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Speaker 4Hello and welcome to the How Not to Squirt Up Your Kids podcast. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat and enjoy the conversation. This is episode 102 and today's episode, Is This Just a Phase?, I'm talking about the question we all ask ourselves and each other. Is my child's behaviour a phase or is it a permanent character trait or issue they might need help with? And how do I know? Now, we know our children will naturally go through ages and stages as they go from baby, tiny little cute baby that we bring back home. Sorry, I'm obviously having one of those days. But we know that they're going to evolve as they go through that tiny baby to adult. But I'm talking about whether there's a way of knowing for sure if the stage and development that they're going through is normal or not. Now, the bottom line is, sadly, there is no hard and fast rule. Trust me, I have really wanted to give you a hard and fast rule as I researched this and reflected on it because I absolutely wanted to give you a 100% reassurance. And before I record a podcast episode, I do a lot of reflecting and I do a lot of research before I sort of put in some of the kind of key things that I want to mention. And I really wanted to come up with some sort of flowchart of like, ask this question and if you get yes, go down this route. If you get no, go down this route to really, really try and absolutely nail it. But sadly, it's just not possible. However, there are some general rules and principles if we go through some specific questions, which should help nudge us one way or another as to whether we have to ride out this particular stage, obviously with love and support, of course, or whether we really ought to. Getting some support elsewhere beyond the family, whether that's professionally, we just reach out to somebody who can give us a little bit more support or knows that little bit more. Now, what I will caveat firstly is to trust your gut instinct. If something feels fundamentally off, then do seek help. Even if you've gone through my flow chart or my questions and it's sort of indicating that there isn't an issue, because I really think it's important that we trust that gut. And I just want to give you an example of when my children were younger. So when my daughter had just started school, and I just want to note that she is a summer birthday, so she's quite young for her year. Now, she was unwell a lot. She had lots of sort of problems with her throat, lots of issues. So she had quite a serious amount of time off school in that early stages of just school. And so that is going to be a normal part. So we have to bear that in mind when we're trying to work out whether our child's change and shift in behaviour reflects a wider sort of large-scale change in their development and that new behaviour is just a fallout of it or whether this is actually something that is the beginnings of something that is really going to be an issue and we do need to seek out some help. So how do we know if this is just an age and stage and when do we need to work on it? So let's look at these areas specifically. And what I've done this week is I've sort of put them into sort of five broad questions or statements that I want you to consider. So the first one is what else is going on in your child's life? Because what we're trying to do is identify potentially a root cause as to whether this is a wider issue or just an age or stage. So for example, if you've got a child that maybe might be wetting the bed, so they've been dry before and now they've started wetting the bed. When we ask that first question, what else is going on in their life? We can start looking at, okay, they've changed school or maybe we've moved house or maybe we've got an arrival of a new sibling or there's some tension specifically at home because we're having a difficult time with our partner. So it's really looking at the wider picture as to what else is significantly happening in this particular child's life. So could it be? that what they're showing with that bed wetting is actually a reflection of stress that they're experiencing because their life has had some additional stresses some additional changes that they are also trying to navigate and it also then helps us look if everything else has stayed the same there's been no significant differences in terms of the demands being placed on them there's no additional stresses there is just this bed wetting then of course that gives us an idea to think about okay is this an age of stage or is this something that we actively need to get support with and particularly with the example of bed wetting is that often well not often actually the reality is with bed wetting there it will be one of two things it will either be psychological so they are experiencing a certain amount of stress and that's why they've regressed with that or it's something physiological there is something around the development within their body that is creating that issue. So now obviously I'm giving one particular example there could be so many things that you're asking yourself about whether this is just a phase or not so it's really looking at what are the wider things happening and there'll be obvious things that we can put our finger on we've moved house our children have changed school there are and the arrival of a new sibling but what we're also looking for is we're really trying to identify some of the subtle changes so it could be that they've been at the same school but actually is there been some subtle changes in the in terms of their friendships in terms of how they've engaged with their teacher are they starting to use language around their ability to perform so we're starting to notice a confidence issue are they starting to also struggle with falling asleep at night you know are they having challenges around not challenges but are they now becoming particularly fussy about their food or we're noticing some additional changes so with this we really want to scan and have a look at what else might be going on in their life have we noticed the there's some very subtle underlying issues that are not big ones but necessarily small ones that might be able to help us understand so if there are if there have been some changes this could genuinely be a stage and then we're looking at supporting some of those big or small changes or it could be that actually there are some fundamental things here that we need to address so we