How to Raise Resilient Kids (Not Entitled Snowflakes)

You're not setting them up for the real world. Life isn't cushioning, okay? The whole world isn't gonna be catering to them. That's the entitlement that we're raising kids with. Rewarding basic good behavior. It's an insult. Well, what the heck was I yesterday? That would be your gut reaction. If you're praising children just for being nice and normal, to me, that's just normal. What are your thoughts on part-time jobs for teenagers? Okay, when my kids turn 15. Welcome to the Bratbusters Parenting Podcast. My name's Lisa Bunnage. I'm a parenting coach. I'm a mom. I'm also a grandmother. And I'm Amy Bunnage. Lisa's daughter and I handle the marketing and planning here at Bratbusters. While I don't have kids, each episode will dive into parenting topics and Lisa will answer your questions. Let's get started. Now you said I'm gonna like this topic. Remember, I never know what's coming. So she said I'm gonna like this one. So what are we talking about today? The topic is, are you raising entitled kids? Oh, okay. Are you raising entitled kids? No, I don't know because again, I feel like it's this interesting dynamic that you and I have because you are definitely, obviously the face of this company, but I do a lot of the titles and a lot of the, of the packaging of the content. I'm wondering if we just go with the title, are you raising self-entitled snowflakes because you- With mental health issues. Now I throw that in there and that's a little bit controversial. I understand that, but that's my standard saying, is that if you're a pleaser parent, you're raising self-entitled snowflakes with mental health issues. It's an exaggeration, of course it is, but I like to throw that out there just to get my point across. So I saw that coming 40 years ago with participation awards, the Pleaser Parents style, and I thought we are in trouble, big trouble, and now I see it's going out of style. I have 10 kind of, almost like a litmus test from your perspective of things that you see parents doing that might lead to raising entitled kids. I've created this list just based off of like, what you've said in the past. So we'll go through each topic. Okay, do you want me to, or are you gonna- I mean, you can do a little start, but I mean, I have the 10 right here that I- Okay, well go for it. Okay. Okay, but I think before we get into this topic, because if this is your first time ever hearing my mom talk about parenting, what do you think is one of the most important parts of common leadership? Well, it's connection, you know. Their love language is fun and that's my strength. I like being goofy and fun and kids love that and I love kids. I just love, I love watching them grow. I love watching them form. I love increasing their self-esteem. I find that really exciting and yeah, if they feel good, they do good. If they feel bad, they do bad. My goal, I never show anger, frustration, or disappointment. I've never yelled at a kid because I know that's, that's not gonna get what you want. You want them to feel good about themselves and it's okay to make mistakes. I never treat mistakes like bad. I say, yeah, that was a bad thing. Yeah, you did something bad. That was pretty stupid. That's okay. You dumb things sometimes, right? That's how I treat it. But here's your consequence, okay? You've got to make up for what you do wrong. You've got to be accountable for what you do. But I don't like the shaming and blaming that is so popular out there. And this a plazor parent style, I think you'll probably hit all the points because I can go off on this for quite some time. But are we, is entitled the same as spoiled? Yes and no. Okay, we'll get into this more. But I think the first point I have here, I have 10 overall, but the first one is talking about leaning into that plazor parent style. Yeah, the plazor parent is, it came in with participation awards. So you want your kids to feel great. You're working on their self-esteem supposedly, but actually you're knocking it back. It's quite the opposite. You're raising kids with really low self-esteem because they don't have any pride because you're doing everything for them. You're trying to make their life as easy as possible. You're trying to make chores fun. You want them to get awards for not even doing anything. It's ridiculous, right? You're telling them how wonderful they are, but you're not building any pride. You're not building any self-discipline in them. And years and years ago, I used to have a column in the newspaper here. It was like a advice column for parents. And I wrote this column. Boy, did I ever get a lot of flack for this one, but you won't believe what the topic was. It was on the participation awards. Something had happened in California. I read about this. And some parent was taking the school to court because they didn't give her child a participation award for sports day, right? She didn't do anything at sports day, but she was mac-ed and get a participation award. Here's the thing. She didn't even go to sports day. Not only did she not do anything there, she didn't even go there. And she took this school to court or the teacher to court. And I can't remember now. I think she won. It just enraged me. I thought, what