The Whole Parent Podcast
The Whole Parent Podcast
Why Kids Interrupt... Impulse Control, Time Blindness, and what you can do about it #50
In this episode, Jon unpacks why kids interrupt, especially in those moments when it “starts to feel disrespectful and chaotic” and you’re thinking, they’re old enough, they should know better. He breaks down what’s really happening in the developing brain around time, impulse control, and attachment, and why so many “rude” behaviors are actually bids for connection. Listeners walk away with a clearer understanding of what their child’s interruptions are telling them, plus practical, shame-free ways to set limits, protect conversations, and still help kids feel seen and important.
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If your child interrupts you constantly, you are absolutely not alone. Every parent that I know hits this moment where the interruptions start to feel disrespectful and chaotic, and you just have this sense of like, they're old enough, they should know better. In today's episode, we're going to look at why kids interrupt, what impulse control and the developing sense of time have to do with this, specifically how our kids process time, and why so many of the behaviors that we read as rude are actually signs of the brain still having to learn how to pause, hold a thought, and trust that their needs are still gonna matter, even if they wait. But the beautiful part of all this is that there are some practical things that we can do to support the growing brain and reduce interruptions without shaming or shutting them down. Let's get into it. All right, so as uh you join me back out here on the porch, I've been recording, trying to record like an episode almost every day, guys. And the reason that I've been trying to do this is because I'm just trying to get back in the habit of recording these episodes and just getting this content out because so many people have come back and said, this is my favorite thing that you do, John. Like your book is great, but the podcast is like the best part of my day or the best part of my week. And if I'm recording podcasts in this way where I'm mostly just answering questions and spitballing and just kind of talking about parenting, it's a lot easier for me to pump out a lot more. So obviously, today I've already said what we're talking about. We're talking about kids interrupting, we're talking about kids being rude and disrespectful sometimes. This is especially prevalent over the holiday season. We're in the middle of the holiday season when we're having these family get togethers and our kids are just kind of constantly interrupting us and being in the middle of things. I wanted to share a quick story about this actually. Uh, this happens to me basically every Sunday because I'm a pastor of a church and it's something that I almost never talk about. But every single Sunday, I have this period of time immediately after the service is over where I go into kind of like Pastor John mode. And I guess I've been Pastor John mode the whole day, but uh, or or I guess the whole morning, but I'm I'm specifically just caring for the needs of other people. And so I'm asking people about their day or their week. I'm asking people about struggles that they've maybe shared with me in confidence, uh I'm kind of being like a host slash therapist slash friend slash, you know, just making sure that other practical things happen around the church. We're like planning for our Christmas program right now. So I'm also like directing where tables go and things like that. And my kids have this real challenge because I kind of go into this mode where I somewhat ignore them. And my wife is around and she uh comes to church basically every week and she'll she'll be around to kind of care for them. But at some point, she takes our daughter and she puts her in the car and she drives home because it's nap time. But I often have to stay beyond that point. And so here are my kids, and they will just come up to me and they will just like interrupt a really personal conversation. Oftentimes, and you know, I'll have to take somebody to like another room and I'll have to like assign somebody, a caregiver or somebody who's around to be like, okay, keep an eye on my kids. I have to physically remove and separate myself from them because if they know where I am, they are gonna come and find me. And it happened today. We were setting up, like I said, tables and stuff for this Santa Lucia festival that our church does. It's a Swedish Christmas festival where we have this teenage girl. This is the kind of the highlights. We have a giant Swedish meal catered. It's like awesome. We have a Scandinavian folk group who plays. I play a character the whole time, the whole evening. I'm like this character, this Swedish guy. And so I talk in a really Swedish accent, and I just kind of do these things. And I I'll actually speak Swedish for part of it. Uh, I write it out ahead of time because I'm not very good at Swedish. And um it's just kind of this weird cultural thing. There's a teenage girl at one point in the whole thing who walks down the aisle with lit candles on her head, like actual fire. It's it's a real, it's it's it's very cultural. It's it's that's what I'll that's how I'll put it. And so I'm organizing for this and I'm trying to do stuff, and my kids just keep coming up to me. And every single time I try and like do something, my kids are like, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad, can I show you this? Can I show you this? Can I do this? Can I do this? And