Telling Your Kids What To Do; Prepares them & allows YOU to raise well-behaved kids w’out yelling, shaming or timeouts! with Special Guest Allana Robinson

Welcome to the No Problem Parenting Podcast. Turn behavior problems into no problem with Jackie Fineman. Are you ready to become the confident leader your kids crave you to be? Do you want to learn how to make parenting easier and more fulfilling?

Whether you are at your wit's end or you want to have more fun as a parent, you're definitely in the right place. Now here's your host, Jackie Fineman. Hey, welcome back parents to the No Problem Parenting Podcast, where we choose to deal with and overcome the behavior and emotional challenges within our home. Today, it's all about seeking first to understand why our kids behave the way they do and why we respond or react the way we do, how we can prepare for the worst, right? We can't always be prepared, but there are certain behaviors that our kids show us every day that we can become prepared for and change the conversation. So that's the three steps in no problem parenting. And today I brought a special guest on, Alana Robinson, parenting coach and CEO of Uncommon Sense Parenting,

as well as a registered early childhood educator, a developmental specialist, a mom of two, and a military wife. Alana supports parents of toddlers, preschoolers, and kindergartners in understanding why their children are misbehaving and how to fix it without yelling, shaming, or timeouts. I love that. Her mission is to empower parents as the expert of their own child and create an inclusive world full of calm, competent, and confident kids.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so looking forward to this. Let's talk a little bit about your story, how you went from being a registered early childhood educator within the school setting to becoming a parenting coach. Yeah. So I was an early interventionist for 10 years-ish. And right at the tail end of that, I unfortunately sustained an injury. And during the process of getting that dealt with, found out I was pregnant and surprise, surprise, he's eight now, he's good. But yeah, so once that kind of got resolved, the agency I was working for was very hesitant to put me back on the front line, working directly with kiddos again, because I specialized in kids who had very high needs,

tended to have violent tendencies, very intense behaviors. And they were like, this is not a safe situation for a pregnant woman. So they put me into a parent coaching role. And at the time I thought the world was ending because I saw my career that I loved working frontline with kids going down the drain and I ended up loving it. The more I worked with parents and the more I saw them understanding why their children were behaving the way they were behaving, the better results the children were getting. And it just lit my soul on fire. And by time I was done my maternity leave with my son, I had a client list of enough that I didn't have to go back to work. And very shortly after that, my husband got posted across the country for a military family. And so it all just kind of conspired together. And now I've been doing this for about eight years.

Same as me, we started our companies about the same time. And, and I just find it so interesting that parent coaching was not on your radar at all. Like that wasn't something you were really interested in. Oh, and that sort of fell in your lap for me. I craved, I wanted to, to help the parents for so long. And I couldn't because the agency I worked for, we had to focus on the kids and, you know, kids were our clients. And, and I just thought, oh, if I could just teach these parents to, to, you know, know what I know and, and, and share the experiences that I've had in my career with them, that they could help their kids in the day in day out behaviors. And so, But I love that you fell in love with it.

Yes, it was a hard, fast fall, as my husband says. He went from thinking that I was having an existential crisis to being madly in love within about two weeks time. Oh, that's awesome. I love that.

So today what we want to talk about is how to help these kiddos with self-regulation. You're going to talk about executive function. You're going to talk about why the behaviors are happening. you know, oftentimes we think our kids are just being naughty or they're just defying us on purpose or, you know, we're doing something wrong as a parent and it's got to get to the root of why they're behaving the way they are, how to create a trusting, safe and understanding kind of relationship with your child. Yeah. Yeah. I find parents get very, very frustrated because they just don't understand what's going on under the hood. They don't understand how their child's brain development is playing into these behaviors and therefore what's typical and what isn't and how to effectively intervene with those behaviors that are driving us wild. So that's my favorite thing is to demystify all of that brain development so that they can really truly understand what is happening. You talk quite a bit about the difference between telling a child what not to do and telling them what to do. So why don't we start there? Absolutely. So, I mean, all parents do this,

right? Stop doing that. Stop throwing that. Stop, stop, stop. Don't, don't, don't. Parents are, they're like, well, if I don't tell them what not to do, how do I discipline them?

Because obviously they don't know what to do. Otherwise they would do that, right? Right. The problem is, is that when you tell them what not to do, very rarely do parents actually tell them what to do. And they expect that by telling them what not to do, that children have the presence of mind and the experience in life to know what that opposite behavior is.

And generally they don't. And usually it's not a direct opposite. And I actually love to demonstrate this to parents by giving them all the ingredients to bake a cake. And then I tell them all of the things not to do to create the cake oh that is a really good don't put the eggs in with the flour don't do this don't do that and I actually did this with my husband's in special forces and I did this with his unit um pre-pandemic and one of the soldiers got so frustrated with me he threw batter at my head because he was so annoyed but that's exactly what we do to kids when we're saying don't throw this don't yell don't run don't do all of this crap and we expect them to understand what they should do instead and what that forces them to do is enter into a process of elimination they have to throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks but how adults see that is defiance. Not listening, ignoring us. And so then we get frustrated, which gets all us hyper aroused, which then our children latch onto and creates hyper arousal in them.

