How do you get out of a power struggle with a young child? Sometimes explaining the rule one more time changes nothing. But saying how you feel can completely shift the moment.

We were staying in an old house with a very low bathroom window on the first floor. Gabriel could open it easily and that window terrified me. I was afraid he might lean out and fall.

He opened it, I closed it, I explained that it was dangerous, then he opened it again. I repeated several times that he must not touch the window, with absolutely no effect.

So I tried something else.

Instead of saying:

“Don’t open the window. It’s dangerous.”

I said:

A phrase to try“Mummy feels scared when you open this window because I’m afraid you could get hurt.”

He looked at me, then closed the window himself, gently. And he did not open it again.

When the power struggle continues even though the rule is clear

I had not found a better explanation of the danger or invented a new consequence. I had simply stopped talking, for a moment, about what he needed to do and told him what I was feeling.

And something changed.

The situation was no longer only:

“Mummy is stopping me from opening this window.”

It had become:

“When I do this, Mummy feels scared.”

That day, my explanations about danger did not seem to mean much to him. My emotion did.

Saying how we feel does not make the child responsible for our feelings

This is not about making children carry our emotions or suggesting they have to obey in order to make us feel better. The boundary remained exactly the same: that window could not be open. If he had tried again, I would simply have stopped him.

But in that particular moment, telling him how I felt created connection where we had started to move into a power struggle.

It will not work every time. But that day, the boundary did not change. By showing him what the situation created for me, we simply stepped out of the tug-of-war.