April 3, 2025 • 16 mins
In this episode, I respond to Sunny from Australia, who shares her family's ongoing bedtime struggle with her 6.5-year-old daughter—an intelligent, big-feeling child working through anxiety and night terrors. After a year of consistency that led to sleep deprivation and exhaustion, Sunny and her partner ultimately let their daughter sleep on a separate bed in their room. Now, they’re wondering how to help her transition back to her own bedroom.
I explain the underlying reasons why anxious kids resist sleeping alone and how control becomes their coping strategy. I also outline a gradual, child-centered approach to help Sunny's daughter regain confidence and independence, emphasizing preparation, ownership, and choice. This episode is for any parent navigating bedtime challenges with a sensitive child—and seeking a compassionate, practical path forward.
Ask Me Questions: Call (813) 812-5525, or email: brenna@thekidcounselor.com
Podcast HQ: https://www.playtherapyparenting.com/
My Newsletter Signup: https://www.playtherapyparenting.com/newsletter/
My Podcast Partner, Gabb Wireless: https://www.playtherapyparenting.com/gabb/
Common References:
Landreth, G.L. (2023). Play Therapy: The Art of the Relationship (4th ed.). Routledge.
Bratton, S. C., Landreth, G. L., Kellam, T., & Blackard, S. R. (2006). Child parent relationship therapy (CPRT) treatment manual: A 10-session filial therapy model for training parents. Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
You're listening to the
Play Therapy Parenting Podcast with Dr. Brenna Hicks.
Hi,
I'm Dr. Brenna Hicks,
The Kid Counselor.
This is the Play Therapy Parenting Podcast where I give you insight,
awareness,
and enlightenment about your parenting
and your relationship with your kids.
In today's episode,
I am answering a question from Sunny in Australia.
(00:24):
So hello to all of you down under.
I was actually just in Australia in November of 2024,
so
it is one of my favorite places I've ever been,
and I was so happy to have had a chance to spend 10 days with y'all.
So.
Thank you for listening on the other side of the world,
and Sunny's question is about having her child
(00:46):
sleep in her own bedroom again.
So she actually was referencing one
of my earlier bedtime battles episodes recently
and she wanted to pose the scenario with her daughter and get some insight.
Before we dive into that,
I wanted to share a little bit of an update.
So Deborah reached out a while back.
And asked a question
(01:08):
in the end of 2024
and she gave me a follow up email and permission to share it with you all.
So I wanted to encourage you a little bit
and celebrate Deborah's success as well.
So she said,
Good morning,
Brenna.
I emailed you toward the end of last year and I so appreciate
your insight on my boys and navigating the multi-household and the age gap.
(01:30):
By intervention of God,
my oldest phone stopped working and his dad and I were able to buy him a Gabb phone.
My oldest does complain about his new phone saying
it's boring and questions how it's keeping him safe,
but I do feel better knowing there's one less device I have to worry about.
Let me pause there.
If you all are not familiar,
I actually have an affiliate relationship with Gabb,
and that's with two Bs,
(01:50):
by the way.
And if you use promo code PLAY.
You will save money on either a watch or a phone,
and they are internet free they are social media free and they
are completely safe and they function as a basic phone for kids
so you can call,
you can text,
you can take pictures,
you can listen to music,
but beyond that there's no internet access.
(02:12):
So I just wanted to make you aware that's what she's referencing there
and if you all are interested in a safe phone for your kids,
I would check out Gabb and make sure you use promo code PLAY
to save money.
OK,
so let me continue with her email.
With my youngest,
I started being more intentional about encouraging over praise and letting
him do things that he can do all by himself.
(02:32):
It has been such a joy listening to him tell me that
he did it all by himself or that he figured it out.
His favorite.
phrase this week is to come tell me when he gets something that he didn't give up,
and that warms my heart.
I want to thank you for all you do to help us
learn and grow and raise our kids to be happy and healthy.
I've started listening to your therapist geared podcast as well,
and I have found it just as motivating.
