The Whole Parent Podcast
The Whole Parent Podcast
Separation Anxiety #014
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Conquering Bedtime Battles
Every parent has felt that tug at their heartstrings when they have to leave a child who's clinging to them, pleading for just one more hug. That's the moment you wish you had a magic wand to ease those tears and fears.
Join me as I guide you through the emotional landscape of separation anxiety in children, exploring its nuances across ages two, three, and six. We'll unwrap the layers of this complex issue, offering a blend of professional expertise and personal experiences that will arm you with strategies to help your child build security and independence.
You'll discover that the delicate balance between fostering resilience and providing comfort isn't just about toughing it out or giving in—it's about the dance of attachment and development. We discuss the importance of the non-preferred parent's role, the power of comfort objects, and the gradual exercises you can employ to strengthen your child’s coping skills.
These are the small, achievable victories that can lead to big changes, and we'll explore how to create these opportunities within the rhythm of your everyday life.
As we round out this heartfelt conversation, we'll focus on the importance of establishing a solid foundation for your child's emotional well-being. From the reassuring rituals that cement secure attachments, to innovative techniques like role-play and 'yes and parenting,' we'll cover methods to validate and reassure your child through transitions.
And for families navigating the complexities of divorce or simply day-to-day goodbyes, we provide guidance to ensure your child feels the stability and love needed to thrive. So, whether your little one clings to your leg or waves goodbye with confidence, this episode is your companion in nurturing their growth every step of the way.
I know that when you get home whether you just commuter to the train or whatever it can feel like, you know what. I got to just go upstairs, I got to. You know, take my work clothes off. I got to put my work clothes on. Whatever it feels like. You know, I got to go to the bathroom right when I get home, like whatever the thing is that you feel like I have to do this right when I get home. I want you to take that. I want you to say I can do that five minutes after I get home, but for the first five minutes, deeply connect with your kids and this is going to help.
Speaker 1:So much separation anxiety. It's a brand new day. Wake up every morning and say it's a brand new day. Take a good day, make it great.
Speaker 1:Okay, hello and welcome to the whole parent podcast. My name is John and I am at whole parent on all the social medias. This is the podcast that is designed to help you parent more effectively, with confidence, and raise resilient and healthy kids. Today, on the episode, we are going to be talking about one of the most popular questions that I get all the time what do I do with separation anxiety? How do I help my child deal with separation anxiety and we are going to talk a little bit about some different aspects of separation anxiety. I'm also going to link in the show notes that, if you want to specifically have an episode about bedtime, we had one of our first episodes I think it might even been the second episode ever of the whole parent podcast was about bedtime and referred to some separation anxiety related to bedtime. Also, just in general handling anxiety things. There's another episode on that too. So as we continue to build up our repertoire in our library of podcast episodes, I strongly recommend that you go back and you listen to some previous episodes, because I'm going to try not to go over the same things over and over again in the same pieces of advice, but it may relate to one piece of advice or another, and the same thing is true with the sleep episode. So we had a whole nother episode Our first guest episode all about sleep, and we have more awesome guest episodes coming up soon, and so that episode is another one that you can go to to think about sleep.
Speaker 1:But I want to talk about separation anxiety and today, on the episode, what we're going to do is we're going to go through three different types of separation anxiety. Three questions, as we always do, from parents just like you, and the first one is for a two year old and the next one's for a three year old and then, lastly, an older child. I believe they're six years old, yep, six years old. So we're going to be going through all three of those and we'll take a little break in the middle just to let you know how you can support the podcast. But before that, let's get into the first question, which comes from Shannon. Shannon says hi, I'm Shannon.
Speaker 1:I'm really struggling with my two year old daughter, who has developed severe separation anxiety. Whenever I try and leave her, whether it's for work or just run a quick errand she becomes extremely distressed and clingy. I've tried various strategies to help her feel more secure, but nothing seems to be working. Help, shannon, I am right here with you. I totally understand how you feel.
Speaker 1:I am not the person in my family who tends to have the separation anxiety issues with my own children, but I have definitely been through this with my wife as it relates to our kids. So we have had three kids who have been two years old at some point. One of them is two years old right now, and I am right with you in that this can be such a stressful thing, especially as a parent, where you feel like man. There are things that I have to do, right, not just from a practical standpoint there are places that you have to go, there are errands that you have to run but also just from a mental health standpoint. Right, we can't constantly be surrounded by our kids 24 hours a day. Parenting is, by all respects, a full-time job, an eternal job, seemingly. You just kind of, once you're a parent, you're never not a parent, but we need that time alone, and so I totally understand where you're getting to with this, and it's really easy to feel like man. But I could just never be away from my kids, right, I could just do all those errands or I could just practice self-care when my kid is asleep. And I actually don't think and from the experts that I've spoken to about this that is not the best way to approach this.
