We Know Too Much About Child Development to Parent the Way We Thought We Would

There is a very weird thing that happens when you know too much about child development: you can’t un-know it.

You can’t watch your kid completely lose their shit because you cut their waffle instead of leaving it whole and just see a kid being ridiculous. You can’t hear someone say, “He’s just doing it for attention,” without thinking, Well... yes. And why is needing attention a bad thing? You can’t watch parents with “tough love” aka break their kids’ spirits (on purpose, to teach them a lesson) and not walk away knowing exactly how many years of therapy that child will work on undoing their inner voice/depression/anxiety. But most of all, you definitely cannot parent the way you thought you were going to parent before you had kids.

Which is HUMBLING, because before I had kids? Guys. I was going to be SO FUCKING GOOD AT THIS.

My kids were going to eat the food I made. They were going to sleep in their own beds. They were not going to be the kids screaming in a restaurant. We were NOT the Disneyland kinda family, we were the simple, easy, pack up and fly to Thailand family, a baby easily nestled on my breast as we fly 28 hours across the world for culture. Y’all, my children would not have ipads!!!!

HAHAHAHAHAHA.

And listen, some of this is just the universal experience of having children and realizing every opinion you ever had about parenting before becoming a parent should have come with a legally required disclaimer. But some of it is different.

Because between Deena’s clinical training, the experts we’ve worked with, the research we’ve read, the courses we’ve built, and the millions of families we’ve spent the last six years talking to, we now know a LOT about what is actually happening inside a child’s developing brain and we know WAY too much about the profound outcomes associated with the way in which we parent (or don’t parent). And it has changed us. Not just how we teach parenting, but how we actually parent our own kids when nobody is watching.

Here’s the part I’ve been thinking about lately: I think a lot of us were handed the wrong scoreboard. We grew up believing you could tell who the “good parents” were by looking at their kids. The kid says please and thank you. The kid doesn’t talk back. The kid doesn’t make a scene. The kid listens the first time. They’re polite to adults. They sit nicely at the restaurant. They get in the family photo without ruining it for everyone.

And when our own kids don’t do those things? Holy shit, it can feel personal. Suddenly we’re not just dealing with a kid who won’t put on their fucking shoes. We’re standing in our kitchen at 7:42 in the morning thinking, Why can’t my kid just LISTEN? Am I being too permissive? Do I need to be stricter? Am I raising an asshole? Is everyone else doing this better than me?

Underneath all of those questions is usually one much scarier one: Am I doing this right? We feel that too. Of course we do. Knowing about child development does not magically make you immune to wanting your kid to JUST GET IN THE FUCKING CAR. We lose our patience. We yell. We say something and immediately think, Cool, that will keep me awake at night for the next 3 days to twenty four years. We have nights where we are absolutely counting the minutes until bedtime. Knowing better doesn’t mean we execute perfectly.

But knowing better has changed what we’re aiming for. And THAT might be the biggest difference. The more we have learned about children, the less interested we’ve become in raising kids who make us look like good parents. We’re much more interested in raising kids who feel safe being fully themselves.

We want kids who can hear their own internal voice even when everyone around them is saying something different. Kids who know that love doesn’t disappear when they disappoint someone. Kids who can say, “I don’t like that.” “I changed my mind.” “I need help.” “That doesn’t feel right to me.” “No.” And here’s where parenting gets really fucking uncomfortable: you cannot raise a child who knows how to say no to the world while teaching them that saying no to you makes them bad.

You cannot tell your daughter you want her to trust her gut at 19 and spend her childhood teaching her that the adults in the room always know better than she does. You cannot hope your son leaves the relationship that doesn’t feel right at 25 while spending eighteen years teaching him that quitting means failure. You cannot raise a kid who trusts themselves if every time they disagree with you, the goal is to shut it down. WHEW.

This is the part nobody really warns you about. So we thought we’d do something we’ve never really done before and take you all the way inside our own homes. Like actually, raw, real, no fluff, no scripts, no tips, no tricks. No research backed instagram strategies today. Today, we’re lifting the veil on what we actually do. Because there are some pretty traditional parenting rules we regularly break. And it just might give you permission to do the same.

Here’s what I want this post to do for you:

• Completely change the way you think about what it means to be a “good parent.” I genuinely think there are things you’re stressing about right now that you could stop stressing about TODAY.

• Make you feel 100x more confident in the moments when you have no fucking clue if you’re doing the right thing. Because after years of studying child development, there is one question we come back to again and again, and once you start using it, so many parenting decisions become clearer.

• Help you stop fighting battles you were never supposed to be fighting in the first place. There are things we’ve been taught we have to do as parents that we simply don’t do in our own homes anymore.

• Change the way you see some of your child’s most difficult behavior. The thing you’re desperately trying to get rid of right now might actually be connected to a quality you’re going to desperately want them to have later.

• Give you permission to parent the actual kid in front of you instead of the imaginary “good kid” we’ve all been told we’re supposed to raise. And I cannot overstate how much lighter parenting gets when you make that shift.

I genuinely think you’re going to finish this and look at at least ONE thing happening in your house completely differently.

Maybe it’s the battle you stop fighting tonight. Maybe it’s something you’ve been worried you’re doing “wrong” that you finally let go of. Or maybe you look at your kid, the exact same kid who was driving you absolutely fucking insane ten minutes ago, and suddenly understand what you’re actually trying to protect in them.

Okay. Come inside our houses. Here’s what we actually do:

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