The Whole Parent Podcast

Why Toddlers Say "No"... #53

• Jon Fogel - WholeParent

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In this episode, Jon unpacks why toddlers seem to say “no” to everything—even the things they want—and why this phase isn’t defiance or manipulation, but their earliest tool for agency. Framed as a selfhood struggle, not a power struggle, the conversation reframes constant refusal as a sign of healthy development. Parents will leave with clarity, reassurance, and simple ways to reduce battles while protecting connection and supporting their child’s growing sense of self.

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If your toddler seems to say no to everything, like even the things that they ask for, even the things that they obviously want, you are absolutely not alone. It's one of the most confusing and frustrating parts of early childhood. You're left wondering, what's happening here? Is this defiance? Is this normal? Is this just me? In today's episode, we're going to talk about what's actually going inside on inside your toddler's brain when no becomes their default setting. And I'm going to tell you right now, it's not misbehavior, it's not manipulation, it's not a character flaw. It's a window into autonomy, emotional overload, and immature executive functioning. And it's the earliest beginnings of them discovering who they really are of selfhood. We're going to break down why toddlers go through this challenging phase and what it reveals about their growing identity and stress response, and why children tend to want control when everything else feels too big. And as always, I'm going to give you simple actionable tools that you can use today to reduce those battles, protect the connection, and help your child feel a little bit more regulated and capable in those moments. If you're ready for that, let's get into it. So I have a kid who is very much so in this saying no to everything phase right now. He is my three-year-old. And man, every single time that we try and do anything, anytime that we try and do stuff that he literally wants us to do, as I said in the intro, like he will just snap and be like, no. And he's definitely also in the I do it phase. So anything we try and do for him, we're just doing it wrong somehow. He needs to be the one to do it. And what happens when whenever we run into a situation with him is that it just like literally, if if we try and help in any way, if we try and offer him, even letting him do stuff, it just feels like it's always no, no, no, no, no, no, no for everything. So if that makes you feel any better, I don't even have a specific example. I'm trying to think of one as I'm starting this podcast episode. I don't always have them because it just feels like, man, this is constant for us. Uh oh, I'll give you one. So so he wanted to make rice. And that might seem like a pretty extreme job, but it's we we have these little uh microwaveable rice things. They it's like just put them in the microwave for 90 seconds, they come out really good. Um, this is my plug. I'm not sponsored by whatever company makes these, but I get them from Costco and these uh boxes, and they think they have like 12 in the box. And he has gotten really latched onto this, and I think it's because he can do it, and so he wants to make his own rice, but that requires us to peel back the corner a little bit. For for anybody who's made microwave meals, you have to peel to vent. This is like a big part of it. And in these little microwaveable rice things, it's like really hard to peel them back. Like my nine-year-old can't even do it, and so I usually do it for him before he even realizes that I do it. But today he had gone and found where the rice was, or actually, this was yesterday. Uh, he went and found where the rice was and he brought it over and he's gonna put it in the microwave. But of course, it has to be vented, and so I'm explaining this to him. And it's just like it, it's like I told him he couldn't have it, or or it's like I told him that he wasn't ever gonna eat it again, or I'm gonna take it away forever. Just saying a very simple, like, okay, let me let me vent that for you. Let me help you do that. And he's just like, no, and he like throws his body on the ground and he's like, I don't want to say he's like kicking and screaming, but he's basically just like, I can't believe you did that. And then he runs away from me. Like, I don't even make the thing because I don't know when he's coming back. He runs away from me, runs upstairs, goes and gets my wife, tells her how terrible and horrible I am that I was going to, you know, help him make his microwave rice. And I promise you, as soon as he we finished it, he would have told me that I needed to blow it off or I needed to add butter and salt to it, or all these things, but it was not on his terms, and he didn't understand the venting. And so uh he vented, he lost it, he just absolutely snapped. And it's just one example, right? Like just this tiny little toddler who's just having the worst day ever because of this. It's just kind of a random thing, but it does happen. I don't know why. Well, I do know why we're gonna talk about that today, but uh I I I didn't know in the moment what was going on until I took a step back and went, okay, hang on. This is totally developmentally normal. And so yeah, I'm just gonna jump right in. The first one uh is uh comes from Catelyn. The first