Is it ever okay to say no to our child’s requests for closeness or attention, to separate when that makes them upset? What if these requests are frequent, or even seem to evolve into a habit of unreasonable, seemingly over-the-top demands? In this episode Janet responds to two notes from parents who feel they may be in this predicament. One shares that her four-year-old “starts crying hysterically and won’t calm down” if the parent doesn’t acquiesce to her demands immediately. This parent understandably feels stressed. “It’s getting to a ridiculous point, and the demands seem to be growing,” she says. “It feels like I’m being held hostage.”
The second mom shares that her two-year-old often cries when she leaves her side, even when her dad is there for her. She wonders if this is a sign her daughter is anxious and if there’s something more or different the parents should be doing.
In both cases, these parents are hoping to help their kids feel more confident and secure, and Janet shares a perspective she believes will help them achieve these goals.
Transcript of “Crying at Separation”
Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.
Today I’m going to be talking about one of the hardest things for us as parents: separating from our children when they’re struggling, when they’re upset and they don’t want us to go and they want us to be with them 24/7 or do all the things they want us to do for them. It’s very hard to see this reasonably because we tend to go straight to my child needs me and I’m abandoning them and I can’t do this! And the problem with that is it reads to our child that we are seeing this as something that we want to do that’s wrong, leaving them, that we feel guilty about it. And then it’s much harder for them to accept the next time, because now we’ve already shown them through our reaction that this isn’t something that is really that safe for them or that we think they can handle.
This is not as complicated as it may sound. I have some solutions that I hope will help. And I have two notes from parents that I would like to address. Let’s get into it.
I’ll start with this first parent’s note and here’s her subject line: “Help with toddler who refuses to let me do independent tasks”:
Hi, Janet-
First of all, I’m a huge fan of your book and approach. I’m a therapist and have been dealing with an issue that I just can’t understand or respond to effectively. I hope you can help.
Our four-year-old has been doing this thing where she gets very controlling and demanding of what I do, mostly in the way of wanting me to hold her hand and not leave the room or even walk to the other side of the room or do any independent task without her. This isn’t the case all the time or even most of the time. She’s actually quite independent and well adjusted.
But when this behavior comes up, it’s bad. It happens at least once a day. If I don’t stop mid-track, go back and hold her hand and acquiesce immediately, she starts crying hysterically and won’t calm down. She usually orders that I redo whatever task I was doing independently, with her by my side. Go and put back the diaper in the package, pour the milk back in the carton or whatever item I got, and go back and get it with her, with her holding my hand.
I used to try and go with it. I knew it was a bid for closeness and reassurance and it didn’t cost much to do a quick redo, but it’s getting to a ridiculous point and the demands seem to be growing. The other day, her two-year-old sister had a blowout and I had to rush her upstairs to change her and my four-year-old cried hysterically for me to go back downstairs and hold her hand while I did the whole cleanup. I asked her to join and help me, but she insisted on me going back downstairs and reenacting the whole situation. The other problem is that she will often only protest these situations after I’m well into my new task, so it really doesn’t make sense for me to go back and do it with her. Sometimes her demands almost seem a little OCD in nature. “Sit here and watch me go potty. No, more to the left. Cross your legs.”
I know in many ways this is a cry for connection and closeness, which is why I have been hesitant to put my foot down and tell her no outright, although I have attempted to just give her a kind but firm, “No, I can’t redo this task. If you’d like to join me, please come along, I’m right here. Can you help with this part?” But unless I go back downstairs, go back and redo the original thing, she just melts down. It escalates into her screaming and crying, her two-year-old sister crying from the stress, and me being close to crying too. It feels like I’m being held hostage.
For context, our family’s going through a big transition. My husband and I are separated and have been for six months. It’s been hard for all of us, but we’ve been careful to talk openly with our four- and two-year-old about it, ask if they have questions, affirm our love and care for them, not argue in front of them, etc. This controlling behavior from the four-year-old started about six months before the separation happened, but has certainly gotten worse.
I’d be thankful for any input you can provide, even if it’s just an encouragement to stand firm and say no, or to go with it and hope it passes. Thank you.
First of all, thanks to this parent for her kind words of support. And I agree with this parent, this has gotten out of hand. She says, “it’s getting to a ridiculous point and the demands seem to be growing.” Yes. That’s something to zero in on no matter what the behavior is our child is doing. When it seems to grow, get more persistent and more over-the-top, that’s a sign that our child isn’t getting the response that they need from us.
