Good Inside with Dr. Becky - Tantrums Trigger Me

Episode Date: October 4, 2022

Meltdowns.... they seem to always happen at the absolute wrong time or worse yet in the most public of ways. Whether it's too much sugar, not enough sleep, or just a phase doesn't really matter when we as parents are just trying to get from point A to point B. Dr. Becky talks to a father of two young girls who remembers the lessons of his childhood, a time when there were things to cry about and not getting exactly what you wanted was not one of them. So how can he do it differently and not feel so triggered by his daughter's behavior? Let's get into it.  Join Good Inside Membership: https://bit.ly/3cqgG2A Follow Dr. Becky on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drbeckyatgoodinsideSign up for our weekly email, Good Insider: https://www.goodinside.com/newsletter Order Dr. Becky's book, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be, at goodinside.com/book or wherever you order your books. Check out the upcoming Mom Rage Workshop: https://www.goodinside.com/workshop/4247/mom-rage-how-to-stay-calm-amidst-the-chaos/For a full transcript of the episode, go to goodinside.com/podcast

I'm Dr. Becky and this is Good Insight. I mean, I think there are times when perhaps during the meltdown where my daughter's emotions are really intense. And she's really feeling them all the way and perhaps we're like, as parents, trying to get from point A to point B or trying to get her to do something and just like we can't really do any of that because there's a lot of feelings and a lot of yelling and screaming and I think there are moments that those times where I'm kind of stuck.

I don't know how to proceed. I do feel like there's almost a certain level of like emotional outburst that is triggering to proceed. I don't feel like there's almost a certain level of like emotional outburst that is triggering to me. Meltdowns are hard and they often feel even harder to manage when they happen in public. In fact, I know public meltdowns are one of the most common triggers for us parents. Because I remember the line for my childhood of like, there being reasons why you should cry, and reasons why you shouldn't, I just struggle with how to approach those situations at times.

We'll work on these tricky situations together, right after this. Hey Sabrina, hey! So I've been thinking about toys recently. I don't want the toy to do that much of the work. I want the toy to inspire my kid to do the work because actually the toys that get really busy and do a lot of things, kids actually lose interest and so quickly.

Oh totally. There are certain toys that my kids have just played with throughout the years. I have a six year old and a and a three-year-old. Like what? So I have these wooden blocks from Melissa and Doug. They're super simple. Just plain wooden, no color.

And my kids love them. They're always building castles or like a dinosaur layer. And then my oldest will tell my youngest to like decorate them after he's built this crazy cool structure. My go-to's are Melissa and Doug too. I feel like we have this ice cream scooper thing that my kids use when they were two, and then they used again when they were developing better fine motor skills. And then for my kind of four year old, my seven year old, still using it in imaginative

play. I really only like talking about items and brands that we actually use in our own home and Melissa and Doug, I just don't know if there's any other brand I feel so good about naming. The way that their toys actually inspire creativity and open-ended, screen-free child-led play, it's just unmatched. And what's honestly so exciting is to be able to offer everyone listening to this podcast,

20% off-visitAndUg.com and use code Dr. Becky20DRBECKY20 for 20% off your order. Melissa and Doug, timeless toys, endless possibilities. I'm Dr. Becky and this is Good Inside. I'm a clinical psychologist. I'm a mom of three and I'm on a mission to rethink the way we raise our kids. Today we're talking about triggers and cycle breaking with a dad of two young daughters. Let's jump in. Hi, how are you? I am well. How are you? Oh, good. It's really nice to meet you. Thank you for

jumping on here in the middle of your day. Middle, you can probably hear a little bit of my background. There's a bunch of kids. That's okay. That speaks to a parents experience always surrounded in our hardest, deepest and thought moments with screaming children. And same with me. Tell me a little bit about you and kind of like the things that are on your mind right now. Tell me a little bit about you and kind of like the things that are on your mind right now. I am a first-generation American, both of my parents immigrated here from the Dominican Republic. And I was the first born in my nuclear family. There was one older cousin older than me, but we never really got along.

