Effective discipline can be confusing! It can feel like we’re working so hard to be caring, empathetic, and patient with our kids—and not lose our temper—yet still, the challenging behaviors keep happening. And then when we try to set boundaries, our child has a meltdown that seems to last forever. What are we doing wrong? In this episode of “Unruffled” Janet explores three common reasons our attempts at respectful discipline can end up being ineffective. She suggests nuanced adjustments that can make all the difference. Her recommendations will not only help to simplify our approach (for the win!) but also help our kids to feel safe, seen, and supported, deepening our parent-child bonds.
Transcript of “Discipline Isn’t Working – 3 Common Reasons and What To Do Instead”
Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.
Today I’m going to be talking about three common reasons that discipline doesn’t work as we hope it will, meaning our responses to our child’s behavior, the way we’re handling it. Why does this keep happening? Why is the behavior maybe getting more pronounced? Why does this feel messy and unclear to me? What’s going on?
I call these common reasons because we’ll all fall into these kinds of responses, at one time or another at least. And besides these being about responses to behaviors, these are also reasons that have to do with feelings, like I’m always talking about here. And that’s because feelings, on some level, drive our behaviors. There are things that we do on automatic, where we’re not thinking about it or feeling like we even want to do that, but we’re just doing them, especially as we get older. But when it comes to children, the behaviors they have, especially the ones that we don’t like so much, are driven by feelings and stress, right? Because that’s how they get dysregulated and lose control. Their system gets overwhelmed.
I was thinking about this today: there’s been such a change in the attitudes about feelings since I first started writing online in 2009. Back then, there was this sense—not so much with the professionals, but parent-to-parent, which was the way blogs were then, they were mostly parents writing about their ideas and their suggestions for each other. And there was this real sense of shaming in the idea that someone’s child was having meltdowns or as a baby was crying, that this meant that the parent was doing something wrong. They weren’t breastfeeding enough, they weren’t carrying their child enough, they weren’t giving them enough connection.
So this evolution has been huge to where we are now, where it seems like everybody’s talking about feelings and how important they are and how to let your child express them. And what often happens when there’s a big evolution like this is that the pendulum swings a little too far in the opposite direction. And I feel like that’s what’s happening now, because it feels like there’s such a focus on feelings that our role seems unclear. It feels like we should be doing so much around this, that it’s so important.
But it’s also life. I think it’s Mooji that said, “Feelings are just visitors. Let them come and go.” And that kind of attitude is really, really healthy for us to have and for us to be teaching our children through our responses. Yeah, this one doesn’t feel good and this one feels great and it’s all normal. It’s not something I’m responsible for making better. It’s not something where I’m worried about you and I’ve got to wait until you get all the way through it and stop everything in my life. It’s this really normal, healthy part of life. So I feel like that’s getting lost in some of the ultra-focus that’s being given to feelings. Which is for the most part, very, very positive, but can give that kind of impression like, Ahh, this is such a big deal!
I guess, of course, there are still circles where there’s this disallowing of feelings and rejecting a child for them. You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit, all of that. I guess there’s even books about that for children, to teach them that this is just something that you control and you don’t let happen. Well, I don’t think I’m getting those kinds of parents because they’re probably not interested in what I’m sharing here, which is really trying to look at the long term as far as our relationship with our children. Do we want to be somebody that they feel comfortable sharing with, that they don’t feel judged for? Or, Just put that one away! I don’t want you to feel that around me. That’s not the kind of relationship of communication that most of us want with our children and that trust and that closeness where they’re going to confide in us. So while that kind of behavior-control stuff maybe seems helpful when kids are younger, it does not build the bond with us and the emotional help that we want our children to have.
Anyway, I just want to acknowledge that that’s still out there, but it seems like a lot of us, or the people in my circles at least, are going maybe too far the opposite way and getting all cluttered about what’s going on with how we’re supposed to react to feelings and what we’re supposed to do.
Here’s the first of the three common reasons that discipline isn’t working: We react to the symptoms rather than addressing what’s behind them. We’re seeing all this behavior in our face. And because our child in so many ways seems so reasonable, it’s hard to realize that this is absolutely not reasonable behavior, this is kooky behavior. And it’s about our child feeling out of control.
