EP 275: Does Lowering Demands Ever Cause More Stress?

Screens. Sugar. Anything that feels really good. The advice to just "lower the demand" can fall really short because for some kids, more access brings real relief. But for others, more access actually causes more stress and we wind up asking kids to take on a responsibility that is beyond their developmental capacity.  

This episode digs into what's actually generating the stress underneath the behavior, and what it looks like when a kid needs to be held steady instead of shifting our expectations.

In this episode you will learn:

• Why high-reward things like screens carry their own built-in stress, and how that changes the question of whether to give more access or less
• What it looks like when a kid needs the burden of managing something taken off their shoulders entirely
• How to tell if a boundary is actually working: not whether your kid protests, but which direction things are trending over time

If this is landing for you and you want to map this out for your own kid, come join us in The Club. Our resource library and our members will help you map your child’s nervous system, troubleshoot things when they don’t seem to be getting any better, and show you how to take care of yourself in the middle of all of it. 

Resources mentioned in this podcast:

• Enabling vs. Low-Demand Parenting → RobynGobbel.com/enabling
• Exploring Low Demand Parenting → RobynGobbel.com/lowdemand
• Stress Response System → RobynGobbel.com/stressresponse

Read the full transcript at: RobynGobbel.com/morestress

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 2:15

So when your kids' behavior is baffling and yours is too, sometimes, yeah. I know. Let's take a break from all the bathboozle. You're on the baffling behavior. Yeah, the other week I was teaching uh professional training online, and one of the participants said something that I've been really pondering. In fact, if you get my emails, I talked about it a little bit in this past Sunday's email. This participant asked, or this participant told me that one of the pushbacks that she's getting more and more from parents in their work is the question of something like is this just gentle parenting? Or what you're describing here sounds like gentle parenting. And it's said with some like defensiveness or some wariness. Um, and I think some kind of implicit belief that parenting with connection co-regulation felt safety is always about lowering demands, making an accommodation or going easy. And then with that kind of being the end game, sometimes certainly this way of parenting does initially look like lowering stress. And it's not the end game. But I really get that that can feel so scary to folks, especially when they kind of look around and they're like, uh, this behavior has actually been getting worse, not better. And when things are stressful or feel out of control, we default to, you know, what what we've done all along or things that we've known since childhood, such as, you know, parenting with a more punitive approach, or with the belief that the only way to get behavior to change is to be more controlling or more punitive. And I totally get, totally get why we fall back on that. But what I think is most interesting is that there is this um way that we're connecting the idea of lowering demands, which for me is lowering stress. We're we're connecting that idea of lowering demands with kind of, yeah, like going easy, relinquishing boundaries and expectations. And then that's causing some fear or some hesitation in folks. And y'all, I get it. I really, really, really get that. That's what we're gonna talk about today. Does lowering stress or lowering demands or whatever language feels true to you, does that mean lowering expectations? And if it does, lowering expectations around what? And I think we can have some really great conversations around that. So welcome, or maybe it's a welcome back to another episode of the Baffling Behavior Show. I am your host, Robin Gobel. I am the author of Raising Kids with Big Baffling Behaviors, which debuted as a USA Today bestseller almost three whole years ago. And my new book, The Guided Journal for Raising Kids with Big Baffling Behaviors, is coming out on September 21st here on the Baffling Behavior Show. We talk a lot about um the relational, social, and behavioral brain, right? The parts of being relationally, socially, and behaviorally human. And how can we use that science to help us support our kids to become more connected, regulated, and experience more safety. Now, I think we could certainly get into a discussion around if what we talk about here on the podcast or what you read about and raising kids with big baffling behaviors meets the definition of um gentle parenting. But I do think we can say unequivocally that the idea of gentle parenting was never ever ever supposed to mean permissive. So if we hear the idea, quote-unquote gentle parenting, and we get afraid or wary, that is often because it has been probably unintentionally conveyed as being permissive. And I think that can feel really scary, especially for y'all that are listening, y'all who have kids with pretty intense, dangerous behaviors. Now, I'm not an expert in