So for all intents and purposes, I felt like I was the oldest. And I was really connected to my younger sister and a lot of my younger cousins growing up. So I was always kind of looking after younger ones. And my mother took care of children in the house as well. We grew up in a very kind of traditional household in that sense where my mom was a homemaker and my dad was working. I went into education and was a teacher, a

bed teacher for a number of years, about nine years and now transitioned this past year to being an inclusion coordinator and I work with children of all abilities right now specifically also with children that have autism spectrum disorder and I am a father of two. I have a three-year-old girl and a newborn who is approaching eight weeks. I feel like I've always worked with kids, but it has been a big difference, a big shift from being someone that has always worked with children to someone that now is a parent to two children. Well, thank you. Maybe we can start by, like, let's go through a scenario by asking you to imagine you being the kid

and how your parents would have reacted. Let's say it's, I don't know, it's a really, really hot day and your parents start with you somewhere outside and I don't know, you see a store, maybe it's like a cart that has some type of icy treat, something cold and sweet and delicious and you asked to have it. And your parents say some version of no. We don't have time. You had something like that earlier. We don't have the money. Some version of no.

And you melt down. You are just on the street. You are crying. You are screaming. You are so just expressive in your displeasure. Like what happens next? Ha ha ha. Um.

Laughter? No. Um, well, what happens next? If I'm the kid, first of all, there were certain behaviors that were communicated to me when I was young were just unacceptable to do in public. There's a word in Spanish called marcariano. Marcariano directly translated means like essentially like raised wrongly.

And you know when you were misbehaving you could be labeled that. And having a meltdown in public, as far as I can, I don't remember having one because as far as I can remember that was shut down very early on. And the fact that I didn't have meltdowns and that I wasn't overly expressive with my feelings in that way or with my disappointment was praised and it was criticized when it was um I had another cousin in fact um the older cousin that I mentioned at the beginning of the conversation, he was, and I'll use this word because that's what, that's how it was treated. He was notorious for having these meltdowns.

For wanting a thing, hearing no, and then like essentially losing the function of his legs, he can no longer walk, he is on the ground, he is yelling, he is screaming. And then the mom would give in and get him the thing to avoid the meltdown. And then in my house, this was openly discussed by my parents as a failing of my aunt and, you know, something that was unacceptable in our household, often aligned and this is a classic,

you have no reason to be crying right now. And if you, I can give you a reason to cry. And so that was the case for me, growing up. There's honestly so much I want to respond to in that, but I think it was one of the first things you said, like you were like, yeah, what would happen next? Well, a better question would be, would that ever have happened?

And you're saying, yeah, that would have happened. Like I literally wouldn't have had that meltdown. By the time I am, I don't know, five years old, Dr. Becky in your situation, by the age of five, I had already learned really, really powerful attachment lessons in my family, where I knew that my emotional and therefore, like actual survival was dependent on my really being hyper vigilant for the way I had to show up to other people, even at the expense

of kind of experiencing my own emotions. Is that accurate? I just want to make sure I got it right because it's so important. Yeah. And it's landing for me. I don't think I've put it in those words. And the way that you framed it is resonating with me for sure. Hey, so I want to let you in on something that's kind of counterintuitive about parenting. that's kind of counterintuitive about parenting. The most impactful way we can change our parenting actually doesn't involve learning any new parenting strategies. The most impactful way we can change our parenting

is by giving ourselves more resources so we can show up as sturdier so we can show up as calm amidst the inevitable chaos. It's what our kids need from us more than anything else. This is why I'm doing my mom rage workshop again. I'm doing it again because it is one of my most popular ones to date. It's coming up July 19th, but no worries if you can't make it live. It'll be available as a recording for whenever you have the time. I promise it's really the best investment we can make,

not only in ourselves, but also in our kids. Can't wait to see you there at goodinside.com. Something I always think about, because I often hear parents asking me questions in my head, even though it's not actually happening live. But I hear a parent saying, Oh, so you think it's like a good thing that kids are just having meltdowns when their parents says no to an icy. Like, is that what you want? And I always feel like there's so much between it never happening and it being something I welcome. Like, no, when my kid has a meltdown, if they can't have something, it's not like

I'm thinking, Oh, my kid is feeling their feelings. Like, just do this and loving it, you know, feel the feelings. Like no, but there's something really complex here that I think a lot of us didn't have explained to us as kids and still as adults now as the parents, it can still be kind of complex, which is nobody loves when their kid has a meltdown.

Number one, of course not. But the meltdown comes from a mismatch, right? Like there's a mismatch. A kid is feeling all the feelings and doesn't yet have any of the skills to manage those feelings, right? It's just like this inconvenient situation. All the feelings, not enough of the skills.

