A parent with 2 children, 4 and 1.5-years-old, writes to Janet feeling disappointed and concerned that he’s letting his children down. This dad admits that he’s very sensitive to both his children’s emotions, especially if they’re upset. In order to deal with their typical, rambunctious behaviors, he’s attempted to set reasonable boundaries with consequences in terms of dressing, bathing, bedtime, roughhousing, etc. This “If you do that, then… ” strategy was effective for a while, he says, but lately seems to have backfired because his four-year-old is now giving him ultimatums. The boy’s behaviors have become more extreme, and in response the dad says he threatens unnatural consequences, which leads to tears, more guilt, and on and on. “I hate the whole cycle,” he says. “I hate feeling like I’ve let them down. I hate the feeling of being out of control. Mostly, I hate and fear the breaking of trust and the positive relationship that I have with him.”
Janet offers her suggestions and encouragement.
Transcript of “If Consequences Aren’t Working, Try This Instead”
Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.
Today I’m going to be replying to a parent’s question. Their subject line is “Help with Boundaries and Consequences.” They’ve been using consequences to help with their children’s behavior and they’ve found that this is backfiring, actually. It’s not helping them in the situations they need help with with their children, and also their son is starting to threaten consequences back to them. So I’m hoping to help this parent reframe some of the ideas that he has and get clearer on his role and what will really work for him to achieve his goals, which is to have a close, trusting relationship with his children. And that’s what we all want, right?
Here’s the email that I received:
Dear Janet,
In the process of writing this letter, I’m probably going to answer a lot of my own questions or at least be able to predict what you’re going to say in response, but I still think I need to write it. Maybe I’ll write it and then have no need to send it, but let’s see.
Firstly, I love your approach. Every time I listen to a podcast or read some of your wisdom in your book, it aligns perfectly with how I want to be as a parent. I’m 100% on board with your principles. What I find difficult is putting it into practice.
What I get from you is that I should be developing a mindset rather than a list of practices or stock phrases, and I like that, but it is a difficult thing to do. I can have a day where I’m listening to your podcast on the way home from work and have a really positive mindset in place, and then when I get home, one or two things can happen and it’s all gone out the window. I guess we have some well trod and ingrained dynamics in our family and relationships that have solidified themselves over the years, and it seems very difficult to reroute myself once I’ve started down a path.
Anyway, I’ll give some context and a bit of background and explain one of my issues. I have lots of things I could ask about, but I’ll start with one. I have a feeling that the answer to one of them might be the answer to all of them anyway.
Some background: My wife and I have two children. The older one has just turned four and the younger is almost 18 months. They are both amazing, full of energy and exuberance, very determined and strong-willed, bright, sensitive, and expressive. The older one is very articulate and has good language skills. You often talk about children who parents describe as being a handful as being your favorite types of kids, and I think my older son is definitely one of those children, especially at home with us.
We have had a tricky few years. Life since my first child was born has been punctuated by illness and injury, isolation and depression, loss and grief. It has also been full of love, closeness, and fun. Since our second child was born, these themes have repeated themselves, and the introduction of a new member to the family has brought lots of love, but also lots of difficulty. I’m happy to give more context if it’s useful to you, but you probably get the idea. In short, I have found it a lot harder to maintain the very close, very attentive, very playful relationship I had with our first son since our second was born.
Anyway, to the reason I write today: One thing I got from your teachings, and I recognize now I have probably misinterpreted or misused it, is around boundaries and consequences. Boundaries are hard for me. I am a school teacher and I find it much easier to be boundaried at school than I do at home. I’m very sensitive to my children’s emotions, particularly when they’re upset, and I get incredibly guilty and sad if I feel I am not responding to them or giving them my time, energy, playfulness, etc. As a result, I don’t like to disappoint them at all, so any dynamic that results in them being upset I find really hard.
However, since reading the bit in your book No Bad Kids about boundaries being like the rails on a bridge at nighttime, I have tried to be better at it. I found it really worked when I started to say things like, “If you do that, then . . .” This worked straight away and had a positive impact in a lot of situations. I try to keep the consequence natural and explain the reasoning every time.
However, due to possibly overusing this or struggling to always find natural consequences, I think this strategy has backfired and has taught my four-year-old something that I’d rather he hadn’t learned. He has now started responding to me by giving ultimatums of his own. For example, “I want another story.” We agreed on three stories and then we’d put the light off. “I want another story.” No, we’re going to put the light off now and try to sleep. “Well, if you don’t tell me another story, I will hit you” or “You tell me another story, otherwise I will put all the lights on.” He has internalized the idea of “otherwise I’ll . . .” because he hears me say it so much and is now using it himself.
