Your choices can be right for you but not necessarily the best choices for other people. Why? You are not other people.
— Emily Oster
The culture of impossible parenting centres children’s needs, wants, desires, and experiences as the cornerstone of family life, and typically it’s the primary parent who’s responsible for figuring out how to meet all these needs. We can trace the popularization and normalization of child-centred parenting to the rise of its sister ideologies: intensive mothering and attachment parenting. Child-centred parenting is often touted as the progressive alternative to adult-centred parenting, whereby parents take an authoritarian approach to childrearing, set clear rules, and exact punishments when behavioural expectations are not met. Adult-centred parenting loves phrases such as “children should be seen and not heard” or “be careful not to spoil your baby.”
The shift to child-centred parenting coincided with the mass rise of mothers entering the paid workforce, followed by the overall acceleration of everyday life. Currently, time is our scarcest resource and providing compassionate, undivided attention to anyone is challenging.1 It makes sense that parents who desperately love their children adopt a child-centred parenting approach; how better to demonstrate your love than by giving your children your scarcest resource — your time and attention. Many parents of young children interpret constant accessibility to their children as quality time and a marker of good parenting.2 But I invite you to challenge this belief and instead understand that this perceived need to be always available to our children is a by-product of the culture of impossible parenting, which prioritizes sacrifice, investment, and magic making. When parents aren’t as readily available for their children as they imagined they would be, they tend to feel guilt for having biological, emotional, or economic needs that create barriers to their availability, such as needing to get adequate sleep, have alone time, or put their children in daycare so they can make money or have time off from the work of parenting. This guilt can quickly lead to parental burnout, where parents complain of feeling drained of energy; they crave rest but are unable to enjoy it because there’s too much to do, and they feel overwhelmed by their long to-do lists.
Parenting isn’t like other jobs. It’s unrelenting. At our paid jobs, there are protective labour laws that limit the hours we can work and ensure we get bathroom and lunch breaks. But parenting work doesn’t have a guaranteed end of day, and even when children are asleep, the hum of repetitive chores such as laundry and tidying calls to us, leaving us with very little leisure time. All families operate by developing a unique and complex internal organization that determines who does what, establishes the roles and responsibilities that are expected of each family member, and creates traditions and routines, which I call your family systems. Unfortunately, most families don’t have enough resources or support to create child-centred family systems in a way that also protects their physical and mental health. Instead, they operate with a constant deficit, as the needs and desires of the children begin to trump every other need in the house. It’s no wonder that research on mothers whose lives are significantly child-centred found them to be less satisfied with their overall lives.3 Child-centred parenting also assumes that children have no internal resources such as adaptability or resilience, but that’s both untrue and unhelpful. Children have historically been expected — and have been able — to adapt to a wide variety of life circumstances. The work required to survive and thrive as a family has always required creative solutions. The recent pandemic has made this clear for many families, with children often adapting more easily than their parents!
I call the process by which families come up with creative solutions to meet the needs of each member family-centred parenting. Family-centred parenting offers an alternative to child-centred or adult-centred parenting, because rather than organizing the family systems around the needs of some family members, it organizes them around the needs of all members of the family. This means that everyone is responsible for communicating their needs and the family is responsible for negotiating and then responding to those needs. This also means that sometimes each family member’s needs are prioritized, and sometimes they are delayed or unable to be met. For example, babies communicate their need for eating or diaper changes at night through crying, and this interferes with parents’ biological need for sleep. Some families negotiate these needs by sharing night-parenting duties, either with partners, family, friends, or hired help, to maximize parental sleep. This can be done a variety of different ways. One is a shift-work strategy, whereby one parent is on duty from, say, 9:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. and the other parent or support person is on from 2:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. Another approach is to have each parent or support person take turns parenting for entire nights. Other families opt to night wean or use sleep-training strategies to encourage their babies to sleep through the night (or at least wake up less often). There are many respectful solutions to night parenting, yet in many families, night parenting falls almost entirely to one parent, particularly if that parent is exclusively nursing. This leaves one parent with extreme sleep deprivation and puts their physical and emotional health at risk. And this could go on for years! The reluctance to view parent work as real work because it’s unpaid contributes to this imbalance, with many primary parents in two-parent households agreeing to do night duty because their partner “works,” which reinforces the belief that paid work is more important than parent work. And yet, in my clinical experience, this night-parenting agreement doesn’t often change when an at-home parent returns to paid employment.
