My Parenting Style, Sponsored By Audible*

*Disclaimer: This post is absolutely not sponsored by Audible. I wish.

This is a post about parenting, but its exact nature has eluded me for a while. Is it an advice piece? Satire? A cry for help?

Honestly? It’s kind of all of the above.

When I first started writing this post, roughly 17 years ago (or 4?), as a parent to one toddler, I wanted to capture some of the great advice I’d learned from reading way too many and yet never enough parenting books. (I’ll include a reading list at the end.) And when I say “read,” I mean I listened to them on Audible on the way to or from daycare. I just did some quick math, and I spend about 8,000 or more minutes driving to and from daycare and school annually, so if you have any additional book recommendations, either about parenting or a small-town murder, hit me up. That said, I’m glad I didn’t post at that time. I’m pretty sure no less than three of you would have flown to my house in the middle of the pandemic just to slap me in the face. There is no one smugger and more self-assured than a new parent to one (1) child under age two (2) who has read a bunch of West Coast parenting books. Fortunately, my negligence saved you a flight, an unnecessary COVID exposure, and potentially a felony arrest. You’re welcome.

When I became pregnant with my second child and yet was legally required to continue parenting the first one, who was now older and objectively worse, I wanted to write about parenting from the perspective of a rabid werewolf who could not decide whether to eat her young or protect them at all costs. I felt so angry, exhausted, and awful most of the time. At that point, the only reason for me to write about parenting was because I was completely sucking at it, despite the too many and never enough books I’d listened to, some of which I’d at that point listened to twice. I wanted to write myself out of those bad feelings, or at least be able to face my rabid werewolf parenting style with more self-compassion. (Side note: I knooooow I need to watch Nightbitch, which I assume was filmed with cameras hidden throughout my house.)

When I had a small baby and a toddler to parent (simultaneously???), I wanted to write about parenting entirely as a parody because who are we kidding, the children are in charge here, no one is getting out of here alive, and everyone is laughing in the face of your “strategies.”

Now the kids are three and 5.75, and I have revised this article 7 times in 4 years yet never finished it because writing while parenting is very easy. And I just. want. to finish. this. Will it be half-baked and nonsensical at this point? Maybe. Will this be the first or last time I post something half-baked and nonsensical on Beyonce’s internet? Hopefully not.

But yes, I would like to capture some parenting wisdom here, mostly to refresh my memory more quickly in the future so I won’t have to spend so many hours re-listening to parenting books on Audible and can devote myself entirely to books about fairies and murder, as God intended. And yes, I’d like to talk about anger, because it’s my near-constant companion. And yes, I’d like to make fun of myself and all parents and definitely children because they are, clearly, more of a practical joke than a real thing nature intended.  

How Did We Get Here?

Early in 2021, when my son turned 19 months old, I posted on Facebook about the shift in our relationship where I realized I was not only responsible for keeping him alive, but also setting him up for a “rich and healthy emotional life.” They say that the infancy period ends around age one, and then toddlerhood begins, with a set of totally different – less biological, more psychological – challenges. Like many parents, I’ve found pretty much every stage of parenting to be challenging in some way, at least the first time around. But around 15 months or so, the nature of the challenges rapidly shifted as my son’s personality, preferences, strong will, and hand-on-hand combat skills began to take shape.

Thank you to everyone who sent readings and other resources when I wrote that Facebook post asking for tips. They have been invaluable. Rabid werewolf that I am, I devoured them all. I didn’t realize at the time how triggering toddler behavior would get, and how ill equipped I was to deal with it. I also didn’t know that I would become pregnant a few months after that post, have an EVEN WORSE PREGNANCY than the first hard pregnancy (wtf how), and patience would become a foreign word that I once knew the meaning of but now couldn’t recall for the life of me. Pat-i-ence… Hmm. Does it mean “excuse me?” “Phone booth?” “Left-handed?”

