A parent writes that her 5-year-old consistently resists getting dressed, brushing her hair, bathing, or brushing her teeth. “What starts as a simple transition can turn into an hour-long battle, with both of us ending up overwhelmed and the task often still unfinished.” This mom has tried everything she can think of—timers, countdowns, reward charts, silly games, punishments—but nothing seems to help. Janet explains why these well-meaning strategies can sometimes work against connection, reframes what these daily struggles may really be asking of us, and offers a perspective on confidence that could change the way this parent approaches the next difficult moment.\
Transcript of “When Daily Tasks Turn Into Daily Battles: Transitions, Conflict, and Real Connection”
Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.
Today I’m going to be responding to a parent I had an exchange with, I think it was in Facebook Messages. She’s struggling with her child’s resistance to transitions in general and tasks that are often part of transitions, like getting dressed, combing hair, taking a bath, brushing teeth. And it’s really getting this parent down because she wants to connect positively with her child and her child to feel that trust between them and she’s worried that she’s undermining that with these struggles that they have on an almost daily basis, it seems, with transitions.
I have a lot of thoughts for this parent that I really hope will help her—and anyone listening—clarifying some really, really important things about what connection really means, about what respecting our child really means, and how conflict and connection can actually happen together. And that’s a relief, right? We don’t have to choose one over the other. We can face conflicts with our child in a very connected, honest way.
Here’s this parent’s note:
I’ve been listening to your podcast for years and it’s given me so much relief and confidence as a mother. I’m a single mom to a sweet, affectionate, social butterfly, beautifully bossy five-year-old who will start first grade this fall. Her father is minimally involved. My mom is my main support and, as a nurse, I work a lot more than I would like.
While I always imagined a slower, more peaceful family life, our reality is often busy and demanding. She has to navigate many transitions that are often inconsistent, especially in terms of the co-parenting situation. I often do not know when or how that will go. Even so, I want us to move through these years feeling connected and secure if possible.
The struggle I keep running into is around daily tasks. Since about age three, my daughter has strongly resisted getting dressed, brushing her hair, bathing, and brushing her teeth. I’ve tried timers, countdown, a game we play called “Get Dressed Race” to make it fun, silly getting-dressed games, reward charts, and punishments. I often say, “I see you don’t want to get dressed right now. Let me help you.” What starts as a simple transition can turn into an hour-long battle, with both of us ending up overwhelmed and the task often still unfinished.
Over the years I’ve tried to approach this through an Unruffled lens: less pressure, more connection, acceptance, and leadership. But lately I’m wondering if I’m missing something. Her resistance doesn’t seem to be improving with age and sometimes it almost feels like she’s compelled to fight these transitions even when she wants to move on with her day.
How do we know when a child needs more support moving through discomfort versus when a parent needs to hold a firmer boundary? Is it possible to be so focused on staying connected and respectful that we inadvertently get stuck in a pattern that isn’t helping our child grow? I would love any insight you might have. I adore my daughter and truly want to help her develop the skills she needs to navigate life while preserving our relationship. Thank you for everything you do.
Then I wrote back:
Hi! I’m thinking I could maybe address your concern on my podcast. I have a question, though. Can you describe your thoughts around this idea of “connection”? What does that mean to you? What does it look like? What does all of this mean to you: “less pressure, more connection, acceptance, and leadership”?
And here’s what she wrote back:
Thank you for getting back to me, Janet.
When I think about being connected and unruffled, “less pressure, more connection, acceptance, and leadership” means feeling confident in my role while being on the same team as my daughter. I want to communicate in a way that respects her, shows that her voice matters, and teaches her that she deserves respect so we can move through life with confidence.
At the same time, life still requires us to do things that are hard, uncomfortable, or simply non-negotiable, and I sometimes struggle to know where that balance is. I often notice that my own negative self-talk echoes the messages I absorbed growing up. As a millennial, a lot of parenting was rooted in stuffing uncomfortable emotions and correcting behavior. While there was plenty of love, struggles were often approached through a behavior-focused lens. I want to give my daughter a different inner voice that is encouraging and compassionate even when things are hard.
Yet these moments around transitions seem to bring up exactly the patterns I don’t want to repeat because we both genuinely get stuck. I think part of what makes this so hard is that I’m not just parenting my daughter, I’m also trying to rethink a lot of what I’ve learned about parenting. Sometimes I find myself second-guessing both myself and these principles at times. But truly when I take a moment and recenter with your podcast, it’s like I find my voice as a mother again and honestly, almost immediately things aren’t as hard.
Thank you.
