5 Daily Discipline Reminders

Wouldn’t parenting be easier if our kids’ behavior was always stellar? Unfortunately, for most of us that isn’t the case. It is during those difficult times especially, when our child is tired or hungry or angry (or their behavior just seems terrible and we’re mystified as to what’s gotten into them), that they need us to be their confident, empathic leader—a role that doesn’t always come naturally. In this episode, Janet shares a shortlist of simple reminders for making setting limits with our kids feel more comfortable and organic. Because, as she says, we all deserve to feel successful!

Transcript of “5 Daily Discipline Reminders”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

I am excited about this. I’m not sure why, it just feels like maybe it’s long overdue that I offer a short list of daily reminders for setting limits. Our whole attitude towards discipline, actually. I thought of this because a lot of you said that you very much appreciated the list I made, 7 Daily Reminders for Parents. It was more general parenting reminders. Some of them were about boundaries and limits and kids’ behavior, but it was a more general approach. And then I realized, well, what’s the hardest part of this parenting thing? For most of us, it’s our children’s behavior, our whole attitude towards boundaries, how we make them work, how we can get comfortable and feel successful in our leadership role.

You’ve heard me talk a lot about being a confident leader, but what are the reminders that will help us to be in that group? We all deserve that. We deserve to feel confident and comfortable and successful as a parent. Will any of us feel this all the time? Absolutely not. Some of us won’t even get close to feeling it ever during certain periods of time. But we’re all in this for the journey. We know actually kids benefit from us being imperfect, so there’s nothing to lose. And again, we all deserve to feel as comfortable and as successful as possible. So that’s what I really hope this list will help you to feel.

Now, the whole secret to raising children who generally cooperate with our rules and direction, it really has very, very little to do with some specific strategy or the words that we use. Whether we’re saying, “I won’t let you” versus “no” or “don’t hit,” none of that really matters. What matters most—and essentially makes or breaks successful guidance—is the way we perceive our children and our overall attitude toward boundaries and discipline. And then the good news is that once these perceptions are on track, we can make lots of mistakes, we will make lots of mistakes. And yet we’ll almost never go wrong, because really there’s a wide net for us as parents. We’re making leadership our own and centering ourselves in this role.

What we need to know about our children is that from the time they’re babies, they are sentient, aware people. From the time they’re born, they’re ready to begin an honest communicative relationship with us. And through that relationship, children of all ages are far more inclined to listen and to cooperate. So these are aware people. They’re also immature people, and that’s important to keep in mind too. They’re easily overwhelmed with discomforts and emotions to the extent that they lose the ability to function in a reasonable way.

And we might wonder, is there an age when we should expect they can move beyond this tendency to become easily dysregulated? Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, because what’s going to happen if we think, well, there’s an age and my child should be doing this by now and they’re not? That’s not going to set us up to help them or be the confident, successful leader that we want to be. So it really doesn’t do us any good to know that. But the truth is, there’s never a time when this goes away, including adulthood. It doesn’t go completely away. Yes, it gets a lot better as children’s brains develop, and we can help a lot by having a reasonably consistent, caring, connected response as the caring, connected leader. But a child’s level of self-regulation is always relative to their particular sensitivities and their stress levels and whatever’s going on with them right then. I feel like a lot of being a confident leader is knowing what we don’t have control over, so we can let that go.

Okay, so here’s the list for summing up and simplifying successful leadership, which is person-to-person. And who’s the most important person in this dyad? Us. We’re the most important person, because everything we feel affects our child. So our experience around parenting, if we’re confused and we’re not being successful, that’s going to unfortunately feed into our child’s feelings of comfort and make it harder for them to self-regulate. That’s why we’re the most important person. And our children are very forgiving. Yes, they give it right back at us when we shout at them and when we maybe try to bribe them. They’ll reflect that back to us at some point, probably, because they’re really good at offloading that way. But they’re all about accepting us, so even more reason to start with ourselves.

