Boundaries and Expectations, Part 1 of 2

Join clinical social workers Heather and Kristina, as they dive into the first of a two-part series on the powerful role of setting healthy boundaries with kids to boost both their success and the family’s well-being. In this discussion, they explain why clear, consistent boundaries are key to helping children grasp what’s acceptable and what’s not—without being too strict or rigid. After all, kids can’t read minds! None of us can! From handling sibling squabbles to teaching respect and emotional safety, this conversation dives deep into the many ways boundaries are so much more than rules. They are teaching tools to develop important skills and help children understand how to respond to tricky situations. Heather and Kristina also talk about the importance of evolving boundaries as kids grow, giving them valuable skills that nurture both their independence and their emotional development. Tune in for a fun and insightful discussion that shows how boundaries, when done right, are so much more than the lines we mustn’t cross.

Gear Up! Adventures In Parenthood is recorded and edited by Dave Purnell and produced by Jen Plante Johnson for the ODC Network in Holland, Michigan.

The ODC Network is a non-profit organization that strives to advance outdoor education and conservation in West Michigan.

Since 2000, The ODC Network has served over a million people through hands-on, outdoor learning experiences and conserved thousands of acres of native habitat through restoration and preservation projects.

The ODC Network’s vision is building a better community by connecting people, land and nature. To learn more and get involved go to: www.odcnetwork.org.

Transcript

 Episode 7: Boundaries and Expectations, Part 1 of 2

Heather  00:00

This episode is the start of a two part series on boundaries and expectations.

Kristina  00:05

We'll discuss how we proactively set up boundaries and expectations with our children in a way that promotes their success and our family's overall wellbeing.

Heather  00:15

We talk about how to consistently enforce boundaries with our children without being overly rigid or confusing.

Kristina  00:22

We’ll also discuss strategies we can use to help our children develop the skills to respond appropriately when they feel frustrated, like when they want something that belongs to another person or a sibling.

Heather  00:33

We like to say boundaries are not just fences we put up, but they are also great tools for teaching skills and reinforcing our values and our kids. Welcome to Gear Up! Adventures In Parenthood.

Kristina  00:49

A podcast where we explore the struggles and challenges we all face as parents. We'll share ideas and offer tips and strategies for raising happy, healthy children. My name is Kristina Boersma,

Heather  01:02

And I'm Heather Bouwman. Kristina and I are clinical social workers who've been working with families and children for a good, long minute. We're support service directors for the Early Childhood network of ODC Network in Holland, Michigan, and we get to support parents and children as they navigate the tricky terrain of raising children and growing up in today's world.

Kristina  01:24

We're here to help unpack the hard stuff and connect with the joy of parenting.

Heather  01:30

Are you ready?

Heather and Kristina  01:31

Let's hit the trails.

Heather  01:37

This project is made possible by the ODC Network, an amazing nonprofit organization based in Holland, Michigan where we get to work supporting preschool age students, their teachers and their parents.

Kristina  01:50

The ODC Network is all about nurturing the community and the next generation through a wide variety of innovative nature -based initiatives.

Heather  01:57

Please visit www.ODCNetwork.org, to learn more about the ODC Networks’, mission and impact. So today, we're going to be talking about boundaries and expectations, why they're important, how they can be tricky, because they are tricky. I think for a lot of people, some of us hold really tight boundaries. Some of us struggle to set boundaries and keep them real loose, and then that's confusing, especially to children. So we're going to talk about what makes a really good boundary. Why good clear boundaries are important, and what they allow in our family. Boundaries allow us as parents to teach our children what we believe are acceptable behaviors in our homes in other settings where we take our children. For me, it was the grocery store. It might have been a restaurant. It was at church. All of those different places that we go as a family, we have the opportunity as parents to teach our children what we deem acceptable and not acceptable, and really, I think we as parents sometimes don't connect, or don't realize or know that boundaries are a vehicle for us to teach our children our values and our foundations, and I think as parents, sometimes we just don't realize that maybe it's that we're focusing too much on a rule, or maybe it's that we're focusing like we talked about before, on obedience, yeah, and we don't realize that so much of discipline is just how we live with our children in our homes on the daily, and that boundaries are one of those vehicles, a really, really good and powerful one to teach our children our values through what is acceptable, what is not acceptable, what is going to elicit a consequence. All of those things are really important, and they're really important for our children to have a clear understanding of and they impact who they become. It impacts what we allow in our families, how we teach respect, care, compassion for one another, is going to impact how our children launch into the world and then respect others, treat others, care for others, show compassion for others. And that's the piece that I think sometimes we don't realize, as parents, we have that influence.

