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Join me, Jess VanderWier, a registered psychotherapist, mom of three, and founder of Nurtured First, along with my husband Scott, as we dive deep into the stories of our friends, favourite celebrities, and influential figures.
In each episode, we skip the small talk and dive into vulnerable and honest conversations about topics like cycle breaking, trauma, race, mental health, parenting, sex, religion, postpartum, healing, and loss.
We are glad you are here.
PS: The name Robot Unicorn comes from our daughter. When we asked her what we should name the podcast, she confidently came up with this name because she loves robots, and she loves unicorns, so why not? There was something about the playfulness of the name, the confidence in her voice, and the fact that it represents that you can love two things at once that just felt right.
Welcome to Robot Unicorn, hosted by my parents, Jess and Scott.
I hope you enjoyed the episode.
We're going to talk about when it's appropriate to be flexible in your discipline.
So flexible parenting
and adapting to your child's needs because their needs actually do change over time.
They're developmentally ready for more or different ways of handling things as they get older.
So anyways
Because of this summer, we had time to think and observe and just uh I mean, you've been on Instagram and talking to people as well and
reading emails, all that kind of stuff.
We've collected our thoughts and we thought it would be good to talk about when it's important to be flexible as a parent because sometimes it feels like we're told
You have to be consistent.
Otherwise a child will never know that they can trust what you're saying is true.
And basically if you want the parent well, you can't be that flexible.
It's tough because I mean
Like I have even said that consistency is important.
You have to be consistent, right?
But then I think this summer having lots of conversations with people who are being consistent and they're like, well, at what point is it not working
Right.
Being consistent, right?
And there's so much nuance to that that's very hard to capture, I think, on Instagram.
Also, I really wanted to say just a little plug for Nurtured First at the beginning, because I heard from someone who
was like, oh I've been listening to your podcast for a year and I had no idea about Nerd First.
Oh, seriously?
So people are Oh well I guess we're kinda bad at that.
Yeah, so we're kinda bad at cross-referencing and maybe we'll make a change at some point to make this more clear to folks.
But she was like
She met me, get this, shout out to this person.
She met me at a school function and had never seen anything on social, hadn't seen my face because our face is not currently on the robot unicorn page.
She's like I recognized your voice and I was like I can't understand why I recognize this person's voice so much.
Really?
You never told me this.
Yeah, this is recent.
I'll tell you who it is after
And she's like, I recognized your voice.
And then later I stumbled across your Instagram, realized it was the same person, and was like, oh my goodness, I had no idea I was talking to Jess from Robot Unicorn.
Oh interesting.
Okay, so here's the note.
We also have an Instagram account and a website, Nurtured First.
The Instagram account is always linked in the show notes where I talk about parenting support
parenting related topics, topics that we cover on this podcast every single day.
So if you don't already follow us there, definitely check it out.
But just uh yeah, a tiny plug after having that conversation, I was like, oh yeah, we maybe should be better about sharing that we're connected.
Hmm, okay.
That's gonna give me separate thoughts outside of this.
Yes, I know.
Let's get right back into things, okay Jess?
Thanks for making us go off on a completely separate tangent.
I think most parents, probably all parents, have been there where we set a clear, reasonable rule for our child, or what we think is clear and reasonable.
You've explained it.
Probably a dozen times, but they just aren't following it.
And you feel like you're hitting your head against the wall.
Can you start by talking about that moment of parental frustration and why it's such a universal experience
I'll give an example.
Let's say it's hitting, right?
You're trying to be consistent with your boundary.
Your child hits.
So your boundary is, I can't let you hit.
You hold their hands down.
You maybe take them to their room so that they don't hurt their brother, give them a time in or something like that, right?
Like give them a break, but you're like, Jess, I've been doing this over and over and over.
And my kids
keeps hitting.
Why do they keep hitting?
I'm being consistent on my boundaries.
I'm saying the same script over and over.
I'm giving them a time in, I'm not leaving them alone with their feelings, but the hitting is continuing.
And now you're starting to get frustrated at your kid.
And for a lot of parents, this is where they're like
Maybe gentle parenting, we've talked about this a million times now what we do, doesn't work for my child.
Maybe they need some punishments.
I see this over and over.
The answer isn't punishments, but sometimes
When we're being consistent and it's not working, there is a piece that we're missing.
And that's what we want to talk about today.
Yeah.
And honestly, it is a very universal experience.
I've had talks with buddies of mine about it too.
It's yeah, I mean we've been there ourselves too, right?
I think children are I mean obviously they're trying to test the limits.
They're trying to understand the world, so that's what they're doing.
They're testing the limits.
But it's frustrating because we gotta get stuff done
I feel like that's for us it's like, okay, we have things to do, right?
So Or you have a baby and your kids hitting the baby and you're like, okay, you gotta stop.
Yeah.
Or like when our toddler's picking up the cat, it's like, okay, enough is enough.
I know.
That one still happens.
So it's she's a lot more gentle and picks her up properly now.
It's like her little uh almost like a little stuffy for her
Yeah, but you get the frustration of like I've told you a million times don't pick up the cat.
Stop picking up the cat.
You're hurting her.
Why do you want to hurt the cat?
Right?
Like this is where our minds go instead of being like, why is my discipline, the way I'm handling this, not effective?
That's the better question
So going back to what I was saying originally, parents I think are pretty constantly told that consistency is key.
I mean even you will say that.
But we also hear about the importance of being responsive and flexible.
But this I think to a lot of people can feel like a contradiction.
You have to be consistent but also responsive and flexible.
So how do you, as a therapist, help parents navigate that tension between holding a boundary and knowing when it's time to bend?
So actually my first thing that I tell parents outside, like, let's just play this out.
