Hard? Too Hard? For PARENTS! {EP 211}

Robyn: So welcome to everybody who is looking for any support they can get in navigating life with a child with a vulnerable nervous system and these big, baffling behaviors. We talk a lot on this podcast and over in the club on the concept of hard versus too hard. And when do we need to take very strategic steps to lower stress, in order to heal the stress response system, and then eventually we also strategically start to increase the stress along with, of course, supports and co-regulation in order to start expanding and strengthening that stress response system. Amanda Diekmann, over at Low-Demand Parenting, and the author of the book, Low-Demand Parenting, I've had Amanda on the podcast. Amanda was probably, I think the first person I heard use the language, hard versus too hard. And I just thought it was such a simple but clear way to express this phenomenon of where do we kind of find the sweet spot for the expectations, for the stress, for the demands that our kids can successfully regulate through.    

Robyn: While it is hard to determine what's hard and too hard, and it also is shifting regularly, sometimes hour by hour, I do think it's a helpful way to look at stressors and then a helpful way to consider, when do we raise or lower the bar, or when do we raise or lower our expectations and demands? But have you thought about applying this idea to yourself? Y'all, I know that this way of parenting is extremely intensive. I actually it's always just funny. I guess I don't know what other word there is for it. It's kind of a giggle. It's really not funny, but it's always funny. When folks equate this approach to parenting with being lazy or overindulgent or permissive. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is intensive parenting, far beyond when parenting is supposed to get less intense, right? You're supposed to be able to offer less scaffolding, less supervision as kids get older, their Owl brains are supposed to grow and they internalize all that co-regulation we've given them and have more capacity for self-regulation.    

Robyn: Everything about parenting this way is hard. It is hard to be continuously second-guessing yourself. It is hard to feel like you live in a fishbowl with everyone judging you for your parenting choices and blaming you for your child's behavior. It is hard to hear your own family criticize you or suggest, sometimes straight to your face, sometimes more passive-aggressively, kind of under their breath, that what your kid needs is just a good spanking. It is so hard to scaffold a 16-year-old the way you'd need to scaffold a four-year-old. It's hard to be that intensive with parenting, but it's also hard to figure out even how to scaffold them. Plus your 16-year-old probably doesn't exactly love the scaffolding that you're giving them, and in fact, to them, it might even feel like a punishment. So they're mad. They tell you that you hate them, and they hate you, when really you are working your tail off to give them the support they need. It's hard to tighten up a boundary that you know your kid really needs in order to be successful without delivering it like a punishment. Because even though you understand that all behavior makes sense, it still really, really, really infuriates you. It pushes you into your Watchdog brain, and sometimes you just want to punish. I get it, of course, when we get stressed, we take old, well-worn neural pathways, like ones that have learned punishment is how to get bad behavior to stop.    

Robyn: It's hard to have more and more battles with the school. It's hard to supervise your 10-year-old with their bedtime routine, because otherwise they won't do it, or they make a colossal mess. All you want to do is just sit down and veg at the end of the day, not usher your older child through their very simple bedtime routine. Some days, all of this hard is hard, and some days all of this hard is too hard. And y'all, it's okay to ask yourself, Is this hard, or is it too hard? It's okay to decide you're just not able to hold a boundary right now and then deal with a meltdown, or you just can't provide the level of co-regulation and scaffolding your child needs to be able to do their homework or clean their bedroom. It's okay to say it's just too hard, right now. Now we do want to make that decision from our own Owl brain, right? We don't want to kind of push back, push past our boundary of too hard, and then kind of give up or relinquish a boundary we're trying to set with our kid in a state of like, kind of desperation, or from a Watchdog or a Possum place, right? We want to, ideally to make a thoughtful Owl brain decision of this is too hard. I can't do this right now, so I'm going to take a breath, I'm going to pause, and I'm going to not enforce this boundary. I'm going to lower this demand for my child. I'm going to not usher them through their bedtime routine.    

