Calm Parents, Happy Kids: The Secrets of Stress-free Parenting

by Laura Markham

One generation full of deeply loving parents would change the brain of the next generation, and with that, the world. – CHARLES RAISON

‘David, please remember … we’re raising children, not flowers!’

Parenting isn’t about what our child does, but about how we respond.

Parenting effectively depends above all on your connection to your child. Period.

Children need to feel deeply connected to their parents or they don’t feel entirely safe, and their brains don’t work well to regulate their emotions and follow parental guidance.

Three Big Ideas: Regulating Yourself; Fostering Connection; and Coaching, Not Controlling.

Calm parents have actually found a way to put the joy back into parenting.

When we regulate our own emotions, our children learn to regulate their emotions.

Mindfulness: Allowing an emotion to take hold and pass without acting on it. – Benedict Carey1

There’s a good reason why the airlines tell us to put on our own oxygen masks first. Kids can’t reach those masks or be relied on to use them properly. If we lose function, our kids can’t save us or themselves. So even if we would sacrifice ourselves to save our kids, it’s our responsibility to put on our own masks first.

That’s why your first responsibility in parenting is being mindful of your own inner state.

In the absence of reflection, history often repeats itself … Research has clearly demonstrated that our children’s attachment to us will be influenced by what happened to us when we were young if we do not come to process and understand those experiences. – Dan Siegel

Whenever we get ‘triggered’, we’ve stumbled on something that needs healing. Seriously. Any time your child pushes your buttons, he’s showing you an unresolved issue from your own childhood.

Our children don’t need perfection from us. What they need is a parent who embraces growth, makes amends and opens her heart when it wants to harden.

‘Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.’

Every crisis is an opportunity to get closer if you’re willing to see things from both sides with an open heart.

You don’t shout at a flower that isn’t thriving; you water it.

All misbehaviour comes from basic needs that aren’t met. Meet their needs for sleep, nutrition, chill-out time, cuddling, connection, fun, mastery, and safety. Let kids know in advance the behaviour you expect. Give them ‘scaffolding’ – teaching, little by little – so they can manage what’s expected of them. Children want to be successful. (If they don’t, that’s a relationship problem, not a behaviour problem.)

Every child is born wanting to connect deeply with other humans and to enjoy mastering the hurdles life presents. That’s what makes humans happy.

Like other humans, children also need to feel their emotions before those emotions will dissipate and vanish.

Authoritative. The final parenting style is the one that Baumrind’s research showed raises the best-adjusted kids. Her authoritative – as opposed to authoritarian – parents offer their children lots of love and support, like the permissive parents. But they also hold high expectations, like the authoritarian parents. Age-appropriate expectations, of course – they aren’t expecting a three-year-old to clean her room by herself. But they may well be working with that three-year-old to help her clean up, over and over and over, so that by six she really can clean her room herself. These parents are involved – even demanding. They expect family dinners, lots of discussion straight through secondary school, good grades, responsible behaviour. But they also offer their children complete support to learn how to achieve these expectations. Importantly, these parents aren’t controlling like the authoritarian parents. They listen to the child’s side of things, they make compromises and they cede control where possible. Their kids, not surprisingly, stay close to them – they often describe one of their parents as the person they would most trust to talk to about a problem. These kids usually do well in school and they’re also the ones that teachers describe as responsible and well liked, simply nice kids who are a pleasure to have around.

Because the term authoritative is so close to authoritarian and often confuses parents, I prefer to call this style empathy with limits. It’s essential to note that this is not just a matter of finding a happy medium between strict and permissive. Actually, the brilliance of Baumrind’s vision was that she integrated two continuums: demandingness and responsiveness. Stay with me here, because you’re about to discover the answer to many of your parenting dilemmas. Here’s how these two continuums – demandingness and responsiveness – create our four parenting styles. As you can see on the next page, permissive parents are low on demandingness, but high on responsiveness. Authoritarian parents are the opposite: high on demandingness, but low on responsiveness. Neglectful parents are low on both. And (authoritative) parents who use empathy with limits – no surprise! – are high on both responsiveness and demandingness.

Imagine your husband or wife losing their temper and screaming at you. Now imagine them three times as big as you, towering over you. Imagine that you depend on that person completely for your food, shelter, safety, protection. Imagine they are your primary source of love and self-confidence and information about the world, that you have nowhere else to turn. Now take those feelings and magnify them by a factor of a thousand. That’s something like what happens inside your child when you lose your temper with her.