the history of the gentle parenting movement, but based on everything I can tell and I can understand, it was not intended to be synonymous with permissive parenting or with coddling kids or with excusing bad behaviors. And I also know that for a lot of us, we are experiencing whether this is backed up by data or not, but a lot of us are experiencing what feels like an increase in behavior challenges in kids in general. Like I'm definitely hearing from folks who work with kids every day, all day long, teachers, educators, um, pediatric providers, like OTs. So many folks who interact with kids on a daily basis, are having their own felt sense that kids' behaviors are getting quote unquote worse. And what I take that to mean is kids are um more dysregulated than maybe they have been in the past. Now, again, I don't even know if this is totally true or backed up by data, but I can tell you that every time I go train somewhere, whether it be in person or online, that is the overwhelming sentiment of the adults who are in the audience. And so what folks are having some fears about is as you know, parenting approaches have shifted in the last decades and moved towards what folks are calling more gentle, it's also feeling like kids' behaviors are actually getting worse. Now, correlation is definitely not causation. But when you're in the thick of things and we've got kids' behaviors that are really baffling and frankly really dangerous, and we can really look at them and be like, yeah, yeah, it would be best if we could figure out a way, right, to get this behavior to shift a little, right? When we're standing like smack dab in the middle of that, and then somebody's offering us some parenting suggestions that I think unintentionally are conveyed as being low boundary. I mean, it makes a lot of sense if folks are wary or confused or skeptical of all that, or that some folks are actually blaming kids' increased dysregulation on these kinds of parenting shifts. So is that true? Is that what's happening? I I doubt it. Um, and I especially doubt it because I don't think that we were ever intending to move away from a more punitive way of parenting and towards a more permissive way of parenting. I don't think that was ever the intention. I think as we, the proverbial we started to learn more and more and more about the brain and about neuroscience and about, you know, the brain's relationship to behaviors, we started to look at what are some different ways we can actually address some of these challenging behaviors. And really, mostly because you, those of you listening know that you've probably tried punishment and it's actually not working. So, you know, we went diving into the brain and the nervous system and understanding the brain, you know, behaviors in that context. And we started to get some different ideas about how we might support kids, regulation, connection, and felt safety. It was never intended to be a framework that was going to be more permissive. And actually, it's been my experience that parenting in this way with regulation, connection, and felt safety, is actually more structured than what folks think of as quote unquote regular parenting. And I actually find parents who are saying that this is a way more exhausting way of parenting. And certainly permissive parenting isn't exhausting. So if we're really parenting with regulation, connection, and felt safety, are we parenting with more permissiveness? I think the answer to that is absolutely not. So let's look at how this confusion maybe came to be, because I think it can be really helpful when we are navigating some of our own doubts. Because I know we all have our own doubts about like, oh my gosh, is this really the way I'm supposed to be doing this? Is this really gonna help my kid in the long run? I know we have our own doubts. And then I know other people in our lives have doubts as well. So a long time ago, I did an episode on the difference between enabling, quote unquote enabling. That's not a word I actually really love to use, but I know that that's a word that um folks can think of when they think of what they're kind of afraid of is enabling. So I titled the episode that way, enabling versus lowering demands, right? Really unpacking the difference there. And um, so I'm not gonna like go into that all right now. You can head back to that episode if you want to check that out. I'll make sure it gets down in the show notes. But the gist kind of was that lowering a demand or possibly giving more access to something that a child wants, or backing off of an expectation, that same parenting decision could actually come from two different places in your nervous system. It could come from our own kind of protection mode, right? Which mostly sounds like I cannot tolerate this distress right now. So I am gonna just make this distress stop by eliminating the thing that's stressing my kid out. That is a decision that comes from protection mode. And there's no shame in that. We all make plenty of decisions that come from protection mode. But we actually could make that decision from connection mode, in which case it might sound something more like I am attuned to what is stressful here for my child. And I am going to make an