Let's say you come to me in my therapy office because your child's hitting, right?
The first thing I'm going to say to you is not set a consistent boundary around hitting.
A lot of people would say that that's not my first thing.
My first thing I say to you is.
.
We first need to understand why your child is hitting, what need that serves.
.
We need to be curious about it.
Once we're curious and we understand, we're gonna teach him a new skill or her, a new skill, so she can get that need met in a healthy way, and then we'll set boundaries.
So my first thing I do with parents is actually not tell them to set a consistent boundary.
My first thing is to understand why is a child hitting, what need is it serving, what's this child trying to communicate with us
Because if we only try and set boundaries around this behavior, punish this behavior, but we're never teaching a new skill, we're gonna just see it come out in a different way.
And I think that's the number one thing that parents are missing is the curiosity piece.
Yeah
We will get into that in a little bit.
Oh, I know, and I'm excited.
The research I looked at frames this balance as flexible consistency.
which I thought was an interesting term, which is rooted in what psychologists call the authoritative parenting style.
And I don't know that we need to get into that too much, but it's just authoritative parent, like we've talked about many times, is a parent who
Provides an unbelievable amount of love to their child, but they also have a lot of rules and expectations for their child that are reasonable
Structure.
Yeah, structure.
But can you break down what that means to be flexibly consistent?
How does it differ from the more rigid styles or the very lenient styles that
people might be more familiar with.
I have a perfect example.
It was right before lunchtime and we were on vacation and we are about to go on a boat and we're gonna go have a picnic lunch on the island
Right?
So the expectation for the kids was we're not having lunch yet.
We're gonna go have lunch on this island.
Now I know our three-year-old very well.
And I know our three-year-old gets incredibly hangry, and when she gets hangry
She gets past the point of reasoning.
She starts to hit.
She starts to like be a totally different human being.
Like we don't even know who she is when she's hangry.
Well we know she's hangry
So it was gonna be a late lunch and I can just see in our three-year-old the signs are beginning of the hangriness, right?
And I have it
choice.
Like the other girls, I'm holding the boundary.
Like they wanted to eat a bag of chips and stuff like that.
And like you guys can wait.
You can tolerate being hungry for a little bit.
We're just about to go have lunch on the island.
Like you're not gonna have a bag of chips right now.
With our three year old, I did not hold the same boundary.
I was like, you know what?
You can have your lunch now and then you can have some extra little food once we get to the island.
So I was flexible.
And my friend was like, oh, but I thought you set a boundary with
the kids.
Like she was just kind of questioning me, right?
She's like, I thought you set a boundary with the kids that they weren't gonna eat until we get to the island.
Like, why are you changing your boundary?
I thought you're not supposed to change boundaries.
Right.
And we can my friend and I talk really openly about discipline.
And I was like, it's because I'm trying to look at the whole picture here and look at what's in her best interest.
And I know that it was my mistake to say that she had to wait an hour for lunch.
That was not realistic for a three-year-old.
And if I were to hold that boundary, she's gonna melt down for the next 30 minutes as we're getting over there
And that's not fair to her.
And so in this situation, I have to be flexible about my boundaries and then I can get back to being consistent to them after.
And so I think that that's a good example of sometimes you have to be flexible in order to work with the child that you know that you have.
And that's not being permissive, that's being like
We're gonna all be set up for success if I just feed you now.
And sometimes that's even like at our house at dinner, like I feel like we give them a really big after school snack.
so that by the time they get to dinner, sometimes the after school snacks actually more of the meal than the dinner itself because we just know that will set them up better for the entire evening.
So I think that's where the flexibility comes in and sometimes asking yourself
Sure, this in theory is a fine boundary, like you have to wait till we get to the island for lunch, but in reality with the kids that you have, is that setting them up for success?
Yeah, and is it logical to l make them wait that long?
Yeah.
And is it fair?
Like sometimes I I ask myself that question because like listen, I get stuck on not harsh parenting, but like being rigid about things sometimes
And then I have to ask myself, like, is this fair?
And if it's not fair to the child, then I will switch my boundary around.
But I'll explain to them why.
Now in that situation though where you told the two older ones, they had to wait, but the younger one not.
Is that fair?
Because I feel like some people would argue that if you're gonna let one child have their lunch before you go, then why not just let all of them?
Well
A, they wanted to have lunch on the island.
So the other two wanted that.
They just wanted to have chips beforehand.
And I knew the chips weren't really gonna fill them up
B, I knew that they already had had a good snack.
So like I had to look at the whole picture, right?
Yeah, okay.
And C, I knew that they could be a little bit hungry and handle it.
and knowing that they're about to get a big lunch.
Whereas our three year old, her brain can't think like, oh I'm gonna get a big lunch soon, so why don't I just hold off on this meltdown so that like she just can't she's not there.
So I think it's just also has to do with the age
Honestly, even probably a year ago, our middle child, we would I bet we would still give her I would have done the same thing a year.
But then this summer, she definitely seemed a lot older.
Right.
So your expectations can kind of shift as they get older, right?
And I would not, actually it's a really good point, I don't hold the same expectations for all three of our kids.
It really depends on who they are and it's about working with them, right?
working with what I know they can handle.
Such a great segue, Jessica.
Wow.
How did you know?
I didn't, but you know I love this topic.
So a huge piece of this puzzle, what I found in the research, seems to be a child's innate temperament
And the research talks a lot about the goodness of fit principle, which is what you were just talking about, I think.
The idea that a strategy's success depends on how well it matches a child's natural disposition.
Can you give us an example of what a poor fit between a parent's expectation and a child's temperament might look like in real life?
Okay, I have a perfect example.
Yeah, okay.
Dinner time.
