Stop Letting Your Child Control You

Lisa Bunnage (0:00)

They like heightened emotions from parents, whether it's good or bad, okay? If she's not getting enough of the good stuff, she'll go for the bad stuff.

Amy Bunnage (0:06)

She feels like she knows everything she needs to and doesn't listen to advice.

Lisa Bunnage (0:09)

Are you telling her what to do? Are you lecturing her? Are you offering advice where it's not really necessary?

Amy Bunnage (0:13)

He doesn't listen and starts acting up and being cheeky towards me when I try to tell him no.

Lisa Bunnage (0:17)

You say no, and then you say, but it just makes them worse. I'm like, so? Welcome to the BratBusters Parenting Podcast. My name's Lisa Bunnage. I'm a parenting coach, I'm a mom, I'm also a grandmother.

Amy Bunnage (0:27)

And I'm Amy Bunnage, Lisa's daughter, and I handle the marketing and planning here at BratBusters. While I don't have kids, each episode we'll dive into parenting topics, and Lisa will answer your questions. Let's get started.

Lisa Bunnage (0:39)

Okay, sugar pants, what are we talking about today?

Amy Bunnage (0:41)

Today's topic is about letting your children be in control.

Lisa Bunnage (0:45)

Okay, which a lot of parents do, and they're very frustrated by it, and they don't know why they're doing that, and how they stop, et cetera. So we'll get into that, I'm sure.

Amy Bunnage (0:53)

Do you approach this any differently depending on the age of the child?

Lisa Bunnage (0:56)

Hmm, that's a tough answer because it depends. Maybe I, you know, not just this though, but I deal with a lot of stuff differently depending on the age. That's why it's not this specific topic, but a toddler is very different from a 17-year-old, so.

Amy Bunnage (1:13)

Okay. Well, I think let's go into one topic that I do want to cover before we get into the parenting questions, and that's the idea of when children have control, you often talk about the fact that they don't really want it.

Lisa Bunnage (1:24)

They don't. They want a leader. One of my favorite, something the kid said, a teenager was really in some big trouble with the police and everything. And I was chatting with them, and he said, my parents didn't love me enough to make me a good person. Like he identified, I said, they didn't discipline you, and he goes, yeah, that's right. He didn't want it now, but he identified that. Isn't that fascinating?

He just got that, and I thought, wow, I'm going to file that one away in my memory. Yeah, and I did.

Amy Bunnage (1:50)

And then do you find that parents often do this because they feel like it's like the kinder option, giving their kids more control or?

Lisa Bunnage (1:56)

I think there's a lot of stuff out there that says you want to give them choices. And you can with some stuff, but not with a lot of stuff. They tend to go overboard with that. And this is what usually happens when I'm working with parents. I notice this with almost all of them, is they will try and give them a lot more control, but they'll do it in all the wrong places. Like they'll say, well, you know, do you want to wear this or you want to wear that? Which is fine if they don't fight you. But if you know you've got a kid who's going to fight you on that, you don't give them choices. You don't give them choices over things that you know are contentious. So they tend to give them choices on everything. And what do you want to eat for dinner tonight? And then you have to cook something special just for that kid. Then you get sick of this because it's not working anyway. You're not getting any respect. Of course you're not because that's ridiculous. They're going to walk all over you. So then they tend to ricochet the other way. So I call it the pendulum swing. They really go with the pleaser parent style, thinking that's the way to go because it sounds lovely, but it's ridiculous. It doesn't work at all.

And then they swing to the other way because it's not working. Then they become the tough authority and they end up yelling and being stern and all that. And that doesn't work. That's better than the pleaser though. If you're going to fail on either side, go with the authority.

Amy Bunnage (2:57)

Okay. Do you want to get just right into the parenting questions and go from there?

Lisa Bunnage (3:01)

Good idea.

Amy Bunnage (3:01)

My nine-year-old has a pretty big ego. She feels like she knows everything she needs to and doesn't listen to advice. She often doesn't listen to instructions and comes up with reasons why she won't or tries to negotiate to get something she wants before handing a task, like getting into the shower or picking up her room. She also has a habit of coming into a room or conversation and making it focus on her. Sometimes disrupting meals and pulling her little sister from being helpful to get riled up and also not listen. I feel like these all come from her wanting to be in control of the situation and gain attention, though largely she has free reign over her downtime and chooses to play video games or other things away from the family.