We have a challenge this morning. Juniper wants to go to the zoo, but for many, many reasons, we can't go today. I have to try to get her to want to go to the museum, but how do I do it -- especially when she's fixated on the zoo?
What do you do when your child really, really wants something, but they can't have it? Do you try to reason with logic? Do you just say "No"!
I've found that the best way to go about it is to call it what it is -- a challenge. And to let them know, we love solving challenges.
And to solve a challenge, you just need to follow these easy steps:
That's it. If you stop trying to solve the problem yourself, and instead help your child solve the problem themselves, then things are going to go a lot smoother.
Hello, mamas and Papas. My name is Jun Loayza. I'm the father of two wonderful girls, Juniper, who is four and Kimball, who is two years old. This morning, Juniper woke up into my delight. She tells me. Puppy. I want to go to the museum today and I'm like, oh my God, that's fantastic. Yes, let's go to the museum. You know what? I'm going to leave work early today.
And then I'm going to pick you up early from school and we can go directly to a museum. How does that sound? Yeah, that's great. Poppy. I tell her we can look at the art. We can look at the sculptures. She tells me, wait, no, I want to see the animals. The Adam Walls. What are you talking about? And so I probe her a little bit more.
And she thinks the museum is the zoo. Now. That'd be great too. I want to take her to the zoo. There's just a few complications. One, the zoo's quite far from where we live. And it's a school day. I don't want to be traveling all the way there just to go to the zoo for a little bit, and then traveling all the way back to pick up Kimball from school. It just wouldn't work out with school schedule with sleep times with dinner times.
So I'm in this predicament. Juniper is excited because I was excited for her request, which was initially to go to the museum. But it was actually the zoo. And now I already told her I can get off work early. I told her I'd pick her up from school early. She's really in the mood to go to the zoo. So I tell her.
Juniper. Um, I think we should go to the museum instead. The zoo's a little far, and it's not going to fit with our schedule. And then right. What's going to happen. She starts to flip her lid. She starts to lose her. Cool. No, I really want to go. To the zoo. I really want to see the animals. What do you do in this situation?
When your daughter or your son, your child is fixated on this one thing. And unfortunately you just can't make it happen. But you want to make up for it by doing something else? It's like, for example, let's say they really want ice cream, but the ice cream store is closed. Oh, you can let them know. Look, the ice cream store is closed. There's nothing I can do.
But I really want ice cream. What are you supposed to do in these situations? Now. There's a few options. I remember in this book, how to talk to kids so that they'll listen. It talks about giving them what they want and fantasy. So in this situation with Juniper, I tried that. I started asking her, which animals do you want to see in the zoo? I want to see the giraffe, the elephant. How cool would it be for us to see the zoo or go to the zoo this weekend?
No, I want to go right now. So I try to really make it fun and playful and give her what she wanted. And fantasy. I grabbed some stuffed animals. Let's go to the zoo right here. No, I want to go to the zoo outside. Okay. Well, it didn't really work.
I tried to use logic. Let her know Juniper. The zoo is really far. We're not going to make it there on time after school. We're not going to be able to see any of the animals and then we have to come home. You woke up really early this morning. So you have to sleep early. It's early bed night tonight. No.
None of that. No logic was going to reason with her. And I think. That's something that's a barrier for us parents. We always try to be little their wants and Trump them with our logic because it makes sense. Logically. I feel like I can explain to her what is happening. And that it's going to make sense to her, but especially when she's all rattled.
She's not going to be receptive to that information. So it hit me today while I was talking to her. 'cause I was telling her it's too far. Well, how is she supposed to know how far things really are? Does she really know? So I let her know Jennifer. Do you know how far the zoo really is? Do you want to see how far it is?
She's intrigued. I just peaked her curiosity. Sure. She tells me. So we walk over to my desktop and I open Google maps and I show her. Let's look at distance because I don't think she's really grasped the concept of distance and how far things actually are. Okay. Let's take a look. Right now I'm taking you and picking you up on the bicycle. So how far is the school? We pull it up. I pull up the address.
What number is that? Six. Yeah, your school is six minutes away. Well, okay. You know, she's starting to get it. Now let's look at the zoo. How far is the zoo? I pull it up and the zoo is 50 minutes away. Oh, okay. That's a lot further. I let her know. 50 minutes. It's quite far to go there and then to come back on the bicycle, it's just too far.
Why don't we try to find something that's closer here. I do a little search for a museum. Which. Location is close to your school and she herself, she picks it out. She picks a museum. This nearby, we click on it. And it says five. Five minutes from your school. Isn't that so much closer. Yeah. And then I click on the museum to show her the pictures and the sculpture. She sees this statue of a horse, which she calls a pony and she's like, oh, I want to see that pony.
Perfect. We're going to the Asian art museum today in San Francisco. Done. All the logic and all that, that I was trying to throw at her and talk about distance and that we're not going to be home in time for early bedtime or be home in time for dinner. She didn't care about any of that.
We could've been talking in circles. I never would've gotten anywhere. But. By not arguing with her by understanding what she wants and just going with it. I was able to really solve the situation.
So, what are you going to do when you get yourself in this situation? When your child really, really wants something and you can't give it to them. The first thing you're not going to do is you're not going to say no. Saying no is going to immediately put up that blocker and you're not going to get through to them.
Instead. Think of it as a situation where you're going to solve it together, say something like. Hm. This is a challenge. We love challenges. Let's figure it out together. Take that deep breath. And then sit down with them and figure it out together.
Lay out the problem and try to figure out the solution today. As the example where Juniper wants to go to the zoo, but it's too far. Then I lay out the problem. Juniper the zoo is too far. Do you know how far it is? Okay. No. So we went to Google maps. All right now we know why we can't go there. It's because it's too far. Let's think of a solution together. Where else can we go?
And have her, or have your child come up with those solutions themselves and then have her make that choice in that decision. That's the best way to approach it. Don't try to solve it for them. Don't try to take it away from them. Just go with it. Call it what it is. It's a challenge and you love challenges.
We as a family love challenges, and we're going to solve it together. Great. That's it. Hopefully you guys found this very valuable. If you guys have any questions, you can always hit me up on Twitter @junloayza. Thank you so much for listening in.