finally, I'm just like, go find someplace to be. Because it's just like, I don't know. I I didn't like yell at them, but I was like, guys, you just gotta go find someplace to be. I I I'm not available right now. And so I started kept thinking, like, oh man, like I gotta do an an episode on this, because that's not how I should have responded in that moment. I could have done some other things better, I could have been working with them. Uh, thankfully, they did go and find something else. It's okay to tell your kids, like, hey, I need some space right now to do like dad's doing work stuff. And it's so rare that I'm that I'm like that. Uh, but but it does happen. It does happen. And so it's okay to do that if if you've ever done that. Don't feel bad. No, just know that I've done that. I do that. But there are better ways that we can talk about interrupting. And so I want to jump into our first question, which comes from Kayla with a K from Instagram. This one was DM'd in. And it says, John, I have a question if you're wondering if you can answer for me. My four-year-old literally cannot let me finish a sentence ever. Like if I'm talking to my husband about anything, literally last night it was about toilet paper. She will wedge herself in between us and start yelling, mom, mom, mom, until I look at her. I swear I'm trying to be patient, but it makes me feel disrespected. Or like she's not learning manners. My husband keeps saying that I'm letting her run the show. Am I? Or is this just what four is? I don't know. I can't really tell anymore. Kayla, this is a great, great question. And the I I love that you frame it around like, is this just what four looks like? And my answer to that is, yeah, in some ways, this is just what four looks like. I have a almost like a five and a half year old, I have an almost four-year-old. And I'll tell you, my four-year-old uh doesn't struggle with this, my almost four-year-old doesn't struggle with this nearly as much as other kids, my other kids that I've had, specifically my oldest, when he was younger. And he's still to this day, he's nine. He struggles with this. He struggles to not be in the middle of the conversation. And my guess is, Kayla, that your four-year-old is an oldest, because oldests really struggle with this idea. They struggle with this us having kind of a world or conversations outside of them. And specifically, what they struggle with is just controlling their inhibitions. They have this limited brain development where it comes to working memory. And so the second something pops into their head, they have no ability to control that inhibition to just like blurt out what's going on. And as I'm going to talk about in the next question as well, because we had a person who's talking about when they're on the phone, it can also be dependent. It can, it can also kind of rear up specifically in moments when our attention is specifically drawn away from them. So what happens in those moments is our kid literally is looking for this like attachment to us. And when they see our attention stray from them, this can actually feel it can it can feel to their nervous system. I know this is kind of crazy to say, but it can feel to their nervous system like a threat. Like, like somehow, if we start paying attention to something else, we won't be as aware of their needs and what's going on with them. And so kids have a really, really hard time with us diverting our attention away from them. And what this is, the the fancy term for this is state-dependent executive functioning. So basically, what this means is that they can do some of these executive functioning tasks at three at four years old in certain environments, like waiting and like waiting their turn. Maybe all four-year-olds struggle with sharing and things like that, but but they can maybe in certain environments, like at school, they can wait to be called on when it's time to speak. But when they're with you, they kind of lose all ability to do that. And let this is what I'm going to talk about again with the next one, because the kid's a little bit older. But I would even start to think of it in those terms right now. And understanding that that's what's going on, that they literally have this inability to control their inhibitions. They have an inability to control their kind of desire to just blurt out and get your attention. We have to give them a reframe of something alternative, a behavior that works, that isn't just saying, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, every single time we're talking to uh, you know, your husband about toilet paper or whatever else, right? Like obviously that's a kind of a funny example because it's I don't want to say it's just your husband, but it's it's you know, your husband, it's a person who's in close relationship. It's probably even more frustrating when that happens when you're out with a friend with your with your daughter, or when you're on a work call or something like that, and she can't handle that waiting. And so we have to give kids an alternative behavior because in their brain, they they don't have an ability to just wait in the abstract. And part of this is literally that they don't have a really clear sense of time yet. So I said at the beginning of the episode in the intro that we were going to talk a little bit about kids' understanding or perspective on time. Kids really struggle because of just the way that their brain is growing, that they really, really struggle to understand how to wait without having a very clear thing, like a timer or something like that. And so what