adjustment because of what I know about my kid and about what I know their stress tolerance is, and because of what I know about what we're working on, what we're really uh supporting in their nervous system. So I can make the decision to shift an expectation and perhaps lower a demand, but I can do that from a very thoughtful, attuned place from connection mode, as opposed to a protection mode state of I can't handle this. So I'm going to change expectations so that my kid will stop their protest because it's too much for me. Again, no shame in that. I understand how all parents get to that point, but there is a difference there in shifting the demand or the stress or the expectation, whatever word you want to use, making that choice from protection mode from connection mode. And I think that knowing the distinction there is really, really, really important. So again, if you haven't listened to that episode, Enabling versus Lowering Demands, I'm gonna put it down in the show notes. You might want to check that one out after this episode is done. So a lot of times when we're talking about lowering a demand or lowering stress, and I do tend to think about it through the lens of lowering stress because I think it's clearer if we look at it that way. I tend to think about lowering stress as opposed to lowering demand. Oftentimes, when we're thinking through the possibility of making a choice that could help lower stress for our kid, we're thinking about things that are kind of straightforward with regards to maybe something that is too stressful or uh too frustrating for a child, something that is causing them a lot of frustration or disappointment. And it's exceeding their capacity to regulate through that. And then there's a choice of okay, do I step in and decrease, you know, like take away this demand or this stress or this expectation or not. Right. So, you know, maybe I'm watching my kids struggle to this is a very simple explanation or just example to be clear. This is a very simple example, but you know, maybe I'm watching my kid struggle with uh math homework or like building a puzzle or something. And there's this moment where we're observing as a parent and we're watching our kid really struggle, and we have to kind of have to make the choice. Like, do I step in here and help them? Or do I offer what I would call more passive co-regulation? I'm present, I'm here, I'm steady, but I'm not jumping in to change the expectation or soothe or remove the stress from them. Sometimes that's absolutely the right choice. And I have worked with so many parents where we have together um considered the possibility that like reducing or eliminating homework would help that child's stress response system rest. So someone might say like lowering the demand around homework. Again, I think it's more helpful to just think about it through the lens of stress, lowering stress or not. Also, things like getting frustrated doing a task or doing a math homework, something like that, it actually is a little bit more straightforward than say something like lowering demands related to screens or lowering demands related to our kids' diet and maybe sugar, something like that. Because then we're starting to talk about the pleasure system, the reward system. And I know that lowering demands with regards to screen or screen limits or screen expectations is a really big topic. We were talking about it in the club a lot. We even have a masterclass on it in the club. Like I had a guest, Eliza Fricker, came in a couple of years ago and we talked about lowering demands and screens. And even though that was a couple of years ago, right? Like new members coming in can watch that in the archives. And so, yeah, this tends to be kind of this ongoing conversation. And it's leading to a lot of confusion and causing more stress in the parents' bodies because there's like, oh my gosh, I do not know what to do. Because something like screens, again, now we're adding in like the pleasure system, the um, you know, the reward-seeking system. But also we have to notice that things like screens, video games, have a way that they could, this isn't true for all people or all nervous systems, but could actually create more stress, right? For some folks, spending time in video games or in screens can reduce stress. Screens and video games are very predictable. They are reducing um, you know, the complexities of social engagement with peers. That for a lot of our kids, you know, they're navigating these social complexities all day long. And so having opportunities for lots of predictability, lots of control, no social skills to navigate, right? Those things that can come that are kind of implicit in screens that can be lowering stress. But also for some kids, screens actually increase their stress. All right, like losing is stressful, not achieving what you want to achieve in the game is stressful. Some games are so intense that they're actually adding to uh like our kids' stress loads instead of relieving it, right? And then there's like the trend the transition off, which for many families causes a lot of stress. Then there's a burden of like regulating access. How much? When do we stop? When when do I get to get screens