really want to start off with that almost like a bigger picture let's look at that whole terrain and that landscape to work out what else might be going on in their life that might be able to help clarify whether this is an age and stage or whether this is something that's a bit of a wider issue that we need to look at so that's the first question that we really ought to be looking at and when we're looking at that we really want to have conversations with all interested parties so don't just look at what's going on at home but look at what's going on at home and look at what's going on at home and if your child is at school ask the school we're noticing you know our child has started bed wetting our child is starting having issues around going to bed at night or they are and we're having a few challenges in terms of the language that they're using with us or their behavior whatever it might be have a conversation with school if your child has got a nanny if your child is going to a child minder if your child goes to after-school activities if they're being looked after by your parents whoever else is involved in that day-to-day conversation with your child when you're looking at the landscape you have to look beyond just home you want to be having conversations with everybody else who's involved because that really helps get that broader wider picture and if we're asking some of those questions at school it also gives school some knowledge about what is happening at home and whilst they may not have initially noticed something maybe they might not be having a conversation with you because they've noticed things if they understand what is also happening at home they can keep their eye out they can then start fine-tuning and looking at things that might help to be able to kind of work that out and that's not just for school but anyone else who might be interested so we need to kind of take a really super broad view and really get involved and have conversations with everybody who's um helping and supporting and raising our child so that's the first thing that we want to do and that helps us understand whether it's a phase or not the second one and this is quite a crucial one is that when we consistently apply some interventions some scaffolding as such to help support our child when we kind of sort of maybe instinctively think one thing or another are we seeing any difference occurring now that difference is not necessarily a big shift and or you know that that behavior is gone but more a case of are we beginning to see a difference and are we beginning to see a difference some movement in the right direction so i'm conscious i'm using the bed wetting analogy but i'm just going to keep going with that one for a minute so if we think that the bed wetting could be a physical thing so maybe we think oh goodness me probably having far too much to drink before they go to bed and we've not been keeping an eye on that or they've not been going to the toilet regularly before they go to sleep and we're consistently i'll come back to that word but we're consistently reminding them to go to the toilet or beginning to go to the toilet and we're going to cut down on the amount of liquid that they have and we're noticing that okay the bed wetting is still happening but it's not happening all the time that we're beginning to see a shift in that then that is some specific progress and it could be an age and stage if we think that the bed wetting might be to do with just feeling anxious and worried and nervous because there's been a lot of big changes for the for them in their lives that we've then noticed that by putting in some tools and strategies and some support through scaffolding
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Speaker 2coverage therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough it shows up in the smallest moments you bite your tongue instead of escalating you put your phone down instead of firing off that text you say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most nobody applauds those moments but they quietly change your life that's what growing feels like and that's exactly what grow therapy is here for grow is therapy that works covered by insurance sessions average twenty one dollars with insurance and some pay as little as zero dollars depending on their plan there are no subscriptions no long-term commitments you just pay per session grow connects you with thousands of high quality licensed therapists across the u.s offering both virtual and in-person sessions nights and weekends you can search by what matters like insurance specialty identity or availability and you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days not the national limit you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days not the national 48-day average see if you could pay as little as zero dollars for therapy in seconds at grow therapy.com slash a cast that's grow therapy.com slash a cast grow therapy.com slash a cast availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan that we're offering
Speaker 4them that we're beginning to notice that that's happening less often then it is unlikely to be something that is perfect and it's not going to be something that is perfect that this is much more about an age and stage and development and then we can help scaffold them what is important with this particular second point is that the strategies the intervention and the scaffolding must be consistently applied i genuinely say this with love quite often as parents we tend to sort of hear advice and i am 100 guilty of this we hear advice we hear listen maybe you listen to something i say on the podcast maybe you read something in a parenting book and you start implementing it and you slightly throw the bath at the baby out with the bath water because it's like oh for goodness sake that's ridiculous it hasn't worked there's clearly a bigger problem but we haven't applied the strategy or the scaffolding consistently and consistently means we need to be doing it often so you can't say categorically that you've tried everything if you genuinely have not been consistent and i would much rather you try one thing and apply that consistently then try one thing one day and it doesn't work so you throw it out and then you try another thing the next day you throw it out because that doesn't work consistency really is about sticking with a new strategy a new tool it might not be the best one it might not be the best tool for that but the only