All right, welcome to another episode of the Become a Calm Mama

podcast, and today I'm going to talk about

misbehavior. But before I get into that, I just want to say thank you

so much for listening. I've gotten tons of like really

positive feedback from all of you just saying how much you love the podcast and

how helpful it is, and that just makes me so

happy. So thank you. And like I said,

today I'm gonna talk about misbehavior and I'm gonna share

the number one reason why it's hard, okay? So we're

gonna talk a little bit about misbehavior. Really, we're gonna focus on why it's

so triggering and upsetting for you. And then I'm gonna give you

some really concrete and practical steps to

handling misbehavior without resorting to lecturing

and avoiding and yelling and threatening and shaming and all the things

that we don't wanna do. So before we get into it all, I

first wanna talk a little bit about the body stress response,

'cause this is gonna be really important for you to understand why

behavior is so difficult. So first, I want you to like

imagine that you're out walking your dog at night

and you see a pack of coyotes. So I live in

Southern California and we live like next to a mountain and there

are a lot of coyotes that live up there. and I've never seen, well, I

have seen a full pack before, but even if I just see one

coyote when I'm walking my dog, I definitely

get nervous, right? Now imagine that you're walking your

dog and there's a bunch of coyotes and they start chasing you.

In that moment, your brain would activate your stress

response. It would quickly assess the threat and it would decide

whether you should run stop and throw rocks, or

hide in the bushes? Okay, I would probably run,

which is probably not the right thing to do. So this is

what happens with stress, right, with our stress response. There's

something in our environment, and our amygdala

is a part of our brain, and it's always kind of scanning for hazards,

and it's looking around and it's deciding if the thing that's happening is

safe or not. And if the brain decides it's not

safe, that it's a problem, then it's going to activate

your stress response and you're going to get all that stress juice,

right? Like your cortisol is going to start pumping, your adrenaline,

and you're going to go into protective mode and

fight, flight, freeze, or faint. So

this is just how stress works in general. But what's

crazy about parenting is that you

have a parenting brain that is also doing this.

It's kind of looking for hazards in the

environment and determining whether you're safe or not.

And when your child is

misbehaving and you're in a default mode,

your brain is going to interpret that behavior as a

danger to you, to your physical or your emotional

safety, right? Because just imagine when you

have a behavior like screaming,

just someone screaming in the world, if

that happened and it wasn't a child, your brain would be like, uh-oh, they're

screaming, we're in danger. Or if there was screaming on

a roller coaster, your brain would be like, oh, it's It's safe screaming, don't worry

about it, right? It can filter that. But if someone's

crying, or someone's attacking you, like they're blaming you, or

they're being really aggressive, like they're hitting you, or they're

lying, or they're peppering you with questions, or they're arguing with you,

like in any circumstance where those things were happening,

you would feel really stressed, right? These behaviors in

any other life situation would mean that you were under attack.

And your brain would tell you that you needed to protect yourself, like get

bigger, get louder, fight back, or run away.

Your brain would tell you that your power was being

threatened, and a powerless human is a vulnerable human,

like in the, like our primal instinct, right?

A vulnerable human is in danger, and that means that we need to

get to safety and get our power back.

I think of this as your brain on parenting, right? It's like

instead of your brain on drugs, this is your brain on parenting, and it's kind

of set at a high level of like scanning for hazards, because

of course you're scanning for hazards. You are a parent, right? You want to

try to keep these human beings safe and alive, and so

your brain is doing its job, but it sometimes misfires.

Fires. It sometimes sends you

information and triggers your stress response when things aren't

actually dangerous. I mean, if you think about

a messy room, is that actually dangerous?

No. A kid who skips a meal or

doesn't bring a coat or has their shoes on the wrong feet,

those aren't actual emergencies. They're not actually dangerous?

A kid who's asking for sweets a lot or asking for screens or not

sharing, a kid who's oversleeping, someone who's

forgotten a water bottle, lost something at school,

when you're running late or there's a big temper tantrum,

are any of these actually dangerous to you?

They're not. They aren't real emergencies.

Misbehavior is rarely an emergency.

Your brain, though, is going to scream, "Fix it! Change it! Stop it! Solve it!"

because it sees the behavior as a problem.