And now we're in this feedback loop. Right. Resistance creates resistance. We're in like that rubber, rubber bayonet tug of war and nobody's getting anywhere. Exactly. And so we really need to be telling children what to do and how to do it. And I understand why this is so frustrating for parents because it's not like other things we teach our kids like math and spelling. We're like, you know, math, you start with addition and then you do subtraction and then you learn multiplication and then division and then you get fancy by combining those four things in a whole bunch of different ways. Social learning, at least to most parents who don't have a degree in childhood development, to them, they don't see that progression of skills.

They don't know what to teach first, second, third, what the foundational elements are, and what the kind of fancy stuff is. So often parents will put the cart before the horse and start trying to work on these higher level skills when they haven't laid the foundation. so we have to teach our kids what to do and how to do it just like we would teach them how to do math or how to spell a word or how to clean their room right step by step and then reinforce that over and over and over so that it becomes muscle memory give us an example of of what that looks like let's say maybe with a three or four year old i'm telling them what to do versus what not to do go clean your room right go clean your room and the three or four year olds like uh right they walk into the room there's toys everywhere there's crap everywhere everything is mixed together there's no clear spots for things to go they don't have that mental picture of what clean looks like and so they get overwhelmed and the adults are there over their shoulder going come on clean up get started and the child's like I don't know what to do stop standing there stop staring at your toys pick things up and put them away and parents think that that is like telling them what to do but that's that's a very general direction right there's no specificity to it and when you're overwhelmed a general direction is just like okay put it where

put it right and then kids often what happens is they end up dumping everything into a pile and the parents get upset and they're like no you have to separate out legos from transformers from dinosaurs from barbies and the kids like you didn't say that okay that's that process of elimination of throwing spaghetti against the wall and hoping it sticks they do what they think they might be supposed to do. And then, then they get criticized for it. And they're like, well, you never said anything about separating out the toys. You never said that the dinosaurs go in the blue bin and the blocks go in the black one. This is all information you're giving me after I've already screwed up. Start by teaching them what we call backwards chaining, right? Where you help them with everything, but the last step, teach them, model for them. Okay. All the dinosaurs go in here. Your job is to go and pick up all the dinosaurs. Mommy's going to pick up all of the blocks and help them. And then for the last step, getting the child to take those bins and put them on the shelf. And then once the child is successful at that, then you're going to back off another step. So you're going to maybe help them with one or two categories of things, let them do the rest of the categories, and then direct them to put the bins on it so that the child feels successful.

they get that nice little punch of hormones that goes yes they did a job well done and that way next time their brain is able to go okay step one step two step three this is how we do this task and I've practiced it and I've been successful at it several times in a row now until you get to the point where you can say hey your room's a mess and they go and they clean it up it starts with taking the time. Oftentimes we don't want to put the time in initially, but if we do, it takes a little longer to teach them in the beginning, but then they will figure it out.

And I know parents that at two and three and four, they're not even asking their kids to clean up the room or they're doing most of the work, but really you don't have to be. So it might seem like, well, of course the kid knows where the dinosaurs go. They took them out. They know what bin it goes in and maybe so maybe they do, but when they have everything strewn across the floor, their mind is just kind of like, I don't know where to begin. They get overwhelmed.

They're not really sure how to get started. Helps them teach the whole process from beginning to end. And our hippocampus loves that, right? It loves information packets that have a beginning, middle, and end. It wants everything to be a narrative. So if they have the narrative of how I clean my room, this is how I start. This is how the middle goes. This is how I finish. And that's a very clear process to them, then it's a lot easier for them to do. I can see how this would help kiddos too that have a struggle with more than two directions at a time, two steps at a time. When does that actually happen? Generally around four, they're able to start handling more than two steps. Four-year-olds are going through the limbic leap. So often we'll see parents get very frustrated because their child is working towards three to four step directions. And then they turn four and it's like they have this huge regression and it's not necessarily a regression it's that their energy is all being put towards keeping their body safe and they're so preoccupied with being safe and not feeling attacked that that area of development kind of gets put on a shelf for a little while but generally around four you can start giving three four-step directions or working towards that and they will start to pick it up.

What are three mistakes parents make when trying to direct their kids or discipline their kids? So there's that, you know, telling kids what not to do. The other is being reactive instead of proactive. Parents are waiting for their child to mess up before they teach them what to do.

And I see so many instances of this where the parent introduces a new something and the child doesn't do it the way that the parent thinks is logical to do it and then they get in trouble you know you take them to a party especially these pandemic babies who oh yeah they were born in the last two years they've barely interacted with anyone outside of their immediate family and now you take them to preschool and they're like they're hitting kids and they're throwing toys and they're peeing on the floor.

And well, okay, you never actually taught them what to do at preschool. You never- Right, or just interactions in general, right? That's such a good point because these babies born in the pandemic, they haven't had a lot of socialization and play dates and things with the parents around. And so they're waiting for the problem to present itself before solving it instead of trying to anticipate where their child is going to have problems and preparing their child for that difficult situation.

