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[00:00:00] Have you ever watched your child just start falling apart over something, not getting to stay up late, not getting the snack they wanted, and found yourself either giving in to make it stop or just becoming flooded with anger or frustration? This, "Ugh, why can't they just handle it?" Most of us were never taught that moments of disappointment and frustration are really golden opportunities for our kids to develop emotional resilience.

When we resist that urge to fix or manage or shut down our child's strong feelings, they get steadier inside. That's what we're gonna talk about in today's episode. You're gonna hear a clip from a master class I did with [00:01:00] Dr. Tina Bryson and Dr. Laura Markham on raising resilient kids. You're gonna hear us share that resilience is not something that kids are born with or without, it's something that they build one tough feeling at a time.

But before we dive in, welcome. You've arrived at the Parenting Without Power Struggles podcast. I am your host, Susan Stiffelman. I'm a family therapist, a teacher, writer, and a mom. It's my privilege and joy to share what I've learned working with thousands of families over the course of my career. You can visit my website, susanstiffelman.com, and you're gonna find a lot of different support.

Free newsletter with lots of tools and inspiration, more than 40 master classes with thought leaders like Dr. Gabor Maté, Mona Delahooke, Byron Katie, Terry Real, Dan Siegel. Lots of great support. Let's start by talking about resilience. One of the things I've seen over my four [00:02:00] decades of working with families is this: parents don't struggle because they don't love their kids enough.

They struggle because it's very hard to tolerate your child's distress. When a child cries or they rage or they collapse in frustration, something gets activated in us. It's an urgency, almost a physical pressure that says, "Do something. Fix it. Stop it. Make it better." I totally understand. This comes from love and care.

We're wired to look after our children, but it's important that we understand that our child does not need us to make the hard feelings go away. They need us to show them that the hard feeling is survivable, it has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and that we're not afraid of those strong feelings. We can be there for all of it.

Tina Bryson calls these moments brain reps or brain repetitions. I think that framing is so useful because- It reorients us. Instead of [00:03:00] seeing a child's meltdown as a problem to solve, you start to see it as a workout, a chance for them to build the emotional muscle that they're gonna need for the rest of their life.

And here's what we've seen over and over again. The more you can stay present and steady in those moments without caving in or escalating or scolding or shaming, the faster the storm passes. Connection is actually the fastest route through, not around. So as you listen to this clip, I'd like to invite you to notice what comes up for you.

Think about where you feel the pull to intervene or where your own discomfort gets activated, 'cause that's really useful information. Here's the clip, and I'll come back for the wrap-up. The way our children learn to be resilient is by practicing dealing with difficult things and difficult emotions with connection.

So just like when I lift a weight and I do repetitions, it makes my muscles [00:04:00] stronger, we wanna give our kids' brain reps, lots of repeated experiences of weathering challenges, but with the support and connection that allows them to tolerate those moments. So really, we're talking about, this is a phrase that Dan Siegel uses, window of tolerance.

That's really a great way to think about resilience as well, is what can your child tolerate? If you have a really highly sensitive kid or a more anxious kid, or if your kid's had trauma, all kinds of things, they can have a m- more narrow window of tolerance. But that can be changed over time by the kinds of experiences we provide relationally to them.

Or your kid may have a heartier window of tolerance. But really, what happens a lot of times is that we really ourselves are having a hard time tolerating our child's struggle. So really that's, Susan, what you're asking here is we're worried our kid can't handle it, and really, I think th- u- what's underneath that fear is that we're uncomfortable- Yeah

with the feeling of our [00:05:00] child struggling. And so it's really about widening our window of tolerance for our child to have those reps and that practice dealing with the struggle. And just a really quick example is my son was really angry one night because he didn't get to stay up as late as the older brothers, and I'm really Boundaried around sleep because it's so important for mental health and all kinds of things.

As he's laying there and just like a fish out of water, thrashing in the bed, "It's not fair," and all these things are coming at me, really my job in that moment is to let him feel the disappointment and let him feel the discomfort of not feeling like it's fair. And we spend so much attentional, emotional, and cognitive energy trying to figure out what to do to fix that situation.

But once I got this as a parent, it was incredibly liberating to say, "All I have to do in that moment is show up, be present, be connected, hold my boundaries." So I don't say, "Okay, fine. You can [00:06:00] stay up later," because what that's gonna do is make him more tired for the battle that will inevitably happen anyway.

I'm gonna be a lose. But what I can do in that moment is say, "It's so hard to feel disappointed. It's so hard to feel left out and not, and to make, to feel like it's not fair. Is that right? And I'm gonna be right here with you while you feel it." So I'm letting him feel. And so if I go, "Oh my gosh, my kid's upset," and that feels really uncomfortable to me and I'm afraid he can't handle it, I'm actually reinforcing fragility.

Because when I step in, I'm communicating to him, "I don't trust that you can handle these big feelings." Yeah. So in that moment when I say, "I know, it's so hard to feel that feeling, and I'm right here with you," he gets an experience of feeling disappointing, feeling like it's not fair, and getting through it, that I handled that.

By the way, my instinct in that moment is usually, my first instinct is, "I'm not gonna read stories tonight." But that just is a lose. We both end up angry. He learns nothing in the process, and I [00:07:00] communicate to him, "I'm not comfortable with your big feelings, and when you share them with me, it doesn't go so well."

So our kids are still gonna feel it, but they're gonna feel it alone. They're just not gonna share it with us. Yeah. So I think it's really important that we say, "My kid has big feelings. When they have big feelings, that's good for them. That's important. And so I'm gonna just be present and say, 'I can handle your big feelings,' and I trust that you can handle their big feelings."

