Janet responds to questions from two parents who describe their sensitive children struggling with separation, transitions, and general emotional overwhelm. One writes, “I go into panic mode when I see his eyes widen with worry,” while another admits, “I often see the meltdown coming… and don’t know how to help without making it worse.” Both parents admit they have their own strong emotional reactions to their kids' struggles including fear, guilt, and self-doubt. Janet points out how our own di...
Jan 20, 2026•30 min
Toddler twins are suddenly melting down at bedtime. A 5-year-old is struggling to manage his unruly friend. Janet explains how parents in both these cases can help to resolve these issues by better understanding their children's sensitivity to change. Janet's "No Bad Kids Master Course" is available at NoBadKidsCourse.com and JanetLansbury.com . Please support our sponsors! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices...
Jan 13, 2026•26 min
Janet believes that one of the biggest hurdles for us as parents is our own self-doubt and hopes that 2026 will be the year we stop second-guessing ourselves. With this in mind, she offers suggestions to 3 families who've written to her about their current struggles. The first is a mom whose 2.75-year-old seems to be stalling during transitions and melting down when the mom doesn't comply with her demands. This parent says, "... my biggest struggle and question is how do we trust our kids' feeli...
Jan 06, 2026•37 min
A parent struggles to control emotions like anger, frustration, and disappointment when they’re triggered by her toddler. While she strives to be a confident leader by appearing calm and unruffled, she also wants to model her emotions authentically for her child. In this encore episode, Janet clarifies what it really means to be "unruffled" and how parents can approach this goal without faking or stuffing their emotions. Janet's "No Bad Kids Master Course" is available at NoBadKidsCourse.co...
Dec 30, 2025•24 min
A parent wants to get out of a cycle of bribing her 3.5-year old and writes to Janet for help. “It seems that in order to get him to do anything, I have to offer a reward, treat, or special outing.” If these strategies don’t work, she says, she will threaten to take something away. This mom admits that she is a people pleaser, so when she does set a boundary, she feels guilty about it. She worries that she’s teaching this to her son. “I don’t want him to feel guilty about his feelings or his bou...
Dec 23, 2025•23 min
Every child is certainly unique, but when it comes to their behavior, we can sometimes complicate a situation that might really be quite simple to address. This week Janet shares an email from a parent who says her nearly 4-year-old has lately been argumentative and having meltdowns over the smallest things. "She seems to want to self-sabotage and create problems where there are none." This parent has tried to be consistent in her responses but to no avail. "Is it a cry for attention?" she wonde...
Dec 16, 2025•30 min
As parents, we do our best to raise kind, thoughtful, appreciative kids. But despite our efforts, our children can sometimes seem downright ungrateful. In this episode, a mom writes to Janet about her frustrations with her sons, aged six and four. Rather than appreciate the gifts and special outings she treats them to, they inevitably ask for more, more, more and then complain when she won't give it to them. "It feels like nonstop unhappiness when I'm trying so hard to make them happy." This mom...
Dec 09, 2025•29 min
Janet responds to emails from parents who describe struggling with their children’s strong emotions. One writes that her 2-year-old rejects her comfort when he has a meltdown. “It breaks my heart, and I feel like I must be doing something wrong.” Another writes that her 7-year-old says he doesn’t feel love from his mother. Another email describes how a 3-year-old’s tantrums last all afternoon and into the evening, disrupting the rest of the family’s routine, and they “all feel trapped by a 3-yea...
Dec 02, 2025•32 min
We all aspire for our children to grow up with a positive self-image and an abundance of self-confidence. When life throws our child a dilemma, it’s our natural instinct to want to fix it, or at least work them through the uncomfortable feelings with a pep talk. In this encore episode, Janet answers questions from three listeners and offers a more helpful – albeit counterintuitive – perspective that can help children learn resilience and find the kind of confidence in themselves that lasts a lif...
Nov 25, 2025•29 min
A parent describes her 5.5-year old as the love of her life. Lately, though, her daughter has been dissolving into silly, immature behavior at inappropriate moments, melting down over nonsensical things, and demanding her mother's attention. "It goes on and on, and I get tired and annoyed." On the other hand, this parent says she feels guilty for not playing along with her daughter's spontaneous games (like joining her in a crab-walking race down the stairs). She worries that at 5.5 years old, h...
