246: My Parenting Feels Off Track: Reparenting Helps You Find Your Way Back

Hi, I'm Adrian in suburban Chicagoland, and this is Your Parenting Mojo with Jen Lumanlan. Jen is working on a series of episodes based on the challenges you are having with your child. From tooth brushing to sibling fighting to the endless resistance to whatever you ask, Jen will look across all the evidence from thousands of scientific papers across a whole range of topics related to parenting and child development to help you see solutions to the issue you're facing that hadn't seen possible before. If you'd like a personalized answer to your challenge, just make a video if possible, or an audio clip if not. That's less than one minute long that describes what's happening, and email it to support@yourparentingmojo.com and listen out for your episode soon.

Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Today, we're talking about something that I hear from parents all the time, and that is, my parenting is way off track from where I want it to be. Maybe you've had those moments, you intended to be present, but you got distracted by your phone. You wanted to be patient, but you snapped. You promised yourself you wouldn't yell, and then you did. This feeling that we're off track isn't just about individual choices, it's happening within larger cultural systems that set us up for struggle, from mom rage to burnout to the impossible standards of intensive parenting. We're navigating challenges that often seem invisible but impact us deeply. So today, let's explore what happens when we feel like our parenting is veered off course. What's really going on beneath those feelings and practical tools to help us find our way back to the kind of parents we want to be. We'll talk about self-compassion, recognizing the systems that make parenting so much harder than it needs to be. We'll learn about the five kinds of family relationships we experienced in childhood that make it hard for us to show up as the parents we want to be today, and how to navigate those challenges by finding the right knowledge to help us, as well as the community that can help us to actually make the changes we want to make, instead of thinking over and over about what we want to do differently and then not being able to do it. So, if you've ever seen that gap between the parent that you want to be and the parent that you sometimes are this episode is for you.

Most of us don't set out to yell at our children or resort to threats and bribes, yet somehow, we find ourselves there, especially during tantrums or sibling conflicts, wondering how we've ended up so far from the parent that we want to be, this gap between our intentions and our reality can be really painful to experience. We might wake up each morning thinking, today I'm going to be patient, today I will connect before I correct, today I will listen more than I lecture. And then by 7:15am we're raising our voice because someone's spilled cereal all over the floor right when we needed to get out the door. Or we might have a day where our kids are asking us for things over and over and over again, and we say yes cheerfully at first, and then through gritted teeth until we get to the end of the day and a final request is the straw that breaks the camel's back, and we yell at them. And then we get into bed feeling terrible, thinking tomorrow's another day. The kids don't seem to hate me yet, I still have time to turn this around, it's not too late. And then tomorrow isn't great either and there's another piece of evidence that we aren't doing well and we can't figure out how to make the changes we want so badly to make. That even if there are other people out there who have been able to make these kinds of changes, there is something about us, some mix of our personality experiences and how our brains work that means we are not going to be able to change. In these moments, even thinking about doing something different can feel overwhelming, and the shame that we might already feel about our relationship with our kids gets even bigger when we think about trying something new. What if we put time and effort and money into it, and we tell our kids and our partner about it, and they're kind of skeptical, and then we try it and again, nothing really changes. That shame that we might experience if we've failed, especially if it seems like other people who are trying to do things differently aren't failing would be almost impossible to bear.

What I want you to know is that these difficult moments don't define you as a parent. It might seem like they are evidence of flaws in your character or proof that you're doing it all wrong, but they're not. This pattern is not unique to you. Parents across all kinds of different backgrounds and cultures and family structures, experience this disconnect between who they want to be and how they actually respond in the challenging moments. We see this so clearly when I run masterclasses and ask participants for examples of their children's behavior that drives them up the wall and how they feel when that happens, and they report feeling such relief knowing that they aren't the only ones going through this as they experience all the other parents typing in their experiences as well. So what are some tools that we can use in these difficult situations, when the guilt and shame come up, when we're caught in cycles of reaction and regret, self-compassion can actually create some breathing room that we desperately need, rather than continuing the pattern with shame and self-criticism, where we think I'm such a terrible parent. Self-compassion allows us to hold our struggles with kindness and self-compassion isn't just something to make us feel better about ourselves. We can actually think of it as a circuit breaker for our brain that allows us to respond differently next time. Dr. Susan Pollak, who wrote the book self-compassion for parents, told me that most of us were not raised to be kind to ourselves. Instead, we developed this inner critic that constantly judges our parenting. Oh, that was stupid, how could you have said that? What's wrong with you? This harsh inner voice doesn't motivate us to do better. It actually makes improvement harder. Think about it, would you ever say to a friend who's struggling with parenting? Wow, you really blew it there, what kind of parent does that? Of course, you wouldn't. You'd be much more likely to say something like, yeah, parenting is really hard. We all have rough moments. What support do you need right now?

