Being Authentic When It Feels Mean

Can we be authentic with our kids without making them feel rejected? Is it wrong to find their behavior so annoying at times? A parent worries that saying “I don’t want a hug right now” when she’s feeling angry or annoyed will damage her relationship with her 3-year-old. Janet explores what genuine authenticity looks like with children, and how understanding a child’s behavior makes it easier to respond with confidence and connection.

Transcript of “Being Authentic When It Feels Mean”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m going to be addressing an email I got from a parent. Her subject line is, “Being authentic when it feels mean.” And her question is particularly about that, but so many other things are also coming up in this that are very helpful for us to understand so we can get clarity on what our children need from us when their behavior is off, when they’re doing things that we don’t want them to do. How do we respond and how do we understand this better so that we can respond in a way that really does address the need behind the behavior?

Some details that are going to come up in this are the words we say. In this case, I want to help this parent see that she’s saying way too many words and that’s not helping her. In fact, it only ends up helping us to feel more impatient and more annoyed and more angry because we’re putting out so much effort trying to explain ourselves to our children, explain what’s going on. And it doesn’t help them because it usually gives too much power, too much interest to what they’re doing. It’s like we’re telling a whole story about something that is just an impulsive action on their part, something that we don’t want to give a lot of attention to. We don’t want to ignore it either, because that also gives it a lot of attention, oddly enough, because children feel that too.

And all of this comes under the heading of something that can help us all to work on: really understanding our child’s perspective, how they’re seeing the situation. I have some thoughts on that, without knowing this child specifically, but to help this parent and anyone listening understand the kind of messages kids get when we react or act in certain ways.

All of this is also about, of course, what authenticity really means with our children. This is something that I value. Everything that I share is about developing this authentic relationship with our kids, because it’s this lifelong gift that we give ourselves and our child. That we can be ourselves, that we can enjoy them as who they are, and that they are authentic with other people. Young children are very authentic, babies are very authentic. But we learn to mask our emotions and behave in ways that aren’t really being true to ourselves, without even knowing it, because we so much want our parents’ acceptance.

Okay, I know I’m saying a whole lot of stuff, but now I’d just like to read the note:

Hi Janet,

Firstly, thank you for your work. As someone who never connected well with babies or toddlers I’ve felt so much more confident, competent and connected using your approach with my 2 children (3 years and 9 months old). There’s one area though that I struggle with a lot and I can’t find any previous blog or podcast of yours that clicks with me about it.

I work a lot with my therapist on trying to feel my feelings and work through them. As someone who was shown as a kid that having emotions was not welcome, I’m constantly trying to identify and allow my feelings rather than pushing them down. I worry though that showing feelings I have strongly (particularly anger, which I think is a crutch emotion that I lean on to avoid feeling the root emotion) is damaging to my kids.

It may be easier if I share an example. My 3 year old son often does things that make me angry and annoyed, not because I’m not seeing his point of view or am taking it personally or because he’s a particularly annoying kid. I just think I’m the sort of person who gets annoyed and angry quite easily. Those emotions are (unfortunately) readily available for me. He’ll quickly move on after the annoying or angering action, which could be something like throwing things around that I’ve just been tidying, not in anger, just for fun. At the time I’ll say something like “I won’t let you throw these things around because I’ve just been tidying them and I want the house neat. I’m going to move them away from you.” He’ll seem fine with this, move on and then not long after say “I want a hug on the couch.” But I don’t feel like giving him a hug on the couch because I’m still annoyed that he’s making my day more difficult. Is it wrong to say “I don’t really want to hug you right now because I’m annoyed with you, I didn’t like it when you threw the things around and made the house untidy”? Because that’s what I want to say! And giving him a hug on the couch when I feel that way seems really inauthentic and not allowing me to feel the annoyed feelings.

It’s hard to describe exactly but I’m struggling to set the boundaries I want (like, I don’t want to hug you on the couch right now because I feel grumpy) because they make me feel like a bad person and I worry that it will make my son feel like I only like him and want to hang out with or hug him when he’s “good.” Hugging him when I don’t want to feels inauthentic, and I don’t think it sets a good example for consent and bodily autonomy. How can I be authentic when being authentic feels mean. I’m not withholding to punish him, I just really don’t feel like it in that moment. But it feels like too much of my own baggage to be putting on a 3 year old! Your input would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Again, there’s so many topics within this parent’s note that I want to help her on, and I’ll admit I get kind of overwhelmed because I could probably do like a five-hour podcast on this, but nobody wants that! So I’ve bolded certain parts of her note as areas that I want to address.