Nov 18, 2025•26 min
In this episode: Janet receives a follow-up message from the mom she helped last week in the episode "Demanding, Stressed, and Aggressive—What's Happened to My Gentle Child?" The parent candidly shares aspects of Janet's advice that did and didn't work. She then reveals a transformative discovery: "We were getting boundaries and discipline all wrong. We were not being confident leaders or using honest consequences." This mom shares how the situation finally clicked for her and she was able to ac...
Nov 11, 2025•34 min
A stressed parent writes that her 4-year-old has been having a very difficult time for the past year. He's anxious, easily frustrated, "screams and stomps so loud it scares the baby," and is physically aggressive toward his older sister. Prior to this, she describes him as "such a gentle, thoughtful boy." She assumes some of his moods and behavior may be attributed to the arrival of the new baby, and she empathizes, but she wonders what to do. Janet has several suggestions to both better underst...
Nov 04, 2025•24 min
A parent writes that the bedtime routine with her 5.5 year old daughter has become an all-consuming marathon, and she feels exhausted, frustrated, and disconnected. "I don't enjoy motherhood right now," she says, "and that's painful to admit because I love my daughter so much." She describes a typical evening that begins calmly enough with snacks, bathing, teeth, and a book, but inevitably her daughter sidetracks the process with demands to go pee, first-aid for a booboo, and sometimes declaring...
Oct 28, 2025•25 min
At the heart of Janet's parenting approach is respectful, honest communication between us and our kids beginning in infancy—which means observing and listening to kids at least as much as we talk to them. It also means walking through our own fears to accept our child's most uncomfortable feelings and broach difficult conversations. In this episode, Janet shares a parent's story about their child's 45 minute(!) meltdown, and how the parent eventually discovered what had caused it. This parent al...
Oct 21, 2025•23 min
No matter how we approach raising our children, there are times we'll feel physically, mentally, or emotionally exhausted. Maybe all of the above. We’re only human, of course, but it may also be that we're taking on more than we need to --- depleting our energy with roles and tasks that are better left to our child. In this encore episode, Janet offers ideas for lightening our workload by recognizing and trusting our children's intrinsic abilities. Janet's job description reframe can help save o...
Oct 14, 2025•29 min
It's common for young children to go through phases of unwarranted aggression, usually directed at the ones they love most. Janet has noted that these phases are as uncomfortable for our children as it they are for us, and probably even more so. In this episode, she responds to two parents of kids who are behaving erratically and lashing out at their siblings. Both families have attempted to address these behaviors with empathy, respect, and boundaries, but they aren't seeing results. The frustr...
Oct 07, 2025•29 min
You've no doubt heard by now about the countless benefits of our children's self-directed play. Less understood is how to nurture this invaluable instinct in our babies—every child has it. With our good intentions, though, we sometimes get in the way of play. Perhaps we intervene and unnecessarily interrupt our children's process. Or, as our kids get older, we let structured activities and excursions usurp the time they might have preferred to spend exploring, experimenting, following their own ...
Sep 30, 2025•31 min
We all hope to raise polite, well-behaved kids who follow rules and comply with requests, assuming these are fair, just, and appropriate. We want our kids to not only respect us but other authority figures in their lives. Yet, many of us shy away from the term "obedience," because it connotes using discipline methods that are overly strict, harsh, and authoritarian. It doesn't need to be that way. In this episode, Janet responds to a parent who feels like she needs more obedience from her almost...
Sep 23, 2025•22 min
The root causes for our children's behaviors—especially the behaviors that most alarm and confuse us—are often confusing and complex. Sometimes, try as we might to understand and even reason with our child, the behavior only gets worse. But these behaviors may be simpler to address than we might imagine. All we need to do is recognize the intense focus that we are bringing to these behaviors and where that might coming from— often our own childhood experiences. Janet responds to two parents who ...
Sep 16, 2025•36 min
As parents, we're naturally protective of our kids' feelings and sensibilities, but as they mature and venture out socially, it's also our job to give them the tools they need to thrive in a variety of settings and with people who have differing views and engagement styles. Our kids need to learn to respect and adapt to every person's boundaries—not just ours, but those of their peers, teachers, caregivers, relatives. Then, when our child finds herself in a new situation confronted by a differen...