So many parents that I work with, I talk to online, that I know in real life, have this expectation that their three year old should just sit at the dinner table nicely, have their dinner, stay there the whole time, talk with their family, and then once dinner's done
you know, then they can go.
But like dinner's 30 minutes.
And I see so many challenges because of unrealistic expectations at the dinner table.
It's not realistic to expect a three-year-old to sit for 30 minutes while you have dinner, especially when you and your partner are usually just doing the talking and you're just expecting them to kind of quietly sit there during dinner time, right?
Like that's not realistic
And parents will get really frustrated with their kids, like you keep getting up, you keep talking, you keep standing on the table, you keep spilling your food.
They'll get so angry and frustrated with their kids because they can't sit at the dinner table
when really it's not the kids' fault.
The kid is three.
They have an attention span.
Maybe they can sit there for ten minutes.
Tops.
But our expectation on them is unrealistic and so we get into these situations where we get angry at our kids or like try and hold these boundaries so firm but we're not actually
Being realistic.
Is that kind of what you're saying?
Yes.
But I mean we're talking more about temperament than so I mean it could be I think that could be a temperament.
Temperament is like activity level
I can't remember what it was.
There was like 11 different attributes or something like that.
And like the most well-rounded temperament system, I guess, and level of activity.
was one of them.
So that could be for older kids too.
But I have had conversations with people where they're like, yeah, but I mean if you go out to a restaurant, I'll take my three-year-old and I'll just
Set the expectation.
You're you have to be here the whole time.
You have to sit and they know that's the expectation and they just do it.
Right.
Some kids can.
And that's the thing too is like we have three children.
And I would say they all have different temperaments, personalities.
Maybe our oldest and youngest more similar, but even them different.
Mm-hmm.
has a lot higher level of activity than our oldest.
Yes, like our oldest, she is one who can sit there for 30 minutes at the table, even when she was younger.
Oh even longer.
Even longer.
She could sit there for an hour as long as you're engaging with her, talking with her
Right.
So I took her out for dinner all the time when she was three.
And you were traveling?
Like that's something special we would do.
And she was great at a restaurant, right?
It was fine.
That wasn't me being some fantastic parent that could force my kid.
She just had the temperament that she was very easygoing, very mild tempered, happy to be engaged with.
As long as I was doing those things, she was fine at a restaurant.
Now I think if we were to take
our current three year old to a restaurant, she has a much higher yeah, activity level.
Like she is a lot more like up and down, up and down, moving around.
Like it would not go the same, I don't think
Well, I mean it's a completely different setup though, right?
Mm-hmm.
She has her two older siblings.
Yeah, it's five of us versus with her oldest, it was either two of you or three of us.
Mm-hmm.
And then we have a lot more attention on
So I kinda wonder.
I should try.
I should try just taking just her out and see how it would go.
I don't know.
I feel like it would go quite a bit differently.
Differently as in she would sit there for longer if
Let's say it was just the three, you, myself, and her, or just the two of you.
I'd be curious.
But that all to say is like each child has a different temperament.
Or
Maybe not, but you can't necessarily compare just because your older sister did this, you should do the same thing, right?
Some kids might sit at a table and it's totally fine.
Some kids might sleep through the night from the time that they're seven weeks old, right?
Some kids don't.
So it's important to take in mind the temperament of your child and ask yourself, am I setting a realistic expectation for this specific child instead of
Like, well your sister did it at this stage, so you should do it too.
And I know I'm guilty of that sometimes as well.
Yeah.
I mean, again, parents are busy.
It's hard to remember all the different things.
Anyways, yeah, it's important that we match up
Each child's unique temperament with expectations that make sense for them.
So if you have a child that's more active, but then you're expecting them to just sit there quietly and have an hour-long quiet time every day or something like that.
Like that may not make sense for them.
They might actually have to get their energy out, and if they don't, they're gonna have more meltdowns because of it.
One of my favorite quotes on parenting, and I think we even have this in our parenting little kids course, is from Ross Green.
He has an incredible book called Raising Human Beings.
And it's just a reframe.
So Ross Green says kids do well when they can, right?
And so if a child isn't doing well, the question is
Why not?
Right?
And so often parents will say, why won't my child meet my expectations?
Right?
Like to sit at the dinner table, stop hitting.
And the better question instead of why won't they, is why can't they?
Why can't they meet my expectations
So is it because my expectations are realistic?
Is it because they're trying to communicate a need and I'm just not seeing what that need is?
Is it because they don't have the ability to meet my expectations because of impulse control, because their environment's not set up?
up for success.
And so I feel like it's that simple reframe where parents will get stuck because they'll be like, well, I'm told I should set boundaries and I should have expectations and I should be firm and structured with my kids.
So I am, but it's leading to constant meltdowns.
But they're not asking themselves
Is this fair?
Is this realistic?
And even if it is fair and realistic, why is my child having a hard time with it?
What skills do they maybe need to learn?
And I think it's those shifts
That is so much of the work that I do in therapy because parents who come to me are good.
They're doing all the things that they should do, usually, but something's still not right.
And that's where we start getting curious about
Well, why can't they meet your expectation?
What else is going on?
I think that makes sense.
And there's a lot of research on the skills gap that kids have or kids, let's say.
have a skills gap and therefore they can't meet your expectations because they haven't learned the skills in order to meet them.
So let's talk about that and what parents often mistake
for defiance, the skills gap.
The research points out that a lot of misbehavior isn't a child being bad, but rather that skills gap where their executive function, the brains
Management system for things like memory and self-control is just overloaded.
but is actually incapable of it in that moment.
So I think one sign is like you have been consistent, let's say for like a couple months, you're like, I'm consistently setting this boundary.
And it's just
My child just keeps doing the same thing.
Like at the dinner, I say all the time at dinner.
