Effective discipline can be confusing! .
It may seem that we are trying so hard to be caring, empathetic, and patient with our children and yet, the challenging behaviors are still occurring. And then when we attempt to set limts our child has a meltdown that appears to never endWhat are we doing wrong? In this episode of “Unruffled” Janet explores three common reasons our attempts at respectful discipline can end up being ineffective. She suggests nuanced adjustments that can make all the difference. Her recommendations will not only help to simplify our approach (for the win!) but also help our kids to feel safe, seen, and supported, deepening our parent-child bonds.
Transcript of “Discipline Isn’t Working – 3 Common Reasons and What To Do Instead”
Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.
Today I’m going to be talking about three common reasons that discipline doesn’t work as we hope it will, meaning our responses to our child’s behavior, the way we’re handling it. Why does this keep happening? Why is the behavior maybe getting more pronounced? Why does this feel messy and unclear to me? What’s going on?
Anyway, I just want to acknowledge that that’s still out there, but it seems like a lot of us, or the people in my circles at least, are going maybe too far the opposite way and getting all cluttered about what’s going on with how we’re supposed to react to feelings and what we’re supposed to do.
Here’s the first of the three common reasons that discipline isn’t working: We react to the symptoms rather than addressing what’s behind them. We’re seeing all this behavior in our face. And because our child in so many ways seems so reasonable, it’s hard to realize that this is absolutely not reasonable behavior, this is kooky behavior. And it’s about our child feeling out of control.
I had an exchange with a parent around this on, I think it was Instagram, and I just want to share some of it here:
Hi, Janet-
I love your workbooks and podcast, it got us through a really hard 2.5 to 3.5 stretch. But alas, our four-year-old is driving the house insane. We do have a six-month-old baby, which she was doing okay with, but our beloved dog got sick and had to be put down at the end of March. This was combined with both grandparents being hospitalized, who live with us and she adores. So I know the reasoning, but it has been unbearable. My wife and I have been very ruffled lately, and all your teachings have gone out the window. We also got a nine-month-old dog unexpectedly, which adds to the stress.
She is yelling constantly, defiant, doesn’t listen at all, screams at the dog, the baby, strangers, the grandparents, etc. She’s been rough with the baby (bit her once), physical with the dog, and is back to hitting and newly biting us. She is super smart, borderline gifted, and manipulative. Bedtime now takes two-plus hours, with screaming and yelling and running out of her room. When asked about her behavior, she says she doesn’t know why. Lately I’ve been trying to reintroduce your techniques, with some success. Tonight after going full exorcist demon mode at 9:00 p.m., she admitted in bed that she is sad every day because of the dog dying and misses her.
I feel so lost daily and like a failure as a parent. She’s so out of control. Please help. She’s a model citizen at pre-K, with no behavior problems.
This family is going through so much and it would be bizarre if the parents were just feeling fine and comfortable and their children were feeling just fine and comfortable. None of them are. And our children are especially affected by us, even more than by these outside factors. Their main influence in terms of how comfortable they are and how settled they feel and how well they’re able to exert self-control is all based on us. Life happens and everything is going on right there, I feel for this family. If this wasn’t all happening like this, I would be really, really surprised.
The second reason that we get caught up with behaviors and discipline isn’t working, and this is closely linked to the last one: We say no to the behaviors, but we don’t allow for another way for our child to share their feelings. I don’t have a particular note about this right now, but I get many, many questions from parents where they’re doing this very typical, normal thing where we’re just saying, Nope, I can’t let you. Stop. Don’t do any of these things. But we’re not allowing any way for our child to share the feelings driving that behavior another way.
And this isn’t a complicated thing where we have to figure out what they’re exactly feeling and all that. Not at all. All we need to do is what’s right in front of us. Just seeing, just taking a moment, “Can’t let you do that. I’m going to stop you. You want to keep doing that. You’re really having a hard time stopping yourself.” Just that little mini-reflection right there, where we’re seeing our child and they see us seeing them, has a calming effect. And helps them to realize, My behaviors are not cool. They’re not telling me you can’t do this behavior and you should never feel like you want to do that behavior. We don’t mean to give kids that message, but that’s the one that they often get when we get very focused on the symptoms. We’re just dealing with symptoms, symptoms, symptoms, and nothing we’re doing is helping with the cause of the behavior. So these are just reminders for us.