I had an exchange with a parent around this on, I think it was Instagram, and I just want to share some of it here:
Hi, Janet-
I love your workbooks and podcast, it got us through a really hard 2.5 to 3.5 stretch. But alas, our four-year-old is driving the house insane. We do have a six-month-old baby, which she was doing okay with, but our beloved dog got sick and had to be put down at the end of March. This was combined with both grandparents being hospitalized, who live with us and she adores. So I know the reasoning, but it has been unbearable. My wife and I have been very ruffled lately, and all your teachings have gone out the window. We also got a nine-month-old dog unexpectedly, which adds to the stress.
She is yelling constantly, defiant, doesn’t listen at all, screams at the dog, the baby, strangers, the grandparents, etc. She’s been rough with the baby (bit her once), physical with the dog, and is back to hitting and newly biting us. She is super smart, borderline gifted, and manipulative. Bedtime now takes two-plus hours, with screaming and yelling and running out of her room. When asked about her behavior, she says she doesn’t know why. Lately I’ve been trying to reintroduce your techniques, with some success. Tonight after going full exorcist demon mode at 9:00 p.m., she admitted in bed that she is sad every day because of the dog dying and misses her.
I really miss my sweet girl and I used to do so well with her. Now I’m yelling at her and I don’t know what to do. I feel so lost daily and like a failure as a parent. She’s so out of control. Please help. She’s a model citizen at pre-K, with no behavior problems.
This family is going through so much and it would be bizarre if the parents were just feeling fine and comfortable and their children were feeling just fine and comfortable. None of them are. And our children are especially affected by us, even more than by these outside factors. Their main influence in terms of how comfortable they are and how settled they feel and how well they’re able to exert self-control is all based on us. Life happens and everything is going on right there, I feel for this family. If this wasn’t all happening like this, I would be really, really surprised.
I wasn’t able to say this to this parent because it was just a quick message exchange and I wanted to cut to the chase. But just to even see that as normal can help us. Well, this is totally expected. We don’t love what’s going on, but it’s totally expected.
What I said back to him, though, was:
Thanks for your kind words. I feel like you nailed it right here: “She is so out of control.” Yes, she’s going through something, feels totally out of control, and I’m certain she doesn’t want to be behaving this way and angering her parents. It can help us to think about how we would help someone we cared about who was in this terribly uncomfortable position, not meaning the things she says and does. We wouldn’t take the person’s behavior reasonably. We’d just try to help them out and minimize any damage they unwittingly do. It doesn’t matter how intelligent she is. In fact, intelligent types are usually even more sensitive to losing control.
Let her yell but keep her protected from the dog, the baby, as much as possible. Can the baby be in a playpen or some other protected space? And can the dog be outside if you’re not there to calmly intervene with the helplessly out of control behavior of your daughter? That’s what will help this to pass, because she’ll feel safer when you realize that she can’t do any better than this and you respond to her from that place of understanding.
The thing that I love about this, the thing that’s so interesting to me, and I know I’ve said it before, is that we know, right? There’s a part of us as parents that knows exactly what’s going on, and yet we still get caught up in kind of taking it personally. Because here’s this really bright girl and she’s doing all this to us. “Cut it out!” we just want to say, right?
So please don’t anyone blame yourself for doing that because that’s just a human, adult reaction that we would have to a child’s behavior. Cut it out, you get what you get, just stop. But that’s where we can get stuck, because we’re not seeing what’s beyond the behavior and we’re not seeing the feelings that are going on that are driving this. Which are, I feel all over the place and I can’t function! And I’m sure these parents are feeling some level of that too, even without their daughter behaving like this. And that is also why she’s behaving like this, if that makes sense. So taking care of ourselves and then perceiving this as, You know what? It’s going to be wild right now. We just have to help her through.
And the interesting thing about what he said about the long two-plus hours it takes to go to bed, when children have that at bedtime, it’s often because they haven’t had enough chance just to vent it throughout the day, whenever it’s come up through our boundaries. We’re not going to let you near the baby right now because you’re too out of control, or whatever we want to say about that. And then she screams. Whatever we’re having a boundary with, she reacts. And right there, she’s moving it through, moving it through, getting these feelings out of her system. Shared safely, because we’re trying to see this as our dear, little, out of control girl. So we’re going to be less likely to yell, we still might yell, but less likely to yell. And if we do yell, “Oh sorry, I’m having a really hard time. I know you’re doing the best you can.”
