Have you ever felt like you’re in a never-ending battle trying to get your kids to put down their screens or say no to junk food? You know it isn’t great for them, but when you try to set some limits, all hell breaks loose! And then, not only are you dealing with a full-blown meltdown, but you’re also left feeling like a crappy parent and secretly wondering if your kids are out to get you. Trust me, if you’ve been there, you’re definitely not the only one!

The good news is that establishing and enforcing boundaries can help you navigate these challenges and restore harmony in your household. When you implement boundaries correctly, it’s not just about resolving the immediate conflict; it’s also an incredible opportunity to help your kids build resilience.

To create effective boundaries, it is essential to first clearly define our role and our children’s role within the family structure. As parents, it’s our role to ensure our children’s safety, and our age and experience equip us to fulfill this crucial role. Our children’s primary role is to communicate their emotions freely with us. Once we grasp these distinct roles, the process of setting and maintaining boundaries becomes more straightforward and intuitive.

When setting a boundary, one key thing to remember is that your boundaries shouldn’t depend on your kids doing anything. There’s a big difference between making requests and setting boundaries. When you make a request, your kids might go along with it, or they may not. But boundaries? They’re different. Boundaries are all about you taking action, not waiting for your child to do something.

Let’s say you want your kid to stop watching TV because they’ve already reached the daily limit you’ve set. The way to enforce this boundary is by turning off the TV or taking the remote and turning it off yourself. Repeatedly asking your child to turn off the TV is about as effective as trying to convince a squirrel to give up its acorn stash – it’s a losing battle that will likely lead to frustration and tension for both of you.

When you turn off the TV, brace yourself for a rollercoaster of emotions from your kids. They might get upset, mad, or sad. You might hear them crying, screaming, or complaining. And here’s where you have to step up and do something crucial: validate their emotions. Let them know that what they’re feeling is totally normal and that you’re there to support them.

You might say something like, “I know you didn’t want the TV to be turned off. I bet you’re pretty upset right now, and I totally get it. I’d probably feel the same way if I were in your shoes. It seems awful, but we can’t watch any more TV.” This step is super important because we want our kids to know that their feelings cannot override the boundary, and the boundary cannot invalidate their feelings. This is also a step that most parents struggle with.

It is difficult for parents to offer support to their kids when they are experiencing difficult emotions. They usually react in one of two ways: either they tell their kid they’re overreacting and dismiss the emotion, or they give in to avoid the meltdown. Sound familiar? Throughout history and in numerous societies, challenging emotions have often been deemed unacceptable or have been suppressed. Our society has had a low tolerance for anything other than happiness and positivity.

When we struggle to listen to our kids or acknowledge their challenging emotions, it can lead them down two paths. Some kids learn to lash out or become aggressive when they’re feeling big feelings. They might explode because, deep down, they feel unheard and unseen, and that unmet need for validation pushes them to the brink.

On the flip side, other kids who don’t feel seen and heard might learn to shut down and bottle everything up. They start to believe that the only way to get attention and approval is by hiding their true feelings and just going along with whatever they’re told. They become little people-pleasers, always putting on a happy face even when they’re hurting inside.

If we really think about it, neither of these outcomes is what we waSetting boundaries for kids, Screen time limits for children, Managing children’s screen time, Junk food limits for kids, Enforcing boundaries with children, Effective parenting strategies, Children’s emotional resiliencent for our children as they grow up and become adults. We don’t want them to be aggressive and explosive, but we also don’t want them to be pushovers who never speak their truth. It’s a tough balance, but it all starts with making sure our kids feel heard and validated, even when their emotions are intense or uncomfortable for us to deal with.

Every time you set a clear boundary and stick to it while acknowledging your child’s feelings, you give them a little mental workout. They’re learning that they can handle disappointment, frustration, or anger without falling apart. They’re discovering that their emotions, even the tough ones, are valid and manageable.

Over time, these small moments of emotional resilience start to add up. Your kids begin to develop a stronger sense of self, knowing that they can navigate life’s challenges with the tools you’ve given them. They learn to face their feelings head-on rather than shying away from them or letting them take over.

