What Can I Do When My Child Says “I Can’t Do It”?

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 we'll be talking about I can't do it moments. Those moments we all, me included, have with our kids where they melt down or they shut down or they look at you with crossed arms and say, I'm not doing, doing this anymore. I can't do it. What these moments bring up for me is the idea of learning, of how hard learning is right now. I want you to visualize two points, and point one is not knowing or not being able to do something. Yet. Point two, which is far away from point one, is knowing or or being able to do something. I want you to now take your hands, actually separate them from each other. So there's a gap between that point one and point two. This gap is learning. And learning is really, really hard because the truth is we never know how long we're going to be in that gap or in that learning space. And most of us want to make that learning space as small as possible. Yet learning life skills like tying your shoes or riding a bike or reading or math, these things often come from staying in a pretty wide learning space so you have enough time to actually master these difficult skills. When I think about I can't do it, I think about a child who's in that learning space, and then the feelings involved become too much and they have to walk away. Everything we'll be talking about today, the goal isn't to get your child to knowing or to being able to do something. Those points kind of just come when they come. The goal of everything we'll be talking about today is to help your child tolerate the learning space for longer. And that is all about emotion regulation. So with that in mind, let's jump in. Let's hear from our first caller, Nina.

Hi, Dr. Becky. My name is Nina. My son is almost 8 years old and my daughter is almost 4 years old. And I am having a hard time getting my 8 year old son to not give up on things. And he doesn't necessarily give up. You know, with big feelings involved. Sometimes he just doesn't want to try that hard. How do I motivate him to not give up and push through a challenge so that you can at least experience what it's like to succeed?

Hi, Nina. Thank you so much for calling in and for bringing up a topic that is so common in almost every family I know, including my own. I have two ideas I want to share. Deshaming and helping your child get ready for a challenging moment. Let's go through those and I'll model some strategies along the way. Number one, Deshaming. What does this even mean? Well, in general, our kids are overwhelmed by our capability. Let's even think about the first, I don't know, hour of a kid's day, right? When they wake up, when they get dressed, when they brush their teeth, when they get their cereal ready, when they think about the homework maybe they have to finish, when they pack their bag, when they have to remember to get a coat or all of these items are things that even an 8 year old really has to think through and probably messes up along the way. Meanwhile, they see us already dressed, they see that we're having our coffee. They see that we can reach everything in the cabinet, even things they can't reach yet they hear us say, hey, you forgot your water bottle again. Clearly indicating that remembering is something easy for us and yet difficult for them. There's no inherent problem here. We know. Well, we're adults. We figured out a lot of things along the way, but our kids don't know that. And one of the reasons so many kids shut down is not only because something is hard, but they feel ashamed that something's hard, because they feel alone in all of the challenges of daily life. So. So how can we deshame this? How can we add connection? How can we normalize having a hard time? We can all, I think, do a lot better at modeling, making mistakes and struggling. This can be something so simple you do in front of your son. One day you could be zippering up your coat and instead of doing it mindlessly and being successful, struggle with it. I'd be like, oh, the zipper's so stuck today. Oh, that still didn't work. Okay, one second. Becky, deep breath. Try it again. I didn't do it yet. I know I can do this. Meanwhile, your son is just kind of happening to witness this, right? Even though, of course, you kind of knew you were gonna do this in front of him. You don't have to look at him after and say, see, things are hard for me. Also, actually, I would say, don't do that. Play it cool and just trust that your child is going to feel a less alone the next time anything is a struggle for him. Same thing with making mistakes. Maybe you drive your son to school, get lost one day, make the wrong turn, say out loud, oh, no, I can't believe I made a left here. It's obviously the next left. How could I have done this? I'm never driving again. Wait, wait. Everyone makes mistakes. Just cause I made a mistake doesn't mean I'm not a good driver. I'm a good driver who made a. A mistake. Right, and then you're continuing to drive, really modeling something huge that we can struggle, we can make an error, we can recover, and we can hold onto our goodness along the way. Okay, next idea. Help your child get ready for a difficult moment. Yes, Sometimes kids shut down because something's hard. But often we shut down because something is hard and we're overwhelmed with the surprise of the moment. None of us like to be surprised by hard things. So we can get around that a little bit by helping our kid predict that moment. And then actually when we're able to predict something in advance, we feel mastery. So there's a deep paradox here. We can help our kid feel mastery by predicting a hard, challenging moment. Let's say your child tends to shut down when there's a difficult problem on his math homework. Before math homework time begins, I'd say to your son, hey, you know what? I'm thinking there's gonna be a moment when math gets really hard in your homework. That happens to all of us because you're learning something new. I wonder when that hard moment will come. We're kind of actually gamifying it, right? Let's make a game game out of it. Do you think it'll come at problem 2, problem 10, or the bonus problem? I wonder. Why don't we each make a prediction? We can see who's right now. I'm adding awareness that this moment's going to come. I'm normalizing it and I'm actually getting my child's body ready. So when the difficult moment comes, instead of your son's body essentially feeling like, oh, what is this? Your child's body is going to feel, oh, I knew this moment was going to come. Did it come when I thought it would? Is it something different? We're almost changing the focus. And in doing that, you're actually building your child's ability to tolerate that moment when it inevitably arrives. So, Nina, what I love about these two strategies is that you're really tackling both elements that make emotion regulation difficult. Feeling alone and feeling surprised. In the deshaiming part, we're managing the feeling alone element. We're helping your child feel connected to you. And with the preparation strategy, we're helping a child avoid that surprise, which can be really overwhelming. And now our second caller, Alyssa.

