Welcome back to Become a Calm Mama. I'm your host. I'm Darlin Childress.

I'm a life and parenting coach, and I titled

today's podcast episode what Kids Don't Know.

I've noticed in my practice and when I'm coaching moms that

a lot of times parents are really upset when their kids are

misbehaving. And they kind of have this

unconscious mind belief that kids should know better.

And that really, that thought kids should know better can really lead

us to feeling very upset and annoyed by

our children's behavior. And I wanted to have an episode

that really was about, like, what kids don't know so that

you wouldn't have so many expectations about them knowing

better. Also, just a reminder that you're

going to have to teach your kids how to behave, make

many, many, many, many, many times. So telling your kid once or

having a limit one time isn't really enough to get them

to understand that it is in their best interest

to follow your rules. That takes a long time.

And every time they go through a new developmental stage, they end up needing

to learn it again because their brain has grown and they've created

new neural pathways, and that old framework for. For the

limits or the behavior that was accepted or that they learned was okay

in the past. They are now pushing the new boundary because their

brain has new ideas, new understanding, new

exposure, and they have to be able to expand

their understanding of what behavior is okay. And in that

expansion, they push against the boundaries to figure out how

solid they are. So you are gonna constantly be

resetting limits, teaching new things for kids because they

don't know a bunch of things. So let's talk

about what kids don't know. And I'm framing this conversation

in the concept of social norms.

There are things in a society, these are unwritten

rules that govern behavior within a society or a group.

And that's what dictates sort of what's considered acceptable and

what's unacceptable. And these are like a

shared understanding among the members, what's okay

in certain situations. A very simple example

is whether you should use your fingers or your

hands to eat or not to eat. And different

cultures have different rules. For example, when

I was in Paris last year, I realized and learned

that they never, ever really pick up their food, that they

always use a fork and knife, even with a hamburger, even with pizza.

And that was really surprising to me, you know, and you can go and be

yourself in that culture, but recognize that you might be doing an

offensive behavior. We see this with Parents as well,

in our own culture, where a kid will start to eat spaghetti with

their hands and we're like, what are you doing? Don't do that.

And it's because they haven't really understood the social norm around

etiquette and food and what utensil to use and what's

appropriate. So every culture, every group, every society

has these unwritten rules. And they're helpful because

they create a predictable and harmonious

interaction between society. We do need some social

norms now. Some social norms are

things from the past that maybe we don't like anymore, like systemic

racism or the patriarchy or something like that. There

might be norms that we've decided we don't like and we want to push

against. But as a parent, what we're primarily

talking about is really what's acceptable behavior.

Like if you walk into someone's home, you don't immediately walk to their

kitchen and start looking into their cupboards. I guess you can if

that's your value system. But most of us would find that sort of

rude, right? You wouldn't do it in if you were a grown up. And

when kids do it, we get really annoyed. What are you thinking that's so

rude? Well, kids don't know what is rude. They have

to be taught what is rude. Social norms are what

determines whether something is rude or not rude. So

kids first learn the social norm, then they learn

that breaking those social norms is considered rude.

So we have to teach our kids how to

maintain how to behave socially so that we

don't have chaos and confusion and we have clear

guidelines for how to stand in a line. And like I said, these are

very specific to cultures and groups and subcultures

and every social norm, it reflects the unique

values and beliefs of that society, of that group. And even within

a society, there's smaller subgroups that have their own norms, like

different religions and different school environments and sport groups and,

you know, racial and cultural groups. And so we're

trying to help our kids socialize. If you are in an environment

where you're socializing a child in the world

and you also have a different subgroup, then you want to be teaching your

kids that this is okay in this environment and not in that environment.

And if you think about the magnitude of what is required

for kids to learn how to, how to be a person in

society, it's a lot, it's a lot of work, it's a lot

to remember and a lot to learn. And a lot

of mistakes are going to be made. So I want to first

Let you know that your kids, they're not born

with social norms, that social norms are taught through

socialization, that your job as a parent is to

socialize your kids and raise

them and educate them in a particular culture or

group. You want to give them enough skills and enough

tools and enough awareness of what behavior is accepted so that they can

be successful. Let me give you some examples of that.

