How Low Demand Parenting Will Change Your Life

Oct 28, 2024

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What it's about:

In this episode of The Low Demand Parenting Podcast, I’m diving into what low demand parenting really looks like. As an autistic adult, mom of three, and someone who’s been on this journey myself, I’ve seen firsthand how letting go of traditional parenting pressures opens the door to more trust, connection, and joy in our families. Inspired by Ross Green’s Collaborative and Proactive Solutions, I share how releasing control and truly respecting our kids’ boundaries can change everything. We’ll talk about how meltdowns are a form of communication, how to build genuine trust, and the growth that comes when we parent from a place of understanding and reflection. It’s all about moving away from power struggles and toward a more peaceful, respectful home life.

12 Days of Low Demand Holidays:

I'll say it: Holidays can be the absolute worst. This transformative course is tailored for families navigating the unique challenges of the holiday season. Discover impactful video lessons, a comprehensive workbook, and recording of an interactive Q&A to empower you through the festivities.

See all the details here!

Ready to Start Dropping Demands?

If you’re ready to dive deeper into low demand parenting, I’ve got some great FREE resources to help you get started!

Quiz: Why is Everything So Hard? – This quick, insightful quiz will help you understand why parenting might feel so overwhelming right now and give you personalized steps to lighten the load. Take the quiz here.
Free Chapter: Low Demand Parenting – Curious about my book, Low Demand Parenting? Download the first chapter for free and start your journey toward more ease and joy. Get the free chapter here.

Transcript:

Hello, we are going to talk this week about how low demand parenting is different from other parenting techniques. And after years of practicing low demand, what the most powerful demand drops have actually been. Let's talk about how low demand parenting is different from some of the other techniques and tools and strategies and mindsets that you might've encountered.

I want to go back to my early parenting days, when I was eager, so desperate, in fact, for strategies that would help me parent my three kids, who I adore with my whole heart, and who also seemed to struggle. Every day with what I had been taught to see as ordinary aspects of being a human and the strategies that professionals and books and blogs and podcasts recommended were things like timeouts or time ins, punishments or consequences or natural consequences, reward charts, sticker charts, praise, praise, Ignoring.

And every one of those techniques that I tried chipped away or outright destroyed the relationship I wanted to have with my kids. Clear kind boundaries and developing emotional vocabulary enraged and alienated them. Picture schedules, consistent routines, and enforced sensory breaks all fell flat.

Nothing worked. All of the best techniques that I was taught failed. And at every turn, it was my fault. I felt like such a failure. Discovering Ross Green's work changed my path. Ross Green is the author of many books, including The Explosive Child and The Parenting Approach, called Collaborative and Proactive Solutions.

When I discovered what Dr. Green describes as releasing adult controlled plans, or Plan A, and his encouragement for us to embrace true collaboration, it felt like freedom. When I truly gave up on My responsibility as the adult being to control the outcomes and the plans, I wept for days. I felt deep relief.

I told my kids, I'm not going to force you to do things anymore. If you don't truly consent to it, we don't do it. We didn't even know what kind of life that would look like. It felt like stepping off a cliff. But there was a method. There was a path. And I felt like if we follow this, we'll be okay. The focus in Dr.

Green's work is on collaborative problem solving. The hard part is that this kind of back and forth, genuine, collaborative approach was still way out of reach for us. My children's trust in me and in themselves was low. The new scripts and questions that they proposed that I use were triggering. And I could tell we were going to spend a long time just letting things go and building trust day after day.

And so that's what we did. We stuck right there, letting things go and building trust, and we developed low demand parenting. And here is what we have learned. I've learned that children's trust is earned day after day. We live in a world that disrespects children and routinely violates their boundaries.

Children are regularly controlled and manipulated by adults in full view of everyone. Low demand parenting restores genuine trust by fostering children's inner voice, by listening to their boundaries and respecting their needs. This is a fundamentally anti adultist approach. Adultism is when adults believe they're better or more important than kids and teens, leading them to ignore or control young people's opinions, feelings, and choices.