I think the answer is to keep any consequences natural and only use them in the correct circumstances, but I find it hard. There are times when I’m completely out of ideas. For example, when he gets out of the bath, I often struggle to get him to put his pajamas on. He’s tired, he doesn’t want to go to bed, and is stalling, delaying. I know all of this and I try to see him and try to empathize and try to do it in a positive way or make it playful, and sometimes that works. But when it doesn’t, I resort to, “If you put your pajamas on now, we’ll have time for a game,” or, “If you don’t put your pajamas on now, we won’t have time for stories.”
But sometimes nothing works. At its worst—this was last night and the trigger that got me to write to you—he will tell me no and run around and try to chase his baby brother and disrupt the whole process. This leads to me being unable to get his brother dressed or make his bottle or do anything because I have a four-year-old jumping on me or jumping on his brother and just sabotaging me. In these situations, I often feel unsafe. Worrying about his little brother’s safety is a big cause of stress and sets things off on a really negative spiral.
In fact, the biggest cause of stress, anger, loss of control for both me and my wife is when our older boy is being physical or unsafe with the little one. It is just too difficult to physically get the little one ready for bed and get everything together when I have to hold him away from the other. Sometimes I try to ignore the older one, I try to be unruffled, but the line between unruffled and distant, uncaring, passive aggressive is thin for me. Add to that that when the little one cries, it raises everybody’s stress levels. In these situations, I completely run out of ideas.
Last night, it got to the point where I was starting to threaten unnatural consequences, like “If you don’t put your pajamas on, I’m going to take one of your toys away.” Which he hates and then just leads to tears, breaking of trust, me feeling terrible because I don’t like him crying, but also because I know I’ve not done the right thing, and it all just gets worse.
When both my wife and I are there, this is all easier and always has been. I find it quite hard sometimes to manage them both on my own, but we are really trying to do this more so that the other one can have a break sometimes. We don’t have a lot of support and are managing everything between the two of us. I think my wife finds it easier than I do to manage the two of them. Sometimes I think I need to think less about what I’m doing and just be myself, but whenever it goes wrong, I reach out for support or advice.
Okay, so I’ve just ranted all of that out and I don’t know if it gets to the point. It probably sounds less of a problem than it feels. We always make up afterwards, but I hate the whole cycle. I hate feeling like I’ve let them down. I hate the feeling of being out of control. Mostly, I hate and fear the breaking of trust and the positive relationship that I have with him.
There’s probably lots of other things I could say that would help give context, but I think I just need to send you this now. If you have any time or thoughts, I would really, really appreciate them, even if you could just point me to particular chapters of books or podcasts to listen to. I think I need some mantras for these difficult times. Any advice or anything at all would be really appreciated. Thank you.
One of the reasons I thought this would be a good note to respond to here on the podcast is that so many of the feelings that this parent brings up are universal feelings that we have around children. We can’t bear it when they’re upset, but it’s even harder when we’ve upset them.
I’m going to talk about how to simplify the concept of setting boundaries with respect, what that really looks like. It really comes down to one word, and that one word is help. So it’s not about even boundaries necessarily, it’s not about consequences, it’s not about playing to make it work. It’s really just about seeing our child in these situations as in need of help. They’re showing us that they can’t behave as we would like them to.
That’s why consequences really don’t work as a strategy. Because desire in us to share a consequence with our child, what’s behind that is we want them to understand reason. Hey, if you don’t do this, we won’t have time for that. And it’s not that there’s anything wrong with that. It can be helpful for children to know that in a certain frame of mind, especially when they’re able to understand, Oh, okay, I want to do that so maybe I can pull it together. But oftentimes, and it sounds like in this situation with this boy who’s four, he can’t pull it together for that. He needs more actual help, not just a reasonable choice that he can make. Because he’s showing that he’s not in a place of reason.
And when these kind of situations keep coming up, as it sounds like it is for this dad, then that is a sign that we’re misreading what our child needs there and that we’re not being as helpful as our child needs us to be in the situation. And the reason that we do that, again, goes back to that we don’t want them to have the feelings. We want to keep this all on a reasonable, intellectual level. Hey, do this and we get to do that. Do that, and we don’t get to do that. Some things to think about and to make a choice. And that’s just not where children are a lot of the time, and they’ll show us that by it not working.