Thank you to this parent! That was very encouraging, that my podcast helps her that way. But what I appreciate so much more about this note, especially this last response, is the care and thoughtfulness and insight that this parent has. It’s pretty extraordinary. I wrote back to her: “This is beautiful what you’ve written here. You are a wonderful mom. I think/hope I can clear up some things for you to help guide your way. You already have everything else you need.”
That’s what I felt reading this note. I felt, wow, this parent already understands so much about what’s going on here and that’s more than half the battle. And then there are a couple of things that she talks about that I feel like I can help give her more clarity on. And by doing so, give her all the confidence that she needs to handle these situations.
First I want to backtrack to the path that she’s taken so far in responding to these behaviors. At the same time, I want to help her and everyone understand how much sense it makes that this child is struggling in transitions. I mean, it makes sense for all children because they’re in such an internal transition of growth in these early years. Then when there’s a transition like the parents’ separation, children often comment when they’re old enough to, that when their parents are divorced or separated, the most difficult part for them is the going back and forth, having two different homes, two different lives, having parents that are in two different places. And this doesn’t mean we should feel bad if we’re in that situation, only that it will help us to come into parenting with more confidence when we know that this is very typical behavior that this child is showing.
And the fact that she’s going into first grade and she’s this social butterfly and sounds extremely confident, she’s “beautifully bossy”—I mean, I personally love that kind of child—sweet, affectionate. And going into first grade, that’s a big transition right there. But it seems like this little girl’s handling all of that, her outside life, beautifully and that is a testament to this parent and the way that she’s handled things and the genuine connection and love and trust that these two have together. So she’s already done all the hard things and here’s what I think is holding her back and keeping both of them stuck, as this parent says, in these uncomfortable transitions.
The first is that rather than handling these situations with connection and confidence, she’s doing what a lot of us want to do: resorting to these strategies that actually get in the way of us connecting honestly, person to person. That’s the timers, the countdowns, the games we play, the reward charts, the punishments especially. All of those things are kind of outside fixes rather than getting the practice that we need and that our child needs from us, really, that we’re being real right now together. This is what’s in front of us. We have to do this. You don’t want to do it, not at all. This is a big old drag. You don’t like this.
Whatever you’re saying, again, the words don’t matter, but really, really allowing those feelings to be. Because what your daughter’s sharing here, what children share in these moments, is not that brushing their teeth is the most painful, horrible thing or that getting dressed is this giant, awful thing. It feels overwhelming right then because they’re filled with the deeper feelings of having to face these transitions. So these are just the little outside things. They’re not what’s really going on, which is that this girl is saying, I need to be a mess with transitions. This is where it’s coming out. Can you gather me through these overwhelmed feelings? Can you stay confident in the face of my overwhelmed feelings? And that’s the hard part, right?
This isn’t to say that those other strategies or tactics or whatever don’t ever work in the moment, but I don’t think punishments work at all because it gives us the opposite of connection with our child. And I know this parent doesn’t want to be doing that, I’m sure. Reward charts, where we’re kind of gaming our child and they feel that, they know that it’s us trying to make it happen without really dealing with it and really connecting with them. And the games work best when they genuinely come from us feeling on top of this. If these are just things that we’re trying because we just want to make this work, that’s going to bring us down. That’s going to make us feel more tired, more uncomfortable, especially when it doesn’t work, less honest in the relationship and more like we’re having to perform.
What I want to say here every single time is that we never need to perform as parents. It should never need to feel like a performance. It can always be us as our real selves, relating to our child as their real, honest selves. Even when it’s hard, even when it’s overwhelming, that’s what works. That’s the through line through all of this that helps our child to not get stuck in these situations and for us not to get us stuck. Because there can’t be a power struggle when we’re not trying to pull the wool over them in some way, push them through. Instead, we’re facing what’s going on. We’re welcoming what’s going on. We’re still going to help our child get from point A to point B. We’re going to do it with the power and strength that we have when we’re being our real selves, not resorting to the tricks or the little games or whatever. And they get to be as overwhelmed as they need to be.
Because here’s the interesting thing and why it’s so wonderful, or at least for me, it’s so helpful for this parent to share about her experience and this setup that’s so common. I mean, how many of us come to parenting with this sense that we don’t have the experience to stay in connection when there’s conflict? We were only connected with when we put those feelings away and our behavior was pleasing. That’s when we were able to connect with our parent, not at any other time. But it’s at these other times when connection can be so powerful and help us through with our relationship not only intact after every one of these conflicts, but even stronger.