Family-centred parenting doesn’t ignore the needs of the children; instead it considers their needs in tandem with parental needs. My general suggestion is that if a family system doesn’t work for one person in the family, then it shouldn’t be acceptable for anyone in the family. Living with other people always requires a certain amount of compromise, and most of us can pragmatically agree to something that isn’t our first choice, but that we can see best meets the needs of the other people we live with. I have found that in families where one parent is struggling with their mental health, very often they have unintentionally found themselves enmeshed in family systems that don’t work for them. Usually this parent is the primary parent, and it’s often one who identifies as a mother in heterosexual relationships. There are many reasons for this, but the one that comes up the most is a fear of being selfish.
Selfishness has a bad rap, especially for women, because part of being selfish means not being considerate of (or not noticing) the needs or wants of others, which is something that women are expected to do. While it’s undoubtedly important to notice and make space for others, it can be equally important to practise self-preservation. Selfishness also means prioritizing your personal needs and wants over others’, which is not always a bad thing. I think selfishness in parenting needs a rebranding, which is why I encourage clients to experiment with the concept of intentional selfishness. Intentional selfishness means that there are times when prioritizing your needs and wants over others’ should be the goal, and that you make that decision with purpose and intention. Essentially, cultivating a spirit of intentional selfishness involves setting boundaries around how much of your time, energy, and resources you can give away, recognizing that you have limits, and that sometimes it’s your turn. When everyone gets to be intentionally selfish at times, and it’s equitably balanced, it can benefit the whole family.
Part of what makes it so challenging to be intentionally selfish is that the culture of impossible parenting has overemphasized the aspects of parenting that require connection and dependence between parent and child, and devalued the parts that call for autonomy and independence.4 Everyone in the family deserves the opportunity to explore their relationship between connection and autonomy, including young children. Both you and your children need to have the experience of autonomy so that you create a sense of self outside of each other.5 There are significant costs to losing your sense of self, such as martyrism, family enmeshment, resentment, or rage. Without the ability to identify and respond to your own needs, it’s almost impossible to be fully compassionate with your child.6
The question of how much connection and how much independence children need from their parents is an ongoing debate. The line between the primary parent’s right to independence and their children’s right to continuous care is blurry because the process of becoming a parent (more so for mothers) so often transforms people from autonomous subjects to community objects whose actions are constantly observed and analyzed by the public.7 This is why I believe so many people who identify as mothers feel a profound sense of identity loss when they become a parent for the first time; they grow confused about where their personal identity ends and their maternal identity begins. Far too often we discuss early parenthood as if its goal is to exclusively benefit the child, with little regard to the experience or cost to their parent.8 We hyperfocus on the romantic concept of mother-baby dyads and overlook the impact of the entire family system on children. The risk of overemphasizing mother-baby dyads is that it assumes that the needs of the baby are the same as the needs of the primary parent, which is not always true, or it positions the needs of the baby against the needs of the primary parent, which creates a win-lose scenario. This is why I think it’s critical to position the needs of the entire family unit at the centre.
How do you begin the process of becoming family centred? Values mapping allows you to get clear about the things that are important to you and learn more about what is important to the other people in your family. I encourage you to explore your core family values using this tool.9
Begin by doing some brainstorming with some key questions about your past, the present, and the future.
Past: Take a few minutes to recall your strongest memories from your own childhood. Why do they stand out? What parts of your family of origin did you internalize? What aspects of your childhood do you want to continue with your own children? What aspects do you want to be different with your family?
Present: Analyze what you’ve already learned about who you are as a parent. When are you the most joyful and present with your kids? When are you the most overwhelmed and frustrated? What are some of your favourite family moments? What moments do you wish you could change?