The doctrines I’ve drawn from when cobbling together my parenting style have a lot in common. Be it Montessori, Respectful Parenting, Gentle Parenting, RIE (Resources for Infant Educarers), Positive Discipline, whatever Dr. Becky Kennedy’s thing is called, Bluey, the French – there are so many shared themes between them that I have to conclude that either a) they have been quietly plagiarizing each other since the 1900s, or b) they are onto something. Probably both. In addition to books, I’ve gotten amazing insight from Instagram and Youtube, so I’ll throw some page links at the end also. I think I must not be on the correct Parenting Tiktok because my FYP is mostly just millennial midlife crises.

My resources have been a security blanket to me, especially after my son turned 3 and assumed his Demon Form, and when my patience has been lower than usual due to illness, lack of sleep, pregnancy, work stress, and so on. That being said, I am the eldest of millennials, with Boomer parents and Gen X siblings, and sometimes it’s just really hard to create new habits and ways of being. At this point, I’ve morphed these resources and all the parenting styles together into something that works for me, right now and probably not a year from now, with modifications to account for my temperament, my kids’ temperament, and chaos.

A few potential names for my current parenting style:

Some people have told me: “You don’t need all these books, just trust your instincts!” People are very generous. My therapist once told me that your instincts are just habits or ways of being that are based on your upbringing and experiences. Others say instincts are “ancestral memories that come from learning.” Others simply say they are genetically determined. What I know is that, when I’m mad, like DEFCON 1 mad, my instinct is to throw a plate against the wall. My instincts are trash. My instincts have a terrible sense of direction and I won’t be following them anywhere.

When I first drafted this, I started with all the negative stuff that I was trying to strategize away: anger, yelling, tantrums, etc. Right, what a bummed-out way to start a parenting blog. But also, of course. It’s the hardest stuff, and the most top of my mind. I’m going to spend some time on that stuff, but as I wrote it, I realized it made me sound like I hated parenting when the truth is actually the opposite. I love this incredible, stressful, rewarding, and insane job – and my kids – so much. Please remember that as I complain about them relentlessly.

Also know that I’m not writing this blog because I have figured anything out. I am still truly so, so lost. I’m writing this because I’m deep in the muck of parenting, trying to shovel a way forward for myself. Maybe we can find it together.

So here is my current parenting style, unfortunately not actually sponsored by Audible.

Freedom Within Limits

Montessori and RIE call them limits. Dr. Becky calls them boundaries. The parenting site Big Little Feelings calls them bumpers. (K…) The French call it the “cadre” (or frame). A rose by any other name is still a super clear statement of what your kid is not allowed to do.

When I talk about my parenting inspo, I don’t use the term gentle parenting because it’s too easily confused with permissiveness or an anything-goes mentality, even if that’s not the case. The truth is, it’s all about the boundaries, baby.

According to Janet Lansbury in No Bad Kids, “a child does not feel free unless boundaries are clearly established.” In other words, if everything goes, they’re actually miserable. Well, maybe in an existential way. Outwardly I think they generally look like they’re living their best life. But I’ll take your word for it, Janet.

I like Lansbury’s suggestion of setting limits with the tone of a calm, confident CEO – particularly since this is the closest I’ll ever get to the C suite.

The key phrases to learn when setting boundaries are:

“I won’t let you do that.”

“I can’t let you do that.”

“We’ll try again later.”

Another pro tip, definitely learned from personal experience, is that you can’t just repeatedly tell your 2-year-old “I won’t let you push your cousin” from across the room while you drink your Starbucks on the couch and expect them to get it. You have to be pretty close by and actively (but gently, or whatever) stop them from pushing their cousin, even though all you want to do is sit on the couch and drink your Starbucks while the children work it out themselves, cockfight style.

When you have to tell your child not to do something, I also love Big Little Feelings’ suggestion of highlighting what they can do. Example: You can’t pick up your baby sister and drag her across the room. You CAN pick up all these GD ball pit balls. Or, you know, something that actually appeals to them.

Limits are tricky, of course. When my son was younger, I tried to think really hard about whether setting a limit was truly necessary, or if I could just chill out and let him be more free in that instance. Now, I am much crankier and set way more limits, probably too many, and may need to start doing a semi-annual limit audit. It’s trial and error, and that’s okay.

