You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, OR— BRAND NEW: we’ve included a fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.

In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I am giving you another sneak peek inside my Peaceful Parenting Membership!

Listen in as I interview Tosha Schore as part of our membership’s monthly theme of “Aggression”. We discuss why kids get aggressive, how to handle it no matter how many kids you have, and dealing with the aggressive behaviour from many angles.

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We talk about:

* 6:35 Is a child’s aggression OUR fault as the parent?

* 13:00 Why are some kids aggressive?

* 15:00 How do you handle aggression when you have multiple kids?

* 22:00 A new sibling being born is often a trigger for aggression in the older child

* 29:00 When you feel like you are “walking on eggshells” around your child

* 35:00 How naming feelings can be a trigger for kids

* 37:00 When aggression is name calling between siblings

* 42:00 Friends- roughhousing play or aggression?

* 49:00 Coming from aggression at all angles

* 50:35 Using limits when there are safety issues

Resources mentioned in this episode:

* Yoto Player-Screen Free Audio Book Player

* The Peaceful Parenting Membership

* Tosha’s Website

xx Sarah and Corey

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Transcript:

Sarah: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. Today’s guest is Tosha Shore, a peaceful parenting expert on aggression. I invited her into the Peaceful Parenting Membership a few months ago to talk to us about aggression and to answer our members’ aggression-specific questions.

So many fantastic questions were asked. I know they’ll help you if you’re at all having any issues with aggression. And remember, aggression isn’t just hitting. It’s any expression of the fight, flight, or freeze response—including yelling, spitting, throwing things, and swearing.

Tosha is such a valuable resource on this issue. I really, really admire how she speaks about aggression and the compassion that she brings to both kids and parents who are experiencing aggression.

One note: one of the members was okay with her question being used in the podcast, but she didn’t want her voice used. So in the podcast today, I paraphrased her question and follow-up comments to preserve the flow of the conversation.

As I mentioned, this is a sneak peek inside the Peaceful Parenting Membership. If you would like to join us, we would love to have you. It is such a wonderful space filled with human touch and support. There are so many benefits, and it’s my favorite part of my work as a parenting coach.

We’ll put the link to join us in the show notes, or you can visit reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/membership. If you know anyone who could use this podcast, please share it with them. And as always, we would appreciate your five-star ratings and reviews on your favorite podcast app.

Let’s meet Tosha.

Hello, Tosha, welcome to the membership. I’m so excited that you’re going to be here talking to us about aggression today. So maybe you could start out by just giving a brief introduction of who you are and what you do.

Tosha: Absolutely. So my name is Tosha Shore and I am the founder of Parenting Boys Peacefully, where we are on a mission to create a more peaceful world, one sweet boy at a time.

I’m also the co-author of Listen: Five Simple Tools to Meet Your Everyday Parenting Challenges. And I work with a lot of families with young kids who are struggling with hard behaviors like aggression, and my goal is to give you all hope and inspiration—to keep on keeping on with peaceful parenting practices because they do absolutely work. Even, or maybe even especially, for really hard behaviors.

Sarah: I love that you added that—especially for hard behaviors—because I think there’s this fallacy out there that, yeah, peaceful parenting’s nice if you have easy kids, but, you know, my kid needs more “discipline” or whatever. So I love that you called that out, ’cause I think it’s absolutely true also.

So maybe—just—we have some questions from our members that people sent in, and I’m not sure, some people on the call might have questions as well. But maybe we could just get started by you sort of centering us in what causes aggression.

I was just on a call with some clients whose child was having some issues at school, which, if we have time, I might ask you about. The mom was saying, “Oh, you know, he’s being aggressive at school because I sometimes shout or lose my temper.” And I said to her, you know, of course that plays a part in it, but there are lots of kids whose parents never shout or lose their temper who still are aggressive.

So why is that? What causes aggression?

Tosha: I mean, I think there are a few things that can cause aggression. I often will say that aggression is fear in disguise, because I’ve found that a lot of kids who are getting in trouble at school—they’re yelling, they may be hurting siblings or hurting their parents—they are scared inside.

Sometimes it’s an obvious fear to us. Like maybe they’re playing with a peer and the peer does something that feels threatening—goes like that in their face or something—and instead of just, you know, play-fighting back, they clock the kid or whatever.

And sometimes the fears are a little bit more hidden and maybe could fall even into the category of lagging skills. I don’t even like to say “lagging skills,” but, like, skills that maybe they haven’t developed yet. School’s a perfect example. I think a lot of kids often will be acting out in school—even aggressively—because they’re being asked to do something that they don’t yet have the skills to do.

And that’s pretty frustrating, right? It’s frustrating to be asked, and then demanded, to perform in a certain way or accomplish something specific when you don’t either feel the confidence to do it, or you don’t yet have the skills. Which sort of spills into another reason that kids can get aggressive, and that’s shame.

We can feel really ashamed if everybody else in the class, for example, or a lot of kids, are able to just answer the questions straight out when the teacher asks—and maybe we get stage fright, or maybe we didn’t quite understand the example, or whatever it is.

So I definitely want to pull that parent away from blaming themselves. I think we always tend—we have a negative bias, right? Our brain has a negative bias. All of us. And I think we tend to go towards taking it on ourselves: It’s our fault. If we had just done X, Y, or Z, or if we hadn’t done X, Y, or Z, my child wouldn’t be acting out this way.

But I always say to parents, well, that’s a choice. There’s like a 50/50, right? We could choose to say, you know what, it could be that I did something, but I don’t think so. That’s the other 50%. But we always go with the “it’s my fault” 50.

So part of my job, I think, is to encourage parents to lean into the “It’s not my fault.” Not in the sense of nothing I do has an impression on my child, but in the sense of: it’s important that we as parents all acknowledge—and I truly believe this—that we are doing our best all the time.

There is no parent I’ve ever met who purposefully doesn’t behave in a way they feel good about, or purposefully holds back their love, or purposefully yells, or anything like that. If we could do differently, we absolutely would as parents.

Sarah: Mm-hmm. So more like, “I didn’t cause this. There’s maybe something I could do, but I didn’t cause this.” Right.

Tosha: I mean, like, look, let’s just be honest. Maybe she did cause it, okay? I mean, I’ve done things—maybe I’ve caused things—but so what, right? There’s nothing I can do at this point.

I can either sort of wallow in, “Oh gosh, did I cause this?” Or I could say, probably I didn’t, because there are so many other factors. Or I could say, you know, maybe I did, but one, I’m confident that I did the best that I could in that moment.

And two—and this is an important part—is that I am doing whatever work I need. I’m getting the support I need, right? I’m showing up to Sarah’s membership or this call or whatever, to take steps to do better in the future.

So if we’re just making a mistake and not doing anything to try to behave better next time, that’s not worth much either. Like, I remember once when my kids were little—I don’t even remember what I was doing, I don’t remember what the situation was—but I do remember very clearly that I apologized. I said, “I’m sorry, I won’t do that again.”

And my kid goes, “You always say that and then you do it again.”

And that was true. But if that were true because I was just saying “I’m sorry” and going about my next thing and not paying attention to the why or getting to the crux of what was causing me to behave that way, then that would be disingenuous.

But in fact, I was doing my own emotional work to be able to show up more often in ways that I felt good about. So I could genuinely feel good about that apology, and I could not take it personally. I could say, “You know what, you’re absolutely right. I do keep making this mistake. And I want you to know that I am working hard to try to change that behavior.” And that was true.

Sarah: Yeah. Makes sense. So you mentioned before that you want parents to see aggression as fear in disguise. And you mentioned that the fear can be something obvious, like someone’s gotten in your face and you’re scared. Or it can be fear of not being able to meet the expectations of your teacher or your parent. Or shame that can come from maybe even having made a mistake.

You didn’t say this, but I’m thinking of something common that often happens—like a kid makes a mistake or does something they didn’t mean to do, and then they lash out. Right?

So how do we get from those feelings of fear and shame to aggression? Because that doesn’t happen for every kid, right? Some kids will just cry or say something, but then some kids really lash out and hit, throw things, shout, scream. So how does that happen? How do we get from A to B?

Tosha: Well, I think all kids are different, just like all adults are different. And when we encounter fear—any of us—we go into fight, flight, or freeze. And kids who are aggressive go into fight.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Tosha: So some kids do and some kids don’t. And you know, I don’t have any scientific research to back this up, but I would say part of this is DNA, part of this is the nature of the kid.

Sarah: Right.

Tosha: And I think that’s also going back to the self-blame. I’ve got three kids, they’re all very different, right? Same house, same parents, same everything. They’re different. They came into this world different, and they’re still different.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Tosha: And I can help guide them, but I can’t change the core of who they are. So I think that aggression is those kids who go from “I’m scared, I’m having to protect myself” to that attack mode.

Sarah: Right. Makes sense. And just—I mean, I know this—but is it in the child’s control?

Tosha: No, it’s not in the child’s control. It is absolutely a reaction. And I think that’s why I feel like having that concept of aggression being fear in disguise can be so helpful from a mindset perspective for parents. Because it’s so much easier to have empathy for a child who we see as being scared, right? Than one who we see as being a jerk, picking on his brother, or disrespectful, rude—all of those terms we use when we’re struggling.

Sarah: Right. Well, there may be a few other points that I want you to make, but they might come out in the context of some questions from our members.

So I know at least two people on the call right now had sent me a question in case they couldn’t make it. But I’m going to ask Sonya—are you willing, Sonya, to unmute yourself and ask your question?

Sarah: Hi.

Sonia: Sure. Hi.

Sarah: Hi, Sonya.

(Sarah narrating): Sonia wonders how to handle aggression when you have multiple kids. She has three kids—a 7-year-old, a 4-year-old, and a baby—and it’s often her 7-year-old who reacts in fight mode. She’s trying to figure out how to keep her cool and also how to handle it and take care of the other kids and manage him.

Tosha: Yeah. So one thing that I noticed is how Sonia kind of glossed over the keeping her own cool. And I want to bring that to everybody’s attention, because we all do that. But actually, when we’re dealing with aggression, we have to come at it from a lot of different angles.

There’s no one magic pill I can give her, but it has to actually start—

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Tosha: So it doesn’t mean we have to reach Nirvana or become the Buddha or never yell before we can make any progress. But we can’t put that aside and just go, “Okay, what do I do to get my kid to stop doing this?”

Because our energy has a huge effect on our kids’ aggression. And usually—well, let me just say—it makes sense to ask yourself questions like: how am I feeling about this? Because most people are feeling scared—either scared of their child (“they’re going to hurt me” or “they’re going to hurt a sibling, hurt the baby”), or scared for their child (“he’s going to end up in juvenile hall, he’s going to end up the next school shooter”).

We project forward. So if we’re having fear for our child or fear of our child, that child is soaking up that feeling. And I don’t know about you, but I’ve never met anybody who could actually change their behaviors—who was inspired, motivated, or able to change their behaviors—when everyone around them was scared of them or scared for them.

Maybe occasionally there’s somebody who’s like, “I’m going to prove the point because the world is against me,” right? And this is like a Hollywood film. But most of us don’t work that way.

So I want to come at it from all the angles. There’s the “take care of yourself” piece. But at the same time, we have to keep our kids safe.

One thing that I think really helps is to pay attention to the pattern of when the aggression is happening, so she’s not surprised. Because if we’re surprised, then we act in surprising ways to ourselves. We don’t show up as our best.

So pay attention. Does this happen at a certain time of day? When there’s a certain constellation of kids playing together? When one particular child is present? When you’re doing something specific? If there’s another parent—when they’re present or absent? Pay attention to these things so that you can show up ready.

Because if you can change your story in your head from, “I have no idea when this happens, it happens all the time, it happens out of the blue”—which is really disempowering—to “I’ve noticed that every afternoon when I pick my 7-year-old up from school and bring him home, then I go in the kitchen to make a snack… and then he lays on top of the baby,” or whatever—then it is much more manageable.

Then you can say, “Okay, well, I remember this call that I was on and they talked about maybe there being some fear in there. Well, I don’t know what the fear is, I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m going to be ready. I’m not going to let it happen.”

So rather than make that snack, I’m going to make it before he comes home, or I’m going to just pull out some frozen pizza. But I’m going to stay present with that child during that time and expect that the upset will happen.

Because then, when that child goes to lay on the baby—or whatever the aggression is—you can actually physically get in the way. You can prevent it from happening. And then what happens is, because that child—the 7-year-old—has something to push against, something preventing them from acting on their fear response, from fighting—what happens then is like a magic reaction.

He’s able to erupt like a volcano and release the tension, those fears, the upsets. Maybe it’s 12 things that happened to him at school today. Maybe there was shame around not knowing the answer when he was called on. Whatever it was.

But there’s suddenly space with an attentive adult who remembers that the child is scared. So they have empathy. They’re not worried, they’re not caught by surprise. So we’re not going to jump at them. And that child has the opportunity then to heal.

That release of the feeling is what heals the child. It’s like pulling up weeds in your garden by the roots, as opposed to just pulling and having them break off, and then the next day you’ve got the whole thing back again.

So this tool—which in our book we talk about as Stay Listening, where we’re staying and allowing space for the child to feel—is what, over time, will change that fight response. That’s actually the gold nugget that, over time, will both change the intensity of the outbursts and also change the frequency.

Is any of that landing for you?

Sarah (narrating): Sonia responded that it was very helpful. She’s told me before that her baby’s almost one, and this started happening a lot right after she had the baby. She also says that she’s done my Transform Your Family Life course, and she’s still working on it. She’s done more of the welcoming feelings, and she has put together that it’s usually in the afternoons—so Tosha is right about that—and it’s happening after school.

She’s also connected that there are things happening at school that aren’t in line with how she and her husband want their child treated, and she thinks that’s related.

Tosha: Yeah. So in light of this new information, I would also say—and I’m sure Sarah’s talked to you about this as well—but pouring in as much connection to that child as possible.

And it can feel, especially when you have multiple kids, that it’s unfair, right? One kid is getting more… Are you familiar with the concept of special times, Sarah? Is that something that you teach?

Sarah: Yeah.

Tosha: Okay. You know, if you’re doing special time—oftentimes we talk about, or I talk about at least—I’m not a “fair” kind of a person. I’m a “life’s not fair” kind of a person. My kids will tell you that.

But when it comes to special time, I always encourage parents to think about a week and to try to give your kids about the same amount of special time over a week. But—and here’s the caveat—when we have a kid who is struggling, they are demanding more of us. They are demanding more attention. And our time didn’t increase.

Tosha: So that means we are going to need to devote more time. It’s going to be uneven. But that child—and especially, like, this is probably the number one reason that I hear for aggression to start, and we didn’t talk about this at the beginning—is when a younger sibling is born. I mean, it is so often the trigger, I can’t tell you.

And if I could go back to all of those parents and say, “Don’t worry about being fair. Just pour as much extra love and connection and yumminess into that child who’s struggling as you can. It will pay off later. You can make it up to the other kids later.” In fact, you’re giving them a gift by helping their older brother, because then his behavior isn’t going to have that negative effect on them.

So I think that we get stuck in the fairness sometimes. I’m not saying you do this, Sonya—this is just from my experience. And then we hold back from giving that child what they need. So special time isn’t the only thing. I would say: make a list of things that you do with that 7-year-old that creates laughter between you, that you both feel really good—where you have that yumminess, like, oh, you’re loving on him and he’s loving on you. Maybe that’s shooting hoops in the front yard, or maybe it’s drawing a picture together, or jumping on the trampoline, or reading a book. I mean, it could be anything at all.

You can do those things, and you can do them with the other three kids around. Also, keep doing all of that stuff. And you’re going to have to, I think, carve out some time for one-on-one special time—named, timed—where he gets to lead and he gets to be the boss.

Sarah: That’s awesome. And we always talk about equity versus equality with the sibling relationships, and I think that’s—

Tosha: Oh yeah. I love that.

Sarah: Okay, awesome. Thank you so much. Priya, do you want me to ask your question, or do you want to ask the question since you’re on the call? Maybe she’s stepped away or can’t unmute herself. Uh, she wants me to ask. Okay. So I’m going to find Priya’s question and ask it.

Uh, Priya says: “My five-year-old gets angry at anything and everything. He has zero tolerance for any kind of dislike or disagreement. We acknowledge his feelings with empathy, doing our best to stay calm and give him time to process his emotions. The only limit we consistently set is holding him from hurting people or property while he yells, screams, says hurtful things, and tries with full rage to attack us.

“We’re consciously making time for roughhousing, special time, connection, laughter, and tears—though he rarely cries—and we talk about asking for help before things escalate. I’ve been trying to track patterns by logging some incidents, but sometimes it feels completely unpredictable. We often have no idea why he’s screaming. If I push a chair slightly, he gets angry. If someone else presses the elevator button, he gets upset. If he has a plan in his mind and we don’t pick up on it, he becomes extremely frustrated. He gets irritated and grumpy very easily. It’s gotten to the point where we feel like we have to expect an outburst at any moment. It looks like it’s becoming a habit for him, and I feel like I’m starting to walk on eggshells—always watchful for what might happen when I say or do something.”

Tosha: Yeah, so this is a really—believe it or not—common situation. Did she say he was five? Is that five?

Sarah: Yeah.

Tosha: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I cannot tell you the number of parents who come to me and this is what they say: “I’m walking on eggshells.” Right? If we get to the point where we’re walking on eggshells, generally what that says to me is that we are not either setting enough limits or we’re not setting limits effectively.

And one thing that I would suggest to Priya is to take a minute to think about whether or not there are places where she’s feeling resentment. That’s always a good sign for me—like, if I’m feeling resentment about something, then that’s probably a place I need to hold a limit. If I’m not, then there’s more wiggle room.

So when this is happening all the time about everything, I would say: get really clear on what limits are important to you and what limits are not. Right? So if you’re in public, in the elevator, and you don’t want to deal with a big meltdown about the elevator button, can you plan for that? If you know that that’s an issue, when you go in, you can say to people, “Hey, my son would really like to press the buttons—what floor would you like?”

Sarah: Mm-hmm. Right.

Tosha: “Here’s our elevator operator—exactly. What floor, please?” Or, if somebody presses the button—or if she’s pressing the button—to just go in knowing, “I’m not going to press the button. I’m going to let my child do this.” And if somebody else has already pressed it, you can say, “You know what? Hey, let’s take the next elevator and then we’ll press it. You can press it.”

So there are places where we can be flexible. But we don’t want to do that all the time, because essentially what this child is showing me is that he has a real intense lack of flexibility. And ultimately, the goal that I would have for him would be—slowly, slowly and lovingly—to help him increase that flexibility. So that, yeah, maybe he’s not going to say, “Oh, shoot, I’m feeling really disappointed because I didn’t get to press the elevator button and I really like to do that.” But maybe instead of having a huge tantrum, he just gets a sourpuss face and crosses his arms. Okay, I’ll take that. That’s better. We’re moving in the right direction.

So it sounds like you’re doing a lot of things right, but I would hone in on limit-setting. Really: are you taking the time to think about what kind of limits you want to set? Are you letting go of limits when you know that you don’t have the wherewithal to stay calm in the face of the upset?

So, oftentimes—I’m hearing Priya say she does a lot of Stay Listening—I would be curious to know: what does that Stay Listening look like? Because I was working with a dad this week, a client of mine, and we were talking about a situation that was going on with his kid, who was coming home really frustrated with homework. And what ended up coming out of his mouth was, “I thought I was Stay Listening, but I think I actually wasn’t Stay Listening.”

Right—because Stay Listening isn’t about trying to calm the child, or trying to get them to stop what they’re doing. It can’t be with the goal of, “Let me get this kid to quiet down,” kind of a thing. Stay Listening is really holding space lovingly for whatever needs to come out, which means—yeah—all the words, all—like, we don’t take them personally.

Sarah: Can I just interject something? For my community, what they would recognize Stay Listening as is “welcoming feelings.” Mm-hmm. Just because that’ll be a familiar phrase to them. So I just wanna—

Tosha: Yeah, absolutely. Right. But “welcoming feelings”—I feel like we need to also talk about: what does that look like? Mm-hmm. What does that look like when we welcome feelings? Because, you know, you could be upset and I could just be like—

Sarah: Yeah.

Tosha: —like waiting for you to be done. Right? I could be like, “Okay, I’m not gonna shut you down, but, you know, hey, whatever you do, what you need to do, I’m gonna go answer my email.” That’s—you know—I can “welcome” the feelings like that. But again, coming back to our energy: what energy are we bringing to that? Are we really staying present with the energy of “We are gonna get through this,” with the energy of “You are safe,” with the energy of “I’m here with you.”

Mm-hmm. Right? Like, can that child sense that they’re not alone—that you’re on their team? And that’s maybe a good litmus test. If you were to ask yourself: do you feel like your child would feel like you’re on their team, or that you’re butting heads? Mm-hmm. And if the answer is “butting heads,” then the question is: what can you shift so that your child will feel like, “Hey, we’re in this together”?

Sarah: Sounds good. Priya, I don’t know if you have anything to add. It sounds like maybe she can’t unmute herself, but—oh, she says he screams really loud, so we usually stay quiet and don’t say anything because it’s really loud. We wait for the moment to pass before we can say anything, at the same time being present. So she’s saying they’re trying to be present, sometimes trying to say, “I see you’re really upset.”