Example, in my own life recently, my sons had to take them to a funeral recently. They'd never been to a funeral before. And so we sat down before the funeral and I was like, okay, so lots of people are going to be crying. It doesn't mean they're hurt.

It doesn't mean there's anything necessarily wrong in that moment. They're just sad because somebody died. Do you know what died means? And they were like, yeah, they're five and eight at this point.

So they've got an idea of what death means. And so I was like, okay, so during this ceremony, you're going to have to be quiet. You can't talk. And they had all kinds of questions like, can we be on our tablets?

Can we be listening to a podcast? Can I go sit in Nana's lap? And so we answered all of those questions ahead of time. What you can do, what you can't do in a funeral, when food is going to be available, what to do if you need to, if you need to go to the bathroom, like all of those expectations.

ahead of time. Yeah. That's so good. Before, once we got there, everyone was like, your kids are so well-behaved. I've never seen two children, two little boys, nonetheless, who sit so nicely. And I'm like, this is not an accident. This is something we have actively worked on and that I actively sat down with them and explained the expectations, what to do at a funeral.

Right. And I did it proactively because otherwise I would have been sitting there going, sit down be quiet no you can't have a snack no you can't go sit in Nana's lap right now she's on the other side of the chart no like yeah right and everyone would have been like oh wow she's a really stressed out mom who's having to constantly redirect her children her kids don't know what to do well if I hadn't told them what to do they wouldn't how would they know what to do in that situation they've never been to a funeral before so I mean that can work with going to a restaurant taking them to the grocery store, going to even play dates or any, you know, on an airplane, going to visit elder relatives. My grandfather's 104. And so I'm constantly having to say to my boys, like, okay, we're going to the nursing home. Here are the things you can and cannot do in a nursing home. Here are things you can and cannot say in a nursing home. And you know, here's how,

where you can run. Here's where the bathroom is. All of those things that as adults, we walk into a situation and we start scoping those things out. But for children, they don't have that ability to look and read that room the same way. So preparing them for it proactively is really, really helpful. Oh man, that can prevent a lot of misbehavior. A lot of misbehavior. And again, I understand why parents don't do this because one, they don't think of it, but two, they don't always anticipate where their child is going to have difficulties. And this is where in my practice, we talk a lot about sussing out your child's weak executive functioning skills and addressing those and practicing them proactively. Because those will help us predict where your child is going to have difficulty. If your child has weak impulse control skills, then it is unfair to them to take them into a situation where they have to exert a lot of impulse control and then shame them for the fact that they failed epically. Yeah. It's such a good point. Prepare them, prepare them both like expectation wise, but actually practice, right? If you're going to, um, my youngest was three, we went to his first birthday party and it didn't occur to me at the time that I have to prep him for the fact that he can't just walk over and take things off the kitchen table he has to wait until it's time to eat the cake that he has to eat when the pizza is presented like I hadn't

told him all of those expectations so he did what three-year-olds do and he walked in like he owned the place and he went right for the cupcakes and stuck his hand right in it and I was like I knew he had weak impulse control because he's three and I knew that that was something that he struggled with, but I forgot to prepare him for that situation. And that was on me, not on him. Oh, I love this. Whereas if you practice ahead of time, if I had put him in situations and practice playfully through games, like hungry, hungry hippos is one of my favorite ways to practice impulse control because you have to wait for everybody to be ready. And then one, two, three, go. And everybody starts. So it's always through play. It's always fun. And it can be as easy as like, you know, giving them their pasta just a little bit too hot. So they have to wait for a few minutes to, for it to cool down before they stick it in their mouth. But by putting those instances in front of him more frequently, I would have been able to prepare him for the fact that you can't eat the cake right away. So it's using these tools and what we know about the brain to anticipate where our children are going to struggle and prepare them ahead of time so that we're not getting mad at them for stuff that isn't really within their control.

Right. Or they'd never experienced before. So why wouldn't they just like, feel like they had free reign when they go somewhere because they never experienced not being able to have that free reign. I have a lot of clients who deal with hitting in particular, and their toddler goes into a new situation. Child steals the toy from them. The first thing they do is smack them. Right. And parents are like, Oh, they see it as this huge character flaw.

like well they don't have you know executive functioning skills only start developing around the age of two so they don't really have impulse control to begin with they've never been taught what to say or how to protect their toys that they're playing with and you just put them in a situation where someone was kind of attacking them right that's what it feels like to the kid right when they're not used to being in the company of other kids who are going to take things from them it feels like an attack right you never taught them how to deal with that attack right so it's that should be expected this is a great subject to talk about because I get often uh I have clients with kiddos that um maybe are to the point where the parents getting a call from daycare or from school and saying you have to come pick them up they're melting down they've hit a kid, they've lashed out. What kinds of advice and suggestions do you give to parents in those situations? Well, generally children don't attack unless they feel attacked, right?