Yet we deny ourselves this same compassion. We hold ourselves to impossible standards, and then we beat ourselves up when we inevitably fall short. That harsh inner voice that judges our parenting does not appear out of nowhere. For many of us, it echoes messages we received in childhood, perhaps our parents' critical words. It might have been a teacher's high expectations or messages from our culture about what makes someone good or worthy. Your parents might have directly said something like, stop making a mess because I'm the one who has to clean it up. Or you might have just got the idea from their size and their eye rolls. Your parent, especially your mom, might have sacrificed a lot for you, which taught you that's what good mothers do. Your teachers might have praised you when you sat still, when you paid attention, when you did your work and punished you when you didn't. Eventually, if this shaping works well, our parents and teachers don't need to say these things to us directly, as we learned in our recent episode on praise. We take on their ideas as if they're our own, and we start monitoring our own behavior to match what others expect. Research describes this process of adopting our parents and cultures values as normal and expected and even as a positive outcome. When the child has fully taken on those values, the job is done, and the way that happens is through praise for things that we do well and punishments for things that don't meet their standards, whether that's taking away screen time, threatening consequences, or withdrawing love by refusing to tuck us in at night or giving us that look that says this is not okay. It's pretty amazing to me that there's a whole area of research on how children learn to act in according to their parents' values, and a completely separate area on where our inner critic comes from, and those two areas don't connect at all. I have never found a single researcher who's connected those dots. So if our inner critic causes us so much pain as adults, why do we see creating our child's inner critic as a good thing? So we developed this inner critic, and at one point it helped us to navigate our world. At first, the adults around us had to criticize us to get us to change our behavior. But over time, we absorbed those voices, and we found that if we could criticize ourselves first, we might be able to avoid the pain of someone else's disapproval, and that critical voice became essentially our internal guardian trying to keep us safe by constantly pushing us to do better.

For others the critical voice developed as a survival strategy. If you grew up in an unpredictable environment where being perfect was the only way to avoid conflict or gain approval. Maybe you learned that achievements were the only reliable way to get connection or validation. These early experiences taught you your worth depended on how you performed, rather than on your value as a human being. Your inner critic became the enforcer of these rules, constantly checking for ways that you might fall short. I think it's really important to remember that our inner critic does not mean to hurt us. At some point, and even today, to some extent, it was trying to help. It protected you from feeling rejected by others, and it helped you to fit in and stay safe when it wasn't safe to be your whole self. Even though it might sound strange, a lot of therapists encourage us to see the critical voice as a protective part of ourselves. If we see it in that way, we might even feel some appreciation toward it. We can acknowledge how much it protected us when we were younger, even though it isn't helping us as much anymore. What's especially challenging about parenting is that it triggers these old patterns with incredible intensity. So when our child misbehaves in public, our critical voice might sound like our mother saying, what will people think when we lose patience? We might hear our father's disapproval of strong emotions. We might believe that we hear the voices of other parents at the playground, in our mind, disapproving of our child going up the slide instead of down, or not sharing toys or not playing nicely, the other parents don't even need to say anything. Just the thought that they might be judging us is enough. The pressure cooker of parenting brings the voices that have become our inner critic to the surface, and maybe even without awareness, we end up passing them along to our children through our words and our reactions.