Tosha: Yeah. And so when she says—I’m sorry, it’s a little bit via you here—but before, when you say, “Priya, before I say something,” what is it that you’re saying? Because another thing about Stay Listening—or welcoming feelings, from my perspective—is that saying something actually doesn’t really have a place. So if we need to say something, it should—I think—uh, or let me just rephrase that: I find it most effective when it’s something that essentially allows that child to feel safe, to realize that they’re not alone.

Right—to realize that we’re on their team, and to realize that it’s not gonna last forever. So that they’re loved—these types of things. So I wouldn’t—if you’re naming feelings, and I don’t know that she is or isn’t, but if you’re naming feelings—which is something that a lot of professionals, for example, will recommend—I would play around with stopping that and seeing if that makes a difference, because sometimes that’s a huge trigger for kids. And maybe even, “I see you’re upset,” or whatever it is that she said—that also might be a trigger.

Yeah. Don’t be afraid to really not say anything at all, and just think about each of these things as an experiment. Take a day and don’t say anything at all and see if it makes a difference. Other things to try—’cause it sounds like he’s quite sensitive—is distance, right? How close are you to that child? Some kids don’t want you all up in their face. Some kids want to be on your lap and hugged. Some kids want to be a room’s distance away. So play with distance; play with tone.

Sarah: Love that. Thank you so much, Tosha. Does anybody else who’s on the call have a question? And if not, I have questions that were sent in, but I want to give priority to people who are here. Uh, and—and Priya says, “Thank you, Tosha.”

Tosha: Yeah, my pleasure. I’m trying to work without the direct back and forth.

Sarah: Yeah.

Tosha: No—so I hope that was helpful.

Sarah: Yeah, that was great, Lindsay.

Tosha: And I want to acknowledge that it is really hard. It is hard.

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. It’s one of the most—

Tosha: It won’t last forever either. Like, it’s absolutely—move through. I can assure you of that.

Sarah: Lindsay, do you have a question?

Member B: Yes. I have a question about my son, actually. He’s 10 years old, and I have a 10-year-old boy and then a 7-year-old girl. And a lot of times—there’s kind of two different questions—but between the siblings, a lot of times my daughter will be, like, have verbal aggression towards him, and then he—he is my—he is a little more sensitive, and he will hold it in, and he won’t spit out things back at her, but then he eventually will just hit her. And, like, he comes with the physical aggression. So kind of, as the parent, proactively trying to step in there—like, how do I handle both of those when one is verbal—maybe aggression—and one is physical? I know it can escalate there. Where do I step in?

Tosha: Yeah. First of all, I just want to appreciate that you can see that there’s a dynamic there. Because oftentimes we get into this place as parents where we’re like, “This person is the aggressor and this person is the victim.” Because oftentimes there is a pattern like that, but it’s—it’s beautiful that you can see this dance that they’re doing.

Member B: Yeah.

Tosha: And so if you see it kind of as a dance, you can interplay around and experiment with interrupting it in different ways. Okay. I would say that, in terms of the verbal aggression, what I have found works best—and again, I was talking to a client yesterday and he was saying to me that this is what works. Mm-hmm. I’m like, “Okay, so let’s do more of that. You came out of your mouth; you said it works when you do it—let’s do more.” And that is being playful in the face of the verbal aggression.

And so it can look like a lot of different things. You could say ahead of time to your daughter something like, “Hey, I’ve noticed that, you know, sometimes these nasty words come out of your mouth towards your brother, and I know you don’t mean them. So I’m gonna—I’m gonna pay attention and just try to help you with that, ’cause I know you don’t want to hurt his feelings.”

Member B: Yeah.

Tosha: And just, you know, outside the moment, just kind of toss that out there. And then in the heat of the moment—I mean, you can just get as goofy as you can think. You could get a paper bag and just pull it over her head, right? Or you could get those indoor snowballs and just start pelting her with snowballs. You could do what we call the “vigorous snuggle,” which we write about in the book, which is something like, “Do you know what happens to little girls who call their brothers, you know, ‘stupid buttheads’” or whatever it is—

Sarah: Uh-huh.

Tosha: —and then you—rather than push away, which is what we tend to want to do—you do something goofy, right? “They get their elbows licked!” And then you’re, like, chasing after her elbow and trying to lick it. What you’re going for is laughter. You’re trying to elicit laughter, because she’s stuck in a hard spot where she can’t feel compassion for him and she can’t feel your love or anybody’s. And so laughter will loosen that up.

So I would say: interrupt the verbal aggression with play.

Member B: Okay.

Tosha: Some of those things will maybe annoy her; some of them will lead to laughter. And then sometimes you’ll do an experiment and it’ll annoy her—mm-hmm—and she’ll explode. And what I want to say about that is—that’s okay. Because, like we talked about with the school incident, it’s an opportunity for her to do that healing and release the tensions and the hurts and the upsets and the gripes and all the stuff that she’s holding in there. So when that happens, if you can welcome those feelings and not try to shut them down or judge her—or what many of us, sort of in the peaceful parenting world, will do is just talk, talk, talk, talk to her about it—if you can let all of that go—

Member B: Yeah.

Tosha: —you’ll see the behaviors lessen. Okay? You know, that would be—I mean, we talked a little bit about the physical stuff before, so I thought for this question I would focus more on the verbal.

Member B: Yeah.

Tosha: But in the sibling dynamic, just kind of rotate who you go to, so they don’t feel like there’s one “bad guy” and one “woe-is-me” sibling.

Member B: Yeah. Right.

Tosha: Because ultimately, our goal as parents is to nurture that sibling relationship. Right. I don’t—I don’t know—like, I just had a birthday. I’m like, “This is my best birthday ever.” And people are like, “Really? How is it your best birthday ever?” I’m like, because, like, a lot of people couldn’t come to my party but all three of my boys were home, and we sang karaoke, and the three of them sang me a song and sang all this. It was like—there is nothing I think we want more than to see our kids loving each other, enjoying each other—mm-hmm—having a strong relationship down the road.

And let me tell you, these kids were at each other. I mean, now they’re 18, 20, and 22. But I have been in your shoes where my mom would call me and be like, “I’m afraid they’re gonna kill each other. I’m worried.” I’d be like, “It’s okay. I got this, Mom. You know, things will change.” Yeah. But we do want to experiment—interrupt the behaviors.

Member B: Yeah, I appreciate the trying different interventions and then also being prepared for her to, like, not enjoy some of them as well. ’Cause I think that happens a lot more than, like, the positive, you know, playful things. Right. So I appreciate that space to, like, let that happen too—and that’s okay.

Tosha: Yeah. It’s—even more than okay. Like, that’s kind of what needs to happen—mm-hmm—in order for her to shift—yeah—in order for her to be able to show up differently. She’s stuck. Just think of her as being stuck.

Member B: Yeah. And maybe it’s not gonna fix that moment, but later on it’ll be less and less, right?

Tosha: Yeah. And it happens much more quickly than we think, oftentimes.

Member B: Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you. Yeah. The other quick question—do I have time, Sarah, to ask the second—

Sarah: Sure.

Member B: Okay. The second one is more—it’s my 10-year-old. So recently, like, he was at a playdate. He’s getting to play with a lot more of his friends. They’re all playing football and sports and things, and he’s just a bigger kid—my husband’s 6’5”, so he’s just naturally bigger than a lot of the kids. And he is super playful, but he gets, like, playful aggression. And, like, one of the moms was saying, like, “Oh my—” I’ve seen the dynamic of how all the boys are playing, and I noticed Calvin sometimes gets a little too aggressive. And her son Luke is pretty small. And Luke is like, “Yeah, I get trampled sometimes.” And so the mom was like, “I just try and tell Calvin, like, how big he is and, you know, his awareness.” But I know it happens with his sister, and I think it probably happens at school sometimes too—that he doesn’t realize his size, and that maybe it comes out to be as, like—I don’t know if he has internal aggression or if it’s just playful and he’s not aware of how big he is.

Tosha: Yeah, I mean, I’d say two things about this. One is: I always have to ask the question in these situations—Is it the kids who are having the problem, or is it the parents who are having a problem?

Member B: Yeah.

Tosha: And I don’t know the answer in this situation, but oftentimes our kids play a lot rougher than we feel comfortable with—but they’re all actually having a good time. Yeah. I mean, the way that you said that kid reported didn’t sound like it was a problem. I could be wrong and it could be a problem, but I think it’s worth asking: whether or not it’s a problem—Is that mom worried, or is the kid not having fun?

Member B: Yeah.

Tosha: So just to keep that in mind. Because there’s often a par between what we are feeling comfortable with and the way our kids are going at each other. Right. And I think in that situation, we do want to stay close if we’re not sure. And just ask—like, if you notice that energy going up—just say, “Hey, are you all having fun?” If everyone says yes—okay. If one person says no, then we know we need to intervene. Okay. So that’s one piece.

And then I think it’s about body awareness for him. Mm-hmm. And maybe one thing that you could do at home would be some practice—sort of—physical wrestling matches or something of the sort, where you could just pretend like you’re in a ring—

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Tosha: —with a timer, and do, like, 15-second, 30-second sessions—or whatever you call it. I’m not a boxing person or whatever, but I don’t—

Sarah: Rounds.

Tosha: Rounds. Maybe it’s rounds, right? Yeah. So where somebody’s actually the ref and saying, “Okay, go at it,” and then when the whistle blows—when the ref blows the whistle—everyone has to run back to their corners. And so we’re increasing the awareness of stop-start, stop-start.

And then also I think it’s oftentimes a good idea to have kind of a—what do you call it—an emergency word, secret word, whatever it’s called—

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Tosha: —the word—

Sarah: Safe word.

Tosha: What’s the word? Safe word. Safe word.

Sarah: Safe word.

Tosha: Yeah. Safe word. And so you all could figure that out at the beginning of this game. And, in fact, that’s something that he could transfer over to his play with his friends. Like, “Yeah, once he learns—he’s like, ‘I know I’m big; I’m just having a good time. I know I don’t want to hurt you, but if things are getting too rough, say banana and I’ll know I gotta pull back.’”

Yeah. But “banana” is going to work a lot better than, “Hey, stop doing that,” or a parent coming in and saying, “Hey, be careful, you need to be careful, you’re a lot bigger than him, you need to pull back.” That’s not going to work as well. But you have to practice those things at home. So—come at it from two different angles.

Member B: Yeah. I like how that is—he and his sister have a thing where if they’re being too much, they yell “T.” Yeah. Okay. And so if they’re like “T, T,” then they know like, oh, that’s a timeout—like, I need to pause for a second.

Sarah: Perfect.

Member B: So yeah, maybe just—yeah—telling him, like, set it up with your friends so they can say it.

Tosha: Yeah. If he already has that skill with his sister, that’s amazing. Mm-hmm. And then, yeah—could we just transfer it over to a friend?

Member B: Yeah, and I agree—it could be a little more parent than kid, because the kid’s inviting Calvin over all the time and wants him to come back. So I’m like, I think they’re having fun. You know, and it just may be the parent’s perception of—or protection of—her child.

Tosha: Right. And I think it’s—I think it’s fair to just ask.

Member B: Mm-hmm.

Tosha: You know, ask the child. I mean, you can ask the child if the child’s at your house. Yeah. You can just say, like, “Hey, you know, if you guys need me, I’m in the other room,” or whatever. Like, you don’t have to— I just—I don’t like to assume that there’s a problem.

Member B: Mm-hmm. Yeah, because he’s—he—it’s very sweet. I just think he—he just plays rough sometimes and—

Tosha: Yeah. Well, some kids like to play rough. And the other thing is, if we interrupt too much, we’re interrupting the development of important emotional intelligence. Because one of the ways that kids learn—or build—emotional intelligence is through playing with one another. Right? If they play too rough, they’re going to lose their playmate. Right. If they don’t play rough enough, they’re also going to lose their playmate. Right. This kid might like to play rough. I mean, this little kid might like to play rough—mm-hmm—because he doesn’t have that opportunity with other kids. And, like, it’s an opportunity to sort of be bigger and use strength and feel—I mean, I don’t know.

Sarah: Yeah.

Tosha: But there’s something about the dance that they do when they play. I remember reading research about this in the animal kingdom. It was like a—it was a—I forget what his name was. This was like a million years ago at a conference when I was—back when I was a linguist—who was talking about this. And it was super, super interesting. I thought, “Wow, okay.” And so I think we need to let our kids also do that dance and just be present—so if there is a problem, we can step in—let them know that we’re there. But don’t assume there’s a problem when nobody’s complaining.

Member B: Right. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks, Lindsay. That’s helpful.

Sarah: So I’m conscious that we only have about, uh, eight minutes left with you. And I don’t think anyone else on the call has a question, so I will go to a question that was sent in. And actually two questions that were sent in, and I’m not sure how different they are, so I’m going to tell you both of them.

Okay. And if you can answer them both together, or if you think they’re separate—if that works. Okay. So one of them is a person, a member who has a child—a girl—who is just about to turn eight. And when she gets upset, she hits and throws things at her mom. And they haven’t been able to—and she’s been following peaceful parenting—but still hasn’t been able to curb this. She doesn’t have any issues anywhere else, except for—

Tosha: Okay.

Sarah: —her mom. The second person has a 12-year-old daughter that is hitting, kicking, pinching, saying mean words, etc., to her younger siblings when they’re not doing what she wants them to do. She’s the oldest of five; has younger siblings who are 10, 8, 4, and 2. And she didn’t mention this, but I know she also—when she gets upset—she will do that to her mom too.

Tosha: Yeah. Yeah. So for me, these are really both limit-setting issues, right? Like I’ve said earlier, we have to come at aggression from all the different angles, right? So we talked—we started out at the beginning with the first question about, like, hey, let’s—we gotta focus in on our own healing and our own triggers, and make sure that we’re not sort of trying to skate over that and pretend that we’re gonna be able to be better without addressing anything.

We also have to focus on connection. Like—somebody said they’re tracking. Yeah, we need to pay attention—like, when does this stuff happen? We need to pour in connection, like we talked about. Make a list of all the things that are yummy when you do them together—just do more, do more, do more. Use play in the ways that we’ve talked about.

But limits aren’t necessarily the place to start—but if there are safety issues, then we have to go right there. So if the problem—well, there are lots of problems—but one thing that I’ve seen is that if we let a child, quote-unquote, succeed—or if a child succeeds in hurting us—let’s just say throwing—like, let’s say we get a stapler thrown at us and we end up with a black eye, or a cut on our face, or whatever it is—that child feels more fear than they felt before. Because there’s a huge amount of fear associated with having that much power when you’re so small, and feeling like the adults in your life can’t keep everybody safe.

Right? Because our number one job, in my opinion, is to keep everybody safe and alive. Let’s just start there. Mm-hmm. So this is just basic. So that means that in a situation like this, you’re gonna want to pay attention. You’re gonna really want to track when this happens. It’s good—it only happens with you, I think. That’s telling in the sense that she feels safe enough with you to be able to show you that she’s kind of holding things together out in the world, but actually feeling yucky inside, and these feelings need to come out somehow.

And the next step is you figuring out: well, how do I want to show her that, yes, I can keep her safe? And that is likely gonna look like you physically anticipating—for her throwing something—or you see that she reaches for the stapler, and you’re gonna rush in and you’re gonna put your hand on her hand on that stapler: “I don’t want that stapler to get thrown.”

And I’m not gonna lie—it’s gonna look messy, and it’s gonna be a struggle, and all of the things. That’s fine—as long as you’re calm. If you feel triggered by the throwing, and you don’t feel like you can stay calm, and you can feel like—to talk about, you know, the sweet child underneath the yucky feeling. So let’s—got the throwing or the hitting or the cussing out or the whatever up here, and there’s just always this sweet child underneath.

If you lose sight of that child, then in a situation like this, I would rather you walked out of the room and the—you know—the stapler hit the door. You know, it breaks the window or it dents the door or whatever it is. I don’t want that to happen, but I would rather that happen than it hit you and then you hit her, or you held her harder than you want, or you screamed horrible things at her that you wished afterwards you could take back.

Right. And I say these things not because I think you’re doing this, but just because in my 20 years of working in this world and raising three kids—I know what those feelings feel like, and they’re real, and they happen to all of us. So if you feel out of control, remove yourself.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Tosha: Even at the cost of the window. But—which is why we have to start with our own—getting ourselves in what I call “good enough emotional shape.” Because ultimately, you need to be able to move in, put your hand on that hand with the stapler, and just say something like, “I can’t—I can’t let you throw that, sweet girl. I can’t let you throw that.” And that’s it.

And then she’s gonna have a huge upset. She’s gonna fight, and she’s gonna try and—“Let go of me,” and “I can’t breathe,” and whatever. And unless she breathes through her hand—like, she’s breathing okay, right? But that upset, again, is the gold nugget. Like—then you welcome the feelings and you allow them to pour out. Because something happened. Something is going on. And it might not be that one thing happened during that day at school, or wherever, but it might be that there was a little nick and a little nick and a little nick. And every time—whatever—she didn’t get what she wanted, or a sibling got something and she didn’t, or you answered a sibling before you answered her, or whatever it is—they’re just all little things.

They happen. They’re not your fault or anybody’s fault. It’s just that if, every time they happen, she doesn’t release the yucky feelings that arise in her as a result, then what’s happening is they’re building up. And so I like to think of it as the sand—or the sedimentary rock—on the beach. You can see those striations in it, right? So it’s like—sand is really soft; you can kind of brush it off, but when it sits and it hardens, then you have to take, like, a chisel to it.

Sarah: Yeah. For our people, we call that “getting a full emotional backpack,” when you’re talking about the nicks that build up over time. So that’ll resonate for people.

Tosha: Exactly. Exactly.

Sarah: Thank you so much, Tosha.

Tosha: Yeah.

Sarah: I hope—that was—

Tosha: Helpful. But you have to physically get in there.

Sarah: Yeah, physically get in there. And if it happens too fast to catch the first one, you just kind of do your best and try for the second one.

Tosha: Yes.

Sarah: Yeah.

Tosha: Yes. And then you expect the upset, and you stay with it if you can.

Sarah: Yeah.

Tosha: Remembering that that’s just a scared little girl in there.

Sarah: Yeah.

Tosha: Right. You don’t know what this is about. Just trust that her body knows that it needs to do this healing, and she’s picked you because she knows you can handle it—that you won’t lose sight of her goodness, that your love is strong. And that’s an honor. I know it feels hard, but it’s actually a real honor when we’re the one who gets chosen for that emotional work.

Sarah: I love that, and I want to highlight that a lot of what you talked about today was our own inner work on keeping ourselves calm and keeping our mindset of keeping track of that sweet child—as you say, the sweet child inside that’s just afraid and needs us in those moments. ’Cause it can feel—I think a lot of parents can feel—like, quote, victimized, and that’s probably going to get them deeper into the aggression than get them out of it.

Tosha: Exactly. Exactly. And so we want to feel—I hope that after this call you feel empowered. I mean, I hope there’s just one thing that you can take away and experiment with doing differently. Just think of these things as experiments. You don’t have to get it perfect—right? Whatever the word is that you have in your head. Right. Just try something.

Sarah: Just—

Tosha: Pick one idea that you heard and try it. Try it for a day. See how it goes. And remember that if it leads to big upset on the part of your child, that doesn’t mean you did it wrong. It probably means you’re actually doing something right.

Sarah: That’s so key. I love that. Thank you so much, Tosha. We really appreciate you and your work, and everyone, be sure to let us know how it goes for you when you try some of these things. Let us know in the Facebook group. And thank you, Tosha—thanks for getting up early and meeting with us today.

Tosha: Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you for inviting me back, Sarah.

Sarah: Thanks, everyone.

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You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, OR— BRAND NEW: we’ve included a fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.

In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I am giving you another sneak peek inside my Peaceful Parenting Membership!

Listen in as I interview Rachel Simmons as part of our membership’s monthly theme of “Friendship Troubles”. Rachel is an expert on relational aggression, AKA mean girls. We discuss how to intervene in this behaviour when kids are young, how to prevent our child from doing this, and how we can support our children when they’re experiencing it.

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We talk about:

* 6:27 What is relational aggression?

* 8:50 Both boys and girls engage in this type of aggression

* 10:45 How do we intervene with young kids

* 14:00 How do we teach our kids to communicate more effectively

* 22:30 How to help our children who are dealing with relational aggression

* 33:50 Can you reach out to the aggressive child’s parents?

* 38:00 How to reach out to the school

* 47:30 How to help our kids make new friends after relational aggression

Resources mentioned in this episode:

* Yoto Player-Screen Free Audio Book Player

* The Peaceful Parenting Membership

* Rachel’s website

xx Sarah and Corey

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Rachel interview transcript

Sarah: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. Today’s episode is another sneak peek inside my membership, where I interviewed Rachel Simmons — an expert on relational aggression, AKA “mean girls.” She wrote a book called Odd Girl Out, which is all about the topic of relational aggression and how we can support our children when they’re experiencing it — and what to do if our child is actually doing that to other people.

If you don’t know what relational aggression is, don’t worry — listen up, because she goes into the definition of it. This was a great conversation. My members had questions, I had questions, and in the end, we all agreed it was a very helpful discussion. I think you’ll find it helpful as well — no matter how old your child is or whether or not they’ve experienced any relational aggression.

This is something we should all be aware of, and as parents, we actually have a lot of control over preventing our child from becoming someone who uses relational aggression.

As I said, this is a sneak peek inside my membership, where we have a theme every month. This month’s theme was “Friendship Troubles,” and it actually came as a request from one of our members. So we brought in Rachel to talk to us about relational aggression, which this member’s child had been struggling with.

Every month in the membership, we have a theme — I do some teaching about it, and we also bring in a guest expert for teaching and Q&A.

If you’d like to join us inside the membership, you can go to reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/membership to learn more and join us.

Another thing we do inside the membership is office hours. You may have heard a recent podcast that gave a sneak peek into what those are like. We do office hours twice a week where you’re welcome to drop in, ask a question, get support, or share a win — from me, Corey, and other members. It’s just a wonderful place.

Our membership is my favorite corner of the internet, and we’ve been doing it for six years. It really is a special place. I’d love for you to join us! Please let me know if you have any questions, or just head over to reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/membership to learn more.

And now — let’s hear from Rachel.

Hey Rachel, welcome to the podcast.

Rachel: Thank you.

Sarah: Can you just tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Rachel: Sure. Well, I’m based in Western Massachusetts, and I’m a researcher and author. Over the last eight years, I’ve also become an executive coach. I’ve always been fascinated by — and inspired by — the psychology of girls and women.

Over what’s now become a long career, I’ve worked with women and girls across the lifespan — beginning, I’d say, in elementary school, and more recently working with adult women.

I’ve always been animated by questions about how women and girls experience certain phenomena and spaces differently, and how paying attention to those experiences can contribute to their overall wellness and potential.

Sarah: Nice. And I just finished reading your book Odd Girl Out, and I could see how much research went into it. I think you mentioned you interviewed people for a few years to write that book.

Rachel: It was a long time, yeah. I was just actually reflecting on that. I came across a shoebox filled with cassette tapes — little cassette tapes of the interviews I did when I wrote that book, which came out 20 years ago.

I worked all over the United States and tried to speak to as many girls as I could.

Sarah: It’s a great book — highly recommended. We’ll put a link to it in the show notes. Thank you for writing it.

So today we invited you here because we want to talk about relational aggression. Can you give us a definition of what relational aggression is?

Rachel: Yes. Relational aggression is a psychological form of aggression — a way that people express themselves when they’re trying to get a need met or are upset about something. It usually starts as early as two or three years old, when kids become verbal, and it’s the use of relationship as a weapon.

It can start off as something like the silent treatment — “I’m going to turn away from you because I’m upset with you” — cutting someone off as a way of communicating unhappiness. That silence becomes the message.

I remember once interviewing a seventh-grade girl who told me she gave people the silent treatment — that she’d stop talking to them as a way to get what she wanted. That was really unusual, because most girls won’t come up and be like, “Yeah, here are all the ways I’m mean.”

In fact, it’s often the secrecy that makes this stuff hard to talk about. So I was like, wow, here’s a unicorn telling me she’s doing it. And I asked, “Why do you do it?” And she said, “Because with my silence, I let my friends know what’s going to happen if they don’t do what I want.”

A very powerful description of relational aggression.

So that’s the silent treatment, but it can also take more verbal forms. Like, “If you don’t give me that toy, I won’t be your friend anymore.” Or, “If you don’t play with me at recess today, then our friendship is over.”

The threat is always that I’ll take away a relationship. And it’s so powerful because — what do we want more than connection? That’s a profound human need. So it’s a very, very powerful form of aggression.

Sarah: Your book is called Odd Girl Out, and you focused on women and girls. Do you think this also happens with boys? Has it started happening more with boys? What’s your take — is it still mainly a girl thing? I mean, when I think of relational aggression, I think of “mean girls,” right?

Rachel: Yes, I think a lot of people do — and certainly did when I first started researching this book many years ago. I did too.

It’s important to remember that yes, boys definitely do this, and they do it as much as girls starting in middle school — at least according to the research I read. I haven’t read the very recent studies, so that could have changed, but back when I was doing this work, no one was writing about boys doing it.

There was almost no research, and frankly, because of my own experience — seeing boys being more direct and girls being indirect — I assumed it was just a girl thing. But it most definitely is not.

I think I and others, in many ways, did a disservice to boys by not studying them. I wish I had. It’s something that’s much more widely understood now by people out in the field doing this work.

Sarah: Yeah, interesting — because my oldest son, who’s now 24, definitely experienced a lot of relational aggression in elementary school. And my daughter did too.

And just as a side note — it’s so painful to watch your kids go through that. I want to ask you more about parents’ roles, but it’s so painful as a parent to watch your child have their friends be mean to them.

You mentioned it can start as young as two or three, and I remember reading in your book — that sort of “you can’t come to my birthday party” thing. Even little kids will say that to their parents sometimes, right? Using that relational aggression.

You said that if we don’t actively get involved, it can turn into older-kid relational aggression that never goes away. What do you suggest parents do or say when they hear this kind of thing — whether it’s to other kids on the playground, to a sibling, or even to the parents themselves?

Rachel: Yeah, with little kids — we’re talking about little, little ones — I often answer that question with a question back to the parent: What do you do when your kid hits or bites somebody?

Usually what most of us do is stop the behavior, make sure the other kid’s okay, and then turn to our own child and say, “You can’t do that. We don’t do that in our family. That’s not what we say, that’s not what we do. You have to use your words.”

And we say, “We don’t ever threaten people when we’re angry.” It’s okay to be mad — that’s really key — but it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. Certain ways of speaking are off-limits, just like certain words are off-limits.

It’s also key, though, to practice self-awareness as a parent. Because if you’re the kind of person who goes quiet when you’re upset, or withdraws as a way of expressing yourself, that’s probably where your kid’s picking it up. They’re not unaware of that.

It’s kind of like when parents tell teens, “Hey, get off your phone,” and the teen says, “You’re on your phone all the time.” Modeling is key.

Sarah: That makes a lot of sense — treating relational aggression like any other form of aggression, giving alternatives, correcting the behavior.

Rachel: Exactly — and helping them cultivate empathy. Ask, “How do you think that other person felt when you said that? How do you think it feels when someone says they won’t be your friend anymore?”

You don’t want to lose friends just because you made a mistake.

Unfortunately, so many people believe this is just “kids being kids.” When you hear that phrase, it’s almost a way of disqualifying or invalidating the behavior as aggression. We have to be really careful not to trivialize it or write it off. That’s the gateway to not taking it seriously and not holding kids accountable.

Sarah: One of the things you talk about in your book — which I thought was really great food for thought — is how this often happens with girls because girls are socialized not to express their anger and to be “nice” and “good.” So it goes underground and comes out in these covert, or even not-so-covert, forms of relational aggression.

What can we do as parents to change this? Any concrete ways to help girls express themselves or communicate more effectively so that this doesn’t happen?

Rachel: That’s a really good question. I think one approach I value — both as a parent and in my work — is taking a more integrated approach to parenting, not just saying something in the moment.

If we want kids — and we don’t even have to say “girls,” just kids — to be more emotionally expressive and authentic so they don’t resort to indirect or harmful behaviors, then they need to be raised with certain principles.

Those principles have to be voiced, reinforced, and practiced throughout daily life — not just in response to an acute moment of aggression.

Some of those principles are: It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. All feelings are welcome, but not all behaviors are. You have the right to be treated with respect and dignity by your friends, and you owe that to them as well.

And not even just your friends — everyone. You don’t have to be friends with everyone, but you do have to treat everyone with respect.

That’s key for girls, in particular, because they’re often expected to be friends with everyone, which makes them feel resentful. So another principle is: You don’t have to be friends with everyone. You can be acquaintances and still treat people respectfully.

You’re striking a balance between supporting expression — it’s good to say how you feel — and being thoughtful about how you do it.

It’s also a practice. Sometimes we’ll make mistakes or feel awkward expressing ourselves, but that’s far better than going behind someone’s back or ignoring them forever.

Sarah: Right. I’m reminded of a line we often use in peaceful parenting when one sibling is being “mean” to another verbally. We’ll say, “You can tell your sibling how you feel without attacking them,” or, “You can tell your sibling how you feel without using unkind words.”

That’s really what you’re saying — it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.

So as I was reading your book, I realized that many of the things we teach in peaceful parenting already help kids express themselves in healthy ways — and also not put up with being treated poorly.

If you learn at home that you don’t have power or agency because your parents don’t treat you with respect, then you’re more susceptible to peers treating you poorly.

Rachel: Yeah, I think so. Parents teach us what to expect from other people. They also teach us how to respond in difficult moments.

If they normalize difficult moments and your day-to-day life includes not feeling valued or safe, you’ll import that into your relationships with others.

It can be more subtle too — if you don’t feel unconditionally valued, or if you have to fight for your parents’ attention, or you don’t feel consistent attachment, you might become vulnerable to pursuing peers who recreate that familiar but painful dynamic.

If your “happy place” becomes constantly trying to get the popular girl to win you over, that might mirror how you once tried to win your parents’ attention.

Sarah: If your child is the victim of relational aggression — what should you do? Both in terms of how to support your child and whether there’s anything you should do with other parents or the school?

Rachel: Great questions. First, how to support your child when they go through something like this — and you’re absolutely right, it can be really triggering for us as parents.

Empathy really matters. And I know some people are like, “Yeah, duh, empathy.” But in my work — and in my life as a parent — I’ve found that we’re wired to help and fix, not to empathize. That’s how humans have survived — by fixing and protecting, not empathizing.

So our instinct when we see our child in distress is to jump in and try to fix it.

Sarah: It’s called the “righting instinct,” I think.

Rachel: The righting instinct — oh! Like to put them upright again?

Sarah: Yeah.

Rachel: Oh, that’s helpful — I didn’t know that! Yes, the righting instinct.

So we have to override that and remember that what a child really needs is to know that what they’re going through is normal — even if it’s incredibly hard — and that their feelings are normal. They need to know they’re not alone.

Say things like, “You must feel really hurt,” or “That sounds so hard.”

Now, some kids will say, “No, I’m fine.” Not every kid will respond with, “Thanks for empathizing, Mom.” But you can still name the feeling — “If I were you, I’d feel the same way,” or, “That’s really hard.”

The feelings are scary, and kids want to know it’s okay to feel how they feel — that they’re not alone, and that it’s normal.

After that, try to override the fixing instinct as much as you can. Because unless your child is in acute distress, these are opportunities for them to develop problem-solving skills.

They will experience social aggression — that’s inevitable. If they don’t, they’re probably not connected to other people. So it’s not a question of if, it’s when.

These moments are opportunities for you to be with them and support them — but not to do it for them.

Ask, “Okay, this is going on — tell me one way you could respond. What’s something you could do?”

What we’re doing by asking that is not jumping in with, “Here’s what I’d do,” which doesn’t teach them anything. We’re giving them a chance to think.

A lot of kids will say, “I don’t know,” or get annoyed — that’s fine. You can say, “Okay, what’s one thing you could do?”

If they say, “Nothing,” you can say, “Nothing is a choice. That’s a strategy. What do you think will happen if you do nothing?”

We live in a culture that’s consistently deprived kids of opportunities to become resilient — deprived them of discomfort, and that’s cost them problem-solving ability.

I’m not saying kids should handle social aggression alone, but these moments are a chance to hold them and be with them — without doing it for them.

So those are kind of the first two steps.

Sarah: Well, I mean, I think empathize and empath—one thing that I read in your book is that sometimes parents dismiss that it’s really happening, or because of their own fears of their child. Wanting their child to fit in, they might try to encourage them to stay in the relationship or to try to fix the relationship. Maybe you could speak to that a little bit.

Rachel: Sure. Well, I think these kinds of moments can be incredibly disorienting for parents and triggering. And I use the word disorienting because we start to lose—we stop losing—the ability to differentiate between our feelings and experiences and our kids’.

So, for example, if we have a lot of emotion and a lack of resolution around what happened to us, when our kids go through it, all those feelings come right back up. And then we may start to assume that our kids are actually suffering more than they are.

Like, I’ll give you an example of a kid I met and her parent. The kid had been not treated well in middle school and she said, “I just want to sit at a different table.” And her mom was like, “But this is terrible! This is a terrible thing. We have to do something about it.” And her kid was like, “I just want to sit at a different table.”

So remaining aware of any delta between how your child is reacting and how you are is very key. And if you sense that difference, then you really need to conform to where your kid is and not insert or enforce your own emotions on them.

I also think it runs the other direction. To your point, Sarah, if you yourself fear—if you remember being really afraid of what happened when you felt alone—and you start to imagine that if your child were to make a move that would put them in more isolation, that would be bad for them because it was bad for you. Again, that’s a flag.

Anytime you find that you’re sort of flooding your parenting with the memories or the experiences that you had long before you were a parent—if you have the ability to differentiate—that’s really where you learn how to do it differently. But becoming aware of that is most important.

Sarah: That makes a lot of sense. And then I love how you’re talking about inviting problem-solving—you know, “What do you want to do?” Because often we come in with this, “Well, this is what you do. You march back in there on Monday and you say this.”

But as you said, that doesn’t allow them to develop any skills.

And, you know, where’s the spot—where’s the space—for encouraging? Because I know that my daughter, I went through this with her, with some mean girls in our community and at her school. And I just wanted to say, “Just make friends with different kids! Why do you keep trying to be friends with these same kids that are not being nice to you?”

Like, where’s the space for that? And what do you do?

And that actually is a question that one of our members sent in: what should we do, if anything, if our child still wants to be friends with the kids that haven’t been kind to them or who have been relationally aggressive?

Rachel: Yeah, it’s such a great question, and it’s one that many, many parents hold. Because it is certainly a phenomenon where, you know, you keep going back to the person who has hurt you.

And girls can be very inconsistent or all over the place—like, one day we’re really good friends, the next day you don’t want to sit with me at lunch, three days later you invite me to your house for a sleepover, right? You kick me out, you take me back in.

There comes a point in a kid’s life where they’re old enough to make their own decisions. They’re going to school, they’re going to hang out with whoever they want. And I’m most interested in supporting the parents who actually can’t control who their kid hangs out with.

Because if it were as easy as just saying, “Well, you can’t go over to their house anymore,” that would be fine. But it’s not—because the kid’s going to make their own social choices when they’re out and about.

So I think the answer is that relationships are a classroom. Relationships are a place where we learn all kinds of life skills—including how to say what we want, how to compromise, how to forgive, and how to end a relationship.

I think that while it is incredibly frustrating and stressful for a parent to watch their child return to an aggressor, trying to remain as much of a guide as you can to your child, rather than bringing down the hammer, is key.

So, in other words, one strategy I’ve suggested—which is not maybe for everyone—but it’s kind of like: think about a friend you’ve had in your life as an adult who keeps going back to somebody who isn’t good to them. Maybe you remember—they were in a relationship with a crappy person—and you’re like, “What are you doing with that person? Why are you dating them?”

And you probably weren’t yelling at them or saying, “You better stop dating them or I’m not going to be your friend anymore.” You had to stick with them as they figured it out, and you knew they were learning and you hoped they would learn.

There’s a bit of that with your kid. Your kid is not your friend—your kid is much more triggering than your friend—but they’re actually in a very similar learning experience to your friend who’s dating somebody that everyone knows isn’t right for them.

And so as a parent, you want to stay connected and say, “Okay, so what’s your takeaway from what just happened? What are you learning about this person—how they’re treating you?” And you’re going to say it a hundred times before maybe some neuron fires next week or next year, and they’re like, “Oh, I get it.”

Sarah: Yeah.

Rachel: Like, they need to keep hearing from you. They need to keep hearing that this isn’t a good person—that this person’s not good to you, that this person doesn’t have the values our friends have.

Sarah: That happened with my daughter—with a best friend from birth, too. I think it was around age eight when things started shifting, and the girl started being pretty mean to my daughter.

And it took her four years until she finally made the decision on her own. One thing happened, and it finally cracked it open for her, and she just said, “I don’t think [name] and I are best friends anymore.”

She cried for about three hours, and she went through maybe a month or two of grieving that friendship. But that was kind of like—it had been the straw that broke the camel’s back, where she finally saw everything in the true light. You know what I mean?

But it was so hard for those four years to watch her keep going back and trying and giving her the benefit of the doubt. Anyhow, it was rough.

Rachel: It was rough. And what do you think she learned from that?

Sarah: Well, I think she learned to look other places for friends. And I think she learned how she wanted to be treated.

So we’ve talked about how to support your child who’s going through this. Is there anything you recommend doing with the other child’s parents or with the school to support your child?

Rachel: Yeah. I mean, I think it depends on their age, right?

Sarah: Let’s say tweens.

Rachel: Okay. I think it depends. So first, with the other parents—it’s important to remember that if you call another kid’s parents without clearing it with your own kid first, you just never know what those other parents are going to disclose to their own child.

If you don’t know these parents well, you have no idea whether they’d go to their kid and say, “Guess who called me today?” So, as much as possible, have some communication with your own child about reaching out to another parent, especially if you don’t know that parent or have a prior relationship.

I understand the intention is to help, but when you call another parent, you can’t control what that parent does with your words—or how that affects your own child. So you have to be very careful.

Now, does that mean you always have to have your child’s permission to reach out? No, it doesn’t. There are times where you’ll just do that because that’s your job. I just want people to be aware of that.

Also, when you call another parent, it’s critical to start the conversation with: “I know I only have one perspective here. I know I can only see what I can see. Can you tell me if there are things I’m not seeing? I’d love to know what’s going on from your perspective.”

In other words, you’re not going in heavy-handed or accusatory—you’re going in with humility. It’s okay to say you’re upset and to talk about what you know, but it’s critical to maintain the humility of realizing you don’t know everything.

And that children—just like everyone else—can have their own distortions or lenses through which they experience their peers.

Finally, when you talk to another parent, be very precise in your language when you describe what happened. Stick to the behaviors that allegedly occurred.

Like, you can say, “My understanding is that your kid called my kid with some kids over while they were having a sleepover, and it left my daughter feeling pretty embarrassed and hurt. Can you tell me more about what you know?”

So you’re not saying, “Your kid did this and really messed up my kid.” You’re saying, “Here’s my understanding of what happened, and here was the impact.” Those are two things you can control knowing—without accusing.

Sarah: Yeah, that makes sense. I made all the mistakes with my friend’s daughter’s mother, so yeah, I think your advice is good.

And I wish I had had it then. It’s so hard not to rush in as a parent, especially when kids are younger. It’s so hard not to rush in and try to—like you said—right things, to try to fix it and make things better.

There’s just a comment from Mare—when we were talking about kids going back to people who are unkind—she said that her grandson, who I know is nine, told her that he’s “an easy mark.” And when she asked why he felt that way, he said his friend punched him in the stomach and he just accepted that and continues to be friends with him.

Do you have any words for her around that—how she might support her grandson?

Rachel: Yeah. I mean, first of all, I like that he’s comfortable talking to his grandmother in that way—how wonderful for her that he’s so vulnerable and authentic. So I would, as the grandma, be very cautious and handle delicately the vulnerability your grandson’s giving you.

And I would be very inquisitive. I’d put on my coach’s hat and say, “Tell me more about that. Tell me more about what happens and why. Tell me more about your decision to accept it. What do you think would happen if you didn’t accept it?”

I’ve learned a lot in the later part of my career about the importance of just holding space for people to talk something through. You don’t have to give advice. You don’t have to have an idea. You can just ask questions and let them talk it through.

Talking aloud to someone who cares and listens closely is not that different from journaling. Both can help you arrive at new insights that you couldn’t otherwise on your own—but don’t require someone telling you what to do.

So I think that kind of stance, if you can take it with your grandson, would be very effective—and you’d probably learn a ton.

Sarah: Thanks. That’s great. So the final part of that three-part question that we keep getting back to is—what about with the school?

One thing that I thought was interesting in your book is you talked about how a lot of the kids that are doing the relational aggression have a lot of social status, and that it often flies under the radar—that the teachers don’t see what’s going on.

I think that would make it especially tricky to try to get support from the school if they’re not seeing what your child is reporting back to you.

Rachel: Yes, it does make it tricky. And you know, psychological aggression is just that—it’s psychological. So unless you’re listening, you’d miss it.

It’s also the case that—like Eddie Haskell in Leave It to Beaver—when the adult shows up, a lot of the most aggressive kids turn into very likable, charming, dynamic kids. They know how to work the adults in the room.

This is why even the most devoted, skilled teachers who really want to catch this stuff still say to me, “Why don’t I see it? I’m trying so hard.”

That does make it hard. And I say that because it makes it particularly hard for a school to respond if they’re like, “We don’t see it.”

So, when you talk to the school, it’s important to keep that in mind—that this stuff might not be visible.

It’s also important to practice that same humility, because often the school does see things you don’t. They may have awareness of the different sides of the story.

Schools are filled with human beings who are tired, and if they get a two-page single-spaced email from a parent at 11:30 at night with a call the next morning saying, “Why haven’t you responded?”—they’re not super psyched to work with you.

Treating people like they’re customer-service reps who are there to serve you—especially if you pay tuition—I understand why that happens, but you’re going to catch a lot more flies with honey.

Sarah: Than with vinegar.

Rachel: Yeah, I couldn’t remember what the insect was—but I think you catch more flies with honey.

It’s hard. It’s heavy. It’s a tall ask, because you’re hurting as a parent—you’re frustrated, you’re angry, you’re worried about your kid. But it’s a really complex situation.

A couple other ways to approach this: figure out if your school has an anti-bullying or behavior policy that acknowledges these more indirect forms of aggression.