Kristina  04:45

Oh, absolutely. I think that we can be lulled into the sense of we can just roll with the punches and see where the day takes us. And some of us have temperaments that lend themselves more. To that type of parenting

Heather  05:01

Exactly. Some of us hold those boundaries real tight because we are firmly rooted in tradition or in stewardship or are more duty bound. And then there are other temperaments that just feel boundaries to be confining, yeah, and they suck the creativity out of life, or they suck some of the joy out of life. And so that gets really tricky, and we have to know who we are as a parent, and it goes back to also knowing who your child is as a child.

Kristina  05:37

So one of the reasons that we are so passionate about talking about boundaries and expectations and having them be clear out-loud expectations we cannot expect another human being to meet an expectation or to remain within a boundary when they don't know what it is. So one of the reasons it's so important to us to talk about it is because once you have established expectations and boundaries and they're out loud, it makes the journey so much more smooth. It allows children to be successful because they know what the expectations are, and parenting becomes more joyful.

Heather  06:21

It absolutely does. And I remember a way long time ago, I think this was even before I had children, because sometimes we think they just know what we expect without us saying it, and they don't. Sometimes I used to think that my spouse should know, that they should be able to know because they know me deeply. And someone said to me, “Well, they can't read your mind. It's not really fair to expect a certain outcome when you're not sharing what you need.” And I was like, “I'm a therapist”  I was like, “Oh, I guess that isn't really great practice.”

Kristina  07:00

I remember my mother telling my sister when she was first married, ‘Honey, tell him what you need, and then act like he came up with it all on his own. That's like the secret of success in a marriage.” 

Heather  07:13

It’s the secret sauce, right there, folks. You heard it here. 

Kristina  07:17

They can't know if we don't tell them.

Heather  07:19

Absolutely. And it's not fair to have an expectation not share what it is, and then get really resentful. And sometimes we do those things with our spouses, with our children. So clear expectations and boundaries are super important so people can be successful. And we say this all the time a child who is not good at succeeding can get really tempted to get good at failing, and we never want that. We don't want that for our children, for ourselves, for our spouse. We want everybody to feel successful because it brings joy to our home. 

Kristina  08:00

Boundaries can be really tricky for parents. They can be tricky to establish. They can be tricky to enforce. I know, just because of who I am, that I'm much more prone to say that, “Oh, just one more time” after I've set a boundary. Like “We're going to leave the pool at two o'clock. You have five more minutes. You may do one more thing in the pool.” And so there's one more awesome slide down the slide, and a big splash, and then it would be time to go. But Grace would say, “Just one more. Just one more.” And I'm prone to say, “Oh, sure.  Just one more time.”

Heather  08:34

We're having so much fun. Just one beautiful day. We need to soak this in. Just do it one more time, right?

Kristina  08:41

But you can bet after that one more time, there will be the request for one more time, one more time, one more time, and then I can get frustrated with something I have set up on my very own, right? I said: here's the boundary we're going to be leaving at this time, and then I just blew the boundary right over, right? Sure, one more time. May I have a cookie? Yeah. May I have another one? Sure. I mean, they're really good, aren't they? To me, it felt happy to be doing those things like, yeah, we can do this one more time. Sure, we can do that. And what I was inadvertently doing is blowing my boundaries, which we talk about being fences that we establish for safety. We establish those fences for teaching skills, like you had mentioned, teaching manners.

Heather  09:33

Well it marks the territory. It marks the area, and it marks the line at which point you've crossed the boundary. 

Kristina  09:43

And if we allow our fences to be erected haphazardly, we just kind of do it on the fly, and the children don't know where that fence is, they will run into it, and then we have a choice about how we're going to respond to the child who runs into the fence.