Adultism creates an unfair power imbalance where adults make all the decisions and young people aren't treated with respect or seen as capable. I have learned that parents meet their own needs while honoring their children's boundaries. Boundaries are a huge topic in traditional parenting circles. For traditional parents, parents meet their needs by controlling their kids.

Something like, I need my mother in law to think I'm a good mom so you must behave at her house. In low demand parenting, adults learn to identify the deep need, motivating their tendency towards demands. And to honor our own need while dropping what's too hard for the kid. In low demand parenting, we adults learn to identify our deep needs that are motivating our demands.

And then we practice honoring our own needs while dropping what is too hard for our children. As a low demand parent, I have learned to heal my relationship to myself. What if you had been trusted and listened to as a child? What if the people in your life honored your boundaries and found creative ways for you to flourish just as you were?

As we parent our kids, we give ourselves permission to grieve our pain and to heal old wounds. There's a lot of talk right now about being cycle breakers. And I believe that this kind of parenting is integral in that reality, that we have some cycles we're desperate to break.

As children, we knew things about the world.

We knew things about ourselves that mattered and somewhere along the way. As we were not listened to, not trusted, not respected, not centered, as adults used their power and control over us and told us who we were, and told us, more importantly, who we were supposed to be, we lost some of those threads. And so many of us, as adults, are desperate to come back to who we once were.

This journey of parenting our children becomes a healing journey. For us in our relationship to our own childhood and to our inner children who live in us today.

In low demand, we view meltdowns as a sign of trust and a communication that something was too hard. In other parenting schemas, meltdowns typically mean something is wrong. It's a failure, a mistake, a problem. In low demand, meltdowns are just more information. They share that our kid trusts us enough to share their big feelings and something came up that was too hard. The adult then becomes the demand detective, discerning what happened, what crossed the line, what was too hard about that situation, and what information does that give us about what to drop in the future.

Low demand works for easy kids and for tough ones. This was something that frustrated me so much as I explored different parenting techniques and trying to find ways to meet the needs of my really tricky kids. So many techniques work for lots of easy kids! But that's the reality with easy kids. Most everything works for them. But if it doesn't work for the ones who are extremely sensitive, if it doesn't work for the ones who feel so deeply, if it doesn't work for the ones who are disabled or have slower processing time or react to question asking, if it doesn't work for them, then it doesn't work.

Easy kids are easy kids. That's the whole point. Easy kids are often hiding their discomfort under a veneer of helpfulness and people pleasing. They are too scared of what would happen if they spoke up and named their needs. Maybe some of you were easy kids. You might remember how it felt. Easy kids can be jealous of their more reactive siblings ability to self advocate. They wish they could speak up. They wish they could say what they really thought. Low demand parenting pays close attention to these subtle forms of communication and proactively lowers demands for all kids, easy and tough ones, to find children's true zone of tolerance.

Low demand is proactive and it's reflective. It's proactive. If you regularly find yourself dropping a demand in the moment, something like, "no popsicles before dinner. Well, okay, okay, you can have it." Or, "we're gonna go to the store, but I'm not gonna buy you any candy. Okay, okay, I'll get you some." This is a sign that you might want to shift into the more proactive element of this method.

Proactively dropping demands means you're doing it ahead of time, intentionally, and wholeheartedly. You communicate these demand drops to your children, which then will enrich your relationship and empower their self advocacy. You don't just let it go in the background and hope no one notices. You bring it right into the center of your relationship. "Hey, I saw that that was too hard. I don't want to ask things of you that push you into that zone. It feels so bad to have a meltdown. So, I've decided that from now on, we're just not going to do that anymore."

When we drop these demands proactively and openly with our children, the first emotion that they typically experience is relief. They feel like, "finally, someone heard me. Finally, I can let this go. I've been trying so hard to please you, and it just isn't working. And I am desperate for some relief."