First I bolded, “As someone who was shown as a kid that having emotions was not welcome, I’m constantly trying to identify and allow my feelings rather than pushing them down.” How many of us were raised feeling that having emotions was not welcome? I would say probably at least half of us, if not more. So this is a very valid issue that a lot of us are trying to overcome.

And this parent also says that showing feelings strongly, particularly anger, which she thinks is a crutch emotion that she leans on to avoid feeling the root emotion, is damaging to her kids. Just to throw this out there, I’m not a therapist and obviously I don’t know this parent very well at all, but I’m sure she’s spot on, because she sounds very intuitive about a lot of things going on here and obviously if she’s been working on this, she understands quite a bit. So I would guess the root emotion is fear and that’s the fear getting tapped into of losing her parents’ regard for her, the rejection of her parents, of feeling like a bad child because they didn’t like the way that we express this feeling. They’ve just told us no and we’ve gotten upset.

As a young child, it’s so frightening when our parents are not happy with us. Our parents are our whole world. They set the tone for everything and what they think about us is what we feel about ourselves. And if they’re disappointed in us, if they’re even annoyed with us, it’s scary. There’s no way that we can feel comfortable in that as a child when it’s like our whole world feels against us. Not that these parents were against her or that she’s against her child when she’s annoyed, but that’s how it can feel to a child. So it’s huge, right? And yet at the same time, this parent wants to be authentic. I’m going to talk about how that can work.

This mom says she worries that showing the feelings she has strongly is damaging to her kids. I wouldn’t jump to that it’s damaging, because it’s always mendable, these riffs or these feelings that our children have in our relationship, this fear that they have. We can always redeem that, we can always make that better. But this parent is right in that it’s scary for her kids and it’s painful for her kids, it’s really uncomfortable. So that’s a conundrum, right? We have these feelings, we want to be able to express them, but they’re scary for our child. How do we deal with that?

Then this parent gives the example where her three-year-old is doing something like “throwing things around that I’ve just been tidying, not in anger, just for fun.” Here’s where I want to help this parent understand her child even better. Children don’t enjoy making us annoyed and they don’t do things like this for fun. Our children are highly aware. From the moment they’re born, they are soaking everything up, and there’s no way in the world that our child is just having a good time doing something that they’re very aware is upsetting to us.

It’s very easy as parents to underestimate children’s awareness because of the fact that they don’t verbalize everything that they’re aware of, or even anything close to that. They’re not able to do that. But babies are aware of our moods and our feelings. Even in the womb, there’s studies showing that babies feel our emotions. We underestimate their awareness typically, and we overestimate their ability to control their behaviors. So it’s not that he thinks that’s fun and that’s a good thing to do and that he didn’t notice that his mom just made the house all tidy. It’s that he’s stuck doing this thing again that he knows is going to bug his mother.

Why is he getting stuck in that? Because he’s getting this reaction out of his mother that’s really uncomfortable. And he’s also stuck in that perhaps because he’s got a nine-month-old sibling, and this sibling is now starting to crawl around maybe. He’s still dealing with this transition in his life of having to share his mom with this baby who’s taking so much of his mom’s energy and time and affection. That’s scary.

When children are scared, that’s a big reason that they get impulsive and then it’s like they keep going to that thing that they need us to work on. This is all unconscious of course, but it’s like, Work on this. Look, I’m doing this stuff. I’m throwing this stuff around. See me. See that I’m not comfortable and I’m doing this impulsive thing. I mean, it’s still going to be annoying no matter what, but it’s far more annoying if we think our child is just having fun doing something that makes our life harder. That increases the annoyance level many, many times over, right?

What I want to offer this parent is to see that he’s reaching out with this behavior. He’s saying, Hey, look! Help! I’m doing this kooky stuff that I know you don’t like. I keep falling into this trap again and again, and your reaction is scary. I need a more comfortable reaction from you. I need something that sees me. That will help this parent to feel less annoyed about this and more kind of, “Oh whoops, what’s going on, buddy? You’re throwing stuff. I’m not going to let you do that. Are you feeling a little out of sorts? Come here. Stick by me while I do this, that, or the other.” It brings out a whole different feeling in us when we can see the pain in that and the kind of alarm in that behavior, the message, the flag, the help. It’s still annoying that he has to go to that, but it’s less annoying when we focus on what’s really going on there for him.

I’m going to say it yet again—I feel like a broken record—but at least 80% of the questions parents share with me are about this behavior that suddenly started happening when the parent was expecting the sibling or the sibling was there or the sibling was getting towards the end of that first year, where they become more of a person to our older child, more of a threat, more of a rival, less of what they could imagine was a blob (although we know that it’s a person from the beginning). They don’t have control over this person suddenly, who can move all around and get into their stuff. It’s terrifying, right? It can be.

