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This episode is brought to you by Peloton Break through the busiest time of year with the brand new Peloton Cross Training Tread plus, powered by Peloton iq. With real time guidance and endless ways to move, you can personalize your workouts and train with confidence, helping you reach your goals in less time. Let yourself run, lift, sculpt, push and go. Explore the new peloton cross training tread +@onepalaton.com this episode is brought to you by Redfin. You're listening to a podcast, which means you're probably multitasking, maybe even scrolling home listings on Redfin, saving homes without expecting to get them. But Redfin isn't just built for endless browsing. It's built to help you find and own a home with agents who close twice as many deals. When you find the one, you've got a real shot at getting it. Get started@redfin.com own the dream hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. So today I'm going to talk about a topic that really affects all of us to some extent. This idea that our children catch our feelings. We could also say that we catch their feelings because their feelings definitely affect ours. But I think sometimes it's easy for us to overlook when there's an issue going on. When our child seems to have a behavior that is worrisome to us and it's continuing. And maybe we kind of feel stuck in a loop in some dynamic. When those kind of things are going on, often the first place to look is at ourselves. Which isn't to say this is our fault. Absolutely not. It's usually not that we did something that caused our child to have this issue. However, the feelings it's bringing up in us are getting in the way of our child passing through this phase. Our feelings in a situation can keep our child stuck because they're already dealing with their own feelings and now they've got ours too. And if ours are uncomfortable, then that's going to tend to perpetuate their feeling uncomfortable or maybe even increase their discomfort. But enough of this very general explanation. Let's get to a message I received on Instagram that really presents the issue very clearly. This parent wrote, hi Janet, I'm the mom to a beautiful, sensitive and energetic four and a half year old boy. Parenting him has been one of the most meaningful things I've ever done and one of the most difficult and terrifying. I'm writing today because I would love to get your thoughts on managing separation anxiety and how to help my son trend toward feeling more confident when we are apart Quick note When my son was three years old, I went into labor a week early with my daughter. As a result, my husband and I had to leave for the hospital in the middle of the night when while my father came to spend the night, my husband and I saw an increase in fear related to separation sleep disruption. Wanting us to come into the room in a dance class, which he never did. Checking on our whereabouts, whether this is by coincidence developmentally related or is directly related to this event, maybe both and she made a sad face As a young child, I struggled with painful worries regarding separation from my parents. My parents responses were inconsistent. My mother got angry with me while my father was more supportive. When I notice increased separation anxiety from my son, whether that is going to bed or a gymnastics class, I go into panic mode when I see his eyes widen with what looks like worry as he scans the window from my face. At times he's more focused on looking for my face rather than engaging in the activity. I'm also terrified that he will be as anxious as I was and that his world and my world will get smaller as a result. I need help in how to understand these behaviors and how to respond from a place of leadership. I worry that I may be reinforcing his worries with my own fears in my response and approach. Thank you for all you do to help parents see their children. Your podcast has been a lifeline, so I wrote back. I'm sorry you're having these concerns and that your separation feelings weren't handled well as a child. It sounds like you're realizing that your son's feelings in these cases are directly related to yours. If you are feeling fearful, your son will be geared to panic along with you. You obviously did nothing harmful to him by going to the hospital to give birth. He naturally had feelings about that that he needs the freedom and safety to share with you. You unfortunately can't do that when you're frightened yourself. This is where care for ourselves and our therapeutic needs is essential. Do you have someone you're counseling with or have you in the past now? If you listen to the podcast I released a couple weeks ago A few weeks ago. Can we be sad or angry and still be unruffled? There's some overlap in what I talked about there and in this podcast, so I recommend that if you think you might have an issue like this that's getting in your way that you could listen to that episode as well. So before I read the rest of what this parent wrote back to me, I Want to talk a little more about what I said to her? So, as I was saying, before our children catch our feelings, well, we catch their feelings too. And on some level, it seems like we always know this, right? But it gets away from us. Even if we don't consider ourselves the most empathic