again? Right. And then scarcity can start to feel like stress. So when parents are talking to me about, um, for example, screens, which is an easy one because I know that that's causing so much stress for families and for parents, like to know what the right thing to do is with regards to street screens. Right. There's there can be this question of do I allow more screen time or do I reduce it? Do I allow unlimited access to screens? And then is that lowering demands with regards to screens or just allowing unlimited access to screens actually increasing stress with regards to screens? And the reality is, is I I can't know that without diving in a lot deeper. I mean, without question, for some kids, more access, fewer limits is going to lower their their stress load. It's going to lower the demand, right? With more screens, life is going to feel maybe a little bit unpredictable, or I'm sorry, a little less unpredictable. Screens can be that one place that gives kids some sense of control. Okay. So um allowing for more unlimited access for some kids could lower stress, lower demand. But for other kids, more access, right? When the parent kind of removes themselves from being the one who's regulating the child's access to screen time, that ends up actually causing more stress, right? It can be more activating because again, monitoring yourself around these things that cause pleasure, being regular, you know, self-regulating yourself around these things. Um, I mean, they're that's hard for even grown-ups to do, right? I mean, how many grown-ups do you know who feel like they have a really hard time regulating around food that gives a lot of pleasure, a lot of dopamine, like sugar, fat, potato chips, things like that. And so I know a lot of adults who are like, I cannot manage that regular, yeah, I can't manage regulating that. So how I manage that is just to not have access at all. Like I don't buy those things and put them in the house, right? So it makes a lot of sense that experiences that involve a lot of pleasure, but also aren't great if we engage in them nonstop, right? It makes a lot of sense that that's hard for kids to regulate themselves. And expecting them to regulate that themselves could actually be doing the opposite of lowering stress or lowering demands. Now, I also want to be clear, this isn't really necessarily intended to be an episode about screens. I think we can apply this concept to a lot of things. It's just that screens are so commonly causing so much stress to parents about what they should do. And I'm hearing from parents pretty regularly that it's like I tried to lower demands with regards to screens. That ended up meaning I gave my kids more access to screen with less of me as the adult regulating that. And now it feels like that's actually causing more stress. And then I've got parents who are confused. It's like, well, I thought I did what needed to be done, like lowering demand and lowering stress. And we have to get in there and look at like, well, what was actually or what is now actually causing the stress. For some kids, decreasing boundaries or decreasing expectations, offering unlimited access to something, especially something that's um offering, you know, a lot to the Pleasure and reward centers of the brain, but and then also are kind of inherently stressful themselves, right? We're using screen as the examples here. A lot of parents are saying to me, Well, I lowered the demand, but stress is getting worse. And what has happened is we have created stress around the burden of like managing this themselves or managing the uncertain of it, uncertainty of it, because even allowing more access to screens, like there still comes a time where we have to stop. It's mealtime, it's bedtime, it's time to go to the bathroom. And that can actually cause more stress for kids. Like it can feel like uh this has to stop eventually, and I don't know when it's gonna be, right? And there can actually feel like some more uncertainty. And it is hard to regulate through the need to put a pause on something that feels good, but we also know we shouldn't do all the time. That's a big regulation ask. And for some of our kids, it's just too much. And it can feel kind of like a burden. It's causing more stress. And so I know a lot of families who are saying actually, the more I hold to my boundary around the rules we have around screen time, the the firm more firmly I stand in that, the more confidently I stand in that. All right, the more present I am with myself and less scared of what's gonna happen, right? What as I hold this boundary, they're seeing the safer that their child feels. And so they're feeling a little bit confused. Like, wait a minute, I thought I was lowering demand by allowing more access. But what I'm actually finding is my child is now more stressed. And it's when I take this responsibility of having the boundary that my child is seemingly feeling less stress, and they're like, help me make sense of that. Sometimes what kids really need is somebody who is holding steady, right? Somebody who is like deeply firmly planted and can hold the chaos, hold the intensity that comes along, right, with with the protest. And they can be okay while there's a protest. And