Every day at dinner I say you have to sit there for thirty minutes.
Every day they don't.
Okay, so if it's like
nothing's changing, nothing's improving, it's not getting better.
Then the question is why can't they meet that expectation?
Like we have to ask ourselves the bigger question, right?
Or like every single night at bedtime.
I'm holding the boundaries, Jess.
I'm doing I'm doing a routine and it always ends in a meltdown every single night.
Okay, so why can't your child do this bedtime routine?
What's going on for them that it's making it so hard?
So I think the one thing is like you are being consistent and it's just not
you're not seeing any progress and it's been like a month or two months, then I would start asking myself like why?
What's going on?
If the you're trying to shift a behavior
So let's say hitting, biting, kicking, but you're not introducing a new skill, like something else that they can do to replace that behavior.
I think
then you need to look at this as well because if we see behavior is communication, so if my child's hitting to tell me something, but I'm not giving them a new way to tell me this thing, you're just gonna see different aggressive behaviors pop up.
So in behaviorism
that's called a replacement skill.
And I know I will be hard on behaviorism sometimes on this podcast, you know, especially in terms of like ignoring kids or like punishing them, that type of thing
But there are some things I've taken away from it that I think are really important and what make my approach so unique is because I have all the attachment child development stuff, but I also do understand the science of behavior.
And the science of behavior tells us that you can't just
take one behavior away and replace it with nothing and expect that you're not going to see more of those challenging behaviors, right?
A child needs a skill to be able to communicate with you
And so that's the other big thing I notice parents doing is like I don't want them to hit, but I'm also not teaching them a new way to get hitting energy out of their body.
Or I'm not teaching them a new way to tell me that they need to talk to me.
So the child's now kicking.
Those are the things that I would be looking at.
Let's get into the behaviorism and your history.
Maybe not your history, but you have experience.
as a behavior therapist, right?
What I was looking into was that the research and you have suggested this many times, but is essentially a that a parent should become a behavior detective.
I know you used to use this method
like this actual method as a behavior therapist, but the ABC model, which is antecedent behavior consequence model.
Can you walk us through how a parent could actually use this simple framework?
I still use this, by the way.
No, I know you do.
You just kind of it's named something different 'cause or do we do you name it something different?
I mean we don't usually say antecedent, so
So in behaviorism is antecedent behavior consequence, but really what I call it now is like what happened before the behavior, what was the behavior, what happened after.
That's how I explain it to parents.
And actually when you come to see me, if like you're seeing me in my therapy office, I'm getting you to journal that out for a few weeks.
Because usually the parents that come to see me, they have kids with like really big behaviors and
I even have some tracking sheets for this in my parenting little kids course.
Like I like when parents journal out what's going on because I find that they often come to their own conclusions about why the behavior is happening.
So it helps you become a bit more of a detective for finding the real function behind like what's the real reason behind the b the behavior that's happening.
Yeah, like I want parents to be curious.
Like you're telling me your child hits you fifteen times a day.
Why?
What's going on before, when do they hit you, and then what do you do after?
Because that will tell me everything I need to know about what hitting is communicating.
Right.
And that's my question.
How does hitting serve them?
Because kids don't just hit for no reason.
It serves them.
Whether it's like I have to get this feeling out of my body, you have a very sensory child or
they need your attention, they hate what they're doing, they're bored, like why are they hitting, right?
So I still get people to journal this out.
I get my clients to bring in their journals.
We go through it together and it helps us get curious.
And I find that's the missing piece for a lot of people.
Mm-hmm.
So to I guess build on top of that, there was another thing that you I don't know if you still talk about that in the same way, but extinction bursts.
What that is is let's say hitting, so your child stopped hitting.
Like you stopped
giving hitting a ton of attention, you taught them a new skill of way to communicate with you.
Your child stopped hitting, but then all of a sudden a week later they're back to hitting again.
And you're like, wait, what the heck?
Like did everything I just do, was that all for nothing
No.
Like I imagine it's like you have your phone, right?
Let's say I have Instagram, a certain spot on my phone where Instagram is, right?
Like the app
And so every time I open my phone, I go to the Instagram, I open it up.
But then sometimes if I reorganize my phone, Instagram's not in the same spot anymore, right?
But the first few times I'm still going to the same spot and then I'm like press the butt like where I think Instagram should be and is not there, right?
So that's what kids do with their behavior.
Like the first few times where you're setting a boundary
you're teaching them a new skill, they're still gonna hit just to see what happens because that's what they're used to doing.
They're like behaviorally they're used to doing that.
Well over time, I stop doing that, right?
Like I realize Instagram's in another place and I start to learn a new pattern for how I'm gonna behave.
But then maybe on some random morning where I'm like overtired, I just go and I do the same thing.
Like I go to where Instagram used to be and I try and like hit the button and it's not there.
That's an extinction burst.
It's like a little while later, you're tired, you're not thinking clear, whatever whatever reason it is, and you just try one last time and you're like, oh shoot, no, I know I knew I moved Instagram on my phone.
Like why am I even trying to click it here
That's an extinction burst.
And parents often get like, oh no, they're doing it again.
Like we get all up in arms.
You need to just know it's normal.
Like kids are just gonna try it out one last time.
That's hitting work.
Like do I get it?
Well it's probably not one last time though.
It might be we're talking about kids, right?
So it might be more than one.
And potentially more intense.
Because like the way I think of it, maybe this is wrong, but let's say on our website uh a couple of years ago we were just trying to see w how people use it and I recognized that I had designed something in a certain way that looked like a button but it wasn't.
Right.
And people would actually like rage click on some of them, like, why is this not working and start doing it more?
And that's kind of what I not that that's necessarily exactly a an extinction verse.