This parent says: “I often notice that my own negative self-talk echoes the messages I absorbed growing up. As a millennial, a lot of parenting was rooted in stuffing uncomfortable emotions and correcting behavior. While there was plenty of love, struggles were often approached through a behavior-focused lens.” So without meaning to, and in a much kinder, gentler way, this parent has kind of been repeating that, or at least that’s what she was doing in the past. But all of those things that she was trying are ways of avoiding our child’s uncomfortable emotions and really just trying to fix the behavior. So it’s a kind, loving way of doing it, but it’s giving the same message of, I’m not comfortable with you sharing these overwhelmed feelings you have in these very minor transitions and tasks. I’m not comfortable with you being overwhelmed. I need to just make this go well.
Now, that’s understandable! This is how we all feel and we all want it that way. But it will help this parent to take a look at that and see that that’s why none of that’s really working, ultimately. It may have worked a couple times here and there, but it’s not helping this parent be on the path that she’s expressed so eloquently that she wants to be on with her daughter: respect, connection, encouraging her daughter’s voice, showing her she deserves respect so she can move through life with confidence, which she’s already doing. We want to continue that, right?
But at the same time, as this parent said, “Life still requires us to do things that are hard, uncomfortable, or simply non-negotiable, and I sometimes struggle to know where that balance is.” So again, it’s not a balance. These are one and the same. Respecting her, showing her her voice matters and teaching her she deserves respect, having that quality connection with her that helps her keep moving through life with confidence and their relationship moving forward with confidence can also teach our kids that they need to do things that are hard, uncomfortable, or simply non-negotiable.
In fact, this teaches it better, because the message we want to give them is that when it’s hard, uncomfortable, or simply non-negotiable, we’re there to help you through. And you can be a mess during that. In fact, we want you to share every bit of that with us. We’re not going to let it discourage us. We’re not going to let it rattle our confidence. We’re still going to be that leader for you. In fact, this is what we expect to happen because we know that you’re sparkling in life right now and that means you need somebody to be that other side with. I want to be that person for you. I’m not afraid of that.
Now I realize it’s easy for me to say this and a lot of people out there are probably disagreeing and just saying, Just give her an answer of what she should do, Janet! You always want us to work on our perspective and how we’re seeing things and how we’re understanding things. Well, there’s a reason for that and that’s because no matter what I or anyone might suggest this parent does, it won’t work the way she wants it to without her confidence in facing these situations, her belief in herself that this is connection and she can do this as her real self. She doesn’t need those games and fix-its. She can express things that she’s expressed in this note directly to her daughter. Like when she’s struggling to get dressed or whatever: “Ugh, this is life, right? We have to do these things and it’s a big old drag. Cry about it with me and let me help you pick up the pieces here.”
This parent said she doesn’t always know in advance when the daughter has to make a transition. I mean, that’s hard for the parent and it’s also very hard for the child. If this bubbly girl was accepting all of this disruption without having a lot of feelings about it, that would be strange, right? When we expect the mess, we can meet the situation knowing there’s nothing we can’t handle here.
Yes, there will be times when we let things slide. “You know what? We don’t need to comb your hair. Let’s just do it like this,” or “I’ll just put a ponytail on.” There’ll be other times when we say, “Okay, now we’ve really, really got to do this, honey.” But since we’ve been practicing this honesty and this acceptance of our child, that will work too. Because what our child wants from us in these situations is the real us. They don’t want the jolly us, the gamey us. They want somebody that really sees them, really accepts them, and can be honest about, “Look, unfortunately we’ve got to go. This has been your life, that you have to pick up and go and pick up and go. And it’s so hard.” I don’t know if this parent has had that kind of conversation with her daughter. I would encourage her to, because the more she can open up and allow her daughter to open up, the safer both of them will feel and the deeper their connection will be.
She’ll find she gets less stuck when her agenda isn’t to avoid, which I sense is what’s going on here, because she feels like either we have a big, awful conflict or we avoid it somehow. But this parent can handle the conflict. She can be in it with her and still be the leader and still be respectful and still even be kind, but be honest and say, “Look, we’ve got to go and I really need your help here, my darling.” And we try to remind ourselves not to push back on all the complaints and the whines, because it’s all good. This parent doesn’t need to worry that this is connection and that’s not. It’s all connection.
This parent said when she thinks about being connected and unruffled, it means confident in her role while being on the same team as her daughter. So this parent is very confident, she said, in some ways, but not in this part. And maybe she also feels, I don’t know, sometimes when parents separate or get divorced, there’s guilt around that. No. This parent has every single thing she needs, except a little more confidence. Because she sees that this is all really, really positive when her child is acting like this. It’s inconvenient, yes. It’s loud, maybe. Yes, it slows things down sometimes, but don’t let it slow things down too much. You’ll find you have more strength with what I call confident momentum the more you give in. It’s like the strength we have when we’re allowing those waves to pass by rather than trying to stop them. There’s so much power in letting go and letting the feelings be. It’s scary, but it gives you strength.
