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Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. I love this topic I'm going to get into today because it very much relates to my personal struggles as a parent and the perspective shift that I needed to eventually work on to be able to overcome them and why that mattered. It's the difficulty that many of us have with

setting a boundary that our child resists or gets upset about. With my people pleasing tendencies,

this has been a big one for me.

And while I can't say that I'm completely cured of this,

I've come a very long way. And'm going to share how I've done that.

First, here's an exchange with a parent who I very much relate to and appreciate. We had this exchange in

Instagram messages actually, which I'm unfortunately not always able to respond to,

but in this case the timing worked out for me and I got on the hook.

Here's the first message I got.

Hi Janet I hope you're well. I was wondering if you could help.

At parents evening I was told that my daughter, who started school six months ago, is emotionally

dysregulated, that she cries over small things such as not being able to finish her work

for the next activity, or wanting to explain her ideas during

focus time when she should be writing. At home she is not displaying this. We have always

let her let out her feelings and she has become good at

doing this. I usually have been calm and held her emotions. I have struggled with

boundaries, not the usual ones,

such as lifestyle expectations crossing the road safely.

These are all fine.

It's been the boundary of demand that she puts on me, such as wanting me to play characters for extended amounts of time,

...