And they need to share that with somebody, with their parent. The way I do that as a kid, unfortunately, is through behavior. I’m not articulate and understanding of my feelings enough to tell you, “I’m really scared about this baby. Look what’s going on,” so I do it like this. We don’t need to dive in right there and talk about the baby with him or anything else, just to know that for ourselves so that we can feel less annoyed. Because this parent and all of us deserve to feel authentic with our kids as much as possible, or at least not feel inauthentic.

This mom says she says, “I won’t let you throw these things around because I’ve just been tidying them and I want the house neat. I’m going to move them away from you.” All of that is so much energy she’s putting into this explanation and these words that aren’t necessary. Because I can guarantee that certainly by three years old he knows she doesn’t want him to throw these things around, that she’s just been tidying them, he saw that, and that she wants the house neat, that she doesn’t want things thrown around.

“I’m going to move them away from you.” That would be something to show, not tell, and just to help him with. “Oops, all right, let’s put these away. I can’t let you do that.” It’s not an explanation of you need me to tell you why this is not a nice thing to do. Our children already know that. So when we’re using up our energy that way, that’s going to make it harder for us to be unannoyed and to see our child’s perspective.

Then she says, “He’ll seem fine with this, move on and then not long after say ‘I want a hug on the couch.’ But I don’t feel like giving him a hug on the couch because I’m still annoyed that he’s making my day more difficult.” Right, so I hope I’ve helped this parent understand a little more why her boy is getting stuck in this behavior and that it’s really not as intentional and it’s definitely not fun as it seems.

And then she says, “Is it wrong to say ‘I don’t really want to hug you right now because I’m annoyed with you, I didn’t like it when you threw the things around and made the house untidy’?” Again, this is getting into all this explanation of things that he already knows. Hopefully she’s going to work on being less annoyed and more understanding of what’s going on here, but she may still be annoyed. I mean, it is annoying behavior, like I said. She doesn’t need to tell him that. He already knows that too.

When we see how vulnerable our child’s behavior is, the vulnerability behind it, it can help us to rise into this bigger part of ourself. This is a little tiny guy doing little stupid things, right? He’s a tiny, immature child and he’s showing us feelings in this really, really immature way. Annoying way, sure, but are we going to let this get to us? This parent can rise above this while still being in tune with herself and her emotions, which is what she really wants, right?

So if she doesn’t want to hug him, first of all, let’s understand why he wants to hug: because he’s frightened. He wants his mom to come back to the other mom that liked him again and he’s trying to fix this. But that doesn’t mean that his mom is in the mood to do that and that’s okay. She can just say, “I’m not going to hug right now, sweetie, but I love you. I’m going to hug you when I can.” Because she does love him. Even if she’s annoyed, she loves him. She doesn’t have to get into that she’s all annoyed and why. He senses why, he just needs to know that they’re going to go on and it’s going to be okay between them. He doesn’t need that hug.

And that’s where this mom can avoid being inauthentic and saying, “Okay, I’m going to hug you,” and then giving him some hug that she doesn’t feel. That wouldn’t feel good to him anyway, right? It’s much better not to do that, we want our insides to match our outsides. But when we understand our child’s point of view, how all this works for them, how all this affects them, then we can feel less annoyed enough to not have to grrr back at him. We can rise into that higher part of ourselves.

Again, I’m not saying this like this parent should do this and be all perfect and everybody should feel like that. I’m not. I’m just talking about the direction we want to go in, where we want to head, and to believe in yourself that this is possible. It’s possible to see your child for what’s going on right now and where he is.

So yes, I’m agreeing with this parent’s wish not to hug, but I would just say she doesn’t need to delve into it so much with him. Because what is he going to do with that? Oh, she’s annoyed. She doesn’t want to hug me. That’s just going to make him feel less comfortable and therefore more likely to behave impulsively. Unfortunately, it works that way: the more uncomfortable our child is because we’re not feeling safe to them, the more of this behavior we’re going to see. It’s not fair, but that’s how it works. And this parent, and every parent, has the power to do this when they understand their child’s perspective, when we can step into our child’s shoes.