way to know whether that tool is working or not is by applying it consistently not only yourself but across everyone who's helping and in raising your child so that's that's why it's so important that we have these bigger wider conversations with school with the childminder with nannies with our partners with our parents who are involved in raising our children so you can only answer that question honestly if you have been consistent in applying that and sometimes it just isn't possible to be consistent so we just add less weight to the response from that particular person particular question and more weight to of the other responses from some of the other questions so this isn't a me being critical or judgmental for you i'm just being honest is that so often we say well it's not that i've tried that it doesn't work but and it's really because we've just not applied it consistently so the first one is what else but might be going in that on in their life so we're looking at the wider landscape the second question is have we tried strategies to support and scaffold and they've not had an impact they're showing absolutely no improvement so it may well be that this might be something that we need some additional support with the third one is looking at actually has my child regressed have they gone back in other areas of their development so that this might indicate that i'm actually dealing with a much bigger issue that is beyond something that i can do and this is not a phase but something that i need to get some support in so if we go to that um if we're if we're looking at a situation we've suddenly found that our child is now no longer falling asleep on their own and they've now um struggling with their big emotions they're now becoming fussy they're now starting to bite whatever it might be you might be looking at one particular thing but we're finding that in other aspects of their development that they had quite clearly navigated through that particular age and stage and they'd moved on from that we're now starting to see that other areas have began to slip and so this is actually and if that is the case then this isn't necessarily an age or stage but could be part of a wider issue now what i would caveat that with is for example if we're going through stages with our teens so you've got a child that is going through those teen challenges you might find that they will be regressing in certain areas because maybe they've always been really good at doing what you've asked them straight away and they're not they've now appeared to regress with that so it's looking at our responses as part of the broader picture of these five questions so if we're finding that actually four of the questions it looks like it's clearly an age and a stage but one of them is um not that way then i would look at okay well all the other indicators the the kind of the the huge weighting is around that this being an age and stage so i'm just gonna observe for a little bit longer before i do something or it may well be that that one question is your gut is saying do you know what i know that only that one thing is suggesting that it's a bigger problem but that's the one thing that worries me the most and so my gut instinct is saying that i need to do something about it so it's really looking at that so that third one is looking at when i look at my child's profile broadly there's a significant there are significant areas that they have regressed that they've gone back with and so actually that's saying to me that this is a bigger problem than than just simply an age and stage that they're going through so the three so far are what else is going on in their life so looking at that landscape have we tried applying some interventions some scaffolding some support through strategies that we're in that we're implementing at home and it's making absolutely no difference we're now noticing that they're regressing in quite a few areas that they're going backwards in so i'm now beginning to think this might actually be not a stage and an age and stage but much more of a wider issue fourth one is are there accompanying changes to their sleep or their appetite and their general temperament so this helps us see that okay when we look at that particular behavior that new thing that we're wondering whether that's an age and a stage are we noticing them some accompanying changes over some of the big stuff the reason why i've got sleep and appetite and their character they're just sort of general temperament is that these are some very big underlying indicators that something is not right and those changes are not just subtle changes that are happening every now and again these are big fundamental big changes we've suddenly got a child that is not sleeping they're waking up in the middle of the night they're struggling to fall asleep at night they're having they're waking up with very bad dreams or night terrors or their appetite has changed quite significantly they're becoming quite fussy with what they eat or they're struggling to eat because they're complaining that they feel sick or we're just noticing some of that real happy-go-lucky optimistic nature in their temperament is now beginning to be very differently very markedly differently to who they really are so if we're beginning to notice that there's a some of these consistent changes to their sleep some consistent changes to their appetite some consistent changes to their temperament then this is unlikely to be an age or stage now it could be an age and stage if let's say that we are noticing changes to their sleep and to their appetite and to their and to their character and their temperament and we've answered to the first question that there is a whole load of other things going on in their life they're taking exams that will get them to their next schools or they're taking exams that will get them to their next stage then of course that's part of an age and stage because we know that once they've transitioned through that particular period that things will then resolve themselves so we're looking at the response to these questions as part of a bigger broader picture but if everything else in their life is static nothing is changing there's no big demands on them there's no big additional stressors and we're noticing changes in sleep and appetite and their temperament and they're not navigating a particular age and stage in terms of a natural brain development so they're not beginning to transition through their teen years which by