So, while enforcing boundaries might feel like a battle in the moment, it’s really a gift in disguise. You’re not just solving a problem; you’re helping your children build the mental strength and emotional agility they’ll need to thrive in the long run. And that’s a pretty amazing thing!

About the Author

Namitha Raju is a Certified Master Parent Coach. She coaches parents to develop deep connections and peace in their relationships with their kids. Her company, Beautiful Bonds, is based on the principle that emotional growth, healthy relationships, and personal transformation are the keys to fulfilling parenthood. Dr. Raju received a Ph.D. in Psychology, where she studied early development. As a mom of two kids, she found that her academic experience couldn’t rescue her from her day-to-day parenting challenges! Her curiosity led her to garner the expertise necessary to inculcate deep connections between parent and child. She serves parents virtually throughout the US. If you would like to find out more, please visit https://beautifulbonds.me.

We have grown up in a culture where respecting elders for their wisdom and maturity seems paramount and it’s an expectation firmly established in our subconscious. This established hierarchy can make apologizing or repairing a rupture with our kids difficult. Moreover, for most parents who did not receive apologies from their parents, it’s unclear why and how to make amends. 

Most conscious parents do apologize if they realize that they are at fault. That’s a great practice to repair a rupture. It shows kids that there is nothing wrong with apologizing. It also teaches them that everyone makes mistakes and mistakes aren’t the end of the world. Kids also feel valued when parents take the time and effort to apologize to them, showing them that their relationship matters. Further, it restores confidence in kids that fairness is independent of age. 

We all recognize that our kids are developmentally less mature than us so it’s likely that they will make more mistakes than us. However, when they do make those mistakes and create a rupture, a lot of the time, we end up escalating and widening that rupture! Of course, when kids make a mistake or violate a boundary, if parents can stay calm and regain their connection with their kids, that’s the best-case scenario. But the majority of the time, when kids violate a boundary or are disrespectful, our ‘normal’ reaction is to lose our cool and yell, blame, or shame our kids for their mistakes. This is because our entire generation and the generations before us have been raised without emotion regulation skills. We are so focused on how wrong our kid’s behavior is that our harsh reaction seems justified. 

Let’s go over this with an example: Imagine that you bought your child a Christmas gift and your child upon opening the gift said, “This is such a lame gift. I hate it”. Hearing this can activate you and you might react with something like, “You know what … you are so ungrateful. You don’t deserve any Christmas gift!” And your kid (who is also activated) in turn, may scream, “I don’t care.” and stomp out of that space. This reaction further aggravates parents because parents feel that not only are their kids not able to see the mistake they made, but they are further arguing or shutting themselves down instead of facing it and expressing their mistake. 

As parents, we are all familiar with this kind of disconnection from our kids. So the question is how do we handle it? Most parents feel lost and confused at this point. These are the times we feel that we are not good parents. And while we suffer from disconnection, frustration, and disappointment with our kid, here’s what’s going on with our kid. 

Our kid is also in a state of acute distress because their parent made them feel that they were disappointing and not good enough. How does a kid traverse this difficult terrain to come back to feeling safe? The most common strategy that kids use at a time like this is self-blame. Even though they may outwardly express acute anguish against their parents, subconsciously, they self-blame. Self-blame is an adaptive strategy because internalizing flaws and wrongdoing allows them to feel safe. How is that? For kids to feel safe, they have to believe that they are in safe hands. Since kids are under their parent’s shelter and care, they subconsciously accept that their parents are right about them as flawed. Because if they believe that their parents are wrong, then how can they continue to survive in an unsafe place? While self-blame helps kids move through childhood, it starts hurting them in adulthood. Core beliefs such as ‘I am not good enough’, and ‘I am not lovable’, impede our kids from exploring their full potential. None of us want that for our kids. 

Now what can we do to help our kids change that internal story? And how do we teach them what is the right behavior and what is not? We start by first bringing ourselves to a place of calm. If we rush to restore the connection with our kid without fully calming ourselves first, we can experience a push and pull within where we want to restore connection but are not able to overcome being upset with our child’s response. This is when a parent may say, “I wouldn’t have reacted the way I did, had you been more considerate”. Such a response continues to shame the kids and will not elicit any repair. 