happens in those moments, when that happens, is our kids they when we say like, okay, wait for a minute or wait for two minutes, they literally have this experience of feeling like that experience is going to be forever. And so this is why often when we talk about kids who struggle to wait, what we're really talking about is kids who don't have a clear sense of time and understanding how long a period of time is. And so this all comes to a head when we're trying to do something in a time like that's time sensitive, like finish this conversation. And our kid just cannot cope, they cannot handle it because five minutes to them feels like an hour. So if you say, like, I'm gonna be done in this conversation in a minute, it feels like that you it's either you're done now or you're not done now. And if you're not done now, I'm just gonna have a meltdown because you know it's not now yet. So I would really want to replace that. And I keep saying we should replace this with the behavior, but the behavior comes from Montessori background, at least that's where I first learned about it. The behavior is to give them a physical thing to do with their body, to simultaneously alert you that they need your attention or that they're desiring your attention without being unnecessarily rude or disruptive. And this is really great to start at four years old because you're gonna have this tool. And like I said, my nine-year-old still does this. But what you're gonna have them do is literally walk up to you and put their hand on your arm, just resting, not grab you, not slap you, but put their hand on your arm. And this essentially says to you as the parent, okay, I am looking to get your attention. Please, I'm it's kind of like raising your hand in class. Please, I'm asking you to give me your attention as soon as possible. And oftentimes what parents will do, you don't have to do this. I actually never remember to do this. It still works. But what parents will do is they'll take their other hand. So say my kid puts his hand on my right arm, take my left hand and cover his hand to acknowledge, okay, I see you, I hear you, you're looking for my intention. And this bypasses that inhibition control because now they they have this inhibit, they have this uh inability to restrict and control their impulse to interrupt you, but now they're able to do that in a way that's not disrespectful by putting their hand on on their on your arm. So it's kind of an end-around way of getting around the fact that their brain is literally not mature enough to wait in a practical sense and just telling them, okay, it'll be a minute, usually doesn't work because that feels like an interminable amount of time in the brain of a four-year-old. So what I would do in this case is I would just literally say, okay, every time I'm talking, what you got to do is just come up and put your hand on me. And I promise you that as soon as I can and can get out of that conversation, or as soon as I can give you my attention, I will give you my attention. And it doesn't mean that you're gonna immediately drop everything and do whatever it is they're asking you to do. It doesn't mean that they're gonna put their hand on you and say, I want to leave and go home right now, and you're gonna go, okay, great, you've you've not interrupted me, and so therefore I'm just gonna give you whatever you want. It's just to say, look, attention is a natural desire for kids, and it feels threatening to them when they don't have their caregivers' attention. And so that's that's one of the ways that we can get around that is to essentially give them a tool to when our attention shifts, to get our attention back without being unnecessarily disruptive. And what the the key here, really, the the most basic level in all of this is to understand that when our kids are interrupting us, it is because to our kids, our attention is a need. It's like an it's like food or water. And that's because their survival depends on our attention. This is why attention and attachment are so deeply connected. This is why we talk about attunement. I'm using a lot of A words today. We talk about attunement and attachment. And attunement is just giving your attention to such an extent to your child where you're able to pick up on their feelings and reflect their feelings back to them. And so understanding that when your kid is asking for your attention, they're actually asking for your attachment can be really, really helpful because it allows you to then realize, okay, they're not being annoying, they're not being entitled. And these are all the things that we hear in our own head, right? This is the thing that your husband's saying. He's she's you're letting her run the show. She's being entitled, she's being a dictator. All of that language comes from a misunderstanding. And I'm I'm not blaming your husband, right? Like I think these things too. But all of that, in especially in the heat of the moment, and that's the thing. When when this happens, you get triggered and then you don't respond the way that you want to. Or I should say you react rather than respond. And then it just kind of makes everything worse. So the the main way to reframe this for you and the for all of us as we continue on with these questions, is to understand that all of these attention-seeking behaviors, like saying, Mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, in the middle of a conversation, are just them saying, I want to make sure that you're still there. And maybe there's more things going on here, like they have an inability to like hold on