Why Your Toddler’s Behavior Isn’t Really About Them Ep 150

Have you ever reacted to your toddler… and then immediately wondered, “Why did I just do that?”

In this episode, we look beneath the surface of toddler behavior and explore a truth that can feel both confronting and freeing: sometimes our reactions have less to do with our child - and more to do with our own history.

I share how early patterns, survival strategies, and emotional wiring can quietly shape the way we parent. 

When we begin to notice the cycle - overwhelm, reaction, guilt, repeat - we open the door to something steadier.

Toddlerhood doesn’t need a perfect parent.
It needs a present one.

If you’ve ever felt caught between being too soft and too strict… between patience and frustration… this conversation will help you pause, reflect, and begin again.

Because lasting change in our children often begins within us. ❤️

👉 Book a Discovery Call 

These are FREE, one-to-one conversations designed to help determine what to focus on first - and whether a focused 6-week parent coaching format would be helpful for your family at this time. Not evaluations, not therapy - just space to reflect and be heard.

📥 Free resource:
The Top 10 Essential Skills Every Baby Needs Before Talking

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DISCLAIMER:

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your pediatrician or a qualified health provider with questions about your child’s development or health. The views shared are based on Erin Hyer’s professional experience and are intended to support informed parenting, not to replace individual consultation or care. Every child and family is unique — please use your discretion and consult trusted professionals when making decisions for your child.