Now, mind you, when I try to calmly but firmly set a boundary with my younger daughter — for example, “I won’t let you slap me in the face” — she cries and essentially says I’m oppressing her. Babies of the family are built different, you guys. Signed, a baby of the family.

Respectful Communication

If you overhear any parent in a store or restaurant with a child in tow, namely me, you’ll realize that the way we talk to children is sometimes downright disrespectful. The number of times I’ve felt uncomfortable listening to the way someone talks to their kid in public because it’s both super rude AND something I said to my child 45 minutes ago is not zero.

Respectful communication involves a lot, but of the things I’ve learned, the most mind-blowing was just to not dismiss your child’s feelings. Mind-blowing because it is so the knee-jerk, even instinctual response. How many times before my West Coast parenting book indoctrination did I say some version of “you’re okay,” “you’re fine,” “that wasn’t so bad,” when my kid hurt themself, however minor it looked to me, and cried? Now I wonder, why do we do that? Maybe because our child’s discomfort is so uncomfortable to us that we want it to go away so much that we dismiss it immediately. I don’t know, I’m not a psychologist. I’m just an unqualified person who listened to a bunch of books on Audible, telling you to stop doing that. It takes just as long to say, “Oh man, looks like you hurt yourself, are you okay?” And if you want to fly to my house and slap me in the face over this, that’s fine; I’ll go ahead and take out the restraining order now.

While not immediately dismissing your kids’ feelings was an easy fix for me, other elements of respectful communication are much harder. As mentioned, I regress a lot. Why? Um, because kids are super annoying and I’m annoyed, like, all the time. They go from formulating their cute and rudimentary first sentences (I…have…ice!) to whining in way too short a time frame. Dear Nature, can’t we enjoy their little voices a little longer before they are weaponized against us? No? Okay, thank you for your time.   

I wish I had a better tip for tricking yourself into speaking to your child respectfully, even when they’re being annoying, even when they’re refusing to get in the car when you’re in a rush, even when they’re picking up every possible snack off the grocery store shelf and asking for it. I’ll tell you what the books say. Take deep breaths. If you need to go somewhere and calm yourself, try to do that. Chant some mantras. Eat a Snickers. No, maybe that was from something else.

The thing that’s worked best for me, assuming I’m not already too grumpy to implement it, is… <drumroll>

Playfulness, The Cure For What Ails Ya

Apparently 80% of good parenting is turning everyday activities into a bit. Bonus ratings if you get your partner and even older children involved. Maybe it’s because of their age, but when our kids aren’t cooperating, the most effective remedy is to make a game or joke out of it.

For example, if they don’t want to get dressed, or undressed: pretend you, a moron, don’t even know how clothes work. Do pants go on your nose? Pull-ups on your head? This game KILLS. I could see this getting very old once they’re 8 or 9, but by then hopefully regular bribery will work just fine.

When my son was smaller, Laura Markham’s game out of Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids where you ask “Oh no, are you all out of hugs?” when they’re out of sorts, was a go to. The gist is you keep giving them giant hugs as you gauge their hug level meter on their body. It would take, like, 12 hugs to fill my son’s hug tank sometimes. In this economy?? But it was so cute. We don’t play the game as much anymore, but even at almost 6, I can still fall back on this sometimes.

Playfulness as parenting strategy is part of what Markham and Dr. Becky refer to as “connecting before correcting.” It also just helps me calm myself down and remind myself that parenting is fun sometimes. And also that kids are very generous audiences for your amateur improv comedy routines.

Offering Choices, The Annoying And Ever-present Advice That Only Sometimes Works

Have you tried offering choices?

Ugh, yes Martha, and she threw both choices directly on the ground.

