Therapy for Moms: managing power struggles with your toddler

 Hi guys. Today I'm talking, power struggles and what to do about them when you need to maintain boundaries with your child. This is inspired by my own experience, parenting a toddler. I think power struggles are one of the more exhausting challenges that inevitably come up in parenting.

Using Playfulness to Manage Power Struggles

You might've heard before that playfulness can often help us and our children maintain boundaries. So with that, we don't have to abandon them when we're tempted to. I wanted to share a couple of ways that playfulness has worked for me. That’s where my son’s stuffed bunny, Floppy, comes in.

We've found that, when it's hard for my child to follow rules or directions. it's much easier coming from floppy. This goes for, when I am trying to prompt my child to put away a toy or give me a toy that needs to be put away now or can't be brought to X, Y, Z location.

Often the default answer, especially beginning at two years old, we were getting a lot of “no!” But with Floppy, well…

“Can I have your toy?” *in cute bunny voice

It's different and for some reason a lot more acceptable. Something very cute about this stuffed animal asking for the item.

And yes, he does take its stuffed paws and it's very fun and very acceptable to my child. So that's one of the ways, and it works, at least for us. I'm not saying this is gonna work for everybody, but for us, this has worked not just with Floppy, but with other stuffed animals too. So, when Floppy's not available, we still often have a way for, somebody to help us get the thing done or to prompt him to do the things that we need him to do.

Another way that this has worked for me, was a time when I asked my child to do something. He was very displeased. We were feeling disconnected. He didn't even want to come near me.

He was so upset and I did not know what to do because I could see that, maybe he had been wanting attention and now that I'm finally ready to give it, he's like, no. but it came to my mind, well, you know what, then I'm gonna be a cat. So I got on all fours and I just meowed and, and yeah, you can imagine just hearing meow.

Suddenly he was ready, just the little look. he was ready to engage, with the kitty cat. Not with mom, didn't wanna deal with mom, but a kitty cat. very nice. Very fun. and that's worked, sometimes when I'm not sure what to do with myself. I become a kitty cat. it's done wonders for us.

I don't know if a kitty cat is what's gonna work for you, but those are just a couple of ways, that using pretend play, and humor has worked for us so that we don't have to completely abandon boundary setting.

If you’re wanting support in caring and connecting better with yourself, let’s talk. You can schedule a free consult with me here.