In her book on mom rage, journalist Mina Dubin describes what she calls the PR team, and those are the cultural messages that constantly tell mothers what they should be and do. And these messages create impossible standards we're supposed to be ever present, but also maintain our career and create Instagram worthy bento box lunches, but don't try too hard and put our children's needs first while somehow finding time for self-care, which invariably looks like bubble baths. These mixed messages are not random. They're part of larger cultural systems that shape our experience as parents, and these systems were not designed with our wellbeing in mind. They come from historical power structures that benefit certain groups while placing heavy burdens on others. And as we've discussed in previous episodes, Eurocentric cultural values tend to split human qualities into either or categories, so reason versus emotion, independence versus connection, mind versus body, and then assign different values to each of these the qualities that are often linked with caregiving are usually seen as less important, less worthy, and those associated with productivity and achievement are celebrated. And that leaves parents, and especially mothers, in a seemingly impossible situation. We're responsible for what is really essential work of nurturing children, but it isn't paid, it isn't really productive, so it isn't worth anything. It can be absolutely maddening, and it seems like a personal issue, because I'm the one feeling the anger. When it seems like we're off track in our parenting, we're often measuring ourselves against standards that nobody could actually realistically meet. Understanding these bigger influences does not excuse behavior that hurts our children, but it helps explain why even the most well-intentioned parents’ struggle. When we recognize that our challenges are not just personal failings but responses to pressures from our culture, we can begin to extend compassion to ourselves and connect with other parents who share similar struggles. This awareness can be really freeing. It helps us question those impossible standards we've taken on and find ways to parent that actually work for real families where everyone's needs matter, including ours. Now that we're adults, that critical voice can be like an overprotective friend who doesn't know how to support you without constantly scanning for danger. And when you see these origins of your critical voice, I hope it helps you to realize this isn't really your voice, it's a voice that you absorbed. It helped to keep you safe, and it still helps to keep you safe sometimes, when you keep your child in line at the park so you don't have to hear that criticism from those other parents. But listening to that voice comes at a huge cost. It damages our relationship with ourselves, because we speak to ourselves in ways we would never let someone else talk to her a child. It also hurts our relationship with our children. When your parents shaped you, they may have lost connection with the real you because you learned you couldn't be your whole self with them.

You hid parts of yourself to cope with that, and when your self-critical voice takes over and tells you to shape your child's behavior, you risk losing your connection with them too. That's why things seem like they're off track. Because if they were on track, you would feel close to each other. Each of you needs to be seen and known and understood and loved for who you really are, and if those needs aren't being met, for both of you, things seem off track. So when you see the critical voices leading you away from that relationship you want with yourself and with your kids, you'll know that not listening to it as much is a really important step toward being the parent you want to be. Where we see that part of ourselves has a good intention, we might be able to respond to it with compassion instead of frustration. Therapists who practice internal family systems suggest talking to that protective part as if it is actually a part of your mind, and we might be able to say something like, thank you so much for trying to keep me safe for all these years. I really appreciate your concern, and I've developed other resources now. I don't need to be perfect to be worthy this thankfulness. Does not mean we keep letting the critical voice drive our behavior, but it does help us relate to ourselves with more understanding as we work to create new patterns. So those are some ideas to work with when your critical voice is taking over, which can happen outside of the difficult moments themselves, right? Those conversations with your critical voice in that difficult moment, we want to try and create a pause between our child's behavior and our reaction, which I totally understand is not easy. The whole Taming Your Triggers workshop is dedicated to creating that pause in those moments, but if you can pause, Dr. Pollak uses a three-step process to access some self-compassion in those difficult moments. First acknowledge the difficulty you're having. This has been a really tough moment. Just naming what's happening can create a bit of space between you and this thought that you're having, that things are not going well. Secondly, remember that you have so much in common with other parents, like the parents on the masterclass who suddenly realized they were not the only ones struggling. So you might think parenting is hard for everyone, I'm not the only one who struggles with this. And then third, offer yourself kindness, and that might take the form of, what do I need right now to take care of myself? It might be taking a deep breath, putting a hand on your heart, or just giving yourself permission to step away for a moment, if it's safe to do that. And so this is what it might sound like in real life, right? Your toddler dumps water out of every cup that they find. Maybe you try to give them covered cups, but sometimes they find your cups and they dump those out and you feel that frustration rising instead of immediately reacting. You take a breath and you think, this is really frustrating.

This kind of thing happens to other parents too. What's going on for me right now, I'm feeling overwhelmed. I'm going to pause for a minute and take a breath. Being compassionate toward ourselves does not mean we're going to do everything perfectly, but what I see among parents who are able to quiet their critical voice and find more compassion for themselves is that they are more able to make the changes they want to make, again, not perfectly, but it does shift something for them. When we practice self-compassion, we're also showing something really powerful to our children. We're teaching them that mistakes are not moral failings, and that strong emotions can be acknowledged without being acted upon. And kindness begins not with how we treat others, but how we treat ourselves. So the next time you find yourself thinking, I have failed as a parent, try shifting to I'm having a hard time right now, and that's normal. What would help me to respond in a way that matches my values, and that simple shift can be a real-life raft that keeps you afloat when parenting feels like drowning. Once self-compassion creates a little more breathing room for you, there's something really important to do with that space. The deepest human need that we all share is to be truly seen and accepted for who we are, not for our achievements or for our good behavior, but for our whole authentic selves. And that need begins the moment we're born and it stays with us throughout our lives. But there's a contradiction in how we approach parenting. We say we love our children unconditionally, but our actions often tell quite a different story. When our children's behavior frustrates us or disappoints us, it becomes harder to see past what they're doing to who they really are, and when that happens, we might accidentally suggest that our love and acceptance depends on their behavior.

We might give that heavy sigh, that eye roll, that phrase like, oh, why can't you just behave? And they send powerful messages. Our tone might shift from warm to cold, our body language from open to closed, and we might pull back attention or affection until the good behavior returns. Even really well-intentioned responses can send the message that we're judging them. Something like, I know you're better than this suggests disappointment with who they are in that moment when we focus only on stopping the behavior, we might miss the needs driving it. Our children may interpret these reactions not just as disapproval of what they did, but of who they are, just like we did when our parents did this when we were little. What children often hear beneath our words is I only like you when you're easy to parent or your big feelings make me uncomfortable, or your needs matter less than my expectations, and these unintended messages shape how children see themselves and whether they feel safe showing their full authentic selves to us. So let's look at the kind of parenting tools that we might choose when our kids are acting up, things like sticker charts and pom pom jars when they behave, and then time outs taking away privileges like screen time when they don't. Those are the strategies we've been taught will help manage behavior, and sure, they often work in the moment. If you send a kid to time out, they might stop hitting their sister. If you offer rewards, suddenly those toys get picked up without a battle. But here's the thing, these approaches focus entirely on changing the child's behavior without helping us to understand what's behind it. They send the unintended message, I'm okay with you when you behave and I'm not okay with you when you don't think about what happens with time outs. When a child's having really big feelings, we essentially say, go and deal with those emotions by yourself until you can behave better. And what they hear is those big feelings are too much for me, and I don't want to be around you when you have them. Rather than learning how to manage emotions, they learn how to hide them, and that might make parenting a bit easier for us in the short term, but having your kids learn how to hide things from you does not make parenting easier in the long term. Or take rewards, we might think we're just motivating good behavior, but the hidden message is, I don't expect you'll clean up or help out or be kind unless I give you something in return. And even deeper than that, I will show you I love you when you do those things, so if you want my love and approval, you'll do them more often. I saw this happen at a playground recently. A child who looked like they were about four didn't want to share the swing, and their parent immediately jumped in with we share our toys, or we're leaving the playground. And so the child reluctantly gave up the swing, but was clearly upset.