instead of changing the expectation because of the intensity of the protest, what I parents are telling me they're finding to be necessary is that they increase their own sturdiness, their own ability to hold their child's distress or dis dysregulation. And yes, yes, yes, yes, 100% yes. What is tricky is of course, it's hard to know like which one is the right thing to do in this moment. Like increase my sturdiness or lower the expectation, lower the stress. It's just in so many ways impossible to know the exact right choice. And we kind of just have to allow ourselves to trust what we know about ourselves, trust what we know about our kids, and trust that we will be okay and so will our kid during the moments when we make the wrong choice. Because sometimes we're going to, sometimes we're going to. It's it's inevitable. We just cannot find the perfect flow chart for if this and this and this and this. Right. There is so much. Well, that depends. And so much just staying as connected as possible to ourselves so that we can make the best decision from connection mode that we think is possible in any given moment. And then seeing later, was that the right one or not the right one? But staying kind of confidently planted, confidently like rooted when our kids have a lot of distress. That is co-regulation, right? Co-regulation doesn't have to look like actively soothing. Co-regulation doesn't look like have to look like actively lowering the demand or lowering the expectation. Co-regulation can look like increasing sturdiness, increasing that capacity of I can be with you in your distress. It makes sense to me. I get why you're so distressed. I can be with you in it. And we're both gonna be okay. So unfortunately, sometimes the intensity of our child's protests or of their distress, even that in and of itself, isn't the only piece of data we need to know, oh, is this a time to lower the demand or lower the expectation? It's just there just isn't a flow chart. If there was a flow chart, I would bring that flow chart back to are you parent caregiver, are you as regulated and connected to yourself as you could be in this moment? In which case, now you can make a decision from that place and trust that you're gonna be okay. If we stay connected to connection mode, we'll be able to offer more co-regulation. When we're making decisions and choices about what to do next from protection mode, we aren't offering co-regulation anymore. So again, that question is like, well, how do I know if I made the right choice? Well, I don't know how you know. Uh sometimes we have to be brave enough to be willing to kind of risk this and track this over a longer period of time. Right. So let's say you're listening to this and you are wondering if actually the way you've taken a lower demand approach to something like screens and by, you know, allowing for some more unlimited access is maybe causing your kids some more stress. And you're wondering, oh my, oh, maybe I want to try something different. And I'm not saying that you should. I am not, please hear me. I'm not recording this episode with a clear do this or do that. I wish I could. I wish I could. What I'm hoping we can do is just find our own regulation and connection, connection to ourselves inside all of the ambiguity that goes along with this. So, but let's just say you're listening to this episode and you're like, oh, maybe I need to try actually removing the burden from my child to regulate through this themselves, right? Self-regulate their screen access or deal with the unpredictability of it, or deal with the stress that unlimited access to screens might be causing their brain. And so I'm gonna lower the stress or lower the demand on themselves by actually taking that job back myself, right? To make the boundaries, make the rules, and enforce them that maybe that's a way we're actually lowering demand and lowering stress for this child. I don't have no idea if it is, but I'm acknowledging that there's a lot of possibilities here. We won't know if that's the right choice of the thing to be experimenting with for a while, still, right? We kind of have to decide what we're going to stick with it for a little bit and you know, stay in curiosity mode, keep our x-ray vision goggles on, keep gathering data. Over time, does my child seem more stressed or less stressed? And if it feels like there's an increase in your child's stress and dysregulation, again, we got to track this over a while, right? Not over like a couple hours or even just a couple days. But if there seems to be an upward trend, then that in it seeming like your child has more stress, then yeah, we got to look at that and see, okay, where should we tweak? What should we do different? It's just kind of this ongoing experiment of try something and see what happens next, which is fantastic because that's actually exactly what secure attachment is. Try something, see what happens next, make adjustments to it. Also, let's just acknowledge, because it's perfectly okay to acknowledge this, that sometimes what we call low demand parenting, it's really about lowering demands for ourselves. Like we're gonna maybe lower an expectation for our kid because we need to lower the demand on ourselves