question comes from Catelyn, and it was an Instagram message, and she says, John, I need help because my two and a half year old has started saying no to literally everything. I swear she doesn't even know what she's saying no to anymore. This morning she asked me for a yogurt, and then when I gave her the yogurt, she started screaming, no, not that. Like it is that it's the exact same cup, same flavor, and then five minutes later she ate it anywhere. What do I do about this? Well, Catelyn, I think that the first thing to say when we're doing an episode on kids who scream no to everything is to unpack why this is such a normal and typical thing for kids to do developmentally. And the short answer to that is that no is one of the earliest tools that toddl have to enact autonomy. And we've talked about this a little bit in previous episodes, but I'll just say it again. When kids are three years old, two years old, three years old, four years old, they have spent the majority of their lives with absolutely no semblance of agency and autonomy. They don't choose what they wear. They are just shuttled from one thing to the next. They have very, very little say in any of that. Any say that they do have is always, you know, granted by their parents. And there's a keen awareness of this, like, you know, one more story. Well, they don't really get to choose whether or not that happens. They might be asking for it, but they understand that we're ultimately in charge. And kids need to feel like their parents are in charge because that makes them feel safe and secure in a world that feels unstable and in a world that feels kind of out of their control. That here's an adult who knows what they're doing and I'm I'm safe with them. But they also need a feeling of agency and autonomy because they're developing what's called theory of mind. And so theory of mind is literally the developmental stage when a child begins to realize that other people have different thoughts and a different inner world, a different mental state, different desires and likes and dislikes than they have. And it's kind of interesting because as adults, we often don't think about the fact that most of us go through the world understanding intrinsically, impair, you know, without having to think about it, that other people are not thinking the same things that we're thinking. But until the age of two, kids basically all think that everybody else is thinking all the same things that they're thinking all the time, that everybody else has the same favorite ice cream flavor, that everybody else has the same uh internal world. They don't, they kind of share believe that they're sharing a collective consciousness, not just with their parents, but with everybody. And so when they start to realize that they are an individual person, and by the way, they have some ability to move around and do things on their own, and this we can kind of go down this path for a moment, but this is also an evolutionary biology thing. Human beings are born premature in uh not just in the sense that if you're born before 40 weeks, you're a premature baby. But uh humans are born premature relative to development compared to other mammals who are similar to us. Uh, what that means is basically we are born gestationally younger. And the reason for this is because we have huge brains compared to the rest of our body. And in order to have a huge brain, you have to have a huge skull, a huge noggin. And we've adapted to this in several different ways. Obviously, the skull separates and then it's it's multiple bones that then fuse together as the the child grows and it forms around. And so there are different ways that we've adapted to that. But one of those ways that we have adapted is by actually just being born too young. And this is because our mothers have proportionally sized birth canals and they don't know, they they their bodies cannot birth a baby that has the head of a three or a four-year-old, which is when you know another species might have their baby, they would be gestationally the size of a three or four-year-old. For we have our babies when they're much smaller and they're much more helpless. And so for the first 18 months of a child's life, certainly the first year of a child's life, and I'm just coming out of this because I have a four almost 14-month-old now, for the first year of their life, they have no ability to do anything for themselves. And they're aware of this. And so they're developing a sense of consciousness and a self of a sense of self, even though it's not really developed yet, because again, of theory of mind, they're developing some sense of self, but they have no ability to act that out in any practical way. They can't even, you know, go to the bathroom by themselves. They can't walk around by themselves. Really, the only thing that they have control over is what they put in their mouth as far as food. And you'll notice this is why many babies use mealtimes as a time to act out that autonomy. They don't want to eat the thing that they wanted to eat. A great example from Catelyn here, right? It's a two and a half year old who's saying, I don't want to eat this thing that I actually want to eat. Why? Because I just want to know that I can say no to it. And I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit, but basically, children have no ability to have any say over their life because of their biological reality. And then at two and