to a thought, but maybe I'll talk about that in a minute. So brass axe, replace the behavior, give them a new neural pathway. And that new neural pathway, instead of screaming, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, is going to be to come over, put the hand on you. And this is gonna be kind of my tip for all of these, but it's especially important with within the first one with a four-year-old, where some of the stuff that's not gonna they're they're not gonna be able to do some of the other things, like go and set their own timer or whatever. So hopefully that gives you some some ability to regulate some of that. And I want to move on to my next one, which was an emailed question. Thank you, uh, for an emailed question. We're always excited to receive emails podcast at wholeparentacademy.com. You can send in your questions via email, it's the easiest way for me to sort them. But this one comes from Jeremy, and Jeremy says, Okay, my seven-year-old constantly interrupts me, but only when I'm on the phone. Like if I'm talking to him, he's fine. But the second I pick up a call for work, he absolutely loses his mind. He suddenly needs me urgently for no reason, it drives me insane. Honestly, it feels intentional. Like he knows that's the one thing that stresses me out. Well, Jeremy, I hear a couple of things going on here, and uh I'm gonna kind of try and take them in different places and hopefully we'll come up with a solution. But first and foremost, I have kids, my other kids. I said that I have one kid who struggles when I'm talking face to face with somebody. I have other kids who really, really struggle when I get on the phone and all of a sudden they start fighting with each other. And I definitely have told myself that kind of I've reframed that for myself as well and said, oh my gosh, they're only doing this because I'm on the phone and they're trying to get my attention. But I want to kind of flip that on its head and say that when your kid is experiencing one of these, and this is where I'm gonna use that fancy term again, state dependent executive functioning lack, right? When they're experiencing that, what's actually happening is that that experience feels threatening to them. So it's not that it feels like they want you to not be able to do it. It's that they feel like all of a sudden my dad isn't paying attention to me. And what if I need him? And so I'm going to test the boundaries, or I'm gonna test the waters and ask for a bunch of stuff, or I'm going to suddenly not be able to tie my own shoes, or I'm not gonna be able to find this thing that I'm looking for, or all of a sudden I'm gonna get hungry, or all of a sudden I'm gonna need to go to the bathroom and I'm gonna have a problem with that. All of this stuff, and I get he's seven, a lot of this stuff he should be able to do on his own. But all of that stuff is him feeling like I don't know if I'm safe if my dad isn't paying attention to me, and he knows that when you're on the phone, that is one place and time where you're definitely not paying attention to him. And so the first thing that I would do is I would just get curious about that with him. I would the next time you have to take a phone call and this happens, I would not react in the moment, do whatever you do to survive, and then and and you I don't want to say you should ignore him, but you don't have to immediately give in to everything, right? Unless you know, hey, this is just gonna be easier for me, then do whatever you need to do to survive. But you don't have to give in to that. Like you can build some frustration tolerance here. It's something that we've talked about in previous episodes. But what I would be looking for is an opportunity really to have a conversation after the fact, let's say 20, 30, 45 minutes later. So after the phone call, you return to Stasis. He goes back into his normal way of being where he doesn't constantly need you for everything. Now I wait for him to be actively engaged with something like drawing or doing whatever he's doing, not watching a screen, not on his tablet or something like that. Because I promise you, at that point, then their brain is like off. What you're looking for is their brain to somewhat be in like a receptive learning state. And then sit down and go, okay, so when I was on the phone, you all of a sudden just lost it. What's up with that? I I want to know. And don't go into this with the assumption that you have all the answers. Because really, the best thing that you can do here is to get him to understand why he's doing it. And at seven, you have a real ability to do that. And so I would really go into that conversation in the most basic way of just saying, hey, so this is what happened. Tell me more about why you think that happened. Tell me more about what was going on with you when that happened. Well, I was just worried that this, this. And you might just say, I don't know. And then you dig down, you can retell the story. Go, okay, so I was on the phone, and then all of a sudden you asked me to, you know, tie your shoes for you or do this. And you know how to do that. So like I'm just wondering how come that happened? And again, we're not looking like a lot of us hear these types of ways of talking to kids with this curiosity. And it can feel pretty threatening to those of us who grew up in punitive environments because oftentimes those types of questions were rhetorical and they were just like waiting for us to, you know, hey, it's what's wrong with you? Explain yourself. And then you say, Well, I was just, and then you go, no, you