Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Welcome back, everyone, to another stimulating conversation on the Parenting with Impact podcast! Elaine and Diane are here today, and we’ve got a really exciting topic to discuss with you.

Diane Dempster: We do! But, like you said, stimulating— and I suddenly realized I’m kind of tired today, so I’m going to have to get my energy up.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: But you love talking about control, right?

Diane Dempster: Oh, I do. I do. So, the topic today is control, and I was laughing because before we got on, I was trying to find the Janet Jackson song.

I’m so ‘90s! I grew up going out to clubs and things like that, but there’s this great song by Janet Jackson called “Control,” and it’s all about control—what she says is the bottom line.

It’s such a big topic for our audience, especially because, as parents, we often feel out of control, and our kids feel out of control too. It can feel like a hot mess with so many different variables going on.

So, I’m really excited to dive into this conversation and explore what’s going on and what we can do to shift some of the less favorable dynamics into more favorable ones.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah, right. Well, the subtext to "it’s all about control" is that help isn’t truly helpful if what we’re really doing is controlling.

So, there’s understanding control, which I think is the first part of what we’ll talk about, and then there are ways in which we think we’re helping them, but we’re actually controlling. That’s probably the second thing we’ll discuss.

Diane Dempster: Well, yeah. There’s this whole thing— we were doing a webinar today, and we were talking about positivity and the research showing that something only counts as positivity if the child feels it is positive.

It’s not about our perspective of whether it’s positive or not; it’s really about the person receiving it that determines whether it’s successful. So it’s the same thing here. We might feel like, “Oh, I’m not trying to control.”

But if, the minute our kids sense that we have an agenda— one that might not align with theirs, or that we have any agenda at all that we’re trying to insert into the process— they’re likely to shut down and not engage.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Let’s talk about control first. Okay, so there’s our control and their control. Let’s break those two down. Let’s deal with us first— us humans, parents, grandparents, and professionals who want outcomes for our kids, right?

Diane Dempster: There’s what we want—our goals or aspirations—or our desire to help our kids get what they say they want, their own goals and aspirations. What tends to happen with most of us is that we don’t approach it from a place of what’s ours to own. I think about Stephen Covey’s Circle of Influence and Circle of Concern.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Versus Circle of Control.

Diane Dempster: I guess it’s technically a Circle of Concern, but I think of it as a Circle of Control. It’s about recognizing what’s really ours to do and what’s not.

One of the important things to note is that the minute we go into control mode—like, "Oh, wow, I’ve got to make this happen, I’ve got to make that happen"—it’s probably a great indication that we’re dysregulated in the situation. Because control is one of the core coping mechanisms.

So, if I’m feeling off balance—if I’m scared, anxious, frustrated, or overwhelmed—any of those emotional things, that little judge in our head goes, "Okay, wait, you’ve got to be in charge. You’ve got to take over."

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And we want them to be successful in life, whatever that means for them.

Diane Dempster: Whatever success means. And then, again, there’s this whole thing—whatever success means. The minute we define it, the minute we say, “This is how it has to happen. This is what success looks like,” we end up in a box.

Instead of saying, “Okay, wait, we want our kids to be successful,” I bet all of us could name people—adults in our lives—that we would consider successful, and they’re on completely different paths from one another. There’s not—

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: A definition of success.

Diane Dempster: Exactly. There’s no one definition of success, and there’s no one path to success. A lot of times, we try to be kind and nice and shortcut things for our kids because our path to success went one way, and so we think that’s the only path.

But it trips us up because we feel like it has to be this way, instead of just focusing on what we really ultimately want, which is the endpoint—not how to get there.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: We’re worried. On some level, we control because we’re worried about them, and we’re concerned that it won’t go well for them, or that they won’t meet whatever metrics we think they should meet.

So, there’s one way that parents control when a kid is successful. That might be the kid who’s doing great at baseball, and now dad thinks baseball is the only thing that kid should do. But now the kid doesn’t want to do baseball because dad’s gotten too involved.

Then there’s another way we can control when our kid is failing to hit the metrics or milestones. In that case, we’re scaffolding, supporting, and maybe even enabling because we want them to be able to be successful.

But in both scenarios, we’re letting our agenda get in the way of what the kid needs to be dealing with.