a half, they all of a sudden can move around, they can run around, they can do some things on their own. And most importantly, they learn to say no. They know that their no has power, and then they want to use it. And the reason that they want to use it is because they have never been able to make any choice for themselves before. And the one choice that they feel that they have is no. It's their earliest tool for agency. And it usually comes across in two major places. One, what they put in their mouth. So in the case of Liam, it was his rice and how to make the rice. In the case of Catelyn's kid, it is the yogurt, which I get. They really like it, but also they want to know that they can say no to it. And number two, in potty training, they know what goes in and what comes out of their body, and they know that they can have some semblance of control over you can't make them do those things. And by the way, this is why the two most anxiety-producing things for parents are one, picky eating, and two, potty training, often for parents, because they're the two things we cannot control. We have to give over control to our child in these places, and actually that's good. It's good because they need some semblance of control. So, what do you do about this as we kind of continue on and we move on to the next question and go deeper into this? Number one, you can narrate what you're seeing. So you can say, Hey, I see that you don't want the yogurt anymore, but you asked for the yogurt before. You're saying no, but I also know that earlier you did want it. It's okay to feel both of those things, right? I'm gonna put it right here. You can eat it when you're ready. And so you're giving them that autonomy and that control, but you're also narrating to them what happened, right? And it's okay to have that boundary of saying, well, I'm not gonna make you the next thing or the next thing or the next thing because you've asked for this thing and I've made it, and here it is. Now understand, if you get into that power struggle with a two and a half year old, um, you may find yourself in a power struggle that's basically unwinnable because they might just double down and say, no, I don't want this, I don't want this, I don't want this, and they're going to enact that autonomy at the expense of them being hungry, which just makes them more dysregulated and go down that path. But I think one of the clearest things you can do is just narrate their kind of wishy-washy ambivalence about this thing. Hey, it sounds like you did want this and now you don't want this. That's okay. You can choose to not have it now. That's your choice. You don't have to eat it. And when you're saying these things, essentially what you're giving them is permission to then eat it and say, it was my choice. And it can be really, it it moves and it bypasses the str the amygdala struggle that they're having, where they're when they say no, they're expecting us to push back and they're expecting us to say, you must do this. And then they double down and no, I refuse to do this. And they're expecting that meltdown. But when you just offer to them a narrated experience, it actually bypasses that. And it's it can be firm and boundaried, but it doesn't have to be about control then. And they can feel that sense of like, oh man, I actually get some say in this. Now, here's the thing: developmentally, research shows us that this type of defiance is normal, it's not pathological, and it's correlated with later compliance and decision-making and self-advocacy. So if you feel like it's really annoying, Catelyn, and the other questions that we're getting today, or the just anybody who's listening, if you feel like it's really annoying and it's like, John, but what I was looking for you to say was just shut up and eat this thing. I get that. Um, but this is not a sign of this is not the there's this old myth that if you let your kid run the show, then they're going to become this tyrant who can never be controlled. If you give them an inch, they'll take a mile. This is not manipulation. This is them exploring their autonomy, and it's normal and it's developmental. And you want them to have a sense of self and autonomy. So as we get on and answer more questions, I want you to keep that in the back of your mind. Like ultimately, you want a child who becomes an adult who one day can say, Oh, yeah, I did order this meal, and now you know what? I I don't want it anymore. I'm you're you can't don't make me eat this thing. You know, they go out to a restaurant, they order something that they don't like. You don't want them to just, you know, eat it because they're a people pleaser and they're afraid of offending anybody. Um, it's okay to say, Yeah, you know what? Um, I don't actually want this anymore. Thank you. And I know that that's that even that, even that scenario for many of us who grew up in total compliance households feels like, oh my gosh, I would never. Are you kidding me? Like that sounds so, so abrasive. But that's actually like I the one of the things that I love about Gen Alpha, which is this next generation that's coming up right now, they have so many additional challenges that that previous generations just did not have to deal with. They have to deal with the internet and cell phones, and I do not envy them. It's never been harder to be a teenager in in like the mental health, relational health way. There have been times when it's been really