weren't thinking at all, and now you're gonna get a punishment. But really, what we're looking for here is that curiosity to get him to trying to unpack what's going on. And I think a real problem that parents have, um, a real misconception that we have, is that we know our kids better than they know themselves. In fact, when I wrote that sentence in the book, that kids by the age of six have an inner world that's robust enough that they know themselves far better than we know them, I got pushback. Like I got pushback from my editor who doesn't know any of like really about any of this stuff. And so it's not like he had like he was like a PhD neuroscientist who was like, well, actually, let me tell you. No, he was just like, I don't think I really are you sure? I'm pretty sure I know my kid better than they know themselves. And I was like, no, no, no. Once they have an inner world, like you don't know what's driving their actions and behaviors. You sometimes we can come at it from an objective perspective that understands who's wiser. In the same way, by the way, that a therapist can help you to understand or unpack why you're participating in the same destructive, you know, coping mechanisms that are maladaptive because they're an outsider. We can be that for our kids, but it doesn't mean that we know more than about them than they know about themselves. And I really would start with that. I would just go, okay, so it, and then I would make a plan. I would go, okay, so the next time I'm on my phone, what can we do? What you know, what what do you think would be a good plan for well, that's gonna be the time when I can do this or that or the other. And here's some examples of things you can do. Number one, you can set a timer. This is good for you and good for your kid. Obviously, if you don't know when you're gonna be off the call, you can't set a timer, but you can set a timer. That's a good, that's a good one. You can uh make a questions parking lot. This is a fun one where you can have a like a post-it stack of post-it notes. And if you have a seven-year-old, he might be able to kind of write some things out or draw some pictures or something, depending on how uh good he is with his uh verbal skill or um written literary skills. But um you can make a questions parking lot where he can just like start handing you sticky notes, like, okay, here are all the things that I need your help with, and they can kind of stack up. And then when you get off the phone, you go, okay, well, I'm gonna start going through these things. Okay, you needed me to put some peanut butter on your bread for you. Okay, okay. Oh, oh no, you already did that one for yourself. Okay, you just drew this picture and you just said, well, you, oh, you want me to cut the crust off your sandwich. Okay, now I understand. And you go through it and it's kind of like a fun game, then, right? As your kid comes up with like tasks for you to do while you're on the phone, it gives them, keeps them organized or um uh distracted and organizing their thoughts rather than constantly just bombarding you with those those thoughts in real time. Again, because even a seven-year-old does lack some of that impulse control. So when we're talking about impulse control with four-year-old, that's very obvious to most of us. Toddlers lack impulse control. Yeah, and so the sky is blue, right? Like everybody knows that. But kids slowly develop impulse control. And kids who are ADHD or neurodivergent develop impulse control even more slowly than kids who are neurotypical. And so I don't expect a seven-year-old to have great impulse control. I I in fact, I expect them to only have the the barest minimum amount of impulse control. But you can frame some of these things. You can make a plan of like, here are the things that we're gonna do when I'm on the phone. And that may be a time when for him, that is a time to utilize, you know, a screen or something like that, because for him, he he that that's what he wants to do. And that's an okay thing, right? If you're on a work call. Not if it's an everyday I'm on the work calls for three and a half hours, and so you have to come up with some other thing to do. But at that point, I would say, okay, well, if you're on work calls for three and a half hours every day, we also just have to figure out a better way of of managing work-life balance because it's we can ask our kids to wait only so much, right? But having a visual timer and things like that, that can help with that again, that inability to understand the large, the, the, the time, the, the time blindness that kids have, where they don't, you know, an hour feels like a day and or a week or a month. Five minutes can feel like two hours. Giving them a visual timer can really help with that as well. So those are some tips and tactics and strategies. But actually, I think that those will be less effective than anything that you come up with with your son. I think that the most effective tool here is actually to just sit down with your son, go back and forth, talk about this, talk about what happened, talk about the problem, replay the game footage, right? If he doesn't know what you're talking about, when you say, you're having a hard time when I was on the phone, you just walk back through. Yeah, so this happened and this happened and this happened, and now we're we're not judging, we're literally just describing. So I was on the phone, and then you needed me to do this or tie your shoes or whatever it was. And what was that about? Because I know that other times you don't usually need my help with