Why Kids Do What They Do with Meri Wallace

This is Women Road Warriors with Shelly Johnson and Cassie Ticcaro from the corporate office to the cab of a truck. They're here to inspire and empower women in all professions. So gear down, sit back and enjoy. Welcome. We're an award-winning show dedicated to empowering women in every profession through inspiring stories and expert insights. No topics off limits on our show. We Power Women on the Road to Success with expert and celebrity interviews and information you need. I'm Shelly and Kathy's on assignment. As a parent, do you sometimes wonder if you're dealing with a space alien who has no idea how to communicate with you or conduct themselves in the proper way? Do you also wonder what it takes to speak to your kids? Sometimes it seems like a really complicated mystery, especially when kids get into their teens. There really are answers and solutions. Mary Wallace is the author of The Secret World of Children. Why children behave the way they do? Mary's been a child and family therapist and parenting expert for over 30 years. She writes a monthly blog for Psychology Today and has appeared on national TV, radio and popular podcasts to discuss everything from infancy to adolescence. She's made repeated appearances on Eyewitness News, Good Day New York, WNBC, CNN, MSNBC, BBC, WPIX, The Hallmark Channel and The Fox Family Channel. Mary is also the author of Birth Order Blues in Keys to Parenting Your 4-Year-Old. Mary helps parents understand the developmental reasons for behaviors that their children have and teaches them positive words and actions to take in response. She's identified nine specific developmental issues that cause a child's troublesome behavior. Her advice helps reduce parent-child battles and builds strong parent-child communication. We wanted to know more, so we invited Mary on the show. Welcome, Mary. Thank you for being with me. Thank you so much for inviting me. Oh, this is gonna be a wonderful conversation. I can't wait to hear some of your insight because, you know, it does seem like at times the kids are on another planet other than ours, you know? As your website says, children's behavior can be baffling, terrifying, and utterly infuriating sometimes. Parents can feel so lost and hopeless. This is such a difficult issue for parents. As a matter of fact, as a parenting expert and a child's infirmary therapist, I feel this is the hardest thing in the world for parents. To understand why their child is flinging a fork full of spaghetti across the room or is kicking and hitting and biting, they don't understand and they get upset. They worry, is my child gonna end up on the therapist's couch forever? Have I failed as a parent? So I wrote this book out of my love for children and my wish to explain to parents how to respond positively to their children's behavior, how to understand it, and most of all, if you understand it and you use the suggestions I give you in the book, you will raise your child to feel loved. That's the most important thing. I love this. You know, it's so important. Kids don't come with an owner's manual. You know what? Everything else in life, we have instructions. We really don't have one for children and every child is different. So I mean, your insight is so valuable. Before we talk about some of the things that you can share with parents, I wanted to cover a little bit about your background so our listeners can get to know you. How did you decide to become a parenting expert and what's your background in therapy? Well, I've had an interesting background. I started out as a dance teacher and I taught children how to dance and also adults. And I just fell in love with children and I wanted to learn more about their development and I wanted to teach parents how to work with their kids better. I mean, I've lived long enough to be on a street corner watching parents hitting their kids because they're so frustrated and frightened and they don't know what to do. Growing up, I could see where my parents were making mistakes. So I really wanted to learn a lot about how parents can do this in the best way possible so that they would feel self-confident and the kids, as I said before, would grow up feeling loved. I think it's so needed. It's kind of interesting. After having children, raising children, all of that, human kind has been doing that forever but it's still a mystery. And it seems to change, of course, technology changes, everything, society changes. So there are different theories all the time on how to parent and it does seem like parenting may be more difficult today. I know I see a lot of kids out there that they really have some bad behavior, not stuff I used to see when I was a child. Is there something that's different out there? Have children gotten a lot more angry? Well, I think that children are facing many more difficulties than ever before. I mean, school shootings and climate change and there's a lot of scary things going on. And with the internet, there's so much access to issues such as drinking and smoking and drugs. And children are living in a very different environment than they did earlier on. Also, I think that in prior decades, I think there was a misunderstanding of children that governed how parents reacted. They didn't understand what I've discovered. I've discovered that the behavior we see is always predicated by some sort of emotional issue or developmental issue underneath. And parents never learned that. So through the centuries, the belief was, okay, here's how you raise a child. If the child does something wrong, you use capital punishment or you scream or you, there was a feeling that the child was bad. And so I think what happened then is children grew up feeling quite bad and they weren't really taught how to deal with their feelings and how to behave in the best way possible. And so I think what I've discovered in my over 30 years is that there really are developmental reasons why a child will kick and bite. The child is not