One of the things I really think about for my own kids is like, oh, the ultimate gift I want to give them is when they're 18, 20 something, 40 something that they can feel all of their feelings and those feelings feel less scary because they know over the course of their lives they've developed coping skills. That the problem is never the feelings. We blame the feelings, but the problem isn't the feelings. The problem is that kids just need our help, and they need time to develop emotion regulation skills. And in that gap, when they have all the feelings

and they don't yet have the skills, there's just a lot of, you know, kind of unfortunate, exhausting moments. And it sounds like one of the things you're saying is that in your house kids who expressed all these feelings who didn't have these skills, they weren't seen really as good kids who were having a hard time or good kids who are still learning these skills, they were seen as like bad kids, maybe even with bad parents. You're seeing as like bad kids, maybe even with bad parents.

Definitely. You know, I think we're not in our household. It was a point of pride that there was not a lot of conflict in our house. It didn't mean that there wasn't reason for conflict or that there people weren't even conflicted. But it was never really something that happened to a lot of our house and there was something

that we were proud of. And something kind of strange now that I'm a parent is that it takes so much effort. You know, I feel like I'm doing the right thing by my kids. I feel like giving them the space to have their feelings has really paid off. Like I already, my three-year-old, is showing a level of emotional awareness that I probably didn't, probably already in therapy when I was learning that one, but she's already displaying that and that feels my heart. I feel so good about it. But it does take a lot of effort. It did take a lot of internal resources and bandwidth to kind of work those things out

with her and to give her that space. And also, especially in my family, we were a very tight-knit family. And so, I love my family. I love my family. And so now, kind of doing things differently and even reflecting back on it. It's a strange feeling. It feels almost like I'm betraying my parents or my own or how I was raised by doing this thing differently. Whenever I take my daughter over to stay

with my parents, I've had to like tell them these very nuanced things like, hey, I want you guys to ask her if she wants a kiss, if she wants a hug, if she wants, you know, like I want a teacher consent from a very early age. And they're like, yeah, I'm all for it, but like not with us, right? Like, we're grandparents, like, you know, and I've had to kind of, it's been so much work going back to your own parents and telling them like the way that you want to raise your kid is different from the way that they raised you. And acknowledge like you did your best. it is different from the way that they raised you and acknowledge like you did your best. And I appreciate that. But also I want to do things differently than you did them with me.

It's a very hard thing to reconcile. Yeah. Right. We're talking about being a cycle breaker. Like what is it like for someone to want to shift in some ways like the direction of intergenerational patterns? And it sounds like you're embodying something really important. Like I can look back and say, I think my parents did the best they could

with the resources they had available to them. And in a way, I'm actually doing the same thing. I'm doing the best I can with the resources I have available to me. Those things happen to be different on the surface. And then when we're together, it creates these conversations where someone is likely to feel defensive or someone is likely to feel criticized, especially when you're literally in your parents' house, you're literally leaving your daughter with them, right? It kind of feels like it all comes to a head.

For sure, it's all a full circle at that point. Like when I'm sitting there watching my parents interact with my daughter, you know, I imagine my younger self in her shoes. And I also see like how well-intentioned it is. But like for instance, like when my daughter cries at my parents house, and I've seen this even at my partner's parents house, like they are allergic to hearing children cry

They you know, it's like a visceral reaction as soon as the kid cries They want to figure out a way to get them to stop crying and you know Because they feel like it's you know that the kid is in pain or the kid is you know worried or they're sad Or they're in a bad place and they want to make them stop crying and they have all these different ways of doing it. But ultimately what I see it as is stifling her emotional outlet, like not letting her feel her feelings. And having to explain it to them,