Low demand is also a reflective practice because we can never be proactive about everything. Stuff's always coming up. There's always unexpected demands that drop in no matter how proactive we might be. In getting reflective, we notice when things come up, and then intentionally pause afterward and look back so that we can learn for next time. We might open up conversation with our children or our partners in order to learn more about all of the elements that contribute into any given demand situation and discern " what do you think we would do differently the next time this comes up?

Low demand is a path to freedom and joy. Without control tactics or manipulation without external standards for behavior. Other people telling us what's right and wrong without punishments and battles. When we let all of those things go, it creates a genuine freedom and joy in our relationship with our children. We can embrace a radically respectful relationship. We're free to listen to our intuition rather than follow a script or obey some expert who's tolling, telling us what to do. We're free. We can customize our parenting to our unique child and our specific priorities rather than following some sort of external formula that's supposed to work.

Freedom and joy. That's the magic.

And last, in low demand, we can all be our true selves. Radical acceptance is really the heartbeat of what makes this method so powerfully transformative. Ableism , says that there is one right and best way to be a human. system that has its claws embedded in all of us. .

And when we mix it up with a little bit of capitalism, we get the belief that that ideal human is productive, independent, and generating wealth to support themselves and buy goods. If you've worried about your kid being independent one day, if you've worried they're not going to be able to get a good job, you know that this is the water we swim in.

It's the fears that we've been taught, and it's oppressive to everyone . The real gift of life lies in interdependence and connection. We spend most of our lives in interdependence. It's how we start, it's how we end, and when we are in deep relationship, It becomes the heartbeat of our entire life.

The real gifts are laughter, love, presence, and connection. And in this method, we can be our true selves, needy, struggling, and beautiful.

After three years of low demand parenting, I wrote down the most powerful demands that I've dropped. I considered writing down dropping eating altogether as a family around the dinner table, which was cataclysmically positive for us.

I could have written down dropping the demand that my kids speak to me nicely and embracing all of the forms of communication. I could talk about dropping screen demands and the way that that helped us to shed shame and to learn to trust ourselves, to use our screens without shame or limits, which is our family mantra.

There's so many things that I could mention, but in the end, the things that have mattered the most are the things that I have shed inside of myself. I drop the demand of being like everyone else, because I know that being me is a far more satisfying path. I drop the demand that I get it all right, because I am human, and I have the courage to learn from my mistakes.

I drop the demand that things go the way I want them to, because I know I can handle whatever comes.

I drop the demand that I do it all, because I know that this is an impossible trap, and because what if I don't want to do it all?

I drop the demand that you agree with me, because I feel grounded and aligned in my choices.

I drop the demand that you accept me, because I know my inherent worth and belovedness.

I drop the demand that you take care of me, because I know many ways to get my own needs met.

I had no idea when I started this journey that it would turn me inside out and upside down. I didn't know that it was seeking to change everything about my life. That small accommodations, like letting my kids yell without correcting them, or putting their shoes on for them, rather than insisting they do it by themselves.

I had no idea that these small daily acts would reshape most everything about my self identity and my understanding of the good life.

There's no script, there's no set plan, there's no have tos, there's no model. There's no formula. Yes, there are steps, but that's because it's a journey and you get to walk them out in the way that makes sense for you and your family. The great freedom of stepping off the path is discovering that there is a whole wide world out there.

So if you're out wandering around in the woods, I'll see you there.

If this podcast is speaking to your soul, you can subscribe through wherever you get your own podcasts. Even better. If you feel the nudge, head on over to Apple podcasts in particular, and leave us a review. It's such a helpful way for new people to also get to experience what this podcast wants to bring into their lives.

I'm Amanda. Remember, it takes great strength to let things go. I'll see you next week.

How Low Demand Parenting Will Change Your Life

What it's about:

12 Days of Low Demand Holidays:

Links:

Ready to Start Dropping Demands?

Transcript: