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Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today I'm going to be talking about a topic I think many of us can relate to.

What do we do when our kids resist all these things that go on during the day that we need them to do?

It's frustrating, right?

When it seems like we just can't budge them or they just seem to push back on everything.

From getting out of bed in the morning to getting out the door,

sitting down for a meal, brushing their teeth, getting ready for bed,

going to school, leaving school.

This can even become a pattern that just goes on throughout the day with children, seems to be getting worse instead of better.

So I'm excited to get into that topic and I have two notes from parents about it.

What do our kids need from us? What's going on with them? How can we fix this?

Or at least ease this so it's not happening constantly because we're pulling our

hair out, right? And really this topic is more than about helping our children to not

resist as much. It's really about helping ourselves because this is so frustrating and reading these notes, I can feel myself getting frustrated along with these

parents who are sharing with me. I can feel my own stress level rising, just imagining what's going on there.

So I get it and I think, well I hope I can help these parents with some subtle shifts in their thinking and their approach.

Here are some of the shifts I'm going to explain.

One, simplifying, minimizing our agenda for kids to what's really needed, letting go of some things.

And then also simplifying by saying less, helping sooner and more readily, closing those gaps where we're waiting for a child

to do it, and, two, being mentally prepared in regard to our expectations for the possible

resistance that we're going to be facing, especially if this has been a pattern,

...