It sounds like there were a lot of times that this has worked for this parent, that their child was able to understand it, but he’s sort of come to the end of that in a lot of these situations. Because what unfortunately happens when we try to use consequences as a boundary is that children are often, again, not in that space where they can just switch it up that way. They really do need more help from us. And maybe sometimes they’re able to get their head together and follow our direction, but a lot of other times they’re struggling to do that. We’re coming at them one way and they’re feeling like they can’t live up to what we’ve asked of them. It creates distance. And then it can have a cumulative effect of creating distance every time this happens, and that sounds like what’s happened here.
It’s really easy to fix once we understand what’s going on. And this parent has exactly what they need to be able to do this, to be able to be a good parent. It’s this self-awareness. So he has a ton of self-awareness, and that’s really all we need, because then we’re going to be able to track what’s going on.
Now I’d like to go over this in more detail so that you’ll see what I’m talking about. Because I know a lot of times what I’ve shared sounds very general, and then people are like, Well, what does that mean? And I get that.
Starting with the biggest challenge that we face, what’s behind most of the issues that we have with boundaries: it’s our relationship to feelings. Ours, and our child’s especially. Now this parent says, “Life since my first son was born has been punctuated by illness and injury, isolation and depression, loss and grief. It has also been full of love, closeness, and fun. Since our second child was born, these themes have repeated themselves, and the introduction of a new member of the family has brought lots of love, but also lots of difficulty.”
This family has been through more than their share of emotional turmoil, it sounds like. There’s a lot going on. And if this parent is noticing that and feeling it, one thing that we can know for sure is that his children are feeling it many times more. Our children are processing not only things that they are exposed to on their own, but all of the feelings that we’re having, because they’re that tuned into us. But the difference with children is that they don’t have the capacity that we have to kind of categorize these feelings, to make sense of them, and have self-control around them. They don’t have that at these ages.
So my advice to this parent is to consider his feelings throughout all of these difficult experiences that they’ve had. If he’s been able to share his feelings with his partner, if he’s been able to allow himself to feel them, to go to those depths and process the feelings so that they can be healed. And maybe he has done that, I’m not sure. But to look at that as such a positive, healthy thing that he could do for himself. And, maybe even more so, such a positive, healthy thing that his children can do with him, if he’s able to see their feelings that way.
And it’s not like their feelings will be categorized in these perfect ways and be expressed as, Oh, when that happened, there was grief or loss, or I have a brother now and that really is hard for me. They cannot do that. The way that it comes out is through these kinds of behaviors that we want to put boundaries on. And as we’re helping them in these situations, in that interaction, when they express things that maybe sound really angry or scared, that that is the most loving, positive, connected thing that we can do for them as adults. Far from being what this dad perceives as not responding to them or giving them his time or his attention. Allowing for those feelings, just making space for those and not trying to play our way out of them or do something to change them. Really allowing our child to be in that strong disagreement, that discord with us, that is closeness with our child. That is the best that we can give them.
Yes, it’s wonderful to be playful and have those high moments of joy together, but it’s not like that’s positive and the other is negative. Sharing the dark side with us is, I believe, even more positive in terms of bonding and our bravery in being able to do it. It’s a higher goal, even, for us as parents. So I would try to take all this negative spin on feelings that this dad has—and it’s understandable, most of us have that—and turn it around to see that sharing feelings ourselves, sharing our feelings and feeling our feelings and our children doing that, is positive, is healing. Is what allows them to come through these experiences like the illness and injury and loss and grief and the situation of having a new sibling, navigating that. That’s how children are able to move through it in a healthy way, because we allow them to share all the gnarliness and discomfort and all those darker feelings that go along with that.
So that’s how I would reframe feelings and closeness and use this dad’s wonderful sensitivity that he describes, he has sensitivity to his kids’ feelings. But use that sensitivity in a helpful way, instead of feeling sensitive in a fearful way. Being sensitive in a manner that sees and believes in a child’s right to feel the way they feel.
And this dad’s experience is what everybody I know feels: “In short, I have found it a lot harder to maintain the very close, very attentive, very playful relationship I had with our first son since our second was born.” That’s because there’s this whole set of feelings that can be scary to accept and look at and allow in all these boundary situations, that’s where they come up. That’s what’s getting in our way. But if we could welcome that, it’s not in our way anymore. There’s nothing to be reticent about or afraid of or tentative about.