The hard part about issues like separation is us seeing clearly what’s going on, because as parents we tend to go to all these fear places and guilt places. Especially if we’re in a situation where we’ve had to make big transitions. And I don’t know how this parent feels about what’s going on with the separation, but it is normal to feel vulnerable and maybe even kind of guilty about that, not only for us personally, but just in terms of our child. Not that this parent should feel guilty about it, but it’s normal for that to come up. So that’s making it easier for us to go to that place of feeling unsure of ourselves and guilty and maybe I’m not doing enough.
And this can be true with any separation, even just “I’m going to go to the bathroom, I’ll be right back.” And our child is upset and so we have to kind of skulk off or say, “It’s okay, I’ll be back, I’ll be back!” and be very guilty about it, which then transmits to our child that we’re not comfortable, so then they can’t get comfortable. It’s a whole cycle that we can put into motion that way. But that’s because we as parents tend to go to that vulnerable fear place around this and then believe things like this parent is saying: “I knew it was a bid for closeness and reassurance.” And she says again: “I know in many ways this is a cry for connection and closeness, which is why I’ve been hesitant to put my foot down.”
What I would try to understand here is that a bid for closeness and connection isn’t as literal as we might perceive it. Closeness and connection, we feel that with someone definitely not because they’re just doing whatever we want them to and they’re always with us and whenever we want them by our side, they’re by our side. It’s that feeling of being able to share hard feelings and to be able to share those without it turning into you not being able to handle it and therefore you putting me in charge. Obviously this parent doesn’t mean to do that, but that’s what I see happening here. And I’m going to explain that further because that was probably not clear.
This transition that’s happening with these parents and their separation, that’s really hard on them obviously. And it sounds like they’re handling it beautifully, not arguing in front of their children, talking openly about it, asking if they have questions, affirming love and care for them. That’s wonderful, but what’s missing is that I need to be able to, as a child, have a huge meltdown about this, scream about it, completely unravel about it. Because it is scary. Any change in my life is a loss and something new that is scary and uncomfortable. And it doesn’t mean I can’t handle it, at all. I can, with my parent’s support. But I have feelings about it. And this is what I want to help this parent see, I need a place to be able to vent those.
And it happens. No matter what, in any small instance where a child is having these meltdowns about seemingly ridiculous things like my parent won’t do everything I say and redo tasks she’s already done and hold my hand every second and all that, I just need you to stop me and let me go to these places that are uncomfortable for you. Because it’s not about you, it’s just about me needing to vent the way kids do, which is in this kind of over-the-top way. It’s very thorough, right? It’s very healthy.
When she’s having the meltdowns that this parent is trying to avoid, and when her sister is joining in, it’s upsetting her too. That can be a kind of empathy that the children have together. Often even when a baby cries and another baby cries, it’s not that that baby is scared or terrified or upset, their feelings are getting touched off. So that’s how I would perceive the two-year-old getting upset when the older one does. Not as something like, Oh no, now everyone’s upset and I’ve got to fix this. That’s so much pressure on us and it’s just not what is needed.
What will help is us having these very reasonable boundaries, like, I already did that. You really want me to do it again. I’m not going to do it again, my love. You can be upset about that if you need to. I support you getting to feel however you feel about what I say. But owning your role in this relationship so that a four-year-old doesn’t have to take it on. That’s the position children can end up finding themselves in when we’re afraid of their feelings a little bit or we’re trying to avoid this healthy thing that needs to happen with them sharing their feelings. Therefore, we’re allowing all of this over-the-top controlling stuff to happen.
Let’s look at this another way. What her daughter’s doing when she melts down on the outside is objecting, right? That’s the first thing we can see. Underneath that are all these feelings of, My family is changing and something’s going on and my parents aren’t totally at ease and I’m not at ease and I need to let that out. But on the outside, they’re objecting, no matter what’s going on that’s making them react to our limits. Including our separation limits, that I’m going to go do this now. Taking care of ourselves in that way is just a natural way of having personal boundaries with our child. We’re not trying to train them or teach them a lesson, we’re just taking care of ourselves in this relationship.
So now our child is objecting. What do we want for our children in their future? We want them to be able to object, right? We want them to feel they have a right to strongly object to other people’s boundaries or other people’s decisions of any kind, other people’s actions. But a child can’t feel comfortable objecting when whenever they object we, as this parent says, acquiesce. Which means I object and there’s no backstop for me to bounce my objection off of. Instead, when I object, the person I’m objecting to just gives way to me and puts me in charge. So that’s not being able to object, as I’m sure this parent wants her daughter to be able to do in life.