that. So I just am looking for, you know, oh, I just wanted you. Okay. Well, then what can we plan to do next time that you want me when I'm on the phone as an alternative? And again, we can do like the hand-on-arm thing, but in my for my money, I'm looking at this and going, by seven, he can make his own plan. And also the hand-on-arm thing works definitely less when you're on the phone because uh the whole hand-on arm thing is because you don't want to be interrupted in an in-person conversation rather than uh being interrupted on the phone, he can be putting post-it notes next to you the whole time and that doesn't bother you, or should you know, maybe it does bother you, but it wouldn't bother me. So you guys come up with a plan together, and I think that you'll be a lot better off. But you have to name this stuff. A lot of us think that like we can just do this stuff without ever going to that place with our kids and naming it. You gotta name this stuff, and that's a big piece of it. And so I just encourage you to do that. Anything that's mentionable is manageable. That's a Fred Rogersism. Okay, I have one more question. It comes from inside my membership. I asked them if I could share my response that I had given to them as uh part of the podcast because I thought it was a great question that related to this. And so here is the question from Eli inside the membership. Uh, Eli says, I just don't know how to handle interrupting without being mean. My five-year-old will wait sometimes, but other times she just jumps in and I snap and I say, stop interrupting, because that's literally what my parents said to us. I don't want to be that intense. I also can't have her thinking that she can just talk over people all the time. I don't know what's the line between teaching patience and shutting her down. Sorry, I'm rambling. I'm climbing, she's climbing on me right now, lol. So uh yes, Eli, thank you again for sharing this with uh the podcast community. But the thing that I told Eli, because I had some time to think about it, was we talked a little bit about that time processing piece. And specifically, temporal processing, and when I say temporal, I'm not saying tempora, the uh battering of delicious deep frying of vegetables and things that you can get at uh Asian restaurants. I'm saying temporal, meaning time processing. And temporal processing happens in the I wrote it down for myself because I'm not that uh quick on my feet, in the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex. And what happens in between dorsal, what I mean by dorsal lateral uh relies on the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex, is that they have to be able to basically their brain has to be so, their prefrontal cortex, which is the last part of the brain that develops, has to be so developed that it can jump between different sides of the prefrontal cortex in order to, in real time, in order to understand how to process time. This is why kids struggle so deeply to have the sense of how long something takes or be able to hold their you know patience for a longer amount of time. It's because literally, when it in real time, they have to be able to do a very complicated brain process in order to understand time. And in in order to do that, that the just the ability to hold on to a thought like is really, really challenging for a kid. And it can be challenging for, again, I know that this is challenging for kids because it's challenging for me as even as an adult with ADHD. Like it's one of my struggles is holding a thought when I'm in the midst of other things. Sometimes I wander on the podcast and I forget what I'm saying. That's a great example of where it struggles where I struggle with this. And when you're stressed, man, it gets so much harder because then your prefrontal cortex starts to go offline because you're in your stress response. And kids obviously are thrown in their stress response more quickly, and also they just don't have a fully developed prefrontal cortex to begin with, especially not at five years old. And so you can see where all of this stuff can just become very, very challenging for a kid. And so we are thinking about this as just, oh, well, just wait and don't interrupt me in the middle of a conversation with somebody, and I just want to scream at them, stop interrupting, because it seems so simple. But actually, it's much more complicated. It requires tons of mental gymnastics and emotional regulation techniques and all other things. And then we wind up lashing out and snapping at them and screaming, you know, snapping, as Eli said, stop interrupting. And what does that do? It sends them deeper into their dysregulation, which shuts down their prefrontal cortex. What little development they have in their prefrontal cortex is shut off entirely, which just makes them, you know, lose it. And why do we just scream stop interrupting? Because we feel like we're raising an entitled, you know, uh narcissistic monster who just can't, you know, think about anybody but themselves. And so you can see where like all of these different layers, there's a very simple problem in in on the surface. Well, my kid talks over other people, or my kid talks over me at the dinner table. Actually, it's a much deeper problem that has to do with brain development, it has to do with our own childhood baggage, that we were probably told this. This is what Eli said, right? I was I was told to stop interrupting when I interrupted. So now I feel like that's the appropriate response, or maybe I don't even think it's the appropriate response, but