Rethinking Bossy

You're listening to good inside with Dr. Becky. I have so many ideas, strategies and scripts to share with you right after a word from our sponsor. Hi, I'm Dr. Becky and this is Good Inside. I'm a clinical psychologist and mom of three on a mission to rethink the way we raise our children. I love translating deep thoughts about parenting into practical, actionable strategies that you can use in your home right away. One of my core beliefs is that we are all doing the best we can with the resources we have available to us in that moment. So even as we struggle and even as we are having a hard time on the outside, we remain Good inside. Today's episode is all about bossiness. Or really it's about reframing the topic of bossiness. I've received so many voicemails from you about this topic and here's something really interesting. Every single one of them described a daughter as bossy. I haven't received one voicemail that described a son as bossy. And really struggling with how to help a male child with this trait. Now in this episode, one of the things I'm not going to kind of solve are the gendered expectations around daughters and sons. Who's allowed to have strong opinions, who's allowed to speak up, who's allowed to be a leader, who's allowed to be inflexible and prioritize what they want over social relationships. And before we get into the rest of the episode, I feel like I'd be missing something if I didn't name that gender expectations are certainly at play. So let's keep that in mind as we listen and let's think about how we can help all of our kids honor their ideas, believe in themselves, speak up for what they want, and figure out how to manage that alongside respecting other people and developing meaningful interpersonal relationships. So with that in mind, let's jump in. Let's hear from our first caller, Veronica.

Hi, my name is Veronica. I live in Denver, Colorado and I have two kids, a four and a half year old daughter and a 22 month old daughter. I'm calling because of my older daughter about how to rethink the idea of being bossy. My daughter has a lot of strong thoughts about how she would like things to go and I find that she's not shy about telling other people how she thinks they should go, kids and grown ups alike. And I've tried reframing this as she knows what she wants, she has strong ideas, she's, you know, determined all these things. But ultimately some Days I just feel like, no, you're just bossy and it's not a super fun trait in terms of interacting with her. And I noticed that other parents coach their kids on how to be more collaborative or literally what to do in a play situation. We've taken kind of a hands off approach. But now I feel like at the end of the day my kid just looks bossy and mean and other kids are on the surface seeing and doing nicer things and. And mine isn't. And I think it's hard to be with her when she's directing how she wants a lot of things to go and they're typically only on her agenda. There's rarely a time for someone else to express how they would like things to go or that to be a successful interaction. So just trying to figure out how to either think about this differently or support her and understanding that, I don't know, like the natural consequence of if you're always telling other people how things have to be, there's some downsides to that. So thanks so much.