tough to be a teenager in human history, but uh in at least in the last hundred years, this is a this is a challenge for them. And I and I'm I don't I do not uh wish to trade places with them. I I think that I had a pretty good run of it growing up when I grew up. But one of the things I love about Gen Alpha is that they do have this like kind of inbuilt audacity. And that's why I like the audacious generation, right? If the Gen Z is the anxious generation, Gen Alpha is the audacious generation, they have this inbuilt audacity to kind of say, like, no, I'm gonna kind of speak my truth and live on it. And here comes my cat again to interrupt our podcast. Anyway, I'm gonna take a quick break before the next one and uh do the do the whole mid-roll thing, the little plug thing where I interrupt myself, and then I will uh be back to answer the next question with Mandy. All right, so Mandy says, and I believe this was an email. I didn't write in the note for myself today what where these came from. Mandy says, My three-year-old is going through a huge no phase, and I've noticed that he says no before he even hears what I'm gonna say. So I'll start asking him, hey Bud, can you? And he already is shaking his head as if he is shutting it down. Is this normal? I feel like how, or did I somehow make feeling like listening to me feel like a chore? I catch myself doing a thing where I stop where I start to say, stop saying no to me all day. It's rude. But then I immediately feel gross because I don't want to shame him, and I also need him, but I also need him to take and put on his freaking socks because we're late again. Thank you, Mandy. Uh I I don't know exactly what you are do like what your idea of what you think you should do is because I know that you've you know you're already saying you're not gonna you shouldn't scream at him, stop saying no at me, it's to me it's rude. Um I think uh some people would say just ignore him, do it do your thing. Some people would say no, you should correct him, you know, it's not fair for him to say this. You should you force him anyway. Um I don't think any of those things is particularly adaptive as a parent. And by the way, I if I sound a little off today, it's because I'm sick, I'm sniffing and snuffling, and I have a cup of decaf coffee here. I should I never said welcome back to the porch. I'm supposed to be saying that at the beginning. I I I decided that's kind of one of my phrases that I say, welcome back to the porch. I'm on the porch today and I have all of the heaters on because I'm freezing cold as I'm out here. Um I I want to kind of go back to what I just said and I want to offer you a different solution, but I want to offer you the same kind of undergirding that I just said to Catelyn, which is the position that your son finds himself in is feeling like it if he's saying no automatically, he's feeling like there is there is some places where he he he just needs that autonomy and he needs to feel safe to say no, or he at least needs to feel safe to like come up with some to be a like to be a collaborator in his own discipline structure. And it doesn't have to do with like I think a lot of parents will get into this mindset of thinking that this is like a hierarchy and a defiance is about like them trying to take back, take over control of us. I kind of mentioned that in passing earlier. I think that we really need to stop looking at it that way, and we need to start looking at it as this is a selfhood struggle, not a power struggle. So, like this is a he wants to have choices and he wants to have opinions and he wants to have autonomy. And whenever you open your mouth, for whatever reason, he thinks that. Whatever's going to come out of it is going to be somehow uh violating his autonomy or not giving him choices or whatever. So, what I would say is okay, first of all, congratulations on having a strong-willed child. And it's not a bad thing. So your kid someday becomes the CEO, becomes the thought leader, becomes maybe the politician, although I wouldn't wish that on anyone, um, becomes the influencer, becomes whatever, right? It becomes the leader. And leaders are the ones who know to put put their opinion forward and and and stand, not not be unwavering in their perspectives. I change my mind all the time, and I think of myself as, you know, kind of a strong-willed person. It's not about not changing your mind, it's about having the confidence to assert yourself when necessary. And what I'm hearing is that your kid at three years old already has that. And so, congratulations on that. And I mean that, not, you know, in some sort of tongue-in-cheek or uh, you know, ironic or sarcastic, that's the word I'm looking for, way. I'm saying, oh, congratulations, your kid's gonna be a real, you know, difficult kid to parent. No, congratulations that like your kid's not gonna be pushed around by a toxic boss someday. Congratulations that your kid's not gonna find himself in toxic relationships. Congratulations that your kid uh is going to say ethical, is going to stand by his ethical principles, even when people, you know, may push back on that. That's what I'm hearing in a kid who says no before you even like come up with a thing. And those kids are more challenging to parent when they're toddlers, but they become teenagers who are less likely to be peer pressured, and they become college kids who know what they want and and you know, assert themselves in