Parenting Blog

"Dr. Laura -- How do you deal with your children if they ignore/challenge your limits or expectations? I am genuinely struggling to understand this, I can currently hear my 2 year old throwing water around the bathroom, and her father calmly explaining to her why it's not a good idea, yet she's carrying on. By your reasoning taking her out of the bath would be a consequence/punishment, so what do you do? There's only so many times you can say no and explain why not! -- Holly

First, a consequence is not necessarily a punishment.  Any child can tell you the difference.  When we mete out a "consequence" after the fact, that's punishment.  When we kindly remove a child from a situation where her behavior is a problem for herself or others, that is not a punishment.

Second, when kids challenge or defy age-appropriate expectations, that is a relationship problem, not a behavior problem. Discipline will just make their defiance worse. Of course kids need guidance, but they only accept it because of who we are to them. Teachable moments only teach if the learner wants to learn, right? So we can't MAKE children do anything, at least not beyond forcing them at this moment. Our goal is to help them WANT to make healthy choices. 80% of parenting is about connection, only 20% is about guidance. And guidance is never control. All humans resist control. (That's a good thing; it's the basis of your daughter's ability to take responsibility for herself.)

Why on earth would any child give up what she wants to meet our expectations/respect our limits? Once kids feel very close to you and consistently accepted/understood/unconditionally loved, they're much more open to your influence. They value the relationship. That's why empathic parenting becomes more effective over time, while discipline becomes less effective over time.

But we also need to check our expectations against our child's age and capacity. Not many two year olds could resist splashing in the water. When kids do have a good relationship with their parents and still act out, it's because their feelings and needs are stronger than their frontal cortex (which is, after all, just beginning to take shape in two year olds). In that case, discipline is not going to help; we need to help them process the feelings (crying in our arms) or meet their need.

In the case of your two year old, her need/job description/biological imperative is to explore the world, which includes throwing water around at every opportunity. Our jobs are to keep her safe, to clean up the wet bathroom, and -- yes -- to let her explore when she can do so safely and without making our lives too difficult. (Resentment makes for lousy parenting, as we have all discovered at times.)

So if we start from the premise that our two year old is not being bad, but is a young human exploring the world who really doesn't understand why her dad cares so much that the water is getting all over the bathroom, then we are seeing things from her perspective. That empathy changes everything. We may even be willing to let her splash water all over, at least for today. (and I have done that, lol.) But we may also be tired and have too much laundry to do already and simply can't bear the idea of more water getting splashed, so we may decide to set a limit on the splashing.

In that case, we might well take her out of the tub. That is a limit. Limits are fine, they are part of life. Obviously, we don't want to overdo them beyond our child's frustration tolerance, because they face limits all day every day and sometimes it's just too much. But of course we need to set limits so that we enjoy living with our child. And of course she needs to experience some reasonable, age-appropriate limits, so that she learns that she can tolerate disappointment and come out on the other side. There's a full description of this process on my web site:

Setting Effective Limits.

Empathic limit-setting means we set the limit in a compassionate way. We empathize: "You are mad! You don't want to get out. You love the tub. But that was too much splashing for me. Tomorrow night you can have another bath. And now that it's getting warm, you can splash all you want outside in your pool." (That's meeting her natural need to splash.)

"But that's all the splashing I can handle for tonight. I know, that makes you so sad and mad. I see how sad and mad you are. Come here, Sweetie, let me hold you. You are just so sad. You can cry as much as you like. Let's get you wrapped in this warm towel and snuggle up a bit, and I will hold you. Whenever you're ready, we can read your book."

Because we resist our urge to be punitive, the child doesn't get distracted by having to fight back or prove she was right, or plot revenge. She may be mad that we got her out of the tub, but she is MUCH less angry than if we were mad about it. In fact, she feels loved and understood even though she doesn't get what she wants. She even understands that we are on her side, that we care about her happiness even when we can't give her what she wants. The relationship is deepened, rather than eroded, which is what happens with punishment.

Because we don't make it into a power struggle, our child does not get used to struggling against us. Because we don't make her wrong, she doesn't internalize the sense that she is a bad person, either for splashing or for getting mad about being removed from the tub. That's important, because when humans feel like bad people, they are more likely to act like bad people. (Research shows that kids who are punished act worse over time.)

Because we felt empathy for her, we saw it from her point of view. We saw her delight in splashing. We saw that she really doesn't have the self control yet to resist her exploratory need to splash. We realized she was not "ignoring/challenging" our limits at all, but being a normal two year old. So we didn't take it personally, and we were able to remain sympathetic to her upset, even while we took care of our own need to avoid a flooded bathroom.

Because we don't distract her from her upset, our child gets the message that there is nothing bad or scary about her feelings. It is just sadness, and after sadness we can feel better and read a story. So we are supporting her development of emotional intelligence.

Because we soothe her distress, the neural pathways in her brain that send soothing biochemicals are strengthened and her ability to self-soothe is strengthened. Kids learn to self-soothe from being soothed by another person, not from being left to cry by themselves.

Because we set a limit, our child learns that indeed there are consequences to her actions. When she splashes too much and ignores our requests to stop, she will have to leave the tub. But that is not a consequence in the way most parents use it, as a punishment. ("If I have to stop the car and come back there, there will be CONSEQUENCES!") So she is free to learn rather than getting distracted by punishment. She is actually empowered by the fact that she can choose. Of course, her brain development hasn't quite caught up with her desire to manage her splashing impulse. But now she WANTS to manage her splashing, rather than getting distracted by fighting with us or "proving" she can win or testing our limits. She's headed in the right direction.

Make sense?