Future: Imagine that your children are adults with their own children, and they invite you to talk about parenting with them. What advice would you give them? How do they remember you as a parent? What are you proud of? What do you wish for them as they learn how to parent their own children?
Once you have brainstormed and made some notes, notice if there are any themes in what you reflected upon. Do most of the memories have to do with being outside doing something totally new? You may value family adventures. Did you imagine that your children remember you as always being there for them, in the same way you felt about your parents? You may value consistent support. Review the list of common values below and mark the ones that seem connected to your brainstorm or any that really resonate with you. My list is not exclusive, of course, so add any values that feel significant to you.
Accountability
Accuracy
Achievement
Adventure
Altruism
Ambition
Assertiveness
Balance
Belonging
Boldness
Calmness
Carefulness
Challenge
Cheerfulness
Commitment
Community
Compassion
Competitiveness
Consistency
Contentment
Contribution
Co-operation
Correctness
Courtesy
Creativity
Curiosity
Decisiveness
Dependability
Determination
Diligence
Discipline
Discretion
Diversity
Effectiveness
Elegance
Empathy
Enjoyment
Enthusiasm
Equality
Excellence
Excitement
Expertise
Exploration
Expressiveness
Fairness
Faith
Family
Fitness
Focus
Freedom
Fun
Generosity
Goodness
Grace
Growth
Happiness
Hard work
Harmony
Health
Helping
Honesty
Honour
Humility
Independence
Inquisitiveness
Insightfulness
Intelligence
Intuition
Joy
Justice
Leadership
Legacy
Love
Loyalty
Making a difference
Mastery
Openness
Order
Originality
Positivity
Practicality
Preparedness
Professionalism
Prudence
Quality
Reliability
Resourcefulness
Restraint
Results
Rigour
Security
Self-actualization
Self-control
Selflessness
Self-reliance
Sensitivity
Serenity
Service
Simplicity
Soundness
Spontaneity
Stability
Status
Strategic
Strength
Structure
Success
Support
Teamwork
Temperance
Thankfulness
Thoroughness
Thoughtfulness
Timeliness
Tolerance
Tradition
Trustworthiness
Truth
Understanding
Uniqueness
Unity
Usefulness
Vision
Next, write all the values you identified during your brainstorm in column one (“Initial List”) of the Values Map (see below). Once you have a big list of values in column one on the Values Map, start to narrow down the list. First rank them in order of importance to you, then rewrite your top-ten most important values in the second column of the Values Map. Now try to narrow the list even further by ranking the ten values in column two in order of importance, and write your top-five values in column three.
Here are some questions to help you rank your list:
Which of these values feel the most vital to you?
Which of these values feel critical to model for your children?
Which of these values feel like an integral part of who you want to be as a parent?
Initial List |
Top 10, Ranked |
Top 5, Ranked |
Intelligence |
Intelligence |
Freedom |
Freedom |
Freedom |
Goodness |
Usefulness |
Usefulness |
Leadership |
Exploration |
Thankfulness |
Simplicity |
Thankfulness |
Goodness |
Making a Difference |
Growth |
Leadership |
|
Goodness |
Assertiveness |
|
Leadership |
Simplicity |
|
Joy |
Making a Difference |
|
Assertiveness |
Helping |
|
Simplicity |
||
Making a Difference |
||
Helping |
Once you have your final list, I encourage you to make this the measuring stick you use to take stock of how you are doing as a parent. Instead of striving to meet the values of impossible-parenting culture, strive to hold yourself accountable to your personal values. Now that you have a list of what you personally value, you can use it to fight back against feelings of parenting guilt.
One of my favourite aspects of values mapping is that everyone’s final list is unique. Part of what contributes to parenting judgment is holding others accountable to our own values, usually without being aware of these values or being able to explain why they are important to us. Imagine how parent shaming would change if we were able to communicate what’s personally important to us, without expecting others to have the same values list as we do? And what if we were open to learning about what’s important to others? I suspect it would completely change the landscape of parenting comparison, because we would approach each other with curiosity rather than commentary.
