Speaker 1Hello and welcome to the How Not to Screw Up Your Kids podcast. Practical, judgment-free tools for parents of anxious kids from a psychologist who works with them every day. I'm Dr. Mary Han and this is your Monday bucket emptying episode. Short, immediately usable and built for the week where you actually need it. So, pull yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat and let's get into it. This episode is one I'd save for any stretch when your children are spending more time together than usual. School holidays, half term, a long weekend, weather that's kept them indoors, a bug that's pulled them out of their normal routine, any patch where the siblings are properly in each other's pockets and you've started counting the hours until bedtime. Because here's what I see in my practice again. Sibling friction is very rarely about that thing that it looks like it's about. It's not about the toy. It's not about who's on the sofa. It's not about the look one of them gave the other across the kitchen. What it's actually about, almost every time, is full buckets. Each child is carrying an emotional bucket through the day. They get tired, they get hungry, they get bored, they get overstimulated, they get a little bit lonely, even if they're tired, they get tired, they get hungry, they get bored, they get overstimulated, they get a little bit lonely, even if they're tired, they get a little bit lonely, even if they're tired, they get a little bit lonely, even if they're tired, they get a little bit lonely, even if they're Even in a busy house, their bucket fills up and the moment it overflows, whatever spills out lands on whichever sibling just happens to be closest. That's it. If you take one thing from today, take this. When siblings are at each other, your job isn't to be the referee. Your job is to look at the buckets. So today I'm giving you three tools, three, to help everyone in the family empty their buckets before they overflow. So try one of these this week and see what shifts. So tool one, one-to-one special time. And I want you to hear this one properly because this is the gold. Once a week, each child gets a chunk of one-to-one time with you. The same slot every week, just for them, sacred, in the diary, doesn't move, not their sibling's time, not family time, their time. Now, let me head off the question I always get. But Mary Han, what if I've got three children? That's not equal. Well, the amount of time each of your children needs from you across a normal day is already not equal. A two-year-old needs help getting dressed, eating, going to the loo, falling asleep. A nine-year-old does most of that for themselves. So equal time across the day is impossible and it isn't the goal. What we're equalizing here is the slot, the protected weekly one-to-one slot, the same length, the same rhythm for each child. So here are the rules of that slot. Your child chooses what you do, not you, them. No negotiating. If they want to be a cat, you're being a cat. You are fully present. No phone, no mental to-do list. No, I'll just put the wash on first. You are there. And this is the bit that does the work. You actively listen. Active listening sounds fluffy, difficult until you do it. The technique is incredibly powerful and genuinely is super simple. And I'm going to suggest you do it almost like a slightly formulaic so that you're able to do it straight off the bat. If it's something that is sort of unfamiliar to you or if you're a troll enthusiast or keen to interrupt, it allows you to kind of have a really simple framework. So you simply repeat back the last few words your child says. That's it. We're not going to overcomplicate it. We can refine it in later episodes. But for the purposes of this episode and for you trying tool one, if your child has a sentence, you simply repeat back the last few words. That's it. So let me show you why this is so powerful. Okay. Your child's says, I want to be a cat. You say, I want to be a cat. They say, like Rosie. You say, like Rosie. They say, because Rosie is loved by everyone. You say, loved by everyone. And they say, I don't think anyone in this family loves me. So that's a slightly contrived scenario that I'm that I'm playing out. But I guess what I'm trying to help you see is that if you look at where that conversation just went from I want to be a cat to I don't think anyone loves me in five sentences, and you didn't push, you didn't pry, you didn't interrogate, you just listened. And that's what's so powerful about active listening. So let's try another. Jack is so annoying. So we repeat back, Jack is annoying. He can do everything. We repeat back, he can do everything. I'm rubbish at everything. I can't ride a bike. I can't read as fast as him. I'm rubbish. There it is. That's what we're sitting underneath. The Jack is annoying. You've been hearing 15 times a day. So what we get from that by simply that repetition is that it's almost a way of just probing. Tell me more. Because what we're repeating back is what we're in essence, active listening is about paraphrasing. It's simply repeat back so that you don't get lost in the mechanics of it. Because then you just simply repeat back what your child says. So let's just do one more. And I want blue eyes. Now, every instinct in your body wants to jump in here. Your eyes are beautiful. Why would you want blue eyes? Why aren't you happy with what you've got? And then the moment you do that, what happens is you slam the door on what was about to come next. So instead, you want blue eyes. Jessica has blue eyes. So we repeat back. Everyone loves Jessica. We repeat back. Everyone wants to play with her and no one wants to play