Hi Veronica, thank you so much for calling in and for putting out so many thoughts that really resonate with me and I know really resonate with so many other parents. So first things first. As you probably know, I'm not someone who likes to choose. Right. I think that leads to this bigger two things are true idea. And I'd encourage all of us who have strong minded kids to watch for the potential to be locked into. Oh, is she a kid with big ideas and she feels really confident or is she just a bossy kid who wants to always get her way and to instead tell ourselves, whoa, I'm thinking about this in a really binary way. Let me find a two things are true. Two things are true. My child knows what she wants and has strong ideas. And my child needs some help managing this part of her while figuring out how to connect to others in a way that feels good. Both are true and I want to preserve this trait and help her harness. Makes me think about just how hard this is. This is hard for me too. Sometimes I have a strong idea and I'm expressing it to a friend who also has a strong oppositional idea and figuring out when to express myself, when to insist, when to listen and be flexible. Well, I promise you, Veronica, it's something I'm still working on as an adult. So it makes sense that our younger kids are trying to figure this out as well. What can we do? Well, you said something earlier that to me actually feels like the start of an Intervention. And I really mean this. I heard this in you. This is not my idea. This is your idea. You said something like, it's so hard for her when she wants things to go a certain way, and she's with other kids who also want things to go a certain and different way. This is actually the making of an intervention. This is something I'd say to her in a calm moment, hey, you know what's kind of hard? I mean, I don't know if it's hard for you, but it's hard. Definitely hard for me. It's hard when you know how you want things to go and you're with other people who kind of know how they want something to go. Oh, and those things are different. That's so tricky, right? What am I doing here? I'm setting a baseline. I'm setting a baseline for my generous interpretation of, quote, bossiness. I'm not sitting down my child and saying, you know, no one likes to play with a bossy kid. I'm just saying, like, you might not have any friends left. Right? And I'm saying that out loud, Veronica, because I've heard myself say those things, too. And then I think later that night, like, that was not an impactful or helpful intervention. Right? So what we want to do instead is something kind of minimal, which is just saying what's true. Sometimes you want one thing, and other kids want a different thing. That is really tricky. Why do I love the word tricky? Tricky is very validating when a situation is hard, and yet it also does something to our body where it activates our problem solving. Like, tricky is something that I feel like is manageable to solve. And so I'd really encourage you to use those words. That's intervention. One, just name what's happening. Say that in front of your child. Let it sit. Strategy two, model struggling with this yourself. You can either tell your child a story from your adult life. Like, you know, I want to tell you, I had a really tricky situation earlier. I was meeting my friend for lunch, and I really wanted to go to one place, and Shirley wanted to go to a different place. I really, really, really wanted to go to the restaurant. I said, and she really, really, really wanted to go to the restaurant. She said, oh, what do you think we did? Right? We all are better at problem solving for someone else than we are for ourselves. And yet when we problem solve for someone else, we're building the muscle we need. Need. So let your child do this for you. Anyone who's thinking, my child is two and a Half or my child is four. My child is at any age not going to be able to offer me kind of any thoughts here. You can also model this in play. If you have a child who struggles to be flexible around their ideas, I highly recommend playing with your child and modeling that struggle yourself. So maybe your child says, let's build an airport with these blocks. I can imagine myself saying, no, no airport. We have to build a school. I want to build a school. It's going to be a school. No airport. No, no, no, no, no. No way. School, school, school, school, school. My child will probably be surprised to see me act in this way. And that's okay. You've gotten their attention. Then you could take a deep breath and maybe say something simple aloud like, whoa, whoa. Oh, sorry. I think I meant to say, I really want to build a school. Even if you only do that, you've modeled going from this kind of intensity around the righteousness of your idea to expressing your idea in a way that will probably land on someone in a better way. And that movement is a lot for a kid to learn. That's a great first step. You might model one other thing. One of the reasons it's hard for kids to be flexible is they have a hard time understanding that even though I don't do my idea, it's still a good idea. It's almost like, is my idea a good idea if I don't put it into action? How will I know it's good and real if I don't see it played out? This really is something inflexible kids can struggle with. So I could see myself in this play situation with my child saying aloud something like, whoa, sorry. One moment, one moment, one moment. I need a deep breath. Oh, Becky, I have a good idea, and someone else has a good idea, too. Or I could see myself saying, I have a good idea, and I know it's good even if I don't do it. I have a good idea, and I know it's good even if I don't do it, then I might turn to my child and say, huh, Airport, school. Airport, school. I don't know. What can we do? Because after all, if one day you witness your child saying to another child, hey, here's my idea. Here's your idea. What should we do? I think we all would count that as a major win. Let's hear from our second caller next. And, Veronica, I think you'll hear more ideas that will apply to your situation with your child. So keep listening.

Hi, Dr. Becky. My name is Elena, I'm from Washington, D.C. and I have two daughters, age two and a half and five. I learned early on that things like transitions from one activity to another could be a challenge, especially with my daughter, who is now five. It's so interesting to me how different the two children are. My two and a half year old seems fairly flexible. Not all the time, but my 5 year old has very strong opinions about what she would like to do or what she think is the best option. And I love that about her. I never want her to doubt her own view and what she thinks is right. However, I would love to help her build a tolerance for considering other options. Now that she is not really focused only on our life here at home, but interacting with more and more people, how can I help her to cultivate flexibility in different situations, different circumstances where I am not there?

Thank you again so much.