(02:55):
So Deborah,
thank you so much for reaching back out and giving me an
update and letting me know that you found success in the skills,
and thank you for giving me permission to share that,
and I hope that encourages
each and every one of you listening because
it's always nice to know that when we implement strategies and we make changes that
there is hope that things are going to be different moving forward.
(03:17):
So Deborah,
I really appreciate that.
OK,
so let me switch back to Sunny's email.
And I want to kind of unpack this together because one of the most consistent issues
that we
deal with at our center
is bedtime struggles.
So this is a very common scenario and it's really helpful to
kind of dive in and figure out how we can handle this.
(03:39):
So Sunny's email
says my daughter's in play therapy and we now follow your podcast to a T.
We've tweaked a lot of language
and seen endless improvements across the board with our 6.5 year old daughter.
Absolutely love everything about this way of life.
The tweaks have transformed so much for us already.
Sunny,
we're celebrating that with you.
I'm so happy for you and your daughter and your family,
(04:01):
just even hearing that much of this.
We had the same scenario with my daughter,
very intelligent,
big feeler.
Similar to the bedtime battles episode recently,
she slept in her own room from 6 months until 4.5 years old.
Then she began to suffer night terrors and got very frightened and very scared.
Slowly but surely from 4.5 to 5.5,
(04:21):
she consistently started to come into our room.
By this time we had had our second child.
Who slept through and it was killing us.
Me and my partner were consistent,
and we spent one year walking my daughter back to her room,
validating and walking back to bed,
rinse and repeat all night long.
She would scream,
kick,
yell,
not sleep,
but we held out,
because if there's one thing we are,
(04:42):
it's consistent.
We did it all night long for a year.
She would struggle all day with tiredness and concentration at school,
but nothing ever changed,
and she never wavered,
and neither did we.
She would even hit us with the You don't sleep on your own,
you sleep with Dad.
As a last resort,
after 12 months of no more than 1 hour of sleep at a time,
we moved her into our room on an actual bed and bed frame.
(05:05):
She slept through all night.
Here we are a year later,
and although she is sleeping all night,
we want our room back.
As I said earlier,
she's a big feeler,
worries a lot,
and we're working on self-esteem building,
which is working.
My question is,
how on earth do we do that?
We were so consistent for a year and it made no difference to the point,
my family mocked me for how stupidly consistent I was.
(05:26):
Help.
All right,
Sunny,
thank you so much for the question and I'm
actually happy to cover another bedtime scenario because this,
like I said,
it's one of the most common struggles.
So let's go back to understanding the why
behind behavior
because at this point you're a year in and you just see this as
she won't sleep in her bed.
(05:46):
But what we need to realize is
probably the very first time that she had a night terror,
it,
no pun intended,
terrified her.
When a child wakes up in a night terror,
that is overwhelmingly scary,
and that's true for kids across the board,
not just big feelers and super sensitive.
So you have a big feeling intelligent,
super sensitive daughter who has a night terror and it,
(06:08):
it's no wonder that it completely unnerved her.
So what happened as an organic natural response,
which is I'm really horrified and scared and I need comfort,
that is a natural instinctive response.
I need to go see mom and dad because I'm really scared.
Well,
what happens is,
then you start to fear the fear.
(06:29):
So let me unpack that a little bit.
I suspect what happened
is she
had that happen.
She got really scared.
She felt better in with you.
Then the next night she went into her bed
and she was fearing the fear.
In other words,
am I going to have that happen again?
Am I going to wake up in that state again?
Is this going to continue?
(06:49):
Was that a one time thing or is this going to be every single night?
And now all of a sudden she's fearing the fear.
So the only way
until play therapy
equips children with coping and
resilience and self-confidence and problem solving
and all the things that we know child-centered play therapy provides
until that happens,
(07:10):
kids default to what they know,
which is mom and dad
make me feel better
mom and dad are safe,
mom and dad can keep me protected Mom and dad can be the crutch for me.
And you also have to keep in mind there's another layer here.
Highly anxious kids
can be distracted throughout the day.