Speaker 1:I do think that we were experiencing a little bit of a pendulum swing, where in the past, especially in the 80s and 90s, there was this very, very high premium placed on independence in young children, and that was, in many ways a reaction response to the 1940s and the 1930s and just going way back to the post-Victorian child-during practices of the first half of the 20th century. What you have is this extreme aversion of trying to build in condition in by-behaviorists, total and complete individual self-sufficiency in very young children two years old, even younger, six months old and this is where you get a lot of those behaviorists who said really horrible things and gave really really poor advice that we now know from psychology and longitudinal studies did not work effectively. Our goal should not be to raise completely independent kids. However, we're experiencing a lot of times a pendulum swing from that. So where that was on one extreme, now we're experiencing a little bit of the other extreme, because parents are so I don't want to say attuned, because that's not really the word, but so unwilling to allow their child to express any frustration or any distress whatsoever related to separation, related to being away from their parents. That actually what winds up happening is that you condition your kids to do the opposite.
Speaker 1:So one of the most important things that you can do as a parent is to actually work with your child so that they can move towards a more robust view of attachment which sees them attaching to multiple people, not just you, and is that going to create some dissonance and disconnection? Will it feel that way? Will there be some tears? Will it feel challenging at times? Yes, but what we know about attachment is that attachment is as much about how we prepare our children for long-term mental, emotional, relational health as it is the things that we do in individual moments, and so we're going to talk about a couple of things here that can really really help with separation anxiety. But there is also going to be a level of parental movement that has to happen.
Speaker 1:So if you're totally and completely unable to hear your child in any sort of distress, for you want you and then not immediately go to them, that's something that you're going to have to work on as well, right, and so I am totally the type of parent personally who, when my kid cries for me, I go to them, and so don't hear me saying that I'm not going to advocate for any sort of extinction method where you're just going to let your kid cry for you, you know, for a long time and not help them and not go to them. I'm not saying that at all. But there is going to be some difficulty and some frustration and some level of distress in your kids, because they do want to be with you 100% of the time and that isn't feasible. And so as we go through these three kind of things and as we continue on this is true for all the parents, not just for Shannon but for anybody who's struggling with separation, anxiety in your child they are going to have to learn to build up a little bit of a tolerance to that separation. So what we're going to do is we're not going to erase this, we're not going to magically fix this. It's not going to fix itself overnight Again. We're not going for the extinction method of just like we're going to let them scream and cry for us until eventually they just get over it and kind of become numb to our absence. We're going to go through some, some really consistent things that work well, without feeling like man, I'm totally abandoning, abandoning my child. But if you're like I can't do any of it, I can't allow my child to want me at all and not go to them, then this is going to be challenging for you, without a doubt. So let's kind of go through a couple of things that I might, that might help, and the first one is to understand that small wins in parenting and this is a universal parenting truth but small wins in parenting become big wins in parenting over time. So if you want to help your child do anything frustrating, it starts by small steps becoming slightly larger steps becoming big steps.
Speaker 1:Now sometimes kids in, for whatever reason, whatever they're learning or whatever they're, you know, working toward it, can feel like man. It's not, it's not a linear growth and that's a normal thing. That's a normal thing into child development, it's a totally normal thing in education. Educators have known this and child education specialists have known this for a long time. You know, when your child's learning how to read, it doesn't tend to be like a linear thing. They don't learn. You know what? They don't get 1% better every single day. Sometimes it feels like they have made no progress for a week. Sometimes it means it feels like they've made and this is the same thing with trying to get some acclimation to separation. It feels like they have no progress in a week. Sometimes it feels like they're worse this week than they were last week.
Speaker 1:We're going to kind of get into that here in a moment with our next question, but but over time, over the aggregate, when you look at it. Step back and take the long view. You'll see that that progression does happen. Some days it'll feel like man. Yesterday they were struggling and struggling. They hadn't made any steps towards feeling connected and secure, and then all of a sudden today it's like night and day. That can happen. And so take the long view.
Speaker 1:Understand that you're not going to win this battle in a matter of moments or days or or individual things. We're going to go for the gradual approach and to do this effectively. You are literally going to set down times when you're going to separate from your child, even if it means you leave the house, you go sit in the car for five minutes and then you come right back in For short periods of time. And this kind of goes back to our bedtime episode as well, where they're going to have short wins where they feel like, okay, I can do this Now. This is especially true for little kids, but it is no less true for older kids. Small wins turn into big wins, and so my first step if I had a child who had severe separation anxiety could not let watch me walk out the door, could not watch, let me be gone for any period of time.
