When Parenting Stops Being About Your Child

Greetings from the road! I have just arrived at the Leading Women Defined conference, a gathering of dynamic Black women that focuses on leadership, wellness, and social impact. I’ll be on a panel talking about Parenting and Tech–a hot topic these days. I’ll report back with the most useful insights.

In my last newsletter, I wrote about what it takes to stop ourselves in the heat of anger—to catch those phrases we heard growing up before they come out of our own mouths. The ones we promised we would never repeat.

Today, I want to focus a little more on this part of parenting.

Those instinctive reactions we wish we didn’t have reflect how hard it is to stay present and respond to the child in front of us. I’m reminded of a phrase I’ve used since the early days of Ground Control Parenting: Parent the child you have, not the one you were, or the one you wanted.

Sounds simple. But in practice, not parenting the child you were can be surprisingly tough.

When we find ourselves reacting quickly, or taking our child’s behavior personally, we are often slipping into an old pattern—parenting from our own past instead of responding to our child in the present.

So how do we begin to shift that?

One place to start is with a concept that Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart, a trusted Ground Control Parenting advisor, talks about in her book Love the Teen You Have: reparenting.

Reparenting is the work of learning how to meet needs that may not have been met for us as children. It’s about offering ourselves the safety, support, and understanding we may have been missing. It’s about validating our own feelings, acknowledging when something is hard, and giving ourselves permission to pause.

And why does this matter so much for our parenting?

Because when our own wounds are still open, our child’s behavior can feel bigger, more consequential than it is. A moody response, a moment of defiance, a shutdown—it can hit something in us that has nothing to do with them. As Dr. Lockhart puts it, “If you don’t heal yourself, you’re going to bleed all over your kids—and then wonder why you’re so frustrated.” Reparenting helps us interrupt that cycle.

Reparenting can take the form of small, quiet choices: taking a break instead of pushing through; saying “this is hard for me” instead of feeling inadequate; accepting that you need rest; asking for help; taking care of your own physical and emotional health.

These aren’t indulgences, or being “soft”. These are tools to help you become a stronger, more confident, more effective parent. Because when you are more grounded, more supported, more aware of your own triggers, you are better able to stay with your child in their experience—without making it about you.

That’s parenting the child you have.

It’s important to remember that so much of parenting is not just about what we do for our children, but what we are willing to do for ourselves.

If you want to know more about reparenting and other important parenting skills, I encourage you to spend some time with Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart’s Love the Teen You Have. It offers thoughtful, practical guidance for doing this work—so that you can come back, again and again, to being a steady, present guide for the child you have, right in front of you.

And be sure to follow us on IG @groundcontrolparenting, where we share insights from Dr. Lockhart and other experts and keep you up to date on the upcoming season.

Thanks, as always, to Paramount for their sponsorship and to the Seneca Women Podcast Network for their continued support. And a special thanks to our new philanthropic partner: DonorsChoose. DonorsChoose is a nonprofit organization that helps public school teachers get the classroom supplies they need by connecting them directly with donors who want to help. More on our wonderful partnership coming soon!

And of course, thanks to YOU for being a part of the Ground Control Parenting community.

Enjoy,