I feel that it's the appropriate response because my nervous system has been trained that when a child interrupts, this is how you respond. Because that was what was done to me. And so all of these things become this whirling, swirling tornado. And as they all interact with each other, we take this very innocuous problem that is age typical of a five-year-old for all of the reasons that we've said. They struggle to hold on to their thoughts, they have no sense of time of how long they're they've waited or how long they will have to wait, they struggle with impulse control, they feel like when anyone's not talking to them that it's a lack of connection and attachment to them. All of these things happening simultaneously trick triggers their amygdala. So they jump into the conversation, which then triggers us, and then we further trigger them, we send them deeper into the dysregulation, and all of a sudden, we we have a kid who's melting down at the dinner table. And it feels like it's because we didn't let them dominate the conversation. But what it's really is happening is that there was a lot of other pieces, moving pieces going on. And we just responded or reacted in that moment in a way that came from our own baggage. And so, how would I react if I could react better? And sometimes I don't react better, just totally, like I said, began the whole episode by just telling I just told my kids like go find something to do, right? That's kind of stop interrupting. It's not that different. Um, I think it was a little, maybe, maybe I was a little bit better, but also I was, you know, I was in Pastor John mode, which means that I probably do parent a little bit more effectively, no matter what, just because I know I'm being watched by people. Uh, most of them don't know about whole parent, or or if they know about it, they don't really follow it or any or anything. But, you know, uh either even so, when you're in front of people, oftentimes you you kind of temper your parenting differently. I might not be as kind if I had been, you know, triggered like that and it had just been me and my wife around. Hopefully, I would be. I'm trying to do better. But uh what I would say if I had all of my faculties about me, and if I had done some journaling work about this, which I've done, and I was really able to emotionally regulate in that moment rather than r reacting, I responded. The thing, the way that I would respond would be to turn to my child and say, I want to hear what you have to say. But I need to finish listening to your brother, your dad, first. You can put your hand on my arm and let me know that you're here and that you want to tell me something, and I really care about what you have to say. And I think that this is kind of as we come to the end of the episode, I'm trying to keep these episodes a little bit shorter and more digestible. As we come to the episode end of the episode, I think this is really where I want to land. Because if the fundamental need that is not being met in our kids in these moments is attachment and is attention, one of the ultimate hacks here is to just say, I want to listen to you. I actually really care about what you're saying. And I'll do this now. If if I'm it's I don't do this much when I'm uh when my kids interrupt me in conversations, but when my kids interrupt me, uh I'm working on something, if I'm you know, working on something for a whole parent, I'm writing or whatever, and my kids walk into the room and they're like, hey, dad, dad, dad, I want to show you this thing, I want to show you this. I will actually stop what I'm doing, not to look at their thing, but to turn to them, give them my full attention for one sentence to say, I really want to see that. I have to finish this, otherwise I'll be distracted when I'm talking to you. I want to see that. Can you leave it right there? Or can you come back and find me in five minutes? You can go set a timer, whatever. But I start from the place of I really care about what you're having to say, what you have to say, and that's why I need to finish what I'm doing over here. I think that can be one of the most powerful things that you can say to your kid, because it kind of does everything that we've talked about up to this point. It it gives them the permission to check in with you and know that you're attentive to their needs and their wants and their desires, that you're not abandoning them, that you're not just ignoring them, but at the same time, it protects the space to say you're gonna have to wait. And understand, my kids do not like waiting, even after I say that. But it becomes a manageable thing that's building their frustration tolerance and their patience and their emotional distress tolerance rather than just sending them into dysregulation because I snap at them. And so I'm not saying, Eli, that you did that you that I have not done exactly what you did because I started the whole episode of the story about how I do that sometimes, especially when I'm in stressful environments myself. What I'm saying is on my best days as a parent, which I hope are more than my not best days, I start with, I really care about what you're doing. But notice I didn't say that on my best days as a parent, I drop everything for my kids at all times. Because one surefire way to make a kid entitled is to constantly drop everything that you're doing and make the world revolve around them. Because then they'll receive the message that the world revolves around them. Not because they're a bad person or they're inherently narcissistic or because there's some sort of