It's that fight flight freeze and kids do well if they can, not if they want to. So if your child's not doing well, it's because what they did is the best option they could come up with in that moment to keep themselves safe. It doesn't mean they were actually in danger, just that they perceived that they were in danger. Children are very bad at determining what is an actual threat and what is a perceived threat. So as you said, like somebody grabbing a toy from them, that's going to be perceived as a threat. And when children melt down, and there's a difference between tantrums and meltdowns too. Tantrums are conscious and purposeful. There's like, I want the peanut butter sandwich and I'm going to scream until you give it to me. And if you give it to me, then thank you. Goodbye. Yep. And it stops. Whereas meltdowns are because children are running out of energy. They don't have the ability to self-regulate and their nervous system is going absolutely hairwire trying to keep themselves safe. They perceive that they're under attack and they've gone into fight mode. And they don't have the language to, you know,

tell you what they need or why they're feeling the way they're feeling. Yeah. When we're dysregulated, we actually lose access to our neocortex, which is where our language, learning, reason, and our executive functions live. So when they're melting down, they actually physically don't have access to that knowledge or to that language because the brain is going, we're under attack. And while all of those things are nice, none of them are keeping us alive, right? When we're born, we get this nice little rush of hormones that turns our prefrontal cortex, our neocortex back on so that it can start developing, which is why executive functioning skills don't really start taking hold until two, because it takes that long for that area of your brain to turn on. It's also why babies have soft spots. So when we're melting down, trying to reason with a child is the worst possible thing you could do because any language that comes at them is going to be perceived as an attack right they can't process it i often say it's like trying to reason with a drunk it's exactly like you know you're not i mean obviously your child's not drunk but i mean they are they're literally not able to access that part of their brain that's going to listen and hear what you say and be like oh good idea mom and dad i should you know recent events we've just the other day will smith smacked the crap out of chris rock at the oscars right

and what happened there is that you know he's talked very openly about the fact that he doesn't feel like he could protect the women in his life and you could see him initially laugh at the joke and it wasn't until he looked at his wife that he got triggered he got dysregulated by this feeling of helplessness that somebody the woman that he cared about felt attacked and he wasn't protecting her. And when we feel attacked, our limbic system takes over, our brain sends all of our resources to it. And it has no reason. It just has emotions, our security system and our memories. And so when he was saying, you know, I reacted emotionally.

Yeah, you did. Because you felt like you were under attack. He knows he's not stupid. He knows that walking up to someone at the Oscars and slapping them across the face is not a socially acceptable thing to do. But he did it anyways, because he felt like he was being attacked. He perceived that he was under attack. And the only way that he knew how to solve that problem was to go and slap Chris Rock. And so it doesn't matter if you're two or you're a 50 year old movie star, that process is there. The neat thing is, is that we can teach our children to recognize when they're getting dysregulated. We can teach them what it feels like to not feel that way and how to get back to it. Yeah. I, this is so great that we're talking about this too, because, um, even when we prepare our kids and we teach them, I mean, look at talk about a 50 some year old man that still can be triggered to do something like that. Even when,

um, we teach that to our kids, sometimes they're triggered. It just, it happens. It's a switch and goes off. And so when, it doesn't mean we don't discipline them. It doesn't mean we don't have them make it right. I do a thing called the make it right technique so they can make it. It's not just about saying sorry to the kid. You can do something kind to make it up to the person or make it right. But even when that happens, instead of reacting with a sort of a discipline in a, you know, in a, in a reactionary, uh, discipline from arts. Like our kid does that.

We get the call from school and we've got to come pick them up. Our inclination all the way driving there is, you know, we're frustrated, we're upset and we've got to make our kid make this right or do whatever. It's like, when you get there, the last thing you want to do is try to discipline your kid in that moment. Right? Exactly. We got to get them calm first. We got to get ourselves comb first. They're like, okay, how are we dealing with this one? And we got to, so that we're not reactionary. Exactly. And then we got to calm our kid down and then we can talk about what we could do differently next time. And that really is what discipline is all about, right? The root word of discipline is discipulous in Latin, which means apprentice learner. And that, you know, the apprentice the root word of apprentice is apprendi which is to learn in french so to discipline someone is to teach them what to do to be a teacher right and if we keep that in mind instead of punishing our kids and shaming them for not knowing what to do we are going to teach them what to do the next time it happens so it doesn't happen again yeah and what would you say to, because now you, and you know, you have this in your history of these, these kiddos,

explosive kiddos or kid really reactionary kiddos. What do you do when you've taught them those things and they still go back and do it again? So that's where I like to lean on collaborative problem solving because again, knowing what to do and actually doing it are two completely different things. And so if a child knows what to do, they're calm, they have the rote knowledge of what they should do in this situation and they're still not doing it, it's because there's something preventing them from doing it. There's a disconnect there. And until we ask them what that is, that we're not going to know. We're just, we're throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping it sticks. We're solving problems that may not exist or we're solving the wrong problem. Right.

So I really love to use Dr. Ross Green's CPS model, plan B model to, especially with children five plus to have that discussion. When we're talking about little kids, I use something called the logical consequence process, which is the plan B process kind of simplified down for toddlers and preschoolers who can't have a back and forth conversation. Yes, this is so important.