📩 Questions: contact@HyerLearning.com
 🌐 www.HyerLearning.com

Transcript

0:00

That is what steadiness does to your toddler. It answers the question that they're always asking. Is my world secure enough, predictable enough that I can learn through it? And when the answer is yes. Hello and welcome to Talking Toddlers where I share more than just tips and tricks on how to reduce tantrums or build your toddler's vocabulary. here our goal is to develop clarity because in this modern world, it's truly overwhelming. This podcast is about empowering moms to know the difference between fact and fiction, to never give up, to tap into everyday activities, so your child stays on track. He's not falling behind, he's thriving. Through your guidance, we know that true learning starts at home. So let's get started. I am about to tell you something that might change everything you think about your toddler's behavior. After nearly 40 years of working with families, I can say this with absolute certainty. Most toddler struggles are not actually about the toddler. Think about that. Not the speech delay. Not the listening. Not the clinginess. Not the meltdowns, but something much quieter and much more hopeful. Sometimes the real story is this. A deeply loving mother doing her absolute best is unknowingly parenting from old scars instead of the present truth. And here is the beautiful news. When the parent grows, the child's future changes. Today's episode is about that turning point, so welcome to talking toddlers. I'm really glad you're here. After nearly four decades working with babies and toddlers and families, I can tell you this with sound confidence I have met countless mothers living this extraordinary story. They are not careless. They're not lazy. They're not selfish. They're deeply devoted, incredibly loving, trying so hard to do everything right. But underneath the surface, there are old survival patterns, black and white thinking, fear of getting it wrong, scars from their own childhood, or simply no one ever showed them any other way. So they step into motherhood carrying invisible weight. That weight quietly shapes how they respond to their toddler, not because they're broken, but because they're human. And I want to say something as directly as I can right here at the start of this episode. If any part of what I just said landed somewhere tender inside of you, that's not a sign that something is wrong. That's a sign that something is right. That's your heart. Paying attention and paying attention is always where change begins. So here's what this often looks like. In real life, a mother feels pulled. And she feels pulled between two opposite worlds. It's sort of like a ping pong match right on the table with a little ball flying back and forth, never really landing and finding peace. One moment it's soft and permissive. Anything to help them feel happy or to keep the peace and the next moment. It's overwhelm and exhaustion. Suddenly you're strict and then what happens? Guilt rushes in. There's that back and forth. Back and forth. Ping pong, right? No steady ground. And here's something I want you to try to understand. This is not a character flaw. It's an adaptive response. It's what makes us human. When we didn't grow up with steady, warm, consistent structure, our nervous system learned to survive, to cope, right? And typically is by going to those extremes, by swinging hard in one direction and then the other, right? That once kept us safe. But it isn't serving you now as a new parent, and it certainly isn't serving your toddler. And unfortunately, I think modern parenting culture makes this so much worse because everywhere you look, you see these extremes, right? You see the arguments around sleep train immediately, or never let your baby cry. Right, or you could have the argument co-sleep forever, or you're going to ruin their attachment. Or only eat organic perfect food every single time, or alter processed snacks all day. These extremes back and forth. No screens ever, or screens with no boundaries. Just let it fly. Dental parenting with no limits or you know, harsh disciplines that shut child development and growth and heart and soul down the back and forth, these extremes. And mothers themselves are thinking, I don't know what's right. I don't know which direction to go. You know, one day I, I'm on your, in your camp. One day I'm in your camp. Here's the truth that I want to anchor today. The answer is almost never in the extremes. It lives steady and quietly in the middle. So today I want to look at what toddlers actually need and how to create a home environment and how to step into that role because here's the quiet truth that I think rarely gets said out loud. Toddlers don't need extremes. They don't need rigidness. They need something far more simple. And truthfully, I think it's far more powerful. They need the adults who love them the most to be warm and steady, not permissive, not harsh, but calm and clear, predictable, because when we provide boundaries, boundaries don't damage that attachment. They create security. Those are the guardrails that don't limit your child. They actually give your child the freedom to explore, to try to learn, to grow, to talk, and think within a safety realm. They know how far they can push because you have their back. So let me show you what that looks like in real life. Let's say your toddler throws food at dinner, the ping pong response might look like this. One day, you're tired, you laugh it off, you clean it up. There's no real consequence. The next day, now you're feeling a little exhausted and maybe overwhelmed, so you raise your voice. You give them time out. There's some tears, yours and theirs. There's tension, right? Because of the frustration. Then maybe on day three, guilt rushes in because you know that yesterday wasn't very successful, so you let them have the dessert anyway just to smooth things over and find some peace. But what's happening for your toddler? They have no idea what's coming next. So they continue to test because testing is how toddlers learn. It is part of their DNA, it's, it's how they're going to get feedback and adjust, and they're asking through their behavior, how do I deal with this? Are you going to show me the way? Are you going to be steady and consistent? Is this safe to throw food on the floor? Can I count on you to tell me when I can and when I can't push the limit? Right? And, and if I push too far, do you have my back? So the steady response looks completely different calmly when they throw the food on the floor. You say, Hey, food stays on the table, or you eat it. Dinner's over. You pick'em up, you clean'em off. There's no anger, no lecture, same words every day, same tone, same response every time. And within days, the throwing stops not because you were harsh or you demanded that they