I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that, if you’re a parent, you are as annoyed as I am by the advice to offer your child choices. Why is this advice so annoying? Because of how often it’s recommended compared to how often it appears to help. Maybe some kids calm right down when offered a choice, but not mine. Still, I will include this advice in here, just as I’ll continue to offer my children roughly 8,000 choice points a day, like the world’s most boring RPG. Because it does help, sometimes.  And because I’m starting to think if we don’t keep repeating this advice in every parenting article, book, or forum, from generation to generation, we’ll create a space-time paradox and everyone wakes up as cats.

Okay so that was fun, and way faster and also less useful than reading any of the books I’ve mentioned. But now, on to the tough stuff… which probably is really why I wrote this whole long thing.

Anger

As Markham explains in Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids, emotions provide useful information, “like indicator lights on a dashboard.” Anger is normal. Anger is information. And that information is: your kid is PLAYING you. 

No no, you say, remember all those books you read? They explicitly say your child is not developmentally capable of playing you.

I don’t care, people. They are. They just are.

When your kid looks you dead in the eye and throws a potty full of pee on the kitchen floor? When they take deadly aim and throw the woodiest wooden toy they can find at their sibling’s eyeball, or yours, then laugh? I’m pretty sure you got played.

Okay, maybe instead I should just say they’re triggering you. Is that better, West Coast Parenting Books and my therapist??

I have SUCH good kids. They are smart, funny, cute, and wild. I want to cry thinking of how lucky I am. But they remain 3 and 5. As a congenitally angry person, I knew anger would be my biggest struggle in parenthood, aside from wanting to take a nap pretty much constantly. I wish I could be peaceful. I truly do. I even come across as peaceful and chill to others sometimes. Often when I tell people I struggle with anger management issues, they don’t believe me, and I find that a) flattering and b) a sign that I have a near sociopathic ability to hide my true self from others.

My peacefulness is subterfuge. It is more than a dozen parenting books and years of therapy screaming at me to fight the urge to throw the plate against the wall. 7 times out of 10, I don’t throw the plate (or whatever this is a metaphor for). I feel good about this. But the 3 times out of 10 I do throw the plate (aka act out my anger in some other completely unacceptable way), I feel like hotttt garbage. Like I’ve not made any progress at all. Like maybe having two children was a huge mistake, oops, oh well, too late now.

The goal is not to never be angry. The goal is not to act in anger. Not throwing the plate goes without saying. But not yelling? Whew, that’s a tough one. Let’s discuss.

Yelling And Adult Tantrums

At some point in Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids, I think Markham says something like “screaming at your children is a tantrum,” and I felt that in my entire soul. She read me like a nutrition label. She read me my rights. She read me exactly as many books as she’d promised at bedtime, no more and no less.

She goes on to explain that when you’re in an angry state, it makes it hard to make good choices. True for kids and adults alike. In this same book/Bible, Markham talks about the importance of “regulating ourselves” as parents.

“Parenting isn’t about what our child does, but about how we respond,” she writes. “In fact, most of what we call parenting doesn’t take place between a parent and child but within the parent.”

If you want to parent well, you have to work on yourself too. Your child will ask you to grow. Ugh, this book, y’all. I did not become a parent to heal myself, I became a parent because I was BORED.

But the self-work that this income-less job is demanding of me is no less than transformational. Yes, I’ve upped my therapy. I’ve tried eMDR. I’ve sympathized with my parents and siblings more even while trying to remember all the cool ways my childhood has traumatized me. I’ve read more self-help books than I ever frankly wanted to. I’ve given up drinking (mostly because I’m an older mom and need to live forever). I took the drugs and the drugs are working.  

I still sometimes throw the plate. I still have a lot of work to do. But I’m growing, and I know my kids see that.

And if I don’t immediately make amends, they call me out on it.

Actually, let’s say more about that.

Making Amends

Apologizing. Ew. I’ll be honest: when I apologize to my kids for yelling or getting mad, I feel a little like a Lifetime movie mom with an alcohol problem who’s trying to make things right after a bender. Like something about the apology makes me feel even more problematic, when I’m really just a normal person who loses her temper sometimes/too much. I guess that’s the point of the apology — to not accept yelling at a small child as normal. To feel bad enough to change.