Heather  10:02

And we have to understand that children are going to challenge the fence. Yes, really, their developmental job, right? They're seeking more autonomy as they grow. They're trying to become independent, and in doing so, they're going to try to climb the fence. They're going to kick it. They're going to shake it, some more than others, again, because there are some children that are just more compliant naturally, by nature, by temperament, and then there are others that also by nature and temperament, are the ones that are going to throw stones at that fence. They're gonna shake it vigorously and they're gonna kick it and try to make it go over.

Kristina  10:47

So we as the adults get to decide where we are going to establish the fences and then how we are going to maintain them. The fence does not attack a child or taunt a child, like, “Ooh, you're getting really close to the fence. Don't touch the fence. Don't touch the fence. Don't touch the fence.” Then, wham, you touch the fence. 

Heather  11:13

We don’t allow our boundary or our fence to become a punishment. So as that child gets near, it doesn't whack the child, right? It's just there, right being the boundary marking the line.

Kristina  11:24

But my behavior at the pool, where I had erected a fence right? Here's the boundary for our time here. And then I knocked the fence over. I said, we don't really need to pay attention to that boundary. You can do it one more time. So when I zoom out and say, “What was I teaching? Was I trying to be a fun mom? Did I maybe think I had erected a fence that wasn't reasonable, or was I just acquiescing because I like to bring the joy, as opposed to holding the boundary?” That was something that I really needed to learn, because I wasn't setting my daughter up for success when I would move the fence.

Heather  12:08

Yes, because it's confusing. And there are times we'll do it because we make a choice to move the fence. Perhaps maybe it is spontaneity. Maybe it is everybody's having a better time. Who knows? It could be lots of reasons. But what we need to understand is, when we move the fence or we move the boundary, it is confusing to the child and the child's brain, because what we have taught them is the boundary moves. And then we have to go back and teach harder that the boundary actually doesn't move, and the only way that their brain registers that message is through rote repetition and practice. The boundary has to hold. The boundary has to hold a significant amount of times, and finally, the child's brain will say, “Ah, I'm not gonna get one more time to go down the slide at the pool,” or “I'm not gonna get another cookie,” because we've held that boundary enough that their brain registers it and now knows. But if we're wishy washy, it's so confusing to the child and their brain, and then they just challenge more, because they know that they can keep at it and that boundary will eventually move.

Kristina  13:35

So this is a tricky thing. It's a very tricky thing, and I want us to talk about, how can we get better at this.

Heather  13:44

And why it's so important to get better as parents. What we always say is that feelings of safety and security are paramount for children. They need them to learn. They need them to be able to feel connected to us. And what we know is when they feel safe and secure, it more likely ignites cooperation. So sometimes, as parents, we can think, if we have a lot of boundaries, that we're not respecting our child's feelings. Do you think that's true?

Kristina  14:25

I don't know that I think that's true. I think that sometimes we erect so many boundaries that the child just has fences everywhere. And deciding where we are going to build a fence and hold a boundary and where they have more room to roam and experiment is important to not have too many. 

Heather  14:49

I think we talk a lot about offering choices, and parents can hear that, and then think everything needs to become a choice, right? It doesn't. It's okay to hold fast to certain things. I'm going to go back to our dinner time. You had to ask to be excused. You had to carry your plate to the counter or sink. I think about the pool. When my kids were little, we would go to the same pool. And do you remember that the water slide? There was a point. Do you remember this like it was a zero grade, and they could go in. But there was a point that we would always mark on the concrete, because the swirl of that water slide would suck the little ones in a puddle jumper. Do you remember that? Yes, and I distinctly remember, with both of my younger children marking that line in the concrete and saying, “Here. You may come up to here. You may not go beyond here, because you will get sucked in to that swirl. The force is gonna suck you into that, and then you're gonna end up at the bottom of that water slide, and the lifeguard is gonna whoop blow their whistle and get you out of there and be mad at me.” But the kids want to be independent. And we wanted to sit somewhat and not always be monitoring when they're getting sucked into the vortex of the water slide. And I distinctly remember with Luke, having to be eyes on him all the time because he'd look at me and be like, does she see me? Is she watching me? And having to kind of silently without words, just look at him and like, point at that line, like, right there, and he would dance on it. And sometimes he would fly right past that point with a big old smile on his face, like, “Here I go!” I imagine it was kind of fun to get sucked into that he didn't need to move his body at all, and just the force took him, and I remember like, “Nope.” And then pulling him out and setting him down and being like, you gotta sit out for this amount of time, because that's the boundary.