This is going to happen to you. This happens all the time in parenting. It

might happen today. It might happen tomorrow. There's going to be things that come

up with your kids, like a scenario where your kids are taking too long

getting out of the car, and all of a sudden your stress response is activated.

Or you open the lunchbox and nothing has been eaten and all the food is

wasted, and your brain's like, oh my gosh, this is a big problem, and you

start getting upset with your kids. Or your kid says,

you're the worst, and they walk away and they slam the door. Or

your preschooler's not gonna get in the bathtub, and then they won't get out of

the bathtub. Or you say goodnight and you close the door

and you're almost to the promised land of the couch, and then your child's

like calling out, calling out, jack-in-the-box, coming out of bed.

Now, when these happen, your default brain

might take over and your stress response might get activated and

you might yell or get upset. And I want to just

say that's okay, because in the beginning of practicing

calm parenting, I just want you to be aware. I want you to

notice your reaction to your child's behavior.

Become a witness of yourself and then notice like where do you feel the

stress in your body? Like does it tighten your throat or does it

feel heavy in your chest or do you feel like your, you know,

blood is pulsing? How do you act? How do you treat your kids

when you're in your stress response? What do you say? What do you do?

And then I want you to really think about like what was going on in

the background that was making you upset.

Just kind of growing your awareness, noticing how you

react is going to help you change how you show up.

Now another thing that's going to help you change how you show up as a

parent is learning not to get triggered in the first

place. Wouldn't that be nice, right? Where you're able to

just, you know, have misbehavior be somewhat neutral,

right? When, when you don't feel like it's so upsetting.

Now, this is what we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about learning

to prevent your stress response from being activated,

and you do this by retraining the way you think

about behavior in the first place. When you

view behavior as a problem, your brain is going to

react with that whole fix it, change it, stop it, solve it energy.

But what if you looked at misbehavior as an opportunity?

I know you're probably thinking, oh, come on, Darlene, really? But I'm going to

really kind of show you how misbehavior is an

opportunity. It's an opportunity to teach your child how to manage their

emotions. It's an opportunity to teach your kids how behavior

has an impact on others and to become more responsible.

It's an opportunity to get closer to your kids. Instead of having that

behavior act as a wedge between you, you use the

behavior as a vehicle to get closer, to be more

connected. So to see misbehavior this way, to

become more neutral and even view misbehavior from a

compassionate lens, it's important to understand

where it's coming from. Like, why is your kid misbehaving in the first place?

Knowing the reason your kid is misbehaving is going to

help you feel more compassionate towards them. It'll make you feel less

confused by the whole misbehavior situation,

and it will give you greater, like, clarity. Like, okay, this thing is happening. If

you're calm and you're not in your stress response, you'll know what to do with

it. So we're retraining your brain right now to think

about misbehavior differently. So Here's

where misbehavior comes from. It comes when your

child has big feelings about anything.

About anything. That could be you, your rules, what

happened at school, their sibling, their

perception of you and your love for them, whatever it

is. If they have big feelings, they're going to act out

their big feelings. And sometimes the way they act

out creates problems for others, and we view that as misbehavior.

So all behavior is driven by feelings.

Misbehavior is when the behavior

causes a problem for somebody else or them.

So behavior, really, it's a strategy that your

kids are using in order to take what's going

on inside of them and put it outside of them. So they're

using their behavior to communicate their feeling

with you, or they're using their behavior to

cope with their feelings. Sometimes they're

using their behavior to change the circumstance so that

they can feel better. So this behavior,

I really think of it as a strategy that kids, and all humans,

kids use to communicate to cope or to change?

So I love labels, not for

people, but for behavior. So I've labeled some of these

strategies because I think naming behavior can be

helpful because it puts distance between you and your kid's

behavior. It helps you go get a little curious, like, okay, what is this

behavior? What is it called, right? So one,

I'm gonna name a couple of these different strategies. So

one is move their body. So a way that kids communicate,

cope, or change their circumstance is by moving their body. And what does

that look like? It looks like hitting, throwing, kicking, punching, spitting,

grabbing, pulling, slamming, stomping, right? They're moving their

body in order to communicate their big feeling or to

cope with it. It is one of the main strategies that

we all have access to is to allow emotion to move

through our bodies so that we can get to a new emotion.