(07:30):
But when they lay down in bed at night,
there's nothing to distract them from their thoughts,
from their worries,
from their paranoia,
from their concerns,
from their
things that swim around in their brain.
So
highly anxious kids almost always end up way more anxious at night in bed,
and this is why we have so many sleeping issues,
(07:52):
because when you are scared and when you're anxious,
you want to be with someone or something that's going to make it better.
So there's peace and comfort
in having someone else in the room.
So we also realized that just the nature of laying
down at night alone in a quiet dark room,
it usually spikes anxiety for kids.
(08:14):
So all of this is understandable,
right?
We're always going back to the why,
the why matters.
So we know
that these are natural byproducts of circumstances for your daughter,
Sunny.
Yet at the same time,
she was so overwhelmed,
she could not rein herself back in.
And the way that we describe this is kids get stuck on one side of the pendulum.
(08:35):
So she felt so powerless,
she felt so out of control,
she was so worried and scared.
The only thing she knew to do was to grasp at control
because control is the antidote to anxiety.
So when kids feel anxious,
they grasp at control.
That's their natural way of handling
(08:55):
really high elevated levels of anxiety.
So her fighting being in her own bedroom,
it was not just to be obstinate,
it was not just to be
cantankerous or contentious
it was because that was the only measure of control that she had.
She didn't have control over the fear.
She didn't have control over the fact that she didn't feel safe sleeping alone.
(09:16):
She didn't have control over the fact that she had night terrors.
She didn't have control over the fact that she kept waking up,
but she had control over refusing to be in her room by herself.
So that's why it lasted for a year and I'll give all of you credit.
You were all very tenacious and consistent.
You were and she was,
but eventually someone gives in.
(09:37):
And so in that moment,
out of,
I'm sure pure fatigue and exhaustion and overwhelm for yourself,
you probably just decided,
OK,
if she'll sleep on a different bed in our room,
maybe that will help and sure enough that solves the problem.
So now that brings us to,
she's been in your room for a year on her own bed in in the room.
(09:57):
Here's how we're going to
work through this number one,
she's been in play therapy
so we know and you even indicated it in your email
that she is working on self-esteem building and it's you're seeing changes
so we know that as she feels better about herself as she trusts herself
more as she accepts herself more as she believes herself to be more capable
(10:20):
and competent and
equipped to problem solve.
She will naturally handle
something like sleeping in her own room
far better than she would have before.
And this is what we know happens when we go
through the wringer with a situation with our kids.
And things get better,
even if the circumstances are not ideal,
(10:40):
which is what you're describing.
Look,
you don't want her in your room.
So the circumstances are not ideal,
but the fact that she's sleeping through the night
was very much
a desired respite.
So what happens is
we fear
things going back to how bad they were before.
So Sunny,
I suspect,
and many of you probably
(11:01):
are in a better state than they were before.
And so you're going,
oh my gosh,
I don't,
uh,
we can't go back there.
Oh my gosh,
we,
we can't deal with that again.
Oh my gosh,
I can never live through that again.
So then we make decisions based on the fear,
rather than based on
appropriate parenting strategies.
So we know she is better equipped than she used to be
(11:24):
to handle this #1.
#2,
play therapy is helping her develop an emotional
vocabulary that will naturally reduce anxiety levels.
So not only is she increasing self-esteem,
she's decreasing anxiety.
Both of those bode well
for her to be able to handle the transition back into her room.
However,
it has to be gradual and purposeful.
(11:46):
So you have to set
a future date of when this is going to happen.
You have to prepare her ahead of time
for what is to come.
On such and such day
It's time for you to be back in your own room again.
And there's going to be a preparation that she goes through
to adjust to this new normal
(12:08):
also
because this has been a power and control grab
and this has been motivated by low self-esteem,
high anxiety,
we want her to have as much ownership and responsibility and buy in as possible.
So here's what that looks like.
When you are going to start sleeping in your own room,
you get to decide what you want in your room.
(12:30):
You can choose to have a special night light,
you can choose to have a special stuffed animal,
you can choose to sleep with the dog,
you can choose to get a new bed,
you can choose to get a special bed.
