You're listening to Toddlers Made Easy, an expert-guided podcast for anyone who has ever felt overwhelmed by a toddler, or in other words, all of us. Parenting a toddler is really tough, and I'm here to help. I'm Dr. Catherine, a pediatrician with more than 32 years of experience and a month of four great kids. I love explaining toddlers and giving you the practical tools, knowledge, and crucial support you need to become the parent every kid wants. Each week you can tune in for simple, actionable strategies, scripts, and practical tips, all in bite-sized chunks because I know your time is precious. So be sure you subscribe so you never miss an episode. Let's not waste any time and let's get going. Today we're going to be talking about how to avoid power struggles. What's the best defense against a power struggle? Avoiding them completely. This morning, while I was out taking smudge for a walk, I passed our local public school, and there was a mum with a stroller and two small children that I realized I was going to need to try and get around because I know many people aren't comfortable with big dogs. As I got close to them, I saw the little boy with his Superman cape over his jacket standing there with his arms crossed and tears running down his face. His mum was yelling, It's your fault not listening to me. Now stop crying. Superman doesn't cry. And the boy snapped back and stomped his foot. No. I'm not sure what had transpired or what they were fighting about, but this mum and child were seriously locked into a foot stomping struggle. I felt bad for the mum as I suspect she was just overwhelmed, and I really felt bad for the little guy too, who looked angry and hurt. I'm not sharing this story to be judgmental, but rather as an opportunity to discuss power struggles. So let's step back for a minute and look at the big picture. Why do kids say no? How do we get trapped into these power struggles? Well, first of all, nobody likes to be bossed around, even toddlers. It makes them feel powerless, and that's a big problem since toddlers are all about the independence. Also, toddlers are more likely to be uncooperative if they feel like you're not on the same team. Unrealistic expectations is another cause. It causes us lots of grief. For example, let's say you've been out shopping for a long time and your child is getting really antsy and starting to misbehave. Well, getting angry at him for not behaving may not really be the point. It may be an expectation problem that it's just unrealistic for him to sit still that long. It's so easy to get sucked into power struggles with toddlers. We get hung up thinking we need to teach our kids who's the boss, or we think that kids need to learn to listen, which they do, but power struggles aren't the way to teach this. Developmentally, toddlers are struggling with wanting to be independent, but they're still hugely reliant on you, and this is really confusing and frustrating for a toddler. There's a lot of push and pull dynamics going on. They're also all about testing, and not just testing limits, but testing everything. What happens if I drop this? Or what happens if I don't do what daddy's asking me to do? Life is one big experiment for a toddler. Now imagine if someone kept trying to interfere with your experiment. Power struggles are all about a toddler craving independence and wanting to be their own boss, but at the same time being totally reliant on you. On the other end, there's an exhausted, likely frustrated parent who is just trying to get something done. So what's the best way to avoid these power struggles in the first place? And I should say in another episode we're going to focus on how to manage power struggles, but I really wanted to just spend some time and look at prevention because it's so much better to prevent a problem than to have to deal with it. So avoiding struggles is the best way of dealing with them. In the meantime, though, let's talk about power struggle prevention. So here are a few fundamentals to think about. First of all, giving your child lots of opportunities to be his own boss will help him manage the desperate need for independence. Now, I'm talking about being a boss in age-appropriate and safe ways. For instance, let your toddler be in charge of their own play activities. Think in terms of empowering them instead of overpowering them. Giving choices is a really good thing and helps kids feel some sense of control over their life. But the problem is they shouldn't be given choices all the time. Too many choices, it can be overwhelming. Learn to sidestep power struggles. A power struggle can't happen if you refuse to be a part of it. And by that I mean you neither get sucked in or cave in. Instead, you just step out of it, you change how you're approaching whatever the situation is. For instance, you ask your child to get in the car. He stamps his feet and he says no. Instead of yelling, I said get in the car right this minute, you could say something playful like, Oh, well, only ninjas can get in the car by the count of five. Let's see how quickly you can get into the car. Do you see how easy it can be to sidestep a power struggle when you relate to a child where they're at? Playfulness is a powerful way to encourage cooperation. It's such an underutilized strategy for managing difficult moments. Playfulness fosters cooperation. You won't need to use playfulness forever to get things done, but your toddler isn't a little adult. He isn't motivated in the same way you are. In other words, logic and reasoning and explanations, they just don't work at this age. In other words, your toddler's right brain is running the show, and that means logic and reasoning don't work, therefore we need to try other strategies. And that's where playfulness comes in. Playfulness helps you reach your child where he's at in his life. It allows you to avoid fights, and it helps your child to succeed. Another strategy is giving your child emotional vitamins. Often my patients ask me, should I give my kids vitamins? And I typically answer yes and I tell them which vitamins are needed, but then I add, your child also needs daily emotional vitamins. And by that I mean let your child know how much you love them in different ways throughout the day, in ways that speak to them. For instance, spend a few minutes every day, or hopefully several times a day, and give your little one your undivided attention. Now I'm not talking about huge chunks of time, I'm talking a few minutes sprinkled throughout the day. Or another little strategy, I love this one, is just whispering in your child's ear, I love you, sweetheart. Or sit down and make eye contact and have a quick chat. There's lots of little ways we can sprinkle little love kisses throughout the day. The next thing I just want to talk about quickly are realistic expectations. Realistic expectations means less stress and less fighting. But here's the thing. Research shows that most parents have unrealistic expectations of their toddlers in several different ways. It makes sense. After about 18 months, when most kids are at least starting to walk and having a few words, there's little discussion around milestones. So you may actually not really know when to expect things like sharing and managing emotions and other emotional or social milestones. It's not your fault. I think maybe we'll do an episode on this actually in the future as I think about it. Now, it's okay if you find power struggles frustrating. They are frustrating, and like most challenges, I find a mantra is helpful to allow you to resist that knee-jerk reaction and handle things more like you'd want to. I recommend saying something like, My toddler is just a kid acting his age. Saying that over and over to yourself when you find yourself getting revved up. Thank you for listening today. I hope this gave you a few ideas about things you can do every day to avoid power struggles. And like I mentioned, we will talk about how to deal with them in the moment in a future episode. Thanks for listening to Toddlers Made Easy, the Healthiest Baby Podcast. If you want more insights, tools, and confidence, join our free baby school and get a weekly parenting insight in your inbox. Head over to Bit.ly that's spelt B is in Bob, IT is in Tom, period L Y forward slash join baby school. Don't worry though, the link will be in the show notes. Also, join me on Instagram at healthiest underscore baby for a daily dose of better parenting solutions. If you love the toddlers made easy podcast, please subscribe, rate, and give us a review on iTunes. We'd appreciate it so much. There's so much more I want to share with you from my experience as a baby doctor. Until next time, have a great week.