Robyn: It's really important that as much as possible we make these decisions with some reflection, with some groundedness, with some Owl brain energy. It's really better for our kids if we can make these choices from Owl brain energy, but it's actually way better for us too right? If we can make this decision and go, nope, too hard, I'm backing off this before we get far down our protective pathway. That is better for our own nervous system, we are actually going to heal our stress response system faster if we make proactive choices instead of reactive choices. Now, the thing we need to remember is that if we make the Owl brain choice, that something is too hard for us right now, something that you know your child needs close to revision on or almost constant co-regulation, or bodily body doubling, like if you decide you just can't, it's too hard. We just got to be sure we aren't expecting our kids to miraculously suddenly be able to do the thing that we know they need co-regulation for or supervision for or body doubling with, we can't expect them to do their homework their bedtime routine, because it's too hard for us to give them the supervision and co-regulation that they need to get through their bedtime routine. But we can't expect them to do their homework because it's too hard for us to give them the intense parenting and supervision so that they can get through their homework, or whatever it is, right? Like, if we make the choice, this thing is too hard. It's too hard for me, for. To supervise, give co-regulation, set the boundary, then we can't expect our kids to do the thing that we're not supervising on, or, you know, giving co-regulation for, right?    

Robyn: I mean, we know this in our hearts, right? We know that if we can't give them the support they need, they won't be able to be successful. That's why we give them that support, right? So when we decide that we just can't anymore, it's all just too hard and we need a break, we have to make that decision with the understanding that without the supports in place, our kids are unlikely to be successful in whatever the you know, way that we're, you know, been working on supporting them through this happens at schools a lot too. It's like the school is often unwilling to provide the supports that a child needs in order to be successful, right? Like I often am inviting folks to kind of use that thought experiment of, what does my child need here for their success to be inevitable? That doesn't mean we do those things, but it's an excellent thought experiment to really piece through, like, what would my child need for their success to be inevitable? And let's say, what your child needs for their success to be inevitable is a one on one support person, someone who's always there with with them, somebody who's so so they're never ever unsupervised. So they're never walking to the bathroom alone, so they're never walking outside to recess alone, right? Like we can let you know, tell ourselves, like my child really would need that for their success to be inevitable, while also recognizing in most schools that's going to be a real difficult thing to get.   

Robyn: But then we have to be okay with the reality that if we can't give our kids what they need for their success to be inevitable, that it's unlikely that they are going to be regularly successful, and we just kind of have to be okay with that. So in our personal lives and in our parenting, the same thing applies. Like, let's look at the CO regulation and the supports and the boundaries and all the scaffolding that our kids really need to be successful. And then let's also be honest with ourselves and those moments where you're like, I just can't do it. And be compassionate and graceful with yourself, but also be compassionate with your child, who then isn't going to be able to do the thing because they don't have the supports in place that they need. Drop the expectation that your kid does what they're supposed to do, and drop the expectation that your kid is regulated, right? If that kid can't be regulated, can't be okay, without intense levels of co-regulation. Okay? Both things have to come together if we're going to drop the demand for ourselves, we have to understand that our kids are going to continue to struggle, and you don't have to feel guilty about this at all.    

Robyn: If it's just too hard for you, it's too hard. You can't do anything more about that than your kid can, you need exactly what they need. More grace, more compassion, more structure, maybe more scaffolding, maybe some adjusted expectations. I'm personally in a season of life right now where there are a lot of things that are hard, and it is at time shifting me into too hard. We are as a family, navigating some significant, extra and unexpected stressors, and sometimes it really is just too hard. So after grumping about and being a relatively unpleasant person to live with for, I don't know, short period of time now, I've finally realized I am living in protection mode, which is making me grumpy and not very fun to live with, because it's all just too hard, and there's a lot of stressors that are impossible to change, they cannot be changed, and even if we could change them, the reality is, is that new ones are going to pop up, because that's what it means to be a middle-aged adult. So I have to be honest with myself and say we can't change these stressors, right? So I had to have a chat finally. Oh, it took me so long. Sometimes you just can't see the forest through the trees, right, like you're so in it, and you have no perspective.    

Robyn: So I finally am realizing all of this, and finally have a chat with my husband about what we could do, where can. Can we shift things so that we can open our bandwidth just a little bit? How do we reduce other stressors? Where can we lower the bar, including lowering the bar about how much energetic capacity we're supposed to have, which means giving one another a lot more grace, and maybe we could keep the house a little tidier. Because actually, y'all, I am a slob, but living in the aftermath of a kitchen flood that has made zero progress in six weeks is starting to really, really wear on me. And so even though having a super tidy house isn't typically a priority for me, I am confident that if we can all just spend 10 minutes a day tidying up a little extra my nervous system can get even just one more click, even the teeniest, tiniest, little extra of regulation, little extra space in my window of tolerance would be worth it.    