It’s possible to calm ourselves fully when we change the story we are telling us about ourselves. You can remind yourself that the story of  ‘I am not a good parent’ isn’t true. The true story is that I am disappointed with the harsh way I reacted to my child and this behavior doesn’t define me nor does my child’s behavior define my child. Bringing some objectivity helps us view the story differently. It can help us tap into some self-compassion.  

Once we feel calm, we can acknowledge to our child how we feel about reacting harshly towards them. You can admit, “I am sorry I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did. Your response to my gift hurt me but that doesn’t justify my reaction. I’m sorry I hurt your feelings. And you are not at fault for how I reacted.” Saying this teaches our kids how our harsh reaction was a problem behavior and it’s not okay. It also shows our love and vulnerability, helping them replace their inner story of self-blame with a story of support and self-trust. 

Personally, in my experience, the majority of the times that I’ve initiated such a repair, my kids have also reflected on their behavior and apologized even though the intention was not to make them apologize! Believe me, their reaction to your apology is worth a million bucks! Ultimately, the goal is to feel a restored connection with our child. When you and your kid are calm, you can also lovingly collaborate with your kid on what kind of a response can serve both you and your child, in case a similar future incident arises. Collaborating and making a plan for the future teaches them acceptable behaviors. 

As conscious parents, we try to do the best we can and often our best is not good enough. We may end up saying or doing things we shouldn’t do to our kids. So, instead of beating ourselves or our kids over it, we can initiate the repair and restore love and connection.  

About the Author

Namitha Raju is a Certified Master Parent Coach. She coaches parents to develop deep connections and peace in their relationships with their kids. Her company, Beautiful Bonds, is based on the principle that emotional growth, healthy relationships, and personal transformation are the keys to fulfilling parenthood. Dr. Raju received a Ph.D. in Psychology, where she studied early development. As a mom of two kids, she found that her academic experience couldn’t rescue her from her day-to-day parenting challenges! Her curiosity led her to garner the expertise necessary to inculcate deep connections between parent and child. She serves parents virtually throughout the US. If you would like to find out more, please visit https://beautifulbonds.me.

By Dr. Namitha Raju

You walk into your home and see your kids screaming and fighting with each other. What do you do? Do you feel numb and walk away or do you scream at them and ask them to cut it out? Or do you take turns going close to each of them, asking them to share what’s going on? There is no right or wrong answer! What you do depends on the survival strategy your autonomic nervous system adopts at that moment. Surprisingly, the logical brain doesn’t have much say here. To understand how and why we react the way we do, we need to understand our autonomic nervous system’s survival mechanisms.  

Let me give a brief historical overview of how our autonomic nervous system evolved that can potentially shed some more light on our behaviors. About 500 million years ago, some life forms developed a new operational state called the Dorsal Vagal State. This state engages a survival mechanism where a being totally immobilizes, disconnects, or collapses. This mechanism was efficient because it conserved energy. To understand this visually, think of a turtle that disappears into its shell when it senses a threat and stays there until it feels safe again. Then over time, around 400 million years ago, another survival mechanism emerged with the evolution of the Sympathetic State. This mechanism had an entirely reverse strategy – to send energy to mobilize the being to fight or to flee! This was also a very useful protective mechanism.  Finally, around 200 million years ago, another survival mechanism called the Ventral Vagal system developed. It was unique only to mammals and was based on social connection. This survival system relied on co-regulation or connection between beings for survival. Each of us has these survival strategies built in to face threats and we use these survival techniques based on the intensity and nature of the threat. 

To explain this a little better, I will use a simplistic analogy that can help you visualize the concept. Consider a building with two floors and an underground bunker. The topmost floor (Ventral Vagal State) is the place from where you have a better view of your surroundings, it’s the place where you carry out your day-to-day activities, you connect with others through social gatherings, meetings, and negotiations; and it’s a place where the world looks welcoming and you feel alive, hopeful, and creative. However, when you experience a threat that cannot be managed by staying on the topmost floor, you step down to the lower floor. Let’s say you see smoke coming from below. You are going to spring into action (Sympathetic State), getting down to see if you can manage it (fight response). If it’s serious, you might even leave the building (flee response). However, let’s say instead of the fire the threat was a catastrophic tornado coming your way and you can’t possibly run from it. That’s when you step further down into the bunker (Dorsal Vagal State) and disconnect yourself from the outside world to keep yourself safe. As you can see, every state provides a functional strategy, depending on the intensity of the threat.

Now, in the example mentioned at the start, a parent will react to the sibling fight based on their perception of how threatened they feel in that situation. One could either move to the Dorsal Vagal state with total disconnect and a numbing response, move to a Sympathetic state with screaming or threatening, or move to the Ventral Vagal state by trying to talk to each of the kids.  Our nervous system is incessantly gauging threats within us and around us, to make sure we are in a state of safety. This process of gauging safety is called neuroception.  And how do we define this safety? Does safety simply mean being away from physical harm? No! Seeing someone’s face or hearing someone’s voice who has not been nice to you can be perceived as a threat! It can take someone from their Ventral Vagal state of social engagement to their Sympathetic state of fight or flight. It’s not uncommon for kids to perceive their parents as a threat if there is a history of parents blaming or shaming their kids. This is a difficult-to-process truth that is not easy for parents to recognize. 

Now, here is where it gets complicated: if we accept that all our behaviors are a result of our biology, then when a parent screams and criticizes his/her kids constantly, we can understand that it’s coming from a place where the parent is seeking safety. Parents scream with the intention of eliminating the perceived threat they experience when they hear or see something they dislike. The downside of this is that the parent’s behavior creates a totally unsafe environment for the kid! So how can this be reconciled? 

Reconciliation is possible when we learn the skill of pausing and observing what’s going on within us. It’s helpful to do a self-check to see where we are as described in the building analogy; on the first floor or the bunker? Learning about our own biology can be helpful to recognize that during difficult moments, the angry thoughts or the resigning thoughts that come to us are our nervous system’s way of protecting us and it doesn’t mean anything about our ability to parent. This objective observation helps us bring some self-compassion for ourselves. This could take seconds, minutes, or hours depending on which autonomic survival state we are sheltered within. With self-compassion, we can start to feel calm and we can start to build the capacity to co-regulate. What is co-regulation? Simply put, it’s providing a sense of safety and connection to our kids. No amount of  ‘logical explanation’ can provide this safety to kids unless your demeanor, tonal quality, and content demonstrate safety for our kids.  

An important thing to keep in mind is that there is no such thing as a perfect relationship. Looping through reciprocity, rupture, and repair are signs of a healthy relationship. We suffer when rupture occurs and it’s not repaired. Ultimately, we are a species that has evolved to survive through connection. Hope this article can help you see yourself and your kids in a different light. Happy parenting!

About the Author
Namitha Raju is a Certified Master Parent Coach. She coaches parents to develop deep connections and peace in their relationships with their kids. Her company, Beautiful Bonds, is based on the principle that emotional growth, healthy relationships, and personal transformation are the keys to fulfilling parenthood. Dr. Raju received a Ph.D. in Psychology, where she studied early development. As a mom of two kids, she found that her academic experience couldn’t rescue her from her day-to-day parenting challenges! Her curiosity led her to garner the expertise necessary to inculcate deep connections between parent and child. She serves parents virtually throughout the US. If you would like to find out more, please visit https://beautifulbonds.me.

What comes to your mind when you think of play? Do you feel stressed out because you feel you don’t have the time to play with your kids? Or do you feel that play is frivolous and is not the best place to invest your time? Or that you have tried and you find it difficult to participate in play with your kids. If you feel any of these, I am here to tell you that you are not alone and my intention in this article is for us to explore the world of play to see why it’s important, why it’s difficult for some of us to play, and how to implement play with our kids. Let’s start with understanding the importance of play. 

