Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids Quotes

“Most parents think that if our child would just “behave,” we could maintain our composure as parents. The truth is that managing our own emotions and actions is what allows us to feel peaceful as parents. Ultimately we can’t control our children or the hand life deals them—but we can always control our own actions. Parenting isn’t about what our child does, but about how we respond.”
― Laura Markham, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting

“Human beings weren't designed to handle the amount of stress our modern life loads on us, which makes it difficult to hear our natural parenting instincts. It's almost as if we're forced to parent in our spare time, after meeting the demands of work, commuting and household responsibilities.”
― Laura Markham, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting

“The most important parenting skill: Manage yourself. Take care of yourself so you aren’t venting on your child. Intervene before your own feelings get out of hand. Keep your cup full. The more you care for yourself with compassion, the more love and compassion you’ll have for your child. Remember that your child will do every single thing you do, whether that’s yelling or making self-disparaging remarks about your body.”
― Laura Markham, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting

“What matters most: Stay connected and never withdraw your love, even for a moment. The deepest reason kids cooperate is that they love you and want to please you. Above all, safeguard your relationship with your child. That’s your only leverage to have any influence on your child. It’s what your child needs most. And that closeness is what makes all the sacrifices of parenting worth it.”
― Laura Markham, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting

“Why is bedtime so hard for many families? Because the needs of parents and children clash. To parents, bedtime is the time they finally get to separate from their children and have a little time to themselves. To children, bedtime is the time they’re forced to separate from their parents and lie in the dark by themselves. On top of that, children are exhausted and wound up, and parents are exhausted and fed up. No wonder it’s the single most challenging time in most families.”
― Laura Markham, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting

“Any time your child pushes your buttons, he’s showing you an unresolved issue from your own childhood.”
― Laura Markham, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting

“As the family therapist Virginia Satir famously said, “We need four hugs a day for survival. We need eight hugs a day for maintenance. We need twelve hugs a day for growth.” Hug your child first thing every morning, every time you say good-bye or hello, and as often as you can in between.”
― Laura Markham, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting

“you don’t raise your voice? When kids are scared, they go into fight-or-flight. The learning centers of the brain shut down. Your child can’t learn when you yell. It’s always more effective to intervene calmly and compassionately. Besides, when you yell, you lose credibility with your child. Kids become less open to your influence.”
― Laura Markham, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting

“Mindfulness is the opposite of “losing” your temper. Don’t get me wrong—mindfulness doesn’t mean you don’t feel anger. Being mindful means that you pay attention to what you’re feeling, but don’t act on it. Anger is part of all relationships. Acting on it mindlessly, with words or actions, is what compromises our parenting.”
― Laura Markham, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting

“The constructive way to handle anger is to limit our expression of it, and when we calm down, to use it diagnostically: what is so wrong in our life that we feel furious, and what do we need to do to change the situation?”
― Laura Markham, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting

“Because no matter how bad your child’s behavior, it’s a cry for help. Sometimes the behavior requires a firm limit, but it never requires us to be mean. And you can’t help your child while you’re shouting.”
― Laura Markham, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting

“Despite the popular idea that we need to “express” our anger so that it doesn’t eat away at us, research shows that expressing anger while we are angry actually makes us more angry. This”
― Laura Markham, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting

“Your goal in disciplining your child is actually to help him develop self-discipline, meaning to assume responsibility for his actions, including making amends and avoiding a repeat, whether the authority figure is present or not.”
― Laura Markham, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting

“before you can correct, you have to connect. Discipline will just make him feel less safe. Play, on the other hand, creates a sense of safety and releases the connection hormone, oxytocin.”
― Laura Markham, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting

“What raises great kids is coaching them—to handle their emotions, manage their behavior, and develop mastery—rather than controlling for immediate compliance.”
― Laura Markham, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting

“The core components of high EQ are the following: The ability to self-soothe. The key to managing emotion is to allow, acknowledge, and tolerate our intense emotions so that they evaporate, without getting stuck in them or taking actions we’ll later regret. Self-soothing is what enables us to manage our anxiety and upsets, which in turn allows us to work through emotionally charged issues in a constructive way. Emotional self-awareness and acceptance. If we don’t understand the emotions washing over us, they scare us, and we can’t tolerate them. We repress our hurt, fear, or disappointment. Those emotions, no longer regulated by our conscious mind, have a way of popping out unmodulated, as when a preschooler socks his sister or we (as adults) lose our tempers or eat a pint of ice cream. By contrast, children raised in a home in which there are limits on behavior but not on feelings grow up understanding that all emotions are acceptable, a part of being human. That understanding gives them more control over their emotions. Impulse control. Emotional intelligence liberates us from knee-jerk emotional reactions. A child (or adult) with high EQ will act rather than react and problem-solve rather than blame. It doesn’t mean you never get angry or anxious, only that you don’t fly off the handle. As a result, our lives and relationships work better. Empathy. Empathy is the ability to see and feel something from the other’s point of view. When you’re adept at understanding the mental and emotional states of other people, you resolve differences constructively and connect deeply with others. Naturally, empathy makes us better communicators.”
― Laura Markham, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting

“When you smile at a two-month-old, it takes her some time to smile back at you. That dance is part of what develops the neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex, the brain center for emotional intelligence. But when a daycare worker smiles at a baby, she can’t wait around for the baby to smile back—she has two or three other babies to tend to. Over and over throughout her day, the baby may miss the attunement she needs. By contrast, a baby in one-to-one care with a responsive caregiver may have her needs met almost as well as by a parent. By the toddler years, a child whose needs have been responsively met will be better prepared for group care. Parents should know, however, that two-year-olds who spend the most time in childcare tend to have the most behavior problems.5 This is understandable, since toddlers who are under stress—and separation from the parent is a stressor for a young child—tend to act out more.”
― Laura Markham, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting

“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.”
― Laura Markham, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting

“The most useful mantra: Don’t take it personally. Whatever your child does, it will be a lot easier for you to respond peacefully if you notice when you start getting triggered. This isn’t about you; it’s about your child, who’s an immature human doing his best to learn and grow, with your support. Cultivate a sense of humor. This will also help you avoid power struggles. No one wins a power struggle. Don’t insist on being right; help them save face. When your buttons get pushed, use it as an opportunity to excavate that button so it isn’t controlling you.”
― Laura Markham, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting

“Leaving our baby to cry also changes us as parents. We have to turn off our natural empathy for our baby, the same empathy that is so essential to helping our child develop emotional intelligence.”
― Laura Markham, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting

“research shows that expressing anger while we are angry actually makes us more angry. This”
― Laura Markham, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting

“So we punish because we’ve been taught that’s how to stop bad behavior, and we see that it does work instantly in the short term. But we also punish to discharge our own upsetting feelings. In fact, I would argue that most of the time we punish our children not to regulate their behavior—since it doesn’t work unless we keep escalating—but to regulate our own emotions. We punish our child instead of taking responsibility for our own anger and restoring ourselves to a state of calm. Punishing our child discharges our own frustration and worry, and makes us feel better.”
― Laura Markham, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting

“Soothing is essential to all infants, whose brains develop the capacity to regulate negative emotion directly from the experience of being soothed. Most, although not all, infants insist on being held and carried much of the time, which helps them regulate themselves physiologically.”
― Laura Markham, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting

“Parenting isn’t about what our child does, but about how we respond.”
― Laura Markham, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting

“Kids raised from birth on to feel safe expressing their emotions, who feel their parents are on their side, aren’t perfect. They’re easier to parent, though, because they’re better at managing their emotions, and therefore their behavior. They’re more willing to accept our guidance.”
― Laura Markham, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting

“A 2012 study reviewed the previous two decades of research and confirmed Gershoff’s findings, reporting that kids who are spanked have less gray matter in their brains and are more likely to exhibit depression, anxiety, drug use, and aggression.9 Spanking has repeatedly been shown to lower intelligence, while it increases tantrums, defiance, bullying, sibling violence, adult mental health problems, and later spousal abuse. No studies show that kids who are spanked are better behaved or grow up to be equally healthy emotionally.”
― Laura Markham, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting

“It’s very hard for us to believe that people who loved us would intentionally hurt us, so we feel the need to excuse their behavior. But repressing that pain just makes us more likely to hit our own children. If you were willing to reach deep inside and really feel again the hurt you felt when you were physically punished as a child, you would never consider inflicting that pain on your own child. And the pain does not end in childhood, even if we repress and deny it. The scientific consensus of hundreds of studies shows that corporal punishment during childhood is associated with negative behaviors in adults, even when the adult says that the spanking did not affect them badly. Even a few instances of being hit as a child are associated with more depressive symptoms as an adult. While most of us who were spanked “turned out okay,” it is clear that not being spanked would have helped us turn out to be healthier. I suspect that one contributing factor to the epidemic of anxiety and depression among adults in our culture is that so many of us grew up with parents who hurt us.”
― Laura Markham, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting

“Sometimes our child’s strong emotions are triggered by essential needs that go unmet, needs the child can’t verbalize. Most parents focus on physical needs like sleep, food, and cleanliness. But often we forget their deeper needs:”
― Laura Markham, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting

“Yelling escalates a difficult situation, turning it from a squall into a storm. And really, how can you expect your child to learn to control his own emotions if you don’t control yours?”
― Laura Markham, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting

“When children feel powerless to convince us that their needs are legitimate, they whine, turn everything into a power struggle or become apathetic or defiant. We usually call this bad behaviour, but we could also think of it as a childish, dysfunctional strategy to meet the child’s legitimate needs.”
― Laura Markham, Calm Parents, Happy Kids: The Secrets of Stress-free Parenting