Diane Dempster: Which is where you started—like, the first place to look in this is us. If you’re trying to control, or if you notice yourself thinking, “I’ve got to be in the forefront,” we want to be leaders in our families.

But if we’re leading from a place of “you must do it this way” or “follow me, I know the right way”—I mean, a lot of us have had bosses like that—it’s not really much fun to be in an environment where the person in charge is saying, “This is the way you must do it.”

If we create that same environment for our kids, we’re not ultimately creating what we want, which is an environment of trust, relationship, collaboration, and independence. All those sorts of things that we’re looking for, because we’re holding on so tightly. And again, the first step is to really look at what’s causing me to hold on so tightly.

Am I scared about my kid’s future? Am I worried that I’ve messed up somehow and need to make it right? Am I overwhelmed and micromanaging because I don’t know what else to do? There are all these different pieces that happen to us, leading us into a space where we’re trying to pounce. I love that. Pounce.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right? Am I frustrated because I can see the path so clearly, and I’m wondering, “Why can’t they just...?” There are a lot of ways it can happen. And it’s interesting—in coaching training, you learn about the concept of attachment to outcome.

What we’re really talking about as parents is that it’s hard not to be fiercely attached to the outcome of our kids’ success because, well, this is their life, and we want them to be successful. But I think we confuse or conflate success with success looking a certain way, which is what we were talking about earlier.

When you have complex kids, what turns out to be successful for them—actually, this is probably true for parents of all kids—may not be what you thought it would look like when you first started parenting that child, whatever their age.

Diane Dempster: I think that’s true for parents of all kids, regardless. The thing that’s coming up as you’re talking, Elaine, is going back to the episode we did on the four roles of the parent—the director, the collaborator, the supporter, and the champion—and we can link to that in the show notes.

But I was thinking about the fact that it’s like, okay, when we’re in director mode, which is full-on control, and then our kids say, “Hey, mom, dad, back off.” And then we do this sort of, "Okay, fine, you’ve got it."

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: You might say over-calibrate.

Diane Dempster: Over calibration, right, but it sort of, we're sitting there waiting in the wings, because we're scared that they're going to falter, or we're convinced they're going to falter. And so again, we're sitting there waiting to pounce.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: In some ways, we wait for them to falter so we can justify stepping back in and directing. That’s a tendency we parents might have sometimes, because that’s when we’re trying to control their outcome.

And again, it doesn’t matter what age we’re talking about—when we’re trying to make sure things go a certain way for them, we confuse that with helping.

We’ll come back to that in a minute. But really, we need to ask, what’s important here? What’s really most important? Is it important that my kid learns to love learning, or is it important that my kid gets an A on every spelling test? This is where we get lost in other people’s expectations, or our own expectations—those kinds of things.

Diane Dempster: Which ultimately leads us to fear, overwhelm, or whatever else, which causes us to move into pouncing mode.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Exactly. So that’s our control issue.

Diane Dempster: Let’s take a break, and then we’ll come back and talk about our kids.

[After Break]

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Okay, so we’re back. We’re talking about control, and now we’re going to discuss control issues from our kids’ lens or perspective, because we’re dancing around control. Our kids are feeling out of control on some level.

Diane Dempster: Or feeling pounced on. I was thinking about that Janet Jackson song again—it’s like, it’s all about my control. It’s about my control, and our kids do want to have more control and agency in their lives.

That’s a normal thing that happens, period. It’s a progression, and they should want that, and we should want them to. The question is, how do we do that in a way that balances what they need with what they want?

That’s the independence paradox we talk about all the time—it’s finding that balance and setting them up for success. There’s a dance there that we have to do.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: But I want to go back because, again, I want to understand—okay, yes, kids want more agency and control in their lives. But before that, what’s making it hard for them? When you have kids with neurodivergence, they are often feeling out of control in some aspect of their brain or in their life.

They can’t do what the adults—parents or teachers—want them to do, and that feels out of control. They can’t do what their peers are doing, and that feels out of control.

Diane Dempster: So, hang on a second. Let’s just put a pin in that and say, even if they don’t acknowledge out loud that they feel that way, I guarantee you your kids are thinking it. No question.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah. They’re probably not able to articulate this to you. But we can assume that if you’ve got a kid with neurodivergence, there are areas where things feel overwhelming, out of control, or scary for them.

So, that’s one thing going on for them. They want to be able to control things, but they don’t feel capable, and they don’t know how to get there. They’re afraid they can’t get there.