Speaker 1:And, by the way, like I said, I might not be that person, but my kids have definitely felt that way about my wife, and so I've navigated this from the inside right, I've been the one inside, I've been the securely attached, non-preferred parent who's trying to navigate this at home while my wife is at work or away or whatever. And so just understand, I've been there, I totally understand it. I don't necessarily, I can't totally and completely empathize what it's like to be the parent who has to walk out. You know, I've had that happen a couple of times, but not near with any sort of consistency, and so I don't want to make it sound like you know, I know you when I can only imagine what it would be like. I haven't experienced it, but I have been the parent on the inside and so maybe that's helpful as well. So the first thing I would do is I would literally, like I said, set a time and anticipate I'm not actually going to go anywhere. I'm going to go, sit in the car for five minutes and then I'm going to come back. Or I'm going to go, get in the car and I'm going to drive around the block and then literally park back in the car, like however you want to do it right If you want your child to physically see your car going away, because maybe they're not two, maybe they're three or four, and that would be helpful for them so that they don't know that you're just sitting there.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I'll often recommend to parents who are struggling with separation anxiety is that if one of the parents is who they're, who they're asking for, if they know that they're specifically in the home, somewhere they're in a bedroom, upstairs that can be incredibly disconcerting to the child, because the child can will then call out for their parent. They know their parent can hear them and then their parent isn't coming. It's much easier for the child to at least understand in some way that the parent is who they're preferring, who they're having the separation anxiety with is physically gone for a period of time. And this is the same thing with preferred parents. Right, I'll have another episode on preferred parents sometime in the future, why kids have a preference for one parent over another, where that comes from evolutionarily, and all that other stuff, and how we can kind of move towards some more holistic understanding of hierarchical attachment, which is actually a good thing in kids.
Speaker 1:But this is going to be the same advice that I give them, which is you're going to walk outside, you're going to get into your car and you're going to drive around the block and then you're going to come back five minutes and in that five minutes your partner, you can I'm going to get here into comfort objects and routines as like two aspects of this as well. So this is kind of it's not like three step process here. I'm kind of giving you an overall three tips that can be used kind of with each other. But your partner's going to do is your partner's going to be reminding your child the whole time yes, mommy is coming back, mommy is coming back, mommy will be back soon. Let's go over here, let's read a book and then by the time we're done, mommy will be back. Mommy will be back for gone for five minutes. Then mommy will be back, whatever it looks like just a constant reaffirming of hey, we understand the connection has been broken, mom has left.
Speaker 1:That is a struggle, but we're going to build up that tolerance to that disconnection or I don't want to say disconnection, because it's not disconnection, that distress tolerance related to separation. We're going to build up that distress tolerance related to separation by having these short confident wins right, the short wins that build confidence, I should say. So drive around the block by the time you come back. You know, the worst, worst, absolute worst case scenario is that your, your child, is upset, but with an attached caregiver, and they're expressing their emotional distress by saying you know, I don't like this, whether that might just look like crying for a two year old, but they're not just crying alone, they're not crying and inconsolable, they will be with a securely attached caregiver. And so even if, in the worst possible case scenario, that they cry for the whole time that you're gone, whether it's five minutes or two minutes or however you want to start, you know that they're safe and that they're with a securely attached caregiver, now that caregiver is going to have to have a level of distress tolerance as well to be able to affirm hey, it's good actually that your kids cry when you leave. It means that they care about you, it means that they love you, it means that they feel secure and attached to you. And so if you have a child who shows no emotion, right in attachment studies, we can look at this stuff.
Speaker 1:There are literal studies done on this of parents leaving and coming back and how kids interact, and that can be the basis for whether we define child as being anxiously attached or securely attached or ambivalent or disorganized attachment, like we. We actually define that based on how the child responds to their preferred caregiver leaving and because of this, when your child is crying, that's actually a good sign that you're securely attached to your child, that they feel comfortable with you and that they want you to be there. That's okay. Now, if they have another caregiver who they're securely attached to, over time, what's going to happen is, as they build the confidence that mom is going to come back, they're going to be able to kind of get through that disconcerting separation more quickly and then, when you come back, they'll be able to reconnect more effectively. And so when you know, when I hear about parents who say, oh, my child never had separation anxiety. Oh yeah, I just dropped them off and they didn't even care, and then when I came back it didn't seem like they cared about me. They were just having so much fun that they didn't even acknowledge my presence Okay, that's a sign of not necessarily the most healthy attachment.
Speaker 1:I'm not saying that kids are not unique personalities. They absolutely are. Some kids will show their connection with you differently, some kids will be more overt in it. Some kids will hide their distress for whatever reason. But just understand that if your child is like seemingly doesn't care when you leave and doesn't care when you come back and just has no indication that they, you know, are wanting to show you what they've been doing, et cetera they ignore you when you come back that's a sign that they're trying to cope with a really some function of attachment wound that you may not be aware of. And so we're going to start with five minutes and then we're going to go to, you know, 10 minutes. Then maybe you'll run to the store and over time these small wins are going to kind of accumulate and get to bigger wins. So bigger wins. And so what are two tips that I have? And again, this goes for all of the people on here. Right, I know I'm going kind of super in depth on this one specific aspect, but this is going to go for all of the people on this list, all of the questions that I'm answering today.