We have to teach our kids what they can say and what

they can talk about. So, like, is it okay to use

profanity? That's pretty confusing as a social norm.

In some groups it's fine, in some contexts it's fine. But when

you have a four year old saying the F word, that feels odd,

right? Or a 12 year old swearing at their parent,

that doesn't feel right. But maybe I swear on this podcast sometimes and I use

profanity in a way that is accepted to most of my social

group. Right? Most of the people that listen to this podcast now, you might really

not like it and it might rub up against you. And I've

decided within my authenticity and my integrity that it's okay for

me. But if you and I were in a one on one conversation and

you asked me to refrain from swearing, I would out

of respect for you. So that nuance

is really complicated to figure out what works and what

doesn't. So if I'm speaking to a large audience, I've decided in

this social group this is fine. But if I'm in a one on one situation,

I've made maybe different social norms are expected, made

different decisions with your kids. They don't

know if it's okay to talk about the size of someone's body, whether someone is

very small or very large. We don't know. We don't know if it's. They

don't know if it's okay to talk about wealth or poverty or

homelessness or if somebody looks different, if they have

a face that looks different or they're acting strange.

We don't, when we're kids, we don't know if that's okay

or not. We don't know when you're kids to be able to say like I

don't like you or your breath smells or your shoe is ugly.

Kids are filterless. They don't have any reason to

filter themselves because they don't understand social norms.

So it's complicated for us to talk to our kids and teach them

how. We have so many things to teach them. Oh my God. So many social

norms. And it's helpful in a society

if other people in your social group

are also giving some feedback to your kids. We've

moved away from this in parenting quite a bit, where parenting is almost in

a silo and we don't want anybody else to talk about

how our kids behave. We get really self conscious and worried about it,

and it's because we're afraid our kids will feel shame. I'm going to talk about

shame in the towards the end of this episode. It can be helpful

if you and your friends are all together at your house and all the kids

are together and one of your kids is jumping off of the furniture.

It can be helpful and also a little bit of a relief for the other

parent if you go over and say, hey, you know what? In our family, we

don't jump on the furniture. Would you be willing to not jump on the couch,

please? Or oh, that's really, really loud.

Ooh, can you use an insulite inside voice, please?

Having other adults correct behavior with

love and kindness and respect is useful for kids

to learn social norms at a faster rate. And it can be

helpful for them to hear it from different adults and different

perspectives. Now what happens to moms and dads is when

their kids are being corrected. It's very easy to think that they

are correcting you as a parent, that they're judging your parenting, that they're thinking.

Thinking bad thoughts about you. Maybe they are, I don't know. But

we've moved away from just having other adults say, hey,

cut it out. That's not cool. Like, you know,

stop. That's where aunts and uncles can be really helpful.

Older cousins, you know, different people in your life,

babysitters, things like that. We talked about it in the Working

Moms podcast. Like having other voices in your kid's life who are

teaching them social norms is. Is helpful. Of

course we want our kids to be protected from being told that they are a

bad kid. We never want to tell our children

that they are bad or they are

rude or they are mean. That is

assigning something to their character, their personality. That's kind of

a hardwired judgment. I would

rather someone say, hey, that behavior

doesn't work and really separate the child from the behavior.

Kids have a lot of trouble separating themselves from their behavior. They don't

know how to metacognate in that way. They are who they are. They are

how they act in their minds. So it's really important for us to

say, I understand that you didn't know that. Like, it's okay, it's okay. To make

mistakes. It's okay to learn. It's okay to not know

how rules work in different families. It's okay not to know how the rules work

at the park. You're little, you're growing, you're learning.

Really validating them as a person and

validating the fact that they are young and it's okay to be immature.

So there's so many different social norms. How we greet each other, how

we show affection, whether it's okay to kiss on the lips or not on the

lips. Is it okay to wear your pajamas to school?