To learn more about what values are important to each individual family member, walk everyone through this process independently at first, and then compare your core values together. Sometimes you will realize that you have very different goals. My partner, Janna, highly values personal responsibility and hard work, while I value fun and kindness, and sometimes it can feel like those values are at odds. Neither of us is wrong, but it often requires us to get creative in how we balance everyone’s values. By doing this work, we have gained a deeper understanding of why we act the way we do, of each other’s parenting strengths, and of each other’s triggers, so that we can celebrate and honour everyone’s unique contributions to the children.
If you and your other family members have values that feel very misaligned or even contradictory, it may be helpful to create a framework for how you will approach and resolve parenting and family decisions.
I really like design consultant J Li’s Medium.com article about the Decide 10 Rating System, which is a decision-making framework that explores how important the outcome of a particular decision is for each person involved.10 Li created it for couples, but you could also use it with older children, co-parents, or family members. Here is the rating scale that Li uses, with adapted examples for perinatal families. I encourage you to adapt this and make it your own.
10. “This is so important, the relationship is at stake.”
Example: I want to have a child.
9. “This is a turning-point critical event for me and I just need you to drop everything and help me.”
Example: I want to do the cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia protocol, but I would need you to do all the night parenting until I am sleeping regularly again.
8. “This is important for my wellbeing in some way. It’s important enough to put things down and [would] potentially (but not always) be a significant favour.”
Example: I’m too sick to watch the children alone today, so please take the day off work so I can recover while you look after them.
7. “I really want/need this and am willing to spend everyday social capital to make it happen. Do it for me as a casual favour?”
Example: I know you think professional family photos are silly, but I found a community photo session that is affordable, and I’d really like us to do this.
6. “I would love to do this and will provide the energy/momentum/engagement boost to make it happen.”
Example: I would love to go for a walk tonight but it’s kind of dark and I don’t want to go alone. I’ll change the baby and get them loaded in the stroller if you’ll come with me.
5. “Yes, if [you] want to go for this as much as I do, let’s do it.”
Example: Sure, apple picking sounds super fun this weekend. Let’s do it.
4. “Mm, I could be chill with going along with this, but I’m not as excited so somebody else will have to drive the energy.”
Example: I don’t want to make two cakes just to have a cake smash at our baby’s birthday, but go for it if you really want it and I’ll take photos.
3. “I wouldn’t do this on my own, but it’s not going to hurt me so I will if it’s important to you.”
Example: I’d rather sign the kids up for swim classes on Mondays, but if it’s really important for you to be there too, we can do it Saturday mornings.
2. “I don’t like this idea at all, or this will actually cause me moderate harm/inconvenience, but it’s recoverable or I can grit my teeth and live with it. I will only do it if the benefit to you significantly outweighs the harm to me, since we’re a team.”
Example: I don’t want to spend $1,500 on a doula, but I’m not the one giving birth so we will do whatever you want.
1. “This will cause me substantial harm/inconvenience. It’s only something I would do if it’s an emergency.”
Example: I don’t feel ready to go back to paid work yet, but I will if it is the only way for our family to survive financially.
0. “This is fundamentally damaging, and I would never do it unless the relationship itself is at stake.”
Example: I disagree with you about immunization choices.
To use the Decide 10 Rating System to make a family decision, have each family member write down the number that best corresponds with how strongly they feel about the proposed idea. If everyone has midrange numbers, you can likely negotiate a decision easily. But if it becomes obvious that you are deadlocked in opposite positions, you may need to explore alternative solutions or even need some professional support to come to a resolution.
Of course, we aren’t always going to follow our own parenting values. We’re human, and humans make mistakes, or they have trauma responses or any other number of things happen that make things not always work out the way we want. This will absolutely happen in parenting, which is why parenting also requires a healthy dose of self-compassion and permission to make mistakes, instead trying to master the performance of “the perfect parent.” I’ve heard the phrase “I want to give my children a childhood they don’t need to recover from” and I think it puts an unnecessary and impossible amount of responsibility on parents. We will all experience a certain amount of relationship and family trauma in our lifetime, but rather than living in fear of it or being hypervigilant about never making mistakes with our children, I encourage you to accept it.
