Parenting Today
People-pleasing behavior is a buzzword these days, but how do you help your children learn to avoid this tendency? To help them grow up confident and strong, make a parenting plan that includes fostering boundaries.
What Is People Pleasing?
People pleasing is the subconscious desire to avoid confrontation and discomfort with others. People pleasers choose their actions and police their own emotions with the goal of making others happy and comfortable. While people pleasers think this approach is good for everyone, it really inhibits their own ability to meet their needs.
People Pleasing Signs in Children
Kids who are people-pleasers may exhibit several of these signs:
- Stopping or changing behavior as soon as others show signs of anger or sadness
- Inability to explain why they’re acting a certain way, other than “because I’m supposed to”
- Difficulty making choices when they know someone will be disappointed
- Periods of calm, complacent behavior followed by sudden or unexpected outbursts of anger and frustration
- Anxiety in situations where adults are stressed or worried
- Hesitation to judge the outcome of a situation themselves, preferring to rely on others’ opinions
Potential Long-term Consequences of People Pleasing
Kids who learn to be people-pleasers can have difficulty with peer pressure during adolescence. They may also avoid seeking adult advice if they see their own problems as potentially “bad” or “causing trouble.” Above all, kids who are people-pleasers don’t have practice forming their own values and judgements, making it difficult to do so as an adult.
How Parents Influence People-Pleasing Behaviors
While parents don’t directly cause people-pleasing in their children, there are several ways they can inadvertently influence that behavior.
Modeling Responses
Many adults are people-pleasers, and kids see this behavior modeled around them every day. Similarly, adults inadvertently praise kids who “don’t make waves,” indicating that the top priority is to keep things easy for other people. These actions seep into our kids’ subconscious and reinforce people-pleasing behavior.
Discipline and Consequences
Often, unintentionally, parents teach children to follow rules so that they don’t get in trouble and make adults upset. Seemingly innocuous remarks like “it makes mommy so sad when you don’t share your toy” can build up over time to help feed a need to please. From an early age, then, kids are trained to people-please, even if their parents aren’t actively trying to instill this behavior.
Helping Children Steer Away from People Pleasing
Fortunately, helping children avoid developing people-pleasing behaviors isn’t difficult, especially if you start at a young age.
Implementing Boundaries
The biggest way to help kids develop boundaries is to stick to yours. When you make a rule, don’t waver when your kids are unhappy. Calmly reassert the rule, then offer to help them work through any feelings.
You can say: “Part of my job as your mom is to keep you safe. I can’t let you climb that tree, even though you’re very angry about my decision. You can feel angry, and I can help you work through that feeling. But I’m not changing my mind.” Show them that it’s safe to make other people upset.
Examining Responsibility and Control
When we understand what things are within our control — and what things are our responsibility — we can move away from people-pleasing. By modeling our own ability to choose our actions and name our feelings, we help kids do the same. Here are a few ways to help teach your children these skills:
- Emotional awareness: Practice identifying your own emotions and those of people around you. Name the fact that you cannot control how someone else feels. “My friend is sad that I’m sick and I can’t visit her today. I don’t want her to be sad, but it’s not my job to make her feel happy. I need to make choices to keep my body healthy.”
- Taking responsibility: Identify the actions you take that are your responsibility (and have kids do the same). “I’m angry, and that’s okay. I don’t have to change my feelings, but it is my responsibility to choose how I show that anger.”
Fostering Confidence
When a child has self-confidence, it’s easier for them to handle others feeling disappointed or upset. Make sure that you help your child develop that confidence as they grow by implementing these techniques:
- Before sharing your own opinion about their accomplishment, ask how they feel first.
- Give unsolicited and specific compliments, often. Notice when your child is working hard or trying something new, and point it out. The less you tie compliments to finished products, the more they’ll internalize the support and shape it into self-confidence.
- Let your child’s ideas play out (within reason). If their plan isn’t the most efficient or has obvious flaws, that’s okay. When we always correct children instead of letting them develop their own sense of trial and error, they begin to second-guess their abilities.
With purposeful parenting, it’s easy to help children develop skills to avoid falling into the habit of people pleasing.