bad. Children are not bad. They start reacting from developmental issues. For example, you're feeding your baby and your three-year-old is feeling jealous and feels he wants attention, but he doesn't have the language or the impulse control to come over and say, hey, Ma. What about me? What are my child's liver? You know, give me some attention. And so children and everything in my book, I show any kind of behavior that I describe, I link it to infancy. Little babies, when they're hungry or frustrated, will thrash their arms and legs. They will react physically. So when you get to be three, you still don't have the language and you still don't have the impulse control. So you just continue to behave that way. And in my book, I follow each particular developmental issue all the way from infancy to adolescence. I mean, adolescents will still slam a door and scream, I hate you. Oh, yeah. And our job as parents is to teach our children how to express themselves in words. And they don't come into this world with the words. And so one of my, the strongest things that I tell parents is you have to teach phrases. You have to teach children what they can say instead of engaging in negative behavior. And as we go along, I'll show you how that works. Okay, that makes sense. When we come back, we can cover some of that. ["Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"] Stay tuned for more of Women Road Warriors coming up. Dean Michael, the tax doctor here. I have one question for you. Do you want to stop worrying about the IRS? If the answer is yes, then look no further. I've been around for years. I've helped countless people across the country and my success rate speaks for itself. So now you know where to find good, honest help with your tax problems. What are you waiting for? If you owe more than $10,000 of the IRS or haven't filed in years, call me now at 888-557-4020 or go to mytaxhelpmd.com for a free consultation and get your life back. Industry movement Trucking Moves America forward is telling the story of the industry. Our safety champions, the women of trucking, independent contractors, the next generation of truckers, and more. Help us promote the best of our industry. Share your story and what you love about trucking. Share images of a moment you're proud of. And join us on social media. Learn more at truckingmovesamerica.com. Welcome back to Women Road Warriors with Shelly Johnson at Cathy Takarov. If you're enjoying this informative episode of Women Road Warriors, I wanted to mention Cathy and I explore all kinds of topics that will power you on the road to success. We feature a lot of expert interviews. Plus we feature celebrities and women who've been trailblazers. Please check out our podcast at womenroadwarriors.com and click on our episodes page. We're also available wherever you listen to podcasts on all the major podcast channels like Spotify, Apple, YouTube, Amazon Music, Audible, you name it. Check us out and bookmark our podcast. Also don't forget to follow us on social media. We're on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube and other sites. And tell others about us. We wanna help as many women as possible. If you've ever looked at your child, especially a teenager and wondered if you're trying to communicate with someone from another planet, you're not alone. Parenting can feel like decoding a mystery, especially when it comes to understanding why kids act the way they do. But there are answers. Mary Wallace has spent over 30 years helping parents crack that code. She's a family therapist, parenting expert and author of The Secret World of Children. Why children behave the way they do. Mary says many times it's a matter of teaching a child what to say instead of engaging in negative behavior. You may have seen her on CNN, MSNBC or the Hallmark Channel or read her blog in Psychology Today. Mary has identified nine key developmental reasons behind challenging behaviors. She's been sharing how parents can respond with empathy, reduce conflict and build stronger connections. Mary, would you say that some of this also is a struggle for independence? We as a species wanna be independent. And if you look at the two-year-old, the terrible twos, they're saying no, they want their way. When you look at adolescents, the same thing, they're trying to break free of their parents' rules and basically function on their own, which is part of the natural process. Do you think that's part of what comes into play there? Absolutely. And it is one of the nine developmental issues that underlie a child's behavior. And you picked two very interesting points. A two-year-old and a teenager do have something in common. They very much want to be independent. A two-year-old suddenly has all these new skills and wants to put her shoes on by herself and will kick you and push you away when you try to help her put the shoes on, even though she can't put them on by herself. So it's the question of how to work with that. And I will tell you that in a second. A teenager wants to go out into the world and do what adults do. But the teenager doesn't have the skills. And we need to teach the teenager skills. So with the two-year-old, we say, oh, I can see you really want to do that, but you really want to put on your shoe by yourself. Okay, I'll tell you what. You put on one shoe and I'll put on the other. Or to a teenager say, you know what? I know you really want to walk to school on your own. But I will walk together to school and I will show you how to do it safely. I will show you where you can stop if you have any problems, who can help you. We'll go over how to cross the large streets. So our job is to be like a mentor to our child, to teach our child in that particular situation what steps to take. And so they will internalize the skills and be able to function more independently. And they'll remember that. Essentially, you're also striking a compromise. You put on one shoe, I'll put on the other. So they're still being able to be independent. But then while