And this is, again, such a common thing that we want to do as parents. I want to do it too, I wanted just to be the good guy and have you like everything I do. But that’s not serving our child, especially in a time where they have appropriate feelings to share. So what I believe this child, and all children, want is to be seen here. Not just as needy and I just can’t get enough of your connection and attention. Seeing them in this weak position because that’s what our fear place in us goes to. Oh, my poor child, they need me and I’m not being there for them! That voice is not telling us the truth. The truth, and what our child really wants us to see, is I’m being unreasonable because I need to fall apart with you a lot. And I also want you to see something that I could never really know or articulate myself, and that’s that controlling you doesn’t feel comfortable to me at all. I’m unable to understand this completely or tell you this in words, so this is how I’m telling you, by making these over-the-top demands on you. This is how hard I’m trying for you to see me.
So yes, I encourage this parent and all parents to, as she says, put her foot down, but in the kindest possible way. This doesn’t have to be, Now I’m being harsh and putting my foot down! That doesn’t feel good to us, and that doesn’t make it easier for us to let our child have feelings about it. What helps us is when we rise into that love place in us, that loves our child so much that we want them to know that we see them. And we’re not going to let them be the boss here when they’re only four years old, because we know that’s a terrifying thing for a four-year-old or a six-year-old or any child, that they have us as hostage, as this parent says.
And that’s how this feels. I know, I’ve been there. I’ve been there with my first and that’s how it feels. I could still dive in there anytime I wanted, but I’ve learned, and it’s been reinforced to me so many times through seeing the difference in my children when I am able to be kindly and lovingly in charge so they don’t have to be. Not letting them do all these controlling things to us because what they’re really trying to control is their feelings. We can put our foot down. But actually I don’t want to use that term because that already sounds like I’m drawing a line in the sand and I’m being so tough. It’s not tough, it’s loving and I guess it’s confidence in ourselves. It’s direct, it’s honest, it can be upbeat. What it can’t be is tentative or skulking or feeling guilty. It’s full-on honesty. Releasing our child from this limbo state of not being able to express her strong feelings all the way because it worries us too much. That’s a burden on them, that they have to be holding onto so much control.
I’m not exactly sure about the timing of her daughter’s behavior, as this mom says that it started about six months before the separation. But what I do know is that kids like this, she’s very sharp, she can go into that control position. She doesn’t want to be there, but look how capable she is of going there. She’s very believable, especially to a parent that’s not feeling that great about herself, maybe. So she’s very believable, she’s commanding. Children like that, especially, they’re so perceptive, they can know that something’s happening with their parents before we even do, a lot of the time. She was probably already reading that something was up between you.
And this is not for you to feel guilty about it, at all. Guilty is kind of what’s going on here already that’s getting in the way. That’s just to know that chances are she did pick up on it, and that’s where she started needing to kind of share. Because when you’re holding this stuff in, it’s just like if these parents are holding in their feelings about what’s going on and not sharing it with a friend or a family member or a counselor, that’s going to make them feel like exploding.
I know this parent can do this, and she will see the difference when she gives herself permission. And I love that she gave me an option to answer this way so I don’t feel too bad. She said, “Even if it’s just an encouragement to stand firm and say no, or to go with it and hope it passes.” I vote for stand firm and say no, but in the most loving possible way. You want me to do this and that, oh gosh, I’m not going to do it, my love. And letting her go to those screaming places. The more you can see that as positive healing, putting your therapist hat on, which is brilliant that she has that, putting that on and seeing her as your client for that period, needing to share, needing to vent this. And not feeling sorry for her, feeling good for her that she gets a chance to do this and you’re bravely giving it to her. Both of you get to feel better, and you’ll see a change very quickly when you do this.
Standing firm and saying no can be done in a way that’s so respectful and so loving and compassionate when we do the other half of that, which is welcoming her to object and welcoming her sister to join in if that’s the case. And not fearing this. Holding strong, with you being the reasonable adult here. I know you can do it.
Here’s one more:
Hi, Janet-
Thank you for all you do to support families, uplifting and educating us and cheering us on.
(Okay, I love that part. I’m so glad I’m cheering her on. That’s all I want to do!)
I’m reaching out about a pattern I’ve been noticing with my two-year-old. She turned two in late January, so she’s still freshly two. She’s a very emotionally strong kid who is extremely observant, even from birth. Lately she’s been getting upset and starting to cry when I leave the room. When I can remember, I try to tell her, “I’m going to go get some water” or “I need to go to the bathroom, would you like to come?” But sometimes I forget or I’m distracted, so I just leave without saying anything, either leaving her alone for a few seconds or with her dad. She doesn’t get upset every time, but I think if she’s in a particularly sensitive mood or tired, it seems to bother her.
