Reader Beware – What to Look for in a Parenting Article

Reader Beware - What to Look for in a Parenting Article

Recently I was browsing Pinterest, and I noticed a litany of “how-to” parenting articles throughout my feed. Since that day I’ve consistently observed the same pattern each time I visit the website. Article after article, I find tips about how to make our children stop doing something we don’t like or teach our children how to be or do something we do like.

Examples just from today, all of which have been re-pinned thousands of times, include:

  • “How to Teach Your Child to Have Self-Control Over Their Thoughts”
  • “How to Teach Your Child to be Humble and Kind”
  • “How to Teach Your Child Self-Control”
  • “How to Teach Your Children to Play By Themselves”
  • “Teaching Your Toddler to Count to 100: Our Top 7 Ways”
  • “How to Stop the Whining and Crying”

Certainly there’s nothing wrong with wanting to raise a child who is humble and kind. However, this pattern seems to suggest we ought to have an agenda for who our kids will be. Rather than focusing on ways to support our children in being the best version of themselves, we’re led to believe we must intentionally shape every aspect of their personalities.

It also seems to encourage parents to change things about their children which they find uncomfortable or disagreeable. To be clear, screaming and whining can be annoying. I won’t begin to argue that point. But when an article focuses on how to stop a behavior simply because we find it obnoxious, I wonder if the intent is misplaced. Are we attempting to address a behavior because it will benefit our kids or because we think it will make our lives easier? 

Some of these articles could be a recipe for failure. For example, self-control requires a certain amount of cognitive and emotional development. Teaching it before a child is capable of controlling impulses won’t be effective. Our time would be better spent acting as our child’s “upstairs brain” while their immature prefrontal cortex develops (for more on brain development, I recommend The Whole-Brain Child).

I also wonder if these “how-to’s” are always a good use of our time. What’s the purpose of teaching a toddler to count to 100? Does that guarantee he’ll be in Mensa? Is the point to give me something to brag about at playdates? Just because something is possible doesn’t mean it’s worth doing or that it’s the best way to spend my son’s precious childhood.

Lastly, research suggests there is great fallacy in attempting to suppress  our children’s emotions. It’s important to assist our children in developing a healthy expression of emotions, but attempting to squash them all together has negative, long-term consequences.

The following are some questions to ask yourself as you search for wisdom in parenting blogs and articles:

Who is writing this article?

There are loads of great articles written by parents for parents, and I don’t mean to diminish the beauty of parents supporting one another. However, we should also recognize that other parents are speaking from experience with what worked for their specific children. Their suggestions are not necessarily based in empirical research or years of education. You may find helpful suggestions, but be sure to remember these are not authorities on the topics of development, education, or child psychology.

Does it address development?

Expectations vary widely depending on age and stage of development. What may be appropriate for an eight-year-old won’t necessarily apply to a five-year-old. When you’re reading an article about how to teach your child something, look for information in the article about development. If the writer doesn’t address this, don’t assume it’s appropriate for your child.

Does it represent my values?

Any article which encourages the use of media to teach my young child academics is incongruent with my value of play-based learning for small children. Sometimes as parents we can feel like we are failing our children when we read how our peers are parenting. Keeping our own personal values in mind will allow us to make intentional decisions in which we can feel confident.

What’s the motivation? 

Here’s what I’ve learned in my short four years as a mother: most of parenting is dealing with my own stuff. There’s a big difference between an article which focuses on how we can support our children and one intended to stop a behavior we just don’t like. The former is child-centered, the latter is parent-centered. Rather than attempting to stop our kids from crying or “causing drama,” our time might be better spent addressing how we can manage our own reactions while asking, “is there an unmet need behind this behavior?”

We all have high hopes for our children, but it’s important to remember they are whole, complete beings separate from us. They reserve the right to become who they want to be, and facilitating their development without focusing on our own egos is admirable indeed.

If we want to raise intelligent, kind people with self-control, the best thing we can do is work on ourselves, not our kids. Allow them to learn through exploration, model kindness and self-control, and work on your own ability to remain calm and compassionate with your children. This paradigm shift can deepen your connection with your children, and it doesn’t even require flash cards.

[irp posts=”2308″ name=”7 Things You Should Never Say to the Parent of a Highly Sensitive Child (by Megan Stonelake)”]


About the Author: Megan Stonelake

Megan StonelakeMegan Stonelake is a therapist, blogger, and mama to a sweet four year old. Most recently she has written for Scary Mommy, Huffpost Blog, Sammiches & Psych Meds, and Parent.co. Her fascinations include child development, empathy, and all things parenting. Head over to her blog, Empathic Parenting, where you can sign up for her newsletter to receive tips and musings on peaceful parenting. You can also follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

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Feeling seen, safe, and cared for is a biological need. It’s not a choice and it’s not pandering. It’s a biological need.

Children - all of us - will prioritise relational safety over everything. 

When children feel seen, safe, and a sense of belonging they will spend less resources in fight, flight, or withdrawal, and will be free to divert those resources into learning, making thoughtful choices, engaging in ways that can grow them.

They will also be more likely to spend resources seeking out those people (their trusted adults at school) or places (school) that make them feel good about themselves, rather than avoiding the people of spaces that make them feel rubbish or inadequate.

Behaviour support and learning support is about felt safety support first. 

The schools and educators who know this and practice it are making a profound difference, not just for young people but for all of us. They are actively engaging in crime prevention, mental illness prevention, and nurturing strong, beautiful little people into strong, beautiful big ones.♥️
Emotion is e-motion. Energy in motion.

When emotions happen, we have two options: express or depress. That’s it. They’re the options.

When your young person (or you) is being swamped by big feelings, let the feelings come.