He says, “I’m very sensitive to my children’s emotions when they’re upset and I get guilty.” Instead of guilty, feel proud of yourself for allowing them to feel those things. He says he feels sad if I’m not responding to them or giving them my time, but that is time and attention. It’s not playfulness, maybe, but playfulness often comes from our discomfort with the feelings and it’s us wanting to change it. So instead of wanting to change it, try welcoming it with open arms. I know that’s probably a difficult concept, but maybe we can look here some more at what that’s going to look like.
“As a result, I don’t like to disappoint them at all.” Right, none of us wants to do that, but that is how the healing happens, when we, for reasonable reasons, because we’re the adult in the relationship and also because we’re looking out for ourselves and what we’re comfortable with, we disappoint our children a lot. And children need that safe feeling of disappointment with us because life is about disappointment. It’s about how we allow ourselves to feel that so we can move on. It’s definitely not about erasing disappointment or avoiding it, which only makes it harder to deal with when we feel it.
This dad said that he started finding that it really worked when he would say, “If you do that, then . . .” And I think it worked because the dad felt confident about being fair that way. And in the beginning it sounds like it worked to help him avoid some of the clashes that are now coming to the fore and really need to happen, in my opinion. He said “it worked straight away and had a positive impact.” I’m not sure what that looked like, but he said, “I try to keep the consequence natural and explain the reasoning every time.” Yes, it’s wonderful to give our child a reason for why we have a boundary with them, a simple reason. But the ideal would be to do that out of respect and not because we need to have a reason so that you’ll understand and come to agree with us in a reasonable way. A lot of us want to explain ourselves. We want to explain so our child will say, “Oh, okay, then I’ll do that.” And oftentimes, especially when there’s all these feelings to be expressed, that’s not the way it works.
And now he says that his son is saying these things like, “Well, if you don’t tell me another story, I will hit you.” So here’s how I would handle this situation, this example that this dad gave. His son says, “I want another story.” And the dad said, “We agreed on three stories and then we’d put the light off.” So that’s where the dad went straight to reason. Well, here’s the agreement that we both signed on to, and this is why you shouldn’t want another story. You should know that that’s not what we decided on. But that is all in the reasonable head. So this child is showing he’s not in that, or at least that’s not what he needs to express right now.
He says, “I want another story.” Instead of saying, “We agreed on three and then we’d put the light off,” the safest thing is to just acknowledge. Ah, you want another story. You really do, when we can’t, because it’s time to put the light off. Acknowledging not just by saying words, “I know you want another story,” but really allowing that to have a life, that feeling that he has. Because we want to turn this around to, Actually, I want to hear your feelings.
And then he says it again, and then we say, “No, we really have to put the light off now and try to go to sleep.” And then he says, “Well, if you don’t tell me another story, I will hit you.” Right there, we’re getting the gist of some of these feelings that are there. It’s not about a story. It’s about, Ugh, I have this feeling that I want to hit you! I just have a really strong feeling. And that’s where I would, again, go to the feeling, acknowledging the feeling. We’re going to work on seeing this as the gold right there, as the positive, as what’s going to bring us closer. And what’s going to help him with his behavior, and help us with his behavior, when he actually feels free and safe to share all the things.
So he says, “If you won’t tell me another story, I will hit you.” Whoa, I feel that! You’re so mad or you’re so disappointed we’re not reading another book. You can be mad at me, my love. That’s okay with me. That kind of attitude. It probably feels scary, because it is a feeling of letting go of control. And this dad said that he doesn’t like that feeling, nobody likes that feeling, I don’t think, but it’s safe. In fact, it’s safe and it’s what will help us to get what we want, that close relationship, that all-accepting but we don’t let you do everything, we help you when you can’t relationship.
And this dad says, “I hate feeling like I’ve let them down,” but them being angry is not letting them down. “I hate the feeling of being out of control.” Yes, it does feel scary to let another person feel something negative about us and actually be okay with that. “Mostly, I hate and fear the breaking of trust and positive relationship I have with him.” So this is actually the opposite. It builds trust and it makes for a more positive relationship. But I know it’s hard to believe that. Try it. I think you’ll see, as so many parents have, that it really does work.