Can you wear a costume to religious services? Can you

wear flip flops in the snow? Right. There's

social norms and then there's also physical things our kids don't understand, like

weather and time and money. And

there's just a lot that kids don't know. As parents,

one of our primary jobs is to socialize our kids

and I want to help you become okay

with their immaturity. So like I said, you want to be careful. You

don't want to shame your kids by comparing them to others. Well,

that's not nice. I don't think that Jacob would ever say that

to his mommy. When you say something like that,

I understand what you're trying to do. You're trying to

normalize and socialize your kid and have them

use other's behaviors as a cue to

them of whether they should behave a certain way or not. That's not

really helpful though. We want to help our kids understand

why they're behaving that way, what

emotional need they're getting met or what feeling they're

communicating or what feeling they're coping with and

helping them find a different way to get that need

met. So we're validating them as a person.

We're validating them having their emotions and their needs

and their desires and all of those things. And we're

setting boundaries about other ways that they can get those needs met. A lot

of times I'll see parents using fear of not being accepted by

others to change their kids behavior by saying things like,

do you think kids will want to play with you if you act like that?

Trying to use like rejection and social

ostracization as a tool to change behavior is

very damaging to your children's emotions,

to their self concept, because they need to believe that

kids are going to want to play with them even if they act

poorly like they. We want our kids to believe that they're

lovable and good enough and worthy of love and worthy of attention

and Worthy of acceptance, even

if they are acting out,

acting out a need that they need, acting out a big feeling.

We don't want our kids to walk around with a self concept that says,

I'm not lovable unless I'm good.

I'm not good enough unless I'm perfect.

I'm not safe unless I

make everyone else happy. That's not going to be

helpful. So we don't really want to be using fear or shame or

comparison or rejection. And to help our

kids change their behavior and to help socialize

them because it creates damage in ways that are very hard to heal

in adulthood. This whole podcast is really about

healing the next generation in advance. And I'm

very committed to your children's emotional well being.

And if you've made these mistakes, don't worry about it,

it's okay. You can like heal that by just changing your behavior and

validating your kids. An example of this would be

say your child has an ice cream cone, right?

And one of their friends says, oh, can I have some of it?

And your child's like, no, I want to have my own ice cream cone. I

don't want to share. And then you say, well, that's not nice. Don't you want

people to share with you? Wouldn't you want them to share? And you know,

kids like kids who share. And I'm not going to buy you things unless you

share. You need to show gratitude, you need to be generous and a lot

of momaloguing, you know, and a lot of talking and

lecturing and moralizing. Instead you

can say, hey, it makes sense that you wouldn't want

to share. You were really excited about your ice cream. That's totally

fine. I get it. And sometimes when we're with

other people and they watch us eat ice cream, it can

make them feel sort of sad too. So you can either go

separate and eat your ice cream over there, or you can choose to share

part of it with your friend. So that's the example of

validating the feeling while also limit setting. Now

think about the fact that I'm very calm while I'm saying that I'm not

mad that they don't want to share.

Validating the desire, the human desire to

get as much sweets inside your body as you possibly can. That's

normal, right? It's normal human behavior.

But it's not a social norm that we've decided

as a society we share with others. There is a

real tension when your kids are not

doing the social norm. Like if they're not Sharing the ice cream with

their friend. There is a true risk

in society because when individuals

violate social norms, it can lead to social

sanctions ranging from mild disapproval to

formal rejection. And I think all of us as parents,

we're very, very scared that our children won't be

socialized in a way that makes them successful. We don't

want them to be the odd person out, we don't want them to be

rejected. That's very existential for us. It

feels very scary. And the

best way to get out of that fear is to not

make this moment in time mean anything about the

future or mean anything about our kids character.

So we really want to be able to look at our kids behavior

and think, oh, this is a skill gap. This is a

thing they don't yet understand about how the world works.

This is a social norm that they haven't become

aware of or maybe they have, haven't bought

into. Sometimes we need to let kids

have a little bit of social backlash in their

friend group. Not bullying, not teasing.

No one. I don't want anyone ganging up on each other. But if

you have a kid who never takes a turn on the yard

and hogs the bull, it is

helpful for the group to say we don't want to play with you

today because you hog the ball all the time.

And have our kid feel that just enough

where they say, well wait a second, I want to play the game

and I want to play with my friends and I really

want the ball, but I don't know if I can get all three.