There is value in the imperfectness of parenting, as suggested by pediatrician Donald Winnicott in his concept of the good-enough mother, or, as I refer to it, the good-enough parent.11 In chapter six, I discussed how the work of parenting is distinct from the relationship we build with our children, which we have a lifetime to explore and which will go through many growth and pain points. By embracing the concept of being good enough in our parenting, we are free to build an authentic relationship with our children, rather than a performative relationship where we are both trying to follow a set of conflicting rules. Winnicott reminds parents that authenticity in parenting is more important than getting it right, saying, “Good-enough parents can be used by babies and young children, and good enough means you and me. In order to be consistent, and so to be predictable for our children, we must be ourselves. If we are ourselves our children can get to know us.”12 Once we take the pressure off ourselves to figure out the “right” way of parenting, we can get to know our children and let them get to know us — flaws and all. Just like any relationship, there will be times of closeness and connection, and times that feel clunky and distant. You will work as a team and you will work against each other. You will irritate each other and you will laugh together. You will hurt each other’s feelings and you will learn how to repair the emotional harm caused.
What’s even more reassuring is Winnicott’s suggestion that children actually benefit from parental mistakes and manageable parental failures.13 Children have a lot to learn about what’s okay (for example, get permission before touching other people) and what’s not okay (for example, don’t hit people) in the world, and it’s helpful to learn those boundaries in a compassionate environment, even if the moments they learn those lessons are fraught with annoyance or irritation. If we have tension, feel angry, or have a fight with our partner, we generally don’t conclude that we’re bad partners. Ideally, we process what happened and try to find a resolution. So why do we worry that we’re bad parents after a disagreement or frustration with our child? Why can’t that also be an opportunity for modelling accountability and conflict resolution? Doing so can help children learn about their own emotional regulation and soothing, and it fosters independence and resilience.14
Obviously, I’m not referring to childhood abuse or neglect because that is never okay and requires serious support and intervention. Thankfully most parents aren’t abusive or neglectful, and I believe Winnicott’s insistence that the majority of babies and children are raised by good-enough parents.15 I hold on to that idea when I remember my most shameful parenting moments. In a state of desperate exhaustion and frustration, I have raised my voice at my crying babies and put them in the crib too aggressively. I try to believe my younger son has accepted my apology and forgiven me for the time I told him to “shut the fuck up and don’t let go of me or I will beat your ass so bad you will never sit again.” That gem came out during a panic attack while we were riding a Sea-Doo together in Florida. We had found ourselves far from shore in shark-infested water and my son’s cavalier attitude only heightened my panic. I still can’t understand why my fear that I couldn’t keep him safe translated into threats of violence every time he let go of my waist to look more closely at the swarming bull sharks, but I couldn’t stop myself from threatening to kill him if he fell into the water. It was particularly painful because it violated my core value of kindness, but it was impactful enough that I have never again sworn at my kids (despite the many moments while raising a preteen and a teen when I have certainly sworn at them in my head!).
I wish that we didn’t have to outline all the ways in which it’s good for us to be human with our children, because whether or not it’s good for them, it just is. In fact, research suggests that healthy parent-child relationships only maintain mutual and simultaneous connection about 30 percent of the time, with ruptures and repair to that connection happening the rest of the time.16 Parents are going to be messy, flawed humans with their children because humans are messy and flawed. We are also fiercely protective, inventive problem solvers, and rich in love and compassion. We are perfectly imperfect. It’s healthy to make mistakes, and it’s normal to find comfort in that fact. It’s okay to embrace your humanity and allow yourself to stop trying to override it with perfectionist strategies.