Also, I’d caution parents against using the word bullying unless it actually meets that definition. That’s a big turn-off for school administrators and teachers when parents elevate something to bullying that isn’t.

Bullying is more of a protracted campaign of one person against another, typically with a big power dynamic. Most of what kids experience are acts of aggression, but not ongoing campaigns.

So being careful about the words you use is important too.

And then, see what training teachers have—what professional development they’ve been given around what to look out for, how to manage their classrooms.

There was a long period in my life where all I did was professional development sessions for schools. We talked about, “Have you talked to your students about body language? About the power of rolling your eyes when someone speaks up, or laughing, or staring?”

Those are silent behaviors, but they send strong messages. Many teachers don’t have those conversations with students—and that’s the kind of thing that makes a difference in communicating expectations.

Sarah: Someone on the call just asked a question related to that. She’s curious what you have to say about shame being used by girls as a form of aggression—especially middle schoolers.

Rachel: That’s interesting—when you say shame, meaning like trying to shame the target for something they’ve done?

Sarah: Yeah, she says yes. Like rolling your eyes at somebody when they do something—that would make someone feel a sense of shame. She also said her daughter was shamed for talking to boys.

Rachel: Yeah. So I think there’s quite a bit of shame that both boys and girls experience.

So—sorry, I’m reading the comments too—your daughter was shamed for talking to boys who came to their lunch table, and was asked to sit at a different lunch table?

Yeah, I wonder if that’s about shaming for breaking an unwritten code—“We don’t talk to boys.” Which can also be rooted in cultural expectations around girls—like, “You’re such a slut if you talk to boys,” or “We don’t.”

And so there’s a way in which girls can police each other and shame each other by channeling messages from the culture that they’ve learned.

What I have to say about that is that girls do become agents of the culture—and of patriarchal culture—that says, “You’re not supposed to talk to boys because that means you must be sexual with them,” or, “We just don’t like those people, so we’re going to punish you.”

Boys will do it to each other too—when they’re vulnerable or show feelings.

So, to support a girl who’s going through that: if we think about the definition of shame, it’s to feel like you are a bad person—that your core identity is defective.

The difference between shame and guilt is that shame is about you, and guilt is about the thing you did.

We’re all vulnerable to shame, but I think tween girls are particularly so because they’re both able to understand what adults are saying and still in a very self-focused moment in development. That’s a pretty toxic brew.

It means you can easily take on shame without fully understanding what’s being said to you.

So I think just really taking a moment to say, “You are a good human being. You are valued. You are loved. You’re not alone.”

You may not think a moment like this requires those words, but if your child is feeling ashamed because of those behaviors, it’s important to remind them they’re just like everyone else—in the best way—and that even if they’ve been othered or singled out, they’re still part of a loved whole, whether that’s family or friends.

Sarah: Yeah, when you were saying that, I was reminded of something I did with my daughter that I talk about a lot—making sure our children, even if they’re having social troubles or not feeling like they have friends or the friends they want—making sure they feel unconditionally loved and appreciated and delighted in and celebrated at home can be very protective, I think.

And I’ve heard adults talk about that—who were bullied—and say, “The only reason I came through it with my self-esteem intact was that my parents made me believe this wasn’t happening because there was something wrong with me.” They made me feel loved and celebrated and appreciated at home.

So I think that’s something for all of us to keep sight of too—if our kids are having friendship troubles—to do the work at home to help them.

Rachel: Yes. A thousand percent. That has nothing to do with their friends.

Sarah: Yeah.

Rachel: Yes.

Sarah: Okay, two more questions before we let you go. A question from a member who couldn’t be on the call: any advice for making future friends once they’ve gone through a mean relationship?

So this person’s child is on the other side of a difficult elementary school relationship, starting middle school at a new school, and is finding it hard—maybe she’s a little hesitant about making new friends after what she’s gone through. Any advice about that?

Rachel: I think you validate it. You validate the hesitation.

And you also say, “Hey—do you notice how many people date and break up and then start dating new people? Or get divorced and marry new people? Friendships are the same thing.”

We’re not meant to have one best friend forever—that’s a myth. People lose friends and also cut loose people that aren’t right for them.

Maybe your daughter’s been through that—but remind her we’re constantly regenerating new connections.

It’s okay to feel a little gun-shy or apprehensive. Ask, “What would make you feel more comfortable making new friends so you don’t feel like you’re exposing yourself too much?”

Again, always staying curious, inquisitive—not assuming you know what’s right because you’re the parent—but asking, “What would need to be true for you to feel comfortable making this new friendship?”

Maybe she’s not comfortable socializing one-on-one outside of school for a long time and wants to keep it to school. That’s okay.

So being flexible and kind of flexing to where your child is, while also holding the line about the importance of continuing to connect—that’s important.

Sarah: Love that. My final question to you is one I ask all my podcast guests—and you can answer this in any context, not just what we were talking about today—but if you had a time machine and could go back to your younger parent self, what advice would you give yourself?

Rachel: Oh my God, so much. Don’t let your kid have YouTube as early as you did. That would be the first one.

I guess I’d say that feeling out of control is normal—and you’ve got to learn to breathe through that more. Yelling isn’t going to give you anything but a false sense of control, and it’s just going to upset your kid.

That’s the truth of it. I think I would’ve yelled less if I’d been more comfortable with the discomfort—feeling like things were out of control and I couldn’t manage or have the solution for something.

Sarah: Love that. Thank you so much for joining us. Where’s the best place for folks to find out more about you and what you do?

Rachel: Find me at rachelsimmons.com.

Sarah: All right. Thank you so much, Rachel.

Rachel: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Great questions.

You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, OR— BRAND NEW: we’ve included a fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.

In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, Dr. Jo-Ann Finkelstein returns to talk with me about what parents need to know about concerning anti-woman rhetoric and actions in the “manosphere” and the “womanosphere”.

We cover the philosophy of each, the terms and important figures of these movements, as well as what to do if your kid is already being influenced and how to protect them from these harmful messages.

**If you’d like an ad-free version of the podcast, consider becoming a supporter on Substack! > > If you already ARE a supporter, the ad-free version is waiting for you in the Substack app or you can enter the private feed URL in the podcast player of your choice.

Know someone who might appreciate this post? Share it with them!

We talk about:

* 7:10 What is misogyny?

* 7:45 What is the “manosphere”?

* 15:00 What is the “womanosphere”?

* 20:00 What are the false statistics that have a lot of traction?

* 22:00 What do we do as parents for our boys?

* 26:00 What to do if your boys are listening to misogynistic influencers

* 28:00 The four parts of developing critical media literacy

* 35:30 How to mentor not monitor social media

* 34:00 Terminology we need to know as parents

Resources mentioned in this episode:

* Yoto Player-Screen Free Audio Book Player

* The Peaceful Parenting Membership

* Sexism and Sensibility: Raising Empowered, Resilient Girls in the Modern World with Jo Ann Finkelstein: Episode 164

* Sexism & Sensibility Raising Empowered, Resilient Girls In The Modern World

* Episode 118: Raising Kids in the Era of Technology with Devorah Heitner

* Jo-Ann Finkelstein’s Substack

* Jo-Ann Finkelstein’s website

xx Sarah and Corey

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Transcript:

Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast.

I’ve been noticing a lot in the media, and in the world around me, an enormous amount of tension around gender equity and ideology—as well as seeing concerning anti-woman rhetoric and actions. I’ve also heard from parents who are worried about the influencers and media their kids are being exposed to, and the really quite problematic ideas that come with that.

That’s why I asked Dr. Jo-Ann Finkelstein to come back on the podcast. She was on an earlier episode about her book Sexism and Sensibility—we’ll link to that in the show notes if you haven’t heard it yet. I wanted her to talk with me about what parents need to know about the manosphere and the womanosphere.

You might not even have heard of the womanosphere—I just learned about it through Jo-Ann’s work. And while I think most of us have heard of the manosphere, we might not be quite sure what it is. Jo-Ann gives us a great overview of the big ideas, terms, and key figures of these movements, as well as what to do if your child is already being influenced—and how to protect them from these, quite frankly, harmful ideas.

If you know anyone who needs to hear this, please share it with them. And we’d really appreciate it if you’d rate and review the podcast on your favorite podcast player app—it really helps us reach more families and support more children and their caregivers.

Let’s meet Jo-Ann.

Sarah: Hey, Jo-Ann, welcome back to the podcast.

Jo-Ann: I am so glad to be back.

Sarah: I’ve really been wanting to talk to you about today’s topic because there’s just so much going on in the world—and in North America right now—that feels so hard. Especially as a person who cares about people, and as a parent. I get your Substack and I love what you write about gender equity and sexism. Of course, your book Sexism and Sensibility was what you were on the podcast to talk about last time—it’s a wonderful book. We’ll link to that episode and to your book in the show notes.

But before I dive in any further, tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do.

Jo-Ann: I’m a clinical psychologist and a writer. I wrote the book Sexism and Sensibility: Raising Empowered, Resilient Girls in the Modern World, as you just mentioned. I see all genders in my private practice, but I do see a lot of girls and women—and a lot of mothers and daughters.

Since writing the book, and especially since the political changes we’ve seen in the United States, I’ve really expanded the areas I study, think about, and write about. So I’m glad to be here to talk about such an important topic—the manosphere and the womanosphere.

Sarah: I’m so glad you’re here to talk about it. My feeling is that we’re going backwards in terms of gender equity and women’s rights—rights that were hard-won over generations. We’ve seen the loss of reproductive rights in the U.S. and threats of even more restrictions. And it feels like it’s become more acceptable again to share misogynistic viewpoints, especially with the rise of the manosphere and the womanosphere.

Before we go further, can you explain a few things for anyone who might not know? What is misogyny?

Jo-Ann: Misogyny literally means “hatred of women,” but it’s often used more broadly to describe the sexism women experience. It can be an attitude or an action—something someone does to put down or harm someone who identifies as female.

Sarah: Okay, and then the manosphere and the womanosphere—or femosphere, as you said it’s sometimes called.

Jo-Ann: Yes, though there are slight differences between the womanosphere and femosphere. But basically, the manosphere is a diverse collection of websites, blogs, and online forums that promote masculinity, misogyny, and opposition to feminism.

In a world where two-thirds of young men say that nobody really knows them—and where there’s no clear agreement on what a “good man” looks like or how to become one—it creates the perfect conditions for men to look for connection online, often through the manosphere.

This network swoops in to provide what feels like clear messaging about gender roles and relationships—and it promotes the belief that for women to advance, men have to lose something.

Sarah: When I was reading about it yesterday to prepare for this, one thing that stood out was that a lot of young men don’t necessarily encounter the overt anti-woman content right away. It often starts with fitness advice, or how to talk to girls—kind of self-improvement content. The anti-woman message is the undercurrent, but it’s still there.

Jo-Ann: Exactly. They swoop in with these simple explanations of how to be a man—and they groom these boys in a very slow-drip way. The scary messages are mixed in with talk about gaming, relationships, mental health, wellbeing, getting rich, and getting enough protein.

The misogyny starts as memes or jokes—things that can be brushed off as humor or “locker room talk.” But over time, algorithm pulsl them further down the rabbit hole, toward deeper messages about being victimized by society.

You can imagine a lonely, rejected boy sitting at his computer thinking, “Yeah, that’s not fair—I haven’t done anything wrong. The system is rigged against me. I’m being victimized.” It’s a very appealing message for someone who feels like a loser—to reframe himself as an underdog, downtrodden by a world that’s unfair to him.

Sarah: Do you think that connects to the Me Too movement? Was the rise of the manosphere a response to that, or did it start earlier?

Jo-Ann: I don’t know if there’s a direct line, but yes—I write a lot about backlash. Me Too was a real moment for women to speak up and have their voices heard, to talk about the things in our culture that are frightening, violent, and deeply unfair.

Whenever there’s progress, there’s backlash. As women began to be heard and things started to change, it felt threatening to some men. That’s part of what fuels the manosphere.

And just to clarify for your listeners—kids don’t call it “the manosphere.” Adults do. The kids think that term is totally cringe.

Sarah: Right, your teenager’s not going to respond if you say, “Who do you follow in the manosphere?” They’ll be like, “What?”

Jo-Ann: Exactly.

Sarah: But I have had a friend—a progressive dad—reach out to say, “My 15-year-old son loves Andrew Tate. What do I do?” And Andrew Tate seems like one of the biggest figures in the manosphere.

Jo-Ann: Yes, Andrew Tate is huge—and very toxic. He was charged with sex trafficking and sexual assault in Romania and London, and Trump is thought to have even helped bring him back to the U.S. so he couldn’t be tried.

Sarah: Let’s talk a bit about the femosphere, but before that, I just want to say—my 18-year-old daughter started working in restaurants this year, and as much as it feels like we’re going backwards in some ways, I can see progress too. When I was her age, there were things that were totally acceptable—especially in restaurant culture—that no one would ever do now, at least not openly.

And I see in my kids’ generation this awareness and confidence—when someone says or does something inappropriate, they call it out right away.

Jo-Ann: Yes, we don’t want to be too depressing—there has been real progress. I wouldn’t say those things never happen anymore, but maybe they happen less, and there’s much more awareness around them.

Sarah: I think maybe part of the rise of the manosphere is that feeling among some men that the ground has shifted under them. There was this celebrity who got “canceled” for behavior that would have been considered normal when I was a teenager, and I think a lot of men who grew up with that were like, “Wait—that’s just how it’s always been.”

Jo-Ann: Exactly. That used to be part of masculinity—and now you’re saying they can’t do that. So they ask, “What is masculinity?” And women are saying, “Just behave well. Don’t be a creep.” And they’re like, “Wait—I thought that was being a man.” It’s confusing.

We have to listen to boys, take them seriously, and teach them well.

Sarah: Thank you for saying that—much more eloquently than I did. Okay, so what’s the womanosphere?

Jo-Ann: Before we go on, I want to add that some of the other big manosphere influencers are people like Logan Paul and the Nelk Boys—who, by the way, are from Canada originally. They’ve had a huge influence on boys and even on the U.S. election outcomes.

Sarah: I’d never even heard of them—thank you.

Jo-Ann: So, the womanosphere includes people like Brett Cooper and Candace Owens. It’s helpful to know what to look out for.

If the manosphere is toxic masculinity dressed up as philosophy, then the womanosphere is misogyny dressed up in milkmaid clothing.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Jo-Ann: It looks soft, harmless, even aspirational—cottagecore filters, tradwife influencers with gorgeous homes and perfectly dressed kids. But beneath that aesthetic is a push for women to shrink themselves, to submit to their husbands, and to trade ambition for dependency.

It preys on the very real struggles women face. But instead of fighting for systemic change—like paid leave, affordable childcare, or equal partnership—it sells women this glossy rewind to the days when women were expected to find fulfillment only through being a wife and mother, taking on all the domestic labor with a smile.

If you’re a woman suffering, —or a girl who sees your mom — suffering under the weight of everything she does, the message “Just let him take care of you” can sound pretty appealing.

Sarah: It must also be a direct response to how hard it is for women to juggle it all. I was listening to an interview with Elizabeth Warren, and she talked about how, as a young mother, her biggest struggle was finding reliable, affordable childcare. Then her daughter’s biggest struggle was the same thing—and now her granddaughter’s is too.

And I recently listened to Ketanji Brown Jackson’s memoir, where she talked about crying on the kitchen floor because she didn’t know how she could keep working and still care for her kids, even with two working parents.

So when it all feels overwhelming, that romanticized domestic ideal must look really appealing.

Jo-Ann: Absolutely. Working and raising kids—it’s exhausting. I look back and don’t know how I survived those years. None of us can be the moms we want to be when we’re that tired and still fighting for equality at home.

So yes, when you see a woman on the internet who looks like she has it all together, you think, “I want that.”

Sarah: Yeah. And I think it can be even darker than just the “make your own bread and stay home” message—there’s also the undercurrent of submission, of not being an equal partner.

Jo-Ann: Oh yes. There’s a lot about submitting to your husband. The goal seems to be: if we glorify femininity and motherhood enough, women will stop demanding things like birth control and abortion access. They’ll become too overwhelmed, overburdened, and outnumbered to organize against a culture built to serve men’s needs at women’s expense.

I really do think this comes from a deep fear—among men in power—of women’s power. A fear that they’ll lose what they’ve long believed is their birthright.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Jo-Ann: Their birthright of power, head of household status, sex—all the things they’ve been raised to believe they’re entitled to.

Sarah: Right? So, where does it make sense to go to next in our conversation here? I mean, I had some anecdotes that I’ve shared a couple of along the way, but one thing that made me think about this was watching this documentary—have you seen the Lilith Fair documentary on Netflix?

Jo-Ann: No, I haven’t.

Sarah: It was really good.

Jo-Ann: I’ve heard it’s really good.

Sarah: It was really good. Why Sarah McLachlan organized Lilith Fair was because she would go to a radio station, and they’d be like, “Oh, we really like your music, but we already have a woman on this week—we’re playing Tracy Chapman.” There was just so much sexism in the music industry, right? There wasn’t room for more than one woman at a time. So she was like, “I’m going to do a whole festival with only women.” And it was enormously successful.

Then the next weekend, I went to a three-day music festival, and I started counting how many women were on stage. I had to stop because it was so depressing. It’s still the same. It’s a little off-topic from the womanosphere and manosphere, but sometimes I just feel so helpless. Like, what’s the point in all of this? So what can we do as parents?

Jo-Ann: Before we get into the how-to, I just want parents to get a sense of what their kids are hearing. They’re hearing the same false statistics over and over again—like “false rape allegations are very common.” They hear that all the time.

So as a woman, you’re saying, “I’m counting these people on stage, and there are very few women.” But they’re hearing the opposite. They’re hearing, “Women are taking over,” that “men are losing out,” that “they’re being rejected because 80% of women only date 20% of men,” which is false. They hear conspiracy theories that feminists want to destroy white men, who are supposedly the real victims of society.

So your son is online, finding this community of guys who feel the same way he does—and they’re offering him belonging he may not have felt before. These are ready-made friends. And like you said, it’s this drip, this undercurrent. When they start to realize that these men are actually calling for the rape and destruction of women, it doesn’t sound that bad anymore because they’ve been so overwhelmed by these messages. It starts to sound normal—maybe even righteous—to incite hatred toward girls and women.

It doesn’t just harm women—it harms boys and men too, because it promotes unrealistic and extreme measures to “improve” their social standing. For example, “looksmaxing”—which can mean anything from hygiene tips and fitness routines to extreme dietary restrictions, cosmetic surgery, or steroid use.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Jo-Ann: So as parents, we have to help boys integrate the idea of themselves as caring, emotionally connected, cooperative people—to see those qualities as aspirational, not emasculating.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Jo-Ann: For the good of everybody. That’s a basic value that I’m sure many of your listeners already hold, but we have to help boys understand that those are human qualities, not feminine ones. Because at the root of sexism is the rejection of the feminine.

Sarah: The people listening to my podcast already care about connection, but I just want to call out—having raised two boys—don’t listen to anyone who tells you they need you less than your girls might, or that they’re not as bothered by things. They still need connection, care, and intimacy with their families just as much as girls do.

Jo-Ann: And they need it within friendships too. But when they seek it out, they’re called “soy boys” or “white knights.” If they’re seen as subservient to women in any way, or having needs that women have, they get called derogatory names.

Sarah: Okay. So, onto the how-to—what would you say to my friend whose 15-year-old loves Andrew Tate?

Jo-Ann: The first thing I’d say is don’t panic. Be curious. Really listen without jumping to react, even if what they say is shocking or upsetting—because that will just push them away.

I went through this with my son. It wasn’t extreme, but he was listening to a lot of those streamers. Thankfully, he was bringing some of this stuff to us, kind of with bravado. Inside, I’d feel disgusted or angry, but I kept my poker face and really listened.

We’re lucky—he grew up with parents who think critically about these things, and in a liberal extended family, so he was less likely to go down that road. But he really could have. He’s also very skeptical. He’d notice when some streamers shifted politically—from liberal to very conservative—and he’d say, “These people are getting paid.”

So we really want to help our kids develop critical media literacy.

Engaging online with your kid can be a natural way to start conversations about what they’re exposed to. I talk about this in my book—it can be broken down into four parts.

Sarah: Sure.

Jo-Ann: The first one is to promote skeptical thinking. Teach your kids to question information they see online. Encourage them to consider the source and the creator’s intentions. For example, they can ask, “Why is this person telling me this? What are they trying to sell me?”

The second is to explain the origins of online content. Teach them that many influencers monetize controversy. They use shock value, misinformation, or skewed statistics to get views—and their advice often lacks expertise. You can say, “These guys aren’t experts. I wonder where they’re getting their information. Let’s look up the real statistics.”

Third, teach them that these ideas aren’t just internet fads—they’re tied to larger political goals, like restricting reproductive rights, pushing “hyper-motherhood,” and keeping women too overburdened to organize.

Also, teach them how “anti-victim” language reframes systemic issues as personal failures. “It’s not sexism—it’s your mindset.”

Sarah: Right.

Jo-Ann: That’s especially true for girls, because it turns structural inequality into an individual woman’s problem to fix.

Sarah: Right—like, “You’re just not working hard enough,” or “You don’t believe in yourself.”

Jo-Ann: Exactly. Or, “It was just a joke. Stop being so sensitive.” It’s the same old stuff. We want them to understand that real liberation isn’t just “dealing with the cards you’re dealt.”