I love when you said that when we rush in to fix something, we're also conveying to the child, "I don't have faith in your capacity to deal with this." That's the meta message. Whereas when we sit with them and, "Oh, sweetheart," sometimes all you're saying, I call it comic book language, "Oh. Oof, boy. Geez." We don't use a lot of words.

Laura, would you like to add to that or talk a little bit about emotional intelligence? Sure. I love the description that Tina gave of being with her son because that's core to helping children develop emotional [00:08:00] intelligence. That's what we mean when we say emotion coaching. It's the perfect description of it, where we're being with the emotions.

We're not scared of the child's emotions. Yeah. Even if they do touch something in us and we wanna threaten them to make it stop or give them what they want to make it stop, if we're able to notice that's our impulse and not do it and instead take a deep breath and the message we give is, "It's okay.

You're safe with these emotions. You can handle this, and I'm right here to help you," that's how kids develop emotional intelligence. And w- emotional intelligence just means... And most parents would give anything to know how to help their kids self-regulate, which means turn off those inconvenient emotions.

But we're not trying to turn off their emotions. We're trying to help them feel safe with their emotions and that they can be responsible for what they do. No, they can't hit their brother, but they're a-- it's fine to feel them. There's nothing dangerous about the emotions. Yeah. 'Cause when they think there's something dangerous, they repress them.

You know, I talk [00:09:00] about the emotional backpack. They stick them in the backpack. It's the body, right? We all know the unconscious is the body, and there's-- That just makes everyone sick and tired, stuffing the feelings in the body, right? So instead, if we can help kids feel safe with their emotions, if we can soothe, even starting when they're babies, soothing them.

When Tina talked about attachment, soothing a baby is how they develop the neural wiring to soothe themselves so that when they're six or 16 and something goes wrong- Yeah ... they're more likely to be able to calm themselves down. It lays the foundation for that process. Once the big emotions have started to subside, they lose their charge, then you can start not to tell them how to solve it, but you can start to explore with them, "I wonder what you could do now."

And that's when resilience also is being built because the child then begins to develop the confidence that they can come up with [00:10:00] other answers. They can try again. They can try differently. And it empowers kids to not give up and just walk away. So it's an important part of resilience, but it always comes after the big feelings have lost their flame.

I love what Laura said toward the end there, that kids can't problem solve until the intense, strong feelings have lost their flames. I've seen that play out so many times. A child who seems completely unreachable in the middle of a storm becomes surprisingly cooperative and even creative 20 minutes later once someone has just been with them through it, not fixing, not redirecting, not distracting, not solving, just staying.

That came to life Recently, when one of the members in my Parenting Without Power Struggles community shared a story on a recent call, she was very proud of what had [00:11:00] happened. She'd had a rough weekend. One of her kids, her younger daughter's play date had fallen through at the last minute because the friend got sick, and her older daughter had a friend over and was absolutely not willing for her little sister to join in.

So now you've got this eight-year-old. She was stomping around the house, mad, sad, really trying to get Mom to make the older sister include her, and because that's not working, she's insisting that they bake brownies, like right away. And Mom wasn't feeling very well. She had really been looking forward to a quiet afternoon.

The older one's got a friend, the younger one was gonna be out of the house, maybe she could actually lie down, and now she's got this bereft child circling her like a shark. So this member has been doing some great work, and we actually did some IFS coaching not too long ago, and she's getting familiar with this idea of parts and focusing on what's getting stirred up inside her to help [00:12:00] her show up with more calm and grace and presence with her kids.

So she said she had a little conversation with herself. That part of her that was just, "Okay, we'll drop everything and push through and make the brownies," that part felt terrible that her daughter was feeling left out and it wanted to fix things and it didn't want that child to be unhappy. But instead, she just sat with her daughter.

Wasn't easy. She just sat there anyway. She let her be mad and sad, and she didn't negotiate with the older sister, and she didn't make the brownies. She just held this boundary, and her younger daughter finally had her cry, and she accepted that the day wasn't gonna look the way she had planned, and she actually went off and made a little handmade book about horses, which she then delivered very sweetly to her mom.

So the idea is that, yeah, Mom didn't get to have the whole afternoon off, but she did get to put her feet up, and she also [00:13:00] conveyed to her daughter, "I know this is hard, and I believe you can live through it." So it's one thing, of course, to intellectually understand these ideas. It's something entirely different to really practice it.

It is possible, though, and I've seen it happen over and over again. When we resist that urge to fix things, we're not being mean. We're communicating something really important, "I believe you can handle this," and our kids feel that, even when they're really mad about it. So the invitation this week is simple.

The next time your child bumps up against something they can't change or control, notice your impulse to fix or make things better or minimize or give advice- Dialogue with that part if you understand what I mean by that, or there's classes on IFS that I've done. You can find them on our website. Take a breath and just stay.

You might be surprised to discover that is enough. So I hope [00:14:00] this episode has provided you with some value, something useful to carry into your week. If so, please leave a review. Please share with a friend. Please leave a rating. It really helps us reach families. And if you aren't already getting our newsletter with free inspiration, practical tools, all the updates on our classes, visit susanstiffleman.com.

There are slots there for personal coaching as well as our memberships for co-parenting with a narcissist and just parenting without power struggles. So that's it for today. As we wrap up, just take a moment to appreciate yourself. Honor the effort that you're making to break old patterns and show up with love, confidence, and presence for your kids.

And remember, no matter how busy life gets, look for those moments of sweetness and joy. Stay well. Take care. And I'll see[00:15:00] 

you next time.