So, you know, bringing the child in, getting their perspective on what the problem is, and then offering them options for solving it. So like for the LCP, we talk about like the first step. And what is LCP? Logical Consequence Process. All right. So our first step is using declarative language, right? Because declarative language is making sure that you're having a common experience. It's commenting instead of imperative language, which is like, go clean up your room. It's like, hey, your room is dirty. So it's the purpose of declarative language is just to share an experience. So when you make an observation about your child's behavior, like you hit your brother you're sharing that experience instead of being imperative about it and putting them on the defensive and then yes and I and I gotta I gotta pause you right there because instead of saying did you hit your brother when you know they did you're you're creating more problems when you do that parents so don't ask them yes don't try don't ask them you know a question that you know the answer to answer to exactly yeah because I mean there's a reason in the States, you have pleading the fifth in Canada, we have chapter 13 legally, you are not allowed to incriminate yourself for a very valid reason, which is that you will do anything in human nature to protect yourself. Right. And so including tell bold face lies. Yes. And trying to

spin a story to make it so that you're not in trouble. So when you ask your child something that you saw them do, they're, they're going to deny it. It's a knee jerk reaction. Right. So I them up to fail and and really inviting more problems to come into play so we start with you hit your brother you hit your brother and then so the logical consequence process the next thing we're going to do is be like ask a problem solving question which is usually identifying the problem and with toddlers this is quite easy to do because usually the problem is like he grabbed your toy from you or he got too close to you um what do we do when your brother steals a toy from you and usually like with the really little ones they're gonna stare at you expectantly because they're like i don't know you're gonna tell me what i'm supposed if i knew what to do i would not have smacked him right um the nice thing about the logical consequence process is it's designed so that as your child gets more used to it, you don't have to go through the whole thing. The end processes fall off because after each of these steps, you're opening opportunities for your child to give their input. And once they do that, then you don't have to continue with it. The whole process is designed for the kiddos who just stare at you expectantly,

like, I don't know. So if they don't give you an answer, or if they give you an answer that is just like, no, that is not what we do. Then you're going to give them controlled choices. The controlled choices are two choices that are equally acceptable. And this is where parents will go very, very wrong. They'll give them a right choice and a wrong choice. And again, that's trapping your child. You're setting them up for failure. So you have to give them two choices that are equally acceptable to do in that situation. So you can come and tell mommy that he took it from you, or you can say, I'm not done with that. And one of those choices has to be enforceable because they're little. And if they don't make a choice, you're going to have to walk them through it, role play it with them. So if one of those choices isn't enforceable and it needs to be something the child independently does with no intervention, you're going to trap yourself.

Right. That's a good point. The consequence or the choice, I should say, needs to be acceptable by you. You have to be okay with that. It has to be something you can model or you can teach them actively to do. Right. So making sure that both the choices are acceptable and at least one of them is something you can follow through on with them right and then so like in that instance you know you can say i'm not done with that is something that's enforceable you can then say like okay let's go tell them you weren't done with it take the child by the hand walk them over to their brother say i'm not done with that and then if they don't then you can model it he wasn't done with that. Give it back, please. The child sit back and then you're like, great, we're done.

Yeah. Right. You've modeled it. You've taught them what to do next time. And that doesn't mean the next time they're just going to do it because children need to experience these things over and over and over. You are literally creating pathways in their brain by giving them that experience. And it doesn't matter. It's like, I often say, it's like trying to rewire your house without turning off the electricity. Yikes, don't do that. Exactly, right? It's going to go haywire.

So it doesn't, and until the wires are connected, no information can go down it. So if a synapse is growing, but it hasn't connected yet, then unless you reinforce it and they have that experience again, it's not going to get stronger, which means your child's not going to be able to use it. So we need to reinforce these experiences over and over and over, but very quickly, especially with little ones, they pick up what you're putting down. Yeah, they do. They learn, they learn by the action of it and the experience of it much quicker than they do your words.

And, um, and I want to say too, that as you're teaching this again, it takes time, takes patience to walk them through these things. But I think parents, you can see how, if you're reactionary to the situation, that that's just going to prolong the behavior and it's, it's not, the kids are going to pick up on that. So, you know, being in that calm pausing first, I always teach pause before you respond. And it's hard and I'm not a pro at it either, you know, as raising a teenager, different things happen. And I'm, I'm, I'm not, our mama bear comes out a lot of times and are just like, we just want something to go well, or we just want something to go right. But but modeling that and being able to pause and collect ourselves. So we're not flying off the handle at the other kid, even, you know, better than to take that toy from your brother.