I feel like I'm kind of reaffirming it for myself. It is really interesting. I think this intergenerational legacy that can get passed on where we're all uncomfortable with our emotions, because we see a kid cry, and we think we're responding to their crying. But we're actually responding to our body,

and the way our body has learned to react to our own vulnerability or sadness. So we look to shut down the crying, not actually for the kid. We do it for our own comfort in that moment. And it seems like you witnessed that. And it also seems like you're kind of the first one in your family who's saying,

hey, I see her crying too. And I'm uncomfortable. Maybe even at this point, I've worked through some of that discomfort. Maybe I am more comfortable with that discomfort. So I don't have to shut it off right away in horror because now I can tolerate it in myself. And as it seems you're doing that, that then really gives your daughter an opening to have that emotional awareness and kind of comfort with

herself. That seems really important for you to instill from the start. Yeah, absolutely. It feels really important to teach it to her. In so doing, this term reparenting is an interesting one in teaching her how to do it and how to have those feelings. I'm becoming more and more aware of when I invalidate my own feelings. And so I am kind of learning how to be compassionate towards myself. To learn that, like, for instance, I can say that I'm upset about something, even if I'm not looking for a solution to it, even if I, I guess I learned growing up that, like, unless you were going to do something about something or fix it, even if I, I guess I learned growing up that like unless you were going to do something

about something or fix it, what's the purpose of like flying off the handle or having these really intense feelings? I'm getting in touch with that now, but it takes practice. And the other day, like my daughter, is so sensitive. And that's another thing I imagine, you know, because she's so already so sensitive to other people's perceptions or reactions to her You know, she asks me like she asks me Already at three she goes dad like are you upset with me? And she's already aware of that and I imagine that when I was a kid. I was probably Super like as you said earlier hyper vigilant of how my actions affected other people and their perception of me. And I'm still working out the latent effects of that and like how that's still to this day affects me.

And how I interact with people around me at work, my friends, my family, so on and so forth. So many things strike me about this conversation, but I think the biggest thing is this idea that when we see something in our kid that kind of activates or triggers something from our past, there's such a reparenting moment, right? That's, and I always feel like my kids teach me way more than I will ever teach them that like this whole parenting thing is talked about as something where oh you're helping your kids grow and like a little bit we're saying yeah that's true but also like there is this amazing opportunity to grow in all the ways that your body is

probably always wanted and now as an adult it's still work, but we are able to start giving more of that to ourselves. And when we look at tricky dynamics with our kids and that reframe, right, not from, oh, why am I reacting like this? What's wrong with me? Or what's wrong with my kid? If we take away the idea that, you know, something is wrong with anyone and we say, wait, maybe nothing's wrong with my kid, maybe also nothing's wrong with me. Like what information is here? What story from my past is coming alive? What need maybe have I always had that this moment with my child

is actually just shedding light on. Like, ugh, it's not necessarily a smooth or linear path from there, but it is a worthwhile path. And like really, it sounds like you are on that path. And it's like amazing to hear about and witness. Oh, thank you. Thank you.

All right, have a great afternoon. Bye. Bye. So I want to leave you all with three takeaways. One, remember that our triggers, our stories our past that kind of come alive in our present. It's okay to not know exactly what your triggers are telling you. Just start here after a trigger moment.

Instead of chastising yourself, place your feet on the ground, a hand on your heart, and tell yourself, there's something important here. I'll stay curious. I'll keep listening. 2. Remember this big idea. We aren't really responding to our kids' feelings, or our kids' meltdowns, or our kids'

behaviors. We are actually responding to the feelings in our own bodies around what we see with our kids. This is a huge difference because then we realize that change doesn't come from our kid changing. Change comes from learning to regulate our own experiences. 3. Being a cycle breaker is tough. I mean, it's epic. You are taking on the weight of all the generations before you, and you're saying, I know you did the best you could with the resources you had available. And I have other resources,

and I am doing things differently. This pattern stops with me. Give yourself credit for taking this on, and know that a cycle breakers path is never consistent or linear. You're doing a great job. Thanks for listening. To share a story or ask me a question, go to goodinside.com Backslash Podcast. You could also write me at podcastatgoodinside.com. Parenting is the hardest and most important job in the world.

And parents deserve resources and support so they feel empowered, confident, and connected. I'm so excited to share good inside membership. The first platform that brings together content and experts you trust with a global community of like valued parents. It's totally game-changing. Good inside with Dr. Becky is produced by Jesse Baker

and Eric Newsom at Magnificent Noise. Our production staff includes Sabrina Farhi, Julia Nat, and Kristen Muller. I would also like to thank Eric Obelsky, Mary Panico, Jill Cromwell-Wang, Ashley Valenzuela, and the rest of the good inside team. And one last thing before I let you go. Let's end by placing our hands on our hearts and reminding ourselves, even as I struggle, and even as I have a hard time on the outside, I remain good inside. you