positive ways, adaptive ways, not maladaptive ways. And so I would lead with a kid like this. I would go, okay, basically, every interaction, he's probably wanting to have some semblance of control. So what can I do? One, you could do like pre-choice priming, basically. So instead of saying, hey, buddy, can you do this? You can do it this way or this way. He's already in his mind as you started speaking, going, okay, no, I'm not gonna listen to her. Instead of going down that road, you say, Hey, buddy, or or even before that, you can start with, I've got two choices for you. Okay, you get to choose. Hey, buddy, it's your choice. And so now you're starting from the perspective of you have agency on autonomy. I'm granting you agency on autonomy. All right, buddy, do you want to put on your left shoe first or your right shoe first? All right, buddy, do you want to wear your boots today or your shoes today? All right, buddy, do you want to wear your red socks or your blue socks? Okay, you've got two choices. Do you want to do this or that? And that kind of pre-choice priming can disrupt that feeling that he has that it's going to be a fight, and it can instead assert for him, hey, I'm getting autonomy out of this interaction automatically by because I'm being given a choice. And so with the strong-willed kid, I'm leading with that. And this, by the way, is also true for ADHD kids. ADHD kids do much better when you give them two choices or three choices, or or you get them somehow involved collaboratively in their in their approach. So I would lead with that. And then once you, once you're on there, then you can listen. And he may still say no and just say, no, neither, right? And that that's a typical thing that kids will learn to do. They'll adapt to that. But at least for the foreseeable next couple of times that you do this, you're going to be priming him that that you want his input. And then I would, I would look for every opportunity to get that input in other areas and aspects of your life. Like whatever that looks like, I would be looking for his input whenever possible. Do you want to sit here or here? Do you want to do this or that? And just constantly be giving him all of these choices, not just in the things that he doesn't want to do, which is where parents make this mistake. They only use the quote quote unquote false choice or the, you know, the choice to avoid the power struggle or the tantrum when it's over something that the kid doesn't want to do. I think you just start to just layer and fill his life with choices. And then instead of feeling like every single time you open your mouth, the only choice he has is to say, no, be quiet. I don't want to hear this or I don't want to do it. Now he's he's his life is filled with choices. And a child whose life is filled with choices can feel a much greater sense of autonomy without going to having to say no every single time. So what we understand is that from the psychological research, that autonomy supportive parents versus like the you know authoritarian controlling parents, um when a child's autonomy is supported by their parents through things like choices, collaborative problem solving, respect for feelings, all that stuff, they're actually more likely to cooperate in the long term. And while cooperating, internalize the values that are that are being offered to them at the at the time, right? So if being on time is a value for you and you're late all the time, by offering choices, you can then not be met with that shutdown. And then you can teach the value of like timeliness as as you're doing that. Another thing that that that happens when we're autonomy supportive is that kids learn how to regulate their own emotions much more effectively. They become self-regulators because now we're not getting into power unnecessary power struggles and then trying to be controlling, and then they need us to pull them out of it because we've kind of created the monster. We can actually do this in a positive way. And then later on, right, you have less rebellion, less aggression, and less, and this is the important one for you. This is why I said we started by saying, congratulations, you have a strong willed kid. You also don't have like people pleasing and passivity either. So a lot of times parents think like, oh, that kid's gonna get cause you trouble later on. Not if you work with them early when they're toddlers and you make them feel like they have say and agency and and control over their life. They don't quote, you know, give you a hard time when you're older. They they may have their own desires and and they may not follow the same faith structure that you do or or want go to the college that you pictured them going to when they were born. Uh they may have their own choices because you've given them autonomy for their whole life. Of course, you yourself will be much better at giving them autonomy because you will have years, decades almost of giving them autonomy. So you'll have practice of letting them make their own choices. And this is also it's your first time parenting, too, right? I mean, I guess I don't know that for sure. Um, but for all of us, it's our first time being parents. Apologize. I have to grab my cap because she's just like meowing all over me. I don't know why she does this. Whenever I she, you know, she doesn't bother me all day, but then as soon as I get on the podcast, she's just like, oh, he's talking into his