First on this list: tune in to and trust yourself. Yes, people like me talk so much about tuning in to our children, seeing them, understanding what’s going on, why they’re behaving the way they do. All of that is really important, but that’s kind of bigger picture stuff to what I’m talking about here, these reminders. That’s not the juice. The juice is for us to notice how we’re feeling. To tune in to that sense that I don’t want to do this game again, or I’m really not that comfortable with my child going in that certain drawer. Or we’re uncomfortable for them, that they’re not behaving at their best out in public. It can feel major or very, very minor. Even the minor little twinges of I can’t pick them up right now, or I don’t want someone sitting on my lap right now. Or the way they’re holding that toy and kind of waving it around, I feel like they’re going to break it or hurt somebody. I’m not cool with that. Or, Oh, they’re reaching for that thing that they have a hard time with and I can see their energy, I’m sensing that they’re not really in their skin, they’re not in control as they need to be with that object. Or I don’t want to bring more things out when they don’t want to clean up what’s there. Whatever it is, it can be just something particular to you that bugs you and it can just be that day, that moment. Maybe other times you feel okay about that, you don’t need to set a boundary there, but at this moment you do. We are free to do all of that.

And you’ve heard me say, of course, that boundaries and self-care for us are the same thing. The boundaries we set with our children and our self-care, they’re hand in hand. We can’t have one without the other. That’s what real self-care is. The other stuff, getting a massage or whatever, all wonderful, but this is what it really is. It’s how we tune into ourselves and notice. We’re registering that we’re kind of getting annoyed or just a little uncomfortable before it turns to frustration or anger. And we realize this is a sign that we need to set a limit. And we give ourselves the green light to do that, encouragement to do that in fact, because this is going to be good for our child as well.

So listen to that voice, tune in to and trust yourself. That’s number one.

Number two: set limits early, with respect and conviction. Using as much respect and conviction as we can muster at that time, that’s going to come from tuning into ourselves so we can set limits early. Because once we’ve asked them three times and they won’t stop, now it’s really, really hard for us to not get frustrated and angry. And there’s nothing wrong with us for getting frustrated and angry, but that’s not going to help us to succeed as we want to, so it’s just something to look at.

None of this is judgment about how you shouldn’t feel that way and that’s not okay. It’s about looking at how we got there and what we could have maybe done before that, that maybe felt like, Oh, I’m being too strict or whatever. I feel like that all the time, Eh, that’s a little strict. But I know it’s better to err on the side of too strict than it is to get mad, because I can always change my mind later, with conviction also. I can always change my mind.

Early, with respect and conviction. That means I’m going to say it politely, if I’m able to do it early. I’m not already, “Stop it right now, just cut it out!” I can say it like, “Oh, hmm, no, I’m not going to let you do that.” Or, “Can you please stop that?” But then if we do ask like that, we’re expecting that maybe our child won’t be able to do it on their own, so we’re ready to do the next step, which I’m going to talk about in a second.

So we want to set limits early, with respect and conviction. I actually thought of an acronym for this, and I’m terrible at acronyms and I don’t really like them. But anyway, early, with respect and conviction, that’s E.R.C. ERC, right? Because we don’t want to be I-R-K, irked, so we’ll do E.R.C. instead. Early, Respect, Conviction. Alright, maybe that was terrible. Feel free to hate that and reject it.

So yeah, being honest, being direct, that is respectful. More respectful than distracting or trying to trick or manipulate kids in some way. That’s just not going to feel as good for us and it’s not going to be as helpful to our child, so it’s not going to help us. We deserve that person-to-person.

And with conviction means there’s a period at the end of our sentence. We’re not saying, “It’s time to go, okay?” I still have a tendency to want to say that. I saw there was an article, I was looking around online, and I decided not to read it because it just sounded like another takedown of gentle parenting. The beginning was like, Parents aren’t allowed to say “no” anymore. They have to say, “I’d rather you didn’t.” I don’t know, whenever these articles come out, they’re all so exaggerated and it seems like they’re being deliberately obtuse or maybe they just can only see things in the most extreme terms. But I doubt it. These are intelligent people writing these, I know they get clicks.