Kristina  16:50

And you had said it out loud, “If you move beyond this boundary, you will sit out for a period of time. 

Heather  16:57

And I remember one time in particular, because remember every hour there was like a five minute break or something, because they didn't want everybody peeing in the pool. Everybody had to get out and pee, so they had this five minute break. And he ended up having to be out of the pool because he had to take that time that I had set. But then it was also the five minute break. And he was like, “I lost a really big amount of time in the pool.” And I was like, “You did. You did.” And so to have that conversation of, yeah, that was the consequence. Like, you lost swim time because you made the choice to go beyond and it didn't take very long of that repetition of doing that. I remember the lifeguard kind of watching it, and they're like teenagers and thinking, “Whew! I think that gigs a lot of work.” It's probably a really good lesson for that teenage lifeguard. Watching it like that is a game for people with a lot of energy and stamina, and it is, yeah, because it took a lot to monitor him, not going beyond that point.

Kristina  18:02

I want to point out something about what you just shared, and that is that when Luke made the decision to go beyond the boundary and he had to sit out, you did not say “I told you. You chose to go beyond the boundary. So here you sit. Isn't that fun, Luke? Maybe you should have listened to me and stayed within the boundary, right?” The fence doesn't come and attack or taunt. 

Heather  18:30

It just holds and it doesn't question their character. We're trying to grow and develop it, right?

Kristina  18:35

The beauty of it is that it's not me against you. It's not parent against child or caregiver against the one that they are raising. It is both of us saying, “Oh, bummer. It is a bummer, Luke. You did miss a lot of time. Nuts. I'm so sorry that was kind of rotten.

Heather  18:56

In some ways, he would do it, looking right at me. Like, “Yep, here she comes.” It was like he was also testing me, right? Like, is she gonna make me do this? Because if not, I'm just gonna keep on going.

Kristina  19:11

But it's so easy. You've talked about how your kids need to clear their plate, bring it into the kitchen. How easy is it if one of them forgets to do that, runs off to play, and you just think to yourself, I'll just take it. I mean, it's no big deal. I'll take his plate this time. And there are times when we can do that, and there are times that we do that, but we need to understand then what happens. So if you do it, then the child learns it’s not really important.

Heather  19:42

It’s not really that important. Maybe I don't have to take my -  there’s not really that committed to it, right?

Kristina  19:46

As opposed to taking the extra work of saying, “Hey, Grace? Come on back. You forgot your plate.”

Heather  19:52

You maybe don't remember this. But one thing that we commonly said was, “First things first.” Yep. “Hey, first things first. Come and take a look at what needs to be done before you head out the door.” Oh, yep, yeah, I gotta get my plate.