Did this child learn about generosity? Probably not. They learned that their feelings about the swing didn't matter as much as appearing to be good in dad's eyes. And when we rely on these approaches, we miss what's actually going on with our kids. We don't ask why they're refusing to share. Maybe they just got on the swing after the other kid had had it for 10 minutes, and they have a strong need for fairness or why they can't sit still at the dinner table. Perhaps they've been sitting all day at school and their body needs movement. We just try to make the behavior stop. And over time, kids get the message, they figure out which parts of themselves get approval and which parts need to stay hidden. The anger, the questions, the sensitivity, the physical energy, whatever doesn't fit our expectations get stuffed down and denied. And that is exactly how many of us grew up, learning to hide pieces of ourselves to stay connected to our parents. And the sad result is that many children end up feeling if I show who I really am, I might lose your love. And that's the last thing any of us want our kids to believe, because that's the lesson we learned from our parents, and it hurt us so much to know that we weren't loved for who we really are. One of the most powerful discoveries I've made in my parenting journey is that raising children gives us a huge opportunity to heal ourselves as well. Those moments when we react strongly to our children's behavior often point directly to the hurts that we carry from our own childhoods. And this is where the idea of reparenting can help us. Reparenting is giving yourself what your parents couldn't give you in your childhood. It's learning how to meet your own needs as an adult, especially the emotional needs that went unmet when you were young. This might sound like a completely separate endeavor from raising your children, but it's actually deeply connected. When your child's defiance triggers intense frustration in you, it might be highlighting a place where you weren't allowed to express your own independence, when their big emotions make you feel uncomfortable, it might connect to how your feelings were dismissed. These triggering moments are actually doorways to healing. There's a therapy approach called Schema therapy, which helps people to identify and change deep patterns of thinking and behavior that often start in childhood. So a Schema is a pattern of thinking, and there are five main categories of Schemas that affect how we see ourselves and others. The first category is disconnection and rejection, which is the expectation that your needs for security, safety, nurturance, empathy, sharing of feelings, acceptance and respect are not going to be met reliably. And this can happen when our family growing up was cold, rejecting, lonely, unpredictable or sometimes harmful. In the impaired autonomy and performance category, we have beliefs about ourselves in the world that can make it hard for us to be independent or feel capable, and that can never happen when our family was too wrapped up in each other's lives, or when parents were overprotective. In the impaired limits category, we find patterns related to difficulty respecting each other's rights, cooperating, making commitments or setting realistic goals. I do want to note that the research in this area often assumes that children need discipline because the researchers can't imagine that both the child's needs and the parent's needs could be met at the same time. The fourth category is over vigilance and inhibition, which means putting too much emphasis on controlling our feelings and following rigid rules, often at the cost of happiness and connection. This can happen when our family demanded perfection and punished mistakes. We never get to relax or feel joy, because we're always watching for things that could go wrong.

The final category is other directedness, which means focusing too much on what others want and need while ignoring our own needs. This happens when children learn to hide important parts of themselves to get love and approval. Parents desires for things like social status become more important than the child's unique needs and feelings. And here's the irony that I see in all of this. The research on time outs, which we covered in two episodes earlier this year, tells us that time outs work as discipline, because children will change their behavior to avoid losing our love and attention. So we should use timeouts, because we can use our child's love and attention to get them to change their behavior. And then on the flip side of that, we have this old a whole other strand of research that focuses on why it's so hard for us to exist in our lives when our parents have used these disconnecting tools. It's the common parenting tools that create these harmful thinking patterns that we spend years in therapy dealing with later, and it's so easy to see that many of us have been hurt by these parenting tools in ways that make it hard for us to parent and even show up in our lives in the way that we want to. When we recognize these patterns in our thinking, we can learn to reparent ourselves, which means showing up for ourselves as adults in the way that we wish our caregivers had shown up for us. There is a five-step process that we can use to do this that is drawn from schema therapy. The first step involves becoming aware of your patterns. So, notice when you have big reactions to your child's behavior, maybe you panic when your child shows anger, or you experience a sensation of rejection when they need space next practice acceptance. So instead of judging yourself for these reactions, try saying it makes sense that I struggle with my child's anger, because expressing anger was not safe in my home growing up. Or of course, I feel hurt when my child needs independence. My own need for autonomy was not respected, right? Trace this back to self-compassion, we're using the same kinds of tools, again, same kinds of tools, invalidating your experience. This means acknowledging what was hard about your childhood. You might say to yourself, it was really difficult to grow up thinking that my emotions were too much, or I felt so alone when no one helped me to understand my feelings. This validation can be deeply healing. It's what you needed, but you didn't get as a child.