He's younger than you. He's, you know, we can end up again, that's just welcoming more problems into the situation. Um, and so keeping our cool is very important. Um, and eventually you get to the point where you can say like, there's Lego on the floor and they run over, they pick up the Lego and they put it back where it was supposed to go because you've taught them multiple times that when I point out there's Lego on the floor, that means that you need to put it away.

yeah it's amazing how this works we can it's incredible it is and people it's if if you're if you don't think it's going to work you haven't tried it enough you haven't gone back and tried it and stuff like some parents will say well that doesn't work for my kid that doesn't work for my kid because they tried it two or three times and they weren't getting the result yet that they wanted that's okay keep practicing some kids it takes a little bit longer and it's amazing like I was with my godchildren just the other weekend and they left all the doors in the house open they came in and they just left the front door hanging open and I was like hey Kiki front door is open and he hopped up and he went and he shut it and his mom was like why does he listen to you and I'm like because I don't tell him to close the door I point out that it's open yeah it's amazing therefore he has to think critically about okay the door is open. Why? Oh, the door is not supposed to be open. I'm going to go take care of that. And that's a much more active, critical thinking process. Then the door is open or open door shut. Right. It's just autopilot at that point. Right. Keep them engaged in their brain thinking through their actions, because the more they think about what they're doing,

the less they're going to operate on autopilot in any situation. And the sooner we can do this with our kids, the time, more time saving it's going to be in the future. So you're going to put in the work and the effort when they're, they're little, because they will learn through the experience. And then you're going to have way less problems as they enter kindergarten, you know, and elementary years, much less high school.

So the three main mistakes. So we've got telling kids what to do instead of what not to do, being proactive instead of reactive. And the third. That collaboration, working with them to solve the problem. And like, we just talked about the logical consequence process where we're giving them opportunities to give their input. Now, at first, they're not going to give their input because it feels like a trap. And if they're used to being trapped, any questions you ask them, they're going to be like, this is you trying to get me in trouble. So they're not going to give their input at first because it feels dangerous.

But the more we use either the logical consequence process for children under five or plan B for children over five, the more they're going to see, oh, if I give my input, this is a safe thing to do. And when you give my input, and then it doesn't mean you have to take their input at face value. Right. Right. Like there, I've had more than one children, child be like, you know, you grab that from your brother and they're like, how do you ask your brother if you want to play with something he has. I grab it from him. Like, did you see, I just did that. So what do you mean?

Why are you asking me? I just, yeah. Captain obvious. Right. Right. You don't have to take that at wholesale. That's when you can interject with, you can ask him for a turn or you can go find something else to play with. Okay. And so you don't have to just take their input and same thing with plan B, you know, they're going to give you options, but you're going to write down in the brainstorming step where you're like, yeah, we're not doing that. Yeah. And I have, I don't know. I'm sure you're familiar with this too. Parents will say, well, I did that.

And, and I told them they have to play with something else. And then they threw a fit and they threw a tantrum and they started screaming at the top of their lungs. And I, and I say like, yep. And they don't have to be happy about it. Right. And so we don't need to be upset just because they're upset. So I often just say, yeah, you can even say to them, I know, I see you're upset by that. Have a nice little fit, get it out of your system, be upset by that. That's totally fine. But I don't have to be mad and say, you know, stop screaming or stop whining or stop yelling or feel that it's generally because you're dysregulated. Yes. Like I always, I'm very honest about the fact that my instinct when my children are triggering me is to hit them. Now I won't because that would be a felony. It's not socially acceptable, but that's my instinct. And I don't fight that instinct because I go and I have a punching bag downstairs and I kick out of that.

It's so interesting that you say that part of this is what we are experiences in childhood too, right how we were raised or what we saw or what we experienced or just our natural tendencies to protect ourselves when we feel uh in danger they were I don't know about your experience but as a child I was just yelled at constantly for hitting don't hit don't hit don't hit nobody ever told me what I could hit nobody gave me any opportunities to hit something acceptable nobody put me in martial arts or, you know, enrolled me in boxing or anything like that. It was just, don't do that.

Don't do that. Don't do that. And when you do that, your child starts to feel like there's a character flaw in them when really it's a sensory need. And so like, I will often say to my kids, mommy needs to go kick her punching bag. And I will go downstairs. I hit the pause button on the situation, go downstairs, bust my butt on the punching bag, and then I'll come back upstairs.

I'm like, okay, now I'm calm and I can deal with this. It's so interesting. You say that too, because people, I don't think people talk about that. They have, there's plenty of parents out there that their first reaction is to hit, but of course they don't, or they won't, or they do.

And then they hide it and they try to apologize and, you know, do whatever to, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that. There's a lot of stuff hidden because of that. And I love that you're bringing it up and owning it in yourself, that that is one of your reflexes almost. Right.

And when you stuff it down, just like when you stuff your emotions down, eventually it's going to come out. Eventually it's going to blow the lid off. Right. Right. Like you can't, you can't just stuff things. These things don't go away. They just get put to the side. Right.

And eventually they're going to come out and it's beautiful modeling for your child too. Like my boys, neither of them are hitters. One of them's a runner. He wants to bolt, but he now, and he's five, he can say, me, I can't deal with this right now. I need to go for a run first.

And I'm not a runner. If I'm running, somebody's chasing me. You should run too, but I'll get on my bike or something and go with him. We'll put pause on the situation. We'll go get his sensory input for him. And then we come back and we deal with the problem. Right. Because otherwise, if I keep pushing him and pushing him and pushing him, he is going to run away in an unsafe way.

Right. He's not going to go for a run around the block. He's going to bolt into traffic. Yep. When he's triggered, he needs to flight, right? He needs to flee. He needs to just that doesn't help anybody. So we need to teach them how to do it in a safe way and an acceptable way so that when they're at school, they're not running away from their teacher and running off the playground. And those are those problems that we have to collaborate with them to solve.