Then she can share it safely and it won’t build all the way up until bedtime, where now she’s got more feelings to vent and it’s ending up taking so long to go to bed. That’s one of the most common reasons that bedtime gets delayed or that children are having all these emotions around bedtime, like he says she’s having. The buildup throughout the day lands them there, and that doesn’t work for us. So we don’t want that to happen as much as possible. If we could remind ourselves, it’s really good that she’s yelling about all these insignificant things, or it’s good that I set that boundary even though it made her upset. Because that was a reasonable boundary and her sharing how upset she is is a positive thing.
The second reason that we get caught up with behaviors and discipline isn’t working, and this is closely linked to the last one: We say no to the behaviors, but we don’t allow for another way for our child to share their feelings. I don’t have a particular note about this right now, but I get many, many questions from parents where they’re doing this very typical, normal thing where we’re just saying, Nope, I can’t let you. Stop. Don’t do any of these things. But we’re not allowing any way for our child to share the feelings driving that behavior another way.
And this isn’t a complicated thing where we have to figure out what they’re exactly feeling and all that. Not at all. All we need to do is what’s right in front of us. Just seeing, just taking a moment, “Can’t let you do that. I’m going to stop you. You want to keep doing that. You’re really having a hard time stopping yourself.” Just that little mini-reflection right there, where we’re seeing our child and they see us seeing them, has a calming effect. And helps them to realize, My behaviors are not cool. They’re not okay, and my parents are not going to let me do them. But it’s okay to feel like I want to do this. They’re not getting mad at me around that. They’re not telling me you can’t do this behavior and you should never feel like you want to do that behavior. We don’t mean to give kids that message, but that’s the one that they often get when we get very focused on the symptoms. We’re just dealing with symptoms, symptoms, symptoms, and nothing we’re doing is helping with the cause of the behavior. So these are just reminders for us.
The third common reason discipline isn’t working: We feel responsible in some way or sad for our child or too uncomfortable for our child to have these feelings. So we want to make them better, instead of just setting the boundary and welcoming our child’s full force of whatever feelings they have. This is my job. And yeah, you can share with me how much you don’t like my choice, how much you disagree. And when you’re doing that, I’m trying to remember as a parent that you’re actually sharing feelings that probably don’t have that much to do with this specific boundary, that are more generalized or more on a theme. Like, you’ve got a six-month-old baby sibling and your parents are really wound up about all these things going on. And you’re not responding well, that’s throwing them off even more.
It’s not about what I was demanding in that moment or what I thought I needed. It’s about these bigger things. But as a parent, we’re still in that other mode where we’re seeing the symptoms, maybe forgetting they’re not coming from a place of reason in our child, so we second-guess ourselves or we doubt ourselves. Oh gosh, maybe I don’t have a right to go to the bathroom by myself or say no to this, or I shouldn’t have. Oh, it hurts her. She needs to do this and that, and I feel bad. And now she’s having this strong reaction. I’ve got to be delicate around that and try to kind of placate her a little bit, calm her down.
The parent that I consulted with in the last episode, called “Struggling with a Strong-Willed Toddler’s Tantrums,” this is what we were talking about, that she thought her job was to teach her child self-regulation on top of everything else. On top of setting a boundary and allowing you to have your feelings, I also have to teach you to control your feelings or calm you down. No, that cannot be our job. And thank you to all the parents who wrote to me and said that that message really hit home from that last podcast. I recommend listening to it if you’re interested, because I get to talk with the parent in person, so we got to have a back and forth.
Again, that’s this whole pendulum swinging so far in this direction that now we have so many jobs as parents and it’s not clear. And we’ve got to help them name the feelings and go through them, and hopefully they won’t feel as strongly next time. It’s unproductive, it’s unhelpful, and it makes it feel like discipline isn’t working. Because our child is getting this message that it’s not completely safe when they go to those dark places or go to those uncomfortable places in themselves. That we don’t think it’s completely safe, that we feel like this is kind of an event. This is something you need help with, this is something I’ve got to invest energy into. It’s not just what happens with young children, which is that their feelings go up and down all over the place, and that’s how it’s supposed to be. The younger the child, the more this will happen. And the more that’s going on in our household, the more this will happen.