But it's similar where there's a certain
behavioral pattern that someone had and now this thing is not doing what they expect it's supposed to do, so then they start rage clicking on it.
So they don't do it just once.
Like I could see that some people were
hitting it ten times trying to figure out like why is this stupid thing not working on your site.
And that's when you're first changing a behavior with your kid?
Yeah.
That's what's gonna happen.
And
you're gonna see the behavior probably get worse before it gets better, especially if you've always been like giving in for lack of a better word.
Your child's like, wait, what the heck when I always asked them to watch one more show, they said yes.
And now they're not?
Yep.
Okay, I'm gonna ask them 10 times harder to watch one more show
Hey friends, so at pickup last week, our daughter asked Scott a truly
kind of tricky question in front of her younger siblings.
Scott was telling me that when he heard a question like this, he used to panic, but this time he had a plan.
And he said to our daughter, thank you for asking.
Let's talk tonight when we've got privacy.
And that's a line that he learned straight from
our new body safety and consent course at Nurture First.
So this new body safety and consent course is taught by me, so Jess.
If you listen to this podcast, you know me.
I'm a child therapist and a mom of three and I have taught body safety and consent education for years.
This course takes all my years of experience teaching this education and gives you calm, age-appropriate language for body parts, consent, and boundaries.
You'll learn how to teach your kids that no means no, you'll learn how to teach them to read facial cues, you'll talk about safe and unsafe.
safe touch and you'll even teach them about their uh oh feeling.
There's guidance inside this course for the real life stuff like tickling that goes too far and even the difference between a secret and a surprise.
We made this course at Nurture First because research shows that body safety education helps kids speak
up sooner and we want that for our family, for Scott and I, but also for you.
So check the course out at nurturefirst.
com slash body safety and to save 10% use the code
robot unicorn.
And just full disclosure here, we are the creators of this course and we're so proud of it.
When parents try a new
approach, they want to see results.
And obviously they want to see it quickly.
But then as we know, it's very possible, very common for an extinction burst to happen.
Like we said.
Like we even moved our garbage can at our house.
Yes, the garbage can't a great example.
It took me probably a good month to stop walking to the
old location of it and walk to the location it is now.
And there are even still times where I'm like about to walk there and it's probably been two months now.
So it does take time to learn a new behavior too.
I hope that will give parents some compassion on their kids.
Like think about yeah, simple things like
You put your garbage can in a new spot.
You moved an app on your phone.
Like even our own simple pro-social like good behavior takes a while to change.
So your kids' behavior is gonna take a while to change too.
That's just natural
That's just how behavior works.
So based on your clinical experience and the research, what's a realistic timeline for behavior change?
How long should a parent consistently stick with a new targeted strategy before deciding it's truly not working and it's time to pivot?
I don't know how accurately I can answer that question in general because I feel like let's say tantrums.
It's gonna take a while for your child to not have tantrums because they need their brains to develop as well
Right.
So it's it's not only the new skills you're teaching them, the way you're co-regulating with their emotions, the way you respond to a tantrum, but it's also their brain development.
So that could be years by the time your child really stops having tantrums.
Whereas like hitting maybe like if they're five and you're implementing something where you're teaching a replacement skill, you're responding to it in an appropriate way, maybe like a month or two
But that's too broad of a question.
Yeah, okay.
That's fair.
Well and even looking at it, it seems like the median time for even adults to learn a new behavior.
Let's talk about the garbage can, moving that somewhere else.
It takes just over two months, apparently on average.
So the median is about sixty-six days, so just over two months.
Even for something as simple as that, right?
Versus you're trying to get your child with
still very developing brain to try and change a behavior.
It could take longer, honestly.
Some things like some kids may be able to learn these things a lot quicker.
But that's for an adult is about two months.
Sometimes it can be half of a year.
Exactly.
Right.
So that's why I never guarantee any results with my like with my clients to be like, okay, well if I do this just then
Like a week, two weeks, and like, no, no, no.
Like we I mean it could be.
You could see improvements.
So like do you think it's realistic to s to say that you could start seeing it?
Improvements after a certain period of time without seeing the behavior you're trying to potentially reduce being fully gone
Like I'd say if if you've been doing something for two months and you're not seeing any improvements and it's getting worse, then I would look back at your strategy and see if it's actually helping you or not.
Yeah.
Even in terms of tantrums.
Like if you're implementing things like more rest time, you know, trying to feed them before they get really hangry, all these things and you're still like, what the heck?
It's just getting worse and worse.
Then I would maybe look back at your stress
strategy if you don't see any progression.
But also, yeah, I don't want to tell parents that like, oh, you should expect in one week all of a sudden things will be better.
Maybe for some kids, but it's just it's hard and we're talking so general that it's hard for me to really say anything, right?
That's fair.
Yeah, because I think it's not like you're gonna see everything change right away, but I would assume that if, let's say, after
Potentially two months, it could be much longer, but after potentially two months, you're hopefully at the point where the behavior that you've been looking at has changed.
You should be seeing something
Starting to improve way before that I would imagine, like within a week or two.
But again, yeah, it depends on I guess what we're talking about.
Yeah, we're talking about body, are we talking about sleep?
Are we talking about heading?
Like
Oh, there's just so many things.
And then you have to take into account their age and all that too.
And the research also warns about the slot machine effect when parents are inconsistent with the rule.
They are accidentally putting their child on a variable ratio reinforcement schedule.
You're really at the big terms today, hey.
I know.
Well, it's even h it's even bolded in here.
Oh boy.
Which is the most powerful schedule for locking in behavior.
It's I think is another term for it called intermittent reinforcement.
So how can parents tell the difference between being adaptively
Flexible versus being harmfully inconsistent.
Where is that line?