you're putting on their shoe, they can kind of observe what you're doing too. Yes, we always want to acknowledge the child's wish. You wish to be independent. That's good, that's very good. We want to promote independence. But we also want to promote safety. And we want to teach our child the skills to accomplish what they really want. And they need to know from us that they're, wait, you're not able to tie your shoe because you need to make a loop this way and that way. If a child is fighting, you putting him into a car seat, you can say, you know what? You can climb up on the seat and here's how you can get into the seat by yourself. So in a way, it's sort of, you could call it a compromise, but you're also aiding the child. You're being this benign mentor. What do you do with a willful child that has temper tantrums all the time? Okay, as I said before, children, young children especially, if you're in a store shopping and your child sees this red fire engine that's new and shiny, and he wants it and he throws himself on the floor. And the reason children do this begins actually in infancy. In infancy, a child knows, I'm hungry and you're not coming fast enough and I have to eat to live. You know, there's an internal message that body has. You must eat to live. So children will scream and cry and then, but later on as they grow, they transfer their urgent wishes to everything they want. And it's hard, it's very hard for us because if a child who walks into a store is gonna find something he gets attached to and urgently wants it, okay? So now a child's tantrum is kind of a protest. I want that. I really, really want that. So there's certain steps you can take to work with that. It's not easy. Well, everybody in this store is looking at you to see, are you a capable parent? Can you handle your child? Do you, you know, can you handle an out of control child? You really have an out of control child. No, you have a child who wants and feels it urgently. So we say immediately, say to a child, I can see that you want that red fire engine. We acknowledge the wish because once you acknowledge it, you sort of bring down the level of urgency to protest. You lower the protest a little bit. A little bit, I'm not saying you always, you know, it takes it away, but I can see that you want it but you need to come off the floor and we talk about it in our family. We talk that what we want. We don't throw ourselves on the floor. We don't hit anybody. We don't kick anybody. We talk. And here's what you can say, mommy, I really want that truck. So your three year old is starting to internalize a way of asserting himself that's positive. And then you can tell your child, you know what, we can't get that today. It's a big present and I just bought you some, a bowl in the other store. And, but we can put it on a list on my phone. And on this, on the phone, we can, and maybe we'll get a few for your birthday or for Christmas or the next time we want to give you a gift. So it's on the phone. Now, children love that. Children feel that it gives them a certain amount of power. And some assurance that, well, I wouldn't even say some, an assurance that you're taking their desires and needs into consideration. Sure. It doesn't mean you buy, it doesn't mean you rush out and buy the truck. But, yeah, so that's why children have tensions because they really want something bad or they feel angry and their emotional economy is not developed yet. I've seen parents who give in, they'll just get the toy to keep the child quiet. And if they're told, the child's told, no, not right now. Sometimes they're like, I want my immediate gratification. They'll still be angry. I want that now. I want it. I want it. How do you deal with that? Because it's almost like sometimes the children do this so much, the parents don't know how to deal with their behavior. The children are running the show. Well, yeah, because a child's wishes and emotions are big. And so sometimes it feels easier just to give in. I don't want to fight. And in my book, I also talk about the parents' childhood and maybe in childhood, they had a parent and they didn't want to fight. They didn't want to fight. They were afraid to fight with their parents or the parents never gave them toys. So as parents, it's not only what the child's presenting, but our own experiences come to the fore. It can ignite all kinds of old issues of our own. And in my book, in every chapter, I talk about, let's say, love is the need for love is one of the developmental issues that children have. So think about your own experiences with love. Did your parents give you enough attention? Did they hug you? Did they tell you, I love you? So when you're dealing with your child, it affects how you respond to your child. So when we go back to the fire and Jake, you know, we might say, because of our own experience, we might say, okay, my parents never gave me anything, I'm gonna give them. But I recommend that, yes, you look into your own childhood because that's gonna help you in your parenting. If you're not aware of what you're reacting to, if you're always saying no, then to your child, then you might say, well, maybe that's something you learn from your own parents. They always said no, so I'm gonna always say no. So you need to look into yourself. But overall, it is best not to give in unless it makes sense, you know what I mean? That makes total sense. Stay tuned for more of Women Road Warriors coming up. Dean Michael, the tax doctor here. I have one question for you. Do you want to stop worrying about the IRS? If the answer is yes, then look no further. I've been around for years, I've helped countless people across the country and my success rate speaks for itself. So now you know where to find good, honest help with your tax problems, what are you waiting for? If you owe more than $10,000 of the IRS or haven't filed in years, call me now at 888-557-4020 or go to mytaxhelpmd.com for a free consultation and get your life back. Welcome back to Women Road