I sat down with him at some point and I was like, okay, so here's my problem. When you get upset, you run away and you run out the front door. And I'm very worried that you're going to get hit by a car. You seem to be having difficulty staying in the house when you're upset what's up and he told me exactly it took a while wasn't wasn't right off the bat but after some digging came out I need to run when I'm upset my legs want to run I want to hide and then I run and you get mad and that makes me feel that's it and so I was like okay so you need to run. You don't want you running out the front door. So how can we facilitate your running?

And we sat down and we brainstormed a whole bunch of different ways. There was several of them where he was like, I'm just going to go for a 5k all by myself. You're five years old. No, that's not happening. That's not happening. But that's where like brainstorming is brainstorming. Evaluating is evaluating. And so sitting down and going through all of those options, once they're out, don't evaluate while you're brainstorming because as soon as you shut that down you shut down the whole creative process but what does that look like if you start evaluating if you start evaluating while you're like when he was like i'm gonna go for a 5k by myself if i'd been like no he's never gonna give me another he's never gonna give me another suggestion because right so you're saying just don't interrupt them until they kind of give you all of it. I see. Okay. Gotcha. All in the brainstorming step, all ideas are valid ideas. That is such a good point because you do want to keep the communication open. And if you're shutting down the things that they're saying that disengage, it's like, no, then I'm not even going to tell you. And then that causes world more problems as they get older. Right. And then you're not collaborating anymore. No. And they won't come to you and tell you their ideas.

They won't tell you the things that they're thinking, the fears, the stuff, they won't tell any of that because they just know you're going to overreact or try to take care of it or handle it yourself. And they don't want that from you. And sometimes these ideas where our gut instinct is to go, no, no way. Sometimes there is a way to facilitate that for them. And once you're in a calmer space and you've, you know, everybody's completely out of ideas and you're sitting down and you're preparing to evaluate, you're like, okay, well, you can't go on a 5k by yourself, but if you really feel like you need to run 5k you know daddy can go with you if you're he's home i can bike with you i can you know take you to the track and you can run around the track at the rec center there are ways to facilitate that it's not just a no having that collaborative discussion where their input is important is going to make rebellion basically non-existent in your household, because it's really hard to rebel against a solution that you helped create. Right. Well, and it doesn't mean that we just in the middle of a, you know, a heated moment or a disciplinary kind of thing that we stop and say, oh yeah,

now we're going to go run a 5k. I mean, we don't always have that luxury, but the fact that you're hearing your kids and you're giving them the opportunity to share that, and you can say, it's not possible to run a 5k right now. Mom can't leave the house. We can't, you know, whatever the thing is and you'll get to do that later just giving them the option that later they'll get to do that can calm and diffuse the situation right away exactly and just because they can't you know 5k might be their ideal situation but there's lots of other options that may calm them down in that situation that can be riffed off of that need for the proprioceptive input of running right right like okay you can't go for a run right now you can go jump on the trampoline in the backyard run around the house five times yeah you can do a practice session and say, let's, let's figure out how many times you'd have to run around the house for it to be a mile, you know, and they, and then, you know, that's an opportunity for them to get a bunch of energy out and you have, you know, a practice session around it. That can be fun.

Exactly. So that collaboration, it means that they're, they've got skin in the game then, and you're solving the problem that they've identified. You're not just solving random problems and hoping that that's what the problem is. Your child has told you very clearly, this is why I'm doing this. Yeah. And you're like, okay, so what you're doing is not a good solution. Right. How's that going to work out for you? Yeah. We need to find a way to do this.

That's safe. It's not going to hurt people or property. Yep. And then if it doesn't work, you can be like, Hey, so we decided that when you get upset, you're going to go and you're going to do some laps around the house. You're not doing it. So what, what about it isn't working and continue solving the problem instead of getting mad at them that their first idea, their first draft didn't end up being the polished product. Right. One of the things I love about this too. And, uh, that I've experienced is that, um, when you do this, when you actually kind of brainstorm and problem solve with your kids after they had, you know, done a misbehavior or something like that. There's a really cool thing that sometimes happens. And that is kids get tired of it. They have to own the behavior. They have to own the problem. They have to own the solution for the problem. And it takes them time, just like it takes you time. It takes them time.

And so sometimes what ends up happening, they think before they misbehave sometimes just because they're like, I don't want to have to deal with this later. This is going to end up causing more problems for me. I'll take more of my time. I have to own this. Mom's not just going to get mad and fly off the handle and get more upset about it than me. I actually, it, you know, it's affecting me. So it's not worth it. I'm not even cause a problem right now. Exactly. And it's right. It's making the appropriate behavior, the path of least resistance, because that's why children our brains don't want to do things that are hard. Nobody, right? There's that Mel Robbins thing where she's like, you are never going to feel like doing the hard thing. We're not wired to do the hard thing. So if doing the right thing is hard, your child is never going to do it because it's going to be difficult. If you can make making the right choice, the path of least resistance for them, then you're never going to have to deal with misbehavior because like you said, doing the other thing is going to cause me a lot more problems.