That's a tricky one.
That's very tricky.
Again, it might be too general, but uh it's kind of like social media platforms are
designed to provide this same type of reinforcement schedule where you're not all you don't always get the likes for everything, you don't always get
comments and all that but you get it just enough and just randomly enough that you are more likely to post on it and it kind of becomes addicting because it's so true the reason why people gamble and
use slot machines or whatever because it has that same effect.
Yeah, can you explain to people in your own words what intermittent reinforcement would be or the slot machine effect?
Just so they understand?
So what I understand at least is a human is or animal, whatever, is given a reward or positive reinforcement, but it doesn't happen every time they do the thing that the per like the
person testing wants.
So let's say if you use a slot machine, it's a simple example.
You don't win it every time, but you usually
when you're playing will win something and it's never consistent, but it is consistent enough or it happens just enough while you're playing.
that it makes you want to get that feeling of winning even more because it feels like you can do something to actually achieve whatever the winnings.
It's like social media too.
You don't always get the likes, you don't always get the comments and everything on everything you post
But you'll get it just enough that it reinforces that behavior.
It causes you to want to do that thing even more.
Yeah, exactly.
So if from what I understand, if a parent is
giving in sometimes to certain kids requests.
Let's say our kids ask for ice cream.
Maybe it's like after doing their chores or something like that, but we don't do it every time.
they might ask incessantly more and more and more every time they do their chores if they can have ice cream.
And like it might make it easier for them to do their chores because we positively reinforce them for doing it.
But then they will likely only want to do that if they get something like ice cream in return for it.
Yeah.
Is what I'm saying, correct?
Yeah, what you're saying is correct.
I think about it in terms of like I think a child pushing a boundary, like TV time, right?
Like one time you say, okay, it's time to turn off the TV, and they protest and cry and you still turn it off.
The next time you say it's time to turn off the TV and they protest and cry and you're like, okay, fine, one more show.
Then they're like, oh, so sometimes they'll give me one more show.
And then the next time you turn it off.
But then the next time
They protest and cry and you're still like no I'm gonna turn it off but then they keep going, they keep going, they keep going.
You're like fine one more show.
Okay, now they've learned oh so if I push even harder I might get one more show
And then you see more and more and more protests every time you're turning off the TV because on that second time or on that third time, you give in, right?
And so now they're gonna push you even harder
to be like, I know that my first like pushing might not be enough.
So if I push them twice as hard, maybe they'll say yes.
If I push them three times as hard, maybe I'll say yes.
because you're reinforcing them pushing back on your boundary different amounts of time every time.
So just you're not being consistent and now they're like, well that's fine.
I'll just push harder.
That's where I really see this play out.
Yeah, and I mean this works on adults too, right?
This is just behavioral science.
This is how a lot of huge companies
change our behavior through the apps that they because they I'm sure have a team of behavior scientists helping them try to figure out how to keep people engaged.
And this is where I'm saying like though sometimes I will pick on behaviorism, I don't have a problem with all of like
you can't discount the science of behavior.
This is just how behavior works, right?
So you need to understand that in order to understand children's behavior.
And actually I don't have a problem with the entire field of behaviorism.
I just want to make that really clear.
I was talking to a behavior therapist the other day and she's like, sometimes I'm like, oh do you have an issue with like
Like everything we do, I'm like, no, totally not.
It's just select things or people who use this in order to treat kids like animals versus
like humans.
As soon as you can't be able to do that.
And I want to be really clear about that.
There's a lot of great professionals in this field who understand attachment and like there's a lot of shifts that have been made over the years.
Anyway, that's a whole side rant.
But I just want anyone in that field to know that like I know that there's a lot of really great professionals and I see you and I'm so glad you're here.
Anyway, in terms of being flexible, yes.
That can be problematic.
And so what you want to look at is as a whole, are you pretty consistent on your boundaries?
Right?
So for us
I would say like on a whole, we're pretty consistent about this is when bedtime is.
This is the rules for screen time.
This is when you if I say we're done after one show, we're done.
Occasionally, sure, whatever.
One more show is fine.
But if on a whole you shift your boundaries as soon as your child has a big feeling about it, you're walking on tiptoes around them because you're afraid of their emotions that they're gonna have.
If on a whole you might hold a boundary once but then the next three times not hold it
Those are the people I'm talking to when I'm being like, it's not working because you're not being consistent.
Yeah.
So on a whole you want to be consistent, but yes, of course, there has to be room for humanity and like
You don't want it feel like you're not robots here.
We focus a lot on the child's brain, but
The research I found also highlighted a parent's own executive functions, their ability to essentially deal with the day and what's happened and
the stress and tiredness and feeling of overwhelm.
So when a parent is stressed, tired, and overwhelmed, their own ability to regulate emotions and stick to a plan is depleted.
How much of fixing a child's behavior fixing I say in quotation marks is not really what we're doing, but fixing a child's behavior is actually about the parent managing their own cognitive and emotional load first, so their own stress and tiredness and everything.
First.
A lot.
Because we've talked a lot about like why does behavior happen, but we haven't really given examples, right?
Like, so you want to be curious, but what does that even mean, right?
So one of the big reasons we know behavior happens is because a child is seeking connection.
There's feeling a disconnection in the relationship with their caregiver.
Right.
And the more disconnected a child feels from their caregiver, the more frantic they're gonna be in order to get their caregiver to be close to them.
This is where we see whining, crying, hitting, biting, whatever.
To be like, I want to be close with you.
I don't feel right because we're not like in a good relationship with each other.
And then we focus too much on like, how do I set a boundary around this hitting versus
How do I bond with my child so that they don't need to hit me in order to get their need for connection met?
So sometimes we do need to flip the way that we're looking at it.