Warriors with Shelley Johnson and Kathy Takarro. If you've ever looked at your child, especially a teenager and wondered if you're trying to communicate with someone from another planet, you're not alone. Parenting can feel like decoding a mystery, especially when it comes to understanding why kids act the way they do. But there are answers. Mary Wallace has spent over 30 years helping parents crack that code. She's a family therapist, parenting expert and author of The Secret World of Children, why children behave the way they do. Mary says many times it's a matter of teaching a child what to say instead of engaging in negative behavior. You may have seen her on CNN, MSNBC or the Hallmark Channel or read her blog in Psychology Today. Mary has identified nine key developmental reasons behind challenging behaviors. She's been sharing how parents can respond with empathy, reduce conflict and build stronger connections. You know, Mary, there's so many differences with children, especially by gender. Boys and girls are different and they have to be handled differently. I mean, I've heard that from my friends. And boys and girls can have totally different ways of handling the teenage years. You've talked about nine specific developmental issues that cause children's troublesome behavior. Did you wanna highlight some of those? I know that we don't have time to probably cover everyone, but maybe give us some tidbits because I know the listeners are going to say, how are they? Okay, so the need for love, children need love, that's the most important need. And again, I'm starting from infancy with all of these. They need to be touched. Touch is like the most, in the beginning is like one of the most important things. You need to touch, hug, give attention to your child, to a child, attention equals love. And you must do that so that the child feels love. The second issue that is an underlying cause of a lot of children's behavior is curiosity. They are naturally born with it. You will see a two-week-old child lift up his body and look around outside the crib. They are in love with the world. They have, and actually they've done studies that show that curiosity is the most important thing for children in learning. The third thing is the need for independence. Children are born and they feel at one with their parents. They cry, the parent feeds them. They often feel like the parent's hand is their own hand. And then really early, we begin to see a baby start to try to be independent, climb up on a chair when they're really too small and it could harm them. And so there's a tremendous need for independence that shows itself most clearly in adolescence. And in fact, adolescents need to begin to be independent because they're going out in the world. This is right before they go out in the world. So they want to feel independent. Fourth thing is that children experience an urgent need for whatever they wished. And I already explained that infants need to eat, so it's urgent and it is urgent. And then they transfer this urgency to anything they want as they grow. And they need to learn that it's okay to want, it's okay to want, but you can't have everything you want and you can't have everything you want right now. The next thing is impulsivity. Children have quick feelings and desires and they take an action and they're not aware of the consequence. Because children have urgent wishes, they experience as life and death, that's why a two-year-old will go through an open gate and jump into the swimming pool because they have an impulse to do it. So that's something that they need to learn that something could happen to them, they could get hurt. And so you can't jump down from the bunk bed. You can't go into the street because it's my job to keep you safe. And so over time, and it takes a very long time for children to control their impulses. As a matter of fact, it's the frontal cortex of the brain. The frontal cortex of the brain actually is only fully developed, but when an individual is 25. Interesting, oh my goodness. Impulsivity exists for a very long time. And frankly, a lot of these things, though I say it's from infancy to adolescence, adults struggle with that too. Okay, I'm not gonna eat a brownie, I'm gonna eat an apple instead. Oh, oh, oh, oh. And then there's a very important issue that children live in the moment. When they get out of bed, they're not thinking, I have to get dressed because I have to go to school, little children especially, they'd rather play. So they jump into play and it's very hard to get them to stop playing, to get dressed. It's very hard to get children to brush their teeth because they'd rather play than brush their teeth. So they live in the here and now, they're focused on what they want to do. Oh yeah, I remember as a child, I didn't like to have to take time to go to the bathroom, it was interrupting what I was doing. Absolutely, absolutely. And then they don't know, if you say, okay, we're leaving in three minutes, they'll go, what's a minute? Yeah. Little kids, they don't know what it is. I remember my mother in the summertime, I'm a redhead and mom wanted me to stay out of the sun so I wouldn't get burned. And she'd say, you need to stay in the shade, you need to stay in the shade. And I wasn't in the shade and she finally came out and she said, what are you doing? And I looked at her, I said, what is the shade? I have no idea. Exactly, exactly. And it takes time to teach children about time. What is a second? What's a schedule? What do you need to do each day? You know, you start off with a calendar that has a picture of all the activities that a child needs to do that day. But we need to be patient because they have such strong urges and desires that it is very hard for a child to stop what they're doing. It feels like a loss. You've got that as one of your developmental issues, the desire for pleasure. And during adolescence, oh my, you cut the sexual stuff going on with the hormones, you know. But this pleasure is so interesting