Then after validation comes reframing, and this is where you decide what you want to believe and how you want to respond now. And this starts to go beyond self-compassion. You might tell yourself it's safe for me to stay present with my child's anger without needing to fix it or shut it down, or I can support my child's independence while still meeting my need for connection. And then finally, we're going to take action to reinforce those new patterns that might mean practicing deep breathing when we feel triggered, setting up regular self-care routines, finding supportive people who can help you process your feelings. And the beautiful thing about reparenting yourself while raising your children is that these processes support each other. As you heal your own hurts, you become more able to see and meet your child's needs, and as you practice staying present with your child's authentic self, even the messy, challenging parts, you learn to extend that same acceptance to yourself. This is not about being a perfect parent or healing completely that mythical state that doesn't actually exist. It's about creating the growth and the connection with yourself and with your child. Each time you catch yourself before you react harshly, each time you respond with compassion instead of criticism. You're not just parenting your child differently, you are reparenting yourself. Remember this work takes time start with self-compassion. As Dr. Pollak points out, many of us were not raised to be kind to ourselves. So we can begin by offering ourselves the same understanding we would give to a good friend who's struggling. We can acknowledge that parenting can be incredibly challenging, especially when it brings up our own unresolved pain, and by committing to this dual path of healing ourselves while raising our children, we create the possibility of breaking generational patterns, we can become the parent we needed when we were young, both for our children and for the child within ourselves, who is still longing to be seen and understood and accepted exactly as they are. As we work to bridge that gap between the parent we sometimes are today and the parent that we want to be. One thing becomes incredibly clear; this journey is not meant to be traveled alone.

We're so used to seeing challenges like mental health. Or even just things that we want to change about ourselves as personal problems, we think we're showing up in this way because there's something wrong with us, and when we fix that thing, there won't be a problem anymore. And the story of the self-sufficient parent who handles everything perfectly is not just unrealistic, it's really harmful, and it sets us up for feeling isolated exactly when we need connection the most. Shifting those deep patterns is not something we can usually do through willpower alone or by reading yet another parenting book. That journey involves reparenting ourselves while simultaneously parenting our children, holding space for big emotions, having problem solving conversations instead of power struggles and setting limits that reflect our real values, rather than just trying to control their behavior so that we don't have to feel uncomfortable. When we try to make these changes by ourselves, we often get stuck in cycles of trying harder, failing, beating ourselves up, which only depletes the emotional resources we need to show up differently with our children. And that's why community is so essential to this work. If you think about it, it makes sense that, because so many of our wounds happened in relationship with others, healing also happens in relationship. When we share our struggles with people who truly understand several powerful things happen. First, we break through the shame, because those thoughts of, I'm the only one who yells at my kids, or no good parent would struggle with this, lose their power when we hear others express similar challenges, and when they hear us express that, and they still tell us that we are lovable. The second thing that happens is we gain perspective. Other parents can often see patterns that we're too close to notice in ourselves, and they can gently reflect back to us when we're being too hard on ourselves or when we're genuinely making progress that we dismiss. And it happens in parents I work with all the time. They disregard how far they've come on their journey and focus only on what's hard today. So when you can focus on what's worked in your family without the judgment that comes from relatives or friends who parent differently, you're able to have a whole lot more energy to make the kinds of changes you want to make. And then third, we find strength in shared purpose. There's something really deeply motivating about being part of a community where everyone is committed to growing and healing and breaking old patterns. That energy of collective intention helps to sustain us when our individual motivation wanes. And I want to share some stories from parents who've been able to make some of the changes they wanted to make in their parenting. Some of them already knew the kinds of things they had to do, like getting more sleep, right, seems How hard can that be? But it wasn't easy to figure out how to actually do it. So that's how Jenny started getting more sleep.

So we had this thing called an ACTion group that you had us join. And I thought, God, not another zoom call in the ACTion group every week, me and some other women would talk and talk about the content from the membership and what we were going to do with it. It has changed my life. Yeah, in the beginning, it was really like first aid for me. They helped me to do basic things like try to get a bit more sleep. Yeah, just like the most basic self-care that I somehow could not manage to do for myself, they held me accountable and held space in the most compassionate, supportive, gentle way that allowed me to kind of get out of my own way and step out of the “shoulds” that seem like it would help you to better yourself, but somehow only makes you feel like crap and sabotages you along the way. And yeah, I've been in the group for about a year and a half now, and they are just amazing. And like, the highlight of my week, yeah, that was, that was kind of the beginning, like just getting to a baseline of decent health and stability, and from there, I've been able to get really deep into the content of the Parenting Membership. And there's been some magic happening.