Because in the womanosphere, you’ll hear, “Men are just naturally stronger and need to lead—and if you let them, everything will be fine.” And in the femosphere, it’s “Men are trash; you’ve got to game the system, use them for money.” We want girls to see that real liberation is the opposite—it’s about naming injustice, demanding systemic change, and building communities of women.

The fourth part is to debunk pseudoscience. Teach kids to recognize misinformation—distorted statistics or pseudoscientific gender theories—and help them identify reputable sources. Give them solid information about mental health and relationships.

And finally, talk openly about and challenge gender stereotypes. Point out the endless denigration of girls and women in movies, TV shows, and other media. Help them see that stereotypes limit everyone and reinforce the rigid beliefs of those online echo chambers.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Jo-Ann: I give a lot of examples of this in Sexism and Sensibility—common sexist themes in media that parents can use to reach their kids. Of course, you don’t want to “yuck their yum” too much, or they’ll tune you out. Ask open-ended questions, share your thoughts, and encourage reflection—but don’t be heavy-handed, or you’ll lose them.

Sarah: Yeah, that’s super important. Because if you go too hard, they’ll just go underground. They won’t tell you what they’re following or listening to, and you’ll have even less ability to help them think critically about it.

Where do you stand on social media guidelines? Do you think people are right to say “no social media until 16”?

Jo-Ann: I’m not a social media expert, but I don’t think waiting until 16 is realistic. I really believe “mentor, not monitor” is the more effective way—because kids will always find ways around the rules.

Of course, when they’re young, the longer you can delay Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok, the better. But that’s how teens find community and connect. It’s not all bad. Boys, for example, do find real communities online—on Discord, for instance—it’s just which communities they find that’s the problem. So yes, mentor, not monitor.

Sarah: “Mentor, not monitor.” I like that. That’s helpful.

Jo-Ann: Credit to Devorah Heitner.

Sarah: I was going to say! Aren’t you friends with Devorah Heitner? I’ve heard her say that. She’s also been on the podcast, and we’ll link to that episode in the show notes.

So—what should I have asked you about that I haven’t?

Jo-Ann: Maybe some of the terminology. Do parents know what “red-pilling” is?

Sarah: Tell us.

Jo-Ann: It’s basically the manosphere’s core philosophy. It comes from The Matrix and means “waking up” to feminism’s supposed oppression of men. The “blue pill” represents ignorance—someone who doesn’t realize men are being oppressed. The “black pill” is used by incels, meaning they’ve accepted their “terminal celibacy.”

Maybe I should explain who the different groups of the manosphere are.

An incel believes men are entitled to sex but aren’t getting it because women deny them—and that women should be punished for that.

Then there are Pickup Artists—this is a $100 million global industry led by men who boast about rape and believe it should be legalized on public property. They train men to harass and assault women.

Then there are Men’s Rights Activists. They claim to care about men’s issues, but in practice, they focus on attacking women and dismantling feminism—bringing lawsuits to defund sexual violence services or weaken women’s protections.

And finally, there’s “Men Going Their Own Way” (MGTOW)—men who believe women are so toxic they have to cut them out of their lives altogether.

Sarah: Wow. This is dark stuff.

Jo-Ann: It really is.

Sarah: It reminds me of that idea that there’s only one pie—if other people get rights, it takes away from yours.

Jo-Ann: Exactly. But I believe we can help boys and men see that it’s not a limited pie. They may have to give something up, but they also gain something—relationships, connection, emotional fulfillment.

Care work in this culture is so demeaned that men avoid it—but it’s also where so much of women’s connection comes from. Many men’s deathbed regrets are about not having the relationships they wanted.

So yes, as women take on more public work, men will have to take on more private work—not more overall, but more equally—and they’ll also gain. Yes, they might have to wash the toilet, but they’ll get more time with their kids, more friendships, more access to their own emotions.

Sarah: I remember when our first son was born, my husband hadn’t really taken care of babies before, and I had. I was much more comfortable changing diapers, all that. His first instinct was, “You do that—you’re better at it.” And I said, “This is where all the connection happens—in the caregiving. If you miss out on that, you’ll miss out on the connection.”

He was like, “Oh, okay.” I think he was just nervous.

Jo-Ann: What a beautiful thing to say to him. That’s so impactful.

Sarah: Yeah, because connection was important to him—he wanted that bond with our baby, but he didn’t realize how much of it comes through caregiving.

Jo-Ann: Exactly. And you’re reminding me of a statistic: people say women are more nurturing, but research shows proximity changes hormones. When men spend more time caregiving, their “nurturing” hormones increase too.

Sarah: I’ve read that! It’s so cool. And it feels good too, right? The oxytocin.

Jo-Ann: Yes, exactly.

Sarah: Thank you so much. I think this will be really helpful for parents to understand what their kids are being exposed to.

Jo-Ann: My pleasure. I’m so glad you’re talking about this—it’s so important.

Sarah: I encourage everyone to check out your Substack and your book. We’ll link to both in the show notes. Before I let you go, I ask all my guests this: if you could go back in time to your younger parent self, what advice would you give yourself?

Jo-Ann: Oh boy, so much. I’d tell myself not to get caught up in the competitive stuff. At the time, I thought I wasn’t, but I was. I told myself I wasn’t a good enough mother because I wasn’t baking endless banana bread like my mom did, or because my house wasn’t as neat as someone else’s. But that’s just culture’s way of undermining women and making motherhood a competitive sport—when really, we all just need to have each other’s backs.

Sarah: Love that. Thank you so much, Jo-Ann, for coming on. What’s the best place for folks to find you?

Jo-Ann: My website is jo-annfinkelstein.com. My Substack is Raising Her Voice—jo-annfinkelstein.substack.com—and I’m also on Instagram and TikTok at jo-annfinkelstein.phd.

Sarah: Great. We’ll link to all those in the show notes. Thank you so much.

Jo-Ann: Thank you. I really appreciate it.

You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, OR— BRAND NEW: we’ve included a fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.

In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, we have a coaching call with Laurel and Derrick.

This call is such a good one because we cover ALL the big ideas behind the peaceful parenting approach, while applying them to real life scenarios in a home with three kids.

Topics include sibling rivalry, nurturing our kids, self regulation, how to handle kids asking lots of questions and always wanting more, what parenting without punishment looks like, and more!

**If you’d like an ad-free version of the podcast, consider becoming a supporter on Substack! > > If you already ARE a supporter, the ad-free version is waiting for you in the Substack app or you can enter the private feed URL in the podcast player of your choice.

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We talk about:

* 7:00 What it looks like when our children truly respect us

* 9:00 7-year-old refusing to get dressed

* 12:10 Why it is okay baby and nurture our kids

* 14:00 Tuning into our own self regulation

* 18:00 Mindset shifts to give our kids the benefit of the doubt

* 19:30 How to handle sibling rivalry

* 24:00 Don’t try to make it a teachable moment

* 38:00 When kids ask questions over and over

* 41:00 Why kids always want more!

* 45:00 Helping kids see how their actions affect other people

* 55:00 Why kids lie and what to do

* 57:00 Natural consequences, boundaries, and limits

* 1:02 Peaceful Parenting Mantras

Resources mentioned in this episode:

* Yoto Player-Screen Free Audio Book Player

* The Peaceful Parenting Membership

* Free Stop Sibling Fights E book

* Free How To Stop Yelling at Your Kids e-course

xx Sarah and Corey

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Transcript:

Derrick: Hi, good morning.

Sarah: Hi Derek. Nice to meet you. Hi Laurel. Hi. Are you a firefighter, Derek? I’m—yeah, I’m actually—I see you’ve got your sweatshirt.

Derrick: Yeah. Just a heads up, I may have to jump off if we get a call.

Sarah: Okay. Well, so nice to meet you guys. So you’ve got three—boy, girl, girl. And what would you like to talk about today?

Laurel: I think I just love your whole—I’ve sent Derek a couple things—but I just love your whole premise of peacefulness and remaining calm when it’s easy to get angry. Mm-hmm. And just some tools for doing that. I guess like some basic things, because we would both like to say where, you know, we have like, you know, the streaks where we’re all calm, calm, calm, and then just—and then her, yeah, limit. Yeah.

And so yeah, just tools for when that happens. We have very typical age-appropriate kind of response kids, mm-hmm, that need to be told 80 times something. And so it’s frustrating. And then how to help them kind of see—without bribing, without threatening discipline, without all of that. Yeah. Like how to have a better dialogue with our kids of teaching respect and teaching kind of “we do this, you do this.”

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, maybe. Okay. So there’s always gonna be situations where it’s hard to stay calm, you know? Just being a parent—like of course your kids are gonna push your buttons sometimes. But rather than—so, we do always start with self-regulation.

And what I mean by self-regulation isn’t that you never get upset. It’s that when you do get upset, you know how to calm yourself and take a minute, take a breath—whatever you need to do—so that you don’t yell. Because yelling hurts our relationship with our kids. You mentioned respect. I think there’s an old idea of respect that used to mean that kids were afraid of their parents, right?

But real respect is that you care what another person thinks. Like, that’s real respect. I don’t want to do this because I don’t want my dad or my mom to be unhappy with me—not that I’m afraid of what’s gonna happen if I do it, but I care what they think and they care what I think. And that’s how I define respect. True respect doesn’t mean that you’re afraid of somebody; it means that you care what they think, right?

So when we yell, we chip away at that. Like yeah, we could get them to do what we want through yelling or threatening things or taking things away, but we’re chipping away at our relationship with them. And that’s really the only true influence.

And as your kids are getting older, you’re gonna see that you can control them when they’re little, right? Because you can pick them up and move them from one place to another or whatever. But there’s a famous quote by a psychologist that says, “The problem with using control when kids are young is that you never learn how to influence them, which is what you need as they get older.” Right? You need to be able to influence them, to get them to do what you would like them to do. And it’s all about the relationship. That’s really what I see as the most important thing.

So back to what I was saying about yelling—yes, that’s really important to be working on—but there’s also: how do I be more effective so the kids will listen to me and I don’t have to ask 80 times? How do I get their attention in an effective way? How do I get them to cooperate the first time or at least the second time?

So it’s a combination of learning how to calm yourself and stay calm when things are hard, and also being more effective as a parent—not asking 25 times, because that just trains them to ignore you. Like, “Oh, I don’t have to do it until they yell,” or “I don’t have to do it until they’ve asked me 25 times.”

If there’s something really unpleasant you had to do at work that you didn’t want to do, you might also ignore your boss the first 24 times they asked you until you knew they were really serious, right? Mm-hmm. I mean, you wouldn’t, but you know what I mean. If they can keep playing a little bit longer, they will keep playing a little bit longer.

So I think what would be helpful is if you gave me some situations that have happened that you find challenging, and then we can do a little bit of a deeper dive into what you could have done instead, or what you could do next time if a similar thing comes up.

Laurel: Yeah. I mean, for my daughter, for example, the middle one—she’s so sweet, she’s such a feeler—but then when she gets to the point where she’s tired, hungry, it’s all the things. She often doesn’t wanna pick out her clothes. Something super simple like that.

But when I’m making lunches and the other kids are getting ready and all the things, I just have to have her—I’m like, “You’re seven, you can pick out clothes.” I give her some options, and then she’ll just lay on the floor and start screaming, “You don’t care! Why don’t you pick out my clothes?”

And then instead of me taking the time that I know I need to, I just tell her, “You have one minute or else this—so you lose this.” I just start kind of like, “This is yesterday.” You know, so she doesn’t wanna get dressed, doesn’t wanna get her shoes on. “You get my socks, you get all the big—” And then I end up picking her up, standing her up, “You need to get dressed.” And then both of us are frustrated.

Sarah: Yeah. No, that’s a great example.

So first of all, whenever there’s difficult behavior in our child, we try to look below the surface to see what’s causing it. The symptom you see on the outside is a kid lying on the floor refusing to do something she’s perfectly capable of doing herself. That’s the iceberg part above the water. But what’s underneath that?

To me, I’m seeing a 7-year-old who has a 3-year-old sibling who probably does get help getting dressed, a capable older brother, and it’s hard to give enough attention to three kids. What I see this as is a bid for attention and connection from you.

I don’t know if you listen to my podcast, but I did an episode about when kids ask you to do things for them that they can do themselves. Seven is a perfect age because you’re like, “Oh my God, you’re so capable of getting dressed yourself—what do you mean you want me to put your shoes on you?” But if you can shift your mind to think, Ah, she’s asking me to do something she can do—she needs my connection and nurturing.

So what if you thought, “Okay, I just spent all this energy yelling at her, trying to get her to do it. What if I just gave her the gift of picking her clothes out for her and getting her dressed?” It would probably be quicker, start your day on a happier note, and you would have met that need for connection.

And yes, it’s asking more of you in the moment, because you’re trying to make lunches. But this is a beautiful example because you’ll probably see it in other areas too—what’s underneath this difficult behavior? Kids really are doing the best they can. That’s one of our foundational paradigm shifts in peaceful parenting. Even when they’re being difficult, they’re doing the best they can with the resources they have in that moment.

So when someone’s being difficult, you can train yourself to think: Okay, if they’re doing the best they can, what’s going on underneath that’s causing this behavior?

I just want to say one more thing, because later on you might think, “Wait—Sarah’s telling me to dress my 7-year-old. What about independence?” Just to put your fears aside: kids have such a strong natural drive for independence that you can baby them a little bit and it won’t wreck them. Everybody needs a little babying sometimes—even you guys probably sometimes. Sometimes you just want Laurel to make you a coffee and bring it to you in bed. You can get your own coffee, but it’s nice to be babied and nurtured.

So we can do that safely. And I tell you, I have a 14-year-old, 17-year-old, and 20-year-old—very babied—and they’re all super independent and competent kids. My husband used to say, “You’re coddling them.” I’d say, “I’m nurturing them.”

Laurel: Oh, I like that.

Sarah: Okay. So I just wanted to say that in case the thought comes up later. Independence is important, but we don’t have to push for it.

Derrick: Yeah. No, I think that’s super helpful. And I love—one of my good buddies just came out with a book called The Thing Beneath the Thing.

Sarah: Oh, I love that.

Derrick: It’s such a good reminder. I think sometimes, like you addressed, Laurel is often a single mom and there is the reality of—she’s gotta make lunch, she’s gotta do laundry, she’s gotta whatever. And sometimes there’s just the logistical impossibility of, “I can’t do that and this and get out the door in time and get you to camp on time, and here comes the carpool.”

And so sometimes it just feels like there needs to be better planning. Like, “You just gotta wake up earlier, you gotta make lunch before you go to bed, or whatever,” to have the space to respond to the moment. Because the reality is, you never know when it’s coming.

Like, totally independent, and she wants to pick out her own clothes in one example—but then all these things creep up.

Another way to describe what Laurel and I were talking about in terms of triggers is: I feel like we both really take a long time to light our fuse. But once it’s lit, it’s a very short fuse.

Sarah: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Derrick: So it’s like for me especially, I’m cool as a cucumber and then all of a sudden the wick is lit and I’ll explode.

Sarah: Yeah. I think that’s really good to be aware of. The thing is, if you go forward from today and start looking—you’re calm, calm, calm, calm, calm—sometimes what’s actually happening is what my mentor calls gathering kindling.

We don’t realize it, but we’re gathering kindling along the way—resentment, eye-roll frustration. If you can start tuning in a little bit, you’ll see that yeah, you’re not yelling, but maybe you’re getting more frustrated as it goes on. That’s when you can intervene with yourself, like, “Okay, I need to take a five-minute break,” or, “We need to shift gears or tap each other out.”

Because it feels like it comes out of nowhere, but it rarely does. We’re just not aware of the building process of gathering kindling along the way.

Derrick: Yeah. No, that’s helpful. I have two examples that maybe you can help us with. You can pick one that you think is more important.

Sarah: Sure. And I just want to comment on one more thing you said before you go on—sorry to interrupt you. If it’s annoying to have to dress a 7-year-old in the middle of your morning routine, you can also make a mental note: Okay, what’s under the thing? What’s under the difficult behavior is this need for more connection and nurturing. So how can I fill that at a time that’s more convenient for me?

Maybe 7:30 in the morning while I’m trying to get everyone out the door is not a convenient time. But how can I find another time in the day, especially for my middle child? I’ve got three kids too, and I know the middle child can be a bit of a stirring-the-pot kid, at least mine was when he was little, trying to get his needs met. So how can I make sure I’m giving her that time she’s asking for, but in more appropriate times?

Derrick: Yeah, no, that’s helpful. I think part of my challenge is just understanding what is age-appropriate. For example, our almost 10-year-old literally cannot remember to flush the toilet.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Derrick: And it’s like, “Bro, flush the toilet.” It’s been this ongoing thing. That’s just one example. There are many things where you’re going, “You’re 10 years old, dude, you should know how to flush the toilet.” And then all the fears come in—“Is he ADD?”—and we start throwing things out there we don’t even know.

But it seems so simple: poop in the toilet, you flush it when you’re done. Why is that? And that’ll light a wick pretty quick, the third or fourth time you go in and the toilet’s not flushed.

Sarah: Yeah.

Derrick: And then you talk about it very peacefully, and he’ll throw something back at you.

Sarah: So do you have him go back and flush the toilet?

Derrick: We do.

Sarah: Okay, good. Because if you make it a tiny bit unpleasant that he forgot—like he has to stop what he’s doing and go back and flush it—that might help him in a kind and firm way. Like, “Oh, looks like you forgot. Pause your video game. Please go back and flush the toilet.”

Also, maybe put up some signs or something. By the sink, by the toilet paper. There are just some things that, if they’re not important to kids, it’s very hard for them to remember. Or if it’s not…

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve told my boys, “Don’t put wet things in the hamper.” They’re 17 and 20 and it drives me insane. Like how hard is it to not throw a wet washcloth in the hamper? They don’t care if it smells like mildew.

Derrick: Yeah.

Sarah: It’s very frustrating. But they’re not doing it on purpose.

Derrick: That’s the narrative we write though, right? Like, you’re just defiant, you’re trying—because we’ve talked about this a million times. This is my desire.

Sarah: And you feel disrespecedt.

Derrick: Right.

Sarah: That is so insightful of you, Derek, to realize that. To realize that’s a trigger for you because it feels like he’s doing it on purpose to disrespect you. But having that awareness and a mindset shift—he’s not trying to give me a hard time. He’s just absent-minded, he’s 10, and he doesn’t care if the poop sits in the toilet. He’s just not thinking about it.

Derrick: Yeah.

I think the other example, which I’m sure is super common, is just: how do you manage them pushing each other’s buttons? They can do it so quickly. And then it’s literally musical chairs of explosive reactions. It happens everywhere. You’re driving in the car, button pushed, explosion. The 3-year-old’s melting, and Kira knows exactly what she’s doing. Then Blake, then Kira. They just know. They get so much joy out of watching their sibling melt and scream. Meanwhile, you’re in the front seat trying to drive and it’s chaos.

For me, that’s when I’ll blow my top. I’ll get louder than their meltdown. And my narrative is: they’re not even really upset, they’re just turning it on to get whatever they want.

Sarah: Classic sibling rivalry. Classic. Like, “How can I get Mom or Dad to show that they love me more than the other kid? Whose side are they gonna intervene on?” That’s so classic.

Kira came along and pushed Blake out of his preferred position as the baby and the apple of your eye. He had to learn to share you. Is it mostly Kira and Aubrey, or does everything roll downhill with all three?

Derrick: It just triangulates and crosses over. They know each other’s buttons. And you’re right—it’s always, “You always take her side. You never—”

Sarah: Yes. And whenever you hear the words “always” and “never,” you know someone’s triggered. They’re not thinking clearly because they’re upset and dysregulated.

Sibling rivalry, or resentment, whatever you want to call it, is always about: “Who do they love more? Will my needs get met? Do they love me as much as my brother or sister?” That fear is what drives the button-pushing.

It doesn’t make sense that you’d pick a fight hoping your parent will choose you as the one who’s right. But still, it’s this drive to create conflict in hopes that you’ll be the chosen one.

So I could go over my sibling best practices with you guys if you want. That’s really helpful for rivalry.

Derrick: Yeah.

Sarah: Okay. Do you currently have any rules about property or sharing in your house?

Laurel: Not officially. I mean—

Derrick: We typically will say stuff like, “That’s Kira’s. If she doesn’t want to share it with you, give it back.” But the problem is we have so much community property.

Sarah: Okay. That’s what I call it: community property. Yeah. So you’re doing exactly the right thing with things that belong to one person. They never have to share it if they don’t want to, and other people have to ask before they touch it. Perfect.

And in terms of community property, I’d suggest you have a rule: somebody gets to use something until they’re done. Period. Long turns.

I didn’t know this when my kids were little, and I had ridiculous song-and-dance with timers—“Okay, you can have it for 10 minutes and then you can have it for 10 minutes.” But that actually increases anxiety. You want to relax into your play, not feel like, “Oh, I’ve only got this for 10 minutes.”

So if it belongs to everyone, the person using it gets to use it as long as they want. And you empathize with the other person: “Oh, I know your brother’s been playing with that pogo stick for an hour. It’s so hard to wait, isn’t it? When it’s your turn, you’ll have it as long as you want.”

So if you have good sharing rules and community property rules right off the bat, you take away a lot of opportunities for resentment to build up

Derrick: My biggest question is just how do you intervene when those rules are violated?