Speaker 1:But the next thing that I would say as far as trying to build this with your child is Number one, to have a consistent routine as it relates to you leaving and returning. That can look like a lot of different things. I know parents who are just like, okay, I have to give you a hug and I have to wave to you as I, you know, get in my car. Or we have to wave as the car pulls out of the driveway. Or, you know, we set a timer for when mom's gonna be back, even if that timer is eight hours from now. Right, all of those can be you know specific phrase, that you say a poem, that you say a song, that you sing. It can be any of those things that Help to build toward consistent Kind of neural pathways that you're building in. So when you leave, here's what you do, and when you come back, here's what you do.
Speaker 1:And and one of the major major pieces of this I would say as a parent and I know that this can be really, really hard for parents who are working, but I just want to emphasize this one of the major pieces is I know that when you get home, whether you just commuter to the train or whatever, it can feel like you know what I got to. Just go upstairs, I gotta get my clothes on. I gotta, you know, take my work clothes off. I gotta put my work clothes on, whatever it feels like. You know, I gotta go to the bathroom right when I get home, like, whatever the thing is that you feel like I have to do this right when I get home. I want you to take that. I want you to say I can do that Five minutes after I get home, but for the first five minutes, deeply connect with your kids. Deeply connect with your kids and this is gonna help so much separation, anxiety. Same thing is true with nighttime, right, if you're like I just cannot be present with my kids until I have that first cup of coffee, get up before them and have the first cup of coffee so that the first five minutes when they're awake, you can connect deeply with them and it's gonna make bedtime so much easier on the other side, because they know that that's what's coming. So now they're tying you leaving and you returning with this deep, intimate, connected time, and so if you can spend that couple minutes before you leave with your child, then go and then connect with them when you come back and make that really, really, really important.
Speaker 1:So, whatever that routine is, make sure that it includes to some extent a Connection period, a re. You can almost call it a repair period. Right, because you've left and I don't want to make it sound Like you didn't have to leave, you probably did like I again, no parent can be on the clock 24 hours a day as the only one. If you are, you're setting yourself up for for not Healthy parent, child dynamic and relationship. They should learn to to cope to an extent with other Caregivers. They should form hierarchical attachment again, we'll get into this in another episode but where they have multiple people that they're attached to, being only attached to one caregiver is not good for kids, and so if you are allowing for that by because you are Unable to cope with any level of distress in your child, you're not setting them up for long-term physical, mental, emotional health.
Speaker 1:And so just establish that routine related to a hug, whatever, and it can feel a little bit like repair, like, hey, I was gone. I didn't want to be gone, but I had to be gone. Now here I am, I'm back, tell me what happened, tell me about your day. This is gonna be a great time to do some affirmation practices, to do some reflecting gratitude practices on the day. This is gonna be a time for you them to tell you about their day. I think that that's so awesome, because kids will tell you about their days if it's like this Crazy thing that happened, but like really all that happened was like they colored a picture of a banana or something, and so I would say that that predictability that can really really help kids. And because, ultimately, what separation anxiety is about I should have gotten to this a lot earlier in this episode, but what separation anxiety is all about at the core is the fear that you will be gone forever and so anything that you can do that says no, no, no, I am gonna come back and I am Predict this is what it's going to look like when I come back Helps your child to set that predictability up, because children are terrible predictors of the future.
Speaker 1:This is where most of their anxiety comes from. Anxiety is thinking about the future and kind of I don't know what the right word is here Obsessing about the future and the potential negative outcomes. Children are experts at this because they are not good at predicting the future. They don't have the prefrontal cortex development to to be able to adequately predict the future, to be able to take into account things you know, like probability and time. They don't have a really clear understanding of how long time has passed, especially kids that are this young two years old, three years old, etc. And so because of this, this can be really really helpful. And so, setting up that clear routine and I'm gonna get to the comfort object here in the next question, but you'll, as we continue on Shannon here, the other things that we're gonna say and and and just Take heart in knowing that the confidence comes and it comes from the slow acclimation to the separation. And so the more you can build in the routines and then the more that you can make that really predictable and have some really quick wins, the better off you're gonna be okay.
Speaker 1:So the next question is for a three-year-old and I'm gonna wait and do our kind of our break in the middle of the episode After this question, because I really want to tie these two questions together. So this one's Mary, who needs help with her three-year-old son. Okay, so the last one was a two-year-old, this one's a three-year-old. I'm looking for advice on how to help my three-year-old son cope with separation anxiety. Recently, he's been having a tough time when I drop him off at daycare. This has never been an issue until now. He becomes very upset and screams when I go off to leave, which makes it hard for both of us. I want him to feel secure and comfortable when we're apart, but I'm not sure where all this is coming from and from what and from what changed.