All of us have a strong need for connection, and this is especially true for our kids. What is this connection? It’s something that’s created when we feel heard and understood. Connection is a vital component in any relationship without which trust cannot develop. Play is the language that kids understand best so play allows a parent to enter into their child’s world. It fosters a sense of closeness and connection between parent and child. Hence, play can satisfy our need for connection. 

Further, in our day-to-day lives as adults, we have to make most of the decisions for our kids. This does make kids feel powerless. Play is the perfect platform for kids to gain autonomy. When parents engage in play, they can follow their child’s lead. This autonomy that kids experience boosts their self-esteem. Moreover, during play when we let our children laugh at us or win at our expense, they won’t need to do that at the expense of other children. 

Play also allows kids to work through their emotions and develop social skills in a safe environment. Certain types of games or even basic role-play, can create a simulated world where kids not only get to exercise their creativity and imagination but can also experience fear, frustration, anger, and aggression in controlled situations without it feeling too intense or personal. 

Research in neuroscience is showing us that brain development (specifically our prefrontal cortex, that’s responsible for executive functioning) doesn’t happen only because of physical maturation. For the brain to evolve and mature, certain experiences are critical. These experiences include self-control, understanding different points of view, planning, organization, and the ability to adapt to unexpected circumstances. Play is the easiest platform to have kids access these experiences! 

Now let’s see why it is difficult for many parents to participate in play. There are two main reasons why parents find it difficult to play with their kids. The first reason is that most of us have grown up in a society where play was not considered a good use of time. As a society, we have evolved from resource scarcity and competition, and anything that doesn’t produce a tangible outcome has been deemed a waste of time. So many of us were encouraged to do something productive instead of playing! 

Similarly, for many of us, our silly behaviors were rebuked by parents or adult figures and we learned early on to hide our authentic, childlike, playful nature. For many parents I work with, the thought of being silly, even with their kids, evokes the fear of being judged and ridiculed. Hence, many parents, when they see their kids being silly, the anxiety and pain of judgment they experienced pushes them to curb their kid’s silliness! However, recent research has uncovered the vital role of playfulness in relationships. Playfulness helps create relational safety and makes our kids feel more comfortable to open up with us. 

Another reason that discourages parents to play with their kids is the never-ending work and to-do lists. I want to empathize and acknowledge that these are real obstacles when we are deciding whether to play or not to play! We have our professional demands, relationship demands, our home-management demands and all of these priorities are competing for our attention! However, the neuroscience behind play motivates me to encourage you to prioritize play with your kids. With our kids growing up so quickly, we have to reorganize our priorities before our time window with them closes. 

If you are on board with me, the next question is, how do we bring the spirit of play into our home? The goal of play should be to put us and our kids in a playful mood, where we can all have fun, and connect. If deciding on what to play starts an argument between kids or ends up in disconnection, then we have to rethink our ways to introduce play. Structured play (board games, sports, bowling, etc.) is not the only way to create playfulness. You don’t need to spend money to create play. Unstructured play can be just as effective. Your imagination and demeanor can create play! For instance, what if you did something crazy, in an age-appropriate way? 

• What if you announced an impromptu family picnic? 
• What if you pulled out a can of whipped cream and made a mess with your kids? 
• What if you had pasta or noodles for dinner without any forks or spoons? 
• What if you made art with your kids? 
• Instead of telling your kids what they need to do, what if you sang the instructions?

The goal is to not just engage in a ‘play’ activity for the sake of it. It’s to create laughter and lightheartedness. You have to first sense if an activity in your family setting can evoke playfulness. Once you start thinking about being playful, you will be able to find more and more opportunities to keep the playfulness and connection consistent. To introduce play in your homes, all you need is an intention! So, are you ready to play?

About the Author

Namitha Raju is a Certified Master Parent Coach. She coaches parents to develop deep connections and peace in their relationships with their kids. Her company, Beautiful Bonds, is based on the principle that emotional growth, healthy relationships, and personal transformation are the keys to fulfilling parenthood. Dr. Raju received a Ph.D. in Psychology, where she studied early development. As a mom of two kids, she found that her academic experience couldn’t rescue her from her day-to-day parenting challenges! Her curiosity led her to garner the expertise necessary to inculcate deep connections between parent and child. She serves parents virtually throughout the US. If you would like to find out more, please visit https://beautifulbonds.me.