Kids are the same, so they're allowing that big feeling to move

through their body by moving it.

Another strategy that kids use besides move their body

is what I call lawyer up. So this

happens a little bit later, like more after 5 or 6

years old, where kids will start to argue

negotiate, challenge, ask repetitive

questions, accuse, interrogate, ask why

over and over. I think of all of that as lawyering up.

Sorry to any lawyers out there. I don't think there's anything wrong with these

behaviors. They are strategies, right, that we use

to communicate, to cope, or to change our circumstance.

So when your kid is negotiating or arguing with you, or

kind of accusing, asking you a bunch of questions, you can be like, ah,

they're lawyering up, okay, okay. Now I don't want you to

lawyer up yourself, okay? I want you just to be able to view

the behavior as an external expression of what's going on

inside of them. Another thing that kids do and

people do, I say kids, but you guys, we all do these, is

complain. So what does that look like with children? It looks like

crying, whining, yelling, swearing, and just

straight-up monologues. So when your kid is kind of

on, like, you know, they're crying a bunch, they're whining, they're

yelling, it's like, oh, okay, this is complaining. This is their

strategy to communicate or cope or change their

circumstance. So they're complaining.

Another strategy is attacking the messenger. They're like,

turn it on you, right? They insult, they blame, they defend, they name-call, they

swear, they try to use guilt, they try to, you know, use these

strategies to turn the situation, and this is their

way to cope, to feel better. They're like, I don't like the way I feel,

and I want to put this emotion onto someone else and make it their fault.

So they're attacking the messenger, which is a lot of times you, because you've had

to say no to something that they want. And when you say no,

it brings up big feelings in your kids, and then they don't know what to

do with those big feelings, so they move their body, they lawyer up,

they complain, or they attack the messenger. A couple other

ones, I don't wanna get too in the weeds here, but I think these are

really helpful just to understand how kids behave. What are

we talking about when we say misbehavior? So another one

is delay. Right? They just like ignore you,

don't listen, they move slowly. I think of it as

delayed compliance, or they lie. So this

is when they have like a delay strategy, and what's going on in their head

is like, if I pretend this thing isn't happening

and I don't do anything about it, I can feel better.

So they're just, you know, working hard to cope with that

discomfort and they're like delaying the

compliance or listening or any of it.

The two last strategies are refusal and negative thought spiral.

So refusal, you know what that looks like, right? They just don't do it. So

they don't move, they don't comply. I also put

like when your kids are doing like sneaky behaviors, like

sneaky sweets, sneaky screens, this is sort of their refusal

to follow the limit. They are, you know,

just not going to do it, so they're going to sneak it. And hopefully they're

thinking, I won't get caught and I can feel better without having any consequences.

So that's a strategy, and it really drives parents crazy.

And then some kids, they go into negative thought spirals. They

start worst-case scenarioing. They go into what-if

questions. They bring up irrational fears, or they

start self-harming or self- blaming or self-critical. And

that is when instead of the attack the messenger, when they take those big

feelings and push them onto someone else, this negative thought

spiral is when your kid's behavior strategy is to

turn that negative emotion onto themselves. It's

another way to cope with the feelings. It's

another indication to you that your kid doesn't know what to

do with those big feelings. So all

of these behavior strategies, they're unconscious.

They aren't malicious. They don't represent a

character flaw in your child. Your child's not trying to

manipulate you. They are trying to

maybe change their circumstance or feel better about it, but

they're not like consciously aware of what they're

doing, and even if they are, it's still a strategy

that they are using to communicate or cope with the situation.

They're taking the messy feelings inside and they're putting them

outside of themselves. So adults have

strategies to cope with feelings too, by the way, right?

We also do these things. Now some of us though have super

duper healthy ways of coping with big feelings,

and like giving ourselves compassion or walking away until we get

calm or talking through a conflict or journaling or going for a walk or

talking to a life coach like me, right? We all, we

have healthy strategies. They're the same in that

we're working, we use these strategies to communicate or cope with our

feelings. There's adults that have less healthy strategies:

gossiping, emotionally checking out, saying mean things,

Yelling, complaining, beating ourselves up, overeating,

overdrinking, avoiding people that we are upset with, right?

