Project Parenthood

Stop solving all of your child's problems

Episode Summary

Stick around till the end to hear about how to practice identifying who has the problem during interactions with your child.

Episode Notes

It’s challenging to see your child frustrated, angry, or having trouble, so it makes sense that you feel the urge to help them when they’re struggling. At the same time, having you jump in to solve their problems isn’t always what your child needs. Dr. Nanika Coor offers suggestions for figuring out when a problem is yours to solve and when it’s more helpful to facilitate your child finding their own solutions to their problems.

Additional resources:

Project Parenthood is hosted by Dr. Nanika Coor. A transcript is available at Simplecast.

Have a parenting question? Email Dr. Coor at parenthood@quickanddirtytips.com or leave a voicemail at 646-926-3243.

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Project Parenthood is a part of Quick and Dirty Tips.

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Episode Transcription

Hey parents! You're listening to the Project Parenthood podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Nanika Coor, clinical psychologist and respectful parenting therapist. Each week, I’ll introduce you to the same respectful parenting practices that I use to help parents repair and deepen connections with their children. You’ll get tips for cultivating more parental self-compassion, more cooperation from your kids, and more joy, peace, and resilience in your relationship with them.

In today’s episode, I’m talking about how to identify when a problem is yours or your child’s problem to solve, and effective ways to handle each situation. Stick around till the end to hear about how to practice identifying who has the problem during interactions with your child.

A common dynamic I come across in my practice is parents who feel pulled to solve all of their children’s problems. Whether it’s big feelings, social dilemmas, body image issues, trouble with academics or a teacher, or sibling rivalry—there are many parents who hold the belief that it’s their responsibility to make sure their child rarely-to-never experiences frustration, sadness, disappointment, anger, annoyance or other difficult feelings. Parents can even become self-critical about not being successful at solving their kids’ problems.

The issue with taking on all of your child’s problems is that it causes you unnecessary stress, it erodes your relationship with your child, and you miss countless opportunities to be a trusted consultant and guide to your child.

Dr. Thomas Gordon’s Parent Effectiveness Training, or P.E.T., promotes a punishment-free and democratic model of parenting that teaches parents how to use non-evaluative active listening, honest communication of their feelings via what’s called “I-messages,” and no-lose conflict resolution skills to foster more peaceful and collaborative relationships with children. One component of P.E.T. that I find particularly helpful is the concept of problem ownership.

What’s acceptable and what’s not?

To help conceptualize this concept, Dr. Gordon uses a rectangle called a Behavior Window. Every parent views all of their child’s behaviors through their own particular window for that individual child. The entire area inside the Behavior Window represents all of the possible behaviors of your individual child. Behaviors are defined as something your child does or says, rather than your judgment of the behavior. Your child leaving their jacket, backpack, and shoes on the floor inside the front door is a behavior. Calling your child a “slob” is a judgment of that behavior.

As a parent, your ability to be accepting of others’ behavior fluctuates from day to day and moment to moment depending on both your internal and external environments. You’re also parenting a child who deals with the same fluctuations! So obviously you’re going to experience both feelings of acceptance and non-acceptance in relation to your child and their behavior. Dr. Gordon represents this in the Behavior Window by dividing the rectangle horizontally into two parts. The top half is labeled “Acceptable Behaviors” and the lower half is labeled “Unacceptable Behaviors.”

For flexible-leaning parents, the line of demarcation might stay pretty low, and the Unacceptable Behaviors area is very small because they feel generally accepting of most of their child’s behaviors. On the other hand, another parent may tend to be more rigid and less accepting of their child and the Unacceptable Behaviors area takes up most of the Behavior Window most of the time. But even for parents who lean toward more or less acceptance, that line of demarcation still will rise and fall depending on the situation, the child and parent’s temperament and personality, and everyone’s inner state. No parent can be accepting 100% of the time.

Now—imagine a new Behavior Window horizontally divided into thirds. The bottom third is still the area representing your child’s unacceptable behavior, but it’s now labeled: “Parent Owns the Problem”. The top two-thirds still correspond to your child’s behaviors that fall into the “acceptable” category. However, the top third is now labeled “Child Owns the Problem”. And the middle third is labeled the “No Problem” area—the child’s behavior isn’t a problem for them or for you. Let’s take a closer look at these areas.