are you teaching your children? You should get an award for just breathing, for doing nothing. I thought that was absolutely ridiculous. And I realized what I was up against, because I got a lot of backlash for writing that, because parents thought that that was fair enough that the parent should want a participation award. Think about it, though. Would that fly today? That was like 20 years ago. Would that fly today? Would parents really think that's okay to do to your child? To just teach them that you should get awards just for breathing? Like, where's their pride? They don't get any pride from that. Self-esteem comes from pride, not from getting stuff for doing nothing. It's quite the opposite. It makes them feel worse about themselves. So yeah, you're just wrecking them by doing that. It's horrible. Anyway, boy, I was mad when I, and I thought people were gonna go, wait a go, Lisa, they hated me for that. I got a lot of backlash for that column. I think nowadays, just serving the general consensus of parents that I see online, I think most people would agree with the whole against participation awards. I think I don't hear much about that anymore. I think this pleaser parent style is going out because we know now, well, I knew it would never work, but it's not working. I have, okay, the next topic, and again, this is just your perspective. You're not saying this is 100% going to raise entitled kids. I just need to do that disclaimer. The next one is rewarding basic good behavior. Yeah, now if you're rewarding good basic behavior, let me put it this way. Let's say you go out for dinner with your spouse. Okay, so let's say you're a woman and your husband takes you out for dinner. He says to you when you're driving home, you were really good tonight. I'm so proud of you. Think about it. Think about that. Do I even have to say anything else? I don't think so. Let me, but you know what? If I start to talk about that, I won't shut up. So let's just move on. No, I think you can go on about it. That's why we have the podcast. Okay, what you're saying, it's an insult. Well, what the heck was I yesterday? That would be your gut reaction. If you're praising children just for being nice and normal, to me, that's just normal. There's no freaking way I would say to my kids, you were so good today. What a horrible thing to say to a kid. I just, that's horrible. Can you imagine your spouse saying that to you? You were so good today. Why is it appropriate to say that to a child? You know you don't want to hear that from your spouse. You were such a good girl today. You do not want to hear that from your spouse. Why not? It implies that you're normally not. It's like the reward chart for good behavior, right? That sends the message, you're normally rotten. If you should happen to be good, you'll get a gold star. It's a freaking insult. A behavior board says you're normally wonderful. If you should happen to make a poor choice, there's gonna be a consequence. See the difference? I do not reward normal. To me, good is normal. That's how I treat kids. You're normal, you're good. I don't praise them for being normal. It's patronizing, condescending and insulting. Oh, I can feel my heart rate going up here. Okay, that's enough. Okay, the third topic, and I think we've already hammered this one home, participation awards and just overpraising in general. Okay, parents tend to overpraise is okay, but it doesn't build self-esteem or anything. Nothing, does nothing for them. You say, let's say you have this little five-year-old boy and you go up to him and you say, you're wonderful, you're special, you're good-looking, you're smart, you can do anything you want. Okay, I'm gonna go do the dishes now. You look at his face, nothing. Dead zone, did nothing for him. You go up to that same five-year-old little boy and you say to him, hey, what are you playing with? Can I play too? He will light up. Okay, what makes people feel good? It's not praise, it's pride and being enjoyed. He feels good when you're enjoying his company, you're playing with him. It's connection is what makes them feel good. It's all the relationship stuff. It's the connection, it's his efforts, what he puts in. Let's say he builds something really great with Lego, I would praise that. When my kids built something really nice, I'd say, wow, that's impressive. But I would never say to my kids, oh boy, you're so smart, you're so, I mean, I would say at the odd time, but that's not what builds their self-esteem. That is not, it doesn't get you the results that you want with your kids, which is kids who are strong, confident, have high self-esteem. That's what we're after here. And they're nice, they treat people well. The next one is avoiding tantrums and scenes as a parent. Okay, you spoil them, if you're gonna have to spoil them to avoid that, because what I mean by that is there's certain things that need to be done and a lot of parents avoid those things that need to be done just to try and please them. So you're not doing them any favor. So, oh, it's time for bed. Well, I'm gonna have a fit if I have to go, okay, you can stay up for another half hour. If you're avoiding a scene, you're probably doing something you shouldn't do. You're probably letting them do something