comply. But because you were clear, you sit in the high chair and we eat. When you're done eating, you get up. You don't throw the food on the table or on the floor. That is what steadiness does to your toddler. It answers the question that they're always asking. Is my world secure enough, predictable enough that I can learn through it? And when the answer is yes. They can finally relax and really dive into the actual growing and learning. They can finally learn through the environment and build systems that support their understanding and their expressive skills, their decision making, their ability to connect and shift behavior according to the context. All of that grows within that predictability. so this is the part that almost feels sacred to me because what's really happening in these parenting moments is not just behavior change, it's healing you as the mother. Are being invited to step out of your old patterns of survival and to step out of your old patterns of extreme response and to step out of our sense of fear or guilt, and then step into steadiness and wisdom and peace. And when she does that. Her child grows up in a completely different emotional world than the one she knew, and I believe this with my whole heart. God doesn't just give us children for us to raise often. I believe He gives us children to help raise us into who we are always meant to become, not through shame. But through love, not through pressure, through invitation, and that kind of change, I believe echoes across generations. So I'd like to share something personal here because I never ask parents to go somewhere that I haven't walked myself. For much of my early adult life, I truly believed I wasn't meant to have my own child. There were many reasons behind that thinking, but underneath all of them was something deeper. When I was in college, I lost both of my parents in the same month, and that ache, that loss was so deep that somewhere in my heart I decided. It was safer not to ever love that fully again, because loving that deeply meant risking to feel that pain again, right? Risking to be that vulnerable. So I told myself I didn't need a child. I poured my love into other people's children and then gave them back. I stayed at a distance, an armed distance, where it felt safe. Now at this stage in my life, looking back, I can see it a little bit more clearly. Those weren't just decisions. They were actually the old scars healed places that once shaped how I saw the world. And I actually heard someone say a while ago that. You share your scars, not the wounds. And I love that image because a scar is proof that something once hurt, but you healed. And a wound is still kinda raw. It's maybe even bleeding, right? Still tender to the touch, but a scar. A scar is closed. It's strong. It tells a story of overcoming or survival, and here's what I learned through my own healing. The extremes we swing between as parents are often just old scars, healing places that once kept us safe, but don't serve us anymore. And for me, those scars kept me from becoming a mother for a very long time. I waited until I was almost 40, not because I didn't want a child, but because I was afraid of how vulnerable it would make me. I didn't believe I had the courage to love that deeply without the risk of vulnerability. What if something happened? What if I couldn't be there? What if those scars had kept me safe once, and they let me heal the loss of my parents, but they were also keeping me from the very life I was meant to live. When I finally faced that fear, when I chose vulnerability. Over safety. Everything changed not just for me, but for the little girl who would become my daughter. And I think that's the invitation many mothers are facing right now, not whether to become a mother, because listening to this program, you probably already won. But whether to give your permission to love fully. To be present, right? To meet your child where they are, to step into this role, not as a burden to survive, but as a blessing, a calling. All our scars made us who we are today. We're still a work in progress and will be for this entire lifespan, but we can be open, open to learning alongside our children. And that's the shift I now help mothers make. I share this because every parent carries some kind of story into motherhood or fatherhood, right? Old pain, old fear, old beliefs about love and loss, trust. We all have a cross to bear, and at some point we each face a quiet question. Do I stay protected or do I grow? Do I let fear shape my future or do I allow healing to rewrite it? By God's grace, my story didn't end in fear. He brought me an extraordinary man, and he was steady and faithful and strong, and together we are given the gift of a beautiful daughter. And becoming her mother didn't just change my life. It healed places in my heart. I didn't even know we're still aching. So let's ask ourselves, what does real change actually look like? It does not come from more research or more scrolling. Or parenting hacks or more pressure to be perfect or Instagram ready, right? It comes from a few quiet, faithful shifts. So let me walk you through each shift that I was able to outline and hold true to. So the first shift is really to be clear and calm with your boundaries, right? To use simple language, to have a steady follow through, to not bring anger or frustration or guilt. Just bring your groundedness, right, your maturity and peace. And that consistency will build their internal sense of being. Imagine your 2-year-old who refuses to leave the playground. The extreme responses look like. You know, one day you might beg and, and bargain, right? Okay, I'll give you five more minutes, then I'll give you five more. And then there's a meltdown anyway, but another day you snap. You say, you know, I told you we're only gonna be here for 30 minutes and that's all we have. And you end up physically dragging them. Guilt follows you all the way home. We've been there. But a clear, steadfast, calm response. You give them two minute warning, you kneel down on their level, eye to eye, two minutes, and then we go. You can say goodbye to the swings. Two more minutes, two more swings things. And when the time comes, you say, okay, it's time, honey. Let's wave. Goodbye. You take their hand, you follow through with what your expectation was. Warmly, calmly, without negotiation. And honestly, the first few times they might still cry and whimper, that's okay, they're a child. You don't fix that sadness, that disappointment. You hold your boundary with understanding and compassion, and within a week or several playground trips, what happens? The goodbye wave becomes part of the ritual that they begin to own, and the meltdowns fade. Not because you are harsh or demanding, but because you were predictable. You followed through with what you said. Toddlers