And yes, maybe there’ll be things that she misses, things that don’t work out as planned. We won’t have a perfect bath every time, sometimes we can have a quick shower. What matters is the dynamic and how you approach it, how you feel about it, because that’s what kids feel. When kids get stuck in something, it’s often because they’re not quite getting something they need from that, so they have to keep trying unconsciously. And I believe she’s not quite getting this feeling that it’s okay for her to be a mess. So rather than trying to override her feelings or avoid them or punish them, bring it on. It’s safe. There’s nothing to feel intimidated about here.
This parent said, “what starts as a simple transition can turn into an hour-long battle.” Yes, because, without meaning to, we’re pushing up against the feelings or trying to avoid them or override them. It’s like a storm that we’re trying to stop. It’s a frustrating experience that takes way too much time, much more time than it does to really lean in with confidence and enough momentum, just in your attitude, to do your best to make it work.
And the worst that happens is you’re late or she doesn’t get her hair perfectly brushed that day or brush her teeth that one day. But even when those things happen, just think what she can learn there. She can learn, Hey, my mom is on my team. My mom is not intimidated. My mom holds a limit in that she’s doing her best to get me through. I’m getting what I need then, as this child. And then while I still may have feelings that build up, it won’t happen as much. They won’t take as long because I know we’re a team and my mom can meet this with confidence too and be that leader that can contain what’s going on with me. Not take it on herself, like she did something wrong. It’s quite the opposite. She’s doing the most loving, brave, honest, powerful thing. Kids sense that.
I hope this parent can proceed with confidence. I know, we gain the confidence when it works! But in this case, it works because we gain the confidence. This parent can be confident knowing that by hook or by crook, she’s going to get through each of these transitions and tasks, or maybe there’ll be some she lets go for that day. But not only can she connect and be respectful by being her whole self, that’s really the only true way to connect.
Just getting back to this parent’s original questions: “How do we know when a child needs more support moving through discomfort versus when a parent needs to hold a firmer boundary?” I don’t know how we can hold a really firm boundary with something like a transition or a caregiving activity or a personal task like brushing hair, getting dressed. This isn’t something where we can hold a very firm boundary because it’s not something that works when we force it, when we hold our child down or tie them to a chair and brush their hair. That’s not going to work for us. These kinds of situations take something different. They take that finesse, that give and take where yes, we’re firm in that we’re going to do this, but we’re not going to force it. We want to work in teamwork with our child.
But the thing is, when we’re doing that and even when we’re holding a firm boundary around other things that we can hold firm boundaries on, we do want to hold ourselves firmly in terms of our confidence, knowing that when we hold that boundary, that’s how our child gets supported moving through discomfort. This ideal dynamic that we want to practice, and that the timers and countdowns won’t help us practice, is allowing our child to move through their feelings while we’re holding the boundary. That’s how it works. And that’s why it’s such a time of connection, because we’re saying, We’ve got to do this and I’m going to help make this happen, but at the same time we’re also saying, You really don’t want to do this and this is not fun. It’s so hard on you to have to keep making these changes, move all your stuff and sleep in another place. Whatever our child is saying, whatever our child is expressing, accept and acknowledge that, fully. Empathize with it if you can. That’s helping our child move through the feeling and it’s the same thing as holding a boundary, often.
And this parent says, “Is it possible to be so focused on staying connected and respectful that we inadvertently get stuck in a pattern that isn’t helping our child grow?” Yes, but only if we are defining or understanding being connected and respectful as moments when we’re laughing together with our child or avoiding them feeling uncomfortable somehow and just waiting for them to give us permission to help them out the door. The definition of connection and respectful is you get to be who you are and I get to be who I am. I’m the leader here that you need to help you, and part of that is allowing you to feel all the things. That’s as connected as we’re ever going to be with our child.
I realize this is an unfamiliar groove for that parent to be in, as it is for all of us. That’s why it takes so much practice. That’s why I would encourage her to not only be thinking about all this and what she’s seeing going on here, but also to let go of the charts and the tricks and have a conversation with her daughter. Depending on how much of this she’s been doing, just very openly saying, “Look, we’ve tried all these things. I don’t want to do that anymore. I just want to be with you and help you when I know these are things that are really, really hard for you.” And yes, they’re small things, and we could see it that way, Why is she making such a big deal about small things? But they represent, as they always do with kids, deeper things that she really needs to share with her precious mom.
I really hope this makes sense. I encourage this parent and all parents to believe in themselves and believe in this idea of messy, messy connection. Because that is what’s real and true a lot of the time, unfortunately.
Thank you so much for listening. We can do this.