Speaker 1:Okay, so the short answer is your child grew up a little bit. That's where this comes from, mary, and I don't want you to feel like you did anything wrong. I don't want you to feel like you're a bad parent. You're not. You're probably an amazing parent, especially if you're asking questions on this podcast and you're a listener of this podcast. That means you're probably an amazing parent, and because of that, I don't want you to feel like this is somehow your fault. It's not.
Speaker 1:Kids go through separation anxieties and it can Track with some developmental things, and so this is happening at three years old for your son. This often happens later. Five years old, even six years old kids will develop separation anxiety where there seemingly was no separation anxiety before, and so we can we can talk about a lot of the things that we just talked about in the last answer the slow acclimate. The Slow acclimation, even though it feels like, well, we've already done that, yep, but we're gonna need to do it all over again. And the reason for this and the routines that's gonna become huge. We're gonna have to reestablish those. And the reason for that is because, developmentally, what happens is that as kids grow and Get smarter, they also get more robust Imaginations that allow them to predict worse and worse potential outcomes. So we're an 18 month old who maybe became a two-year-old and a two and a half year old who may have been in daycare for that entire time.
Speaker 1:Some kids start in daycare very young, or maybe it's a home daycare or something like that. Those kids may actually begin daycare before they have the cognitive ability to have asked the question what if mom never comes back? What if dad never comes back? What if? And then these are usually the questions that happen with four-year-olds and five-year-olds what if they get into a car accident? What if something happens to them while I'm gone? What if they forget about me? All of these questions come from the, the budding development of young children, where, in their internal world, all of a sudden they're able to think more comprehensively and more Thoughtfully and they can kind of catastrophize in these ways, and the reason for it is actually because they're growing and changing and Getting older, and that's a beautiful thing, but it can make our job a little bit more difficult. This is why, like I said a lot of times, four-year-olds and five-year-olds will just all of a sudden get afraid of the dark. Why would they do that? Why they were never afraid of the dark before. Well, now there can think about the things about the dark that feel scary.
Speaker 1:Not all separation anxiety comes from this innate drive, evolutionary drive, to be around our primary caregivers. A lot of it does, but not all of it. Some of it comes from our own Overactive imaginations, and that is a beautiful thing that kids have such active imaginations. But it can pose difficult you know unique circumstances like this where all of a sudden, a child who never had separation anxiety has separation anxiety, and so in this case I want to offer you a couple of things, a couple of unique ways in which you can do that.
Speaker 1:But the first thing I want to do is offer the tip here and this again goes for all of the different separation questions that we have today of finding a comfort object, and so comfort objects can be anything from home, whether it's a toy or a blanket, but the one that I like the most of all is actually a picture of you and your child together, and the idea of a comfort object is that the child can tie the existence of that object, which is very concrete and firm, to you and also keep it with them when you're not with them. And so you know, we talk about object permanence and things like that. You know, when you go away, it's like you cease to exist. With young kids, with a three year old, having a physical picture of you with them while you're gone can feel so incredibly comforting because it kind of reestablishes for them. Here's the person, here's what they look like, they're not gonna forget about you, they're coming back in X, y and Z amount of time, and so if this works with your two year old, I'm to this is to Shannon this works with your two year old great. A lot of times with two year olds it can't work by three. This can be really, really helpful Mary the person who asked this question to give them a picture of Polaroid, whatever of you and your child and they can take it to school with them, or you can give them something with your scent on it, right, if you wear a certain perfume or a certain cologne and you wanna spray it onto their blanket a little bit, I mean, be careful with that, because you don't want them like shoving a bunch of chemicals in their nose and burning out their nostrils, because these are things that are designed to be diffused and kind of create an aroma. But, you know, spray it in the air and wave their blanket through it or something like that. That's fine, because for them that physical object becomes a concrete sense that you are still in existence somewhere in the world and that you are coming back for them. And so that can be a thing that's incorporated into the routine, where you just say to them do you have this thing, are you ready? I'm gonna leave now, here I go, but you have this and I'll be back and I wanna hear about your day when I come back. And so setting that expectation this kind of goes with the routine thing of what it's gonna be like when you reconnect that can be very, very helpful With kids who go into separation anxiety sometimes they're also.
Speaker 1:What this signals to us is that they're also old enough for some role play based or open ended play based therapy. And when I say therapy here, I'm not using the term in the clinical sense, I'm using the term in the way in which you can do therapy with anyone at any time. But play based therapy can be things like role playing with toys. This person goes off over here. Right, you can do this with puppets. Very famously, fred Rogers was really really good at using his puppets, which were kind of like aspects of his personality, and using those in role play in the land of make believe on Mr Rogers neighborhood, and acting out stories and visuals for kids of like, okay, well, here's what happened when Daniel Tiger if you didn't know this, daniel Tiger is based off Mr Rogers neighborhood. When Daniel goes off and is away from his mom, or when Daniel goes off and is away from Miss I forget what her name is, the woman who the only human in the land of make believe, or not the only one, but one of the only ones when he's away from her. This is how he feels.
