Tara's Take - Parenting, Education & Life With Kids

What Might Be Fuelling Your Power Struggles with Children

June 04, 2023 Tara Gratto Episode 44
Tara's Take - Parenting, Education & Life With Kids
What Might Be Fuelling Your Power Struggles with Children
Show Notes Transcript

Part One: Conflict and challenge is a part of life, it’s one of those uncomfortable truths in parenting.  It’s also something that’s worth sitting back and thinking about because how we handle conflict impacts our relationships, our ability to set boundaries and our general parenting experience.

In this episode I’m digging into one of the things that might be fuelling your power struggles and how to start rethinking your reactions.

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The music for this podcast is written and produced by Jazlyn B with the guidance of Sabine Ndalamba

Note: This podcast is created for educational purposes only. Any references links, resources or content are not intended as a substitute for medical or professional mental health advice.

Hello and Welcome to Tara's Take a podcast about parenting, education and life with kids rooted in experience, expertise and a deep commitment to life-long learning. 


I’m your host Tara Gratto and I’ve spent the last two decades working with children and families in a variety of different roles and responsibilities.


Along the way I've discovered there are things parents never learned that are helpful to understand, topics in education that need discussion to support children more effectively and bits and elements of life with kids that need to be shared more openly.


My passion is making emotional regulation & social emotional well-being understandable, relatable and easy to implement. As part of this journey I wrote a picture book called The Adventures of Team Brain. My goal is to help parents and caring adults build skills and tools that are fun, effective and will support you and your child’s unique needs.


Today I’ll be tackling What Might Be Fuelling Your Power Struggles With Your Children and How to Start Changing the Dynamic 


Okay, so conflict and challenge is a part of life, it’s one of those uncomfortable truths in parenting, but it’s also something that’s worth sitting back and thinking about because how we handle conflict impacts our relationships, our ability to set boundaries and our general parenting experience.


When it comes to problem solving behaviour challenges or challenges in general there can be an element of conflict involved and there are different ways to tackle this but first I want to touch on something I think is related but rarely stated. There seems to be this idea that there is some magical path where children will be joyous in their agreement about every decision or every obstacle that needs to be faced if we can just find the right method to get them to agree to it. I think this is a bit of a rabbit hole because the reality of raising children is we actually have to support them with doing things they love and things that are necessary and likely those necessary things aren’t enjoyed as much or at all.


Stop and think for a moment, when you need to do a boring or necessary task -  is your reaction one of joy or do you do a little internal grumble and then tackle it? As an extension, do you do that thing right away or put it off? Now I recognize that when your children do their grumble it’s probably not internal and might be in the form of things I like to call unwanted behaviours. Those are the by-products of feelings that we don’t like to experience, can make us uncomfortable or trigger us - you know things like yelling, crying, screaming, stomping, talking back and so on. 


Now here’s the question, does this reaction escalate things and lead to conflict or power struggles? And does this send you into rationalization mode? Are you attempting to get them to do whatever it is that needs to be done by using logic and talking a ton? Perhaps the logic you are trying to use is the same line of thinking you use on yourself to get the dishes done, take the garbage out, clean the toilet, finish the work task you’ve been putting off and so on…. 


In other words are you trying to get your child to comply by talking them through, are you trying to get your child to calm down by talking them through, are you using a whole bunch of words to get your child to stop reacting to their feelings about the thing and just get it done? Are you trying to get them to agree with you about something they likely aren’t going to, but still has to happen? 


When I think about myself. There are not enough words in the dictionary to convince me that I’m ever going to find cleaning the dishes fun even though I know it’s something that has to be done for so many different reasons. There’s nothing you can say that will make me feel any better about doing that task and being told to do it generally doesn’t make me feel more motivated. 


It’s a task, one I dread and have varying degrees of success on getting done in a timely manner. Now this example is obvious in terms of the lack of fun factor, but what about something less obvious. Like you know your child really enjoys school, but getting out the door is still the biggest nightmare of the day? In that moment, it’s not about how fun school is, it’s about switching their brain from home mode to school mode and talking your way through isn’t going to flip the brain any faster. I have a great workshop on transitions inside my membership community where I dig into this with strategies.


Okay, if you are having an aha moment right now you aren’t alone. I’ve been there too and this is something I have to work on regularly. I just want my kids to understand and I talk talk talk my way through that and… it’s not as helpful as I would like it to be.


Now let’s take it to the next level and figure out a different problem solving approach.


To do this, you have to think about if you have a bit of an unknown goal for problem solving. If underlying your reaction to conflict or power struggles with your child is finding a way to just get them to do the thing that needs to be done and avoid witnessing the uncomfortable feelings and unwanted behaviours that can come along with that. In other words, to avoid your child protesting doing something they either want to do themselves and cannot do yet independently or simply don’t want to do. The latter happens a lot with responsibilities in my home. Nobody wants to do the laundry, but the reality is clothes don’t clean themselves.


So today’s brainstorm is for you to reflect on your parenting power struggles. Is the thing that’s make you uncomfortable the fact that your child is expressing feelings in a way that makes you feel disrespected? Annoyed? Triggered? 


If the answer is yes. Your next step is to build some tools for emotional regulation for both you and your child so you use tools instead engaging in the power dynamics, particularly ones around arguing, over-talking and using logic to power your way through. This is a core component of the work I do with parents in either one-on-one or inside the the RRC membership. 



Now, there is a part B to this conversation, the part where parents say to me: what about the situations where I don’t have time to explore the why’s behind what’s happening, what about the situations where I just need my kid to do XYZ.


I’m going to talk more about this in the next episode because it’s another important layer. Today I just want you to focus on the tactics and tools you are currently using to get through conflict and power struggles. 


Are you over-talking and over-explaining the why’s? Start catching yourself on those and then we’ll talk about how to strike a balance between validation and teaching children that adults do have a lot of experience and value and what they say does mean you need to do things, but at the same time you might have some feelings about it!


If you don’t already, make sure you’re following Tara’s Take to be notified when new episodes go live and if you have questions or comments, I’d love to hear from you at taragratto.ca/podcast. Until next time, don’t forget to brainstorm your reactions so we can tackle the next layer.