The third common reason discipline isn’t working: We feel responsible in some way or sad for our child or too uncomfortable for our child to have these feelings. So we want to make them better, instead of just setting the boundary and welcoming our child’s full force of whatever feelings they have. This is my job. And yeah, you can share with me how much you don’t like my choice, how much you disagree. And when you’re doing that, I’m trying to remember as a parent that you’re actually sharing feelings that probably don’t have that much to do with this specific boundary, that are more generalized or more on a theme. Like, you’ve got a six-month-old baby sibling and your parents are really wound up about all these things going on. And you’re not responding well, that’s throwing them off even more.
It’s not about what I was demanding in that moment or what I thought I needed. It’s about these bigger things. But as a parent, we’re still in that other mode where we’re seeing the symptoms, maybe forgetting they’re not coming from a place of reason in our child, so we second-guess ourselves or we doubt ourselves. Oh gosh, maybe I don’t have a right to go to the bathroom by myself or say no to this, or I shouldn’t have. Oh, it hurts her. She needs to do this and that, and I feel bad. And now she’s having this strong reaction. I’ve got to be delicate around that and try to kind of placate her a little bit, calm her down.
The parent that I consulted with in the last episode, called “Struggling with a Strong-Willed Toddler’s Tantrums,” this is what we were talking about, that she thought her job was to teach her child self-regulation on top of everything else. On top of setting a boundary and allowing you to have your feelings, I also have to teach you to control your feelings or calm you down. No, that cannot be our job. And thank you to all the parents who wrote to me and said that that message really hit home from that last podcast. I recommend listening to it if you’re interested, because I get to talk with the parent in person, so we got to have a back and forth.
Again, that’s this whole pendulum swinging so far in this direction that now we have so many jobs as parents and it’s not clear Because our child is getting this message that it’s not completely safe when they go to those dark places or go to those uncomfortable places in themselves. That we don’t think it’s completely safe, that we feel like this is kind of an event. This is something you need help with, this is something I’ve got to invest energy into. It’s not just what happens with young children, which is that their feelings go up and down all over the place, and that’s how it’s supposed to be. The younger the child, the more this will happen. And the more that’s going on in our household, the more this will happen.
It’s tricky, right? Because as parents, we do tend to see, especially when we’re in a stressful time and it feels like everything’s black and white, that either we’re being gentle and so kind, or we’re being rejecting and you get what you get and get over it and you shouldn’t be doing that. But there’s this wonderful middle place that is so helpful to children, that encourages all the things we want to encourage our child to share with us instead of worry about how we’re feeling about their feelings. Even if we’re a little bit uncomfortable, that comes off to our child, unfortunately. They’re so tuned in, right?
So I just want to circle back to this dad on Instagram because he gave a little follow-up. He said:
Thank you. I’ve been trying to just sit with her and let the storm ride over me the last few days, and she seems to be responding better.
I wrote back:
Great, and you don’t even have to sit with her every time. Definitely don’t need to make an event out of every explosion, or any explosion. All that’s needed is acceptance and as much understanding as you can muster that she’s feeling it and going through it.
That’s me trying to quickly explain that sweet spot that we all can find in ourselves. We definitely have it, but we need to practice it. We need to taste it and then we need to practice it. And it can become pretty comfortable. We’re never going to be entirely comfortable when our child is upset and when we’ve been the cause of that, of course. But it starts to become a familiar place and it feels right. And it works, because our child’s upsets are shorter, the difficult behaviors lessen. We see the safety it gives our child when we’re accepting, but we’re not seeing this as a big deal.
But after that moment of feeling really disappointed and kind of sad that this parent had that response, it’s amazing how quickly I wanted to just try to help her to maybe get something she wasn’t quite getting. And of course, she just gave me this very small example. And because I’m into this topic so much, it’s like a challenge for me, now I want to help her, to make this easier for her. Not to say at all that all those parents that shared the success stories in that episode, which is called “Discipline That Works — Your Best Responses to Your Kids’ Behaviors.” There were like eight parents that I shared from there, and none of them wrote back to me and said, “By the way, after that success it’s happily ever after and everything’s easy now with my child.” And I doubt that happened with any of them
This thing about discipline and feelings—this dynamic where we set the boundary, they get to share the feelings, we all move through—we do have to be kind of brave, I feel. Brave and believing in our kids. Believing in their ability to go through life with all the disappointments and the heartbreak and the losses and the anger. They’ve got what it takes, they can do it. And we can do this. It’s so much less complicated than all the messages out there around feelings and behaviors are making it out to be. It’s really quite simple, the dynamic: I see what’s going on. I set the boundary with confidence. I welcome you to share whatever you feel about it, that’s your prerogative. And we go through our day like that.
I really hope some of this helps. And there’s a ton more about this in my No Bad Kids Master Course, and in my book No Bad Kids, which has helped many, many parents turn a corner.
Thank you so much for listening. We can do this.