person, we're so invested in being parents, we care. We have our whole heart riding on this. So when, say, we're worried about a particular fear, our child has a discomfort, like, as in this situation with this parent, or we're disappointed and ashamed by their behavior with maybe peers or other adults or family members, we feel maybe guilty and worried about their emotionality. The way our children are expressing emotions. We feel like our child shouldn't feel like that and maybe that we've caused this or we've hurt them in some way, or we feel hurt when they seem to reject us, perhaps prefer our spouse to us. That's a really common one that I've done several podcasts on and articles on before that. They're all on my website if you want to look up. Prefer one parent. A lot of parents have been asking me about that recently, so I may do another podcast. But that's another one where our own feelings kind of perpetuate the issue. As she said to me in her note, I worry that I may be reinforcing his worries with my own fears in my response and approach. So it's easy to see how now we're worried that we're worried, and then we're worried that they're worried, and then, you know, it just can keep building and keep us all stuck there. Right? How do we get out of this situation? We do what this parent did, which is we become aware. That's the first step. We become aware. We keep in mind that this happens, that it's a natural thing for us to project our own fears into our child. And maybe we're not thinking of this all the time, but when our child is having an issue, we consider this first. How might I be contributing to this? It's not about blaming myself. It's about knowing I have power here to try to make this better. So being aware, knowing that the feelings that are getting touched off in us aren't the cause, but very likely contributing to the issue. Two, reminding ourselves our child is a totally different person from us. Even if we thought they were our mini me or everybody says they're just like us, this is a totally different person. Raised by someone thoughtful enough to listen to parenting perspectives, someone who's putting their mind and heart into this job to an extent that few do comparatively. Our parents probably didn't do anything close to this in the thoughtfulness they gave to their job. I'm not even saying that's a bad thing. In some ways, maybe it was a better thing than us overthinking it. But that we have such a desire to be the best parent we can be, that is only positive, extremely positive. And it means that your child is already. Even if you still get stuck in a lot of patterns from your own childhood or whatever reactions to your own childhood, your child is in very good stead to be able to flourish in this life and in your relationship, which is what we all want. We want a wonderful relationship with our child. And stemming from that, we get everything. They get to find themselves, they get to be themselves. That's all part of being in a wonderful relationship. That you accept the other person, you accept where they are in their learning, you accept their temperament and personality type. And we realize that we don't get to make our child become a certain thing or more this or more that. All of that is already pre programmed. A lot of it. What we can do, what we have so much power to do, is have this relationship with them that gives them confidence in who they are, that helps them know who they are. Because we're working so hard to be accepting. That doesn't mean we accept all their behaviors. If there's problems we help them with that, we stop them. We're very clear on that. Our children will have a lot of moments where they need our help stopping them, guiding them to behaviors that are appropriate or are safe or are okay with us, that aren't crossing our boundaries. But back to this number two, reminding ourselves our child is a totally different person. And that this is always about a process. Our child's development is a process. Our development as a parent is a process. There's not a finish line that we're going to get to. Relationships are always in motion, right? They're always evolving and they're always imperfect. So we're not going to get to this point where suddenly everything's smooth and we never have to worry again. It's just not going to happen. And if your child hasn't already proven this to you, they will. Your child is not you. So this means that their experience, even of feelings is probably a lot healthier than ours in a lot of cases. I'm speaking for myself here, that my kids experience of feelings is a lot healthier than mine. I've evolved a bit, but they've been able to experience time and again that they're safe having their feelings and the feelings pass. Everybody didn't need to rush in and make it better for them. No one got angry at them or shamed them or rejected them for their feelings. They were safe in those states. So, number three, do what this parent also said she's doing, which is wonderful. Get help and support for any healing you need to do. Because when we realize that our child is a separate person, we're also realizing that we have our own separate issues. So if we're feeling, as in this case, that I'm terrified that he will be as anxious as I was and that his world and my world will get smaller as a result. So this parent's