Speaker 1Before we start, a quick heads up, especially if your child struggles with worry or anxiety. This summer, for the first time, I'm running The Summer Reset, a seven-week program for parents of anxious children where I coach you as a parent, a small group, live, and you get two private one-to-one sessions with me. Because here's the truth, your child's worry doesn't take a holiday, just because school does, but with the pressure off, summer is the best time of the whole year to actually do something about it. We start on the 23rd of July, and I'm capping it at 18 families, so you want to act quickly. The link is in the show notes. Right, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat, and let's do this. Your child has just had a hard moment, a failed test, a disastrous football practice, a project that didn't go the way they'd hoped, and they look at you, or at the floor, or at themselves in the mirror, and they say, I'm not good enough, or I'm rubbish at everything, or I can't do anything right. And every instinct fires at once. You want to fix, you want to list every wonderful thing about them, you want to tell them they're brilliant, because they are. So you say, of course you are, you're amazing, I'm so proud of you, and they don't believe you, or they cry harder, or they shut down completely, and you're left wondering, what am I supposed to say? Today, I'm giving you exactly what to say instead. This is the How Not to Screw Up Your Kids podcast, the bucket-emptying episodes. I'm your host, Dr. Mary Han. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat, and enjoy the conversation. This episode is about what to say when your child says, I'm not good enough, and why the most loving response isn't what you think it is. So, the moment may be in the kitchen, or in the car, or at bedtime, which trips parents up more than almost any other, because here's what's actually happening when your child says, I'm not good enough. Their emotional bucket, the one that carries all the stress, the pressure, the worry, the effort, is full, or pretty close to it, it's pretty close to overflowing, and what you're hearing from your child when they say, I'm not good enough, I'm rubbish at everything, isn't a statement of fact, it's a bucket that's sort of run out of room. There's no more space in it, there's no more capacity, and it's overflowing. And we know that when the bucket is full, the nervous system, our children's nervous system, is in overwhelm, and their thinking brain, the prefrontal cortex, that bit behind the forehead, is offline. And in that moment, your child can't take in logic. They can't receive reassurance, they can't access perspective, because they're flooded. Which is why, of course you are, doesn't work. It's not that the words aren't true, they are. Of course they are. It's just that a flooded brain can't receive them. You're talking to a nervous system, not a rational mind, and the nervous system needs something else first. So in this episode, I am going to suggest three things that you can do in order. My advice to you will be, if you're, it may well be that you'll hear some of these sort of three tools, and you may well say, do you know what, actually, Mary-Anne, I'm really, I'm already doing tool one. Then in which case, focus on tool two. You know I love the power of one, and you know how much I believe very strongly that consistency always trumps quantity. So if you hear these three tools, and you're not doing any of them, start with the first one. Do that, and again, we're not looking for perfection. We're looking for you to be able to do it one time more than you have done the previous day, or one time more than you've done the previous week. You know, it starts small, and it grows. But then, there is a specific order, so just think of it that way, rather than trying to do all three. So, here we go. Tool one. We want to hear what our children are saying first. So, tool one is just hear it first. Before you do anything, before you reassure, before you problem solve, before you gently point out that actually, they did really well, you acknowledge. Because what we're doing here is we're meeting our children where they are at. We are acknowledging, acknowledging how they feel, and that sort of gives us a bit of a window and a bit of an opportunity to then progress further. So, just hearing it first, just acknowledging it, nothing else. We want to acknowledge the feeling. So, that might sound something like this. I can hear how much that hurt. That sounds really hard right now. Yep, that didn't go the way that you wanted. That's it. No but, no pivot, no silver lining, not going to happen. Not yet. It's that hearing it first. Now, I know that that feels almost impossibly hard. And I will say this obviously as a reforming control enthusiast and problem fixer, because the instinct to reassure is so strong and the instinct to provide a solution is so strong. But it can't, and I know it comes from love, completely from love. But what it accidentally communicates is, particularly where we don't, where we seek to reassure, and we don't do that acknowledgement, is what it accidentally communicates is, the feeling you're having is wrong. And a child who's already feeling like they're not enough doesn't need to be told that their feelings are also not enough. So, two seconds of genuine acknowledgement does something really quite remarkable to a flooded nervous system. The guard comes down, even if it's just a fraction, the child feels seen rather than fixed. And now, only now, do you have a gap to work with. The rule of thumb is you match the feeling before you