Robyn: So y'all be honest with yourself, what's too hard? Enforcing screen boundaries, enforcing homework expectations, enforcing chores or keeping their room clean, supervising teeth brushing, if it's too hard for now, give yourself permission to drop that demand on yourself, and then remember that if you drop the demand on yourself, your child is going to need you to drop that demand on them too. If they need screen boundaries enforced, you can't expect them to just cooperate with the rules because you're too exhausted to enforce them. If they need their nighttime routine supervised and supported, you can't expect them to do without you because you're too exhausted to be playful and by their side the whole time, but just be honest with yourself. Have compassion for yourself. It's okay to choose temporarily that it's just too hard, and then be really diligent about caring for your own nervous system, just like attunement to our kids is so important so that we might be able to notice when it's time to start strengthening their stress response system. Attunement to ourselves is super important. When is it time to kind of dip a toe back in to what was previously being experienced as too hard.    

Robyn: If we stay in a time of rest for too long, beyond what the body truly needs for repair, we start to reinforce the implicit belief that, yes, it's always going to be too hard, and we start to build memory networks that believe stress is more than we can handle, and we don't want to enforce those beliefs. And there's no perfect algorithm or flow chart for when it's time to start strengthening your own stress response system, but with practice, attuning to yourself, really paying attention to your own subtle cues and clues. The more you do that, the more you'll be able to attune to your kids, really noticing their subtle cues and clues and making adjustments accordingly. So in a way, the gift of attuning to yourself will give you the gift of attuning to your kids. Start with rest, when everything is too hard rest. I'm going to put in the show notes, a link to a list of podcast episodes that I have that are my top recommendations for parents experiencing burnout, so I'll make sure the link is in the show notes. Actually, what I'll do is if you follow the link to where this podcast episode is posted on my website. I always have that link in the show notes, so go to where this episode is posted on my website, and I'll put it there the list of podcast episodes that I have that support a parent and burnout when it's too hard, see if you can find ways to increase support. Look for ways to be not alone in your suffering, because hard things are less hard when we have other people with us. That's social baseline theory, hard things are less hard if we're accompanied.   

Robyn: That is actually one of our core foundational beliefs over in The Club, is one of the pieces of theory that I was holding in mind as I created the structure for The Club, right? That when we come together, hard, things get less hard, meaning our system, our nervous system, our stress response system, has to use fewer resources to respond to the same amount of stress. Increase connection, increase co-regulation, increase structure in your life, wherever you can the exact same suggestions for helping your kids with things that are too hard, do those things for yourself. Now, y'all, I am not a very structured person at all. I don't like to be told what to do, even by myself, but my husband and I agreed we need to up the structure for ourselves. We both work from home, and basically every day is just like, huh. What should we do today? We need more structure. We must have more structure that is going to take some of the burden off our stress response system, and we're working on it.    

Robyn: Go back through Raising Kids With Big Baffling Behaviors, and check out chapter six and apply all those ideas to yourself slowly, slowly, slowly, you'll start to rebuild your stress response system, and there will be fewer things in that too hard column. If you are listening to this episode The day that it airs, on March 4, today is the last day to join the club during this open enrollment period. If you are listening to this episode at a different time, the club might be open. It might not be open. You can go and check that out at RobynGobbel.com/TheClub. The club is, if you're not familiar, a online community for parents of kids with vulnerable nervous systems, big baffling behaviors. We have a forum. We have an enormous video library. We have a huge resource library. We have live meetings. It really has been strategically designed, based on my expertise in relational neuroscience and the window of tolerance in our stress response system. It was strategically designed to support parents of kids with vulnerable nervous systems. So even before kids behaviors change, you can begin to feel better. So anyway, we're open until March 4, 2025 if you're listening to this at a different time, just go check it out. See if we're open. If not, you can put yourself on the waiting list. RobynGobbel.com/TheClub, as always, it is tremendous honor and pleasure to support you on your journey. I have so much gratitude for your invitation to accompany you on this journey in your life, and I will see you back here again next week!