they shouldn't do. So yeah, okay, time for the iPad to be put away now. You've been on there for three hours. No, okay, another hour then. You see, if you avoid the scenes, because the scenes are the lessons. The scenes are, and they're only gonna happen temporarily until they realize that they've gotta listen anyway, right? They've gotta put the iPad away. They've gotta go to bed. But if you're trying to avoid a scene, you're probably doing the wrong thing. That's a pretty much a sign. If you're avoiding a scene, it's you're probably doing the wrong thing. The next one is cushioning their lives, maybe a little too much and giving in to demands. Yeah, you're not doing them any favors because life isn't like that. You're not setting them up for the real world. Life isn't cushioning, okay? The whole world isn't gonna be catering to them. That's the entitlement that we're raising kids with. That's the frustrating thing for me when I saw that coming in 40 years ago. I thought, boy, you're gonna raise these self-entitled snowflakes because if you're catering to all their wants and needs all the time, like, no, the needs are a bit different. But if you're catering and giving them everything that they want, then the world, they're gonna expect that from the world. How are they gonna manage? How are they gonna navigate through real life? They're not going to. They're gonna have a boss that isn't catering to them, right? They're not gonna deal with that very well. So yeah, you're not doing them any favors. I think that's a tough one too is because it's this balance, right? Maybe you are, let's do a scenario. If you're, maybe you didn't grow up with much. Maybe you wanna give your kids a better life than maybe you had. I think it's that balance of, okay, how do I not spoil them? But then also like make them strong individuals when they grow up. Okay, what'd we do with you? We did spend a lot of money on you, but how did we do it? Well, not tons of money, but if we were gonna spoil our kids, it was experiences, it wasn't stuff. We took them nice places, you know, within reason, we weren't traveling around the world every week, but I mean, we were, it was experiences, like we go to water slide parks, but we never visited gift shops, okay? They didn't come home with all the stuffed animals and the flags and whatever else those gift shops have. We didn't do any of that. But if you wanna spoil your kids, do it with experiences, not with stuff. My favorite, like not my favorite, but one of my favorite stories of us is we went to New Zealand to go skiing and I am a klutz. Like I have always been clumsy my entire life. I, mom said, and I kid you not, she goes, don't break any bones before we go, okay? Because we got this skiing trip, I don't want you broken going there. Don't you know, I run into the coffee table. So. Broker toe. Broke the toe. Broker toe. Pinky toe, pinky toe. Now, do you wanna say what happened? Well, I don't wanna talk about this because it doesn't make me look good. Anyway, okay, I'll tell you. So, and this was the day before we had to leave. Now we lived in Australia, so that's where my kids are born and raised. And then we can't really ski much in Australia, obviously. So we were gonna fly down to New Zealand. This is a big deal. It's a big expensive trip for just skiing, which to me, coming from Vancouver, you can ski like in a drive 20 minutes and you can ski here, but anyway. So anyway, it was a big deal, right? She was five, her brother would have been 10. So she broke her baby toe. We had to go in, we got x-rays and everything. So I said, I told, and I'm always telling her, I know you're clumsy, I know, but we gotta get you out of this. And I was really mad that she'd broke her toe, right? So we were kind of laughing about it. So I said, she went to put her sandals back on after the x-ray and I said, don't do that. Let me do it because you're probably gonna break something else. I went to put her sandal on, I caught the toe and bent it onto the side. The toe went flinging out to the right. It's swaying out. The broken toe. The broken toe, because it was broken. So there was no bone holding it there. Oh my God, and you know what was funny? It must have hurt, but how did you react? Oh, I was crying from laughter. We were laughing so hard. And because here I'm always calling her a klutz, and then here I went and did that. Twing. Yeah, twing. We just broke up. We laughed about that for years. Anyway, and she's five years old, that would have hurt, but she is laughing so hard. It was like payback, ha ha, mom. It felt great. She was happy it happened because I ended up looking like a klutz. So go, we sure laughed at that one. And I think for years after I'd go, mom, do you wanna put on my shoe and then cringe a little? Oh, I would cringe. No, you do it, I'm a klutz, you do it. So yeah, Void and I ever have to eat my words after that one. Okay, and I think that's an important part is growing up, I always felt like I could tease you too. Like I think that sometimes parents find this balance of how do I be a leader for my kids, but then also show that vulnerability. And it was, well, I was very vulnerable and humble. And because you lead by example, what? I am incredibly humble. I am the most humble person. I'm so