Sarah: You just calmly say something like, “Oh, I know you really, really wanna play with the pogo stick. You cannot push your brother off of it just because you want a turn.” I’m just making things up here, but the idea is: you can’t push your brother off just because you want something. Then you go back to the family rules. You could even make a sign—I actually have one I can send you to print out—that says, “In our family, we get to use it as long as we want.”

And then you empathize with the aggressor about how hard it is to wait. Keep going back to the rules and offering lots of empathy. If someone’s being difficult, recognize that they’re having a hard time.

Laurel, when Derrick said, “You always…” or “You never…,” anytime you hear words like that, you know somebody’s hijacked by big feelings. That’s not the time to make it a teachable moment. Just empathize with the hard time they’re having. Nobody ever wants to calm down until they feel empathized with, acknowledged, and heard. You can always talk about it later if something needs to be discussed, but in the moment of heightened tension, just acknowledge feelings: “Oh my goodness, you were doing this thing and then your brother came and took it. This is so hard.”

I also have a little ebook with these best practices laid out—I’ll send it to you.

The third best practice is: always be the moderator, not the negotiator. If there’s a fight between the kids, your goal is to help them talk to each other. Don’t try to solve it or say who’s right or wrong. Even if you’re right and careful not to favor one child, your solution will always fuel sibling rivalry. The child who wasn’t chosen feels slighted, and the one who was chosen might think, “Dad loves me best.”

So my phrase is: “Be Switzerland.” Stay neutral, intervene in a neutral way, and help them talk to each other. Give each child a chance to speak. Do you want to give me an example we can walk through?

Derrick: A lot of times it’s not even about taking, it’s about disrupting. Aubrey has this baby doll she’s obsessed with. She carries it everywhere—it looks really real, kind of creepy. Blake will walk by, pull the pacifier out of its mouth, and throw it across the room. Instant meltdown. His thing is, he knows the rules and how to toe the line. He’ll say, “I didn’t take the baby, I just disrupted it.”

Sarah: Right, right.

Derrick: And then, “Deal with it.”

Sarah: Yeah, okay. So that’s not exactly a “be Switzerland” moment, because it’s not a two-way fight. He’s just provoking his sister to get a rise out of her. That’s classic sibling rivalry. It also sounds like he worries you don’t love him as much as his sisters. Does he ever say that out loud?

Laurel: He has sometimes. His other big thing is he doesn’t have a brother, but they have each other. He constantly brings that up.

Sarah: That’s what I call a chip on his shoulder. When he provokes her like that, it’s because he has feelings inside that make him act out. He’s not a bad kid; he’s having a hard time. Picking fights is often an attempt to get rid of difficult feelings. If we have a bad day and don’t process it, we might come home cranky or pick a fight—it’s not about the other person, it’s about us.

So I’d suggest having some heart-to-hearts with Blake, maybe at bedtime. Give him space to process. Say, “It must be really hard to have two little sisters and be the only boy. I bet you wish you had a brother.” Or, “I wonder if it’s hard to share me and mom with your sisters. I wonder if it’s hard being the oldest.” Share your own stories: “I remember when I was growing up, it was hard to be the big sister.” Or Derrick, you could share what it was like for your older sibling.

The same goes for Kira: “It must be hard being in the middle—your big brother gets to do things you can’t, and your little sister gets babied more.” The point is to let them express their feelings so they don’t have to act them out by provoking.

That provocative behavior is just difficult feelings looking for a way out. Your role is to open the door for those feelings. Say things like, “I know this must be hard. I hear you. You can always talk to me about your feelings. All your feelings are okay with me.” And you have to mean it—even if they say things like, “I wish they didn’t exist,” or, “I wish you never had that baby.” That’s totally normal. Don’t be afraid of it. Resist the urge to offer silver linings like, “But sometimes you play so well together.” It’s not time for optimism—it’s time for listening and acknowledging.

You can also say, “I’m sorry if I ever did anything that made you feel like I didn’t love you as much as your sisters. I couldn’t love anyone more than I love you.” You can say that to each child without lying, because it’s true. That reassurance goes to the root of sibling rivalry.

Derrick: That’s really helpful. I’d love your insight on some of the things we’re already doing. Lately, I’ve realized I spend more time in the girls’ room at bedtime. Blake has his own room. He’s more self-sufficient—he can read and put himself to sleep. For the past year, I’ve been reading in the girls’ room instead, since they need more wrangling. So I’ve tried to switch that and spend more time in Blake’s room reading with him. We’ve also started doing “mom dates” or “dad dates” with each kid.

Sarah: That’s perfect! My final best practice is one-on-one time. You’re on the right track. It doesn’t have to be a “date.” Special Time is 15 minutes a day with each child, right at home. You don’t need to go to the aquarium or spend money. Just say, “I’m all yours for the next 15 minutes—what do you want to play?” Try to keep it play-centered and without screens.

Laurel: Sometimes when we call it a “mommy date,” it turns into something big. That makes it hard to do consistently.

Sarah: Exactly. You can still do those, but Special Time is smaller and daily. Fifteen minutes is manageable. With little ones, you might need to get creative—for example, one parent watches two kids while the other has Special Time with the third. You could even “hire” Blake to watch Aubrey for a few minutes so you can have time with Kira.

Laurel: That makes sense. I did think of an example, though. What frustrates me most isn’t sharing, but when they’re unkind to each other. I harp on them about family sticking together and being kind. For example, last week at surf camp, both kids had zinc on their faces—Blake was orange, Kira was purple. She was so excited and bubbly that morning, which is unusual for her. In front of neighbor friends, Blake made fun of her purple face. It devastated her. I laid into him, telling him he’s her protector and needs to be kind. I don’t want to be too hard on him, but I also want him to understand.

Sarah: Based on everything we’ve talked about, you can see how coming down hard on him might make him feel bad about himself and worry that you don’t love him—fueling even more resentment. At the same time, of course we don’t want siblings hurting each other’s feelings. This is where empathic limits come in.

You set the limit—“It’s not okay to tease your sister because it hurts her feelings”—but you lead with his perspective. You might say, “Hey, I know people with color on their faces can look funny, and maybe you thought it was just a joke. At the same time, that really made your sister feel bad.” That way, you correct him without making him feel like a bad kid.

Do you think he was trying to be funny, or was he trying to hurt her?

Laurel: I think he was. He’ll also reveal secrets or crushes in front of friends—he knows it’s ammo.

Sarah: Right. In that situation, I’d first empathize with Kira: “I’m so sorry your brother said that—it never feels good to be laughed at.” Then privately with Blake: “What’s going on with you that you wanted to make your sister feel bad?” Come at it with curiosity, assuming he’s doing the best he can. If he says, “I was just joking,” you can respond, “We need to be more careful with our jokes so they’re not at anyone’s expense.” That’s correcting without shaming.

Laurel: I love that. Sometimes I’m trying to say that, but not in a peaceful way, so he can’t receive it. Then he asks, “Am I a bad kid?” and I have to backtrack.

Sarah: Exactly—skip the part that makes him feel like a bad kid. Sensitive kids don’t need much correction—they already feel things deeply. Just get curious.

Laurel: That makes sense. Correcting without shaming.

Sarah: Yes.

Laurel: We also tried something new because of the constant questions. They’ll keep asking: “Can I do this? Can I watch a show?” We got tired of repeating no. So now we say, “I don’t know yet. Let me think about it. But if you ask again, the answer will be no.” Is that okay?

Sarah: I used to say, “If I have to give a quick answer, it’s going to be no.” I’d also say, “You can ask me as many times as you want, but the answer will still be no.” With empathy: “I know it’s hard to hear no, but it’s still no.” Another thing I said was, “It would be so much easier for me to say yes. But I love you enough to say no.” That helped my kids see it wasn’t easy for me either.

Laurel: That’s helpful. Another thing: our kids do so much—they’re busy and around people a lot, partly because of our personalities and being pastors. We try to build in downtime at home, but often after a fun day they complain on the way home: “Why do we have to go to bed?” They don’t reflect on the fun—they just want more.

Sarah: That’s totally normal. You could go to an amusement park, eat pizza and ice cream, see a movie, and if you say no to one more thing, they’ll say, “We never do anything fun!” Kids are wired to want more. That’s evolutionary: quiet kids who didn’t ask for needs wouldn’t survive. Wanting isn’t a problem, and it doesn’t mean they’ll turn into entitled adults.

Kids live in the moment. If you say no to ice cream, they fixate on that, not the whole day. So stay in the moment with them: “You really wanted ice cream. I know it’s disappointing we’re not having it.” Resist the urge to say, “But we already did all these things.”

Laurel: I love that. We even started singing “Never Enough” from The Greatest Showman, and now they hate it. It feels like nothing is ever enough.

Sarah: That’s normal.

Laurel: I also want to bring it back to peaceful, no-fear parenting. I can be hard on myself, and I see that in my kids. I don’t want that.

Sarah: If you don’t want your kids to be hard on themselves, model grace for yourself. Say, “I messed up, but I’m still worthy and lovable.” Being hard on yourself means you only feel lovable when you don’t make mistakes. We want our kids to know they’re lovable no matter what—even when they mess up or bother their siblings. That’s true self-worth: being lovable because of who you are, not what you do. That’s what gives kids the courage to take risks and not stay small out of fear of failure. They’ll learn that from your modeling.

Laurel: That makes sense.

Sarah: And I’ve never, ever seen anyone do this work without being compassionate with themselves.

Laurel: Hmm. Like—

Sarah: You can’t beat yourself up and be a peaceful parent.

Laurel: Yeah, I know. Because then I’d see them doing it. It’s like, no, I don’t. Yeah. Yeah. I purposely don’t want you guys to be that way. Yeah. That’s great. Those are all good things to think about. I think the other questions I can tie back to what you’ve already answered, like being disrespectful or sassiness creeping in—the talking back kind of stuff. And that’s all from, I mean, it stems from not feeling heard, not feeling empathized with.

Sarah: Totally. And being hijacked by big feelings—even if it’s your own big feelings of not getting what you want. That can be overwhelming and send them into fight, flight, or freeze. Sassiness and backtalk is the fight response. It’s the mild fight. They’re not screaming, hitting, or kicking, but just using rude talk.

Laurel: Hmm. And so same response as a parent with that too? Just be in the moment with their feelings and then move on to talking about why and letting them kind of—

Sarah: Yeah. And empathizing. Just like, “Ah, you’re really…” Say they’re saucy about you not letting them have some ice cream. “You never let me have ice cream! This is so unfair! You’re so mean!” Whatever they might say. You can respond, “Ugh, I know, it’s so hard. You wish you could have all the ice cream in the freezer. You’d eat the whole carton if you could.” Just recognize what they’re feeling. It doesn’t have to be a teachable moment about sugar or health. You can just be with them in their hard time about not getting what they want. And they’ll get through to the other side—which builds resilience.

Laurel: How do you discipline when it’s needed—not punish, but discipline? For example, a deliberate rule is broken, somebody gets hurt, or stealing—like when it’s clear they know it was wrong?

Sarah: You want to help them see how their actions affect other people, property, or the community. That’s where they internalize right and wrong. If you give them a punishment for breaking something, that only teaches them how their actions affect them—not how their actions affect others. That makes kids think, “What’s in it for me? I better not do this thing because I don’t want to get in trouble,” instead of, “I better not do this because it will hurt my sister or disappoint my parents.” So punishments and imposed consequences pull kids away from the real consequences—like someone getting hurt or trust being broken.

You really want to help them understand: “The reason why we have this rule is because of X, Y, Z. And when you did this, here’s what happened.” If they have a problem with the rule, talk about it together as a family. That works much better than punishment.

Laurel: We had an incident at church where our 10-year-old was talking about something inappropriate with another kid. The other parent reached out, and I feel like we handled it okay. We talked with him, he was open, and we discussed what was said. Then we apologized to that parent in person and had a conversation. It didn’t feel like we were forcing him to do something bad or shaming him.

Sarah: That’s good—it’s about making a repair. That’s always the focus. Without knowing the whole situation, I might not have said apologizing to the parent, because technically the parent wasn’t directly involved. But if your son was willing and it felt authentic, that’s great. What matters is the outcome: repair. Sometimes parents suggest an apology to make the child feel ashamed so they’ll “remember it,” but that’s not helpful. The question is: does the apology or repair actually improve the situation? That’s what you keep in mind.

Laurel: Well, thanks for all your wisdom.

Sarah: You’re welcome. It was really nice to meet you both.

Part 2:

Sarah: Welcome back, Laurel and Derek. Thanks for joining again. How have things been since our first coaching call?

Laurel: Yeah. I feel like we gained several really good nuggets that we were able to try. One of them was about my daughter in the mornings—not wanting to get dressed, feeling stuck in the middle and left out. I’ve gotten to stop what I’m doing and pay attention to her. Even this morning, she still had a meltdown, but things went faster by the end compared to me being stubborn and telling her to do it on her own.

Sarah: So you dropped your end of the power struggle.

Laurel: Yeah. And it felt great because I wasn’t frustrated afterward. I could move on right away instead of also blowing up. If we both blow up, it’s bad. But if she’s the only one, she can snap out of it quickly. I can’t as easily, so it usually lingers for me. This way, it was so much better.

We’ve had some challenging parenting moments this week, but looking at them through the lens of making our kids feel worthy and loved helped us respond differently. One thing you said last time—that “the perpetrator needs empathy”—really stuck with me. I always felt like the misbehaving child should feel our wrath to show how serious it was. But we were able to love our kids through a couple of tough situations, and it worked.

Derrick: For me, the biggest takeaway was the “kindling” metaphor. I’ve even shared it with friends. Before, I thought I was being patient, but I was just collecting kindling until I blew up. Now I recognize the kindling and set it down—take a breath, or tell the kids I need a minute. This morning on the way to soccer, I told them I needed a little pity party in the front seat before I could play their game. That helped me calm before reengaging.

Sarah: That’s fantastic. You recognized you needed to calm yourself before jumping back in, instead of pushing through already-annoyed feelings.

Laurel: Yeah. We did have questions moving forward. We had a couple of situations where we knew our kids were lying about something significant. We told them, “We love you, and we need you to tell the truth.” But they denied it for days before finally giving in. How do we encourage truth-telling and open communication?

Sarah: Kids usually lie for three reasons: they’re afraid of getting in trouble, they feel ashamed or embarrassed, or they’re afraid of disappointing you. Sometimes it’s all three. So the focus has to be: we might be unhappy with what you did, but we’ll just work on fixing it. When they do admit the truth, it’s important to say, “I’m so glad you told me.” That helps remove shame.

Natural consequences happen without your involvement. If they take money from your wallet, the natural consequence is that you’re missing money and trust is broken. But adding punishments just teaches them to hide better next time.

Derrick: How do you frame the difference between a consequence and a boundary? Like if they mess up in an environment and we don’t let them back into it for a while—is that a consequence or a boundary?

Sarah: In peaceful parenting, we talk about limits. If they show they’re not ready for a certain freedom, you set a limit to support them—not to punish. A consequence is meant to make them feel bad so they won’t repeat it. A limit is about guidance and support.

The way to tell: check your tone and your intent. If you’re angry and reactive, it will feel punishing even if it’s not meant to be. And if your intent is to make them suffer, that’s a punishment. If your tone is empathetic and your intent is to support expectations, it’s a limit.

Derrick: That’s helpful. Sometimes we beat ourselves up wondering if we’re punishing when we’re just setting limits. Your tone-and-intent framework is a good check.

Sarah: And if you mess up in the moment, you can always walk it back. Say, “I was really angry when I said that. Let’s rethink this.” That models responsibility for when we act out while triggered.

Derrick: That’s good.

Sarah: You mentioned sibling rivalry last time. Did you try the “It’s theirs until they’re done with it” approach?

Derrick: Yes—and it’s like a miracle. It worked especially in the car.

Sarah: That’s great. I know car rides were tricky before.

Laurel: What about mantras to help us remember not to let our kids’ behavior define us as parents—or as people?

Sarah: What you’re talking about is shame. It’s when we feel unworthy because of our kids’ behavior or what others think. We have to separate our worth from our kids’ actions. Even if your child is struggling, you’re still a good, worthy, lovable person.

Laurel: Almost the same thing we say to our kids: “You are worthy and lovable.”

Sarah: Exactly. So when you feel yourself going into a shame spiral, remind yourself: “Even though my child did this thing, I am still worthy and lovable.” Hold both truths together.

Laurel: Yes. That helps. One last question: mornings. School starts in a day, and we worry every morning will be a struggle with Kira. She resists everything—getting dressed, socks, breakfast. Then she’s fine once we’re in the car. How can we help her set her own boundaries about mornings?

Sarah: It sounds like she gets anxious around transitions. She doesn’t do well with being hurried. That anxiety overwhelms her, and she goes into fight mode—pushing back, lashing out.

Laurel: Yes, that’s exactly it.

Sarah: So part of it is adjusting your routine—giving her more time in the morning. But another part is building resilience. The anti-anxiety phrase is: “We can handle this.” Remind her, “Even if it’s not going how you wanted, you can handle it. We can do hard things.” Add in laughter to ease tension.

And maybe accept that for now, you might need to spend 10 minutes helping her get dressed. That’s okay. You can balance it by giving her extra nurturing at other times of the day so she doesn’t seek it as much during rushed mornings.

Derrick: That’s good.

Sarah: Thank you both so much. I’ve loved these conversations.

Derrick: Thank you, Sarah.

Sarah: You’re welcome. It’s been wonderful.

You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, OR— BRAND NEW: we’ve included a fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.

In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I have a conversation with Devon Kuntzman, an ICF-certified coach and author of the new book Transforming Toddlerhood.

We cover why toddlers are so misunderstood, and how to work with our toddlers by better understanding their needs and development. Tune in to learn better ways to work through car seat struggles, diaper changes, tooth brushing, throwing things, and more!

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We talk about:

* 7:10 Why do toddlers have such a bad reputation?!

* 10:00 Contractionary needs of toddlers

* 11:00 What hard toddler behaviours are totally normal?

* 13:00 Nuance around “limit setting” and power struggles

* 19:30 Having unrealistic expectations for our toddlers

* 24:00 Understanding crying

* 29:00 Toddlers need for movement and bodily autonomy

* 30:00 Car seat struggles

* 31:15 Refusing diaper changes

* 32:00 Tooth brushing

* 35:00 Throwing things

* 38:00 The problems with Time Outs

Resources mentioned in this episode:

* Yoto Player-Screen Free Audio Book Player

* The Peaceful Parenting Membership

* Transforming Toddlerhood: How to Handle Tantrums, End Power Strugglers, and Raise Resilient Kids --- Without Losing your Mind

* Devon’s website

xx Sarah and Corey

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Interview transcript:

Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. Today’s guest is Devon Kuntzman, who is an expert on all things toddler. We discussed why toddlers get a bad rap—why they can be really challenging—and what’s going on with them developmentally. Devon has so much insight into how to understand your toddler better, and therefore how to make life with them easier by knowing how to support them.

We also talked about mysterious toddler behavior, and I asked her the questions I get most from you—what to do in tricky situations like car seats, teeth brushing, diapers, and more. You are going to finish this episode with a deeper understanding of your toddler and a deeper appreciation of these wondrous and sometimes challenging little beings.

Even if you don’t have a toddler anymore, you might find it interesting—as I did—to understand in hindsight exactly why they acted the way they did. And if you don’t have a toddler anymore but you do know someone with a toddler—that’s ages one through four—send this podcast on over to them. I’m sure they’re going to find it really, really helpful. Devon is just wonderful.

Okay, let’s meet Devon.

Sarah: Hey Devon, welcome to the podcast.

Devon: Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to be here.

Sarah: Me too. I’m so excited to talk about your new book that’s coming out. But before we dive into that, can you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Devon: Yes. So, I am Devon Kuntzman, and I’m an ICF certified coach, toddler expert, and the founder of Transforming Toddlerhood. I’m also a mama to a toddler and now an author with a book coming out October 21st called Transforming Toddlerhood as well.

I really started Transforming Toddlerhood in 2018 to dispel the myth that toddlerhood is terrible. Yes, toddlerhood is very, very challenging developmentally for so many reasons, but it’s also a critical developmental period. If we just go into it white-knuckling it, bracing ourselves for the worst, we actually start to miss the magic of this developmental period and the opportunity to set our kids up for success in the long run.

The first five years of life set the foundation for brain development and social-emotional development for years to come.

Sarah: I love that. And actually, I love the toddler stage. I know a lot of people find it really challenging, and I can see why, but also, as you said, it is really magical. They’re such interesting little creatures, and I just love that stage.

So, your book is coming out October 21st, and we would encourage anyone listening to pre-order it. I was so excited to read your book because, when I was reading it, I was thinking, “You know what this is? It’s like a perfect peaceful parenting primer, except everything is focused on this age group.”

There are a lot of great peaceful parenting books out there, but they don’t focus on this age group. And this age group is so specific. I don’t know if that’s what you were intending to write when you wrote it. If you weren’t intending to, I think that’s what you did.

Devon: Yes. The reason I wrote this book is because we have so many parenting books out there—amazing books that talk about peaceful parenting, respectful parenting, and all of these things. But none of them are truly tailored to the toddler years.

At the same time, I have parents DMing me every day asking me so many different questions, and I can see the desperation of these parents. They’re searching on Instagram, they’re Googling, they’re trying to find the answers to these very real, challenging problems in their lives. And there wasn’t just one place to go to get all of these answers.