We do strategies too, we just don't have an adult

walking around criticizing us all the time.

So sometimes you might have a partner who does that, haha. Okay,

so these behaviors though, they create a lot of conflict

in families, your children's misbehavior. So it's one of the

main reasons why parents yell. And parents will think like, "Ah,

if they would just listen and stop acting out, I wouldn't have to yell."

But that's just not how it works.

Like, they're not going to stop acting out. You want to give them new

ways to act out their feelings, but they're

not going to be able to change their behavior unless

you help them find new strategies. So

when, so think about that stress

response from earlier, right? When you're thinking like, you know, my

kids should be listening to me and I'm yelling to get them to listen to

me, what you're really doing is you're trying to get like more

control over the situation so that you can feel better.

Your brain is offering you a solution of getting your kids to

behave better because your brain wants to like get

everything calm again. And so you're kind of coming on harsh and you're

maybe, you know, your brain's like, okay, let's be more strict and have more

rules and more consequences. And you're

thinking that this answer to misbehavior is

going to be being more firm or being more consistent.

But the problem is the solution of being more strict, it

doesn't address the roots of misbehavior.

If you don't address the underlying emotions, the

feelings that are pushing or driving your kid's

behavior strategy, what you end up is playing whack-a-mole. You know

that old arcade game where the mole comes up and you have

this hammer and you try to whack it down? So I

think sometimes there's whack-a-mole parenting where you have these different

behaviors that are popping up and you keep creating rules and

being really strict and having more consequences and you're whacking at the

behavior, but then you deal with one behavior and then another behavior

pops up because what you're not doing is you're not helping

your child learn better ways to

communicate, cope, or change their circumstance.

I'm not saying that misbehavior isn't frustrating or that we

should continue to just allow it. This is not permissive parenting.

It is compassionate parenting though. What we are doing is we're

looking at the reason the kid is behaving this way in the

first place. We're getting curious. We're moving from curiosity

into compassion. Now it's not permissive parenting because when your

child is behaving in a way that does not work for

others, they do need a limit. It is your job to

make sure everyone stays safe in your house And it is your job to teach

your kids that when they have behavior and it creates an

impact, it's their job to, you know, deal with the impact of their behavior.

So limits and consequences are super helpful because

they create kind of an external interruption of what's going on

inside. But your child is much more

likely to respond to that limit or that

consequence and change their behavior when they feel

seen and heard and understood by you. Because

here's the thing, your child, they have this story in their head

about whatever's happening, and they have a lot of feelings about that

story. And when they behave,

when they show how they're feeling through their behavior, it's

an opportunity for you to see those thoughts and feelings in action. It's a

chance for you to get to know them better. To strengthen your relationship.

It's also a way for you to be able to look at their behavior

and say like, well, that doesn't work. Okay, so what do they need help learning

here? So when you have that clarity and you have

that calm, you're able to look at that behavior

from a more neutral space, and you're just looking at it like, okay,

this behavior is a form of communication. What is it

communicating to me? What is the feeling underneath?

What is the tool my kid needs to cope with this feeling?

Yeah? Okay. So I said I would give you practical

tips, a practical strategy for handling

behavior, and I am gonna do it. I'm gonna walk you through

sort of how to handle these behaviors. So the first one,

always, always, always, is to get calm.

Remember the stress response, if it's activated, if you're looking at their

behavior and you're making it mean something that's dangerous about

like the future, I don't mean dangerous like obviously if they have a

hammer and they're gonna like go hit their brother or something, I want you to

stop that. But what's cool about the stress response is it's really

hard to override it in normal circumstance, it's very

hard to override it when it's actually an emergency. So

as I've said, misbehavior is rarely an emergency,

so it's okay to delay your connection and

it's okay to delay the consequence. So delay is

this concept I teach all the time because when you pause and

delay in the middle there, when you're resetting, you're

resetting yourself back to calm so that you can connect and limit set.