Hi Alina. First of all, I just want to say I love how you frame this. You know, I think so many of you, you good inside listeners, you're starting to do my job for me. And, and I love that where you're not even saying, hey, what's wrong with my child that she can't be flexible. You're seeing so much of the kind of positive version of your trait in your child and then you're saying, okay, I love that she knows what she wants. And I think I need to help her with figuring out what to do when she doesn't get what she wants. That framework is just so powerful. It sees our kids and their strengths instead of seeing them through the lens of something's wrong with them. And I think all of us want to be seen in that first way and not that second way. So I really, Elena, also just want to commend you on the way you're thinking about this. Something you said that really stands out is I want my child to build tolerance for things not going the way she wants or maybe not going the way she imagined or would prefer that word, tolerance. It really, really stands out to me and here's why. We have to tolerate in our kid the feelings they struggle with before they can learn to tolerate those feelings, feelings themselves. I'm going to say that in another way because it's so powerful and it applies to any situation your child is struggling with. I, as a parent, have to show my child that I can tolerate their struggle way before they're going to learn to tolerate their struggle. Why? Because when a kid is having a hard time, they're really taking in interactions with us, their parents, through the lens of, is this ever going to be manageable? Is this feeling that overpowers me? Is it something that just overpowers anyone? Or are there people out there who can manage this? And then that would give me the faith that I, too, will get there. That's how they're taking in our interactions. So let's play this out. You give one of your children a red water bottle and one of them a green water bottle, and your less flexible child, the one you're calling in about, says, no, no, I want the green one. It has to be green. I have to have green. What's really happening there? Well, there's a feeling she's having a hard time tolerating. The feeling is, I didn't get what I imagined, or I didn't get what I wanted, or this didn't go the way I thought it would go. We can name that feeling disappointment or frustration or some combination, but that's a really, really hard feeling. Well, how do we help our child be more flexible? Well, flexibility, which would look like a child saying, oh, I wanted green, but I got red, and that's okay. That comes from tolerating that feeling of frustration and disappointment. We have to tolerate it in them first. So let's play that out. Oh, man. You really wanted green and you got red. I believe you. You know, you want green. You love green. You really, really wanted green. You don't want red at all. And, ugh, getting the opposite of what you want, that stinks. Now, that's the validation piece. That's the tolerating it piece combined with. And you don't even have to say this with your words. It's really just the action of not giving them the thing they're demanding. Because when you hold that boundary, what you're really doing is you're saying to them, I know you can tolerate disappointment. I know you can tolerate frustration. And way before you act in a way on the surface that's, quote, flexible, you have to tolerate the feelings that would allow you to be flexible. Because as long as you can't tolerate frustration or disappointment, you have to insist on getting the thing you want because that's in service of helping you avoid this feeling that feels larger than life. So I would think about this across the board in different situations with your daughter, does this mean saying once in a while, look, today we are going to watch the show that your sister wants first. I know it seems like she doesn't even care that much, but sometimes we all need to practice waiting and not having the exact thing we want first. I know that's hard. That's why I'm sitting with you. And if it's too hard to stay here while that show is on, you and I can go into your room and we'll take some deep breaths because I know this is hard and I know you can do it right. I am showing my child that I can tolerate that feeling in her. I'm also showing my child that I believe we're going to get through it. I'm kind of holding hope for this. What else might I do? Well, you can add a few things kind of after these tough moments that also build a child's tolerance for frustration and disappointment, which is what builds their capacity to be flexible. So later that day when things are calm, I might see myself saying so hard to not get the things we want right. Oh, that's really hard for me. Or just want to let you know that I also don't like waiting for things that I want to happen right now, even though I'm an adult. That's hard. It's not my favorite. It's not something that's easy. It's something I just manage. And I promise I'm going to help you learn to manage that as well. Let's hear from our final caller, Talia.

Hi, my name is Talia and I have a five year old son and a three year old daughter and my question is basically about how to deal with the dynamic that we have going on in our home. My 5 year old son is very sweet and more of like a gentleman, calm type of child. And my daughter, who's younger is more like a strong personality, a lot of fun, but also like a little bit bossy, for lack of better terms. So many times my daughter, the younger one, is trying to tell my older son what to do, trying to kind of be his mom telling him what to do, what not to do. And he obviously gets very bothered by this. I don't know exactly how to deal with the situation as a whole. If you can help out. Thanks so much.