So I, I have a choice. I can go play by myself and hog the

ball all I want or I can figure out a way

to not hog the ball. And when everyone is feeling

kind of happy about each other, they can say, oh, you're doing the

ball hogging thing again. You know, don't do that.

And the social group will oftentimes do a

lot of correcting in norms and helping us find norms. It

doesn't always have to be shaming, it doesn't have to be bullying, it doesn't

have to be teasing. We want our kids to be in community

so that they can rub up against the boundary, fail, not

fail, learn a little bit and then overcome

that. Little kids are going to make a lot of social

mistakes. They're going to hog the ball, they're going to not share,

they're going to maybe tease or taunt or say name calling, different

things like that. And the friend groups will say ew, like

there's something about it that doesn't feel right to them and they'll give

that feedback. Of course we need adults around to make

sure that kids feelings are coached. But we don't need to put children,

we don't need to be so careful that we're always avoiding the

opportunity to learn the socialization by

over policing all the children in how they treat each

other. I don't mean to be too ranty here, but I

do feel that we've done a great job at making

sure kids are emotionally safe, but we

haven't done a good job at helping kids

overcome discomfort. We've almost made

some of the circumstances too protected, too

safe. That the kids aren't really getting a chance to

build that resilience and build that scaffolding

that comes with understanding how the world works.

You don't understand how the world works. If the world is always changing

for you, does that make sense? I hope so.

So your job as a parent is to socialize your kids,

right? You want to give them a basic understanding of what works in the world

and then give them tools to manage themselves. Because we want

our kids to be successful in society. But at the same time the

tension for us is that we want our kids to also have their core needs,

that core need of attachment and their core need of authenticity

to be met. So we want to discipline our child

in a way that encourages them to create and

preserve a positive sense of self. So let me break this down a little

bit. On one hand, we have the social norms, right?

Be nice, be smart, be athletic, be attractive, be helpful,

be likable, care about others, don't hurt others.

Those are like the social norms. But then we also have some

social values. Or maybe they're your own personal values

of be unique, be creative, be yourself,

be authentic, take care of yourself, prioritize

yourself, express your needs, express your feelings. Now

what if you have a child who expresses their feelings, which is really

expressing their thoughts of I don't like you or you have a stinky

breath? Well, that's their authentic

expression, right? That's their thought and feeling coming

out. They're using their words, right? They're saying the thing.

And we know that that has an impact on others

and that might create social problems if they

continue that behavior. So the idea here is

to validate. Yes, you get to have your feelings and

you get to have your thoughts about someone's stinky breath.

But in the world, a lot of people will find

that not kind if you say that they

have stinky breath. Not everything that you think and

feel needs to be expressed, especially if it's an

opinion about someone else. If it's an opinion about

yourself, that makes perfect sense. But if it's an

opinion about someone else and someone else's behavior,

only if it's affecting you. We want to talk about how we think and feel

about ourselves and our experience. So you're kind of giving your

kids the nuance of it. The tension is true.

You want your kids to socialize while also being their authentic

self. So the only thing we need to be worried about here

is that we don't want to have our kids believe

that they can only be loved if they

suppress their authentic self. We just want to

give our kids better ways to express their authentic self

in ways that don't hurt others, but they're going to have to hurt

others in order to understand that those

strategies don't work. So we don't need to over police

kids. We need to let them try it out. Try to express your

feelings, try to express your thoughts, try to express

your desires and see what happens.

And then if they are out of bounds socially, we're going to

give them a limit and we're going to give them an opportunity to correct or

fix their mistake. So we want to be careful

that we don't have our kids believe I'm only lovable

when I am accepted. I'm only safe

when I act like the world wants me to act.

We want them to believe I am lovable even

when I make mistakes. I am safe.

I can trust the adults around me even

when I act poorly.

And by poorly, we really mean out of

bounds socially. We want our kids to be able

to feel that they're good even when they're bad, that they're

lovable even when they make mistakes. We want our kids to believe

deeply that it's okay for them to be young and immature and not

know things. Children actually know that they're young.

