Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of the Parenting with Impact podcast.

Diane Dempster: It's just the two of us today.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And we're going to talk about something that has come up a lot lately—again and again—and we've been featuring it in many of our presentations because it's such a resonant topic. It's about asking for and accepting help.

Diane Dempster: I can't tell you how many times parents say, "I want to help my child, but my child doesn't want my help." 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: They won’t let me help, right?

Diane Dempster: They say, “Mom, I’m fine,” or “I don’t need your help,” or they hide in their rooms to avoid it, right? So the question is, why don’t our kids ask for or accept help?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Well, and I think that’s an important point right there. There’s a distinction between asking for help and accepting help. 

So, I think there are two areas for us to focus on. One is looking at this issue: one of the greatest long-term life skills we can teach our kids is how to make it okay to both ask for help and accept it.

Diane Dempster: Yes, exactly. I think that’s what adulting is all about. I was laughing the other day because we were on a webinar or something, and you mentioned that you don’t cut your own hair and you don’t do your own taxes. And I thought, "I need a haircut."

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: But you do your own taxes, right?

Diane Dempster: I do my own taxes. Now, I’m at the point where I want someone else to review them just to make sure, because they’ve gotten more complicated recently. But there’s this adulting skill I don’t think our kids realize. 

We often think they’re not supposed to need help, that grown-ups don’t need help. They see us being so independent.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Well, yes, it’s an adulting skill. They’re not the only ones who struggle with it. We’ve got some key points we’re going to go through—we’ve been teaching this a lot. But here’s the other thing I want to add: I’m in a “sandwich generation” phase of my life, spending a lot of time caretaking for my very aging parents. 

I’m witnessing how hard it is for them to accept help, and it’s reinforcing for me how important it is to teach our kids, and for me to practice, because this is a lifelong skill.

Diane Dempster: Well, and I was thinking about that. The word we often use is “independence.” We’re working on helping kids become independent, and I think we equate that with not needing help. 

It’s almost like, if I’m independent, I don’t need help. But it’s more complicated than that. I mean, I want help with my dishwasher. I want help cleaning my house. There are all these things I want help with.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And what to do with that help?

Diane Dempster: I like to think I’m pretty darn independent, and I’m a grown-up, but the adulting skill is knowing where I want to choose to get help or where I need to get help. Because either it’s not my strength, or I always go through this thought process—you might not even know this. 

I think, "Okay, how much do I make an hour, and how much would it cost to pay someone else to do this for an hour?" It’s an exercise we go through as adults to decide whether we want someone else to do it, whether we enjoy doing it, whether it’s too hard for us, or whether my hair would look like crap if I tried to cut it myself. 

I mean, there are so many factors, right?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Well, it’s about the best and highest use of our time. I hear you speaking to it—where are we in our zone of genius? Where are we in our zone of excellence? And where are we not? Going back to taxes for me. 

I want to bring up something we’ve been teaching a lot: we’ve been asking this question of audiences for a while—why do you think your kids don’t ask for or accept help? And we’ve narrowed it down to a few key answers. First of all, why don’t they? In part, it’s because we don’t. Right?

So why does anyone resist asking for or accepting help? This is the first thing we really want to invite you to consider.

Diane Dempster: Because underneath...

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Are your kids different from you, or is this really something they’re learning from us on some level? Go ahead, Diane.

Diane Dempster: I think it’s universal, right? When we look at the list in just a second, you’ll see that these same reasons are probably the ones we don’t ask for help either.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah, very common. So for those of you listening and not watching, you don’t have to watch the podcast on YouTube, but we’re going to read the list to you.

Diane Dempster: We’re going to say it.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: You’ll get to see the actual slides we’ve been sharing in presentations. There are a number of reasons we’ve identified for why all of us resist asking for or accepting help. Right? And the first one...

Diane Dempster: Is that we’re afraid we’re not ready to do what’s being asked of us.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And that’s a big one. We’re afraid we’re not ready to do it. Maybe as kids, or maybe as adults, we just don’t want to do what’s being asked of us. Going back to taxes—I think about when my middle child was in high school. She really wanted to go to college, but at the same time, she didn’t. She was afraid she wasn’t ready for college, so she kind of put the brakes on the whole college application process. 

But once we figured out—and she figured out—that she didn’t have to be ready for everything, that she didn’t have to know everything when she left for college, that helped her feel less fearful. When we’re afraid we can’t do something, or we’re not ready, or we don’t want to do what’s being asked of us, we’re likely to put the brakes on, right?

