When our kids’ behavior seems negative or inappropriate, we know we should disallow it. But what if the behavior continues? Or goes from bad to worse? What is our child needing from us or telling us that we’re missing? There’s often a simple, yet easy to overlook, answer. In this episode, Janet responds to notes from parents who have become alarmed by their kids’ recent behavior. One child seems hooked on playing that he’s a “bad guy” and becomes physically aggressive. Another tells his parents he wants to hurt them. A third is sneaking food and even medicine. These parents are unerringly patient and empathetic, but nothing seems to work. One parent writes: “It’s been getting more intense over the past several months, and I really want it to stop, but I don’t know how. Am I doing something wrong?” Janet has an idea for what they may be missing, and she explains how it applies in each of these families’ situation.
Transcript of “Baffled by Bad Behavior – Do This First”
Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.
Today there were three questions that came up in different emails and, in one case, a message. They’re very different, but they all reminded me of something really, really important that I think maybe gets taken for granted, or maybe I’ve taken it for granted in some of my advice. And it’s crucial. It’s the key to easing so many behaviors that our child has, pretty much everything. It’s the key to developing the bond of trust that we all want with our children, that sense that they have that they can tell us anything, confide in us, show us whatever difficult things they’re going through. It’s the key to all that, and it will help us to solve all kinds of behavior issues that we’re concerned about. And here’s the advice, and then I’m going to talk about how it works in these different issues that parents are raising with me.
The advice is to do this first: See your child. Meet them where they are, seeing them with acceptance and curiosity. And this can be the opposite of what we might feel we should do in these moments. We probably feel we should say, Don’t do that behavior! Try to talk them out of it, maybe get a little angry with our child for doing it, maybe ignore it. But in most cases, none of that will really help give us what we want, which is for this behavior and other behaviors to stop, for children to stop needing to do them or stop having the impulse to do them. Because encrypted in our child’s behavior is a message. There’s always a message in the behavior. We may never understand the message entirely, but the simple gesture of demonstrating to our child that we are open to seeing and understanding and, from there, helping, is the key. Because it’s from that place that our child feels safe to be open with us, to feel our unconditional acceptance and love, that we’re on their team. Which is something I say a lot here, I know, but I don’t say it lightly. It’s so important.
So often we jump straight to the disallowing part, making sure our child knows that what they’re doing displeases us, that it’s a no. And it can be scary not to do that, right? Does my child really know that this is not okay? and Why aren’t they getting the message? But the thing is, they almost always do know that, and that’s actually part of what’s in the message that they’re giving us: I know this isn’t great what I’m doing. I know you don’t want me to be doing this. I’m sensing that all over the place. I need you to see me, to stick with me, stay on my team here and help.
Here’s the first note that I wanted to respond to:
I have a question for you that I couldn’t find an answer to on your website. My son, who’s four years old, has become very sneaky in the last few months, mostly around food. I’m always very intentional about making sure he and his two-year-old brother get protein-rich meals and snacks to keep their bellies full. I’m also intentional to keep meals fun and pick foods I think they’ll enjoy, and we always eat as a family.
In the last few months, he’s become incredibly sneaky and started to get food out of the fridge or the cabinet without asking. Usually what he’s doing is sneaking things like fruit. But a few weeks ago, I caught him eating multiple chocolate chip cookies that I had made for him and his brother to have as a snack later. Just today, my husband found him hiding under a table with a bowl of ice cream. Where this sneaking habit becomes more dangerous is that I’ve caught him multiple times trying to drink his cold medicine. I explained to him how dangerous it could be to have medicine without a grown-up making sure he has the right amount, and then the next day, I caught him again. (I’ll add that, since this happened multiple times, I’ve moved all our medicine up to a very high, hard-to-reach spot.)
I just can’t figure out what to do or say to keep him honest about the things he’s consuming. Usually I’m very firm but kind with my boundaries. Like today, he started asking for ice cream before breakfast. I said, “No, it’s too early and we’re about to eat breakfast. Let’s have it for an afternoon snack this afternoon when it’s hot outside.” He cried at my response, but I just went on with making breakfast and he moved on after a few minutes. He then proceeded to ask for ice cream probably every hour. I responded the same way each time, until my husband found him eating it.