microphone. Now is the time to just go and bug him and just try and get as many pets out of him as possible. It's probably a conditioned behavior at this point for her. But yeah, the more you can do this, the better off his outcome is going to be, right? And we are learning at the same time as our kid, as our kid is learning how to make those good choices. We are learning how to live with the fact that they make choices that we wouldn't necessarily choose. And so we're all growing at the same time. And what we see later is that kids who know that they're going to be granted some semblance of autonomy and agency don't do the rebellion thing, right? Rebellion is comes from kids who feel like the only way to uh have any control over their life is to rebel against their parents because their parents are never going to give them control. This is not true of kids who, you know, are given control. They don't need to rebel. What are they rebelling against? So I think that this is a great opportunity. And when you think about like I I kind of hear you saying, like, should I just shut this down? And in in in your question, and you're saying, like, you just say, stop saying no to me, it's rude, or stop saying no to me, I'm your mother, right? Is another way of saying that. I really encourage you not to shut it down. I guess that's what that's really what this whole answer is about. I really encourage you not to shut it down because this is a gift in disguise. Um and you want you want that kid, you want the kid who's strong-willed now because you're gonna grow with him, and as you do that, like it's gonna become a beautiful thing together. Okay. Last question on the porch. My voice is like giving out as we speak. Last question is from Cora. It says, John, please tell me if this is a me problem or a toddler problem. Love that beginning, Cora. My four-year-old says no to everything. I suggest um that I suggest, but will immediately do it if my husband says it. Like if I say Noah, it's time to get in the car, he screams, throws himself on the floor. If my husband walks in eight seconds later and says the exact same words, my kid is magically cooperative. I feel stupid even typing this because it makes me feel rejected and mad. Is he trying to is it possible that he just hates transitions, or is this some sort of manipulation? I kind of feel like I'm being manipulated, which um is just like ug. I don't know. Okay. A couple things that I want to say here. The first thing is kids act differently with different caregivers, and it's not because one caregiver is better or worse than the other. A lot of people spin this narrative that the reason that kids are worse with one parent is because the other, you know, the other parent that they're is not letting them walk all over them. That your husband is, you know, he's he's not gonna let them walk all over him, and they hear that and they're not gonna do that. More often it is an adaptive response from the child to understand that. I mean, first and foremost, he may just feel safer with you than with your husband. And I don't mean that to like knock your husband, but he feels like you're the person who he's allowed to be dysregulated with because maybe he's just been dysregulated with you more, and he's felt feeling the feeling be validated with you. Uh, this is kind of goes back to that whole if you have a kid who you go to parent teacher conferences and they're like, oh man, this kid's an angel, I love them. And then you're like, I don't know who you're talking about because that's not my kid at home, they tear up the place. Uh, that's actually a good sign that that tells me that they feel more free and safe to be with you than, and then when they're at school, they they have some measure of restraint, and then they get home, they get home and they have restraint collapse, right? Um, there may be an aspect of that in parenting relationships too, where one parent it feels like I can't really be dysregulated around this parent because I don't know what's gonna happen. It may not be that your husband did anything wrong, but it just, you know, hey, I've I've really, I've really, you know, in the attachment hierarchy, mom is at the top. And because of that, she's the one who I'm gonna give a hard time to because I know that it's not gonna change how she feels about me. And again, I don't want to say that like a four-year-old is thinking in those terms in some sort of conscious way, but it's a subconscious experience of feeling like, you know, I know that I can be safe with this person. Um, the second thing that I'll say is that for some kids, transitions are really hard, but novelty can really outstrip that transition. So for my son, Liam, novelty is like a huge thing. And if if I just tell him, like, you know, he doesn't a great example of this. He doesn't ever want to go to bed when it's me. If I tell him it's time to go to bed, he won't go to bed. But if I say, mom wants to play with you upstairs before bed, kids just like runs, he's like, it's bedtime, this is great, and he runs upstairs. And the reason my wife does bed almost every single night for my almost four-year-old Liam is because it's like way easier because he wants to do it when it's going to be playtime with mom, that is part of the bedtime routine, versus for some reason, playtime with dad does not seem that fun. And it's which is crazy because like I think of myself as a particularly fun dad. And uh, I do