Delay is this really great strategy to manage a

moment without adding any chaos. Because if you go talk to a

person about a problem that was created because of their feelings,

but you're upset, you're not gonna show compassion. So

really, discipline or training your children

and connecting with your children only works when everyone, well,

it only works when you're calm, that's for sure.

Always, always, always the first step is going to be

to get calm and take that pause break if needed.

The next thing I really want to remind you is that a lot of times

behavior comes because you have said no to something that your kid

wants. If your child is acting out because you've said

no to a request or they're experiencing an impact or a

consequence, you're really going to see these behavior strategies.

They're going to bring out, you know, a lot of strategies to

communicate their feelings or cope with their feelings or try to change the

circumstance. So they're going to be moving their body, lawyering up,

complaining, attacking the messenger, delaying, refusing,

or doing that negative thought spiral. So you're

going to be tempted in that moment to give in.

Okay, you're gonna be like, okay, it's not that big of a deal, look at

how upset they are. I don't— I don't want you to do that. I want

you to stay committed to your limit and then allow for some

of that protest. Don't take that protest personally.

So we're pausing if we need to, so we're getting calm,

we're staying committed, and then we're allowing for

some protest. That's just that

complaining and things like that. I'm gonna give you some scripts to how to limit

that. So not taking it personally is also

really important. It can be really hard, especially if they're like

attacking the messenger or complaining to you or

lawyering up to you, right? Or moving their body and trying

to hit you. It's gonna feel really personal. I really want you to remember

it's circumstantial. So you're staying calm, You're staying

committed, you're allowing for some of it, and then you want

to go into connect, right? Using that connection tool,

connecting. I hear you saying, I'm so

mean, Mommy's so mean. Are you feeling frustrated by my

saying no? Like, narrate what is

happening, what you're seeing, and name the emotion. Now remember,

naming the emotion is just a guess. It's just

kind of guessing the feeling and then pausing and letting them

answer yes or no. Then you

use that connection tool and then you have your limit set. So we're

calm, we connect, we limit set. So that

looks like saying, "It makes sense that you're frustrated. It's hard hearing no,

I know. But what else can you do besides name-calling?"

So this is that circumstance where your child's like, "You're so mean! You're the meanest

mom! You're the worst!" Right, that's name-calling.

And so we want to identify the emotion that's driving the behavior

and then set a limit. So connection is identifying the

emotion, limit set is putting a limit on

that behavior. It makes sense that you are frustrated, it's really

hard when mommy says no. If you have older kids, yeah, of course you're

upset, it's hard getting told no, right? You just change your affect.

And then you offer, what else can you do besides name-calling? Name-calling doesn't work.

How else can you tell me that you're upset? How else can you tell me

you're frustrated? So you're calm,

you're connecting, you're setting that limit, and then delaying the

consequence, right? We don't go to correct, which is that fourth step.

So it's calm, connect, limit, set, correct. We're not going to correct until

everybody is calm, like delaying the consequence for the strategy

until everyone is like kind of settled. So

I'm gonna give you a couple of scripts. I think these are funny a little

bit for how to set limits. And

these are like times when your child has like a bunch of big

feelings or is acting them out and you're a little bit overwhelmed or you

want to limit it and allow for some of that

protest but without allowing it to go on and on and on.

Now these are examples. Whenever I give you a script on this podcast,

I am, the limit-setting formula, remember, is

what your child can do and the conditions. I don't get

to decide what those conditions are for you. I don't even get to decide what's

allowed. You do. But I'm gonna give you some of

the scripts so you can hear the language and how it works. So

imagine a kid who's like really, really annoyed and complaining and

complaining and complaining. So you've said like, "Oh, you know, I hear

you, you know, being, you know, really complaining about this limit. Are

you just so frustrated with mommy? Are you so angry about this?" Whatever

age they are. "Yeah, I'm so mad! This is so stupid!"

Then you set your limit. Ready? "I will be happy to sit here and

listen to you complain about my rules

for 2 full minutes. Tell me everything you don't like about this

circumstance." And I would actually get my phone. I've done this so many

times. I would get my phone and I would set the timer. I'd be like,

"Ready, go!" So we're

communicating to our child, "Yes, you can complain.