Diane Dempster: Yeah. The second one is when we’re feeling stressed, triggered, overwhelmed, or stuck in our coping mechanisms. And I think this comes up a lot with our kids. It’s like they’re in this state of what I call "analysis paralysis." 

Have you ever had analysis paralysis, where you’re looking at something over and over, trying to figure it out, but you’re so stressed by the situation that you can’t even think straight? You can’t pause to think, “Okay, wait. Maybe someone could help me with this.” Because the part of my brain that says, “Hey, Diane, you might need some help” isn’t engaged. All I’m doing is spinning in circles in the back of my mind.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Well, this one feels like a counterintuitive truth, right? Because it seems like when you’re stressed and triggered, that’s when you should accept help. But it’s precisely because we’re stressed and triggered that we may resist the very help we need. 

Being stressed can actually prevent us from not just asking for help, but from accepting it. Even the idea of accepting help can feel overwhelming.

Diane Dempster: Right, and the other thing is that many of the coping mechanisms we rely on when we’re stressed and triggered are themselves counterintuitive. If your coping mechanism is inwardly focused, like a control-based stress response, the voice in your head will say, “I have to do this. I’m the only one who can do it, and I have to do it right now.” 

So, you internalize everything. On the other hand, if your coping mechanism is externally focused, you might fall into blame, avoidance, or shutdown. So, in those moments, you’re not even thinking about getting the task done, let alone asking for help to get it done.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Well, if I’m stressed or triggered by the idea of exerting the energy it might take to do something—even if I had help—I don’t want to put the energy into it. And that might be something we should add to our list: it’s not just about feeling unready to do it, but the notion of how much energy it’s going to take can feel overwhelming sometimes.

Alright, so the next one is that sometimes we resist help because it’s not really our agenda. And I think we see this a lot in our kids. We might think it’s important for them to do X, Y, or Z, but they’re not really owning it. Since we’re the ones who care about it, they don’t feel the need to own it or do it. So there’s this hesitation or resistance because it doesn’t feel like their responsibility in the first place.

Diane Dempster: Well, we could probably do an entire podcast episode on your agenda versus your kid’s agenda. It ties into motivation and how to get kids to engage or get buy-in when it’s not their agenda. That’s a whole other episode.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I just wrote that one down. We’re capturing that idea. But, so often, our kids don’t do something or resist asking for or accepting help because we think it should be their agenda, but it’s not really their agenda.

Diane Dempster: And it’s not that they’re not asking for help—they may not even be engaged in doing it or getting it done. The next reason is that we don’t feel safe or trusting. And this is a big one. 

It takes vulnerability to ask for help, and it’s not easy, especially if it hasn’t been modeled well for us. Especially if we think we’re supposed to be independent. If I’m afraid you’re going to take over, make me do it your way, or jump in in a way that doesn’t feel like collaboration—like I just want a tiny bit of help and not for you to take over—that’s a real issue. 

This happens a lot because, as parents, we get stuck in director mode. Our kids are afraid we’ll jump in and take over, so they don’t feel safe asking for a little help. They might just need a small amount, but history tells them that we might pile on instead.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah. So they don’t feel safe or trusting either, because they’re afraid we’re going to take over, right? Or there may be other issues around shame. They might not feel safe or trusting because they feel like they shouldn’t need help, or they feel like we think they shouldn’t need help. 

Or, conversely, we might feel like they have to need it, and that somehow there’s something broken about them, which leads them to feel they need help.

Diane Dempster: Or...

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: What's going on with our kids is they don’t want to feel broken. So, we hire a tutor because we think we’re helping them, but they see the tutor as a sign that something’s wrong with them. Right? Go ahead.

Diane Dempster: Yeah. No, I’ll save that for the last one because we’re going to talk about two more here.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So the next one is that they don’t want to feel judged, or we don’t want to feel judged. And that ties into what we were just saying. When we don’t see asking for help as neutral or just a matter of fact, but instead view it as something that comes with strings attached or indicates there’s a problem, it doesn’t feel good. 

It can feel judgmental. And there’s no shame in asking for or accepting help—unless we feel like we’re being shamed for it, right?

Diane Dempster: Yeah, I was just going to say, with the taxes—it’s like, part of me prides myself on being really good at numbers. I’m really smart, and it’s like, “Is this the best and highest use of my time?” That’s the question. It’s not that I can’t do it, but am I secretly judging myself for needing to get someone else’s help? 

A lot of times, we’re our own worst critics, and our kids are no different. They judge themselves, too. And the last reason is that we think we shouldn’t need help.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And we’re all so guilty of this, aren’t we?

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: All of us. We think we shouldn’t need it. We should be able to do it all ourselves. Especially when it comes to parenting—it’s supposed to be natural, and we’re supposed to just know how to do it, right?