anxiousness on the face of this, without knowing more about her, but just from what she's offered, it makes sense. If she had feelings around separation, her mother got angry at her. That is very scary for a child that would create anxiety in anyone. That was the setup that she had. But she is not doing that approach with her child at all. But she's getting touched off back into her own anxiety around her experience of separation. It's so brilliant to know that and make peace with that and say, okay, wow, here's something I'm bringing in that's really about me and I deserve to understand this and my son deserves me to not impose this on him if I can help it. I mean, again, we're all doing this all the time. We're all ringing our experiences in our parenting, in all our relationships. It's just the way it works. So to be aware of it, to realize, oh, this is me and you know what, I can look at this and the more we look at it, the more we realize this has nothing to do with him and he is safe in feeling these feelings. And of course he's going to have a feeling around his parent not being there in the night and you know, going off to the hospital when he wasn't ready for that to happen or whatever, or even just a parent going to have a baby and coming back, there's separation. There's separation in our 8 month old or 10 month old or 15 month old, seeing us leave to go do something in the kitchen and they're in a safe place, but hey, we don't want you to leave. There's often feelings about that. And there's a period where children are very sensitive to this between eight months and 15 months, something like that, where they're kind of realizing that they're More this separate person and that this person they feel they really need and love can get away from them. And that's an uneasy feeling, right? Hey, I don't want you to leave. I want you to always be there when I want you, which is all the time, 24, 7. So even that separation anxiety, that's developmental, that most children have it to some extent, it's very healthy phase, and it's healthy for the child to get to express those feelings and for the parent to come back and say, wow, that was a tough one for you. You didn't like that when I left for one minute to go to the bathroom or whatever it was. You want me to always be there with you, don't you? It's safe, it's healthy. It's typical, as are just about every feeling a child has in all of these developmentally appropriate situations. But, yeah, some children feel strongly about it. And then if my parent is kind of falling apart over there and seems scared for me, there's no way in the world I'm going to get comfortable. There's no way I'm not going to also feel scared when I'm taking my tone from this adult that I worship. So number one was be aware. Remind yourself that your child's a totally different person and that everything is about a process and they have feelings in the process. Three, get help and support for any healing you need to do so, whether that's with a therapist or a counselor or some kind of online program or a retreat or books. Do this for yourself because you deserve it. And it's also great parenting to take care of yourself. And then finally, number four, believe in your child as a person who needs to experience and feel the whole gamut of their feelings, including perhaps some that go very deep for them and that they seem to feel for a prolonged period. As Susan David famously says, discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life. Remind yourself of that and notice also what your child is achieving. If they're taking that step to go into the gymnastics class, even though they're looking for us for that confirmation they went in or whatever they're doing, where they are making strides. It's so easy for us as parents to focus on what seems to be going wrong or what they're not doing yet, and we just never notice all the things they are doing. And this is one of the gifts we're able to offer in RI parent, infant and toddler classes because we do observation time. We're able to see what the children are doing and where they're struggling. But we're able to help parents notice all the amazing strides they're taking physically, developmentally, cognitively, socially, the efforts they're making, the critical thinking they're doing. When we're able to notice our child in this way, it helps us to believe in them as capable people, capable of going through all the ups and downs of life with our support, of course, and with our empathy when they're feeling scared. But an empathy that comes from strength. And we get that strength again from seeing ourselves as separate, seeing them as separate, seeing that we're in this imperfect process, all of us, and that feelings are the gold for learning, healing, developing. So here's what this parent wrote back to me. Thank you so much for reaching out. You can definitely share this on your podcast. Oh, because I also asked if I could share it on my podcast because it did seem kind of personal and I don't like to just share people's feelings without asking them, even if I don't share people's names anyway. But it was sweet of her to say yes, so she said, this means a lot to me. I'm going to respond to your other questions in the next couple hours. And then she wrote, I am in counseling and working with a therapist. As