It depends on the family.
I feel like some families are great at being consistent and firm with the boundaries
But when you look at the nurture and the relationship building aspects, it's not there.
All they're doing is being firm and consistent with their kids.
So that's where going straight back to the beginning of this episode, warmth needs to be in place as well
And that often if a parent can't be warm and doesn't have the ability to provide the nurturance that a child needs because of their stress, because they just don't know how from their upbringing, because they don't have someone being warm to them
I think that sometimes is the greater issue, right?
And you can be consistent and firm all day long, but if your child still doesn't have the warmth, the relationship, the times to feel cozy and just cry in your arms and like
be gathered up into your lap, your consistency and firmness is not going to be enough.
And you're just going to see more challenging behaviors.
So again, like you need both.
And when you're getting curious, like, oh, why is my child hitting so much?
Right.
So let's say I have a a parent fill at the ABC, whatever the what happens before, what happens after.
Typically what I'll see is like what happens after the hitting.
They're taking the child to the room.
They're having a time in together.
It's connection, right?
And like, oh shoot, your time in is supposed to be part of your discipline to get your child to stop hitting, but it's actually meeting the child's need for connection.
And now that it's reinforcing that reinforcing the hitting.
And what we're learning is, oh shoot, your child's hitting because you take them to their room away from their siblings, just you and them for a time in to discipline them, but that's the only time they ever have alone with you.
So what if we just flip that and try and find little pockets of time where you can be alone with your child or connect with them or be warm and cozy to them before they ever hit?
So that they don't need to hit in order to get that need met.
So that's the kind of thing that we're looking at.
We want to be creative with our solution and not so stuck on like, oh, I heard once that if you say this script and then you hold their hand so they don't hit and I take them to time in, it will stop
If it's not working, like sometimes we have to be creative and just look at the whole picture.
And that's why the question should be, what need is this meeting and how can I get that need met in a different way?
Yeah, I can see that being considered creativity or in what I would think of that as more problem solving.
You're seeing
Here's the equation laid out before you and I see that this is the end result.
How can we get that potential end result without everything before?
Yeah, exactly.
Or an example that might be really relevant to people right now whose kids are struggling in school.
I used to have this kid who he was sent to the principal's office like fifteen times a day.
Right.
And we were like, what the heck?
Like what's going on with this kid?
And everyone's like, how else can we discipline him?
The principal is not even work it's not even working.
Right.
You get curious, well, what happens when he goes to the principal's office
Oh, the principal is very tender, very sweet towards this little boy.
Boy loves to sit there.
He sits at the principal's office and plays Lego.
Okay, let's look at the classroom.
Classroom's chaotic.
There's 31 kids in there.
This little boy is very, very sensitive
So he's hitting his peers, he's fighting with them, he's getting mad at them, and he gets to go sit in the principal's office and play Lego.
Of course he's doing that.
Yeah, right.
It's nice and quiet.
It's perfect.
It's quiet.
He needs a break
Yeah.
So what we had to do wasn't give him more punishments.
We had to teach this child a new way to ask for a break and maybe give him a spot in the class where he could get a break.
and teach him how to use it.
And doing those two things, just simply teaching him how to ask for a break, having a s a secret signal with the teacher of like, I need a break, and giving him a spot in the class that was quiet and a little bit like they just made a sensory corner, which I think is good for any
classroom with young kids.
That's all you needed.
And the principal visits went like all the way down to zero.
So sometimes that's what I mean in terms of like we have to look at the whole picture, be creative, ask yourself what need it's serving.
And this is where I just don't see that we ever really need to do punishments.
We just have to help them get the need met in a way that's gonna serve them better.
Alright, to close this out, let's talk about the big picture.
The goal of all this
isn't just to get kids to comply, obviously.
But what is the ultimate long-term benefit of adopting this kind of flexible consistency approach for the parent-child relationship?
Or maybe
Sure.
And for the kind of adult we're hoping to raise.
This is
Brings me back to another conversation I had with our friend.
So there was a day when our oldest, who's eight, we kinda talked about this before, but she w same the island day actually.
She was having so much fun on the island
Does she refuse to leave it?
Yeah, right.
And we were all leaving the island to go back to their cottage and she just crossed through him.
I'm not going.
I was like, what do you mean you're not going?
I'm not leaving you alone on a literal island.
Like what do you think?
Like we're leaving.
We're all in the boat going.
I'm not going.
And uh
I'm like, yes you are.
Anyway, I noticed like my own like anger rising up, being like, What the heck?
And so I didn't force her I can't force her in the boat 'cause she's like too large for me to like just pick her up and plop her in the boat like I did when she was three, right?
But I'm like, you're getting in the boat.
She's kind of faster than you too.
And she's faster.
She totally could run away from me, right?
But I was very firm.
I'm like, I am not leaving my friend's like But I'm like, I am not leaving you on an island.
You're getting in the boat and you're coming home with us.
And my friend's like, okay, Jess is like using her firm mom voice.
But anyway, she did.
She got in the boat.
She was so mad at me, she wouldn't even look at me the whole way home.
She's like crossed arms looking out like basically worst mom in the world alert
But here's what I know in my head.
I know she's exhausted.
It's been a really long, long week and long day.
It was hot.
It was chaotic there.
She didn't have as much time as she wanted.
We had to leave earlier because the little kids, like they were ready to go.
But mainly I knew she was really tired.
And when she's tired, she gets more defiant
Yeah, we were staying up to watch like the stars and everything and so it was pretty late.
And so I can see all these things and I'm like, I know this behavior is not a reflection of who you are.
You're not like this to me.
And I know you need me to be firm so that you can get in the boat and we can go back.
And when we got back, I said, hun, I'm gonna give you your book.
