Walking with Boundaries

We went for a walk after a long rough week of being sick, and watching screens. And while it was a great way to come down from a day with lots of screens and not much connection, it certainly wasn’t without some struggles.

I knew heading into this walk that I didn’t have the bandwidth for E to walk the whole time and that I would want her to be in the stroller at least for the majority of the time. She’s hit or miss on liking the stroller, so I wasn’t sure how it would go.

We told her we’d be going for a walk with the stroller, popped her in, and headed out. After about 2 minutes, she starts getting a bit fussy about the stroller. My husband looked at me like “should we turn back?” But I felt confident we could get through it.

Here’s what I did: I moved right in to empathy, validation, and understanding. “I am hearing you want to get down and don’t want to be in your stroller right now. We are going to stay in the stroller for now. I know. I believe you. I see you are pulling at the straps. I’m wondering if maybe they are feeling a bit uncomfortable. Yeah, you sucked them down. That’s a good idea. I know you are wanting to get down and walk. That makes sense that you are frustrated being the stroller when your body is wanting to move. I know. I understand.”

(This all happened over the course of about 5-7 minutes, so not too much talking & stream of consciousness, but I do definitely struggle with saying less sometimes.)

E never really escalated above a 4 or 5. She ended up getting distracted by someone’s Halloween decorations. After that she was pretty de-escalated, so I stopped and told her, “I know you want to walk, but we have to stay in the stroller for now. On the way back, when we get back to right here, we will put your shoes on and you can walk. Does that sound like a good plan?”

She seemed okay with it. We were able to sort of keep a fun, little intermittent chatter going on with her pointing at things, us naming them and talking about them, making silly noises for all the Halloween decorations, etc. There was lots of moments of delighting in her experience which led to some good connection.

She did ask to get down again a few times, but I reminded her that when we got back to the spot, that’s when we’d puto n her shoes to walk. We also chatted along the way about how hard it can be to wait. Here’s what I said: “I am noticing that there are a lot of times that you are having to wait for things. Like when we have to wait for our food, or when you have to wait to get down on a walk. And you know what? Waiting is SO hard! Did you know that waiting is still hard for me and daddy sometimes? Yeah, so it makes sense that it’s hard for you. But the more practice you get, the easier it gets to handle how hard it is!”

Did a lot of this go over her 1.5year old head? Yep! But it’s starting to talk about these things, these feelings that happen inside of her. Saying that I see them, I understand them. They make sense. Where we can help make the implicit explicit, kids have an easier time making sense of their internal worlds (and the internal worlds of others).

And I didn’t force this. Because the walk ended up in a way that was actually super connection building, she was in a really receptive place where she was tuned into me and what I was saying. If she was still more escalated and upset about the boundary, this would not have landed at all.

So, when we got back to our spot, she probably would have been happy to keep riding in the stroller the rest of the way home. And I was tempted to pretend that I forgot. But I know it is important to make good on our promises. So I asked her if she wanted to get down. Sure enough, she did. And she had so much fun playing with her shadow the whole way home and we were all giggling about it.

I generally try to say “yes” when I can, and I certainly could have said “yes” to her wanting to walk from the beginning, but I knew that chasing her around, keeping her on the sidewalk, etc would have really taken it out of me and not been the rejuvenating reset walk that I was hoping for us.

So instead I decided to set the boundary. And when I did, I knew that I would have to be ready to support the emotions that came up. I wasn’t sure how it was going to go. And honestly, I couldn’t have asked for a better evening walk.

Tough times aren’t bad. Big emotions aren’t bad. Sometimes they lead to deeper connections.