So sometimes we already know what we want to do, but we can't figure out how to do it. And in the Parenting Membership, we have these ACTion groups, which are groups of up to five peers and an experienced peer coach who meet once a week on Zoom. And I think it's safe to say that very few parents join the Parenting Membership for the ACTion groups, most people join because they want help. My help to untangle the struggles that are going on in their families and of course, I do provide support with that. But what often ends up being the thing that supports parents in going from knowing what change they want to be able to make to actually being able to make it is being held by the other parents in their ACTion group every week. And of course, there are also times when we don't. Know what to do, even if we would know what to do if it was happening to someone else, because it's so much harder to see what's happening when we're in it ourselves. The parent Elyse finds that when she's listening to podcast episodes, it's so obvious to her what the parents should be doing in the difficult situation they're in, but when it's her in that difficult situation, the path forward can be much harder to find, but it's so much easier when you have a group of people who can help you to see that path, knowing that you will also help them to find their path through their difficult circumstance. When I asked Elyse what advice they would offer for a parent who has joined the membership and who wasn't sure how to engage with all the resources available, I was really surprised by her answer.

It might seem like extra work or uncomfortable once you get into it. It's just becomes a regular touch point every week. And I'd also say, I imagine this be true of other ACTion groups, but ours has zero expectations that are you are on track in the modules. It's not like, you know, you show up and you're a failure because you're not where you're supposed to be, or even when you set your next step and you didn't quite get there, we called our group all the wins, because each time somebody usually comes in and starts just tearing apart whatever happened. It's like, well, this is a problem now. It's like, but wait, what you did last week is what you said you were going to do, and you had these great conversations with your kid, and I'm like, oh, okay, this, this was definitely me. So it's good to pause and understand that it's a long process, and each part of this is just a process. And it's not like you're going to do one of the modules and suddenly that is going to be done forever. I think, just like you say in some of your promo materials, do you ever read the child books and think this is great? And then you try whatever it is, and it doesn't go that way. And then you're like, well, what do I do now? It's like, yes, because I'm a scientist and I like protocols, and my child is not a protocol. So it's like, just those ideas, and it's interesting too, being in a peer group, because all of us have those tools where there's so many times maybe this is strange, where I listen to podcasts, or listening to you talk to another parent, and I'm thinking, I wonder if they've tried this, or I wonder if they've tried this, right? But when you're in the moment, it's not obvious to you.

I know that adding another weekly meeting to your schedule might not seem like something that would actually reduce your workload, but many parents find it does, because you don't have to schedule and reschedule it multiple times. I can't tell you how many parents I meet who tell me I don't have anyone I can rely on, because we don't have family close by. I wish there was someone I could be real with. Isn't it so interesting that there are so many parents all wanting the same thing? Here's a place where you can actually find other parents who want what you want too, and you'll know that they're somewhat aligned with your approach to parenting, and they're trying to be better versions of themselves and better parents as well. And you might even end up feeling more connected to them than you do to your friends in real life, like Stephanie did.