humble. I'm so humble, I'm a reek of humbleness. I'm the most humble person you'll ever meet. That's what makes me so great. And good one. Anyway, what was my point? Oh, you've gotta be vulnerable. Yeah, vulnerable. And because if you're not, you're not setting a very good example for your kids. Like if I made a mistake, we would laugh at it. Like it's okay to make mistakes, right? The only reason I was so mad about that broken toe was I thought it would ruin our whole trip. The funny thing is you just bandaged it up with the other toes. She didn't bother her at all. She didn't even feel it after that. So it ended up being a great trip. But the point is that it's okay to make mistakes, okay? And laugh at them. That's a sign of confidence. Well, now I'm humble and confident. Throw in a third one for a triple threat. Oh, sure, I'll come up with something because I'm so smart. Anyway, so anyway, let's get back. Okay, so let's get back to where we were though. Experiences, I think it's okay. You're not spoiling them with experiences because that's your connecting. You're doing stuff with them. We were skiing together. We were, you know, you're doing, you're connecting with your kids. I think experiences are different. Whereas buying stuff, it just, and it's just different. But we did a lot of family experience. That's where we put our money. We didn't put it into buying a lot of toys or anything. We put our money into going out, just going out for sushi or something. Like we did a lot of stuff like that with the kids. Okay, the next one is actually on the topic of fun, but it's trying to make everything fun for your kids. Well, a lot of parents say, well, I don't want to associate a consequence with the chore because I want them to think chores are fun. They're trying to make everything fun. So in other words, when your kids are 18 or 15, they get a job. If their bosses aren't making everything fun, how do you think they're gonna cope? I want my kids to learn how to do stuff that isn't fun because that's part of life. I used to tell them this, you gotta do what you need to do before you can do what you want to do. And they learned this when they were three because they knew that if they asked for something, I would say, oh, sure you can have a snack. As soon as you put your toys away, I use the as soon as method. So I never really told them what to do, but I learned, they learned that if they wanted something, they had to sort of clean up after themselves. They couldn't just leave a trail of destruction behind them and expect to go in the pool, right? If they wanted to go in the pool, they had to clean up their toys first. They learned that by the time they were two even, they would start to clean up before they'd even asked for anything. So what's wrong with them learning how to do hard stuff? How are they gonna function with homework? If you're trying to make everything fun, everything isn't fun. You're not setting your children up for reality. You're gonna turn them into self-entitled snowflakes, right? This isn't fun, I don't wanna do it. Well, I hired you for a job, you gotta do the job. I don't like it, it's not fun. You don't want that. I feel like when you are talking about these, they keep on leading into the next. The next one is not enforcing work or chores. Well, yeah, I've just answered that, haven't I? Well, I think maybe talk about the idea of a part-time job for us when we were teenagers. I would never pay for chores. You live here, you contribute, okay? But I did give my kids allowance, but they didn't have to earn it. That was just something that they, I feel children, well, you can look it up. Look up Bratbusters allowance, I got tons of videos on that. I've got a whole system on how I did allowance. So yeah, I think chores are really important. What was the original question, chores? But it's just not having any work or chores for your kids in general. Well, my kids knew if you eat, you got to put your dishes in the dishwasher. If you play, you got to clean up after yourself. You know, it just, that's, you got to be responsible and respectful. You know, you got to respect our home here. You know, I work hard to keep it nice and clean. I did all the cleaning because I didn't like anyone touching my mop or anything. I love cleaning, but they never left a mess behind ever. I used to tell my kids and my husband at the time, I said, if I ever have to pick anything up of yours and clean under it, you'll be doing the vacuuming and mopping the next day. No one ever did because they knew. When they saw me going for that vacuum, boy, they cleaned everything up fast. So, but yeah, they learned that chores are just part of life. They had to make their bed every morning. They had to put their stuff away. They had to put their laundry away. That's just normal. I didn't treat that like, wow, you did your chores. It was just, that's just normal, right? And what are your thoughts on part-time jobs for teenagers? Okay, when my kids turned 15, they both were dying to get a part-time job, get out in the world, you know, because so I was praying that they would have to clean a public toilet. It wasn't their jobs, but some janitor was out each and they both had to clean up a public toilet at least once. I was thrilled. I