feel rejected sometimes when that's the case, but I also just know that like he understands our parenting relationships differently, and he is willing to run upstairs for mom, and he's not willing to run upstairs for me. For me, it's like, no, no, no, five more minutes, five more minutes, and it's constantly, and there's probably gonna be a meltdown because whatever. Now, I would probably just play like an emotional regulation game on the nights when I have to do that and we'll figure it out, we'll figure it out uh as we go, but but that's not to say like I say all of this to say just because a child reacts differently to the demands of different parents or reacts differently to a transition involving different parents does not mean that either parent is wrong or right. Neither my wife or I is a better parent or a more loving parent or a more secure parent or more attached parent. But for whatever reason, some kids they they just feel like I can do this one thing for mom, but I can't do it for dad. And maybe every time he gets in the car with dad, it's a positive association, right? Because it's a novel experience. He doesn't do it that much and or or not as much. It's not like an everyday thing. And so, you know, I remember the last three times that I was in the car with dad, one of those times I got ice cream. And so when dad says get in the car, I just run and get in the car. And it's not a conscious thought, but it's a subconscious experience of like, this is just new and novel for me, and it's fun. I I used to use this trick all the time when I was when we got a new car. I would say, Oh, do you want to take the new car? Should we go to the grocery store in the new car? And the kids would be like, Let's go to the grocery store, which of course they don't actually want to, but they want to get in the new car. And so there's there's an aspect of like the transition is hard, but it can feel less hard when there's subconscious factors going on here. And one of those subconscious factors may just be that there is something going on with your husband. So it it may it may be that your husband is like really, really fun, and that's why they are rushed to get in the car with him. It may be that your husband is not really a safe person for them, at least in the moment, they don't think of him as being like a particularly safe person to be dysregulated around, and so they don't act dysregulated around him. Like it could be a lot of different things. But I think that the actual way of fixing this problem is to one try lowering the intensity, right? Go with a slower pace, name the transition before you announce it. Hey, we're gonna do this in five minutes, we're gonna go get in the car, et cetera, et cetera. And then what I would do is focus on giving as much autonomy around the home as possible. And this kind of goes with what we just said with the giving choices, but I would just look like like I've kind of been waiting to say this, and I don't know exactly the right moment to say it, but I think you the the you can manage the transition in a lot of different ways by slowing it down, by being just more calm around the transition. One piece of it is also just that kids, and and I was waiting to say it because I think at four, this is where I think it's the most important. There is one aspect of this, which is just kids who say no the most when they hear no the most. Kids who hear yes more say yes more. And it's not just a modeling thing. It is a, it's like a they have an autonomy tank that must be filled. And I don't know if this is the experience with your four-year-old, Cora, but I can tell you from experience with all of my kids when they've been four, and now I have one that's about to be four. They have a certain amount of autonomy that they need to enact throughout the day, and it's probably literally like an educational developmental thing. Uh, in the same way that kids need a certain amount of tummy time when they're six months old, or they certain need a certain number of reading minutes when they're seven years old and eight years old to like learn how to read effectively, and they just need repetitions of that. One of the needs that your child has it for is autonomy, and they will get that autonomy need met by any means necessary. And so kids who hear know the most become kids who say know the most, and kids who hear yes the most are kids who say no the least. They say yes the most because they know. And and this is a phrase that you can use, all of you, everybody on the call can use, everybody on the call, everybody on the podcast can use. I did a workshop yesterday, and so I'm still thinking everybody on the call, um everybody on the workshop can use. Everybody on the podcast can use. You can say this phrase, it's one that I learned and I had to learn to say. It's if I could say yes, I would. And then I lit learned to live into that motto. But if my kid I I realized if my kids believed that if I could say yes, I would, they would be way more hit willing to hear me say no. If they thought that I just said no about everything arbitrarily all the time for no reason, then they didn't want to hear it when I said no. Because dad always says no. But if they felt like I always genuinely tried to say yes when I could, but right now we have to put on our shoes and get in the car. That was way more tolerable. And so there could be a lot of things going on here. I I don't want you to feel like a bad