uncomfortable as it is to hear that I am reinforcing fear and anxiety, it makes me hopeful that focusing on care for myself is something I can work on and commit to. Thank you again for the beautiful work you do. There have been so many times your podcast and quotes have provided me with a sense of calm and reassurance. Let me know if there's anything else I can add or clarify. And I wrote back, this is what we all do to some extent. It's human nature. Please don't come down on yourself for even an instant. And I want all of you out there to hear that because we're always coming down on ourselves. We don't deserve it and it's not helpful at the start of the year. I've always tended to rethink my finances. Paying down debt, building an emergency fund, planning for big milestones like my kids education or even buying a home. The problem was in the past, I was mostly just tracking what I'd already spent. Not very helpful. Monarch gives me the tools I need to be proactive and actually plan ahead. Why not set yourself up for financial success this year? Monarch is the all in one personal finance tool designed to make your life easier. 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That's journey spelled J-O-U R N I app a P-P P.com podcast unruffled and Use Code Unruffled at checkout. Okay, and now I'd like to read one more note that I'm probably not going to have time to address in detail, but I just want to show a different way that all this can look. But come down to the same issue. Here's what this parent says. Dear Janet, I'm writing because I'm really struggling right now and don't feel like myself as a parent. We have three children, seven and a half, five and almost three. They love each other and are very close, but lately everything feels harder than it used to. Transitions, especially evenings, are where Things fall apart. Over the past year, we've gone through several big changes. My husband started his own business. Our oldest started school and started we. Our youngest recently gave up her pacifier. None of this feels wrong, but the accumulation has been intense. I've been losing my patience, complaining, guilt tripping, and yelling in ways that I didn't used to. What's hardest is that I often see the meltdown coming, especially with my oldest. My oldest is very sensitive. She wants to be in the middle of everything and often pushes herself too far when the release finally comes. It's a lot. And she really hates crying, especially in front of others or at bedtime. She's affected by the smallest signs of disapproval, and I don't know how to help without making it worse. I feel torn between wanting to accept all her feelings and wishing I could help her avoid becoming so overwhelmed in the first place. At the same time, I'm not regulating myself well, even though I know the idea of observing the storm instead of riding the wave that leaves me feeling discouraged and guilty. How do I support her when I can see the overwhelm coming but can't seem to prevent it? And how do I get through these moments without losing myself as a parent? Thank you for everything. So here I just bolded this one part because this is where she touches on the actual issue that's key to everything. So we talked last week about transitions and how challenging those are for children. And then it all sort of comes down in these momentary transitions we have during the day, especially at bedtime, because that's when there's been a buildup of all the feelings from the whole day. And this parent is saying, what do I do when my daughter has a meltdown at night? And it could feel like a lot if we're letting ourselves get involved in it, like this is some kind of problem. And that's the key right here. So when this parent says, I feel torn between wanting to accept all her feelings and. And wishing I could help her avoid becoming so overwhelmed in the first place. So these are two opposing desires because she has this very understandable feeling that there's something wrong here, that she's acting like this, that she's being like this, I feel like I should have done something so this didn't happen. And that's the feeling her daughter's getting from her. And that feeling is also making this parent lose her temper, yell, you know, guilt tripping. She's kind of projecting it out because she feels bad, oh, she shouldn't be doing this. That's where she's getting in her own way, because her child should be doing this. This is what children do when all these transitions are going on. This is how a sensitive child processes it. She says she wants to be in the middle of everything and often pushes herself too far. So I don't know if the parent's getting involved in that in any way, but I would just as soon as this girl gets home from school or whatever, I would realize that she's going to start discharging and it's going to come out in all these different ways where she's pushing limits. I don't know what pushing herself too far looks like, but maybe the parent is a little bit accommodating. That I don't know. But every one of those moments is a golden moment when our child is going to get mad at us for something that's totally unreasonable. It's not about us. She needs to vent out all these feelings that she's built up. I mean, here's this really positive thing. The children love each other and are very close, but