You can choose to have certain sheets or blankets or pillows.
She gets to have a measure of control
over what's going to alleviate some of the concern.
(12:53):
And it will not be a perfect first time transition.
It rarely if ever is.
There will be a little bit of
a shift.
She may fight it for a little bit,
but she's not in the same place that she was and she's not the same child that she was.
We call this reverse Pandora's box.
In other words,
in the mythological story,
(13:16):
when Pandora's box was opened,
all the stuff came out and only the good remained inside.
Well,
reverse Pandora's box is all of the good that opens
is out for good,
and it can never be pushed back inside.
OK,
so all of the gains,
all of the change,
all of the growth
that will still be there.
(13:37):
We never go back to square one.
And so you have to trust that she is better equipped,
she has more resilience,
she has more coping,
she has an emotional vocabulary now she has higher levels of self-esteem,
she has lower levels of anxiety,
but she still needs control,
so she needs to have some buy in.
She gets to decide what goes into the room,
(13:57):
what goes into the bed.
She has choice,
she has ownership
and when there's buy in,
children are more likely to abide by the choice that was made.
We know that when we provide choices
that there's likely adherence to the choice because the choice was made.
So Sunny,
I hope that's helpful for you.
You're going to have to prep and you're going to have to involve her in the process,
(14:19):
and you're going to have to know
that for the first few days or maybe even upwards of a week,
there may be resistance to this.
But if she has enough time to adjust and prepare and plan.
She is better capable of handling it this time and you can even say that to her
you're older now and you're bigger now and you're braver now
(14:40):
and you are more capable of all of these
things now so you can actually paint the picture
that she doesn't need to default to old
behaviors because she's not that person anymore.
So I hope that that's helpful for each and every one of you.
Sunny,
thank you so much for the email
and if you'd like,
please reach out and give me an update.
I would love to hear about that
(15:00):
as we get a little further down the road here.
If you all have a question for me,
I would love to answer that as well.
brenna@thekidcounselor.com.
You can also,
if you're in the states,
leave a voicemail at 813-812-5525.
And as always,
I'm so grateful for you all.
Thank you for being so faithfully committed to
your children and your family
(15:22):
and working on yourself as a parent,
as a caregiver,
as a guardian
because
when we change,
it changes
everything.
And that is a really special thing that we just make the choice to change something
and the change continues as a ripple.
So I'm super grateful that you spend time with me each week.
(15:43):
We'll talk again soon.
Bye.
Thank you for listening to
the Play Therapy Parenting Podcast with Dr. Brenna Hicks.
For more episodes and just subscribe to our newsletter,
please go to www.playtherapyparenting.com.
You're listening to the
Play Therapy Parenting Podcast with Dr. Brenna Hicks.
Hi,
I'm Dr. Brenna Hicks,
The Kid Counselor.
This is the Play Therapy Parenting Podcast where I give you insight,
awareness,
and enlightenment about your parenting
and your relationship with your kids.
In today's episode,
I am answering a question from Sunny in Australia.
(00:24):
So hello to all of you down under.
I was actually just in Australia in November of 2024,
so
it is one of my favorite places I've ever been,
and I was so happy to have had a chance to spend 10 days with y'all.
So.
Thank you for listening on the other side of the world,
and Sunny's question is about having her child
(00:46):
sleep in her own bedroom again.
So she actually was referencing one
of my earlier bedtime battles episodes recently
and she wanted to pose the scenario with her daughter and get some insight.
Before we dive into that,
I wanted to share a little bit of an update.
So Deborah reached out a while back.
And asked a question
(01:08):
in the end of 2024
and she gave me a follow up email and permission to share it with you all.
So I wanted to encourage you a little bit
and celebrate Deborah's success as well.
So she said,
Good morning,
Brenna.
I emailed you toward the end of last year and I so appreciate
your insight on my boys and navigating the multi-household and the age gap.
(01:30):
By intervention of God,
my oldest phone stopped working and his dad and I were able to buy him a Gabb phone.