But no, of course we’re not going to say, “I’d rather you didn’t” and put all of this pressure to decide on our child. That’s what happens when we have that questioning tone or we’re tentative, we’re looking for our child’s approval, maybe—and maybe we seriously are because we want our child to like us. That’s not going to help them like us, that’s the interesting thing. Being that confident leader who’s able to catch it early when we can, have respect and conviction, that’s going to make them like us more. They’re not going to show it in the moment, but they feel it. They feel, My parent’s capable of handling me, and that’s all any child wants to feel. They’re not getting thrown off by my behavior. I’m safe, I’m totally safe with this person. But when we expect them to make all these decisions about whether to please us in that moment or not, they can’t do that. That’s such a burden on them. So no, don’t ask a question.

We can ask, “Can you stop doing that?” But if we’re going to do that, remember that our child very likely can’t be the one to answer that. So we want to be ready to have to then say, “I’m going to stop you right here because I’m not comfortable,” or “I don’t want you to do this.” We don’t have to have a whole big explanation, just something simple. That’s respectful. So we’re not coaxing, we’re not expecting that our child’s going to want to please us there. They can’t always, especially if they’re a little bit off-kilter. When in doubt, set the limit. Again, early because we can always change our mind. It’s really hard to be polite and respectful when we’re a little bit frustrated or we’re already expecting that we don’t have the power to stop our child and we need them to decide. That doesn’t feel good to them and it definitely doesn’t feel good to us. So E.R.C.: early, with respect and conviction.

As far as conviction goes, remember, you own this job. And I really don’t understand—but that’s another conversation that I actually had on a podcast, maybe not enough, but—what is this thing against gentle parenting? It’s not a term I use that often, but why would we want to be something other than kind and gentle as a parent? I don’t understand that. We want to be harsh and rough, or mean? No, most of us want to have a relationship with our child where they actually want to be with us. And of course we want to be gentle. But gentle doesn’t mean tentative, wishy-washy, putting all the pressure on our child to make decisions that please us. That is not gentle. We need to be strong to be gentle. And that’s why tuning in, getting an early start on the boundary, that conviction is what makes it possible for us to be gentle.

That brings us to number three: follow through with firm, decisive actions. So again, it’s this early part that helps make it possible for us to be gentle.

And I know that sometimes parents shy away because it feels like they’re being forceful when they insist on holding their child’s hand in that parking lot and they don’t let the child have the choice as to whether to hold hands or not. Or we’re moving that toy right away from their hands because we’re not sure where they’re going with it and we just don’t feel like dealing with that. Maybe there’s other times where we can sort of hold it with them and be closer, but not right now because I don’t feel like doing that, so I’m not going to. I’m just going to stop you, I’m going to take the toy. Maybe another time, but I’m not comfortable with you using this right now. That’s all we have to do.

But I understand that parents could get afraid of it. What I like to think of is that conviction in holding a child’s hand in the parking lot. A parent was so brilliant, I thought, when I was consulting with her and she was having a really hard time with all the boundaries. But holding hands in the parking lot was one that was so clear for her. She was very decisive and had conviction in that, and it worked. And what I told her is to use that same approach with all boundaries. Whether it’s I don’t want you touching my sweater or my face that way, or I’m not going to play that again, or We’re not going to take these out, or We’re going to go inside now, it’s getting late and I’m getting cold. Our child needs that conviction from us in all of those. So if we can do it in one area, we can do it in other ones, right? If we trust ourselves and believe in ourselves as leaders, this makes it so much easier for us and so much easier for our child. There’s no being over-strict if we’re being kind and respectful about it.

I also think of ripping that band-aid off instead of pulling it off slowly. We’d all rather someone just rip it off, right? Or one of the images that comes up for me is the firefighter that has to rescue someone, and maybe that person has to jump down into a net from a window and they don’t want to. So are we going to say, “Please, come on, let’s do it,” or, “Look over here!”? No! We’re going to say, “Sorry, you’ve got to do it,” and maybe we even push them out. Because that’s the kind, loving, respectful thing to do. Not to stand there with them trying to talk through it and get them to be okay with it and want to do it themselves, and then maybe it’s too late. I know that most boundaries that we have do not have that sense of urgency, of course, thank goodness. But that’s the same feeling we can take into all these situations for ourselves and it will pay off.

Next, number four: let feelings be, accept and acknowledge. This is something I talk about here a lot.