That’s why I wrote Transforming Toddlerhood. It’s an all-in-one, comprehensive, easy-to-read guide that truly covers just about every challenge you might have throughout toddlerhood. Whether it’s healthy, developmentally appropriate discipline, being on a different page from your parenting partner, your child whining, struggling with parental preference, or introducing a new sibling—I really cover everything in this book.

I wanted parents to have a place they could go to get quick answers that were trusted, so they didn’t have to search everywhere for them.

Sarah: Yeah, you absolutely did it. You succeeded at your goal. I get lots of questions about toddlers too—in my coaching and in my communities—and every single one of the questions that I get was in the book. That was great.

So, I encourage people to go out and get it. I’m actually going to order a copy for my husband’s cousin and his wife. They have a little girl who’s about 15 or 16 months now, so it’ll be perfect for them.

Devon: Perfect.

Sarah: So, toddlers—as you mentioned before—have a bad rap, right? You know, the “terrible twos,” the “horrible threes,” or whatever people call them. Why do you think that is? And maybe tell us a little bit about what’s going on developmentally. I think those two answers are probably connected.

Devon: I am so excited to answer this question, because this is a question I always ask everyone who comes on my annual summit. And I’m so excited to get to answer it myself.

I really feel that toddlerhood is so challenging for parents because it’s the first time your child is realizing that they’re a separate entity from you. And at the same time, you’re realizing your child is a separate entity from you as well.

The whole point of toddlerhood is for your child to become their own separate individual. And the way they do that is through behaviors that delineate a line between your toddler and yourself. They’re going to say “no.” They’re going to push back. They’re going to have their own agenda.

We start seeing this even as early as nine months old, with a child who doesn’t want to get their diaper changed. Or you have a 12-month-old—you ask them to come over, they laugh and run the other direction. Or you have a 14-month-old who thinks you’re moving too slowly, or doesn’t like what you’re doing, and then they hit you on the head.

It’s really the first time we move out of a purely caregiving role into what I like to call a really active parenting role, where we have to decide how we’re going to respond to these behaviors.

I think the bigger challenge is that we’re looking at these behaviors through a logical lens with fully mature brains. So, we label these behaviors as bad or wrong. But really, all the behaviors that drive us crazy are developmentally appropriate behaviors for toddlers.

Because of that mismatch—between our expectations of what we think is typical and what our toddlers are actually doing—it creates a lot of frustration. It creates fear spiraling: “Are they always going to be this way? Is my child going to grow up to be a bully?” X, Y, Z. All of that makes parenting this age group really, really challenging.

Sarah: Yeah, I was just talking to someone this morning who has a 2-year-old and a new baby—which, of course, as you know, exacerbates the challenges of toddlers when you’re adding to your family.

I have noticed anecdotally that people tend to think two or three are the hardest years, and it almost always comes back to when they had their next child. If they had them two years apart, they found two harder. If they had them three years apart, they found three harder.

This mom was just telling me about some struggles, and I said, “Yeah, your daughter is at that stage where she has her own ideas about things she would like to do or have. And it’s combined with a lack of logic, perspective, and brain development.” It’s like a perfect storm: “I know what I want, but I don’t have any experience in life or brain development to be able to express it in a different way.”

Devon: Yes, exactly. And another challenge that’s really happening in toddlerhood—which comes through in their behavior—is this idea of contradictory needs.

As I was saying, your toddler is trying to become their own person. They want to be independent. They’re developmentally driven to have a sense of control, feel capable, and exert their will. But at the same time, they’re highly reliant on the adults in their life to meet their social and physical needs.

So even though these developmental needs are so strong, they still need you—that safe and secure base—to help meet their emotional and physical needs. Toddlers are constantly trying to balance these opposing needs, and that really comes out in contradictory, challenging behavior that can drive us crazy.

Sarah: Yeah, I love that. I remember that so well—that “I want to do it by myself. No, I want you to do it for me.” The contradictory needs. That’s such a beautiful way to put it.

Devon: Yeah.

Sarah: What is something you hear all the time that you find yourself saying, “Oh, that’s totally normal for toddlers”? What’s something parents don’t know is normal, but you find yourself reassuring them that it is?

Devon: Yes. Basically, the behaviors we as adults really don’t like, that we think are inappropriate. Yes, in our logical, fully mature adult brains, hitting, biting, throwing, kicking, screaming, crying—all of these things—feel wrong.

But if you think about it, babies’ only way of communicating is to cry. Then, as toddlers start to grow, they go through a lot of physical development. They start communicating through their behaviors.

For example, if you have a toddler throwing food from their high chair at 15 or 18 months old, they might be experimenting with cause and effect: “If I drop this food, what happens? Does the dog pick it up? How do my parents respond?” They’re experimenting and exploring, which is very appropriate.

Or take hitting and biting. Toddlers, especially one- and two-year-olds, cannot say, “I don’t like this. I’m feeling frustrated.” So instead, they hit you or bite you.

I just want parents to know: behavior is not good or bad. We have to step away from that dichotomous lens. Behavior is communication. Once we understand that, we can ask: “What skill does my child need to learn to be successful here?” instead of “What punishment do I need to give to make them listen or to teach them a lesson?”

Sarah: Yes—or not only, “What skill?” but also, “What support does my child need to meet my expectation?” Right? Because sometimes the skill’s not going to come for a long time with a toddler. But the support is something you can give them.

Devon: I love that. This comes up a lot—the idea of “My toddler’s not listening to me.” We set the limit, and then we expect our toddlers to just fall in line, follow through, and listen.

But the truth is, we need to ask: “What support does my toddler need to meet this limit I’m setting?” We often think saying the limit is the end of our job, but it’s actually the beginning.

Setting the limit is step one. Then we have to help our kids follow through on that limit—especially the younger they are or the more unmet needs they have in that moment. If they’re tired, hungry, overstimulated—then they’re going to need even more help to follow through.

Sarah: Yes. And I’m going to jump ahead in my list of questions. I was going to ask you about power struggles later, but I want to ask now since you just mentioned limits.

I find parents sometimes get too hung up on limits—not that limits aren’t important, because they are—but they often get too attached to their own sense of what the limit should be.

I love that when you were writing about power struggles, you suggested starting with the question: “What’s the goal here?” I’d love for you to talk about power struggles and limits through that lens. Because, as I mentioned this morning to a parent of a 2-year-old, there’s so much a 2-year-old has no control over in their life. We want to think about how we can be flexible about the rest.

So maybe just talk about your lens of power struggles a little bit, starting with that “What’s the goal here?” I love that.

Devon: Oh my gosh, I have so much to say on this subject.

When we ask ourselves, “What’s the goal here?” the main thing to consider is: are we trying to win? Because if you’re battling your toddler to win, then you’ve probably lost sight of the bigger picture—which is: How do you want to show up as a parent? What relationship are you trying to create? What support are you trying to give your child? What skills do they need to learn?

When we get caught up in trying to win, we’re in our stress response. The more committed we get to winning, the more tightly we get locked in the power struggle. And then everyone’s just on their own emotional roller coaster.

The reality is, it takes two people to be in a power struggle. And if you’re waiting for your toddler to suddenly say, “Oh, just kidding, I’ll do what you want,” you’ll be waiting a long time. Toddlers are developmentally driven to exert their will and be their own person. They’re likely to double down.

And toddlers can be really persistent. So we have to zoom out and think about the bigger picture. Instead of being so attached to one way of doing something, we can pivot in an empowered way.

That might mean moving forward and letting your toddler follow you. Maybe it’s giving them a choice between two things within your boundaries. Maybe it’s saying, “When you brush your teeth (or pick up this toy), then we can go outside (or read a book).”

There are so many different tools we can use to pivot out of power struggles. Because quite frankly, we’re the adults. We have to be the leaders and guides in these moments. Our toddlers aren’t going to suddenly say, “Oh, just kidding, sorry.”

Sarah: Yes. And the other thing I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is, if we’re not modeling flexibility, how are our kids going to learn it? If we can’t be flexible as parents, then how will our kids learn to be flexible?

So often parents say, “My kid is so rigid, they’re not flexible at all.” And then you listen to the parent a little, and it sounds like they’re also being pretty rigid with their child.

I think finding those graceful sidesteps—what you’re talking about—is so important. It’s not about someone winning and someone losing, but about how we can still get to the goal we’re trying to reach.

Devon: Exactly. And this is a very Montessori-aligned thought: we as parents have to create the container, the foundation. But within those boundaries, there are a million ways something can happen and get done.

So, we can give our child freedom within the boundaries. Of course they still need our guidance, but the key is to avoid backing out in a way that says, “Fine, you win.” Instead, we ask: how can we give them a sense of control within our boundaries? That way their developmental need for autonomy is met, while we’re still in charge overall.

Sarah: Okay. Going back to expectations—one thing I read in your book really struck me. You cited research showing that half of parents believe kids are capable of self-control and milestones earlier than they actually are.

I find that too—parents’ expectations are often way too high for the age their child is, or for where they are developmentally.

So, how do you know if your expectations are out of whack? And what happens—what are the negative things that can happen—when they are?

Devon: I always say we typically underestimate our child’s physical abilities and overestimate their social-emotional capabilities and impulse control.

There’s a lot of research and polls showing this is the case. And when we hold unrealistic expectations, we get really frustrated, because we think our toddler is being “bad,” doing something they shouldn’t be doing developmentally.

Then we turn it inward: “I must be doing a bad job. I’m messing up.”

The best way to know if your expectations are appropriate is by looking at your child’s behavior over time—over several days or a week. What’s really happening in those moments? If you see a consistent pattern, you can start to say, “Okay, maybe I’m asking too much of my child.”

That doesn’t mean you just throw the expectation out the window and say, “Too bad, I’ll try again next year.” It means they need more support.

So you scaffold the skill. For example, something like getting dressed takes a lot of planning and coordination. It’s a skill that needs to be built over time. We need to start transferring those skills to our children—with our support.

So when your expectations are too big, you don’t throw them out completely. You ask: how can I support my child to get where I need them to be?

Sarah: Yeah. I always talk about when there’s the gap between your expectations and the reality, a lot of conventional parenting is like, “Okay, well what threat or consequence do I need to close that gap?” But I always think about just like, what support do we need to close the gap between the expectations and reality?

And of course, sometimes I think you do—there is a place for throwing expectations out the window. Because sometimes they’re so far off that it’s better to let go of the expectation than to try to get your kid to do it.

Or, you know, I think resources can go up and down. One day your kid might be able to do something, and the next day their resources might be a lot lower and they can’t manage. We have to be flexible.

Devon: For the parent too. There are going to be days when we’re more resourced, and days when we didn’t sleep well. Maybe our toddler was up at 2:00 AM and we’re tired. There are days when we just feel like there’s too much to do and not enough time. Days when we have our own feelings, emotions, and needs that need attention, and there’s not a lot of space for that.

That’s where we really just need to have compassion for ourselves and for our toddlers, and really give each other the benefit of the doubt—knowing that we’re doing the best that we can. Then we can start working from that place: right now, we’re doing the best we can in this moment. What’s the next step to getting where we need to be?

I didn’t mention this in the book, but something I talk about a lot with my private clients is that oftentimes we want to jump from A to Z. And that’s a really big leap, right? We want to leap across the Grand Canyon, when really what we want to do is step across on stepping stones. Move from A to B, B to C, C to D. That’s how we eventually get to where we need to be.

This is true across the board when we’re thinking about expectations, skills, and things of that nature. So when we don’t try to do it all at once, we’re going to have more realistic expectations and we’re going to be less frustrated.

Sarah: Yeah.

Devon: That makes so much sense.

Sarah: I love also that you really, in the book, normalize toddler behavior. You mentioned before, throwing—and at one point, as I was reading your book, I wondered, “I wonder if she’s going to talk about play schemas.” And then you had the section on play schemas.

So much of what toddlers do, parents just don’t know is normal. Like you were talking about throwing food off the highchair. I always remind parents of the trajectory schema—how does the food move through space, or what happens when I drop this, and learning about gravity.

Speaking of normalizing, one of the things that I loved in your book was when you talked about avoiding positive dismissiveness. I loved how you addressed that—when parents say that kids are crying for no reason. Can you talk about that a little bit, what to avoid, and what to do instead?

Devon: Yeah. I decided to dedicate a chapter to crying because crying is such an important communication tool for kids. Beyond that, research shows that crying is actually beneficial to our bodies. It helps release hormones that make us feel better.

So crying serves a lot of purposes. When we look at crying as “fake crying” or “crying for no reason,” it really shortchanges a normal biological process, a normal way of communication for young children. It also dismisses a child’s needs.

Now, I will tell you, it is hard to hear your child cry. It is so hard. I had a baby that cried for hours on end—I’m talking five-plus hours a day. So I’ve heard my fair share of crying, probably enough for ten lifetimes.

It’s really hard for me, even now with my toddler, to hear him cry. But knowing that you’re not a bad parent and there’s nothing wrong if your child is crying—that this is actually an emotional release—is super helpful.

We don’t want our kids to shove it down. Instead of saying, “You’re fine, you’re fine”—which usually comes from a good place, because we just want our kids to feel better—we can say things like, “That must have been hard,” or, “That was unexpected,” or, “Oh, you fell down and scraped your knee. I’m sorry that happened.”

This creates emotional connection and helps build emotional resilience.

Sarah: I love that. Listeners to this podcast will have heard me talk a lot about emptying the emotional backpack. That’s what you’re talking about too—crying might not even be about the thing that just happened. It might just be how they’re releasing pent-up stresses, tensions, and big feelings they’ve been carrying around.

And the second part of what you’re talking about is really empathy, right? It’s so hard because we don’t always get why something is so upsetting—like you cut the sandwich wrong, or the muffin is broken in half and they want it whole.

But I always tell parents, it’s appropriate for little kids to have big feelings about small things. That’s their life perspective right now. They don’t have big adult problems like we do; they just have toddler problems. And to them, those are just as big.

Devon: Yeah. And I think it also really stems from this idea of a lack of control. A lot of crying isn’t really about the thing that happened—it’s just the release of all the pent-up stuff, and that was the last straw.

But why that becomes the last straw—like cutting the sandwich wrong or peeling the banana when they didn’t want you to—is because toddlers have so little control over their lives. Yet this is the stage where they’re craving control so badly, as they’re differentiating themselves and becoming their own person.

So that little thing, like peeling the banana when they didn’t want you to, just reinforces the lack of control they feel—and that’s what sends them over the edge.

Sarah: That makes so much sense. I just have so much compassion and empathy for toddlers. I think toddlerhood and middle school are the hardest times of childhood.

Okay, let’s shift into some tips, because I’m going to use you to ask some of the questions I get all the time. These have been the questions on repeat for the last 12 years I’ve been doing this.

Here’s what I hear:

My kid won’t get in the car seat—or they cry when they’re in the car seat.

They don’t want their diapers changed, even if it’s really wet or dirty.

They don’t want me to brush their teeth.

They won’t stop throwing things.

So if you want to lump some of those together, go for it—or take them one at a time. I’d love to hear your advice on those situations.

Devon: Absolutely. Most of these have to do with the toddler’s developmental drive to experiment and explore—and that happens through movement. Couple that with bodily autonomy: kids know inherently that they are in charge of their bodies.

You can’t force a child to eat, use the bathroom, or fall asleep. They are 100% in control of their bodies. That idea—that control is an illusion—is really tough for toddler parents to reckon with. But toddlers are great at teaching us this.

The faster we accept that control is an illusion, and that instead we are partners who have to work with our children, the better things will go. At the same time, we are the adults, and we are in charge. Sometimes we do have to cross a child’s bodily autonomy to keep them safe and healthy.

So let’s go through the examples.

Car seats: Toddlers don’t like being restricted—in a high chair, stroller, or car seat. Every toddler will push against this at some point. It can last for a while and come in phases.

Giving your child a sense of control helps: let them climb in, let them choose whether you buckle them or they do it, let them clip the chest strap. Play a silly song as a celebration when they’re in. Keep special toys in the car that they only get to play with there.

Also, start earlier than you think you need to, so you’re not rushing. But in the end, sometimes we do have to keep them safe by buckling them in. If we go against their autonomy, we need to talk them through what’s happening, support their emotions, and try again next time.

Diaper changes: When toddlers start refusing diaper changes, it means they’re ready for something new. They want to move from a passive bystander to an active participant in their toileting journey.

The first step is to change them standing up in the bathroom. Teach them how to push down their pants, undo the diaper tabs, or lean forward so you can wipe them. Yes, it’s harder to clean them up this way, but it gives them control.

Tooth brushing: Toddlers want control here too. I recommend three toothbrushes—one for each of their hands and one for you.

Sarah: I remember letting my kids brush my teeth with my toothbrush while I brushed theirs.

Devon: Exactly! That’s perfect. Another tip: start brushing your own teeth in front of them from a young age. Don’t put pressure on them; let them get interested in what you’re doing.

If it’s become a big power struggle, change up the environment. We often brush my son’s teeth in his bedroom, with his head in my lap—it’s actually easier that way. Change of scenery can make a big difference.

Sarah: I’ll share a tip that worked with my kids—we made up a story about “Mr. Dirt” who lived in their mouths, and every night we brushed him out. They loved hearing about his adventures while we brushed.

Devon: I love that. That’s playfulness—and playfulness creates connection, which creates cooperation. Play is the language of toddlerhood. The more we can tap into that, the better things go.

Sarah: Yes! I’m surprised we got this far without specifically calling out playfulness—it’s the number one tool in the toolbox for working with toddlers.

Devon: Exactly. Playfulness, role play, brushing a doll’s teeth first, or letting your child brush yours—it all helps toddlers feel powerful and understood.

Sarah: Okay, the last challenge: throwing things. I talked to a young couple who wanted to make a “no throwing” rule in their house. I told them I didn’t think that would work, since it’s such a developmental need. How do you manage throwing when it could be unsafe or destructive?

Devon: Great question. I talk about this in my book when I explain the recipe for effective discipline: connection, limits, and teaching skills.

First, get curious about what’s driving the behavior—throwing can mean so many things. Then, set clear limits: it’s not okay to throw breakables or throw at people. Finally, teach skills and alternatives.

Sometimes you can’t expect a two-year-old to regulate in the heat of the moment, so give them safe alternatives: a basket of balled-up socks, or paper they can throw into a laundry basket. This meets the need within your boundaries, while you also work on calming skills in calmer moments.

Sarah: That’s so helpful. Now, can you talk about why you don’t recommend timeouts, and why you prefer time-ins instead?

Devon: Yes. Timeouts are usually used as punishment—to teach a lesson or stop a behavior. But that’s shortsighted. Behavior is communication, and if we don’t understand what it’s telling us, it will keep popping up—like a game of whack-a-mole.

Also, kids often escalate in timeout, because they’re being cut off from their safe base—you. They need you to help them calm down.

That’s why I recommend time-ins instead. With time-ins, you’re still upholding limits and keeping everyone safe, but you’re staying with your child, supporting them, and helping them regulate. This builds long-term skills and emotional resilience.

Sarah: Love that. Thank you so much for coming on and for writing this book. I really encourage anyone who is a toddler parent—or who knows one—to pre-order your book. It’s a fantastic addition to the peaceful parenting world, and so specific to toddler needs and development.

Before I let you go, here’s the question I ask all my guests: If you could go back in time to your younger parent self, what advice would you give?

Devon: Gosh. I waited a long time to have a child, and I had a vision of how I wanted things to go. But I had a child with a lot of extra needs, and the things I thought would happen didn’t. So I would tell myself to loosen my expectations, be grateful for the moments I have, and be flexible in how needs get met.

Sarah: I love that. Perfect advice for parents of toddlers especially. Thanks so much, Devon.

Devon: Thank you! You can find me on Instagram at @transformingtoddlerhood, or on my website, transformingtoddlerhood.com/book for preorder info and bonuses.

Sarah: We’ll put the link in the show notes. Your book is comprehensive and very readable—even for me, far past the toddler years. Great job, Devon.

Devon: Thank you. That was my whole goal.

Thanks for reading Reimagine Peaceful Parenting with Sarah Rosensweet Substack! This post is public so feel free to share it.

>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, “Weekend Reflections” and “Weekend Support” - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in November for the 3rd year!) All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. If it has been helpful or meaningful for you, your support would help us to continue to provide support for free, for you and for others.

In addition to knowing you are supporting our mission to support parents and children, you get the podcast ad free and access to a monthly ‘ask me anything’ session.

In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I have a conversation with Zach Brittle, a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) and couple’s therapist certified in both Gottman Method Couple’s Therapy and Relational Life Therapy.

We focus on the two big areas that partners struggle with: what do you do when you disagree about parenting, and what do you do when one parent is highly reactive.

We talk about:

8:00 Sorting through different levels of disagreements between partners

11:00 Start by finding what you agree about/values/parenting goals

18:00 Explaining “Relational Life Therapy”

21:00 How “repair” is the goal in peaceful families

27:00 How to go into triggering conversations with our partners

30:00 Take care of yourself, so you can show up for your partner and kids

31:00 When one parent is more reactive than the other

36:00 What do you do if your partner won’t change?