Speaker 1:These types of role playing with toys can be super, super helpful for kids who have moved into separation anxiety over time, because it kind of shows us okay.
Speaker 1:Well, now they're telling themselves a different story, and that means if they're able to tell themselves a different story about how separation is happening and what that means, then that means that we can also leverage that same imagination to tell them a different story, a better story about coming back and continuing to be in connection with us, and then, as always, validation and emotional support.
Speaker 1:This is the age where it starts, and so you know, a lot of times, with kids three years old just expressing to you I was afraid that you were gonna be gone forever, or I don't like it when you leave, just reflecting back to them, instead of I call it blocking versus accepting, just accept that that is their real inner world and that that inner world is real to them, rather than trying to block that and say, no, you know, I always come back, which is our instinct as parents. We want to oftentimes make our children feel better, and I don't wanna say we're gaslighting them, because it's not really the proper use of the term, but we can kind of take their emotions from them and say that's not a good thing to feel, you don't need to feel that way. But instead of saying you don't need to feel that way. We often say you shouldn't feel that way. Right, you shouldn't feel like I'm not coming back. Look at all the times when I've come back in the past.
Speaker 1:Instead just say, wow, you felt like I was going to be gone. That must have felt scary. I would never leave you. So that's different than saying you don't need. It's different than saying don't feel this way because I would never leave you. You say you did feel that way and that's very scary and I will never leave you. And so this is what I call yes and parenting. So just always yes, the feelings. Yes, you feel like I was gonna be gone forever and I won't be gone forever. I will never leave you. You know you feel this way.
Speaker 1:Yes, and this and this, by the way, goes the same when we talked about discipline stuff in the last episode, or maybe those two episodes ago, we were talking about discipline and we were saying you know, holding boundaries, you can, yes, validate experiences and hold boundaries. Yes, I see that you're so mad at me right now and I'm not gonna let you punch me in the face. I had to do that one this morning with my three year old. He was very frustrated at me about it being done and we were moving from one activity to another. Three year olds have a hard time with transitions. They have an even harder time with transitions when they're responding to their seven year old older brother, who is also having a hard time with the transition. And in this case I had to hold a very difficult boundary and in doing so, my three year old tried to punch me or hit me with something and I said yes, I see that you're so mad and that you're so mad that we had to stop doing this and I'm sorry, you can't hit me, I can't let you hit me. That's not good for you, it's not good for me. So, in all things, validate, find a way to validate the feeling underneath, including taking into account everything that we've already said. That is gonna be super, super effective and helpful. And now we're about to get to. How do we do this with six year olds and older kids.
Speaker 1:But I wanted to lay this groundwork first and before I get to that, a brief note from me talking about why you should rate and review this podcast. So why should you care enough to rate and review this podcast? Well, the short answer is if this podcast is helping you to parent better, more effectively, with more confidence, if it's helping you raise resilient kids. If you're just feeling like man I really just wanted more long form content from you, john and you feel like this is benefiting you in any way, then why wouldn't you wanna share it with somebody else? And one of the easiest ways for you to share it with somebody else is by simply rating and reviewing this podcast. By saying, hey, I'm gonna write a review, I'm gonna say what I liked about this episode, or maybe this series of episodes.
Speaker 1:Or here's a way in which I implemented something that I learned on the podcast and really was effective and helpful. And when you write that, you're writing it to me. You're telling me in that moment hey, this is helpful to me, thank you, please keep producing this podcast, please keep making episodes. But you're also saying at the same time to other parents who may just have stumbled upon this Maybe they just searched parenting on Apple Podcasts, or they just searched how to parent better on Spotify and they found this podcast. You're signaling to them hey, look, here's another parent who is parenting more effectively as a result of listening to this podcast. So, please, if you're willing to read a review, you are doing me a tremendous service. It's an amazing way to say thank you to me, but it's also a service to other parents. And if you can't find a way to review it for whatever reason maybe you don't have an account or something like that wherever you're listening, almost always it is really easy just to hit that five star button and say, hey, I think this is valuable, and every single week I say this and every single week we have a couple people take that step and soon we're gonna have enough reviews and ratings where we're gonna really be pushed into those main search engines for these podcasts and then the podcast will really take off. And so if you love this content, if you wanna see more of this content, that is how you can communicate that to me by rating and reviewing this podcast.
