Hi, this is Janet Landsbury. Welcome to Unruffold. Today I am doing something a little different.

I'm sharing a success story that a parent excitedly wrote to me. For those of you who are

familiar with my written work, my books, and my posts on my website, you know that I love

to share success stories. I feel it really helps all of us to get specific examples of what

these principles and responses that I recommend actually look like in practice,

how parents are using them. And I'm also going to give some commentary, which I don't often get to do

so much in my written post, bit by bit about this experience.

Okay, so here's the email that I received. Hi, Janet. I have a success story that I wanted to

write down for myself and then thought I should share this with Janet. It was a textbook Janet

moment for me. At a low point last January after my five-year-old boy hit my mom, I read no bad kids

and it started a deep shift in our family that I'm incredibly grateful for. Thank you so much

for your profound work. Since last January, I've read something of yours several times a week,

awkwardly trying your approach, wondering if I was doing it right with small successes and some

hopeless moments. But today, it all came together. I'd love to share that story with you.

My son and I had a conflict yesterday that we didn't quite resolve. I still felt disconnected

from him this morning. So after I had done some self-care, a workout, and felt well-resourced,

I saw that he was drawing by himself and I went over and sat next to him. My closeness started

bringing up the feelings. I want space. Go away. I felt the doubt slip in. He's asking for space.

Shouldn't I just give him space? But then I remembered that he was pushing me away when deep down,

he probably wanted to be close. So I stayed there quietly and just looked at him with love.

His feeling started escalating, which unexpectedly made me more confident.

Leave me alone. Go over there. You never learned how to listen when you were a kid. You're so mean.

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