wanted them to learn how to be hard workers. They're both almost to a fault now. You're a workaholic. I'd say your brother's very close to one also. I think you're both pretty much workaholics. They love working. They love, you know, the responsibility, but I raised them with a lot of chores and responsibilities. So I've cleaned many public toilets in my lifetime. Yeah, I only had to clean one and it was for a graduation party. We turned up, one of my kids had a graduation party at this big gymnastics auditorium and a horrendous thing had happened in the bathroom. And they said, what do we do? And I said, okay, I got this and all the other parents could not have been more grateful. I had rubber gloves and I went in there. I was there for like two hours. So even I had to do that, that was gross. And that was just because of my kids' event. It wasn't even one of my jobs. Even I, the triple threat had to go on and do that. Oh, that was bad. That was bad. Yeah, the triple threat. Okay, the next, we're on the seventh one now. It's negotiating the non-negotiables with your kids. Well, what's a non-negotiable bedtime? I don't negotiate. Let's say bedtime and they say, no and you start negotiating with them. Well, I don't. I just say, well, that's bedtime. Would a teacher negotiate lunchtime or when you come in at recess? No, it's a non-negotiable, right? The bell goes, you come in from recess. That's a non-negotiable. But as they get older, you negotiate teenagers and you negotiate just about everything. But all the other stuff I would negotiate for sure. Everything was up for grabs. Although I'll be honest, I don't talk about this a lot. I sort of mentioned it in coaching when I get further along with clients in coaching, but we didn't have a lot of rules or anything. And my kids knew, like if their bedtime was eight o'clock and there was a really good show on that for a half hour that they wanted to watch, they would have said, mom, can we watch this? I would have said, sure, because they were such good kids. I already had that leadership cemented. The difference is though, if I'd said, no, they would have gone, okay, I'm going to bed. They wouldn't have argued it, right? So that's the difference. So there were exceptions, but yeah. But when you're working to get that leadership cemented, there's no exceptions to the non-negotiable. Bedtime can't be negotiated. Brushing your teeth can't be negotiated. If my kids said, look, can I brush my teeth later? I would have said, sure, you know. But if I'd said, no, do it now, they would have. That's the difference. If they're going to argue it, then I wouldn't negotiate or I wouldn't even discuss it. Okay, the eighth one or the ninth one now is lack of consequences in general for kids. That's terrible because let's say they, okay. Well, let's say you decide that one day you're going to be really on top of everything and you have on the behavior board, no hitting is the kids rule. But then let's say you're doing really well. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, you have a consequence every time they hit. Then Thursday, you just say, oh, forget it. I'm just too tired. Huge mistake, huge mistake. That's why we only deal with one thing at a time because you've got to be really consistent with it. Now, the only way you can recover from not having a consequence on, let's say Thursday, you decide I just can't even handle it today. The next day, let's say your kids have been done rotten things all day long, right? Because they think, oh, I got a free pass now. She's not on her game today. She's letting everything go. So on Friday, I would say, I'll tell you what, yesterday you did this and that, and I didn't do anything about it. Do you know what? That is bad on me. I have to have a consequence because I wasn't doing my job. You can't blame the kids for not getting consequences. You can only blame yourself. So now you get a consequence for not disciplining them. They're kind of confused by this huge amount of respect you just threw their way. That is major leadership brownie points right there. It's for sure what I would have done. If they'd been rotten all day and I was too lazy to discipline them, the next day I would have said, oh, you have to discipline me now because I didn't do my job as a parent yesterday. They'll be confused initially, but boy will they feel respected. They'll look at you differently. I'm sure it's also double because it's sending the message of, I should have disciplined you. And then also because I didn't. Yeah, you're admitting that you messed up and saying I should have like I messed up, but now I can't discipline you now because it's too late. I let that slip. It's on me now. You get to discipline me. I would even say, what do you think's fair? They might say, we'd like to go to paintball today. I'd say, okay, let's go. Right now, think about that. That's so much more powerful than I even, I wanna go on about it a little bit. How would you feel if your parents did that for you? Looking back in your, how you were raised, my parents would have done that for me, but maybe your parents wouldn't have. How would that make you feel as a kid? You knew you were rotten all day. So the next day your parents say, you know what? I didn't do anything