Hi Talia, thank you for raising how kind of the topic of assertiveness and inflexibility and flexibility plays itself out in a sibling dynamic. Because I think if we have a child who might be labeled as, quote, bossy, it often goes hand in hand with a child that we might hear labeled as oh, so easy and so flexible or so mature. And then one of the things that really happens in a house is our children get kind of more and more rigid in those roles. We have one child who's always dictating what the play is going to look like or who goes first, and the other child is always essentially saying, okay, no big deal. And the way we frame that dynamic is really important in terms of helping both kids get out of these rigid roles. So here's a way of framing it that I think might be kind of different from what we're used to, because we're used to saying, oh, how do I help my really inflexible child be more flexible? How can I help my bossy child finally go second? Or finally say, sure, I'll do your idea? Well, I think it's really empowering and different to frame it almost in the opposite way. And it would sound like this, hmm, My child, in this case Talia, my son is kind of hogging, like, all the flexibility, right? He is so flexible that he gets in his sister's way of learning how to be flexible and generous. I really need to help him in a way. We need to say, I need to help my more flexible child learn how to be more inflexible so that my other child learns how to tolerate frustration and disappointment, which would lead to their being more flexible. Here's the big idea. And yes, if you're thinking, wow, this applies to my partnership and so many other relationships, you're right. There's only 100% of a trait to go around in any relational dynamic. So looking at the dynamic between your siblings, it's almost like your daughter has 100% of the assertiveness and your son has 100% of the calm and flexibility. Well, we need to shake that up. It's probably not going to be 50 50, but the only reason things feel so off is because it's 100 0. So here's how I'd intervene. Let's say your daughter is insisting on. On the drawing they make, and she's saying to her brother, no, I'm drawing a flower in a swing set. You have to draw the same thing as me. And maybe to avoid the argument, your son is saying, okay, I was gonna draw something else, but that's fine. We often think of turning to our daughter and saying, hey, don't tell him what he has to make, but try this. Say to your son, you know what? You're a kid with ideas, too, and you probably know what you want to draw. I'm going to help you have your own space so you can do what you want. Another example, your daughter's saying, I'm going first in Candyland. And your son says, okay, Fine. Instead of saying, can't you just let your brother go first once? I would actually say to your son, you know what? I'm going to help you go first. I'm going to help you go first. Because that's something you need my help with. Standing up and saying, hey, I want to go first. I don't want you to always go first. It's my turn now. I'm a realist. What's gonna happen, Talia? Candyland's never gonna happen. Candyland's never gonna happen. Why? Because your daughter's gonna have a meltdown. I am aware of this, and I promise. I'm not one for increasing the number of meltdowns in a family's home. That's not my definition of psychological success. I am one for building important skills, skills that lead to meaningful, lasting family changes. And that might mean some meltdowns. It might also mean your son having a hard time. Because often when you start to do this, the one who's in the more people pleasing mode will say over and over, no, no, it's fine, it's fine. Let my sister go. And then it really highlights for us as a parent. Wow, my kids really are locked into rigid roles. I'm so glad I'm stepping in because clearly both of them need to rebalance the situation. So then your daughter's melting down that she's not going first. What would I say or do? Well, I'd make sure there was no further damage. I wouldn't let her grab the board and knock it over. Right. So I kind of get ready for that and just say, I know you really want to go first. And often your brother lets you. Today is different. And that seems to feel really hard for everyone. My number one job is to keep everyone safe and make decisions that are good decisions in this family. Even if people are having a hard time, and right now is one of those moments, then I'd probably, if it was me, kind of try to play out the game of Candyland, me against my son while my daughter was probably having a big meltdown on the side. And then find some time when all of that passed to kind of put my feet on the ground, put my hand on my heart and say, wow, that was hard. That was hard on everyone. And that was the start of something really, really important. Thank you, Veronica, Elena, and Talia for calling in and helping us jump into this important topic. Let's tie it all together with three main takeaways. Number one, if your child struggles to listen to others or to be flexible here and there. Model struggling with that yourself. That is so much more effective than sitting a child down and giving them a lecture. 2. We have to tolerate feelings in our kids before therefore they can learn to tolerate those feelings in themselves. This means when your child has a meltdown because they're frustrated or disappointed because they have to be more flexible than they want to be, take a deep breath and remind yourself, I can cope with this. I can get through this. That's really the first step for a child learning to regulate that same experience. 3. If you have kids who are locked into a inflexible role and flexible role, notice how you think about that. It's really powerful to start an intervention helping your more flexible child become a little more inflexible, to hold a boundary to assert themselves. This then creates the space where your other child would have to tolerate more frustration and that's the first step to becoming more flexible. Thanks for listening to Good Inside. I love co creating episodes with you based on the real life tricky situations in your family. To share what's happening in your home, you can call 646-598-2543 or email a voice note to goodinsidepodcastmail.com There are so many more strategies and tips I want to share with you and so many Good Inside parents I want you to meet. I'm beyond excited that we now have a way to connect and learn together. Head to goodinside.com to learn more about Good Inside membership. I promise you you're going to love it. It's totally game changing and if you're not already receiving my free weekly email, go to goodinside.com to sign up. You don't want to miss it. Good inside with Dr. Becky is produced by Mary Kelly. Our Senior producer is Beth Rowe and our Executive producers are Erica Belsky and me. If you enjoyed this episode, please do take a moment to rate and review it or share this episode with a friend or family member as a way to start an important conversation. Let's end by placing our hands on our hearts and reminding ourselves even as I struggle and even as I have a hard time on the outside, I remain Good Inside.