There’s also confusion around this co-regulating. It sounds like we’re supposed to do something. We’re supposed to make our child feel better, we’re supposed to get them to calm down. But really co-regulating is much less about doing, much more about not doing. It’s about not adding our discomfort to our child’s discomfort. And of course, our discomfort is an inside job. It’s not necessarily about what we say or what we wish we were showing to our child. It’s how we actually feel. That’s why tuning into ourselves was the first point.

But the way that it commonly shows up is that we’re impatient in trying to help them feel better, working at calming them down. That usually does the opposite for a child. It makes them feel that there’s something unsafe going on that we’re trying to rescue them from. We’re needing to stop them from going there. But going there is what resilience is about. It’s about children knowing, because they’ve experienced it so many times, that they can go there and that it passes. They don’t have to try to do something or make something happen. It will just pass, by them feeling safe in our presence and us not adding our own discomfort in.

Accepting and acknowledging has to be genuine. It can’t be a rote “I understand you don’t want to do this. I understand you’re not happy that we came in.” It’s less about words, more about believing it. And when we believe it, we never have to worry about words. When we believe it’s okay for our child to have some crazy point of view, some point of view that seems so overblown or feelings that just seem so over the top. There’s always a reason. We don’t have to figure it out right now, but there’s always a reason. And so, “Yikes, you didn’t want to come in. You didn’t want to come in at all. You wanted to stay out there.” We don’t even have to say that much. It’s just that feeling behind what I just said that really accepts and acknowledges.

And then it’s also not about stopping everything while my child is having a feeling. No. What we’re doing is accepting, and maybe some more acknowledging, maybe not, but really just accepting from wherever we are. And oftentimes that means that we’re helping our child through a transition or something, and we have to keep going. We keep going with accepting, “Oh, you don’t want to do this. You don’t want to put your shoes on.” And then we just do our best. We bring them in the car. We say, “Could you just put this one on?” We do that from that place of acceptance, and it often works. And if it doesn’t, “We’re just going to bring the stuff. We can pick you up, we’re going to go in. You’re so mad at me, argh!” Going with that, believe it or not, while we carry on as a confident leader with conviction, accepting and acknowledging, it’s like we’re free to do anything.

No, it doesn’t feel good. We’re going to feel like maybe our back’s going to hurt if we’re trying to move a child or if they’re too big and we have to put our arm behind them and they’re just going off. But this isn’t, Let’s make this whole event about you being upset about a boundary. It can’t be an event. Because if it is, then it’s almost like we didn’t set the boundary. It undoes the boundary when we’re saying, Okay, now it’s my job to not only be clear and respectful towards you and honest, but now it’s also my job to make sure you’re in agreement with me.

And the truth is, children need to be in disagreement with us a lot, especially at certain ages or when they’re going through certain things. That’s a healthy thing, not something that we have to fix or avoid. So if we could welcome the awkward, messy things where our child is not pleased with us as healthy, we’re free. There’s nothing to fear. So it’s finding that place of okayness within ourselves, okayness with our child’s not okayness.

Let feelings be, accept and acknowledge.

And then the last one, number five: be available to reconnect, and let it go. So this isn’t the time to talk about let’s see what you can do differently, especially if we’re annoyed, right? Really, they can’t go there.

Hand in Hand Parenting, I don’t know if you’ve heard of them. They’re wonderful. It’s Patty Wipfler. She’s been around a long time, she even studied with Magda Gerber way back in the day a little bit. Anyway, they just put out this brilliant statement that I shared: “Dysregulated brains cannot answer questions, describe a feeling, explain what happened, say sorry, follow direction, share, play well, settle down.” Wow, there’s so much right there to take in that can help us. Because we get frustrated when we’re trying to make all those things happen that just are not going to happen right then. And are going to make our child feel that sense of distance from us, that we want something of them that they can’t give. And all that does is add to their discomfort and therefore more chance of dysregulation and behaviors.

So it’s so helpful to know what it feels like to be dysregulated. And maybe you can relate, I know I can, to feeling that way. The last thing we want to do then is try to deal with someone else’s feelings, deal with their impatience, deal with their worry about us, deal with their wanting us to be okay for them. Or dealing with us wanting to perform all these things, saying a perfect apology, doing what we say: Just share. Just stop doing that. Settle down. We just can’t do it.