Then there’s this other layer of disappointing you and the other adults in their lives because they’re not achieving the milestones they think they should—so there are lots of shoulds.

Diane Dempster: Yeah, which ties into the fact that both of those scenarios you described would cause a kid to become dysregulated. And so, if a kid gets dysregulated or overwhelmed, whether it's pressure from mom and dad or disappointment because they aren’t doing what they want to be doing—or what they think they’re supposed to be doing—you’ve got a dysregulated, overwhelmed kid. They’re going to go into their coping mechanism. So, they may get into a mode of saying, “I’ve got to do it; stay out of this, this is mine to do, I’ve got to take care of this.”

They might become controlling. Or, what often happens, is that they go into avoidance. So, now you’ve got a kid who’s avoiding their reality, and the parents step in because control is their coping mechanism. Mom’s chasing the kid around, or dad’s chasing the kid around saying, “Come on, you’ve got to get this done!” And the kid’s saying, “No, I’m fine. I’m fine.”

And now both of you are just operating out of your coping mechanisms. Instead of saying, “Okay, wait, let’s figure out what’s really going on here,” and finding a way to balance ownership, rather than fighting for control.

I love this shift. It’s this sort of thing—if we shift from "who’s in control?" to "how are we balancing ownership?" How are we inspiring ownership? Does that feel different to you, Elaine?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah. I mean, I feel like that’s what we talk about when we get into that space of moving from collaboration to support. We move into support when our kids take ownership.

And when they step into ownership, we shift from sharing the agenda to supporting their agenda, which, by the way, can be really hard if you don’t actually agree with their agenda.

But we still want to find ways to support them in what’s important to them, if they’re taking agency and leadership in a way that’s obviously safe and healthy. There are exceptions to every rule.

But what’s really striking me again is that I want to be careful not to jump to the solution before we really understand the problem. The challenge is that you’ve got kids who want control, who feel out of control, who want a sense of agency.

They’re either going on the offensive or the defensive with their parents, typically. If they’re going on the offensive, you get combative, oppositional behavior, some of that lovely language.

If they’re going on the defensive, you get avoidance, learned helplessness, or “Why should I do it if you’re just going to do it anyway? I’ll just let you do it.”

So, I want to frame that before we then move back into this conversation about what we do with this information.

The initial idea for this conversation started in one of our coaching groups—it was in the coaching group for parents of teens. We had this realization. What I love about these groups is that I’m always getting insights along with everyone else.

When I hear myself say something, I’m like, “Oh, they’re like, ‘Can you say that again?’” And I’m like, “No, what did we just say? Because that was good.”

But this notion that we want to help our kids—we do all this stuff to help them—but help is not actually helpful if we’re really trying to control them instead of helping them.

For this small group, we were all like, “Whoa, that’s so cool!” because we realized that we really are trying to be helpful, but the underlying goal is some level of control.

We want to control the outcomes. We’re afraid for the outcomes—back to that beginning conversation. And so we have to start looking at help in terms of transferring control, not controlling.

Diane Dempster: It's so funny, the analogy that just popped into my mind. We were actually talking about this—I was speaking with a couple of colleagues on our team about the idea of having someone else load your dishwasher. Have we ever had anyone else load our dishwasher? And it's like...

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: No, but I had a couple I work with who spent 20 minutes discussing each of their methods, both sure they had the right way to load the dishwasher.

Diane Dempster: The bottom line is, if someone loads your dishwasher for you, you want to be appreciative of the fact that they did it. But then there’s this part of you that thinks, "But you didn’t do it right!" The bowls don’t go there...

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Those aren’t going to get cleaned.

Diane Dempster: The plates aren’t going to [get cleaned]... like all that other stuff.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: The clothes are going to wrinkle if you don’t fold them just right.

Diane Dempster: Exactly. That's the key here—holding it loosely enough to let them take charge. Because, okay, you know what, a couple of the bowls didn't get quite clean. You can just put them back in next time.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: You clean them the next time, or learn to load it differently.

Diane Dempster: And in the meantime, they’re experimenting, or maybe it’s an opportunity for them to rinse and repeat. Haha, like that—rinse and repeat with the dishwasher.

There we go, rinse and repeat! And then you can say, "Okay, wait, sweetie, I noticed that a couple of dishes didn’t get clean. What can we do better next time?"