It’s tricky, right? Because as parents, we do tend to see, especially when we’re in a stressful time and it feels like everything’s black and white, that either we’re being gentle and so kind, or we’re being rejecting and you get what you get and get over it and you shouldn’t be doing that. But there’s this wonderful middle place that is so helpful to children, that encourages all the things we want to encourage our child to share with us instead of worry about how we’re feeling about their feelings. Even if we’re a little bit uncomfortable, that comes off to our child, unfortunately. They’re so tuned in, right?
So I just want to circle back to this dad on Instagram because he gave a little follow-up. He said:
Thank you. I’ve been trying to just sit with her and let the storm ride over me the last few days, and she seems to be responding better.
I wrote back:
Great, and you don’t even have to sit with her every time. Definitely don’t need to make an event out of every explosion, or any explosion. All that’s needed is acceptance and as much understanding as you can muster that she’s feeling it and going through it.
That’s me trying to quickly explain that sweet spot that we all can find in ourselves. We definitely have it, but we need to practice it. We need to taste it and then we need to practice it. And it can become pretty comfortable. We’re never going to be entirely comfortable when our child is upset and when we’ve been the cause of that, of course. But it starts to become a familiar place and it feels right. And it works, because our child’s upsets are shorter, the difficult behaviors lessen. We see the safety it gives our child when we’re accepting, but we’re not seeing this as a big deal.
Here’s a note about that:
Dear Janet,
I have read your book and followed your podcast with great interest. Your work has been a meaningful part of my parenting journey. In a recent episode, you shared stories from parents who had applied your methodology with their children and experienced peaceful, harmonious outcomes. While I appreciate hearing those success stories, I felt the need to share that my reality as a mother of a six- and four-year-old has been very different.
Since their birth, I have genuinely tried to embody the respectful, attuned approach you teach, yet parenting has remained extremely challenging. For instance, just today my son created a cardboard sword and wanted to bring it with him to his grandparents’. We gently told him the sword would wait for him at home. He became upset and refused to leave. I sat down with him, acknowledged his feelings, expressed curiosity about his creation, and suggested we find a special place for it to wait. Despite this, he remained angry and immobile for 15 minutes, unwilling to budge.
Hearing the recent episode felt surprisingly discouraging. Not because I don’t believe in the method, but because I’m applying it wholeheartedly and still not seeing the kind of ease and harmony described. I think the podcast could benefit from acknowledging that even with committed, aligned efforts, outcomes can be messy, prolonged, and emotionally intense. Without this balance, it can leave parents who are sincerely doing the work feeling like they’re somehow failing, simply because their experiences don’t mirror those in the examples shared.
This parent was so kind. And I just have to say, this made me feel terrible. I mean, this is obviously the opposite of what I’m trying to do, to be discouraging, to make people feel like it’s not typical to have messy, prolonged, emotionally intense situations with our children. It absolutely is.
But after that moment of feeling really disappointed and kind of sad that this parent had that response, it’s amazing how quickly I wanted to just try to help her to maybe get something she wasn’t quite getting. And of course, she just gave me this very small example. And because I’m into this topic so much, it’s like a challenge for me, now I want to help her, to make this easier for her. Not to say at all that all those parents that shared the success stories in that episode, which is called “Discipline That Works — Your Best Responses to Your Kids’ Behaviors.” There were like eight parents that I shared from there, and none of them wrote back to me and said, “By the way, after that success it’s happily ever after and everything’s easy now with my child.” And I doubt that happened with any of them.
The reason I value success stories, the reason they help me and I feel they can help parents, the reason to celebrate these is that we’re getting this taste of what I was talking about earlier, that sweet spot. And the more we can taste that, the more we can find our way back to it. That definitely doesn’t mean it always works or that it always works for us after the success story, it definitely didn’t always work before the success story. It’s always going to be messy and prolonged and hard to have young children, no question. I’m really sorry this parent was left with those feelings. Like I said, the last thing I want is to discourage anyone.
I wrote back to her:
Thank you for reaching out to me and your kind words. I’m so sorry the episode was discouraging to you, that’s the last thing I’d ever want. I would love to try to help you with your challenges, perhaps for a podcast episode, if that would be okay with you. Can you please give me some other examples besides the one with the sword? I have thoughts about that, but more examples would be helpful.