the way is not when they hit 13 it's starting to happen when they're 10 and 11 that if we're not getting these big other changes but we're getting some consistent changes in sleep and appetite and temperament then there is something else that we need to look at this is not an age and stage but something that we need to seek help and get support in so that is number four number five is probably the most crucial one to look at because this will be the shift and decider for so many of these if you're slightly sitting on the fences does your child's change in behavior affect their ability to carry on with ordinary day-to-day life is this change in behavior significantly impacting your child's ability to get up and go to school to then be able to lead these ordinary normal day-to-day life and if it is impacting that then it is unlikely to be an age and stage so if we're finding that our child is just not able to carry on with ordinary life so going to sleep eating going to school playing with their friends being able to just be as they typically would be then it is then that's where we want to kind of dig deeper because that is unlikely to happen if we're not able to carry on with ordinary life then it is unlikely to mean that it's just an age and a stage it is more likely to be something that we do need to seek some additional help and support with which is why i made that emphasis that this sort of fifth point was something that we is kind of an overarching so it may well be that we look at the landscape with number one and we there's nothing else really significantly going on and that we've applied various different interventions and and they're not really having an effect our child maybe hasn't regressed in other areas but they're having an effect on other areas and but we have noticed some accompanying changes in their sleep and their appetite and we're noticing that they're just debilitated with their confidence they're not able to go to school on their own or it may well be that they're struggling with eating because they're worrying and they're often complaining about feeling poorly those are the things that we really want to be looking out for and those are the sort of five areas that help us kind of really get a sense of okay the evidence is pointing to the fact that this looks like an age and a stage so i'm going to keep applying these interventions i'm going to keep scaffolding my child or it may well be of you know it's really significantly impacting their ability to go to birthday parties go to school go to sleep at night eat play so there's clearly something more to this and i do need to be seeking help and what that help looks like it may well just be having an initial conversation with somebody it's not necessarily that the issue is huge but in my experience as i sort of shared with my daughter but just generally all of the evidence whether our child is struggling with their learning whether our child is struggling with their emotions and whether our child is struggling in some physical way all of the evidence points to the fact that early intervention is crucial the more sort of quickly we put in support strategies the more we begin to talk with our children about the challenges that they're particularly experiencing and helping to normalize some of these challenges and the more we begin to talk with our children about these issues the easier it is for our child to then navigate that next age and stage so it's really crucial that we sort of ask ourselves those five questions really start to examine them and then put that intervention in if we need to continue with the scaffolding if we think it's an age and stage and caveat that with this notion that we have to listen to that gut instinct and quite often when we're in overwhelm it can be really hard to understand what's going on really difficult to do that which is why it's so important to have these open conversations and you know i haven't written a sixth one but if there was a sixth one it would be about having conversations with our children other parents about the ages and stages that their children are going through but if you're going to do that which is why it isn't formally on here and I won't be putting it as part of the give that I that I give you because that can be helpful and or it can be quite a hindrance because it can be helpful when we hear from other parents who are being honest who we've got a really good honest relationship with that they will also be saying that their child is going through that but if you don't have that kind of open relationship with another set of parents that will be honest with you about what is actually going on behind closed doors then having conversations with other parents can actually make you feel worse because what then happens is you judge your parenting you feel that you failed that this challenge is that this issue is around your inability to support your child's development so that's why the sort of consulting other parents having conversations isn't on my mind. isn't my number six because I really don't think that's helpful unless you're part and you've cultivated a community a collective of parents where you can really have those honest conversations so you can really work out whether this is something that is an age and stage that your child is going through or some additional support that you need so my give this week are going to be these top five questions really in a checklist to remind you of how you need to go through this we'll give you the usual space underneath so you can reflect you can make some notes and it serves as a good reminder for the age and stage and the challenge that you might be going through now or not or also the age and stage and challenge that your child may still go through multiple times because they we ask ourselves this question all of the time as usual all you need to do is head over to my free resource library drmaryhann.com forward slash library where you'll find the link to download the application and I'll see you in the next video. episode all you need to do is pop in your email address and you'll get instant access not only to this week's resource but all the other free resources across all my podcast episodes as ever if you have enjoyed this episode I would be monumentally grateful I would love it if you could follow and review this podcast so that others can find us and we can spread the love so until next time I'll see you in the next one.
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