My oldest does complain about his new phone saying
it's boring and questions how it's keeping him safe,
but I do feel better knowing there's one less device I have to worry about.
Let me pause there.
If you all are not familiar,
I actually have an affiliate relationship with Gabb,
and that's with two Bs,
(01:50):
by the way.
And if you use promo code PLAY.
You will save money on either a watch or a phone,
and they are internet free they are social media free and they
are completely safe and they function as a basic phone for kids
so you can call,
you can text,
you can take pictures,
you can listen to music,
but beyond that there's no internet access.
(02:12):
So I just wanted to make you aware that's what she's referencing there
and if you all are interested in a safe phone for your kids,
I would check out Gabb and make sure you use promo code PLAY
to save money.
OK,
so let me continue with her email.
With my youngest,
I started being more intentional about encouraging over praise and letting
him do things that he can do all by himself.
(02:32):
It has been such a joy listening to him tell me that
he did it all by himself or that he figured it out.
His favorite.
phrase this week is to come tell me when he gets something that he didn't give up,
and that warms my heart.
I want to thank you for all you do to help us
learn and grow and raise our kids to be happy and healthy.
I've started listening to your therapist geared podcast as well,
and I have found it just as motivating.
(02:55):
So Deborah,
thank you so much for reaching back out and giving me an
update and letting me know that you found success in the skills,
and thank you for giving me permission to share that,
and I hope that encourages
each and every one of you listening because
it's always nice to know that when we implement strategies and we make changes that
there is hope that things are going to be different moving forward.
(03:17):
So Deborah,
I really appreciate that.
OK,
so let me switch back to Sunny's email.
And I want to kind of unpack this together because one of the most consistent issues
that we
deal with at our center
is bedtime struggles.
So this is a very common scenario and it's really helpful to
kind of dive in and figure out how we can handle this.
(03:39):
So Sunny's email
says my daughter's in play therapy and we now follow your podcast to a T.
We've tweaked a lot of language
and seen endless improvements across the board with our 6.5 year old daughter.
Absolutely love everything about this way of life.
The tweaks have transformed so much for us already.
Sunny,
we're celebrating that with you.
I'm so happy for you and your daughter and your family,
(04:01):
just even hearing that much of this.
We had the same scenario with my daughter,
very intelligent,
big feeler.
Similar to the bedtime battles episode recently,
she slept in her own room from 6 months until 4.5 years old.
Then she began to suffer night terrors and got very frightened and very scared.
Slowly but surely from 4.5 to 5.5,
(04:21):
she consistently started to come into our room.
By this time we had had our second child.
Who slept through and it was killing us.
Me and my partner were consistent,
and we spent one year walking my daughter back to her room,
validating and walking back to bed,
rinse and repeat all night long.
She would scream,
kick,
yell,
not sleep,
but we held out,
because if there's one thing we are,
(04:42):
it's consistent.
We did it all night long for a year.
She would struggle all day with tiredness and concentration at school,
but nothing ever changed,
and she never wavered,
and neither did we.
She would even hit us with the You don't sleep on your own,
you sleep with Dad.
As a last resort,
after 12 months of no more than 1 hour of sleep at a time,
we moved her into our room on an actual bed and bed frame.
(05:05):
She slept through all night.
Here we are a year later,
and although she is sleeping all night,
we want our room back.
As I said earlier,
she's a big feeler,
worries a lot,
and we're working on self-esteem building,
which is working.
My question is,
how on earth do we do that?
We were so consistent for a year and it made no difference to the point,
my family mocked me for how stupidly consistent I was.
(05:26):
Help.
All right,
Sunny,
thank you so much for the question and I'm
actually happy to cover another bedtime scenario because this,
like I said,
it's one of the most common struggles.
So let's go back to understanding the why
behind behavior
because at this point you're a year in and you just see this as
she won't sleep in her bed.
(05:46):
But what we need to realize is
probably the very first time that she had a night terror,
it,
no pun intended,
terrified her.
