Boundaries with toddlers: gentle parenting, codependency, and parenting strategies for real life

So the question I got several times at this event, and that I've had many times before, is setting boundaries with toddlers.

And why this conversation is so important is when your baby, when your kids are babies, they are, you and your baby are biologically hardwired for you to be overly attentive to what they need and want from you.

They cannot survive unless you are willing to forgo what you want and need to get that baby's needs met.

All of their needs are met through you.

It is their need for you to biologically respond to them.

Now, there's, this isn't like a, we're not actually gonna talk about babies and that whole season.

That's a whole different topic.

But one of the things that happens for so many mothers is they start to transition into this toddlerhood season, and they realize that it's a different kind of hard than the baby season.

The baby season, you are so attuned to that baby, and then in the toddler season, there's kind of two things happening at the same time.

One, you biologically and relationally are entering in a new season of motherhood where you start to resent.

And I don't mean this in a negative way.

I, I think it's actually healthy that you start to have this biological relational role of you start realizing that it's no longer in your responsibility, it's no longer healthy parenting to respond to this baby's wants, needs, emotions in the same way that you did when they were a baby, right? A toddler having a fit about you cutting their crust off their sandwich is very different than a baby requiring you to feed them.

That, that's very different.

And so the role and relationship to your child is changing in the toddler season.

But people don't talk about that in parenting.

They give this overreaching parenting advice.

And this is where I don't love the response that I gave at this event, actually, because the hard thing with speaking and teaching is that in the moment with the mom, I can't really coach her in the same way that I would if we were in one-on-one, or if we were in a group, or if we were in, like, a smaller scenario where I can ask her lots of questions.

And so I'm gonna take this podcast to really slow down the process, because in that moment, the response that I gave was very formulaic.

It was very like, "Here's what to do." And I actually really hate giving moms that response.

And so I had this feeling, I'm gonna use the word guilt.

I had this, like, icky feeling of like, I actually don't like how I responded because that's actually not in alignment with my values and how I wanna coach and how I wanna support moms.

Because there are so many places where you can go to learn the formula of parenting, to learn what it is you can do.

But I think this is one of the most problematic things for women and for mothers, is that there are very few people who are teaching mothers how to know what to do on their, how to feel in their own bodies, their own agency, their own values, their own relational goals with their child.

In the moment, what you do might change.

In one moment, something might feel really, really good as a response.