I would say that they really feel like friends, and I feel closer to a lot of them than I do to my friends in person, mostly because I don't see many of my friends in person, and so having that weekly connection where I may see like other friends of mine once every couple months now at this point. And getting to have that weekly connection, knowing it's always there, knowing I can also reach out to these people outside of that weekly connection, if I need to, and I have done that before and kind of expanded on these relationships outside of our weekly meeting, has, it's just been huge for me. It's really has filled like I can't describe enough the lack of connection I had for so long after my husband died, and much of that was because I didn't want connection, like I was dealing with my own grief, I was dealing with trying to figure out how to parent, and so I didn't really want that connection. But once I finally realized that I needed that, and that was probably earlier in the summer of like twenty twenty late summer twenty twenty that having that easily, they're always there once a week, I could reach out to all of these people. It just, it really does. It fills my cup, and I don't. I wish I could describe it better, but that is really what it has done for me, where and it's, it's easy, it's not. Okay, I need to text this person, figure out a time to meet them. When are their kids available? Other kids are sick. Okay? We can't meet well now it's going to be next week. One never heard back from them. Well, do I reach out to them? They're not reaching out to me. This kind of internal, you know, external thing going on of trying to reach just one person. Can where I can get on this call. I can talk to multiple people. I can express what's going on with me. I can get multiple opinions if I want them and if I don't want them. Nobody just offers their advice and says you should try this, or you should do this. They just listen and hold space. And if I say that I want advice on this or recommendations, then I freely get great advice, like nobody really has ever had bad advice, so it's just been very fulfilling for me.

I’ve seen over and over again how parents try to create these kinds of communities themselves. There's a respectful parenting group on Facebook that's local to my area, and every few months, a new parent will join and will notice the group hasn't been active in a while, and they'll propose a meet up. And it might even happen once or twice, but then its kind of just fizzles before you even really get to know the other parents, and then the cycle repeats itself in a few months. It's so hard to navigate all the scheduling to make even two or three meetings happen, which is not enough to actually feel comfortable sharing your struggles and pain and even your successes without it seeming like bragging. And that's one reason why having a weekly scheduled meeting is so powerful. You miss a week because life is busy, or a kid gets sick and you pick right back up again the next week and you've barely missed a thing. So if you see that your parenting is off track from where you want it to be, I hope you'll consider joining me and Jenny and Elyse and Stephanie and all the other parents in the Parenting Membership. I know it seems like the changes you want to make will happen when you have the right knowledge, but you've already read and listened to and watched so much information already. You have a lot of knowledge, you need help to sort out which bits of that knowledge fit with your values, and then to apply it in real life, whether you're struggling with tantrums, sibling conflicts, screen time battles, or the shame that comes up when you don't parent in the way that you want, the membership provides the practical tools and the supportive community to help you find your way back to being the parent that you want to be. In the membership, you'll find specific modules that address the challenges we've talked about today. You'll finally get comfortable with being able to identify and meet your needs and your children's needs. You'll learn how to talk about discipline and other hot button issues with your partner, without one or both of you getting triggered, you'll learn more about your values so you can better align your daily activities and your interactions with your kids, with your values. And of course, we have help for all the daily challenges, like screen time, food struggles and when you're ready for it, we'll help you to heal the shame that you've been carrying around for a long time, and that may impact our kids as well. Enrollment for this year is open right now, but only for a few more days, until midnight Pacific on Wednesday, May 28th all the information on the Parenting Membership is at yourparentingmojo.com/parentingmembership. The real beauty of this community approach is that it creates a ripple effect. As you heal your relationship with yourself and your child, that healing extends outward. Your child learns that it's possible to meet multiple people's needs at once, that repair is always possible, that emotions can be expressed and worked through, rather than suppressed. These lessons don't just improve your family dynamics now, they help create a generation of people who know how to connect authentically, who can resolve conflicts respectfully, and who can love themselves and others more completely. This path is not always straight or smooth, there will be days when it seems like you're back at square one, when old patterns reassert themselves, when you wonder if anything is really changing, and that's exactly when community matters most, to remind you how far you have come, to hold hope for you when yours is wavering, to offer both practical support and emotional understanding. So if you've been thinking that your parenting is off track from where you want it to be, please know you are not the only one facing this challenge, and more importantly, you do not have to figure it all out by yourself. There's a whole community waiting to support you in becoming the parent you want to be, not by pushing you to be perfect, but by helping you to embrace your full, messy, authentic humanity. Because that's ultimately what our children need most from us, not perfection, but presence, not flawless performance, but the courage to keep showing up, to keep growing, to keep loving both them and ourselves exactly as we are. I hope you'll join us now at yourparentingmojo.com/parentingmembership.

If you'd like Jen to address the challenge you're having in parenting, just email your one-minute video or audio clip to support@yourparentingmojo.com and listen out for your episode soon.