Supporting a Child Who is a People Pleaser - Weekend Wisdom

Question: How should I deal with an adoptive child with a people-pleasing personality? I want to prevent the anxiety that comes with that, but I'm not sure how. 

Resources:

• 6 Tips for Creating Attachment
• How to Cultivate Resilience in Your Kids
• 7 Character Traits Your Kids Need to Thrive
• Signs Your Child Might Be People Pleasing and How to Help

Transcript

Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.

Hello and welcome to Weekend Wisdom. Every weekend, CreatingAFamily .org, posts these
episodes to answer your pressing questions about adoption, foster care, and kinship
care. We love digging through our archives and pulling up practical help that will
strengthen your family from our expert -based interviews and other content that we
create every week for you. We hope that these answers will strengthen and support
your family, and we look forward to hearing from you. My name is Tracy Whitney, and
I'm the host of this podcast and our other hour -long expert -based interview podcast
that drops on Wednesdays. So if you have a question about adoption, foster care, or
relative caregiving, either because of something you heard on one of our podcasts or
something that your family is experiencing, we would love for you to send those
questions to info at creating a family .org. We'll look over our archives,
we'll look over other content that we create, and we will put together some
information, and hopefully yours will make it to one of our weekly episodes. Today's
question is kind of close to home for me. I am a recovering people pleaser, and so
I'm going to read the question from Marilyn, and we're going to try and help her
out. So how should I deal with an adoptive child who has a people -pleasing
personality? I want to prevent or help her prevent the anxiety that comes with that,
but I'm not quite sure how. So thank you for listening over on Spotify, Marilyn.
We're glad you found us. And I want to let you know that you're not alone in the
struggle of how to support and care for a child who has a people pleasing tendency.
When we are raising kids who are constantly trying to please us or others,
whether that's because they're saying yes to everything, or they're trying to avoid
conflict at all costs, or they're just used to putting other people's needs first,
it's natural for parents and caregivers to worry about that child. It's natural to
worry about the damage that it might be doing to them and their identity, it's
natural to worry about the anxiety that that child might be feeling that's driving
those behaviors or the anxiety that they feel when they think that they've not
pleased the people around them. And so I want to acknowledge that you're not alone,
but your feelings aren't uncommon and they're not abnormal. I think it's really
important to validate that that is a thing to be concerned about. When you're
raising a kid who's also been impacted by trauma or other early life challenges,
that anxiety might ramp up a little bit for us as their caregivers and as we're
trying to guide them through adulthood or towards adulthood. So it's important to
recognize that a child's people -pleasing tendencies or behaviors can come from a few
different places. Sometimes it's just a natural part of their temperament.
loss that they've endured. They've learned somehow in there that being good or being
easy or being pleasing to the people around them, particularly the adults,
is the safest way for them to keep things safe and comfortable and keep people in
relationship with each other. And sometimes it's a mix of both of those things.
And varying across the ages and stages of their life, that mix might change.
So the good news is that no matter where those behaviors come from,
we can support our kids in ways that this tendency doesn't have to be harmful to
them or this tendency doesn't have to be a source of ongoing anxiety for them or
for us. And we can also support them in ways that protect them or buffer them from
the unsafe situations that that kind of vulnerability might create for them. Here's a
few things that we think you might want to try to focus on while you're raising a
child who has these people pleasing behaviors or people pleasing tendencies. Number
one, increase this child's sense of felt safety. Kids who try to please others out
of fear.
they're really looking for. So that means that you should be, first of all,
letting them know regularly that they are safe with you, even when they say no or
when they make a mistake. You should model very calm, non -punitive,
non -punishing, regulated responses or reactions when they disagree with you or when
they push back and be as predictable as possible as you can with your routines and
your responses so that they know what to expect from you and from the environment
around them. A second thing that you can try to do is create lots of opportunities
for them to experience success and experience wins. Children who people please often
have pretty fragile self -esteem or self -confidence, and and you want to build their
confidence by offering tasks that you know that they can succeed at,
by celebrating effort, not just outcome, and by noticing their small,
daily accomplishments out loud. Tell them the things that you see that they're doing
well. Every little win that they experience and that you acknowledge will tell them
that they are capable and that they are valuable, even outside of the times that
they are working so hard to please other people. A third thing you can do is to
build their confidence and their competence. So you want to, in addition to calling
out the good things that you see them doing or learning, you want to encourage them
to build skills in areas that they enjoy. When they try a new thing and they
accomplish it well or succeed at it or even just try really hard,
they will find a niche where confidence and competence can kind of grow.
It's like you're planting a seed. So try a variety of activities like sports or
arts or cooking or volunteering at a local shelter, get them a babysitting class and