That was a couple of weeks ago and this parent never got back to me, so I’m just going to go with my thoughts about what she shared and see if there’s something here. Because for me, this falls into this idea that we’re doing too much around emotions. And this isn’t to criticize this parent or any of these parents at all, because this is a very nuanced idea, especially in the story this parent’s sharing. Very nuanced. And I’m taking a chance here just sharing my impressions on it. I could be way off, but I’m still going to do it.
She says: “Parenting has remained extremely challenging. For instance, just today my son created a cardboard sword and wanted to bring it with him to his grandparents’. We gently told him the sword would wait for him at home. He became upset and refused to leave.” And this is a six-year-old boy. And then she says: “I sat down with him, acknowledged his feelings, expressed curiosity about his creation, and suggested we find a special place for it to wait. Despite this, he remained angry and immobile for 15 minutes, unwilling to budge.”
So the sense I’m getting here is that this parent was kind of leaning into doing what a lot of us have the instinct to do, especially people like me that are people-pleasers and don’t want to disappoint anyone. Let’s try to make this okay with you. Let’s find a way to make it safe. Let’s talk to you about it. Let’s hear all about this. And if this is what’s happening regularly with boundaries, what I always do is I put myself in the child’s shoes. And I’m feeling like there’s some delicacy around this. It’s a bit touchy to say no to me for something that, if we think about it, it’s really not very reasonable that I made something and rather than enjoy it at home later, I have to bring it to my grandparents’. It’s definitely not a need that a child would have. And even as a desire, it’s kind of, I don’t know, I almost have the sense that her child knew that was a little bit of an inappropriate demand to make, but that this was symbolic of some other things that he’s feeling are going on with him.
And that it would help him more, and definitely help this parent more to not be dealing with such a prolonged episode, for the parents to just lean in and say, “Yeah, you really want to bring that. Gosh, that’s making you so mad. Come on, we’re going to go. But you can yell at us the whole way in the car if you need to.” Keeping it direct and kind and simple and not trying so hard to make it work for him. I doubt he would’ve gone on for the 15 minutes. It would probably be five intense minutes, and maybe a few more in the car. But if parents can have that conviction and that simplicity and honesty, while at the same time welcoming the feelings, You get to share. I’m not afraid of you being mad about something. I don’t see it as a problem or something you can’t handle with our support, then it flashes much more quickly and it’s over.
And our child knows, Hey, I can vent stuff and it’s not a big deal, and I’m not getting all this—I don’t want to say “attention” because there’s so many things put on negative attention and all that, Oh, the kids are just seeking attention. But kids get an impression when there’s so much attention around them having an uncomfortable feeling. They get the impression that it’s not that safe and shouldn’t be normal and comfortable and just acceptable. That there’s a need my parents have to make it better for me. And what that does is it kind of undoes our boundary in the first place because we’re not being decisive, we’re not being confident, and it can tend to create a situation where a child keeps kind of seeking this clearer passage to share.
I don’t even know if that makes sense to anyone but me. This parent, like all the parents I hear from, could not be more caring and thoughtful and loving, and I can feel her working hard just in this example. What I’m suggesting is to do a little less and to trust our children a little more to share all the things they need to share, to know that’s a positive thing for them. There’s nothing negative about it or problematic about it, at all.
That’s my strange, nuanced feedback for this parent. I don’t know if she’s ever going to hear this, but thank you for reaching out to me and being so kind about your constructive criticism. That’s really, really helpful. I always love hearing feedback like that, something I can work with and consider.
This thing about discipline and feelings—this dynamic where we set the boundary, they get to share the feelings, we all move through—we do have to be kind of brave, I feel. Brave and believing in our kids. Believing in their ability to go through life with all the disappointments and the heartbreak and the losses and the anger. They’ve got what it takes, they can do it. And we can do this. It’s so much less complicated than all the messages out there around feelings and behaviors are making it out to be. It’s really quite simple, the dynamic: I see what’s going on. I set the boundary with confidence. I welcome you to share whatever you feel about it, that’s your prerogative. And we go through our day like that.
I really hope some of this helps. And there’s a ton more about this in my No Bad Kids Master Course, and in my book No Bad Kids, which has helped many, many parents turn a corner.
Thank you so much for listening. We can do this.