Then he talks about this situation where the older one’s wreaking havoc and they’ve got to get the little one to bed, and they’re worried about the safety of the child and all of that. Those are valid fears. Do what you can to keep that child safe. What can sometimes help is to put that younger child to bed first, I don’t know if they’re both in the same room or how this is going. But this is where we want to pull out that word, overall, help. As soon as he starts stalling, even before he starts stalling, be in helpful mode.
He says, “For example, when he gets out of the bath, I often struggle to get him to put his pajamas on.” So right there, “I’m going to help you out of the bath,” and you’re holding him. “Okay, I want to help you put these clothes on.” Yes, he knows how to do that himself, but he’s showing that he’s struggling to do this right now. I wouldn’t try to direct him there, I would think more in terms of helping him. Getting your little guy through this difficult time as best you can, with him fighting and saying no and all of that.
It’s amazing how, when we go into helpful mode—not waiting until we’re already in angry mode to help, then our energy is not comfortable for our child, understandably, it’s not comfortable for us either. But if we realize that we may need to go there right away, and we’re willing to do that, it’s amazing how children melt into that. Because we’re not going up against them with all the reason and the consequences and trying to get them to do something. We know they’re little emotional children that need a lot of help, and we’re willing to be that person for them, right away. So it won’t hurt if you go into it when it wasn’t needed, that’ll never be a problem. But what does get in the way is if we wait too long.
And then, like this dad says, he has a hard time being unruffled. Well, yeah, we all do because right there, we’re trying something that’s not working, we’re getting more frustrated, and we’re not going to be able to be unruffled. The only way to be able to do that is to already be ready. It’s the end of the day, this guy’s been showing me he needs extra help, and I can do that. Or, You know what? We’re all tired. I better go into helpful mode right now. And while you’re in helpful mode, that same idea of feelings are welcome.
As dad says at the end, “I need mantras.” Well, let the feelings be. Encourage the feelings, even. Like, You get to feel like this! Yeah, you don’t want to do this, you don’t want to do that, you don’t want to do the other thing. Instead of pushing up against them, take the risk of letting go of that control. We’re physically controlling the situation, but we’re welcoming the feelings instead of trying to get our child to feel differently. Which is just an impossible task, even if it works now and again, it’s not sustainable, and it creates this sense of distance. So it’s creating exactly what this dad is trying so hard to avoid. By avoiding it, he’s actually creating it. But he can turn that around right now by remembering this word, help, and this idea that feelings are the healing.
Let those feelings be, welcome those feelings. This is the best thing that could happen, that my child is mad at me right now. And I’m not going to let him do the hurtful things. If he wants to run away, I let him get a little way away from me, I’m not going to be chasing him. He’s just a little kid. So I see him run away and I’m like, “I’m right over here. I’ve got your clothes. Okay, it looks like you need more help.” And I’m walking over, being that leader that really wants to help, that doesn’t want to charge everything up more with that kind of energy, but is really going to stay calm no matter what, because I’m expecting that this may happen. And that through all the experiences my family’s been through, there are a lot of feelings that need to be shared. Piece by piece, we’re going to allow that to happen if possible.
So turning this around and reframing these ideas about feelings and sensitivity and closeness, what that really looks like between parent and child or between any two people. It’s getting to feel all the hard things you feel and be safe with someone who’s not just trying to cheer you up or make it better. They’re really okay with it. That’s the ultimate closeness, and that’s the ultimate freedom. When we’re not afraid of any of it and we’re not trying to push it all away with reason and make behavior better, we’re going to help our child when they can’t help themselves. Taking a step back from this feeling that we all have of wanting to avoid kids’ feelings, the messiness of that, the scariness of that for us, it creates the very thing we want to avoid.
Please be patient with yourself as you’re trying new things and you’re trying to see differently. Practice it when you’re not in that situation with your child. Just practice looking at those situations you’ve found yourself in and seeing, Oh, I’m just going to help this kooky guy get it together here. He doesn’t want to make us frustrated. I can do this. Yeah, I want him to love me, but this is actually the way. It’s different than what I thought.
I really hope some of that helps. And again, baby steps. Be good to yourself, it’s not going to all change at once. But just by going a little bit this direction, I think you’ll start to see the difference. When your child melts into you, so mad at you at the same time, but melting into the comfort of your help and acceptance.
Thanks so much for listening. We can do this.
And there’s lots more about alternatives to consequences 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, of course, I have a ton of free resources for you, all on my website.