don't resist structure. They resist unpredictability when they know what's coming, they can prepare themselves emotionally, and that is the beginning of self-regulation. So now the second shift is really looking at what your daily structure looks like. And you want to build this with intentionality, right? Shared meals. Predictable rhythms, moments of connection woven into your normal day life where they get their cup full, right? Nothing fancy, just faithful and consistent. So I want to paint a picture for you here because I think we overcomplicate this. Structure doesn't mean a rigid schedule that you print up and you put on your refrigerator or, uh, a big screen color coded, you know, app. It means that your child wakes up and knows what comes next. We eat breakfast today together, we get dressed. We play or share a book. We have a quiet time after lunch. We read books before we go to bed. Simple, warm, repeated. Whatever you design, keep it simple. The science here is consistent and I think quite beautiful. And it's, it's worth taking a pause and really looking at this. When your toddler experiences predictable daily routine, their cortisol levels, which is that stress hormone is measurably lower, and when stress hormones are lower, the brain is free to do what is designed to do, expand attention. Go deep in their play or their curiosity to learn language, to build connection, to explore the world with comfort, and grow and learn. That's not a parenting theory, that is developmental neuroscience, and it doesn't require a perfect home. Or you know, Instagram worthy routines that you see all over the place. It requires you showing up the same way day after day with warmth and intention, and you're gonna tweak it here and there, especially in those first few years because your child's needs are going to expand. But that's enough. That's more than enough. and so now the third shift is more about a parental mindset that we, when we enter parenthood, we need to be willing to grow, That it's not gonna be perfect. By any means, right? And it's not gonna be instant that we have to be honest we need to be open to be learning on the job. And so I wanna tell you about a mom that I worked with, and I'm gonna call her Sarah. Sarah came to me because her 22 month old wasn't talking and she had been. To see a couple of different specialists. Um, she'd read several books, right? She was doing all the right things on paper and she was really trying her best. But in our first conversation, something else emerged. Sarah had grown up in a home where emotions were not safe to express, where silence was the way that you stayed outta trouble. And without realizing it, she had recreated a version of that silence in her own home. Not from cruelty, but really from familiarity, right? The house was calm and peaceful, but it was a quiet kind of calm that didn't have much room for spontaneity or noise, or even messiness. Right. And, and I look at that as a wonderful, kind of chaotic period where your child comes alive, finds her voice through babbling and, and ex experience. But when Sarah began to see what I saw and, and she began to look at it really, not from shame or guilt, but more like. Oh, this is a great opportunity for me to let go of some of my history and shift how to create a different home life for me and my child and my husband, right? So she started by simple things like narrating her days out loud, which she really wasn't doing. Right. And she, you know, let's wash the apples. Where are the apples? Ooh, the water is cold. Simple little statements. She started getting on the floor more and, and really feeling the moments, the playfulness, right. Laughing and, and making a little mess here and there. Knowing darn well that we'll clean it up together. She started letting her daughter be loud and messy and expressive, and within several weeks her daughter's language began to emerge, not because of any therapy technique. Yeah. But because the environment changed and her presence changed, the vibe of the home living changed, right? And so when we change the environment, development typically follows. So that's the power of a parent willing to grow into this new role that she was placed in. So if you're listening right now and you're thinking quietly, Hmm, that kind of feels like me. I want you to hear this. You're not too late, right? You still have a toddler or preschooler. You haven't ruined your child and your toddler is not broken. In fact, you're both learning together. The very fact that you are here wondering, listening. Thinking about these things means that your heart is already moving toward change and growth, right? And that that is where beautiful things begin. So don't underestimate the power of one quiet, honest moment of paying attention, and you don't need to overhaul your whole life or your whole week, right? You need one small step. One calmer response or one more expressive moment, one extra minute on the floor with your child and really be in it with them, right? One moment where you choose to be more playful, make a mess over perfection, and then you can always go back and clean it up where you truly begin to enjoy these moments with your child. Start there. This is the heart of everything I teach, not fear, not perfection, not extremes. But helping to guide parents to become more present and purposeful and playful with intention, so then your children can grow in a home that feels grounded, predictable, approachable, steady love, and, and compassion and safety, deeply loved, right? When that happens. We don't just change a toddler's behavior, we quietly change the future of your entire family. And if you're listening today and something in this conversation felt personal, I don't want you to have to figure it out alone. That's why I offer my discovery calls. It's simply a quiet conversation to, you know, share your story, ask a few questions, What kind of support would help you the most at this time? Right? For some parents, that becomes one-on-one coaching for others is simply finding clarity in that conversation And they're good with that. Either way, you'll be heard, you'll be supported. If that feels like something of interest to you, the link is down below, and whether we ever get the chance to speak directly, I want to say this to each and every one of you. The fact that you're here, that you took the time to listen, to reflect, and to seek guidance. It says a lot about you as a parent at this stage. Don't lose that curiosity. Curiosity isn't just something toddlers need. It's often the catalyst for growth, for learning, and for meaningful change at any age. And when curiosity is paired with intention and support, beautiful things begin to shift. I'm truly grateful you chose to spend time here with me today, so God bless and I look forward to our next talking toddlers.