teach them how to be a babysitter. All these things can help them find what
interests them, and it also can help them build skills and abilities that will
create the environment for self -confidence and self -competence. When they know that
they can do hard things or new things that feel hard, they will rely less on
seeking the approval.
is failure. And you can flip that script for them by letting them see that you are
trying something new as well and that you messed up or that you didn't succeed like
you thought you would. You can try new things with them together and you can learn
to laugh at each other's mistakes and learn to laugh at each other's efforts in
healthy, positive ways. And then you can talk later about what you learned.
Brainstorming together when
we all experience. And for parents that are parents or caregivers that are raising
kids who are chronic people pleasers, you also want to, number five,
increase the space that you allow for their voice to be heard. So you want to help
them practice speaking up and self -advocating. That could be giving them choices in
very low -stakes situations like, do you want to wear your red shirt or your green
shirt and not caring either way what decision they make? Or should we do homework
before or after dinner and being totally okay with whatever choice they make and
acknowledging that their choice is an absolutely acceptable choice. You want to also
try and help them follow through on their choices whenever possible so that they
feel the power of that input. So if they say, I want brownies for dessert tonight,
not cake, then go ahead and make the brownies and make sure that you acknowledge
that you made the brownies because you were recognizing and honoring the choice that
they offered when you gave it to them. As they grow and develop in the skills of
choice and voice, you want to start to build some higher stakes situations into your
daily routines. As these skills start to expand, they can make bigger choices like,
for example, are you going to set out all your clothes and stuff for school tonight
or are you going to do it tomorrow morning? And that's got bigger stakes because it
could impact how their morning goes. And And again, if they don't succeed or it
doesn't go quite as you had hoped or thought it might go, that's okay. Acknowledge
that it didn't go great, but it was a choice that they made and that you're
willing to help them either rethink the choice or prepare differently the next time.
And then whenever you hear them expressing a preference or an opinion, even if it's
small, go ahead and call it out. Say, hey, Thank you so much for your input or,
oh, I really hadn't thought about it that way. That's a great choice. Let's see
what that will unfold like. And then you can be messaging to them that their voice
and their choice and their preferences matter, even if it's different than voices or
choices or opinions around them. The main message that you want to be giving them
when they're trying and failing and brainstorming is that their voice matters. And
number six, you want to try and understand what resilience is and what resilience
looks like for that child. So resilience is the ability to bounce back from
stressors or setbacks. And creating a family has a ton of really valuable resources
about resilience and how to build a child's resilience, and I'll make sure that
they're linked in the show notes for you. But here's a few little tips to get you
started on building your child's resilience. Encourage problem solving. So instead of
solving everything for them, ask them what they think. What do you think is the
right next step? Or what do you think will happen if we do this? Another thing
that you can try is to talk through any past challenges that they've already
overcome successfully or not.
struggle that you're having right now. Remind them that they have the inner resources
and outside supports to overcome whatever obstacle or tendency to people please that
they're facing when they're looking at building resilience. It's real important that
you also think about the safety considerations for kids who are highly focused on
people pleasing. When they are people pleasers, they can be vulnerable,
more vulnerable to peer pressure or bullying or grooming or other forms of
exploitation. And so it's important to teach them how to advocate for themselves.
They might struggle to say no to unsafe situations because they don't want to be
seen as being difficult or being obstinate or not being pleasing to be around.
You want to equip them with how to say no or refuse unsafe activities.
And you can do that by role playing. You can do it by creating memorized scripts,
practicing them together. I think role playing is a lot of fun for the younger
kids. Kind of developing some memorized scripts might be helpful for some of the
older kids. It's real important to talk
if something doesn't feel right, they should say so. Whether people pleasing is your
child's natural tendency, or it's a learned survival skill,
or some combination of both of those things, the goal is not to erase it.
The goal is to build a sense of kindness and cooperation as a strength that you
want your child to develop, but how to do that in an anchored, safe,
confident way so that they're honoring themselves and they're honoring their bodies
and they're honoring their safety, but also being empathetic and knowing their worth.
Their worth should not depend on keeping everybody happy or saying yes to everything
so that they don't make someone unhappy. They should know that their worth is
anchored in the preciousness of who they are as an individual and that you will do
everything you can to keep them safe and help them grow the skills needed to do
that. Thank you, Marilyn, for listening so much. We're grateful that you found us on
Spotify. If you enjoy what you heard today, you can catch us anywhere you catch
your other favorite podcasts. And please tell a friend about weekend wisdom because
we feel real committed to making sure that you guys get the practical answers you
need to strengthen your family. Thanks for listening.