parent, Cora. It really centrally, what I would say is another big aspect to this, and I just I have to wrap because because we're out of time on the episode, but another big access at uh piece of this is if you start to feel like your child doesn't like you, then you start to put off that energy. You don't like me, and and and you don't listen to me, and you don't respect me. And I don't want you to think that. As I just listed, there's a million reasons why this is happening, and none of them is that your child doesn't respect you. Uh it I guarantee you that your child respects you and loves you. It's that like unconditionally, kids respect and love their parents. It's really hard to make kids not love and respect their parents. But developmentally, they still need to push those boundaries and they still need to push back. And and for everybody, as I kind of conclude this episode because I've because this is the end, um everyone who's hearing this today, I want you to listen to what I'm about to say very carefully, which is that as you're going through this experience of parenting, your child you may come into a conflict with your child where the right thing for you is to hold a boundary, and the right thing for your child is to push that boundary. And that may cause inherent conflict where they scream no in your face. But it's the right thing for them to do developmentally. And the right thing for you to do developmentally, or from a parenting perspective, from a discipline perspective, is to say, I don't I don't like how you spoke to me right there. And that does not mean anyone failed, it meant that everybody was getting what they needed out of it. That interaction. And so if your kid is screaming no at you, try and give them more yes. Try and give them more choices. Try and understand what's going on. They're not manipulating you. They're not they don't like somebody else more than you. Being autonomy supportive actually leads to long-term physical, mental, emotional, relational health. And if you have that kid who's screaming no, don't take that out of them. Because that is going to be one of their greatest traits. Okay. That's what I got for you. I'll see you next time. Thank you for your time listening to the whole parent podcast today. I hope you got something out of it. I have a couple quick favors to ask of you as we end the episode. The first one is to jump over on whatever podcast platform that you are listening to right now and rate this show five stars. You'll notice there are a lot of five-star ratings on this show, whether that's on Spotify or Apple Music or Apple Podcasts. We have a ton of five-star ratings and it helps our podcast get out to more people than almost any other parenting podcast out there. And so it's a really quick thing that you can do if you have 15 or 20 seconds. And if you have an additional 30 seconds, I'd love to read a review from you. I read all the reviews that come through. If some if you particularly like one part of the podcast or you like when I talk about something or whatever, imagine that you're writing that review directly to me. The second thing that you can do is go and send this episode to somebody in your life who you think could use it. Think about all the parents in your life. Think about your friends, your family members who could use a little bit of help parenting. It's vulnerable to share an episode of a parenting podcast with them. I get it. But imagine how much better your life is as a result of listening to this podcast, of following me on social media, of getting the emails that I send out. You can share that with someone else too. And so I encourage you, just go over, shoot them a quick text, share this episode with them, or share another episode that you feel like is particularly relevant to them. The last thing you can do is go down to the link show notes at the bottom. And like I said, in the mid-roll, you can subscribe on Substack. It's$5 a month or$50 a year. Uh I don't have that many people doing it, and yet the people who are doing it have made this possible. And so if you like this episode, if you like all of the episodes, if you want them to continue, the only way that I can keep making them is through donor support, free will donations to the podcast. Please, please, please, please, as you're thinking about the end of this year, as you're thinking about your charitable giving, I know I'm not a 501c3. You can't write it off on your taxes, but if you'd like to give me a little gift to just say thank you for what you've done this year, the best way to do that is over on Substack. Again,$5 a month,$50 a year. It's not going to break the bank. It's probably less than you spend on coffee every week. Definitely less than you spend on coffee every week. Maybe uh less than you spend on almost anything, right? Five bucks a month is very, very small, but it goes a long way when it's multiplied by all of the different people who listen to the podcast and sending that over to me. I get all of that money. It's just my way of being able to produce the podcast, spend money on equipment, spend money on subscription fees, hosting fees for the podcast, all of that stuff. Email server fees, all that. So if you're willing to do that, I would love it. Thank you so much for listening to this episode, and I'll see you next time.

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Jon Fogel

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