EP 287: How to scaffold "accepting no"

Robyn Gobbel (0:00)

Hey, y'all, so we'll get to the episode that you pressed play on in just a second, but I wanted to make sure that you know that The Club will be opening for new members next Tuesday. The Club is our virtual community of parents of kids with big, baffling behaviors, and you can read all about it over at robingobel.com/theclub. If you already get emails from me, you'll get a message next week reminding you that The Club is open. Otherwise, set yourself a calendar reminder to go to robingobel.com/theclubnexttuesday.

All righty, let's get to that show you're waiting for.

SPEAKER_2 (0:39)

So when your kid's behavior is baffling and yours is too sometimes, yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_3 (0:45)

Let's take a break from all the bamboozle here on The Baffling Behavior Show.

Robyn Gobbel (0:57)

Hey, everybody. Welcome. Maybe this is welcome back to another episode of The Baffling Behavior Show. I know that especially with the guided journal just coming out, we have lots of new folks discovering the podcast and tuning in. So super glad that you're here. Y'all, this episode is one of the episodes that's going to be really packed with information and lots of like practical tips. So this might be an episode you listen to more than once, or you head to the website and check out the transcript, or come and join us in the club because we can then help take all of the information I'm going to offer you in this episode and really make it something that could be implementable. Is that the right word for you in your family? So one of the absolute most common frustrations, complaints, things that leave parents feeling super, super overwhelmed, you know, when I look back over, you know, the course of the last 20 plus years that I've worked with parents and families, almost all of our frustrations with our kids can come down to some form of how difficult it is for our kids to accept a limit or hear a no, or for something fun that they're doing to end, or to tolerate a feeling of disappointment, which is, of course, a part of accepting no or frustration tolerance. So, so, so many behaviors that we see, if we really broke down what's really happening here, the ability to be okay when not okay, right? When feeling disappointed, when feeling like, I don't want to do this other not fun thing when I'm already doing something fun, or I really want this thing and you're not letting me have it, right? There's so much in all of those experiences that are really about frustration tolerance, being okay with just being okay, not being okay. And, you know, I think that another thing that makes having a child who doesn't do well, hearing the word no, another thing that makes that hard is this is a place we judge other parents about, I think, pretty intensely. There's something in our culture that has essentially decided it's basically morally superior to not express disappointment. There's this like bootstraps mentality that goes along with the superior way of just never expressing a negative feeling, like disappointment or not getting what you want, right? There's this way that we've been taught to believe that when you don't get what you want, again, it's like a moral superiority thing, I think, is to just be okay with it. Now, without question, a lot of behaviors that come out of not having a lot of frustration tolerance or not accepting no, some of the behaviors that come out of that are absolutely not okay. But there's nothing like, you know, morally superior to being able to act as though, you know, not getting what you want is just no big deal. And I do think that that's something that's communicated both implicitly and explicitly, culturally, even like from when we were kids. And certainly, as we're judging other parents, there is this big heaping of judgment that gets tossed onto parents whose kids seem to be, quote, unquote, spoiled. Or, yeah, I think that, yeah, like spoiled, you know, like whenever they don't get what they want, they throw a huge fit. And we've decided that that means they're spoiled. And we have a lot of judgment about that for that kid and that parent. But y'all, like childhood is like one big no after another. Kids want to do all sorts of things. They want to have all sorts of things. Kids want all sorts of things. And for a myriad of reasons, they can't have. It might be not safe. It might be not time. I mean, there's so many reasons why kids want something and can't have the thing that they want. I mean, that's kind of life in general. But as adults, we have slightly more agency in many ways about getting that thing we want or adjusting things so that we can have what we want or things like that. I mean, kids just don't have a lot of agency in that. And life is one big, like not getting what you want. All humans are going to experience a no, like a thwarted reach, right? Like wanting something, wanting to do something, wanting to have something, has this like energetic reach, like I want, right? There's like this, yeah, that's the best way I can say it. There's like energetic reach. And when you don't get that thing you want, there is like a thwarting of that energetic reach. And that is always going to be experienced as humans by, as a cue of danger. Now, for kids with a more sensitized stress response system, vulnerable nervous system, those cues of dangers, no, that doesn't need to be both plural. Those cues of danger are just so much more likely to tip that kiddos nervous system into protection mode, right? And then not just tip them into protection mode, but send them like careening down the protection mode pathway. So, there's a no you can't in a million different kinds of ways kids are hearing no you can't. And as we develop, as we grow and develop, as our brains grow and develop, as our stress response system grows and develops, all these things, we develop more capacity to be okay when we are, one, not okay, and two, when we aren't getting what we want. There's a bit of a like, this is like a developmental skill, right? And some folks achieve this skill faster than others. It's really about regulation. And many of us now as adults, again, we're so accustomed to not getting what we want or not being able to do what we want, that we internally regulate through that boundary or that limit or that thwarting without even noticing. It's just like a part of life. And that's a sign of well-strengthened regulatory circuits, right? It's not that those limits eventually become not a cue of danger. It's that as regulation grows, we're again, we're regulating through these things without even noticing. And then sometimes we do notice and we have a disappointed experience or really like, this is a real bummer. And we express that, but also still like regulate through it and then move on. So it's not that having a no or a limit or a boundary isn't a cue of danger to basically everybody. It's that some folks have better capacity to regulate through that than others. Now, luckily for all of us, I believe we can basically scaffold everything. I think we can scaffold things that are really obvious to scaffold, like riding a bike, driving a car. But I also think we can scaffold these things like frustration tolerance, being able to accept no. One of the things we've talked about in The Club recently that we can scaffold is tolerating the hard feelings that come along with reflecting on something you did that wasn't okay. And there is a skill stack underneath that. And there is a skill stack underneath accepting no. And identifying that skill stack is so wildly important because one, it helps us see how complex this skill really is. And I think that opens us up to some compassion.