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Thank you so much for loading the dishwasher. What do you think we should do next time to make it work differently? Or let’s figure out how the machine works or whatever.

Diane Dempster: Rather than, "I told you, you should have done it this way."

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Don’t ever do anything to prevent your kids from folding laundry or loading the dishwasher. That’s my takeaway from this.

So, if it's all about control, we have to look at the ways we’re trying to control things, and how they may feel out of control or are trying to exert control. We want to be helpful, so what’s the message here?

Diane Dempster: The message is collaboration, not control, I think. And part of the challenge is— I know all of you will raise your hand and say, “Yeah, but they don’t want to work with me. Yeah, but they won’t collaborate. Yeah, but they tell me they do it.”

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Cue another episode on trust-building.

Diane Dempster: I think someone made a comment in the webinar we did today. They said, "Yeah, it takes a while to build the muscle of trust and relationship and shift our communication so that we can collaborate."

Maybe you can collaborate right away on something like cooking together or loading the dishwasher—something that feels less stressful.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And maybe not start with homework.

Diane Dempster: Yeah. And maybe not start with homework unless you know you can bite your tongue. In our small group this week, in our team meeting, we were talking about the fact that we’re in the middle of the semester, and a lot of these parents have been working really hard not to micromanage until the first report card comes out.

Not that they’re going to pounce, but now they’re at the point where it’s like, there’s part of me that wants to pounce because I’ve waited so long.

But it’s like, "Okay, so now what do you want to do instead of trying to micromanage?" How do you move yourself into the conversation, rather than being all out or all in? I mean, this is the dynamic. This is a dance.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I’ll cue us to the episode on the relationship pyramid and the four phases. We talked about that earlier, and really just the notion of building trust.

So if we don’t have a podcast on that, we’ll do one. I’m going to check because I feel like we’ve done one. Yeah, we’ll check. Anyway, I think we need to start wrapping up. How do you want to wrap it?

Diane Dempster: I want to wrap up by saying, number one, notice when you're in control mode. Notice when you're holding on tightly. There's another one—we talked about triggers. When you're overwhelmed, when you're stressed out, when you're freaking out, when you're catastrophizing—notice what that feels like in your body.

And then go, "Okay, wait, hang on a second. I’m in that space. Where do I want to be? Do I want to be in charge? Is it in my best interest to be in charge?" How do I relax enough to even ask, "Wait a second, what is my role here in this process? Is this mine? Is this theirs?" That’s one of the bottom lines. What’s your bottom line?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I think my bottom line is similar to that. It’s really a continuous process of asking, whose agenda is this? Am I supporting them in their agenda, or am I pushing forward my own agenda? If I’m getting my kid a tutor, I’m pushing my agenda, and they’re not bought in and it’s not helpful.

When parents come to us all the time and say, “My kid needs a coach,” we always ask, “Is your kid asking for help?” And if the answer is no, but you feel like they need it, then we know you don’t have a kid who’s really ready for help yet. If you give them that coach, tutor, or whatever support, chances are, you’re not going to get a lot of buy-in and you may be wasting your money.

But if you get your kids to a place where they say, "Wow, I could really use some help," you’re going to get a whole different agenda, because now they’re feeling some sense of control.

Diane Dempster: And just to say that a little louder—that’s the moment to get some help for you, so you can help move your child into a space where they are ready and available to ask for help.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah, for sure, because this is your work. I was just teaching a group on communication today to parents of young adults, and the conversation was about how this is our work. It’s not easy to stay out of our own agenda so we can support them, especially when it’s not going at the pace we think it should. That’s our job, y’all.

So join us. Let us help you. If you see that this is your job and you want to get on board, come play with us, because that’s where the magic happens. All right. So, wrapping up...

Diane Dempster: Awesome. So, wrapping up, what did you take away from this conversation, everybody?

Take a minute and write down an insight, an aha moment, or something you want to do differently when you go back and talk to your kid tonight.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: What is important for you to keep in mind about control? And, as always, thanks for tuning in. Thanks for listening.

Thanks for doing what you’re doing for yourself and for your kids. You make an enormous difference, and thanks for being part of our community. Take care, everybody.

Diane Dempster: See you next time.

 

Helpful Links:

• Parent Expectations: 2 Steps to Success 
• Parenting is Leadership Guide