Kristina  20:06

Yep. And in that way, when we hold a boundary, when we keep it consistent, when we are on the same side as our child with empathy and with understanding, and they experience that repeatedly, they begin to learn, yes, it doesn't do me any good to kick that fence. It's not moving. One of the easiest ways to extinguish a behavior is to respond to it absolutely consistently. The fastest way to ingrain a behavior is to respond to it inconsistently. Because if a child knows if I come into my parents bedroom or my mom's bedroom or my dad's bedroom in the night, and I want to sleep with them, if sometimes they'll say yes, then I know that I can come in for another thousand days, and at some point they're going to say yes again. I don't know when, but I know it happened once, so it can happen again. So when we do move our fences intentionally, speaking of nighttime, this was one for my daughter that we had to figure out. I've said before, my husband traveled a lot with work, so when he was out of town, my daughter, who struggles with being anxious, she could sleep with me. Now some people are going to say, “Oh, boy, that is trouble.” For us, it worked. And it was something I could say out loud “When daddy's gone, you may sleep with me in our bed.” And so on those nights, it wasn't that I was responding to her request in the moment, that was pushing a boundary or kicking a fence. I could proactively say, “Here's a new fence.” That's important. So I'm going to go back to the pool. We were members at the same fitness club, which had an outdoor pool. At the outdoor pool, it also had a little concession stand. So one of our, one of my, you know, boundaries, was that we didn't buy food from the concession stand, because I knew we would be buying food every day for the rest of forever when we went to the pool, so we were not going to do it. So every time Grace asked, “Can we please do it? Can we please, please, please, please, please, please, just this one. Just this once?” I would say, “Nope, not this time.” Now, I later found out that, like you can get a grilled cheese sandwich for next to nothing, and those little ice cream cones are fantastic, and they were also next to nothing. So I thought, “Hmm, it's actually not such a bad idea to get lunch here every once in a while.” So I would say to Grace proactively, “Hey, when we head to the pool today, we're going to be able to order some food from the little area there, and we can eat lunch at the pool.” So it wasn't in a response to her, asking, begging, trying to push the fence. It was something you put in place ahead of time. And that's a huge difference. Children learn not by what we say. So much more than by what they experience. So if the experience is that boundary holds, that fence holds, then again, they learn kicking it doesn't help anything.

Heather  23:29

And it can get real tricky when everybody else is buying food, and your rule is, we're not gonna get food. And sometimes, as parents, we don't want to, I think, deprive our child of that, whatever that that food brings, because we brought snacks. It's not that they're not gonna get fed, right? But it's the excitement, or, I don't know-

Kristina  23:59

And the snacks we brought don't look nearly as good once you see what the others are having, right?

Heather  24:04

And so we can join in that empathy. But we also say, “Empathy without boundaries always equals chaos.” And that is a really important thing to remember. And the distinguishing point that you made is that you can change. You don't have to lock yourself into something forever. It's that in the moment, once you've set a boundary, you don't want to move your fence in front of that child because they're begging, because everybody else is doing it right. Because that's never a message we want to send our kids. We don't want to send the message that, well, we're just going to do this because everybody else is. At least, I never wanted to send that message. But you set it up on the front end so that it could be something that felt special and felt together. I really like that. It felt like we're going to do this. This is going to be fun for us. Set it up ahead of time so it wasn't in response to whining, begging, pleading, gnashing of teeth, a tantrum. Yep, none of those things, right? It was established ahead of time, and establishing those boundaries allows everyone to be on the same page and have a really clear understanding and a much more enjoyable experience.

Kristina  25:35

So tech time was another tricky one for me. If I was busy doing something. During all of COVID, I worked from home. I was still working full time. I was at home. My daughter was at home. So that got dicey, right? So she would have tech time, and we had a boundary on that tech time. But man, oh man, if I was in a conference call and she came up and her time was done, it was so easy for me to say, “Yeah, you can have another half an hour.” Because I still had work to do. I was in the middle of it, right? And being able to respond to her while still working put me in a really tricky situation. Sometimes it's not work, sometimes it's just I'm in the middle of getting dinner ready, or whatever it might be. And so I would say, “Yeah, you can have a little bit more time.” You put the limits on their tech where, you know, it turns off in 30 minutes, and then you put the code back in and give them another 30. That set me up for a child that would consistently ask for more and then have big fits when she couldn't get it, because sometimes she did and she didn't understand what the difference was.

Heather  26:40

Well, why do I get it sometimes, and then other times you're just so frustrated and shout “no” or say “no” or say “you know you've reached your limit.”

Kristina  26:52

So I was not setting her up for success. Or for me, it certainly wasn't setting us up to have a smoother journey, a more joyful hike. We were kind of engaged in that back and forth, the tug of war, the “Am I going to topple the fence today, or am I not going to topple the fence today?” So there are times like that when, again, I like to zoom out a lot and think about the boundary we've established. Is it reasonable? Is it developmentally appropriate? How am I equipping my child to be successful in meeting that expectation? Do they have the skill to meet the expectation? Because sometimes we set a boundary that they don't have the skill for and then we can't expect a child to meet an expectation when they don't have the skill for it yet. 