My read on this behavior is that it seems like she’s feeling anxious and/or insecure. If it only happened every now and then, I feel like I wouldn’t feel the need to investigate it more. But since it comes up a lot, I want to see what I can do. I want her to obviously feel confident and secure. I’m wondering if it is something that I’m doing to make her feel this way or not doing, or if it’s just her personality.
Do you have any advice for me to help my daughter feel more secure and perhaps less anxious? Or, if your read on the situation is different, I’m very open to understanding some other dynamic. Thank you in advance.
Thanks to this parent as well. And I just have to say, along with the other parent’s note, “she’s a very emotionally strong kid who is extremely observant.” That’s, I think, both of these children. I would characterize them that way, that’s their personality. So this parent is worried that anxiousness or insecurity could be part of her child’s personality. And I would never want to discount this parent’s instinct that her daughter may feel anxious or insecure. I can’t know that for sure. However, I do know that the best way to help her feel more secure and less anxious is to do as I said with the last parent: be clear and honest and welcoming of her feelings around separation.
And again, welcoming and allowing her to express these feelings is only possible when we don’t cave to them. That’s what it’s all about. They can’t express it if we’re not someone they can express it to without us crumbling or melting or acquiescing in some way. Feeling bad, feeling guilty, worrying, Oh no, they’re too anxious. All those places that we can naturally go when we’re not perceiving all their feelings as all positive, all the time to express.
This parent says her daughter is not getting upset every time, but it’s happening enough. And yeah, it is probably happening when she’s in a sensitive mood or tired, and that’s when we need to cry sometimes. I’ve been having a hard time falling asleep lately, and last night I cried as I was trying to fall asleep. And what happened afterwards? I fell asleep. It’s not something that I usually do, cry at bedtime, but that’s what helps us to feel better. It’s not a bad sign, it’s a healthy sign.
Our children need a secure, confident parent to receive all their states, all their feelings, and not take it to heart and change something because of it. Quite the opposite: that we receive it while still holding ourselves as the leader in this relationship that children need us to be. Because if we’re not the leader, they have to be it sometimes, and that doesn’t feel good to them. That can create insecurity and anxiousness. It’s like, I’m four or I’m two and I’m in charge here?! That’s scary, right? We can relate to that. It’s scary enough for me as an adult sometimes to feel the responsibility that I have, but gosh, when I was that little, that’s overwhelming.
I don’t know what’s creating these feelings at these certain times. I mean, there may be more that’s going on in this family that would explain that. It could just be the age. It’s an age where a child does feel more separate as an individual. That’s okay when I want to be separate, but ooh, what if the other person wants to be separate, and I don’t? And I want my mom. That doesn’t mean we need to acquiesce to a demand, never leaving her side or all the things that we might think we’re supposed to do to fix this. No, it’s not about fixing it. It’s about allowing for the process of feelings being shared. Each child’s emotional developmental process as they’re maturing and becoming more resilient because they’ve felt safe to go to the depths with us.
This parent says similar things to what the other parent said: “It seems like she’s feeling anxious and/or insecure, and I want her to obviously feel confident and secure. I’m wondering if it is something that I’m doing to make her feel this way or not doing, or if it’s just her personality.” So no, we don’t have this power to make a child feel certain things. We do have a lot of healing power in allowing them to feel certain things, allowing them to feel all the things basically. And then they can move through them, the feelings pass. And every time a child knows that they don’t always get everything they want with every person in their life, that other people have their own needs and wants, and that it’s natural in any relationship for there to be conflict in those needs—but I don’t even want to say conflict in those needs, because I don’t think it’s her need to have the parent with her at all times. Conflict in those wants. These are really important messages for kids to receive, to learn and grow from to keep developing in this emotionally healthy direction.
And it makes sense. If we think about it, why would our child want us to ever leave their side? They adore us. But that doesn’t mean that they’re feeling anxious or insecure about it, just that they want us there with them always. They love us. So I see nothing but positive changes these parents can make right away. It’s all in the way that they’re perceiving their child’s reaction to separation and the parent really needing to be the one who’s the leader here.
I really hope some of this helps. And there’s so much more about boundaries in my book No Bad Kids: Toddler Discipline Without Shame, which has been a bestseller for years now, and also in my No Bad Kids Master Course at nobadkidscourse.com. That is a deep dive that will help you with your perceptions and to know where kids need us to, as this first parent said, stand firm, put our foot down, but put our foot down in the nicest possible way and where they need to be leading. Knowing those two different aspects of parenting, where to trust and where to lead, makes our lives so much easier and clearer, and all of that’s in the course.
Thank you so much again. We can do this.