lately everything feels harder. Yes, because they're all feeling it. They're all feeling it. But three kids that love each other and are very close, this parent has won the game. You know, if there's a win, this parent already did it. I mean, look at all these positive things going on here. I'm not trying to be Miss Sunshine, but I mean, look what we miss. And hopefully this parent writing it down in a note to me, sees how great everything's going. And yeah, it's not this parent's fault that her daughter gets so overwhelmed. And every time her daughter does this makes the parent feel bad about herself. She sees it coming and she's already feeling like, oh, no, here we go, I did this. Or this. Just shouldn't be like this. Instead of accepting. This is exactly perfect for right now. And I know it's not pleasant to hear and it's not pleasant to see and all of that stuff. Of course, that's the challenge of parenting is we have to do a lot of things that aren't pleasant. You know, everything from the smells at the diaper table to, you know, cleaning up, throw up, to all these emotional things that our kids have. It's. It's a really hard, brave job. But it's so much harder when we're just constantly, like, letting ourselves bag on ourselves, and then we're acting out of that because it doesn't make us feel good. And now we want to lash out and then we Feel bad about that. And, you know, it's just a cycle, and our child is picking that up from us, and then it's perpetuating their feelings. And that's how it goes. Unfortunately, we have to be the ones to get off the cycle. Our children can't be the ones to do that first. We, the adults, can do that with a lot of thought and perspective and patience with ourselves, number one. Because it's harder to be compassionate and patient with our children if we're not doing that for ourselves. This parent says, I'm not regulating myself well. Right. Because there's some feelings about these feelings happening here. Even though I know the idea of observing the storm instead of riding the wave. Yeah. I talk about being the anchor, and you're not even really observing. You're just holding your own as you're allowing. And that can mean we're doing a lot of other things that need to be done with that sense that we're allowing her to be where she's at. But then this parent said, that leaves me feeling discouraged and guilty. Right. So as soon as her daughter starts to get close to any of this, it's already building up in the parent. Discouraged, guilty, and then she's putting that out there, unfortunately, because she's feeling it. And whatever we feel, we're putting out there. So how do I support her when I see the overwhelm coming but can't seem to prevent it? You don't prevent it. You let it roll out, knowing it's not our job to prevent it. It's not our job to stop it. In fact, that gets in the way. It just keeps going. If we don't just let children express it and let them express it from a place of knowing this isn't about us, anything we've done wrong, and it's safe for us to be the calm leader that maybe has that little bit of emotional distance so that we're not taking it on ourselves. And when she says that her daughter hates crying, especially in front of others, I wonder if they're feeding into each other that way that the parent doesn't like when her daughter goes there, and so her daughter now doesn't want to go there, and then that makes everybody go there. You know, it's really not fair how all of this works. But we've got to let it all flow and welcome those feelings to come as soon as the wave's coming. Okay, here we go. We're not going to get caught up in it. And how do I get through these moments without losing myself as a parent. So that's something also to look into for this parent. Getting back to those points that I made earlier, why is this becoming about me? How did it go in my childhood when I had feelings? Was I blamed for them? Was I told I was being silly? Was I rejected? Did my parents get angry? Did they turn away from me? Did they have great disappointment? What is it that I'm bringing in here that didn't create the issue, but is keeping my child and me stuck there? So yeah, this is all it's kind of complicated, but it's kind of simple. At the same time, I feel this topic just knowing that, yeah, whatever we're feeling, our child is picking up from us. That's inconvenient. But it helps us to figure out our feelings and that we deserve. So I hope some of this helps. And thank you so much for listening. Please check out my no Bad Kids Master course. If you haven't so far, I think you'll find it very helpful in all of these topics, especially around boundaries and emotions and understanding why children behave the way they do and how appropriate and normal it all is. All these things that we may be thinking are problems are part of their development. Healthy and most of all, that we can do this. Toogood and Co Coffee creamers are made with farm fresh cream, real milk and contain 3 grams of sugar per serving. That's 40% less than the 5 grams per serving in leading traditional coffee creamers for a rich, delicious experience. Whether you enjoy your coffee hot, cold, bold or frothy, two good Coffee creamers Make every sip a good one. Two Good Coffee creamers Real goodness in every sip. Find them at your local Kroger in the creamer aisle.