move. Always and never skip it. So that would be tool one. And if you are not already doing this, I would encourage you to focus on that tool alone because that, even if you don't do the other two, will have such a profound impact because it's the first tool and it's the first thing that we do in response to a statement that our child makes about themselves and the belief system that they have about themselves. So just by acknowledging we're already further along in terms of helping and supporting them than we would do if we went in with a reassurance. So tool one is hear it first. Tool two, so the next thing we've done, we hear it first. Now, we want to look at the action, not the identity. So, let me expand. Once you've acknowledged, you gently narrow the statement. Remember, well, if you haven't listened to the episode, the Thursday episode, then do listen to it. But in essence here, when we've got perfectionism, this is about their identity being attached to the outcome of something and how they perform in a particular area. So we want to kind of slightly disentangle this a little and do it gently so that we can take apart that the identity is not, is not linked directly to the action. So once we've acknowledged, we're going to gently narrow the statement. So a child that says, I'm not good enough. Now that's an identity statement. It's about them. It's global. It means I'm fundamentally inadequate as a human being. And to be honest with you, you can't argue your way out of an identity statement because it doesn't respond to logic. What you can do is mirror back the specific thing not the global verdict. So for example, you found that really difficult. That test felt hard today. Getting that wrong felt awful. That makes sense. Yeah. Notice what we're doing here. We're taking I'm not enough, this statement of identity and translating it into I had a hard moment. One is permanent. I'm not enough. One is specific and specific is manageable. Permanent. Permanent is terrifying. So you're not dismissing the feeling. You're containing it, keeping it proportionate to what actually happened. And if they do push back, no, I'm really rubbish. I always mess things up. Don't argue. Just say, I hear you. That's how it feels right now and leave a breath of space. All right. So that is number two. We've heard it first. We've got focused on the action, not the identity. And so our third tool is to empty the bucket. So once they feel heard and the feeling is slightly more contained, we might not have contained it completely, but we've began that process of containing it around the action rather than the identity of your child. You can move toward one question. Yeah. And that question is, what does your bucket, what does the bucket need right now? Now you can literally ask that question. What does your bucket need right now? Particularly if your child already knows the bucket. bucket concept or if that the language around the maybe you've introduced it but it doesn't feel natural yet or you haven't introduced it at all instead we can just simply say what do you need from me right now now some children will know immediately they want a hug they want 10 minutes of not talking about it they want a biscuit and a sit on the sofa some children won't know and that is completely fine what we can do is we can offer choice you could say do you want some time on your own or do you want to come and sit with me or do you want me to come and sit with you what you're not doing is solving the performance problem you'll notice that that's what we're doing we're not trying to solve the how they feel about that particular task or that particular thing we're not getting them back on the horse immediately we're not trying to kind of fix it we're not fixing the thing that went wrong what we're doing is putting them back in that driving seat of their own nervous system rather than being a passenger in a runaway nervous system and that that sense that they have some agency over how they feel is one of the most important emotional skills that we can build as parents a child who learns when i feel empty here's what helps a child who learns when i feel like i've got a full bucket here's what helps has a tool for life far more useful than reassurance a flooded can't take it in okay now my advice as i said at the top is don't try all three of these at once pick one the first one is probably the hardest because the instinct to reassure is so powerful but if you can lead with acknowledgement even once even imperfectly just try it notice what happens and i think it'll surprise you now my give this week for this particular episode is a free resource in the resource library drmaryhand.com forward slash library it's a quick reference phrase card for exactly this moment what to say at each stage when your child is in the i'm not good enough spiral so it's printable it's short and you can stick it anywhere useful for those moments when you've got about three seconds to remember what to do if this episode was helpful please do leave a rating or review it makes an enormous difference in helping other parents find the podcast and if you know someone who's going to be a part of this podcast please do leave a rating or review and if you know someone who's living with a child in that i'm not good enough spiral share this episode with them it might be exactly what they need to hear so thank you so much for listening i'll see you on thursday and until next time it's not the reassurance they need it's the acknowledgement so until next time it's not the reassurance they need it's the acknowledgement
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