Speaker 1:Without further ado, let's get back into the episode and talk about Andrew. All right, our last question comes from Martin. He says Hi, my name is Martin and I'm a father to a six-year-old boy, andrew, who is experiencing some separation anxiety. Whenever it's time for him to go to school or say with a babysitter, he becomes inconsolable and refuses to be apart from me. This has been a major challenge for us, and I'm not sure how to help him feel more confident and secure when we're not together. For context, his mother and I got divorced about a year ago. First and foremost, thank you so much for submitting this question. It's a really good question and I just want to affirm that the fact that you're even thinking about this and you're not just kind of at six a lot of parents will just dismiss this and just say you know they'll get over it. The fact that you're trying to figure out a way that this can be more effective and that you can connect and separate more effectively is really really healthy and helpful. Thank you also for the context and the bravery to share that. You know it's possible and, in fact, potentially probable that some of this comes from the fact that you're not with his mom and that that creates some anxiety in kids. Divorce can be one of these really challenging things, and so because of that, it's difficult on everyone in the family and so because of that, I really am grateful for that context.
Speaker 1:You know, if you've listened this far in the episode which I hope you have, martin, everything that I've said about two-year-olds and three-year-olds can be applied to Andrew, who's six. You spoke about confidence. That's what we're talking about. We've got to get back to how can he feel confident in you being gone for any period of time? Probably not gonna start with five minutes or two minutes with a six-year-old, probably more like half an hour or 45 minutes. But how can you build upon that? How can you go out for 15 minutes, 45 minutes, whatever I shouldn't have said 15, 45 to an hour and then and then come back and reconnect. That can be a really really healthy kind of foundation building thing that you do.
Speaker 1:Secondly, all that role-play stuff that I talked about. That can be effective with six-year-olds. How do you feel when I leave? Do you want to act that out? Do you want to play that out in some way? Play with toys and get into that. Tell a story about this. This can also be helpful where you read books. You can look at books related to separation anxiety, children's books. I mean not books like academic books, but children's books related to separation anxiety. You read those together. That can be a really helpful tool. But really working this out and play can be very helpful. And then you know as much.
Speaker 1:As I said, validation for the last question. This becomes imperative with a three-year-old I'm sorry with the six-year-old, where it is a good and positive thing for three-year-olds. It is imperative for a six-year-old that they understand that what they're experiencing you take seriously. Their inner world is very, very serious to them, in fact, deadly serious, right. What happens in their inner world feels, as it does to all of us, incredibly serious and because of that, oftentimes parents who may want to dismiss the inner world of their children because it's illogical or it's not based in reality, it's just based on imagination. Even at six years old you can feel like dismissing it is the right thing. Talking about Andrew's feelings openly and empathetically I have to experience that, even if you haven't experienced it in that way can be really, really helpful. Again, it may not feel like he can discuss that with you in that way, but discussing characters in books who go through this, characters in TV shows, like, like I mentioned before, daniel Tiger I'm sure there's probably 10 episodes on separation anxiety of Daniel Tiger Maybe for six years old they're to a point where that doesn't really work for them. They might be a little too old for that, depending on kind of the maturity level of a six-year-old. But that can be something where you can discuss hey, how did this character feel when their parent left for a period of time? Well, they were really upset about it, etc.
Speaker 1:The other piece of this is you can rely on a lot of positive reinforcement here and focus on the positive aspects of the, whatever situation they're in. How did you feel about school today? What were some fun things that you did? All this comes with that reconnection that you have at the end of the day. So reconnecting with your child at the end of the day becomes that much more important when they're older and experiencing separation anxiety. And trying to focus on some of the positive things that happened can kind of redirect that attention, although you don't want to focus on the positive things that happened to such an extent where it feels like you're invalidating the negative experience of separation. So just trying to do that in ways and highlighting especially the vulnerability points, of saying, wow, I'm really amazed and not amazed, that's a bad word but I'm really proud of you for your bravery, that I know that you didn't want to go to school today and you did, and I think that that's really, really awesome. I see that bravery and I'm really impressed by it and I'm grateful that you're experiencing that and you should be proud of yourself too. Right, always redirecting back to that internal validation. You should be proud of yourself because this is a challenging thing.
Speaker 1:You can also you know you can make babysitters a little bit more fun. I like to say that I let my babysitters spoil my kids more than I spoiled them myself. This is because I'm pretty confident in my own ability to parent, and I think all of us should be. We're all amazing parents. Like I said, even if you don't feel like it all the time, you are an amazing parent and so babysitters sometimes can. Can you know, doing a movie night or something like that with a babysitter, that can be a way of making that person a little bit more fun and a little bit, you know they maybe some of the rules about candy after dinner or something can can kind of go away, or you can have an extra special treat when a babysitter's here. That can be some of that positive reinforcement.