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Sarah’s podcast about limits and boundaries and the issues with them

Yoto Player-Screen Free Audio Book Player

The Peaceful Parenting Membership

Reimagining Limits (and more) in Peaceful Parenting

Zach’s podcast Marriage Therapy Radio

Zach’s private practice

Connect with Sarah Rosensweet:

Instagram

Facebook Group

YouTube

Website

Join us on Substack

Newsletter

Book a short consult or coaching session call

xx Sarah and Corey

**If you’d like an ad-free version of the podcast, consider becoming a supporter on Substack! If you already ARE a supporter, the ad-free version is waiting for you in the Substack app or you can enter the private feed URL in the podcast player of your choice.

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You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, OR— BRAND NEW: we’ve included a fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.

In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I have a conversation with Desireé B. Stephens about her 10 conscious steps to talking to kids about global crisis.

**If you’d like an ad-free version of the podcast, consider becoming a supporter on Substack! If you already ARE a supporter, the ad-free version is waiting for you in the Substack app or you can enter the private feed URL in the podcast player of your choice. You can find the private feed URL for the ad-free version in your Substack account settings under “manage subscription”.

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We talk about:

* 7:30 What inspired Desiree to write about talking to kids about global crisis

* 9:50 1- Start with consent not control

* 12:30 How to rest, reset, resist

* 15:00 2- Ask, don’t assume

* 16:34 3- Name the reality, not the details

* 20:24 4- Honour their hidden hives

* 24:00 5- Let them see your grief with boundaries

* 28:00 6- Link emotions to actionable compassion

* 31:00 7- Revisit, don’t one and done

* 35:00 8- Build their critical consciousness

* 39:00 9- Co-creating boundaries for when it’s too much

* 42:00 10- Root it all in relationship, not rhetoric

Resources mentioned in this episode:

* Screen Free Audio Book Player https://reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/yoto

* The Peaceful Parenting Membership https://reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/membership

* Concious Parenting for Social Justice Collective https://parentingdecolonized.com/join-the-collective/

* IG post: Conscious Steps to Talking with Kids about Global Crisis with Desiree B Stephens

* https://desireebstephens.bio/digitalproducts

Connect with Sarah Rosensweet:

* Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahrosensweet/

* Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/peacefulparentingfreegroup

* YouTube: Peaceful Parenting with Sarah Rosensweet @peacefulparentingwithsarah4194

* Website: https://reimaginepeacefulparenting.com

* Join us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/peacefulparenting

* Newsletter: https://reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/newsletter

* Book a short consult or coaching session call: https://book-with-sarah-rosensweet.as.me/schedule.php

xx Sarah and Corey

Your peaceful parenting team- click here for a free short consult or a coaching session

Visit our website for free resources, podcast, coaching, membership and more!

>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, "Weekend Reflections" and "Weekend Support" - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in the spring for a third year). All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. If it has been helpful or meaningful for you, your support would help us to continue to provide support for free, for you and for others.

In addition to knowing you are supporting our mission to support parents and children, you get the podcast ad free and access to a monthly ‘ask me anything’ session.

Our sponsors:

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Interview Transcript: Talking with Kids about Global Crisis with Desireé B. Stephens: Episode 205

Sarah: Today's guest is Desiree B. Stephens, and we are going to be talking about 10 Conscious Steps to Talking with Kids About Global Crisis. With everything that's going on in the world right now, it's so important to know how to effectively talk to our kids about what's happening and to help them become social change-makers, rather than wanting to turn away from everything scary.

I loved this conversation with Desiree. I was inspired by her and the work that she does, and I thought it would be a great overlap to have her come on and talk to us about this topic.

On her Instagram, she asks the question: Ever wonder how decolonization and whole self-healing can transform our world? She and I would both agree that adding conscious parenting—or peaceful parenting—to that is really important. It's one way we are changing the world. Slowly, yes, but still changing the world.

Hey Desiree, welcome to the podcast.

Desiree: Hello. How are you, Sarah?

Sarah: Good. I'm so glad! We’ve crossed paths a couple of times, but we've never really sat down to talk. I’m so glad to have this opportunity.

Desiree: I am as well.

Sarah: So, tell us about who you are and what you do.

Desiree: Okay. Well, my name is Desiree B. Stephens, and I used to open up on TikTok and say, I pathologize whiteness as a system. What I do is believe in dismantling systems through somatic and trauma-informed practices and education. We work on removing shame spirals and touching on the root of the oppression that intersects us all.

Sarah: Awesome. I found you—well, I knew you from Yolanda Williams—but I also came across an article you wrote on Substack that someone forwarded to me. That’s what we’re going to be talking about today.

But I was also looking at your Substack, and you write about everything from parenting to history, decolonization, and politics. You cover a lot of really interesting topics. I encourage everyone to check it out—we’ll link it in the show notes.

The article that really piqued my interest was titled 10 Conscious Steps to Talking with Kids About Global Crisis. This is something I get asked about a lot, and honestly, I’ve never felt like I had great answers. Now you do! So I’m excited to hear about your steps. I think conscious parents are really struggling with this right now. I know I am, both personally and as a professional.

My kids are older, so they have a little more understanding—not that it makes it easier, but at least they can use logic a little bit more. Whereas little kids are like, but why?

You opened your article with the line: The world is burning and our children are absorbing the smoke. How do we talk to them about war, injustice, genocide, climate collapse, and economic fear? Just a few light dinner table topics, right?

So what inspired you to write this? And then let’s get into your ten steps.

Desiree: What inspired me was simply that I am a conscious parent. I think we’ve all traversed different parenting styles over the years. I’ve been parenting since I was 17 years old. My youngest just started first grade, and over the years I’ve always had conversations with my children about what’s happening in the world.

I think where parents struggle is that it’s innate to want to protect our children. Protection often looks like insulation. But in this current climate—having parented through the ‘90s and now parenting kids who have access to the entire world—it doesn’t matter if we talk about it or not. They’re going to find out. They can get on TikTok, and parental controls don’t stop that.

So I asked myself: how can I do this in a trauma-informed way? How can I honor their bodies? Because, like you said, we can’t logic our way through colonization, genocide, starving people, or climate collapse. None of it makes sense.

What we can do is trust what our kids are feeling, what they’re going through, and what they’re hearing from friends. So I began sitting down with them and asking: What did you hear about today? How did that make you feel? Where did that show up in your body?

Our bodies tell us something. If they say, “My tummy hurt,” that’s anxiety. For example, if a child hears about a school shooting, then suddenly doesn’t want to eat and complains of a stomach ache, they’re not sick—they’re anxious. I can’t tell them, You’re safe, there’s a security guard at school. That doesn’t erase their fear.

So the question is: how do we process those feelings and help them engage in social justice within a framework that makes sense to them—usually, the home?

Sarah: That’s such a good point—that none of it makes sense, and that the fear is real. I love that one of your steps is asking them what they already know. But before that, you have a step that I think is so important: start with consent, not control. Can you talk about that?

Desiree: I believe in consent in all things. We often talk about consent in the context of sex—like, don’t touch me here, that’s my no-no square. But consent is much broader. A touch on the shoulder could be the lead-in to inappropriate behavior. Most children who are harmed are hurt by someone they know, who has built trust.

So for me, consent extends to all things—including conversations. That ties into the second step, which is: What have you heard? But it begins with consent: Would you like to talk about this today? How are you feeling? Do you have questions?

It lets them lead and make a choice. Because sometimes, even I don’t want to talk about it. Sometimes I just want to eat dinner or relax, not think about the world burning. And if I feel that way, surely they do too.

Sarah: You know what I love about that? I think of my oldest child, who’s 24 now. From day one, he carried this existential angst. He cares so deeply about everything we’re talking about, but he’s always had a hard time putting it down.

As he was growing up, I kept saying, It’s amazing that you care so deeply and you go to protests, but you don’t have to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. That’s such an important lesson—and it’s embedded in your idea of starting with consent.

Desiree: Exactly. Right now, I’m in what I call a season of rest, reset, resist. On my Substack, I’ve been writing lessons on these themes: two on resting, two on resetting, and two on resisting.

There’s no way this work can be sustainable if we live in constant crisis. If we only focus on the terror, we lose the joy. But joy and rest are also acts of resistance. They are resilience.

For example, in my work on decolonization, I remind people that these systems have existed for thousands of years. And yet—we’re still here. That should bring joy. It’s proof of resilience.

White-bodied people who are new to anti-racism work or activism often burn out quickly. They go to every march, every meeting, until they’re exhausted. And I ask: When are you just going to take a walk? When are you going to gather with friends and celebrate?

This doesn’t have to feel like an emergency all the time. That sense of urgency is one of the pillars of supremacy culture. Not everything is urgent. We’re still here.

Sarah: Yeah.

Desiree: And that’s why it’s so important to balance. Otherwise, kids end up feeling crushed under the weight of global crisis, on top of their own developmental changes. Sometimes the best response is: Okay, baby, breathe.

Sarah: Yes. And so, by starting with consent, you give them the choice to say, Tonight I’m just going to play video games, even if there was a school lockdown earlier that day.

Desiree: Exactly. That’s fine. Because later is coming. These conversations are not going away.

Activism has to be sustainable. You have to know your capacity. Not everyone can march. Some people write emails. Some people color with their kids and talk about it during that time. That’s valid too.

Sarah: I love that.

Desiree: Coloring with your kids, reading children around the world books, talking about culture—these are beautiful, simple ways to weave in social justice. It doesn’t have to be violent or traumatizing.

Sarah: Yes—because if you traumatize people, they shut down. And then nothing gets done.

So, your second step is ask, don’t assume. Ask them what they’ve heard, what they know, and how they feel. And your third step is name the reality, not the details. Tell us about that.

Desiree: This changes with age. I have children from adulthood down to six years old. So, for example, when my kids ask about expensive sneakers, I explain: They cost $3 to make, using child labor. That’s why I won’t pay $300 for them.

That’s naming the reality—without overwhelming them with traumatic details. Similarly, with Gaza, I don’t need to show my kids graphic images of starving babies. That’s traumatizing. The reality is enough: This is happening. People are suffering.

Children don’t need trauma dumps. We can speak clearly without overwhelming them. For a younger child, it could be as simple as: Some leaders are hurting people, and some people are standing up to stop it.

Sarah: Right. And you use examples at home too, like play-fighting among siblings. One child steps in and says, That’s too rough. That’s social justice on a small scale.

Desiree: Exactly. Small examples at home translate to global understanding. We can show kids that standing up for others matters. And then we help them find their own capacity—whether it’s writing letters, talking about it, or making a video.

Sarah: Yes. And if you just pour out trauma, kids will shut down.

Desiree: Exactly.

Sarah: So step four is honor their hidden hives. What does that mean?

Desiree: Kids have their own communities, their own secret lives. Online especially, they connect globally—with Palestinian friends, Jewish friends, Congolese friends, kids in red states, kids with MAGA parents. Their reach is global in a way ours never was.

So, honoring their hidden hives means respecting that their conversations matter. Ask: What are you and your friends talking about? What do they think? Don’t dismiss them as “just kids.” They often understand more than we do.

Sarah: Yes! I remember being dismissed by adults as a child, and how frustrating that felt. I had real thoughts and opinions. That’s a kind of adult-centrism, and I know that’s a theme in your work.

Desiree: Exactly. Center kids in their own lives. What matters to them matters—just like what matters to us in our friendships.

Sarah: Okay, now step five: Let them see your grief, with boundaries. This is a hard one for me. I cry easily when talking about these topics, but I don’t want to traumatize my kids.

Desiree: But why do we think crying is traumatizing?

Sarah: I guess I worry that if they see me overwhelmed, they’ll feel overwhelmed too.

Desiree: The opposite can also happen. If you never let them see you grieve, they may feel they have to hold it in as well.

Our parents and grandparents grew up in eras of war, enslavement, displacement. They learned to “button it up” and carry on. They raised us to believe there’s “no crying in baseball.”

But my parenting journey has been about humanizing myself. I don’t want my kids to only realize I’m human after I die. If they see me cry about a world in crisis, that teaches them it’s okay to feel deeply too.

Now, the boundary is important—we don’t completely fall apart in front of them. They still need to feel safe. If a parent collapses emotionally, kids may feel like they have to take care of the parent. That’s the line we don’t want to cross.

Sarah: Yes—that’s exactly what I was worried about.

Desiree: Right. So we want to find that balance of communal care. We take care of each other here, right? Let’s set aside a moment for grief. How are you feeling? What are you grieving today?

What made you feel sad? What made you feel displaced? What made you feel unheard, unseen, unloved? Let’s get into that. Let’s feel that for a moment. And then — what could feel different? What could we all do better as a community?

This made me feel bad when you said that. I share with my kids: “When you don’t do X, Y, and Z, it makes me feel like you don’t care about what I think. And that hurts me.” Right? I don’t want to be a parent who just seems angry. I want to be clear that I’m hurt. That hurt my feelings.

And I love you so much, I care about you so much, that your feelings matter to me — but I also want to matter to you. And that, for me, is communal care.

Sarah: You mentioned a couple of sentences back about “what can we do,” which links nicely into your next step: link emotions to actionable compassion.

There’s that Mr. Rogers quote about whenever anything bad is happening, look for the helpers. And research shows that when you have big emotions without feeling like you can do anything, that’s when kids (and adults) turn cynical.

So maybe you could give us a couple of examples. You already mentioned going to marches and emailing. But what are some other things you’ve done with your kids, or that you’ve seen other people do with their kids, that connect emotions to actionable compassion?

Desiree: Well, again, it all ties together. What’s your capacity? What are you able to do that’s long-term and sustainable?

When the George Floyd protests were happening, my eldest was outside. She said, “Absolutely not. I’m not going to march, I’m not going to take risks.” I said, “Okay, but how do you feel? Do you feel like you’re making a difference?”

She started going out with water and sandwiches. That turned into a nonprofit — Feed the Revolution. Donations poured in. We even had to get a storage unit for all the water and dry goods. That’s linking compassion and passion with actionable steps. It was something she could do safely.

And that’s how you bring in community care. Other people couldn’t march, but they could bring food, bring water, or look for the helper.

With kids, it might look different. If they have a Discord group, maybe they can have a conversation once a week: What are your thoughts on this? How do you feel? That’s activism too. Sharing, course correcting, letting people know, “Hey, that was harmful. Can we do better?”

So: What are you feeling? What do you have the capacity for? What’s sustainable? And what can we do?

Sarah: And you mentioned even some quiet things, like coloring with your kids, learning about kids around the world, lighting a candle at home, making art for peace, or helping someone locally. Even helping actions that aren’t tied to a “cause,” but are just about kindness.

Desiree: But that is the issue, right? Because then you start raising helpers.

The other day, we had some leftover curry. My son Kira said, “I don’t want any more… but can we box it up and give it to somebody?” I said, “I love that. Great. Let’s microwave some rice, put it in a container, and go outside to share it.”

So now he’s learning about not wasting food, about climate collapse, about taking care of community. And people often think it has to be big. “Oh, you need to feed 50 people.” But you fed one. That matters.

Sarah: Even if it’s just your next-door neighbor who doesn’t cook much — bring them some food.

Desiree: Or the burned-out parent who’s doing all the caretaking. How nice would it be to say, “Hey, I got dinner for you. I know you’ve already fed your kids. Let someone take care of you.”

That shows your children you can make a difference without it having to be huge. The fatigue comes from feeling like we need to combat everything at once. That’s overwhelming, and overwhelming leads to burnout.

Sarah: Right.

Desiree: Liberation isn’t one-and-done. It isn’t a single conversation. It’s a practice, a relationship, a rhythm. You’re modeling that the truth takes time, and we don’t have to rush.

Sarah: I love that. It’s like conversations about sex, right? You don’t have one talk and then you’re done. You keep talking as kids grow and change.

Desiree: Exactly. When I talk about liberation work and decolonization, it’s about creating a culture shift. None of us like to feel lectured to. Making it conversational changes everything. It becomes about solution-finding: there’s a problem, what’s the solution, what are the steps?

That teaches kids that even if a problem can’t be completely eradicated, we can do something. Harm reduction matters. How can we create less harm and do more good?

Sarah: And it leaves space for thought and choice. For example, my daughter’s iPhone screen broke. She wondered if she should just buy a new phone. I told her, “I’m not going to judge you, but my value is: fix what’s still good.” It might not be the most practical or cheapest option, but it feels better ethically.

So we talked. And then she made her own decision.

Desiree: Yes, exactly. It’s harm reduction again. And you gave her the choice — you didn’t say, “Absolutely not.”

Sarah: Right.

Desiree: That’s powerful.

Sarah: Okay, so your next step is build their critical consciousness. This means inviting them to go deeper — asking questions like, “Who benefits from this system? What would fairness look like? What do you wish adults would do differently?”

Desiree: Yes. The safest place to practice that questioning is at home. But that’s hard in a hierarchical society.

Sarah: Right, you’re like, “Question other people, not me!” (laughs)

Desiree: Exactly. But raising reflective rebels — kids who can think critically, even with us — is essential.

We even did this around bedtime. My kids didn’t want a set bedtime. I explained why rest matters. Then we co-created a boundary: “Okay, stay up as late as you want, but you have to get up happily, on time, and not be dysregulated at school.”

It lasted less than two weeks! They realized for themselves that lack of sleep doesn’t work. That’s better than me saying “Because I said so.” They learned through experience.

Sarah: That’s such a good example of co-creating boundaries. What does that look like in the context of activism and social justice?

Desiree: It’s about recognizing reality. Not everyone is open to these conversations, especially because they’re kids, and also because they’re Black and neurodiverse. They need to know when to call me in, and when to stand firm with a respectful “no.”

For example, my kids don’t do homework. I don’t want them indoctrinated into an 80-hour work week. They come home to rest, play, and have a balanced life. That’s our boundary.

Sarah: Yes, that’s so good.

Desiree: And finally, root it all in relationship, not rhetoric. If I don’t trust you, I won’t have conversations with you. Punitive parenting “works,” but only out of fear. The opposite of fear is radical love.

Our kids need us to see them as human beings and build real relationships with them. That includes repair when we mess up. Restoration is key.

Sarah: Yes.

Desiree: Parenting is inherently hierarchical, and that creates a power imbalance. It can be abusive if we’re not conscious of that. So our goal is to shift from power over to power with. That’s how we raise kids who believe in communal power — and who grow up ready to change the world.

Sarah: I love that. That’s a hopeful place to stop. Thank you so much.

Desiree: Thank you.

Sarah: One last question I ask all my guests: if you could go back to your younger parent self, what advice would you give?

Desiree: Parent the child in front of you. That’s the best advice I ever got. Don’t parent from your own trauma.

Sarah: Beautiful. And where can people find you?

Desiree: My Substack is desireebstephens.com

— that’s Stephens with a PH. I also co-host Parenting Decolonized with Yolanda, and we run a parenting support group. I’ll share those links.

Sarah: Perfect. We’ll put all of that in the show notes. Thank you again.

Desiree: Thank you.

Sarah: We’re all out here trying to change the world. Slowly, but sustainably.

Desiree: Absolutely.

>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, "Weekend Reflections" and "Weekend Support" - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in November for the 3rd year!) All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. If it has been helpful or meaningful for you, your support would help us to continue to provide support for free, for you and for others.

In addition to knowing you are supporting our mission to support parents and children, you get the podcast ad free and access to a monthly ‘ask me anything’ session.

This episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast is my fourth interview with anxiety expert Lynn Lyons! We discuss how to handle school avoidance, including: how to figure out the root cause of school avoidance, how anxiety works including physical symptoms, and how to teach parents and children how to handle anxiety when it inevitably shows up.

We talk about:

4:31 Finding the root cause to school avoidance

7:00 Using “home days” when kids need a break

9:00 Normalizing needing breaks, rather than pathologizing 

11:40 Emotionally based school avoidance- includes anxiety and depression

16:00 How anxiety can cause physical symptoms like stomach aches and headaches

23:03 Teaching kids and parents to tolerate uncertainty

30:00 Why techniques to “get rid” of worry don’t work

32:00 How to talk back to worry

48:13 How to handle “The Moment of Goodbye” when dropping kids off

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Three Skills to Protect Our Kids’ Mental Health with Lynn Lyons https://reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/episode35/ 

Membership Q&A – How to Help Anxious Kids in Real Life Scenarios with Lynn Lyons https://reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/episode45/ 

How Anxiety Shows Up in Our Parenting and What to Do About It with Lynn Lyons https://reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/episode-99-how-anxiety-shows-up-in-our-parenting-and-what-to-do-about-it-with-lynn-lyons/ 

Lynn Lyon’s podcast Flusterclux https://www.flusterclux.com/episodes/ 

Lynn’s website https://www.lynnlyons.com/ 

Connect with Sarah Rosensweet  

Support us on Substack: https://sarahrosensweet.substack.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahrosensweet/ 

Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/peacefulparentingfreegroup

Website: https://reimaginepeacefulparenting.com  

Book a short consult or coaching session call: https://book-with-sarah-rosensweet.as.me/schedule.php 

Hey all, we just wanted to let you know that we are doing a little podcast hiatus, while Corey and I both take some time off in the summer and enjoy time with our families. We will be back with a new episode in a few weeks.

Until then, look over the archives. There may be an episode or two that you've missed. We've been doing this podcast for a long time now and we have over 200 episodes. So maybe there's one you've missed or maybe there's a favorite one that you would like to revisit. And also if you love the show, please take the time to rate and review us and make sure you're following the show so you don't miss an episode when we do come back.

Thanks for being such a great listener and can't wait to come back to you in this space. See you soon!