Yes, there will be things that we can address much later when our children are in a calm, safe place with us. We want to make that very safe, put this cocoon of safety around that. Children don’t generally need cocoons, but when they’re talking about things that are uncomfortable for them, talking about their discomforts and the behaviors that they’ve had, they do need that cocoon with us around that. And that means, again, not being tentative, but being honest in a way that’s not demanding or coming from our own negative emotion around it.

And then maybe we can brainstorm solutions together. Mostly it’ll be us, because children really have very little ability to analyze situations. They’re not post-mortem analysts, they’re not rehashers. It just makes them feel bad, right? It’s like that thing of rubbing the dog’s nose in it, in a way. It’s just like, Ugh, don’t make me go over this. I’m so embarrassed that I did that. Or, I feel so scared that I did that.

But with that love and respect and that kind of empathy around it, though, we can say, “It seems like you’re really having a hard time with this. What can we do to make it better? It seems like you really don’t feel comfortable, and if there’s anything we can do, I’m here for you.” So we’re on their team. We’re not telling them it’s okay to behave that way. If you really want to make sure your child knows—which they mostly do, though—you can say, “You know that wasn’t okay, and we can’t let this go on.” With a toddler, I probably wouldn’t say much of any of that, but as a child gets into maybe preschool age, three or older, then maybe there’s something you can say there. But mostly they just want to know that we see them, that we are going to show them that we’re there to help, and that we see something’s not right with them, that they’re struggling.

So that’s it. Again:

1. Tune in to and trust yourself.
2. Set limits early, with respect and conviction.
3. Follow through with firm, decisive actions.
4. Let feelings be, accept and acknowledge.
5. Be available to reconnect, and let it go.

And overall, I just want to add that I hope you’ll begin to see this as quality time, because it is. So re-imagining quality time to the two hats that we have to wear as parents. There’s the party hat where we’re having fun, we’re just laughing with our child or just having a good time. It’s just working. And there’s the professional hat that children need when their behavior is off-track or when it feels like it’s going to go off-track or we’re in a situation where it often goes off-track. This is when we’re firmly preventing our baby from hurting the dog, or we’re patiently removing our children from situations when they’ve lost all control so they can melt down safely in our presence.

I know it’s counterintuitive to think of this as quality time. Meltdowns and setting limits. Are you kidding me? But I feel certain that it’s true. In fact, this professional hat work is the most precious kind of quality time because children need our empathic, confident leadership even more than they need us to be their playmates and their most ardent fans. I strongly believe that our kids sense how difficult it is for us to wear this hat gracefully, so they’re going to explore our limits to see if they can knock the hat off. But they don’t want to knock it off.

Embracing the idea that this professional time is also quality time is especially crucial when we’re working, when it’s the holidays and we’re busy, we have multiple children, or we just don’t have as much time to spend with our kids as we would like, either routinely or just on that particular day. That’s when we need to see this as quality time. Otherwise, we could get disappointed.

Of course, we’d all prefer to spend this little time that we have joyously, but quite often that’s not the dynamic our children need from us. They need this other quality time, where they get to complain and resist and stomp their feet or they cry. They express these darker feelings with assurance that we’re going to hold boundaries while we accept and acknowledge where they’re at. That we’re going to help them comply with rules and boundaries, even when they’re screaming no! at us. We’re not going to be intimidated by their displeasure and their disagreement. Because we’re not just their good time Charlies. We’re people who they can sense deep down have their very best interests and their health and their good character in mind. And we love them too much to not do this hard job.

I hope some of this helps. I know that it works because I was a tough case. Please be very, very, very, very kind to yourselves. Look out for yourselves. Your child can’t do that part, so we have to do it. And if you’d like more, please check out my book No Bad Kids: Toddler Discipline Without Shame. And of course, for a deep dive that will give you a ton of support, my No Bad Kids Master Course. It makes a great gift as well. It’s at nobadkidscourse.com.

Thank you so much for listening. We can do this.

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