Hi, Dr. Becky. My name is Alyssa and I have a 23 month old and then a baby on the way due in a couple months. And I had a question about how I can continue to build resiliency in my 23 month old. For example, he loves to do puzzles, and he'll often play with them independently. But sometimes when a piece doesn't fit in correctly the first time, he might get frustrated and cry or throw a puzzle piece. And my typical response is to have him pick up the piece, offer to help him. And I find that when I do offer to help and he trusts that I will help him when he needs it, he is more likely to try it on his own than if I say, come on, you can do it, try it again. Often when I say that, he'll just continue to throw the puzzle piece or cry. And I just started to question like, is this the right approach? Or should I be trying to encourage him to try it more on his own? But he's working more on his problem solving and resiliency skills, and I just felt kind of stuck. So I would appreciate any advice you have. Thank you.

Hi, Alyssa. Ooh. So much comes to mind when I hear your voicemail. And I am right now picturing my my own children attempting puzzles in their younger years. And really doing a puzzle is just ripe with frustration. Right. It is so hard when you're young to do a puzzle. There's so much involved. And actually for that reason, I love kind of helping kids with the process of doing a puzzle because I really do think it's a situation where our kids can learn so so many coping skills and really build so much resilience, as you mentioned. So the first thing that comes to mind is actually a question with that word help. Right? We all want to help our kids, but I think the question that comes to mind for me is what do our kids really need help with? Right. If I picture my child trying to do a puzzle is help finishing the puzzle, getting the peace in, which is kind of a product oriented, an outcome oriented type of help. There it's complete? Or does my child need help learning how to calm his body in moments of frustration when he can't figure out the puzzle yet so that he can re engage and do a little bit more or, or try for maybe 30 or 60 more seconds? I can tell you without a doubt. I think the second answer is definitely the type of help I believe kids are really looking for. Because kids don't need help kind of having success with an outcome. They need our help learning a process that will inevitably lead to their own independent success. And so what might this look like with the puzzle? Well, for me, what your child really, really needs your help with is learning how to take a deep breath, how to calm his body, maybe even how to engage in a type of self talk that I will help you kind of learn and I'll model for you that can get him through this really frustrating process. So what would this look like in real life? Well, I would encourage you, Alyssa, to do a puzzle to the side of your son. In a moment he's playing, maybe even before he does the puzzle himself. And when you're doing it, I would model what is kind of a realistic process of doing something frustrating. So I would start by not being able to get two pieces together and even saying out loud while he's next to you. Puzzles are so hard. I thought these two would go together. They going together. And if your child does shut down, say out loud, oh, I don't think I want to do it. Kind of huff and puff and then on your own take a deep breath and say, wait, I haven't figured out how to do it yet. I know I can keep trying. I know I can do hard things. Okay, Alyssa, I've got this. Our kids pick up on our words. Our words become their words. And what I want my kids to have as they get older is encouragement. And when I model that process myself, I am giving my kids the type of help they can draw on for the rest of their lives. Now let's take this a step further with the specificity of a puzzle. One of the things doing puzzles really requires is a lot of flexibility from a kid because you're trying to put two pieces together. You try and you try and you try. And I know for me as a parent, it's almost excruciating watching a child do this, knowing those pieces