Heather  27:40

So let's talk about how we determine boundaries. You said a couple of things right there, that we want to carefully select them for what we're trying to teach, that we want it to be developmentally appropriate. But let's look at what boundaries for the really young child look like. Because really it's only a few things, and it really is to protect them from physical harm when they're really little. We want our boundaries to keep them safe. That's primary importance. Keep the young child safe. We want them to protect property like we're not going to write on the walls, even though sometimes children do, and then we have to figure that out and what the consequences for that, but teaching again, how do we protect our property? And then the other one is often to protect the child and other children emotionally. So we want to make sure our child feels emotionally safe and that they're not doing anything to make other people or children feel emotionally unsafe, and that kind of goes back to the pool. Like we're keeping those, a young child you're not going beyond this point, because I don't want you to get sucked into that. You can't go beyond this point in the yard because you'll be too close to the road. You know, you must wear your helmet when you ride your scooter. All of those are safety things.

Kristina  29:04

But what do you do? Because welcome to our homes, right? With siblings. When one sibling is whacking and wailing on the other sibling, what do you do for us? One of our foundations is that you are safe in this home. You are safe in this family. Safe, physically. Safe, emotionally. Your property is safe and that’s something that we as the adults are responsible for ensuring and teaching. Yes, it's your job as the children to help us do that. But if something occurs that is unsafe in the family, whether with words or with physical harm or with property damage, what do we do?

Heather  29:44

So a commonly occurring thing: There are two children. One of them took something from someone else, or somebody wanted to turn and didn't get it. They both want the same thing, and it ends up being chucked at the other person, and it connects. I remember a specific time that this happened with our girls. This happened at my house in the basement, where the kind of toy room was, and I think it was like a doctor's kit.

Kristina  30:10

Doc McStuffins, I bet probably,

Heather  30:12

And it was the otoscope that probably they both wanted. One of them had it. I'm not sure what happened. Ava ended up chucking it at Grace, and it made contact and hit her. And Grace said, “Ow, Ava.” And so I went over there, and then I think she began to cry. And I very intentionally physically turned my back to the perpetrator. So whoever has perpetrated the violent act, or made the poor decision, I just put my back to them physically, because I don't want to make eye contact. I don't want to give them any attention or input for that behavior, because we want to extinguish it all, right?

Kristina  30:54

So when you go in Grace is crying. You have ascertained that Ava threw something and make contact, and you go in and you said you turned your back to Ava. Why do you do that? What are you doing in turning your back toward the perpetrator, in this case, Ava and focusing on the victim, in this case, Grace?

Heather  31:16

It’s very intentional. Even though Ava's my child, right? She's behaved poorly. She's done something that I don't like. She's not keeping the place safe. She is just low level assaulted a friend. So I'm gonna go in and I'm gonna keep my back to her intentionally, because I don't wanna give that any energy. I don't wanna give her any attention for that negative behavior, because I don't want to see more of it, right? What I want to teach in that moment is, “You just caused harm to a friend.” So I go to Grace, your daughter, and I scoop her up, and I say, “That seems like it hurt. That was not kind.” And of course, Ava's watching this entire exchange, like, “Oh, this apparently wasn't a popular choice, right?”

Kristina  32:05

Yeah, and so you said to Grace, “Something happe”ned.

Heather  32:08

“Tell me what happened.”

Kristina  32:

“Ava threw that at me, and it really hurt.”

Heather  32:16

“Yes, see that. It hurt. Hit me right here. Did you like it? No. Why didn't you like it? I didn't like it because it hurt. Tell her, look at Ava's eyes.

Kristina  32:29

I didn't like it when you did that. It hurt, Ava.

Heather  32:31

Do you hear what Grace said? Yes. Say it back to her. “She didn't like it because it hurt when I threw that.” Right. Grace, tell her what to do next time.

Kristina  32:43

Next time if you want it,  just ask me if you can have it. Or if it's my turn to have it, just bring it to me. But it hurt when you threw it at me.

Heather  32:55

Ava, did you hear what Grace said? Yes. She said that next time to bring it to her. Don't throw it at her when it's her turn. But I wasn't done with it, Mom, I wanted it longer. I hear you. You were frustrated. Next time say, “I'm frustrated.” Don't throw it at Grace.