about yesterday. You did this and that. And then you know what? I should have had a consequence for you. I was too lazy to do that now. You get to discipline me today for not doing that. Wouldn't you feel respected? And wouldn't you feel, wouldn't you respect them? You know, it's not weakness. That's strength. That's not weakness as a parent. That is the opposite. And talk about respecting your kids, right? And that's how you make it up. So you can mess up. You can be inconsistent. Don't make a habit out of it, by the way. Don't do it every second day. But I mean, maybe once a month or so if that happens, that's how you make it up. And you can actually get even more brownie points as leadership, right? Are your kids driving you nuts? They don't have to. Check out bratbusters.com for my bootcamp courses. If you want to learn how to become a leader. And the final one is just spoiling your kids overall. Find them too much stuff. This is hard for a lot of my clients, who have a lot. Some of my clients have a lot of money. And they say, well, what are we supposed to do? We get all this money. I say, well, then spend the money on experiences, right? Not stuff. And here's the thing is they should really only be getting toys and stuff twice a year, birthday and Christmas, right? The rest of the time, they don't need that. They've probably already got tons of stuff anyway. And if you're spoiling them with stuff, usually it's because they're asking for it. If they never asked for anything, I was more inclined to maybe get something for my kids just a treat once in a while. It was always my suggestion. If my kids had ever asked for a treat, they wouldn't have got it. Because I would have said, well, that's not a treat. That's me feeling a demand. So they knew if they never asked for treats every so often, they'd get one. But it was always a surprise. And then they appreciated it. Talk about gratitude. If you're spoiling your kids and filling all their demands and whatever they ask for, you give it to them. Where's their gratitude? Where's their grace? They don't appreciate anything. They just expect it. That's that entitlement, spoiledness. It's not a good trait to have. No one likes a spoiled, entitled person. It's not a very good trait to train your kids into. You're not doing them any favors. They're not going to be very likable. Do you want to get into a few parenting questions? Sure. Oh my goodness. I thought that was everything. Even we've been talking for three hours. I felt like a really long, it was 25 minutes we've been talking there. OK. Oh gosh. That's going to show if I cut out anything. People are like, no, it's just been 12 minutes. You never know, because I do say some weird stuff. But anyway, the thing is that my voice starts to cave a little bit after 30 minutes. That's why I'm concerned. Now, just to be clear, before I get into these questions, I'm not saying that these parents are raising entitled kids. It's just some of these touch on the topics that we discussed earlier. That's your disclaimer, I get it. You're not calling them spoilers. You're just saying they kind of fit what we're talking about. Yeah. OK. The first one is Natasha from Pakistan. What should I do if my toddler who's 2 and 1 1⁄2 demands praise for very mediocre accomplishments? Like drawing a line on a piece of paper and showing it to me expecting applause. I try to encourage him and applaud him. But I worry I'm raising someone who will be only extran- the, extrinsically motivated. Or maybe even someone who expects praise for every little thing is an adult. How do I encounter this without being a harsh mother? I think it's intrinsically. Anyway, OK, so I would praise that age. Yeah, everything they do. God, my granddaughter just squishes a bit of play-doh. I go, wow, well done. Yeah, she's only 2. Yeah, at that age, I praise everything. Yeah. But I play with them too. I don't just praise and walk away on their playing with her. Right? When does that age cut off? They start to care less about all that stuff. They just pull away. They get sick of hearing it. Wow, well done. Yeah, anyway, I'm busy here. So yeah, they start to pull away from that usually. OK, the next one is Natalie from Australia. My son's 18 months. He started to become very demanding if he wants something open for him. Or he can't quite work out to play with a toy or read a book. He will come up and be yelling straight at me, for instance, with the book. He just throws it and drops it right on me. He only says a few words, but speaks a lot of gibberish all day long. What's the best way to go about this? I know he's only young. I just want him to grow up in no matters and patience when he's developmentally there. OK, so he's 18 months. He's in the toddler stage. I call toddlers like 16 months to 35 months. Anyway, so if he threw a book because he's mad, because he won't read it already, I would just pick up the book and I'd say no. And then I just put it away where he can't touch it. And then I go about my business, but I don't talk to him. I just let him work through that. I want him to process that. You throw a book at me, you're going to get ignored, and that book's going to get put away. OK, now if he keeps going on for too long, he's having a tantrum, and it's just