Teach Your Kids to Stop People Pleasing

I grew up as a major people pleaser. My family thought it was just my personality; they thought it was who I was and who I would always be. In reality, it was who I was conditioned to be.

Do you have one or more kids who strives very hard to please everyone? Do you believe they will always be that way because it’s too hard to change when they’re in an abusive situation?

In 2016, I realized that my daughter was people pleasing. I was concerned because here I was making this bold, courageous move to leave an abusive situation, yet my daughter was still chasing after love and approval from her father, her friends, and even (emotional) bullies at school.

I felt ill-equipped to help her through this. I felt like I had a muzzle on my mouth because I couldn’t speak clearly to her about the situation she was in. She was very young and I believed anything I said to her would get back to her dad.

So I fumbled my way through. I would see her chase after the approval of someone at school and I’d overreact, not wanting her to be anywhere near this situation.

I finally decided I’d had enough.

I removed that muzzle over my mouth and looked for situations in our day to day life that could be used to teach her another way. Disney movies provided a multitude of…