Before I explain family hot spots, I want to do a quick overview of how the nervous system works, because it feels like an important part of perinatal mood that doesn’t get discussed enough. There are two parts of our nervous system that I want to focus on. The first part is our sympathetic nervous system, which turns on in response to threats.17 Some threats are “high stress but time-limited,” such as almost getting into a car accident, while others are “low stress but chronic,” such as having a boss that you don’t like but have to work with. When we feel threatened physically, emotionally, or socially, our sympathetic nervous system kicks into gear and puts our body into either flight, flight, or freeze mode to help us survive; our heart beats faster, we pump cortisol and adrenalin, and our muscles tense.18 Once the threat subsides, it’s important to discharge all the stress hormones from our body by turning on the second part of our system, the parasympathetic nervous system, which allows us to rest, recover, and heal from the intensity of the threat; if we don’t release the stress it can become chronic and make us unhealthy or feel miserable.19
Caring for young children can be very activating for the sympathetic nervous system, in particular because of the way crying makes us want to jump up and fix whatever is making our kids cry. I was incredibly sensitive to my babies’ cries and felt like my body was on fire when they weren’t easily soothed. I would be quickly moved to tears or anger by the level of discomfort in my body, and I was always desperate for them to stop. I would hold them and mutter swear words and we would cry together, sometimes for a very long time. Eventually, when they’d stop crying, I’d curl up into a ball and frantically rock myself while slowing my breath until my nervous system calmed down. As they got older the noise from whining, toys, and loud children often left me feeling dazed and overwhelmed, not to mention the agitation I felt from living in a constantly messy, chaotic environment. And it wasn’t that my children were doing anything unusual. They were just being busy, active kids that were curious about the world. It was just that I’m sensory-sensitive and my nervous system found all the stimulation to be too much. I still feel this way when we do family events at places that have loud noises or large crowds, such as fairs or amusement parks or busy malls. My poor nervous system just doesn’t like multisensory input. Sensory overload is one of my hot spots that I need to manage.
Another common reason for sympathetic nervous system activation in the postpartum period is relational stress conflict, with kids, partners, friends, or family. It’s normal for each of us to have hot spots, or particular issues or situations that we find very activating, which cause our nervous system to freak out and leave us feeling emotionally dysregulated. Psychiatrist Dan Siegel calls this falling out of our window of tolerance, meaning we all have a range of emotional ups and downs through the day that we can self-soothe and regulate on our own, but we also have limits, and some experiences are too much for us to emotionally process when they’re happening. We can fall outside of what feels possible for us to tolerate, sending us spinning into a state of hyperarousal (fight/flight/high freeze) or hypoarousal (low freeze/fully shutting down). It’s normal for us to feel sad or angry when we feel like someone is stomping all over one of our core values, so values mapping can help each family member identify their hot spots. For example, if respect is one of your core values and it feels like your child is behaving disrespectfully toward you, you’re likely going to be triggered by it! Sometimes you may be able to regulate easily, but other times you may not, depending on what else is affecting your nervous system in that moment.
Knowing your own hot spots is helpful, but it’s just as important to know how you respond when you get activated. Does your heart start to race? Do you find yourself ruminating about what just happened? Do you feel like your body gets flooded and then powers down? With a better understanding of why you get triggered and what happens when you get triggered, you can design some support strategies to help you take control of your nervous system and feel more grounded. This could be something as simple as taking a break from the trigger and focusing on your breathing. When my kids would scream when I put them in their car seats, I would walk really slowly to the driver’s side and collect myself before getting into the car, and then hum or sing while I drove, which can help stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system (the rest and digest, soothing part of your nervous system). It can be helpful to create family systems that limit our exposure to triggers when we’re having a tough time coping with the day-to-day, but triggers are often unavoidable, so it’s critical that we learn how to support ourselves through them.
I usually suggest that parents do two things once they’ve become activated. The first is to ground themselves, so they can get back in their window of tolerance. There are two popular grounding strategies that can offer relief: the 54321 Sensory Awareness technique and the Body Scan.
Name five things that you can see in the room around you.
Example: Chair, dog, shoe, cup, book.
Name four things that you can feel.