When a child wakes up in a night terror,
that is overwhelmingly scary,
and that's true for kids across the board,
not just big feelers and super sensitive.
So you have a big feeling intelligent,
super sensitive daughter who has a night terror and it,
(06:08):
it's no wonder that it completely unnerved her.
So what happened as an organic natural response,
which is I'm really horrified and scared and I need comfort,
that is a natural instinctive response.
I need to go see mom and dad because I'm really scared.
Well,
what happens is,
then you start to fear the fear.
(06:29):
So let me unpack that a little bit.
I suspect what happened
is she
had that happen.
She got really scared.
She felt better in with you.
Then the next night she went into her bed
and she was fearing the fear.
In other words,
am I going to have that happen again?
Am I going to wake up in that state again?
Is this going to continue?
(06:49):
Was that a one time thing or is this going to be every single night?
And now all of a sudden she's fearing the fear.
So the only way
until play therapy
equips children with coping and
resilience and self-confidence and problem solving
and all the things that we know child-centered play therapy provides
until that happens,
(07:10):
kids default to what they know,
which is mom and dad
make me feel better
mom and dad are safe,
mom and dad can keep me protected Mom and dad can be the crutch for me.
And you also have to keep in mind there's another layer here.
Highly anxious kids
can be distracted throughout the day.
(07:30):
But when they lay down in bed at night,
there's nothing to distract them from their thoughts,
from their worries,
from their paranoia,
from their concerns,
from their
things that swim around in their brain.
So
highly anxious kids almost always end up way more anxious at night in bed,
and this is why we have so many sleeping issues,
(07:52):
because when you are scared and when you're anxious,
you want to be with someone or something that's going to make it better.
So there's peace and comfort
in having someone else in the room.
So we also realized that just the nature of laying
down at night alone in a quiet dark room,
it usually spikes anxiety for kids.
(08:14):
So all of this is understandable,
right?
We're always going back to the why,
the why matters.
So we know
that these are natural byproducts of circumstances for your daughter,
Sunny.
Yet at the same time,
she was so overwhelmed,
she could not rein herself back in.
And the way that we describe this is kids get stuck on one side of the pendulum.
(08:35):
So she felt so powerless,
she felt so out of control,
she was so worried and scared.
The only thing she knew to do was to grasp at control
because control is the antidote to anxiety.
So when kids feel anxious,
they grasp at control.
That's their natural way of handling
(08:55):
really high elevated levels of anxiety.
So her fighting being in her own bedroom,
it was not just to be obstinate,
it was not just to be
cantankerous or contentious
it was because that was the only measure of control that she had.
She didn't have control over the fear.
She didn't have control over the fact that she didn't feel safe sleeping alone.
(09:16):
She didn't have control over the fact that she had night terrors.
She didn't have control over the fact that she kept waking up,
but she had control over refusing to be in her room by herself.
So that's why it lasted for a year and I'll give all of you credit.
You were all very tenacious and consistent.
You were and she was,
but eventually someone gives in.
(09:37):
And so in that moment,
out of,
I'm sure pure fatigue and exhaustion and overwhelm for yourself,
you probably just decided,
OK,
if she'll sleep on a different bed in our room,
maybe that will help and sure enough that solves the problem.
So now that brings us to,
she's been in your room for a year on her own bed in in the room.
(09:57):
Here's how we're going to
work through this number one,
she's been in play therapy
so we know and you even indicated it in your email
that she is working on self-esteem building and it's you're seeing changes
so we know that as she feels better about herself as she trusts herself
more as she accepts herself more as she believes herself to be more capable
(10:20):
and competent and
equipped to problem solve.
She will naturally handle
something like sleeping in her own room
far better than she would have before.
And this is what we know happens when we go
through the wringer with a situation with our kids.
And things get better,
even if the circumstances are not ideal,
(10:40):
which is what you're describing.
Look,
you don't want her in your room.
So the circumstances are not ideal,
but the fact that she's sleeping through the night
was very much
a desired respite.
So what happens is
we fear
things going back to how bad they were before.