Speaker 1:And then the last piece and this kind of goes with the divorce aspect is just continual solidifying and stability in the environment Because of the divorce. You know the separation anxiety may be coming out of school or during a babysitter, but it may really be a cry for attention or a cry for help related to you know, my life feels unstable. This is one of the most challenging things about divorce with young kids is. You know? I think a lot of us think you know this is how kids are going to feel about it. Really, the thing that's most disconcerting for kids is the lack of stability in a divorce situation, oftentimes, unless you're doing and this is becoming increasingly popular, I know this has been a thing in psychological community for a long time, but but nesting, or bird nesting, this is where you have a child who lives in the family home and, instead of the child going from one home to another home, the parents actually take turns in the home. So you might have you know I'm not sure if this would work, martin, for you and I'm not, you know, recommending this even, but just for context of how some families have done it where you have the child who stays in the family home and so the stability is there. Maybe it's mom getting up for school this morning, or maybe it's dad, but you know, maybe mom and dad have different rooms in the house. Even that's okay, as long as they and they may never be in the house at the same time. Maybe that's what's healthiest for you.
Speaker 1:Having a child who's constantly around fighting and bickering and derogatory statements or aggression is not a positive thing for children. We have known this now for a long time. It's much healthier for a child to have one stable, secure caregiver or even two stable, secure caregivers who are together, than it is to have to be in a home where neither caregiver is healthy and stable and secure because they are, you know, in a hostile environment with a partner or an ex partner. But but if they're in that secure environment where it's, you know, as little as possible can change for the child, that's usually a good thing. So finding ways to make those schedules with your partner as solid as possible and the routines as solid as possible will help Andrew feel more secure in your relationship and then, as as a byproduct, will probably feel more confident in these separation moments and points when the schedules are constantly changing and and okay, well, you're supposed I'm supposed to have you this weekend, but now I'm not, because I'm doing this and like doing that, and parents can kind of just do this like real fast juggling act A lot of times.
Speaker 1:That's not really good for their kids, especially young kids, because they get the sense of I don't, I never know what's coming next. And so because of that, it's really really important as much as you can to make the routine predictable and the schedules predictable, and so that solid foundation of feeling that their life and their world is predictable and stable, that things happen in the same order every day, that if mom is watching us or dad is watching us, we still have dinner at the same time All that type of stuff can really really benefit in the child's overall physical, mental and emotional health and in the process can can mean that a lot of those other aspects whether it's separation, anxiety or something else those things feel less threatening to children when the rest of their environment is more stable. And so the more you can do that with plenty of reassurances of love and connection for Andrew in the process from both parents, if that's possible the more he's going to feel at home in his own body and in his own skin and in his own world, and that can really really lead to some positive dividends as it relates to separation with babysitters or school or other things. And this is, by the way, is why kids a lot of times struggle in school, when their parents get divorced, et cetera, is because, as their exterior world seemingly feels like it's unpredictable and falling apart even if that's not necessarily true, but it just feels that way to a child, then you know, the higher levels of learning and things like that will often follow suit. They'll they'll kind of crumble and fall apart too. And so the more secure and established and predictable the routines can be in a home during a separation or a divorce, the more you're going to find that it's going to be possible for the child to reconnect and establish healthy boundaries and routines.
Speaker 1:So I hope that that helps and I hope that everything else I've talked about up to this point also is helpful to you, martin, as you handle Andrew, and I think it's like I said, I think it's amazing that you're asking this question, and I'm really grateful to you for doing so, as I am to the other parents, to Mary and to Shannon, who asked questions about separation anxiety, because this is challenging. It's challenging for so many parents, you know. I do know that there is a day that, like I said, I know there's a day in the tiger episode, because I, because now that I'm thinking about it, you know enough to come back, establishing a song that you sang with your child or that your caregiver sings with your child, whatever it is, to remind your kids that you are indeed coming back, that you are indeed not leaving them forever, that you are there for them. That can be incredibly, incredibly helpful and productive for your child. So I hope all the all these things can be helpful and have been helpful to you so far.
Speaker 1:And if you have not yet subscribed to this podcast, please go ahead and do so. As I said before, if you can rate and review it, I would be eternally grateful. And if you have a person in your life who would benefit from this podcast, this episode or another episode, go ahead and shoot them a text with with a link to this podcast. Go ahead and let them know. Here's this guy on social media whole parent. I think you should follow him. He has a podcast I've been listening to and it's been helpful.
Speaker 1:When you share my podcast directly, people are far more likely to listen to it. People love getting things from a friend, even if it, you know, is kind of a weird thing like a parenting podcast. You're way more likely to go to a restaurant that you was recommended by a friend. You're way more likely to read a book that was recommended by a friend. You're way more likely to listen to a podcast that was recommended by a friend, and so don't keep this to yourself. Share this message with everybody else out in the world and until next time. This has been a whole parent podcast talking about separation anxiety.