Do you recognize any of these recurring themes in your parenting?

*Wails* I need the iPad. I’m in the middle of something! I hate you. You’re so unfair!

*Whines* I hate this! I don’t want this. You never make anything I like!

*Yells* I didn’t do it. Stop accusing me! Get out of my room!

*Groans* I don’t want to do it!

 How do you react when you hear something like this from your kids? How does it feel? How do you feel about your kids in those moments? How do you feel about yourself in those moments?

Let’s dive deep into a power struggle and see what is going on for us at such times. I have named this difficult interaction with our kids and what ensues the parenting struggle pattern because it is a pattern that repeats itself from time to time.

This is how the pattern looks:

1. A parent encounters difficult behavior
2. The behavior triggers a bodily response in the parent
3. A state of frustration or acute helplessness pushes the parent to use a controlling technique (lecture, sarcasm, yell, blame, shame, punish) to ease their discomfort
4. The kid feels disconnected and distant from the parent
5. When the parent sees the child’s disconnection, no matter how justified they feel in their actions, most of the time, they feel sad about the child’s disconnection from the child.
6. At this point, some parents are reluctant to continue holding boundaries in order to rebuild the lost connection until they encounter the next challenge.

Interestingly, this pattern reveals that our “controlling techniques” are essentially coping mechanisms to overcome the acute discomfort we are experiencing!

Let’s understand this pattern through the lens of nervous system science. As soon as we encounter a difficult situation, our nervous system shifts into a “fight, flight, or freeze” response. In this state, our prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the brain that can voluntarily control our thinking, emotional responses, and behavior, cannot be accessed. We only have access to our reactive lower brain, which augments our anger or fear reactions, compelling us to lecture, be sarcastic, yell, blame, shame, or punish. We clearly can’t employ effective communication in this state with anger and fear as our resources. As a result, our kids naturally learn to shield themselves. They construct an emotional wall to disconnect from us, mainly to protect themselves. This makes it even more frustrating for parents whose best intentions didn’t work and ended up worsening their relationship. As kids mature, parents want them to seek their help if they ever get into trouble or find themselves in a difficult situation. But kids hesitate to approach parents in these situations because they perceive their parents as judgmental.

So what’s the answer here? The first step is to become aware of this pattern. Once you gain awareness, the next question is, “What do I do to break free from this cycle?” Many factors can contribute to the trigger that sets off the pattern. While there can be strategies you could use to escape the onset of this pattern, a lot of the time, you can be in a state of acute discomfort that disables you from accessing any strategy!

But there is hope. You can work on reducing the frequency of these triggers and these states of discomfort and frustration. Start by introspecting your fears concerning your child, your expectations from your child, your expectations from yourself as a parent, your own disappointments, and your history and conditioning. All this is a lot to unpack, and it can be overwhelming to traverse your emotional map without an objective and trained guide. It is usually helpful to seek structure and support from a parent coach. Whatever you do, remember that what you are going through is hard, and it is important that you treat yourself with kindness!

About the Author

Namitha Raju is a Certified Master Parent Coach. She coaches parents to develop deep connections and peace in their relationships with their kids. Her company, Beautiful Bonds, is based on the principle that emotional growth, healthy relationships, and personal transformation are the keys to fulfilling parenthood. Dr. Raju received a Ph.D. in Psychology, where she studied early development. As a mom of two kids, she found that her academic experience couldn’t rescue her from her day-to-day parenting challenges! Her curiosity led her to garner the expertise necessary to inculcate deep connections between parent and child. She serves parents virtually throughout the US.  If you would like to find out more, please visit https://beautifulbonds.me.

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Several schools are introducing kids to the concept of a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset as part of their social-emotional learning program. It’s a great awareness tool, thanks to studies by Stanford University researcher Dr. Carol Dweck.