You can protest within the limit that I am

setting." I found that when I did this, my

kids, especially if I was in really good connection with them,

they would be like, "Oh, forget it." get it, because they recognize that

their complaining isn't going to change the circumstance. And actually, by that

point, they've probably worked through the emotion, so

it's not— they're not even that charged anymore. Does that make sense?

Um, okay, here's another scenario where your kid is like

throwing things, and you can stop.

This is like almost like a hard no, where you're like, listen, you are welcome

to show me your feelings about this as long as you don't throw things.

So listen to how firm my voice got there, because I really am

saying like, yes, you can have these big feelings, but throwing

things, no. And I want to communicate that in a very firm

voice. You are welcome to show me your feelings about this as

long as you don't throw things or throw things at me. Like,

if they are throwing, you know, balls or whatever, you're like, you're

welcome to throw balls outside, you can throw balls You know, you can throw this

pillow, you can give them some options, but you

wanna communicate what the limit is. Here's another

one. When you have screen time rules in your family and your

kid doesn't like them and they wanna complain and complain and complain, you can

say, you guys listen to this, it's so funny. I

am happy to listen to you complain about our screen time rules on Fridays from

6 to 6:15 PM. Would you like to make an appointment?

And then when they get like annoyed or whatever, you kind of

smile and they start to complain, then you go, "If you want to

talk, you can talk, but I'm not listening. I

will listen to you on Fridays from 6 to 6:15."

I had to do this with one of my kids because I had— he didn't

get to play video games until he was much older than his peers, and

it was like an ongoing complaining thing that he wanted to talk about.

And so I would reserve a certain

period of time every week and he could just talk about it with me.

Again, I was committed to my limit, I was

calm, and I allowed for some of it within the limit,

right? This limit script

is when your kid is like really

overwhelming you and you're in your stress response. I want you to be able

to say, "I'm going to take a calm-down break, and I'll be back

to listen to you in a few minutes." Like, just straight up

saying, "I want to hear you, and I will, but I'm going to take a

break first." So this is when you're not ready for that

connection tool and you need to go calm. That's how that sounds.

"I'll be happy to listen to you as long as you speak kindly

to me." You don't have to and have someone

name-call you over and over and over again, you can,

"Uh-uh, uh-uh, uh-uh. I'm happy to listen to you as long as you speak

kindly to me. Name-calling is not kind. What else can you say?"

So you're, you know, setting that limit right there while still

in connection. Okay, I

hope hearing a few of these scripts gives you an idea of how it

works in practice to set limits. In ways that are

respectful of your child's feelings and still allows them to

communicate or cope with those feelings, but within a way that

actually is safe, emotionally safe for everybody, and physically safe for

everybody. So the key takeaway for today is this,

ready? Your child's misbehavior is

triggered by feelings that they don't know what to do with.

Right? That's The thing I really want you to understand is

that your child's misbehavior is triggered

by feelings that they don't know what to do with. Now,

just having that awareness is going to transform how you view your

kids and the story you tell yourself about them. Instead

of thinking they're jerks, they're psychopaths,

or whatever negative thoughts you have about their behavior and

what it means about them as a person, their character. You don't have to do

that. So just knowing, oh, this behavior, this is

feelings coming out, it will change how you view your

kids. It will help you feel more compassion towards your

kids and will make you more connected to them. That's the goal

here, right, is to help your kids know what to do with

their big feelings. So how do you do

that when you're looking at behavior and and getting mad about it, you're

gonna miss seeing that the behavior is

showing you what's underneath. So this awareness will help you feel more

compassion. And also, like, it's

almost like a parenting hack because if you're able to

see that their behavior is triggered by their feelings, it will

help you feel more calm because you're gonna see the behavior

as a temporary strategy. Because feelings

come and go. They rise up, they move through. They rise up, they move through.

It's temporary. And when you see the behavior as a way

that your child is communicating or coping with their feelings, you're

like, "Oh, okay, this will pass." It'll help you calm.

It'll help you not freak out so much, and it will activate your stress response

way less when you understand that this

behavior is acting out feelings,

and there's nothing wrong with my child. It will help you freak out

less and not have your stress response so

activated.