Diane Dempster: Yeah, we shouldn’t need help with parenting.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: But we joke that there was no instruction manual. But the truth is...

Diane Dempster: There was no instruction manual.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right, no instruction manual. And this is complicated stuff. It only gets more complicated as we live in an increasingly complex world.

Diane Dempster: The same is true for our kids. They don’t think they should need help. In fact, a lot of the time, they’re told not to get it. I remember very clearly when my kids hit that age when teachers say, “Your parents shouldn’t be helping you with your homework anymore. You should be doing it on your own.” Suddenly, the wall went up, and my kids were like, “Mom, you’re not allowed to help me. Stay out! I’ll get in trouble if you help me.” 

It’s like this feeling of, “I shouldn’t need it” or “I’m not supposed to have it.” And these were kids with executive function challenges. So, yes, we’d talk to the teacher together and find out what is and isn’t okay. I’m not doing your homework, but helping you organize it is not the same as doing it for you. Or taking notes while you tell me what to write is not the same as writing your paper for you.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: There are all kinds of ways...

Diane Dempster: And a lot of these kids are very black-and-white thinkers. So when the teacher says, “Your parents shouldn’t help you anymore—you’re in fifth grade now” or whatever grade it was, suddenly it becomes this universal rule: my parents can never help me again.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right. And again, those big "shoulds" come in: I’m supposed to do this on my own. It’s like when they turn 18 and go off to college—you can pay for their education, but you can’t support them through it. That’s another one of those "shoulds."

Diane Dempster: Yeah. When both my kids turned 18, I was like, “Here’s the piece of paper you signed so that I can keep helping you. Thanks, Mom.”

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: But that relies on the relationship and the trust you’ve built—that they feel safe asking for help without worrying you’re going to micromanage or control them. This idea that we all need help is a message we want to communicate to our kids. 

My family laughs because they say my superpower is that I don’t take things personally. And I think the reason I got good at that—because I wasn’t always like that—is because I got really good at asking for help. 

I know it might not seem linked, but it really is. When I stopped feeling ashamed and realized I couldn’t do it all, that’s when everything started to shift. Asking for help was the biggest turning point for me—and not beating myself up for needing it.

Diane Dempster: So, let’s take two minutes to talk about how we remedy this, right?

Number one, as you mentioned earlier. And number two is modeling it. So, it’s about asking for help and engaging with your kids—working together, collaborating on the easier tasks. For example, planning family vacations, going grocery shopping together, planning meals, or finding ways to partner and help each other. Again, just asking for help.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah. Just saying around the house, “Hey, I could use some help. Is there anyone who can help me with this?” Even if they say no at first, it’s still normalizing the behavior. But you have to be careful with the tone of voice. It shouldn’t sound like a demand, like “Can someone help me?”

Diane Dempster: Yes, exactly.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: "Why isn’t anyone helping me?" You really have to watch your tone of voice with that. Another thing to watch for is when we don't understand why our kids can't do something. We may think it should be easy, so we make it sound like it should be. Like that kind of “Why can’t you just...” Even if we don’t say the words, we can convey that feeling.

Diane Dempster: Yeah, and that doesn't really create a helpful environment. So, the key is creating an environment where they feel safe, not judged, and can trust. It’s all about relationships. How many times does everything come back to the relationship, Elaine? It’s about creating an environment where your child will feel comfortable asking for help, especially if they believe that help will come in a way that’s genuinely helpful.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Exactly right. So, watch your tone, watch your language. We’ll include a link in the show notes to that article, “Are You Secretly Calling Your Child an Idiot?”

Diane Dempster: Idiot. Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: We’ll find a couple of articles that might be helpful, but the key is tone and intention. We talk a lot about assuming the best intentions. Assume that they do want to be helpful, rather than assuming they don’t. Over time, they will begin to want to help. It’s funny how that shift happens.

So, before we wrap up this conversation, take a moment to ask yourself: What are you taking away from this discussion with Diane and me? What’s your insight? What’s your takeaway? What’s your "aha" moment?

Diane Dempster: And how might you turn these action steps into something tangible? What will you do with the information you’ve gained from our conversation today?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And impact has always been about taking information and turning it into action. So, what do you want to do with that? How do you want to show up for success in whatever you commit to? My invitation to you is to give yourself the exercise of practicing making it okay to make mistakes and practicing asking for help in the coming week. See how it goes!

Diane Dempster: Thanks for being here. Thanks for listening and joining us.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And thanks for everything you do for yourself and for your kids. It makes a huge difference. We’ll see you on the next one!