So, yes, I’ve now normalized this to the point where if I’m still stewing after getting mad and didn’t apologize yet, my kids will demand it of me. And that actually feels amazing.

In Conclusion, May I Please Remind You, It Does Not Say RSVP on the Statue of Liberty

As Alfie Kohn, author of Unconditional Parenting and other stuff, says, “raising kids is not for wimps.”

I would argue that raising kids is not for almost anyone. A mom friend recently called it “all joy and no fun,” quoting the title of the book by Jennifer Senior. Have you ever noticed how unappealing parents make parenting sound? It’s not an accident. This is one of those gigs that you mainly enjoy when you’re off the clock and in hindsight. I guess my main goals, then, are to laugh more, yell less, and enjoy parenting in the moment a little more. And to stop throwing my back out on a weekly basis.

I fall short of these goals often. But this is my long-term plan, not just to get me through the tricky toddler years, but forever.

Sometimes I worry, or perhaps “prophesize” is a better word, that each stage that feels SO HARD right now will seem laughably easy 6 months to a year from now, and I will constantly be wondering, for the rest of my parenting life, what past me was complaining so much about. Imagine being mindful enough to know all that, and in the knowing, be able to handle the present moment more easily? And I will continue to only imagine it, because I can’t even remember to use my meditation app two days in a row.

I would also be remiss to pretend that books and social media alone are getting me through these tough but rewarding years of early parenting. I am so blessed to have incredible support groups of friends who also happen to be parents. Some I met just before having kids. Some I met through work, daycare, or school. Some I met when I was in freaking middle school. I love you all, and think you are all killing it, for the record.

Readers, if you’ve made it this far, thank you! I hope this rant/advice piece/cry for help has made you feel even the tiniest bit seen, but never shamed. If anything here strikes a chord with you, I recommend reading (or listening to) at least one or two of these books in their entirety. This post isn’t even the cliffs notes version of any of the resources I rely on. But I hope it’ll be a bit of a resource for myself to look back on as I try to vaguely remember wtf I’m doing and why.

To end with another quote from Dr. Becky, our spiritual guide and savior, “This feels hard because it is hard, not because I’m doing something wrong.”

Good luck out there, parents. This ish is not for wimps.

Reading List

• Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting by Laura Markham
• Good Inside: A Practical Guide to Resilient Parenting Prioritizing Connection over Correction by Becky Kennedy
• No Bad Kids: Toddler Discipline Without Shame by Janet Lansbury
• The Montessori Toddler: A Parent’s Guide to Raising A Curious and Responsible Human Being by Simone Davies
• The Whole-Brain Child: Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child’s Developing Mind by Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson
• Bringing Up Bebe: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting by Pamela Druckerman
• Positive Discipline: The First Three Years by Jane Nelsen, Cheryl Erwin, and Roslyn Ann Duffy
• How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish
• Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason by Alfie Kohn
• The Montessori Baby: A Parent’s Guide to Nurturing Your Baby with Love, Respect, and Understanding by Simone Davies and Junnifa Uzodike
• Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish
• Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier, and More Secure Kids by Kim John Payne and Lisa M. Ross
• 1-2-3 Magic: The New 3-Step Discipline for Calm, Effective, and Happy Parenting by Thomas W. Phelan (NB: I don’t use this method anymore, but it got me through a little tough spot until I could try something else! I don’t think he talks about kids respectfully at allllll LOL)
• All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood by Jennifer Senior (I haven’t read or listened to this one yet, but it’s next on my list, after a murder mystery or two)
• How Not to Hate Your Husband After Kids by Jancee Dunn (also recently recommended to me, also in my TBR queue)

Social Media Accounts (sorry Gen Z, it’s all Instagram)

• Busy Toddler
• Dr. Becky at Good Inside
• The Mom Psychologist
• Big Little Feelings
• The Mellow Mama
• Kids Eat in Color
• Prof. Emily Oster
• Yummy Toddler Food (this is about food but it’s also about parenting and body autonomy in a way. I also only half follow her advice, so… yeah.)
• Kallie Branciforte