What it feels like is as if my no doesn’t matter to him at all. He wants what he wants and he’s just going to go for it, which as a parent can be so frustrating, especially as it’s been dangerous at times. I learned from your podcast about being a confident leader, so when I catch him in the act of sneaking, I’ll just calmly pick him up and carry him out of the kitchen. I’ll reassure him a meal is coming up soon and ask him if he wants water or milk while he waits. There’s usually a big reaction from him, and then it feels like when I turn my back, he’s sneaking back to the kitchen.
I just don’t know what the right thing to do is. I would love any advice you may have. Thank you, Janet.
And I wrote back to her a quick note: “Do you have a sense of why he’s doing this? Has anything happened in the past few months?”
And she said:
Thanks for getting back to me. Nothing has changed that I can think of. He’s always been the type to push back on boundaries, so I’ve been looking at this as just his next phase of doing that. We’ve always had to be very hands-on with our boundaries, like I mentioned, physically removing him from the kitchen. But as he gets older and has a younger brother, it’s harder to always keep my eyes on him.
And then I wrote back one more time: “Do you feel like you are acknowledging his side of things, even when it seems unreasonable?”
She said:
Yeah, I’ll usually say something like, “I hear you, baby. It’s hard to wait. We’ll have another meal very soon.” Then I tell him how much longer until the next meal. I always aim for genuine empathy, I know it can be hard to wait for food when you’re hungry.
So this one part, especially, that I bolded in her note for myself because it really says a lot. I’d asked her about something changing, and she wrote “as he gets older and has a younger brother, it’s harder to always keep my eyes on him.” I felt that as, She’s not seeing me and I need her to see me right now. This parent is, of course, doing a million things in the right direction here, so this is not at all a criticism. This is me trying to find some clues here as to how I can help.
Even “I hear you, baby. It’s hard to wait. We’ll have another meal very soon.” That’s great to acknowledge and empathize that way. But what about seeing what he’s doing? He’s sneaking. “You really want that, and you were going to find a way. You waited until I turned my head and then you went over there. What’s that about? Why do you want to sneak?” It’s definitely great that she, of course, is hiding unsafe things, and I would even hide tempting things. Because sugar can be addictive, it’s hard to not want more or to crave it. So helping him that way, preventatively. But what will really change things is seeing him, with that acceptance and curiosity.
It sounds like he knows he’s going to be caught and wants to be caught. Maybe I’m wrong about that, but I have the sense that yes, he’s got the brother, maybe his brother is now, she doesn’t say how old the brother is, but maybe he’s reached an age where it’s feeling like he’s this rival and my parents don’t have their eyes on me as much, and I really do need them to see that something’s not quite right in the way that I’m feeling about this. So I’m going to these lengths—not consciously, but impulsively—to be seen.
And often when this happens and children aren’t getting that feeling of us really seeing them and being interested in what’s going on with them and why they’re doing this behavior, being open to it that way, there is an escalation. It started with fruit, right? Which is healthy, it’s a healthy choice to make. But then it progressed to, Well, you didn’t quite see me there, so I’m going for the cookies now. And now I’m going for a whole bowl of ice cream under the table, and the cold medicine. It’s kind of that, Hello! See me! See that I’m doing this stuff. Not just that I shouldn’t. That’s where I would go as this parent.
Sometimes we’re afraid of saying those things that call attention to the behavior that we don’t want. But if we can do that in a way that’s unconditionally accepting—not allowing, we’re not going to let him—but we’re accepting that this is where he is right now, this is what’s happening, and we want to know more. Instead of just trying to make it disappear, which usually doesn’t work. So I would say, “What is going on here? What are you doing here? You want us to notice that you’re sneaking stuff? Is that because we said no and you really wanted it? You don’t have to go behind our back. We want you to tell us, and it’s okay for you to get really upset about it. We’re there for you.” That’s the other part. When he is expressing feelings about it, that will start to flow a little easier when he feels that acceptance. Because reassuring him that a meal is coming up soon doesn’t sound like what the issue is. The issue is, See that I’m sneaking. Love me anyway and want to understand. Not that he’s going to be able to express the feelings, the why. I wouldn’t expect that at all. But from this place of acceptance and curiosity and just openness to that. Not that we need answers, but we’re open to him.
From there, we can work together on a solution that may or may not work right away. Again, it’s this gesture that we’re giving him, that means the world to any child. And then we can say, “We’re going to put some things away that are really tempting. It is hard to not want the cookies. But we’re also going to keep an eye on you because it seems like you need a little help right now from us. And we’re going to make an effort to notice, so we can help you stop.”
Here’s the next one:
I have a question about play and the roles my son J. likes to put on, and if it means something or how to handle things when it turns into inappropriate behavior.