problem with their brain, but because you've said that to them through your actions. And so I think it's important to say stop interrupting. But we can do that in kinder ways. And we can give our kids alternative behaviors and we can understand developmentally what's going on so we don't take those things personally. And ultimately, the way to raise a non-entitled kid is that they are going to have to wait sometimes, but that the waiting does not have to be an attention or an attachment rupture, that the waiting does not have to be maladaptive and hurtful and painful for them. And I think that that's where we can end the episode. Because in all of these things, I did I, you know, it's easy to just say, well, just let them interrupt you because eventually they'll grow out of that. And and some of the parenting is that. They just do grow out of some of these behaviors. But I think the harder thing to do and the better thing to do is to say, no, I'm gonna, I'm gonna stay in this. I'm gonna talk to them about it after it happens, if it keeps happening in one particular time, I'm gonna give them alternative behaviors to do, whatever. But most importantly, I'm gonna make sure that they know that I delight in their attention, that I love giving them my full and undivided attention. And that in order to do that, I actually have to finish what I'm doing before I give you my full and undivided attention. And by the way, here's an egg timer. And kids love egg timers. You should get your get an egg timer. I wish I had a sponsor that just gave me egg timers to give to you. Anyway, that's what I got for you in this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope it gave you something to think about. And uh yeah, I'll try and do this again tomorrow night. An episode a day, as much as I can. See you next time. Thank you again for listening to this episode of the Whole Parent Podcast. If you are listening to this right now, yes, you in your car driving somewhere on a walk with your kids, perhaps your kids are melting down and you're listening to this on your headphones with the noise cancellation turned on. Whatever you're doing while you're listening, doing the dishes at night after your kids go to bed, I don't know. That would just be me if I was listening. Stop right now. I have three quick favors to ask you. I promise they're not going to take you very long. The first one, very, very easy. Go in to wherever you're listening to this podcast and rate it five stars. That's one, two, three, four, five stars. The more five star reviews that our podcast gets as we accumulate episodes, the more likely it is to be pushed out to more parents who are searching for parenting podcasts to solve their problems. Whatever you got out of this episode, whether it was something that to try with your kids, whether it was a new way to think about parenting, maybe this episode was not specifically about a problem that you're having, but you're somebody in your life who's having this problem. Go in and rate it five stars. And if you have an additional 30 seconds, that first one only takes you 10 seconds. If you have an additional 30 seconds, just type a few words for me to read. I'd love to read, I'd love to read the reviews. If there's something specific that's helped you, write it out. It helps me to know what we should keep doing here on the podcast, week in and week out. The second question that I have for you or request that I have for you, favor, let's call it, is to share this episode with somebody in your life who you think could use it. It might be a parent, another parent in your kid's class. It might be a sibling who has young kids, maybe it's your kid's teacher or a faith leader in your life, whomever it is that you think should have this episode of the podcast or any episode of the podcast, send it directly to them. I know it's vulnerable to share podcasts with people who you might not have that close of a relationship with, or even more vulnerable if you do have a close relationship with them. But I promise you, so many of the people who listen to this podcast listened not because they followed me on social media, but because they got a personal recommendation from somebody in their life who said, Hey, this guy has a way of talking about parenting that just works for me. You don't know if they listen to it or not, they might never reply, but maybe, just maybe, they'll love the episode so much that they become your new parenting partner out there in the world, doing things the same way that you are, and you might have just made your new parenting bestie. The last thing that you can do is definitely the biggest ask from me, but it is to go over to Substack. That link is down below in the bio, and to subscribe so that these episodes can keep coming to you. Paid subscriptions on Substack is the only way currently that I am being funded here on the Whole Parent Podcast. That is the only money that I receive. It is$5 a month. I think that this podcast is worth the price of a coffee for you. If it's not worth the price of a coffee for you, obviously don't do it. But if you're extra cheap like me, you can just subscribe annually. I know that you're gonna listen for the rest of the year. If you know that you're gonna listen for the rest of the year, just give me 50 bucks up front, and then you don't have to think about it coming out of your credit card every single month. Those are the ways that you can support me. And as always, I think that you're a great parent already. But I do hope this episode gave you something to make you a little bit better. Take care.