Kristina  33:13

And that right there is teaching children skills, right? Skills to be able to respond when something doesn't feel good to them, how to communicate that, how to share what you would like to have happen instead.

Heather  33:31

We aren't done yet. I mean, I would say, “Ava, come over, pick this up, go back, try it again, and have a do over.” And then you do it the correct way? Yeah, you did it. There's no ill will towards either one of them. No, they're children that are learning, right?

Kristina  33:48

It just presents an opportunity to teach. 

Heather  33:53

To teach. Yep. Absolutely. They don't have the skills. And if we can look at it, remove all of our stuff as parents that we tend to like, “Oh, people saw that. They think I'm a bad parent.” No, it's just children being children learning skills within the skill set that they already have, right?

Kristina  34:16

And people will think a lot of things, and we can't control. If we focus on trying to control that, then we've lost sight of what we're doing. We're more concerned about our reputation as parents and our children behaving in a way that secures our sense of “we're good parents” and childhood is messy. They will make mistakes. 

Heather  34:39

We will make mistakes. And they will make mistakes within our homes and within our friend groups with children that we know and love, they will do those things. But if we can all approach it with “what can we teach? How can we grow?” and focus on that? It is a much more joyful journey. And we can all support one another.

Kristina  35:01

Now I don't intend to make this sound like it's easy. There are some children who, mine was one of them, who have real difficulty controlling their impulses. They're lacking or have a very short pause between input and reaction. And so sometimes the task is helping a child build their pause. And we'll talk about that in an upcoming episode about let's just give them a nibble, though. Let’s give them a little nibble. What is the most common question that we ask a child when we're trying to teach the pause?

Heather  35:37

The thing that I always try to teach teachers or parents, is to say to the child, “What's your plan?” Because what that question does is it forces a pause, and the child thinks, “What is my plan?” They maybe didn't have a plan. When a stick goes in the air, when the rule is sticks stay to the ground, I could say simply, “Sticks stay to the ground,” - but there's a plan that child has that stick in the air for a reason. So it's much more effective to say, “What's your plan with the stick?” I'm really mad. I'm going to- “Oh, you're really angry? Put the stick to the ground. I'm here to help.” Yep, you don't want them brandishing the stick, and it's going to crack over a head, or it's going to slam into something or fly through the air and potentially harm somebody. But for really impulsive kids, where there's that impulse-action, impulse-action, and we need to teach the pause, the thing to get them doing frequently until it becomes their new habit, even when you don't ask, “What's my plan?” So just saying to them, “What's your plan? What's your plan? How are we going to get from the door at Target to our car? What's your plan?” And it might be your plan and you've given some direction, and they had choice within it: “Are you going to hold my hand? Are you going to sit in the cart basket? What's your plan?” It gives them choice. It also gives them a sense of being in charge, which they want to be in charge of themselves to a certain degree, within our confines and our fence and so on. But “What's your plan?” Is a great way to teach them how to pause and think things through, and then it just becomes a habit when we ask it frequently enough.

Kristina  37:44

We often, like you had mentioned earlier, do not see the entirety of an interaction between children before somebody's hurt. 

Heather  37:54

Almost never, right, do we see the entire interaction.

Kristina  37:58

So, in moving into those spaces when something has happened, to get down on their level and saying, “Something happened. I'm here to help.”

Heather  38:07

Oftentime  with children, we don't know who did what. But the one who instigated an act that is probably breaking the rules or is going to seem unkind, will take off and run. And oftentimes those children know they've done something wrong, and they know there's going to be a consequence or and maybe at home, it's a punishment, I don't know. They're afraid they're in trouble. They're afraid they're in trouble. And so they peel out of there. And so getting low immediately says to them, “I am friend.” And then verbalizing, “I'm here to help. Something has happened. I'm here to help you. Let me know when you're ready.”

Kristina  38:54

Because too often we charge in and see the child who's injured and then look to the person injured, and we think we know what happened.