because it actually starts in infancy. There is a mechanism in our body that makes eating pleasurable so that there's a release of dopamine. So it keeps, so our species will survive. And this need for pleasure continues all the way through a child's growing up and adulthood. But the thing is, is that over time with our patient instruction, guidance, children learn how to handle it better. Every child also has, as our last, I think I covered all nine, fear and anxiety. Naturally, when a baby is born, there's a natural instinctive feeling that I could get hurt and killed in a second. And that's an instinct. So the fight or flee comes from there. You know, I need to survive. All life is about survival. And these nine issues also have to do with survival. The child's main goal is to survive. And they need love for it, they need independence. A lot of the issues that I have mentioned are all about survival. So we have to help children understand what is in fact really dangerous and what they need to do to protect themselves. Sure. The next episode will be about Stay tuned for more of Women Road Warriors coming up. Dean Michael, the tax doctor here. I have one question for you. Do you want to stop worrying about the IRS? If the answer is yes, then look no further. I've been around for years. I've helped countless people across the country. And my success rate speaks for itself. So now you know where to find good, honest help with your tax problems. What are you waiting for? If you owe more than $10,000 of the IRS or haven't filed in years, call me now at 888-557-4020 or go to mytaxhelpmd.com for a free consultation and get your life back. Welcome back to Women Road Warriors with Shelly Johnson at Cathy Takarro. If parenting ever feels like a daily negotiation with a tiny, unpredictable roommate, you're spot on with that feeling. Whether you're dealing with toddler tantrums or the silence of a brooding teen, it can feel like you somehow missed the manual. But our guest, Mary Wallace, has been sharing the answers you've been looking for. Mary is a seasoned family therapist and author of The Secret World of Children. And she spent decades helping parents understand what's really going on beneath the surface of their child's behavior. She says children have a deep need for survival and love. And that means more than just saying it. Touching, hugging, and giving focused attention are all essential. That's what equals love to a child. Mary also explains that a lot of misbehavior isn't about being bad. It's often rooted in natural curiosity or tied to stages of development, as far back as infancy. She's identified nine specific reasons why kids act out and offers practical real life strategies to reduce the conflict and strengthen communication. Mary, there are a lot of things to think about as a parent that I don't think a lot of parents are even aware of. Parents really need to be self aware. They have to use a lot of understanding. But this gives a really good perspective of all the stuff that's going on in a developing child. This is a book. I think all parents really need to pick up, maybe before they even have children. The Secret World of Children, why children behave the way they do. Where can people find your book, Mary? Well, it's on Amazon. And yeah, you could just go on Amazon and get it. Excellent. And can people work with you virtually? Do you do virtual sessions? Yes, I do. And telephone. Yeah, I do do that. Especially since COVID, I began to do that more and more and it works beautifully. Oh, absolutely. And that's convenient for parents if they need something like right now, I can't drive for your facility. So I need to talk right now and can we set up an appointment? So this is convenient. Can people go to marywallis.com? That's M-E-R-I-W-A-L-L-A-C-E.com? Yes. And I talk about my experiences on television and the books I've written. And I have my Psychology Today blogs about every topic you could go to Psychology Today and you'll find tons of topics that may relate to you. That's terrific. This is some tremendous information, Mary. We barely tapped into everything but you've really given listeners some food for thought. I don't think the average parent really thinks about all of this stuff. There's so many dynamics that go into the growing child. I love how you've broken all of this down. It's such common sense and I think it's great. It's a great guide for parents and it's gonna make for happier children. The secret world of children, why children behave the way they do. I recommend people pick up the book. I really appreciate you talking about this, Mary. It's my pleasure. I believe it can be very helpful. Sometimes I work with a family for a few minutes and I start turning things around in their lights when they're pulling out their air. Yeah, and that's all they need sometimes is like show me the light, please, please guide me. I enjoy it. Oh, I love what you're doing. This is terrific. Thank you, Mary. I appreciate you being on the show. We hope you've enjoyed this latest episode and if you wanna hear more episodes of Women Road Warriors or learn more about our show, be sure to check out womenroadwarriors.com and please follow us on social media and don't forget to subscribe to our podcast. On our website, we also have a selection of podcasts just for women. There are series of podcasts from different podcasters. So if you're in the mood for women's podcasts, just click the Power Network tab on womenroadwarriors.com. You'll have a variety of shows to listen to anytime you want to. Podcasts made for women. Women Road Warriors is on all the major podcast channels like Apple, Spotify, Amazon, Audible, YouTube and others. Check us out and please follow us wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening. ["Women Road Warriors"] You've been listening to Women Road Warriors with Shilly Johnson and Kathy Toccaro. If you want to be a guest on the show or have a topic or feedback, email us at sjohnsonatwomenroadwarriors.com. ["Women Road Warriors"]