Parent owns the problem

Your child’s “unacceptable” behaviors are those that actually or potentially interfere with your basic right to get enjoyment and satisfaction from your existence, or those that prevent you from meeting your needs. This could be something like your child stalling at bedtime when you’re anxious to have some kid-free adult time after they go to sleep, or playing their video game too loud for you to hear what your partner is saying. In some concrete, tangible, and direct way their behavior is affecting your ability to meet your needs.

Inner feelings of unacceptance might feel like annoyance, resentment, anger, or frustration about your child’s behavior. You might experience muscle tension or other physical discomfort, having negative thoughts about your child’s behavior or feeling hypervigilant about controlling their behavior. Those are all signs your child’s behavior falls into Unacceptable Behaviors part of the Behavior Window.

This means that you own the problem—so it’s your job to help yourself. P.E.T. advises using “Confrontation Skills” to try to modify the behavior that’s causing you a problem by bringing about some change in your child’s unacceptable behavior. This calls for taking a stance that communicates to your child, “Hey buddy, I’ve got a problem and I need your help.”

Many parents experience discomfort around asserting their rights and needs. If you’d like some suggestions for how to do that, check out a previous episode I did called How to Talk So Your Family Will Listen To You. In that episode, I talk about using non-violent communication tools to ask for help getting your needs met in ways that maintains connection and reduces defensiveness for everyone involved. You can find a link to this episode—and the other episodes I’ll mention later—in the episode description in your podcast app.

Child owns the problem

Your child will also experience problems in their own life—independent and outside of their life with you—that are frustrating, disappointing, painful, or even devastating. They have problems with friends, siblings, teachers, parents, and sometimes themselves. When kids get help solving their own problems they maintain mental wellness and develop resilience, mastery, and agency.

When your child is thwarted in satisfying their needs, or their own behavior is causing them a problem, your child owns the problem. You’ll know because they’ll likely be expressing feelings of frustration or unhappiness. Your child’s concerns, confusions, frustrations, deprivations, and even their failures and mistakes belong to them, not you. You don't have a problem because your child’s behavior isn’t hindering your needs in any tangible way.

This calls for taking a stance that communicates to your child, “Hey buddy, it seems like you have a problem—do you need my help?” This is where you’d put your non-evaluative active listening skills to use. You’ll find ideas for active listening in my previous episode called How To Listen So Your Child Feels Heard.

Both parent and child own the problem

Inevitably you’ll encounter situations with your child where active listening or honest communication about the problem you’re having with your child’s behavior doesn’t result in a change in the said behavior. Your child “needs” to engage in a particular behavior even though you’ve made them aware of how what they’re doing is interfering with your own needs. This is a situation where your needs conflict with your child’s needs, so the parent-child relationship owns the problem.

At these times you’ll want to use a no-lose method of conflict resolution where you collaborate with your child on a mutually acceptable solution to the relationship problem. I talk about this kind of conflict resolution in a previous episode called How To Reduce Your Child’s Challenging Behavior, if you want to get some ideas for brainstorming solutions with your child.

When you work together with your child to find a solution, your child is more motivated to hold up their end of the agreement and you don’t have to spend as much time running around behind them like an enforcer. You also end up with solutions that neither of you could have come up with on your own—both of your creativity is needed to come up with mutually satisfactory solutions. Your child develops critical thinking skills as you evaluate each solution for whether or not it’s realistic or sustainable or meets everyone’s needs. You also increase connection by working together!

Consulting, modeling, and accepting

Sometimes your child will feel strongly about doing their own thing and living their own life—acting out their own beliefs and values about who they want to be in the world. Often kids feel they have a right to hold their own values—even if they differ from yours—as long as they can’t see how it affects you in any concrete or tangible way. You can’t problem-solve with them unless they accept the logic that what they’re doing interferes tangibly with you meeting your needs. Your child will rebel against any of your efforts to take away their freedom—like trying to change them or mold them into the person you want them to be through pressure or harassment.