Heather  39:04

And really to let the injurer be because they need a minute to compose themselves, and they're not ready, because they know, typically that they're in trouble. But there's real power in going to that victim and letting everybody see when someone's harmed, we go to them first.

Kristina  39:22

And like we've talked about in discipline: our end game is not that now you perpetrator, child, you're in trouble. It is much more about saying “So how can we have a fix? How can we have a do over? What can we do differently because we're teaching skills.”

Heather  39:40

And how can we check in on whomever we've harmed, and how can we make that right?

Kristina  39:44

Yes, because that's part of life, right? We make decisions throughout our lifetime that unintentionally or intentionally cause harm, and what are we going to do with that? Simply saying, “I'm sorry” doesn't fix the harm. Doesn't heal the broken. 

Heather  40:03

It doesn’t teach a skill. It doesn't teach, in fact, it erodes the words “I'm sorry,” and reduces them to empty words, I would say, because children don't even understand that process. Like the little ones that we're working with, and they get into this habit then of just doing kind of crappy things and be like, “sorry, sorry, yeah, sorry,” and thinking it's okay, and we never grow the skill, right?

Kristina  40:29

So one of the other things, again, we work a lot with preschoolers at this point in our careers, and it could be that, like you had said, a child does something that causes harm, and that could even be, “I don't want to play with you.” Words that feel unsafe to a child or hurt a child's feelings, while the child who says it may not be ready to have that conversation. And so I'll say to the child, “So I know you're really upset about that. That really hurt. You know, child B is not ready yet to talk about that. So you have a choice: You can wait for that child to be ready, and you can stay here and be sad. I mean, that's absolutely an option. Or you can go and play while we're waiting for a child B to be ready.” We need to make sure that we come back around and close that circle, that there actually is that connection point. But sometimes, again, depending on what a child has experienced, how much shame they've been exposed to, what being in trouble looks like, they may not be ready to come back and have that conversation right away, or vice versa. The one who's been harmed may not be ready to have the conversation with the person who harmed them. And so being able to give that space, and that's a beautiful way to teach consent.

Heather  41:48

“May I talk to you?” No, oh, they're not ready. It's going to take a few more minutes, and that is really the definition of a natural consequence. Something happened. That child now needs some space and time and distance from it. And another childs need to either feel better about it or have maybe us as the parent, because we want to remedy it or solve it, doesn't get to over impose on the other child's speed at which they're ready to receive the other part of that. It goes back to not everything is a teachable moment. You can circle back later. I think that's something that we forget as parents, that we have more time we don't have to immediately deal with those things. We can circle back at another time and have a really powerful conversation about something that will go much better when we have some distance, all of us from whatever transpired, right? Getting back to our thinking brain. Yes, so we talked about little little people, and having the boundaries be safety based and emotional safety and all of that. But as our kids are older, over time, we've had to change our boundaries and our expectations within our home as our kids have grown, they've become more capable. They've matured. And then that's really where we move into that sweet spot of our boundaries can really teach our values and really grow them into the people that we would love to see them be. They're going to be who they're going to be, but as parents, we can help shape that. And that's the power of nurture. There's that whole nature piece they come into the world who they are, right? But as parents, we're the nurture we get to help grow them into who they're going to be. And boundaries is a great way to do that.

Kristina  44:06

Thank you so much for joining us for Gear Up! Adventures In Parenthood. I'm Kristina

Heather  44:12

And I'm Heather. And we're so grateful to join you on your parenting journey.

Kristina  44:17

Until next time-

Heather and Kristina 44:18

See you on the trails! 

Kristina  44:20

The Gear Up! Adventures In Parenthood podcast is brought to you by the ODC Network in Holland, Michigan. It is produced by Jen Plante Johnson, recorded and edited by Dave Purnell, with original theme music by Dave Purnell.

Heather  44:34

The ODC Network is a non-profit organization that strives to advance outdoor education and conservation in West Michigan.

Kristina  44:42

Since 2000 the ODC Network has served over a million people through hands-on, outdoor learning experiences and conserved thousands of acres of native habitat through restoration and preservation projects.

Heather  44:55

The ODC Network's vision is building a better community by connecting people land and nature. To learn more and get involved, go to www.ODCNetwork.org.