Sep 09, 2025•27 min
Transitions tend to be difficult for young children, and they express their struggles in a variety of concerning ways. They may be focused to distraction on particular random-seeming anxieties and fears. Worse, they take their feelings out on us by being uncooperative or lashing out in violent meltdowns. Two families reach out to Janet with these issues, and she proposes a three-step approach to help resolve them. Janet's "No Bad Kids Master Course" is at: NoBadKidsCourse.com Please support our ...
Sep 02, 2025•31 min
The parent of a 7-year-old describes writes that her daughter has become relentlessly negative and argumentative. "It feels like everything is a debate, and she says no to almost every request." As one of Janet's longtime followers, she knows not to take the behavior personally, tries to maintain a light attitude, but she often finds herself lecturing and sometimes completely losing her cool. She wonders if Janet can suggest some other way to deal with her daughter's negative attitude. "I feel s...
Aug 26, 2025•25 min
It's unnerving when our kids engage in conflict with siblings or peers, whether it's over a toy, their perceived 'space', or even our attentions. As emotions escalate, so does grabbing, pushing, and sometimes hitting. No parent wants to witness this, and our instinct tends to be to try to manage the situation by separating the warring factions, comforting hurts and disappointments, figuring out alternative activities our kids can engage in, or admonishing them to "share." But peer and, especiall...
Aug 19, 2025•33 min
Janet welcomes a timely visit from iconic educator Mr. Chazz who shares how parents and teachers can help kids successfully transition to a new preschool or childcare situation. His focus is on trust and maintaining the sense of connection that supports parents and kids to separate with confidence. Janet's "No Bad Kids" Master Course is at nobadkidscourse.com . Please support our sponsors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices...
Aug 12, 2025•45 min
A parent describes her 4-year-old son as energetic, independent and strong-willed. While she appreciates her son’s enthusiasm and free spirit, she constantly struggles to reign him in and finds herself yelling, "You're not listening!" As an example, she says they often take nature walks with friends, and he inevitably runs ahead at an unsafe distance. She feels overwhelmed, especially when they are out with other parents “that have high expectations for behavior." In this encore episode, Janet o...
Aug 05, 2025•23 min•Ep. 400
The practice of acknowledging our children's feelings and struggles can provide healing, calming messages of safety and acceptance. With a genuine tone and a few words, our acknowledgments can help children share pent-up emotions, feel seen and heard, and gradually regulate, which in turn eases problematic behaviors. However, parents commonly share with Janet that validating feelings doesn't work for their child and feels more like an exercise in frustration. In this encore episode, Janet speaks...
Jul 29, 2025•21 min•Ep. 399
Janet responds to 3 messages from listeners who say their kids exhibit aggressive or violent behavior towards their peers, in one case "pushing, hitting, or attacking faces, sometimes without warning." While all these parents recognize that fatigue and other discomforts can contribute to this behavior, it often seems that their kids lash out for no reason at all. These parents have come to distrust their kids in social situations and are at their wit's end, worried they've done something wrong. ...
Jul 22, 2025•33 min•Ep. 398
In a previous "Unruffled" episode, Janet offered advice to a parent who was struggling with potty training. That parent wrote back recently to announce her daughter's 4-year saga had finally come to a successful conclusion... it was NOT the result of the parents following Janet's advice, but going full speed ahead in the opposite direction. In this episode, Janet revisits the guidance she originally offered, and explains why she believes her advice was unhelpful to this family. Janet's "No Bad K...
Jul 15, 2025•34 min•Ep. 397
In this popular encore episode, a parent writes that she’s overwhelmed by her two girls constantly demanding her attention, following her around their home and calling “Mommy! Mommy!” even if they are in the same room. “It’s driving me mad,” she writes. “It’s like a dripping tap. It is getting to the point where I just want to scream.” This mom notices that the girls don’t have this dynamic with their father. In fact, even if he is sitting beside them and she is in another room, they still call ...
Jul 08, 2025•22 min•Ep. 396
Janet is joined by Grace Lautman, a therapist and nutritionist who focuses on eating disorders, the conditions that can create and aggravate them, and how eating — or not eating — can be a symptom of mental health issues. She writes: "My hope has always been to provide accepting spaces for all individuals and bodies to explore and honor their relationships with food, body, and self." Janet and Grace discuss some of the early signs of eating disorders, and how our own relationship with food and b...
Jul 01, 2025•42 min•Ep. 395