Let me start by explaining our life circumstances. J. is being treated for a critical illness and has to go through a lot of medical treatments, which are about to end. But he’s immune-compromised, so we have to be careful about going out in public and traveling, etc. We moved to a new state about eight months ago because I got a new job. My husband stays home with J. during the day, which we’ve done since he was diagnosed over two years ago. And we got a new puppy—we already have a dog and a cat—three weeks ago. So yes, definitely lots going on. Plus J. is about to turn four. So I can understand his world feeling like a lot. It certainly does for me at times.
That said, he likes to play a game that is sort of good guy/bad guy, where he is usually the bad guy and I or my husband chase him around and catch him and put him in jail. He will often switch characters and say, “No, mama, it’s just me, J., the bad guy is gone.” When this type of play first started, I tried once or twice to say something like, “There aren’t really bad guys or good guys. There are just bad things people can do,” because I didn’t like the judgment of the label. But he more or less ignored me, kind of shook me off even, haha. I took that to mean that this is just a game and he’s just playing and whatever, it’s fine. And he can play this game with or without us, he’ll just role-play with two cars or some other figure.
Well, over the last few months he’s started doing some inappropriate things while playing the role of the bad guy, like hitting us or breaking things or throwing things. This isn’t typical behavior for him unless he’s really upset. I’ve approached this with curiosity, trying to see what led up to the hitting or whatever it was. Is he hungry or tired? Did that game get too intense? And if I ask him why he did that, his answer is simple: “Because I’m a bad guy,” which he says seemingly still in character, with his tone of voice.
I’ve been interpreting this as play that he took too far and explain that I don’t want to play like that, I don’t want to be hit, so I’m going to have to stop him. Well sometimes it’s actually really difficult to stop him because he’s getting strong and he’s fast and can catch me off guard or in a vulnerable position when I wasn’t in on the game. And sometimes he’s very intent on doing the bad thing, and when I do stop him or put space between us, he gets really upset and has a tantrum and I think, Okay, so he needed to get all these feelings out. But often he just drops it and goes on to the next thing. If I try to ask when it’s not the heat of the moment, he just answers that he’s a bad guy, so he does bad things.
This is just play, right? I’m worried he really thinks he’s bad or that there’s something else going on that I should try to address. It’s been getting more intense over the past several months and I really want it to stop, but I don’t know how. Am I doing something wrong? Thank you so much for reading this.
Again, like this other parent, so much in this amazing direction. The way she realized that it was okay to allow him to role play like this, that he had a reason for doing that, that he was exploring. I want to encourage her to continue feeling like that even more, to seeing the harmlessness of him exploring the “bad guy” in him. I mean, I think we all—well, I can’t speak for everyone—but children often and we as adults often feel the, for lack of a better word, badness in us and kind of making peace with that is really healthy. When we ignore things like that, it tends to make them stronger. So again, this parent is in a great direction.
A few things I noticed in what’s going on with her. For one, she’s got a lot of challenges and she admits that it’s a lot for her too. So for her son, it’s not just what he’s going through at this young age, it’s him also feeling that his parents are going through it. And there’s no way around that, we’re just going to go through it in these kinds of situations. So this isn’t to feel like you shouldn’t feel the way you do, but just knowing that there’s a lot of stress in the home. There’s just going to be while he’s going through this illness, there’s no way around that.
We can’t be exactly sure why he’s kind of locked onto this bad guy thing. But oftentimes when children feel that a lot of life is out of their control—in this case, having the medical treatments, moving, even the new puppy, it’s all this novelty and life happening around them and choices that they’re not necessarily actively making. They can naturally respond by exploring control where they have control and maybe they’re trying to exert control in other situations. And I think that might be part of him wanting to play that he’s a bad guy. The bad guy has power, right? He’s got power to be mean, to hurt.
And so, while this parent is connecting with him beautifully in playing the game with him, I would also notice. I would see him more, I would see this bad guy. Because, just as in the other situation that was quite different, she’s saying this is escalating. Now he’s doing physical things to her that are hurtful. It’s like this bad guy isn’t getting noticed for what he is, the bad guy in this little boy, so he’s playing it out.
I think it will also help for her to say, “Wow, you’re feeling so bad inside. You want to do this, you want to do that. What’s going on with that? Does it feel strong? Does it feel good to kind of want to be hurtful?” From that place of open-hearted acceptance and seeing him and meeting him where he is, being curious from there. She said she’s being curious, which is great. Even going deeper, speaking to what he’s actually saying and doing. I want to know about this guy. Instead of, Is he hungry or tired? I mean, those are all reasons that children act in certain ways, but in this case it’s become a theme, a real theme. So I would want to know everything I could about that bad guy. And again, this isn’t about getting some succinct analytical answers from our child, it’s not going to happen. But just that gesture of wanting to know, wanting to understand, if possible even relating to that feeling of wanting to be bad. What’s that like for you?
Then when he’s getting physical with it, “Ooh, I can’t let you hurt. I know you want to be a bad guy, but I can’t let you do it that way. What else can we do to help you get that energy out?” And maybe he’ll have some ideas, maybe he won’t. But connecting with him there, by seeing him and meeting him where he is and being curious, it will open up new ideas to you and it will help him feel so safe and allowed to be all the sides of himself.
And I believe—and I really would love to hear back from these parents—but I believe that he is going to need to do this less the more that you connect with it and accept it. Because I’m not sure that I agree with this interpretation that it’s play that he took too far. I think it’s, I really need you to see this, how bad this is inside me, these feelings. Maybe it’s, How angry I am that I have to do all this stuff and be prevented from playing out in public as I want to. Or, Why do I have to do this? That’s a bad guy feeling, right? So open up this world for yourselves together, staying on his side, with curiosity. The healing begins there. And again, I’m so sorry for all the stuff you guys are going through right now, and thank you for reaching out to me.
Here’s one more shorter one. This was a message on Instagram:
Hi, Janet. Do you have any advice about what are the alarms to look out for as signs to investigate feelings further with our toddler? I have a three-year-old son who is quite verbal even when he is upset. My husband and I are not on the same page of concern about what our son says when he is angry or what he says in a boundary set. I think it’s fine as long as he obeys or the boundary is kept by us. My husband thinks it’s alarming that he is verbally reversing what I say. Vague example: Us: “Stop, that hurts me.” Him: “But I want to hurt you.”
Yeah, she nailed it right in the beginning here: “investigate feelings further with our toddler.” She says, “Do you have any advice about what are the alarms to look out for?” I wouldn’t see this as alarms, because that is already maybe taking us to a scary place. I would do this with any behavior that a child has, because I sincerely want to know what’s going on. And I can’t say I would’ve always been this way, but I’ve learned to become fearless about accepting and meeting them there in those dark places. That’s where the magic is, of children really trusting us and feeling that safety and that connection.
I kind of agree with both of these parents. She says, “I think it’s fine as long as he obeys or the boundary is kept by us. My husband thinks it’s alarming that he’s verbally reversing what I say.” I don’t think it’s alarming, but I think it’s something, and it’s something that I want to know more about. So this is how I would approach this: “Stop. I can’t let you, that hurts me.” “But I want to hurt you.” “Ooh, you want to hurt me. Wow, what’s going on with that? That doesn’t feel good, right? Something’s making you want to do this stuff, making you want to hit and hurt me.” Sometimes children will escalate and say things like they want to kill the parent or pull them apart or do all kinds of graphic things, and that’s when it’s really escalated. A child is feeling this distance that’s uncomfortable.
These thoughts that they’re having—that are almost always not literal thoughts, they’re just symbolic thoughts that represent feelings—they need to share that with somebody that they trust: us. And to not have that rejected or us to be alarmed by that, if possible. To know that, again, it’s not literal, it’s symbolic and it represents a feeling that we want to know about. And we can. Not exactly, not precisely, not in this perfect analytical way, but we can know the message in it that’s encrypted in there. And that is: See me, accept me, help me.
This is something we can all do. It is scary at first sometimes, when we just want to shut down behavior. But give it a try and please let me know how it goes. And thank you to these parents again for reaching out to me.
There’s lots more about getting into the mind of a child and their behavior in my No Bad Kids Course. Please check that out if you haven’t already. Also, my book No Bad Kids, which is less of an investment than the course and parents have found it very, very helpful. I think it has like 5,800 reviews on Amazon now, which is unbelievable to me. And I have a ton of free resources for you, all on my website. There’s like 700 posts and podcasts about every topic. Oftentimes when I get notes from you—that I wish I could answer, I don’t have time to answer all of them, unfortunately—but I wish I could just send you a couple of resources that I’ve already done on that topic. Please check them out. You can do a search with my name and your keywords, and you’re sure to find something. I really hope that helps.
Thank you for all your support. We can do this.