with me. That. That's what was sitting in the bucket hidden behind that I want blue eyes. So this is bucket emptying through connection. Your child doesn't need you to fix the cat thing or the Jack thing or the Jessica thing. They need to feel heard. And paraphrasing what they've just said back to them, is the most underrated parenting move I know. Make sense? Try it with your partner tonight. Give it a practice with your partner before you try it with your with your children. Try it with your partner. Try it with a friend. You'll be amazed at the conversations that you start having and where that first sentence goes to the last bit of revelation. So that's tool one for you to try. Tool two is own time space. So this one is the literal bucket emptying. So children need time in their own company, doing their own thing in their own space, even when they resist it, especially, in fact, when they resist it. When kids are stuck together for extended stretches, what looks like boredom or whining for a screen is often a child whose bucket is full and who has no idea how to empty it themselves. And you can help build a small pocket of own time space. So children need time in their own company, doing their own thing in their own time into the rhythm of the day. Now, it doesn't have to be a big production. 20 minutes after lunch where each child has their own corner, a morning slot where the older one reads in their room and the younger one has the building blocks in the kitchen, a wind down before tea or dinner where nobody has to talk to anybody. You will get pushback. They will tell you that they are bored, but stay on track. Stay the course. Boredom is not a problem to be solved. It's the door way through which their bucket starts to drain. You know, children who never get own time grow into adults who can't tolerate their own company. And we don't want that. But that discomfort and that discomfort tolerance is a really important part of what we want our children to become capable of being with, you know, sitting in, of navigating. If your child is anxious, this one matters doubly so, because anxious children, especially fill their buckets in busy environments and especially struggle to empty them when siblings are in their face all day. So protect their solo time like it's a meeting in your work diary, because effectively it is. So that's number two. Tool three, this is real time descriptive praise. This is your multiplier and it works on everyone in the house, including you. So most of us, when our kids do something we don't like, we say, oh, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. Don't snatch. Stop shouting at your sister. We don't do that. We're quick on the draw. Now think about the inverse. Yeah. Your child managed not to snatch. Your child shared the trampoline for 10 whole minutes. Your child walked away from the argument instead of escalating it. Did you say anything? Most of us don't. We exhale. Oh, we feel a quiet flick of relief and we move on. Don't catch it. Name it out. loud in the moment. I saw you wait while she finished her turn. That was really kind. You told him you didn't want to play and you walked away. That took strength. You shared the iPad without me even asking. This is descriptive praise. You're not saying, good girl, you're describing exactly what you saw and here's why it matters. Children learn what we pay attention to. If we only pay attention to friction, the friction grows. If we pay attention to moments of regulation, even small, tiny, even imperfect ones, even where they've become dysregulated, but they started trying to, those grow instead. And here's a bonus you might not expect. Descriptive praise empties your bucket too. It shifts what you're noticing about your own children. So you stop hunting for the bad behavior and start spotting. The whole emotional climate, the culture within your home changes truly. So I would like you to pick one. Just literally three tools, special time, own time, and real time descriptive praise. If you'd like to go deeper on siblings specifically, my older episode, five hacks to help siblings get along, goes further into family packs and rotas. So pop it in your queue, and you can listen to that. But for this week, don't try all three, just simply pick one. Try it and see what shifts. So my give for this week's episode is the active listening script card. So you head over to my free resource library, www.drmaryhand.com forward slash library, where you will pop your email address in. And if you're already registered, you can log straight in. If you're not registered, you simply register. And then you'll have free access, not only to this week's resource, the active listening script card, but all the other resources across all my other episodes. Now, before I let you go, two things. First, a heartfelt thank you to everyone who replied to my newsletter when I asked for help. Your responses have shaped the next chapter of this podcast in a way I truly didn't expect. You told me what you're struggling with, and I'm going to spend the next 10 weeks making episodes that meet you exactly where you are. Second, Thursday is a big one. I've been working on something behind the scenes for a while, and Thursday's episode is the first proper signal of where this podcast is heading. If you've ever lain awake at night worrying about an anxious child, that episode is for you. Be there. As ever, if you've enjoyed this episode, I'd love it if you could follow and review the podcast so that others can find us and we can spread the love. So until next time, look at the buckets, not the fight. I'll see you next time.
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