They know that they're little. Like, they look at adults and they know they're not

adults. They look at you driving a car and they know they don't know how

to drive a car. When they're young, they look at you using your

ATM card and they know that they don't quite know what that is. They

don't know how it works. They don't really understand time. They don't

understand a lot of things. They know that they are okay with

being young. But then when they act young and they act immature

and they're being socially sanctioned by you, that

feels very, very scary for them. It Feels very

unsettling. That creates a sense of

shame and a sense of, you know, disconnection.

Right? We don't want kids to think that they're only

good and lovable and acceptable when they act a certain way.

We want them to know you are loved and good and acceptable

even when you act out that your emotional

and physical safety is guaranteed no matter how you

act. When they have that sense of internalized security,

they don't have to go into a bunch of maladaptive strategies to get their

emotional needs met. So this is a foundational episode that's

really about how to first validate that there is a

tension between socializing your child and

allowing them to express their authentic self. But

it can be handled in such a way where you preserve both.

And that really is the calm mama process. Ultimately,

it's being okay with your kid's behavior. So that's calm.

Not making their behavior mean anything about their character or

their future. Just see it as it is. Skill gap,

immaturity. Next, validate that emotion that's driving

that behavior. That's the connect. So we have calm, connect, connect.

Helping your kid understand themselves. I think about connect a

lot lately, like connect my kid to themselves.

Connect their outside behavior to their inside behavior. When they

understand what's happening inside, then they can change how they

behave on the outside. Now, sometimes

kids need limits, right? So we calm, we connect, we limit set.

We set limits around the ways that their emotion

or their needs can be met in ways that work for others.

Limit setting is a major tool in socializing.

And then if they make mistake, we go to correction. Giving kids an

opportunity to correct their mistakes that makes them feel

empowered. So we have the commaa process.

Calm, connect, limit, set, correct.

Starting with us. Normalizing that kids are going to make mistakes.

Normalizing kids are immature. Normalizing

that they don't know a bunch of stuff yet and letting that be okay.

If that's your primary takeaway, I'd love that for this week.

If you can have the belief

and communicate to your child, I'm good.

I'm good enough exactly as I am. Maybe

you need to go back and reparent yourself. Maybe

there's parts of you that felt like you had to hide or

not be able to show yourself because of, you know, you expressed yourself in

a way that other people told you was bad or wrong or they told

you you were bad or wrong. For me, one of my

childhood messages was that I was too direct, you know, that

I was too straightforward, that I lacked

diplomacy, that I didn't I wasn't able to communicate in a

way that was kind and really I just had a lot of thoughts

and feelings and I felt very safe to express them. And look,

today I have a podcast, right? I'm constantly expressing my thoughts and feelings.

I had to overcome the shame of hiding

my true thoughts and feelings because I was so afraid of being socially

ostracized, being rejected. What I really needed

in childhood was for someone to come alongside and say, you have great

thoughts and great feelings and you can learn better ways to

share those. So validating my insides

and giving me new tools to show them on the outside, that's

what we all need. So you might need to go back and heal some of

that for yourself so that you can show up more calm with your kids. What

I want you to know, mamas, is you're good

even when you're bad. And I never think of it that way, but

that childlike binary, good, bad,

black, white thinking, sometimes we get stuck

there. I'm a bad mom because I yelled.

I'm a bad mom because I lost my patience. I'm a bad

mom because I didn't go to the end of the year birthday party

or celebration because I was at work. I'm a bad mom.

Don't do that. Don't assign yourself

an identity around your behavior. You are

a good mom. You are lovable even when you make mistakes.

It's okay to be new at this parenting and not know things.

It's okay to be a beginner. You are safe

regardless of how you act. You're good.

You're good enough exactly as you are. If

no one tells you that, at least re listen to this. I'm

telling you that. And you get to tell your kids that. It's okay to be

beginner, okay to make mistakes. It's okay to

learn new things. It's okay.

You're okay. You're lovable. You're good enough.

So that's my message to you this week.

Kids don't know things. They just

don't. And your job is to teach them lovingly and

gently. All right, mamas, I will talk to you next

week.