big problems.
Dr. Sarah (28:57):
Yep. Oh yeah.
Dr. Emily (28:59):
Little kids have problems, but it all feels like it’s hard as a parent. So I, we might as well try to tackle them here.
Dr. Sarah (29:06):
I agree. All right, well thanks for coming on and let’s, let’s set up that follow up episode. Stay tuned. We’ll get back to you on it.
(29:17):In this episode, you heard us talk about needing to do a follow up episode. So that’s just what we’re gonna do as children grow. Rejection only gets more nuanced and complicated. So next week we are continuing the conversation about peer conflict resolution, how to get your child to open up to you and ways to prevent the formation of a victim narrative when parenting grade school kids. And if you have a question that you want us to answer or a topic you want us to tackle, let me know. You can email me at info@drsarahbren.com or go to @drsarahbren on Instagram and DM me. Parenting can feel hard, isolating, and overwhelming. So I hope that by answering your questions directly, Emily and I could be a source of support and strength. We are all in this together, so thanks for listening and don’t be a stranger.
I want to hear from you! Send me a topic you want me to cover or a question you want answered on the show!
✨ DM me on Instagram at @securelyattachedpodcast or @drsarahbren
✨ Send an email to info@drsarahbren.com
✨ And check out drsarahbren.com for more parenting resources