are not going to fit together. And yet it requires so much flexibility to be able to put a piece down and grab another one. So the most kind of outcome oriented help would be saying to your kid, Put that down. Here's the piece. Try that one instead. Or obviously the blue and the red don't connect. Instead, try this. Do a puzzle to the side, have two pieces that don't fit and start singing the song kind of to yourself, but out loud so your child hears. If it doesn't fit, put it to the side and try another piece. What am I doing there? First of all, I'm aware that I'm singing and I'm singing because the sing songy nature of that self talk is inherently regulating, right? Our body responds to that non verbal kind of just tone to calm down. And the actual kind of pieces of information become a way your child can master this task. But do it on their own time so they experience that aha moment. This is what we really want to preserve for our kids. We want to help our kids just enough with the process so they can get the outcome they're looking for and have that amazing feeling of wow, I didn't think I could do something. I kept going and going and trying and trying and then I did it. We don't want to take that feeling away from our kids by doing things for our kids. We want to help facilitate that feeling by helping our kids with the regulation process so that they are in a calm enough place to be able to experience their own capability. Now, often I know my kids will say to me, mom, just can you do the piece for me, please just do the piece for me, right? And it's not that I'm rigid, it's not that, of course I'll never give my kid that type of help. We all have to be flexible. And yet sometimes I say exactly this to my child. I'll say, look, if I do it for you, you're not gonna get this feeling that I know you're so close to getting. It's this feeling, I don't even know the name. It's the feeling of, wow, I work so hard and I, I figured that out. And that is the best feeling in the world. And honey, I really don't wanna take that away from you. And that's really honest. And that's something. Even when my kids were under two, when they were working at something, I would say to them, and as a result, we're really helping build our kids resilience because we're getting our kids to believe that they can generate that feeling for themselves if they keep working. Alyssa, one more thing I wanted to add. When we help our kids help in the form of finishing something for them, doing the puzzle kind of Completing the task. Yes, there is kind of short term relief. We avoid the meltdown, Our kid seems happy, we can move on. And yet there's a longer term implication in terms of the messaging to our kids. We're kind of saying to our kids in those moments, yeah, I don't really think you're capable of either working through this frustration or completing that task on your own. Kids so often shut down because they don't feel capable. And if we intervene in a way where we essentially say we also don't think you're so capable, then it's no wonder our kids aren't building their frustration tolerance and, and their own resilience. So that's kind of one more reason to take a pause, to focus on the process and to reflect back to your child that you really do believe they can continue working on their own. Let's listen to our final caller, Jessica.

Hey, Dr. Becky. My name is Jessica. I live in Chicago and I have three boys who are 4, 9, and 11. I'm calling today because my youngest, Liam, is struggling with meltdowns. For example, the other day my parents were visiting and they parked their car on the street and all the boys ran out to greet them. Liam just sort of fell down on the grass and was crying that he can't run so fast. He can't run so fast. And nothing we said made it any better. He sort of, this has been happening all the time with him not being able to tie his shoes or use a knife, try to explain to him that he's the youngest. So it's okay that he's not as fast as his brothers or can't tie his shoe yet, but nothing really helps. We're hoping that you can help because these meltdowns are happening just all the time. Thanks so much.