So Sunny,
I suspect,
and many of you probably
(11:01):
are in a better state than they were before.
And so you're going,
oh my gosh,
I don't,
uh,
we can't go back there.
Oh my gosh,
we,
we can't deal with that again.
Oh my gosh,
I can never live through that again.
So then we make decisions based on the fear,
rather than based on
appropriate parenting strategies.
So we know she is better equipped than she used to be
(11:24):
to handle this #1.
#2,
play therapy is helping her develop an emotional
vocabulary that will naturally reduce anxiety levels.
So not only is she increasing self-esteem,
she's decreasing anxiety.
Both of those bode well
for her to be able to handle the transition back into her room.
However,
it has to be gradual and purposeful.
(11:46):
So you have to set
a future date of when this is going to happen.
You have to prepare her ahead of time
for what is to come.
On such and such day
It's time for you to be back in your own room again.
And there's going to be a preparation that she goes through
to adjust to this new normal
(12:08):
also
because this has been a power and control grab
and this has been motivated by low self-esteem,
high anxiety,
we want her to have as much ownership and responsibility and buy in as possible.
So here's what that looks like.
When you are going to start sleeping in your own room,
you get to decide what you want in your room.
(12:30):
You can choose to have a special night light,
you can choose to have a special stuffed animal,
you can choose to sleep with the dog,
you can choose to get a new bed,
you can choose to get a special bed.
You can choose to have certain sheets or blankets or pillows.
She gets to have a measure of control
over what's going to alleviate some of the concern.
(12:53):
And it will not be a perfect first time transition.
It rarely if ever is.
There will be a little bit of
a shift.
She may fight it for a little bit,
but she's not in the same place that she was and she's not the same child that she was.
We call this reverse Pandora's box.
In other words,
in the mythological story,
(13:16):
when Pandora's box was opened,
all the stuff came out and only the good remained inside.
Well,
reverse Pandora's box is all of the good that opens
is out for good,
and it can never be pushed back inside.
OK,
so all of the gains,
all of the change,
all of the growth
that will still be there.
(13:37):
We never go back to square one.
And so you have to trust that she is better equipped,
she has more resilience,
she has more coping,
she has an emotional vocabulary now she has higher levels of self-esteem,
she has lower levels of anxiety,
but she still needs control,
so she needs to have some buy in.
She gets to decide what goes into the room,
(13:57):
what goes into the bed.
She has choice,
she has ownership
and when there's buy in,
children are more likely to abide by the choice that was made.
We know that when we provide choices
that there's likely adherence to the choice because the choice was made.
So Sunny,
I hope that's helpful for you.
You're going to have to prep and you're going to have to involve her in the process,
(14:19):
and you're going to have to know
that for the first few days or maybe even upwards of a week,
there may be resistance to this.
But if she has enough time to adjust and prepare and plan.
She is better capable of handling it this time and you can even say that to her
you're older now and you're bigger now and you're braver now
(14:40):
and you are more capable of all of these
things now so you can actually paint the picture
that she doesn't need to default to old
behaviors because she's not that person anymore.
So I hope that that's helpful for each and every one of you.
Sunny,
thank you so much for the email
and if you'd like,
please reach out and give me an update.
I would love to hear about that
(15:00):
as we get a little further down the road here.
If you all have a question for me,
I would love to answer that as well.
brenna@thekidcounselor.com.
You can also,
if you're in the states,
leave a voicemail at 813-812-5525.
And as always,
I'm so grateful for you all.
Thank you for being so faithfully committed to
your children and your family
(15:22):
and working on yourself as a parent,
as a caregiver,
as a guardian
because
when we change,
it changes
everything.
And that is a really special thing that we just make the choice to change something
and the change continues as a ripple.
So I'm super grateful that you spend time with me each week.
(15:43):
We'll talk again soon.
Bye.
Thank you for listening to
the Play Therapy Parenting Podcast with Dr. Brenna Hicks.
For more episodes and just subscribe to our newsletter,
please go to www.playtherapyparenting.com.
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