This parent then says, “It’s hard to describe exactly but I’m struggling to set the boundaries I want (like, I don’t want to hug you on the couch right now because I feel grumpy) because they make me feel like a bad person and I worry that it will make my son feel like I only like him and want to hang out with or hug him when he’s ‘good.'” This is where this parent is maybe putting this whole onus on herself around this, that now she’s supposed to want to hug him, and if she doesn’t want to hug him then she’s hurting him and not giving him the right message. She can not want to hug him and, like I said, I wouldn’t hug him if she’s not feeling like hugging him. I don’t recommend doing that because that is usually far more uncomfortable for our child than for us to say, “I’m not going to hug you right now, sweetie, but I love you. We’re going to hug a lot later.” You can postpone that reconnecting moment.

One thing that I really, really hope this parent and everyone listening does is to normalize this for yourself, that yes, you are going to feel annoyed and edgy. And we don’t have to get into it, explain it all to our child, but we can identify it for ourselves. Like this parent, she’s got so much self-reflective ability to know she just gets annoyed really easily as a person. So her own triggers are putting her in that position, and that’s something to own in herself right now and to forgive. But she doesn’t need to let him into this adult struggle she’s having. She can just let him know, “I’m not feeling it right now, but we’ll do it later. You know I always love you no matter what.” Maybe saying something like that would help her to feel like she can have a boundary there and still feel like a very good person.

In fact, she’s the best kind of person, because she’s being honest. She is going to repair with him when she feels ready to. When she’s able to digest this a little more and go, Gosh, he’s still doing this behavior because of the way I’ve reacted to it and that’s been scary for him. It’s going to take him a while to calm down.

And it may take other times where she does sit with him and is able to say, “This thing with having the baby is really, really hard for kids. What does it feel like for you?” Whatever he says, whatever complaints he has. Some children don’t complain about the baby at all, they have other things. But whatever other annoying things he’s saying or doing, reflect on those with him. “You don’t want the baby getting into your stuff,” or, “You don’t like that the baby has any toys, do you? You want all of them for yourself.” That doesn’t mean we’re letting him control all the toys that belong to the baby, but we’re not judging him for feeling that way. I don’t know if that applies here at all, but that’s an example of other ways that she can help him share the feelings as they come. Because again, it’s really impossible for children this age to articulate these feelings that they have.

So this thing about setting a boundary, she can do it. There’s no need to say because I’m grumpy and I’m this and that. That’s just going to fuel his discomfort even more. It’s not necessary. We don’t tell everybody in our lives everything. Unloading is not what authenticity is. Authenticity with kids is not doing the tricks and the strategies and the “Where’s Jessica?” or whatever. Those things are what’s inauthentic. Or making a big, Oh yes, let’s hug! while I’m really mad at you. Imagine how that feels to a child. They need our outsides to match our insides. That’s authenticity, honesty with them about things that are going on between us. But we don’t have to tell them every feeling that comes up for us.

This parent’s instinct not to hug when she’s annoyed is very, very positive. And she doesn’t need to worry that he will get the message that she only wants to hang out with him when he’s good as long as she doesn’t get into, Well, it’s because I’m grumpy and you’re making me grumpy. Even if she doesn’t say “you’re making me grumpy,” he knows full well that he made her grumpy. So I’m hoping I can help you feel less grumpy and that when you are grumpy, you don’t have to get into it with him.

Reflect on some of these things I’ve talked about in terms of his point of view. This parent already says that she relates to his point of view. Well, hopefully this is more information that, once you’ve digested and you’ve gotten over your hump of being annoyed, maybe empathize a little with what’s going on with him. You can always come back to him and say, “You know what? I’m hugsville right now. Let’s hug!” And maybe he’ll reject you then, who knows, but you can hear that too and know that that’s another way of him expressing the feelings. “Okay, if you don’t want to hug, you don’t have to. I’m going to be here for a few more minutes, just available. You don’t have to hug me this time.”

This parent says, “It feels like too much of my own baggage to be putting on a 3 year old!” She really does understand this on so many levels and I think it’s heroic and incredible that any parent is working on these triggers. That’s the work she’s doing, out of love for her child and herself. That will pay off, that combined with the understanding of where he’s coming from.

That’s my input. I believe in this parent. I want to encourage her and empower her to feel she can totally set her boundaries with respect, with honesty, with authenticity, and without it creating fear for either one of them. And I really thank her for reaching out to me.

There’s a whole lot more help for understanding our children’s point of view and their behaviors, what’s behind their behaviors, what they need from us, and to be able to embody our role in a way that gives us that confidence that we need to be authentic in my No Bad Kids Master Course. You can check it out at nobadkidscourse.com. And for a light read, my book No Bad Kids. And of course, this podcast. There have been many episodes about everything under the sun to do with raising our children in their early years. So check it out!

Thanks to all of you for listening. We can do this.