Hi, Jessica. I really, really feel your pain. I have three kids too, and my two younger ones often melt down in a similar kind of puddle of tears as they watch their older and obviously then more capable siblings do things that they really want to do and can't yet do. What comes to mind for me first is just kind of the plight of being a younger child. I think we need to all kind of just acknowledge this for what it is, that a second child or a third child is just surrounded by other children who can do things easily that they can't yet do. Like I said earlier to Nina, our kids are overwhelmed by our capability. Well, now you have a kid who's overwhelmed by four people's capability. Your son sounds like he's a Kid who actually has a lot of kind of belief in himself, a lot of independence. He sees what's going on around him and he knows what's happening. And he essentially thinks, I want to do that too. I want that for myself. That's actually telling me he perceives his environment and he actually has a belief in himself because he wants to achieve that. And yet over and over and over, there are people who can tie their shoe, who can run faster, who can cut with a knife, who can do a million things. Things. Now, I would think about the difference between intervening with logic versus validation. I think that's really, really important. Logically, your youngest can't do the same things. And we can explain that a 4 year old can't do what, say, an 11 year old can do. That doesn't actually tend to help most people feel better. What does help is just validating things like this. Ah, you saw your brother run so fast. You wish you could run that fast. You wish you were running and you got to grandma first, right? Or I find myself saying to my youngest over and over, it's so hard to be the youngest kid, isn't it? Sometimes it's just so hard to be the youngest. I totally understand. I know even a part of me hears myself say that. And I think, becky, how does that help my child? How does that build resilience? Am I just giving more permission for my child to be this puddle of tears? The thing I always come back to is it's never our feelings that overwhelm us. It's our aloneness in our feelings. And so what you're actually doing is you're surrounding Liam's sense of being the youngest with your support. You're kind of giving it a hug. And so the next time something happens where he sees his older, older brothers do something he can't yet do, his body is going to remember your words, essentially saying, it's okay to feel this way. Sometimes it's really, really hard to be the youngest. The other thing I would focus on is coming back to Liam's experience over and over instead of focusing on the comparison. The more we talk to our kids about how it's okay that they can't do what their brothers do, the more we're actually kind of reinforcing their tendency to look toward others. So I would say to Liam, when he can't tie his shoes, oh, you really wanna tie your shoes. I know there's so many steps. Let's do one at a time. I know you're gonna be able to Figure this out. We'll work on this together. Now we're really focusing on his experience instead of saying, hey, your brother didn't even learn how to tie his shoes till he was sick. Six. You're four. You're so young. We're actually now bringing the older one into the equation and further kind of locking Liam's gaze at his brothers instead of focusing back on himself. I think the thing that comes up as kind of the biggest idea here, it's normal for younger kids to have these types of meltdowns and that we as parents can talk to our youngest about how it's hard to be young, about how it's hard to want to do things that they can't yet do and stay with that experience. And by doing that, you're building your child's frustration tolerance the next time these moments come. One more thing, Jessica. And this is probably something I should have started with because it's a great go to strategy for any child in any I can't do it moment. Validate that whatever your child is struggling with really is hard. In many ways, your tone and pace are going to be much more important than the actual content of your words. So I'll model that here. You might say, it's hard to put on socks, or this puzzle is tricky, or learning to read is so hard. I know. It was really hard for me to learn, too. Let's tie it all together with three takeaways. One, here's something we can all do today. Model struggling and making a mistake. Burn a piece of toast you make for yourself, or talk about a project that you're having a hard time with at work. What's really important is don't solve these struggles too quickly. Instead, model realistic regulation. Even express your conflict at continuing. Maybe say, ugh, I can't do this. Then take a deep breath, say something nice to yourself, and keep working without immediate success. Two, Helping our kids is not about getting them to a successful outcome. It's about helping our kids learn a successful work process. This really means focusing on emotion regulation and tolerating hard feelings. Three, Come up with some family mantras, maybe even some songs too, around challenging times. I personally like this feels hard because it is hard, not because I'm doing something wrong. In our house, we sometimes also say, yes, this is challenging and yes, I can do it, or every time I'm working hard, my brain is growing. No wonder this feels hard. My brain is changing as I'm working. Use these mantras yourself in front of your kids. Your kids will absorb them, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if they started saying them during their own challenging moments. We all build confidence from watching ourselves do hard things, especially those things we initially think we can't do. If you're looking to help your child build lasting confidence, I've got you covered with my Rethinking Confidence workshop. You'll end that workshop with so many actionable strategies to set your child up for fewer I can't do it moments and many more I can do it moments. Thanks for listening to Good Inside. Let's stay connected@goodinside.com if you you can sign up for workshops and subscribe to Good Insider, my weekly email with scripts and strategies delivered right to your inbox. And for more ideas and tips, check out my Instagram drbeckyoodinside. Goodinside is produced by Beth Rowe and Brad Gage and executive produced by Erica Belsky and me, Dr. Becky. Please rate and review our show. Let us know what you think and what resonated. I actually do read each and every review, so please know that your feedback is meaningful to me. 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.