Your child is a separate and independent human being with a life of their own. If you use your influence with your child to try to change their behaviors that don’t interfere with your life, you’ll lose your influence to change their behaviors that do interfere with your life! Every time you listen to your child with empathy and attentiveness without owning their problems, you make deposits into the bank of goodwill between you. When your goodwill account balance is high, your child is able to listen to you with empathy and acceptance. You’re able to act as a consultant. That is, you’re able to share your life wisdom and expertise with your child—including facts about the tangible and concrete negative effects their behavior has or may have on them (not you)—that they may actually take in and hopefully take on your values. You need to accept, however, that the final decision is theirs.

Whether you like it or not, you’re teaching your real values just by living your life. Your child will model what you actually do in your life more readily than they will do what you tell them they should do. So if it’s important to you that your children read books, exercise, write thank you notes, and practice give and take in relationships—let them see you doing those things in your own life. Your actions will always speak louder than your words.

In the end though, your child is their own person. You could potentially use your parental power to coerce your child to change their actions, but no amount of parental power can change your child’s thoughts, beliefs, and values. Only they’re in charge of those. Sometimes the only way to reduce conflict with your child is to accept what you can’t change. There will be behaviors that you just can’t change and your child just won’t stop doing. At those times you also have the choice of modifying your own attitude. You can practice radical acceptance—which I’ve talked about in a previous episode called How to Practice Radical Acceptance As a Parent.

Problem-free times

This is when you and your child are getting along well—you’re chatting or playing or working on a task or project together, sharing an experience, or just quietly enjoying each other’s presence. This is where you share your personal opinions, thoughts, ideas, and memories with each other. There’s no conflict between you at all, so have fun!

Practice makes progress!

For 7 to 30 days, challenge yourself to classify each situation in your relationship with your child so that you know whether to actively listen to your child, send a clear and direct “I-message” stating your problem, or just hang out and enjoy time together.

Each time you sense a “problem” in the interpersonal field between you and your child, before reacting or responding—ask yourself: “Who owns this problem?” Notice what happens to the amount of ‘problems’ that exist as you start using these active listening and assertive communication skills regularly. Does the no problem area of your Behavior Window for your child get any larger?

Test it out and report back!

There’s no getting around it. Your child will inevitably run into all sorts of problems in their lives. Trust that your child has real potential for finding good solutions for the dilemmas they find themselves in. When you give your child all of the solutions, you’re inadvertently creating a dependency on you to solve every little problem they might have. And rather than developing good problem solving skills, they’ll keep bringing them all to you to solve. Also—when you own all of your kids’ problems, you’re pressuring yourself with too much responsibility for coming up with great solutions to other people’s personal problems—it’s an impossible task.

If you only take one thing away from today’s episode it’s that you don’t have to assume responsibility for solving your child’s problems! Instead, help your child by letting them own their problems and facilitate them working through the problem-solving process on their own.

Accept that your child is having the problem. Accept your child as a person who is separate from yourself. Trust that your child has the inner resources to solve their own problems. Use your concern and care about your child’s problems to be a helping agent for your child in solving their own problems. You might find that you and your child begin to spend a lot more time in that problem-free zone of your Behavior Window!

Don’t forget to check the episode description in your podcast app for links to the other episodes I mentioned!

I hope that’s helpful! You can learn more about my work with parents at www.brooklynparenttherapy.com and on Instagram at BKPARENTS.

If you have more questions about problem ownership in your relationship with your child or any other parenting questions or stories, leave me a message at (646) 926-3243 and be sure to let me know if it's okay to use your voice on the show. Or, send an email to parenthood@quickanddirtytips.com. And don’t forget to subscribe to Project Parenthood on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Catch you next week!

Sources: 

A P.E.T. Glossary. (n.d.) The Acorn Within. Retrieved from: http://www.theacornwithin.com/blog/2015/2/9/a-pet-glossary

Gordon, T. (2008). Parent effectiveness training: The proven program for raising responsible children. Harmony.