of dealing with their intensity of dysregulation or intensity of protests regarding that boundary or limit or rule or whatever. That's okay. It's okay. If we need to lower the demands for ourselves, I just want to invite us to do that from connection mode, not from protection mode. I have a podcast about that somewhere too. I'll get that into the show notes. Um I would have a hard time even remembering what it's called, lowering demands for parents or something like that. I'll find it. I'll get it in the show notes. So the question becomes, and it's not quite this binary, but I think we can kind of hold these two ideas in in mind. The question becomes, you know, when we are lowering a demand, are we lowering their stress, lowering the kind of load that they're carrying because the man the demand really is too hard in the here and now? Or do we need to put more emphasis on ourselves being the sturdy, grounded, rooted, like a tree, right? Like anchored solidly in the ground, you know, like shifting and moving with everything that's happening around, but without like falling down, right? Which one is the approach to take? And I wish I could tell you again, I wish I could give you a flowchart, right? Neither one is wrong. What we want to keep doing is noticing, well, what happens next? Where does my child demonstrate that they actually are experiencing a reduction in their stress? Because to repair the stress response system, we do have to lower the stress. If we have a hurt, an injured stress response system, which those of you listening to this podcast is very likely true about the kids in your family. An injured stress response system, it's been working too hard for too long and now it's extremely sensitized. We do have to lower the stress first and take the burden off of the stress response system. And that's not the forever thing that we do, right? We have to lower the stress so that we give the stress response system a rest. And then we can start to slowly increase the stress again so that memory networks can learn, like, oh, I can manage stress and be okay. I have an episode about that too. It's, I think it's called strengthening the stress response system. I'll double check it. I'll make sure it gets into the show notes. And y'all, I totally get that you might have gotten to the end of this episode and are feeling like, well, great, Robin, great. Now I'm even more confused. This is, of course, not my intention. Never, ever, ever want to leave you with more confusion, but I do want to talk about the things that I see parents struggling with. And maybe you've been struggling that without yourself, like just a lot of confusion about what does it really mean to lower demands, right? And the fear around what that might mean to like what happens when we lower demands. And does lowering demands always mean doing something that looks quote unquote more gentle? And I don't have answers to all these questions, but I think we can do a lot be, you know, be be with these questions with a lot of curiosity. It could it can be helpful to be with these questions while also surrounded by other people who are also grappling with some of these questions. It can be really helpful to get feedback from others and can be really helpful to see what's happening for other folks and and other families. And if that feels like it could be true for you, then when the club opens next, I want you to come and give us a try over in the club. We will be opening soon, or I have to think about the exact date. I think August 4th. It's a Tuesday. Um, we'll be opening the club for a few days. Um, and in August, so if you come and join us in the club in our next opening, then you will join us in time to do a felt safety plan workshop. We are gonna take the Grow Our Child's Owl Brain with Cues of Felt Safety workbook. We have this big extensive 40 plus page workbook in the club, and we are going to get together and we're gonna work on it together. Sometimes it's really hard to do something if we don't like kind of have a time and a place to do it. So we are going to work very specifically on creating a felt safety plan for our kids. And we can layer that on top of the work that we did back in June and mapping our kids' nervous system because that workshop and the work um sheet that goes along with it, all of that always lives in the club. So we can, you know, all do those things when whenever we want to. So if having folks be with you on this hard parenting journey would feel like it would lower your stress and therefore your demands around parenting, consider that. Consider coming to check us out in the club the next time we're open. All right, that's it for today's episode. I'm sure that it was clear as mud, right? And what I do hope you are taking away from it is that unfortunately, in this way of parenting, nothing really is. And we have to grow our own capacity to experiment and to watch things go, quote unquote, well, and to watch things go, quote unquote, not well, and to see how all these things that we do are impacting our kids and then making adjustments based on what we know about our unique family. Alrighty, y'all. I will be back with you again next week on another episode of the Baffling Behavior Show.