Hold the boundary around behaviour - keep them physically safe and let them feel their relationship with you is safe, but you don’t need to fix their feelings.

They aren’t a sign of breakage. They’re a sign your child is catalysing the energy. Our job over the next many years is to help them do this respectfully.

When emotional energy is shut down, it doesn’t disappear. It gets held in the body and will come out sideways in response to seemingly benign things, or it will drive distraction behaviours (such as addiction, numbness).

Sometimes there’ll be a need for them to control that energy so they can do what they need to do - go to school, take the sports field, do the exam - but the more we can make way for expression either in the moment or later, the safer and softer they’ll feel in their minds and bodies.

Expression is the most important part of moving through any feeling. This might look like talking, moving, crying, writing, yelling.

This is why you might see big feelings after school. It’s often a sign that they’ve been controlling themselves all day - through the feelings that come with learning new things, being quiet and still, trying to get along with everyone, not having the power and influence they need (that we all need). When they get into the car at pickup, finally those feelings they’ve been holding on to have a safe place to show up and move through them and out of them.

It can be so messy! It takes time to learn how to lasso feelings and words into something unmessy.

In the meantime, our job is to hold a tender, strong, safe place for that emotional energy to move out of them.

Hold the boundary around behaviour where you can, add warmth where you can, and when they are calm talk about what happened and how they might do things differently next time. And be patient. Just because someone tells us how to swing a racket, doesn’t mean we’ll win Wimbledon tomorrow. Good things take time, and loads of practice.♥️
Thank you Adelaide! Thank you for your stories, your warmth, for laughing with me, spaghetti bodying with me (when you know, you know), for letting me scribble on your books, and most of all, for letting me be a part of your world today.

So proud to share the stage with Steve Biddulph, @matt.runnalls ,
@michellemitchell.author, and @nathandubsywant. To @sharonwittauthor - thank you for creating this beautiful, brave space for families to come together and grow stronger.

And to the parents, carers, grandparents - you are extraordinary and it’s a privilege to share the space with you. 

Parenting is big work. Tender, gritty, beautiful, hard. It asks everything of us - our strength, our softness, our growth. We’re raising beautiful little people into beautiful big people, and at the same time, we’re growing ourselves. 

Sometimes that growth feels impatient and demanding - like we’re being wrenched forward before we’re ready, before our feet have found the ground. 

But that’s the nature of growth isn’t it. It rarely waits for permission. It asks only that we keep moving.

And that’s okay. 

There’s no rush. You have time. We have time.

In the meantime they will keep growing us, these little humans of ours. Quietly, daily, deeply. They will grow us in the most profound ways if we let them. And we must let them - for their sake, for our own, and for the ancestral threads that tie us to the generations that came before us, and those that will come because of us. We will grow for them and because of them.♥️
Their words might be messy, angry, sad. They might sound bigger than the issue, or as though they aren’t about the issue at all. 

The words are the warning lights on the dashboard. They’re the signal that something is wrong, but they won’t always tell us exactly what that ‘something’ is. Responding only to the words is like noticing the light without noticing the problem.

Our job isn’t to respond to their words, but to respond to the feelings and the need behind the words.

First though, we need to understand what the words are signalling. This won’t always be obvious and it certainly won’t always be easy. 

At first the signal might be blurry, or too bright, or too loud, or not obvious.

Unless we really understand the problem behind signal - the why behind words - we might inadvertently respond to what we think the problem is, not what the problem actually is. 

Words can be hard and messy, and when they are fuelled by big feelings that can jet from us with full force. It is this way for all of us. 

Talking helps catalyse the emotion, and (eventually) bring the problem into a clearer view.

But someone needs to listen to the talking. You won’t always be able to do this - you’re human too - but when you can, it will be one of the most powerful ways to love them through their storms.

If the words are disrespectful, try:

‘I want to hear you but I love you too much to let you think it’s okay to speak like that. Do you want to try it a different way?’ 

Expectations, with support. Leadership, with warmth. Then, let them talk.

Our job isn’t to fix them - they aren’t broken. Our job is to understand them so we can help them feel seen, safe, and supported through the big of it all. When we do this, we give them what they need to find their way through.♥️
Perth and Adeladie - can't wait to see you! 

The Resilient Kids Conference is coming to:

- Perth on Saturday 19 July
- Adelaide on Saturday 2 August

I love this conference. I love it so much. I love the people I'm speaking with. I love the people who come to listen. I love that there is a whole day dedicated to parents, carers, and the adults who are there in big and small ways for young people.

I’ll be joining the brilliant @michellemitchell.author, Steve Biddulph, and @matt.runnalls for a full day dedicated to supporting YOU with practical tools, powerful strategies, and life-changing insights on how we can show up even more for the kids and teens in our lives. 

Michelle Mitchell will leave you energised and inspired as she shares how one caring adult can change the entire trajectory of a young life. 

Steve Biddulph will offer powerful, perspective-shifting wisdom on how we can support young people (and ourselves) through anxiety.

Matt Runnalls will move and inspire you as he blends research, science, and his own lived experience to help us better support and strengthen our neurodivergent young people.

And then there's me. I’ll be talking about how we can support kids and teens (and ourselves) through big feelings, how to set and hold loving boundaries, what to do when behaviour gets big, and how to build connection and influence that really lasts, even through the tricky times.

We’ll be with you the whole day — cheering you on, sharing what works, and holding space for the important work you do.

Whether you live with kids, work with kids, or show up in any way, big and small, for a young person — this day is for you. 

Parents, carers, teachers, early educators, grandparents, aunts, uncles… you’re all part of a child’s village. This event is here for you, and so are we.❤️

See here for @resilientkidsconference tickets for more info https://michellemitchell.org/resilient-kids-conference

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