Example: Feet to the floor. Skin to shirt. Ring on my finger. Sofa supporting me.
Name three things you can hear around you.
Example: Clock ticking on the wall. Refrigerator humming. Dog snoring.
Name two things you can smell around you.
Example: Fresh cut grass. Burning candle.
Name one thing you can taste.
Example: Cinnamon gum.
Sit, lie down, or plant your feet to the floor. Close your eyes if it’s helpful.
Start by tensing your feet, hold for three seconds, and then let them go.
Tense your calves, hold for three seconds, and then let them go.
Tense your thighs, hold for three seconds, and then let them go.
Tense your butt, hold for three seconds, and then let it go.
Tense your abs and lower back, hold for three seconds, and then let them go.
Tense your shoulders, hold for three seconds, and then let them go.
Tense your arms, hold for three seconds, and then let them go.
Tense your neck, hold for three seconds, and then let it go.
Tense your face, hold for three seconds, and then let it go.
Keep repeating this sequence until you feel your body relax.
Once you’re grounded, you want to complete the stress cycle by flushing out the stress hormones from your body and turning on the parasympathetic nervous system. The Nagoski sisters’ research offers some easy things you can do at home to help with this:20
Exercise: It doesn’t take much! You don’t need to head to the gym. Running up and down the stairs a few times, having a family dance party with Beyoncé in the kitchen, or taking a brisk walk for ten minutes all count.
Breathing: I know. It’s really annoying to be told to breathe when you’re activated. But slow breaths do help signal to your body that the threat is gone. Try counting your breaths and see if you can double the time it takes you to exhale than inhale. For example, if it takes you two beats to breathe in, see if you can release the breath in four beats.
Social engagement: Engage positively with the people around you. Smile at a stranger, say thank you to the mail carrier, or call a friend and tell them all the things you love about them.
Laughter: Start telling a story that makes you laugh every time you tell it, or watch that YouTube clip that made you laugh so hard you almost peed that one time.
Touch: Cuddle, kiss, nurse — anything that involves being affectionate with people you care about. If you’re feeling “touched out” from too much touch, skip this one.
Alongside identifying family hot spots and learning how to expand your window of tolerance, it can be helpful to improve your conflict-resolution skills. Most of us don’t feel that well-equipped to repair riffs with the people we love. Some people are conflict avoidant and make their needs small so they don’t upset others. Others are prone to anger, and they know they can scare people but don’t always know how to hold back. Parent rage is often the result of a silence/violence continuum, where we suck up a lot of frustration for a prolonged period of time only to reach a tipping point and act disproportionately angry about a minor situation because we’ve been stuffing down our anger. Then we feel ashamed of our behaviour and re-resolve to not show our rage, which leads us to go back to silence and hide appropriate frustration responses to day-to-day irritations. If you feel like your relationship to conflict or anger is confusing or concerning, it’s worth getting some support in gaining some confidence with these skills. And if you suspect you have complex PTSD or a significant trauma history, I highly recommend getting professional, trauma-aware support because there are many aspects of parenting and family dynamics that can be very triggering.
I do also recognize that part of what can cause stress in our family systems are external influences that extend far beyond how we organize our individual families, such as financial demands that lead to long work hours, and confusion about how to simultaneously work full time and parent full time. Not having enough hours in the day or enough help to meet the daily demands of parenting are real problems; having enough resources to keep the family system running smoothly can be a serious challenge. Our family economic system was historically designed to encourage one parent to stay at home full time and have the other work full time, on the assumption that this would allow middle-class families to flourish. But the entire landscape of work life has changed dramatically in the last fifty years, with very few structural changes to support working families. Family supports such as paid parental leave, part-time work that pays a living wage, access to affordable high-quality child care, and more resources for at-home parents would be a significant part of the solution. While many activist and advocate groups are working hard to change these systems, in the meantime it’s even more important to design family-centred strategies at home. Within these strategies, we also need to find ways to care for ourselves, which is why the next chapter will dig deep into reconceptualizing self-care.