Right. Take up a lot more of my time and energy. Why would I do that? And this like potty training all the time, I'm talking to parents and I'm like, okay, so they had an accident.

What do you do when they have an accident? They're like, well, we clean them up and we put them on the toilet and they go about their day. I'm like, okay, so your child has to be the one cleaning it up. Yeah, they're three, they're four, they're, they're not going to do it perfectly.

But that doesn't mean they don't have to do it at all. Right, right. They have to take off their pants. They have to take off their poopy underwear.

They have to be the ones to put it in the laundry. They're the ones who have to get in the shower. You can be there. You can hand them the soap.

You can hand them the showerhead. they need to clean themselves off. They need to dry themselves off, get new clothes, put new clothes on because if it's inconvenient for them, if they are the ones, they don't just get to stand there and get their personal maitre d' to clean them off, then they're going to be like, this, this is exhausting. Yeah. I'm going to pay attention to when I have to go potty because it's too much work to have to clean myself up. And I have, I don't get to stay in play. Yeah, exactly. And we don't have to be mad about that oh that's so sad you wet your pants oh i bet that feels icky yeah you can be empathetic and yeah hold the boundary right right and like i mean i do this all the time with my own kids my youngest about three months ago right before christmas he decided he didn't want to wear underwear to school and i was like okay well i'm gonna put a pair of underwear in your bag because I'm pretty sure you're going to want it.

But it's there if you need it. And then I sent his teacher a text message and I was like, hey, so just FYI, Owen's commando today. Yeah. Pretty sure he's going to start chafing.

And when he does, there was a pair of underwear in his bag. Please direct him to the bathroom to put them on. She was like, okay. And I was like, just not the hell I wanted to die on.

Yeah, right. God love our teachers, the things they have, the messages and the things they hear. I've shared that with parents too when your kids are fighting, getting dressed in the morning, it's like, you can wear your clothes or carry them. That's a good old love and logic tip for parents out there, wear your clothes or carry them. They can go to school in their pajamas. And then you just phone the teacher ahead of time and say, Hey, she's coming in her jammies. You know, maybe let her know that she's welcome to join the class as soon as she's dressed, you know, because that's a requirement in school that you wear clothes, but we're not going to battle it at home. We protect our kids from these natural consequences all the time. Right. And we battle them. We don't even protect them from them. We like get in arguments with our kids over natural things that they can experience themselves. And we don't have to join in. He never ever said, I don't want to wear underwear again.

Right. Because again, sometimes kids are doing this to throw us off, see what we'll say, how we'll respond, how we'll react. They're trying to engage us in an argument or, you know, and we don't have to take the bait. Yeah. I love it. Things like wearing your winter jacket. I mean, you're in Minnesota. I'm sure, you know, it was just as intimately as I do where, you know, I don't want to wear my jacket. Well, it's minus 40 degrees out. So I don't support the choice.

I'm going to bring it anyways, but you go outside and feel how cold it is. They go outside, they come right back in. I want my jacket now. Yeah, you do. Yeah. Yeah. Probably do wear your coat or carry it. As long as they have it with you're doing your job as a parent, right?

they're not going to freeze they will figure it out all right well you've given us so many good examples and tips I'm going to encourage parents to go to your website alannarovinson.com backslash free class and you actually have a free class that people can access at any time tell us about that it's an hour-long class and in that class I go through the three main mistakes that parents make that are actually causing misbehavior. And then we talk a little bit about how flipping your perspective from behavior management to skill development is that secret ingredient for well behaved kids. Oh my gosh. You are so up my alley. It's like gone are the days of behavior mod, right? Just, we're not dealing with modifying behaviors anymore. We're teaching skills.

Oh, and I think we're getting back to grassroots, like way, way, way, way before baby boomer age, right? When we tried to make everything better for our kids, they wouldn't have to like have as hard of a life as, as our parents did or whatever those days, man, we're, we're learning the repercussions of that. Uh, not so great. We want kids to be able to make mistakes and to learn from those. And so we're going back to the early days where kids had to figure things out because parents didn't have all the time in the world to teach them or parents had the patience to allow We weren't so busy. So parents could allow their kids to make mistakes and, and watch them and actually sometimes chuckle or giggle over how they put their shoes on the wrong feet and walked around like that for a while and went, this is uncomfortable. So I love that you're doing this.

Parents can also follow you on Instagram under Parenting Posse. Yeah. Parenting Posse is my Instagram handle and it's my Facebook group, the Parenting Posse with Alana Robinson, where we have over 10,000 parents all working together to problem solve and troubleshoot. I love that.

So parents just kind of give their situation, their example, their, their, uh, their aha moments, right. Or their success stories or rely on each other when they epically failed a technique or something. Absolutely. And we've got some amazing moderators in there.

A lot of my former clients are in there and everybody's working together to solve problems. I love it. All right. Parents of kiddos ages two to six, especially, but it can work with older kids as well.

go check out all the things that Elena has to offer both on Facebook, Instagram, and on your website and get registered for that free class and her membership community. Thanks for being here today. I'm so excited to connect with you and I'm sure we'll be doing some more things in the future. I just envisioned that already. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.

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