I want you to just lay on the bed, just relax for a little bit, read your book
Like I wasn't getting her in trouble, but I knew she needed rest time.
And I'm like, and then once you've relaxed for a little bit, we'll talk about what happened.
And so then as she's in the room, she's reading her book.
My friend's like, what are you gonna say to her?
Like, man, that attitude.
And I was like, I'm gonna get her to try and reflect on why she acted that way.
Because I know that's not
what she's normally like.
She's like, I've never seen her like that.
Like and I was like, yo, I'm gonna get her to reflect on it.
And she's like, and what do you think she's gonna say?
And like, I think she's gonna say
I know mom.
I was really tired and it's been a long week and I was hot and the kids were annoying me and you know I'm sorry that I put on a whole show and like refused to listen to you.
I said I think that's what she's gonna say
That's not too far off.
And she was like, really?
She's like, do you always get your kids to reflect on like why they acted that way?
And I was like, yeah, I do.
And I I think it's really important that they understand why they're behaving the way that they are, so that the next time she's really tired and grumpy and is noticing that she's being short with me or annoyed with me
She can see that she's actually just tired and grumpy not hating me and thinking I'm the worst mom in the world, right?
Like eventually I want her so to answer your question, like
The discipline that we're doing long term, like getting curious with your kids and then teaching them why they behave the way that they do, helps them eventually reflect on like, even last night for me, I was grumpy and tired
And I was annoyed with every single one of you.
Yep.
And I was able to say in my head, like Sc or say to you, Scott, why don't you take the kids outside?
I just need a minute.
Let me clean up dinner by myself.
Like
I just need a minute.
Are you already annoyed at that point?
I don't even know if I was.
I knew that.
Yeah, that's right.
Okay.
You guys are rowdy during dinner
Oh yeah.
With all the burping and the fail.
I was so done.
I was like, I need these guys out of my house.
Anyway, but I could see I don't hate everyone in my family.
I'm just tired.
And I want
Our daughter to reflect.
So anyway, I went back to her and that's pretty much what she said.
Yeah.
Sorry mom, I know I'm so tired and I took it all out on you and da-da-da.
I refuse to listen to you in front of everyone.
And that's all I really need from her.
I need her to understand that.
And I was warm and we gave her a hug and like we worked it out and I said, okay, we're good now.
Like we're fine.
And she n now can understand hopefully that piece of her.
And so I was firm.
I helped I held my boundaries.
So what happened.
She's a kid, but I helped her get her need for rest met, and then we had the conversation, right?
And so I think
That's an example.
She's an older kid of how you can do that.
It's still nurturing.
It ended in hugs.
It ended in like, let's just talk it out.
But that's a way that you can be firm and warm at the same time.
So it's an older kid example, but I
I think my friend was like, wow, I never think to tell my kids why they're behaving that way.
She's like, even if I know they're tired or hungry, like I never say, oh, you hit me because
I know that you were really tired and hungry.
I was like, oh, that might be helpful for them to hear that so that they can start to recognize that in themselves.
Do you think
Though that's saying that, let's say a child hit you because let's say you're pretty sure that they hit you because they're tired or hungry or both, do you think saying, you hit me because you were tired and hungry is the right approach, or is it more
Do you think that you hit me maybe because you're a little bit tired and hungry?
Yeah, that would be bad.
I would pose it more as a question.
Otherwise you are I mean you're kind of planting the idea in their mind either way, but I feel like one is more
I know exactly how you're feeling versus the other one is a little bit more helping them try and reflect on it a bit.
So I think it again it would kind of depend on the age.
Like toddlers, like littler ones, like a three-year-old
I might be like, hey Han, I know you're a good kid and I can always tell I can always tell when you're ti when you're hungry because you start acting this way.
So let's go have a snack and then we can talk about it
Right?
Because I know I like she's so easy.
Whereas our five-year-old, I might be like, hey, what do you think's going on right now that's making you act this way?
This this doesn't seem like you
And like give her a chance to to come up with it.
And if she doesn't, I'd be like, hmm, you know what?
I realized it's twelve thirty.
We haven't had lunch yet.
Do you think you're maybe hungry?
Like maybe I'd plant it there
And with our oldest, I'd really get her to try and come up with the answer herself.
So it depends on their age, I think.
Okay.
Well, what a great episode.
No, I think this is a really good episode and I think
I'll plug something at the beginning and at the end.
But like in the parenting little kids course, I think what people really enjoy about that course is I go into the functions or like the reasons why behavior happens.
We didn't get a chance to do that in this episode, but
I did skip a lot of questions.
Not necessarily even just on that.
There's a lot of other stuff.
Like we could get into that in another episode, but there are core reasons why behavior happens and it's not
always just connection.
So I just want to say that like if you're like I think that I get lots of connection with me.
It could be like sensory reason, it could be like another reason why.
But stay curious.
Yeah.
Again, there's goodness of fit, skills gap.
Temperament.
Yeah.
Well, that's kind of the related to the goodness of fit, but yeah, but there's a lot of things that go into it.
So like I was saying, I was saying before, I feel like it's relatively
It feels complicated, but most of the research I would say talks about how important that warmth and guidance that you're providing your child, how important that is.
So even if you don't get everything perfect, having that is very important.
That's the foundation, right?
And if you just ask yourself in your discipline, like, am I being curious or am I just following like a script that I was told I should say
Like just stay curious.
I think if you keep staying curious and seeing your child's behavior as communication and asking yourself why can't they meet my expectations, like those will be your guiding lights in order to make sure that you're disciplined
feels effective for your kids.
Very good.
Beautiful.
Thanks for the conversation, Jessica.
Anytime.
All right.
Thanks guys.
Thanks for listening.
See you next week.
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