going on and on and on for like five, 10 minutes. I might go over and sit down maybe on a little chair of his, and I might start reading out one of his books just to myself. I don't invite him over. It's called Indirect Redirection. So he knows he can come over and join you. But it's your offering, sort of offering it, but you're not looking at him or talking to him. You're just sitting down. He can come over and join you very quietly. If he grabs that book and throws it, then I would take it away. And I'd say no, and I'd get up and walk away. And I'd go through the process again. He's just testing you, by the way. He's seeing what he can get away with. Okay, the next one's Lana from South Africa. I'm really wanting to implement a toy rotation, but I'm unsure what to do with various little other toys, such as children's cameras, fidget toys, singing microphone, walkie-talkies. I get that you recommend only having a few toys out, but should all of these other random items also get packed away and brought out on a rotation basis? Okay, you leave the big stuff out, like Lego and blocks. You usually leave the big stuff out, but I call those activities. So if it's something that like a train set or Lego, I only allow one of those on the go at any given time. Okay, how old was the kid? I don't think she mentioned the kid's age. There wasn't a specific age here. So let's just say there, I don't know, three. So I would say, okay, do you want to do Play-Doh? Now, there's no way I would have Lego and a train set and Play-Doh all on the go at the same time. I'd say, okay, let's pack up your Lego, and then we can pull out Play-Doh. I treat those big things with lots of little pieces that are really messy. I treat that as an activity. All the other toys, I have them all put away with just a few out maybe on a bookshelf in their room, and they can just play with those in addition to the activities. But the activity stuff, it's one at a time. Sure, you can play with the train set as soon as you put the Play-Doh away. And I think I brought up this question because you do talk about the idea of the toy rotation. It's kind of the idea of like, they're not constantly bombarded with like hundreds of toys. You look at the way classrooms run. Now, schools are very different from home. One is personal, one's business, but a lot of stuff works the same. Like, I kind of ran all the toys like a classroom. Here, now we're gonna play with this activity, and we put everything else away first. I never pulled something new out without putting the other stuff away first, because you got a lure. The lure is, sure you can have Play-Doh. Let's pack this up first. It's teaching them to clean up after themselves before they go on to something else. That's like the teenage girls who try on 20 outfits, but they never hang any of them up. They just throw them all in the bed. So, you know, you want to teach them, well, wait a minute, before you try on another outfit, hang it up first. That probably won't work anyway. They'll probably continue to do it the other way. But it's sort of along the same lines. You got to finish with one thing before you start another. It's a really good self-discipline to learn, and the younger they learn, that the better. So, yeah, and they can have, they can bounce around from all the little toys that you have out, but the big stuff, the schools run beautifully that way. They say, okay, let's clean this up, and then we'll bring that out. They don't focus on anything if there's too much around. And it's teaching them how to focus and discipline. So, if they had a train set and Lego and Play-Doh all out at the exact same time, it just strewn out everywhere, would they focus on anything? No, they're more likely to say, I'm bored at the same time, which parents are shot. You should see all the stuff he has out, and I'm going, that's why he's bored. He's got, no, you haven't taught him how to focus, right? The closet thing reminded me, did you ever watch the movie Clueless? Yeah. With Cher, and she had that closet thing where it was just like an app where she could just look through her closet and put all the outfits together and see it. Yeah, that was cute. Well, I didn't have that for my kids with toys. But yeah, that was really cute. But I just had all this stuff thrown up in boxes up in the closet. And I only really rotated them once every few months. People are shocked at that, but my kids really were more into activities. They were into a bunch of little junky toys. I usually gave them all away anyway. I like big activity creative stuff, and it kept them entertained for hours. Okay, so, and also we had a toy library where we lived. In Australia, they have like a toy library is attached to any, a big library, like a normal one, and it's all free. And you can rent out these great big toys. Like they're really neat things, the mini trampolines, the little slides you put outside, and the big doll houses and big garages and whatever. They were fantastic. And so they had a lot of that sort of stuff too. So you might have a toy rotation going, but you also might have a toy library where you're kind of rotating those toys. So every two weeks we'd go back and get something different. It was fantastic. So I was always moving stuff around. If you just have a toy room, I'm not into toy rooms to be honest, but if you do have a toy room and all the toys are out at any given time, those kids are more likely to say I'm bored than kids who don't have a toy room or a play room. What would you have done if we said we were bored? Well, you'll both tried it once and my son was older. So he said, I'm bored. And I said, oh, my precious angel, are you bored? He realized right away that I was up to something because I was sort of smiling. And he goes, no, I'm not bored. I was just kidding. I said, come on, he was about five. And I said, come on, sweetheart, my poor angel. I hate the thought of you being bored. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not. So I took him in the laundry room, filled up a bucket and gave him a mop. He was never bored again. Don't you complain to me, kiddo. We've got a great life here. I've got stuff out for you. But he'd heard a friend say it. He'd been for a play date with a friend's house and the friend would have said it. And I think the mom gave him chocolate bars or something. Guess he thought he could try that on me. Good luck with that. Anyway, five years later, she said, I'm bored. And my son couldn't, oh, he was laughing right away. And she knew she was in for something because he was laughing, I was smiling. So yeah, don't pull that on me. You got stuff to do. But plus I was rotating stuff around so they didn't tend to get bored with stuff, right? Okay, we have one final question. So Ali from the United Kingdom, what to do when a four-year-old keeps insisting that you play together, but then won't let you play at all? So they just want you to be their slave. I would say, they'd say, do you want to play a game? I'd say, sure. And then if they're not playing nicely, I said, oh, I don't want to play. You're not being nice. I would literally just say that and get up and leave. And say, no, you're not playing nice. I don't want to play and get up and leave. I think often you've talked about the idea that you let kids be in charge of the play, but how does that look practically for this? Well, because they're not in charge of the play. They're in charge of bossing you around. They're just being rude to you. But I would make sure that they know how to play nicely. I'm assuming they do. Okay, so I might say, what do you want to play? You let them be in charge of what you play, right? You say, so you let them be in charge of the fun, but it doesn't mean they can boss you around and they can just have a free for all that they can treat you like crap, right? So you say, well, what do you want to play? They're in charge of what you play, okay? Once it comes out, if they start getting rude, say, no, you can't have that. Say, you're not playing very nice. Maybe we'll try again later. Okay, get up and leave. Or you might even say, look, we'll try again in five minutes because you're not playing very nice. We'll try again in five minutes. Put the timer on five minutes later. Oh, now don't discuss the bad behavior. Just say you're ready to play now. He should start playing nice. If he wants you to play, if he wants your attention, he should start playing nice. Okay, that was it for the questions. Okay, that felt like a really long one. I think because I got a bit passionate at the start there with all this stuff and I wore my voice out. Anyway, so it was, are you raising self-entitled kids or spoiled kids? However you're gonna name this. She's in charge of all this stuff. So anyway, are you raising entitled kids? You already know you are if you are. You're spoiling them. They're demanding stuff. And if you say no, they have a fit. That's an entitled child, okay? Or if they don't want to do the hard stuff because they just don't want to put their clothes away, that's also entitled, okay? So you don't want to do that. You're not doing them any favors because life isn't like that. You want kids who pull their own weight, who appreciate things and they have gratitude when they do get something nice. They don't just demand it and then have a fit if they don't get it. That is spoiled. You're not doing them any favor. And if you do want to spoil them with, because you have lots of money or you have lots of time or whatever, do experiences, okay? That's sort of spoiling, but you're spoiling them with love sort of. It's just different. It's just different. It doesn't raise entitlement. It raised like a happy family, right? You want to do stuff together. So that's a way that you can sort of spoil them, but not in a negative way. Anyway, does that make sense? It does. That was very, very lovely. Was it lovely? That was lovely. Was I being lovely? Now I'm lovely and I'm also humble and vulnerable. Okay, so thanks so much for joining us. We'll be back again another time talking about another parenting topic. Happy parenting. Thanks for tuning in. If you're ready to dive deeper, check out bratbusters.com to learn more about the behavior board, parenting courses, and private 101 coaching with Lisa. If you've enjoyed the show so far, we'd love it if you could take a moment to follow, rate, and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback helps us reach more parents just like you. 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