Dr. Dweck’s research discovered the two main ways people think about their ability to do things: the fixed mindset and the growth mindset. Her research looks at the sources of these two distinct mindsets, their role in motivation and self-regulation, and how it influences achievement and interpersonal relations. The illustration above shows how people with growth and fixed mindsets go through their lives. When I read this for the first time, I felt a punch in my gut because I could relate to many of the beliefs listed under the fixed mindset. It didn’t feel good at all! The fixed mindset develops from interactions with parents who employ a controlling or dominant parenting style. When we were growing up, the power-over way of parenting was the most prevalent. Sadly this parenting style, which is quite pervasive even now, has adverse effects on emotional growth.

“In daily interactions, parents who employ this parenting style seek control over their children, indirectly through blaming, shaming, sarcasm, or directly through yelling and punishments. The result is a power struggle, ‘parents versus kids,’ a winner and a loser.”

Ultimately, this weakens connection and communication between the parent and child. Additionally, it erodes the child’s sense of self-worth and confidence. And this is where children learn limiting beliefs, such as, ” I’m only loved and accepted when I fall in line.” This conditional acceptance from parents lays the foundation for a fixed mindset, rigid beliefs about self, and inflexibility to grow emotionally. As progressive parents, we all want to raise kids with a growth mindset where things are not black or white but where there is a continuum of possibilities and hope. We can achieve this goal by providing unconditional acceptance to our kids. Sadly, it is hard to provide unconditional acceptance when our subconscious thinking and attitudes are only familiar with conditional and controlling versions of parenting because of the way we were raised.

This vicious cycle is hard to break without support. Mindset changes take time, but I am grateful I took the leap because the changes I saw in myself directly impacted my parenting, and I started seeing my kids showing much more openness than before! If you aren’t sure how to turn things around in your parenting, you aren’t alone! Join the growing community of conscious parents who want to transform their parenting style and raise kids with a growth mindset.

About the Author

Namitha Raju is a Certified Master Parent Coach. She coaches parents to develop deep connections and peace in their relationships with their kids. Her company, Beautiful Bonds, is based on the principle that emotional growth, healthy relationships, and personal transformation are the keys to fulfilling parenthood. Dr. Raju received a Ph.D. in Psychology, where she studied early development. As a mom of two kids, she found that her academic experience couldn’t rescue her from her day-to-day parenting challenges! Her curiosity led her to garner the expertise necessary to inculcate deep connections between parent and child. She serves parents virtually throughout the US.  If you would like to find out more, please visit https://beautifulbonds.me.

Wouldn’t praising kids encourage them to do well? The answer is ‘No!’

I won’t be surprised if you think, “What’s wrong with encouraging my kids?” I am myself recovering from being in the ‘good-jobbing-camp’ for a very long time and still catch myself saying it occasionally! I always assumed that saying “Good job” encouraged kids. I believed praising kids was a valuable parenting skill to build a kid’s confidence. While praising may seem like it encourages kids to do well, surprisingly, I have learned that it erodes a child’s inner confidence! 

Let’s start by backtracking a bit. Many of us have grown up in a home where our parents were quite frugal with their praises but liberal with their disapprovals, and we felt unappreciated. This led us to believe that praising our kids can help their confidence. It turns out that just as criticism negatively affects one’s self-esteem, praise has its own fair share of negative impact! When I first learned about the way praise negatively affects one’s confidence, I was somewhat surprised.  A disappointment followed this revelation because I felt miserable about having deliberately practiced praising for so long!! 

Let me first share why praising our kids is not a good idea. Any praise aimed at our kid’s character or the outcome (e.g., smart, intelligent, pretty, brave, good job, excellent grades) focuses on something a kid has no control over! A kid can only control what he can do, not what the result is. Moreover, praise is an external motivator that hinders one’s ability to build intrinsic motivation. Let us take a specific example where an adult praises a kid who solves a puzzle by saying, “You are so smart!”. To secure this reputation or acceptance from the adult, kids may not attempt a more challenging puzzle for fear of losing this “reputation” in case he/she may fail. This causes pressure each time he/she sees a difficult problem at first.

Instead of exploring it further, they start withdrawing under the pressure of not being able to meet the expectation that has been set for them. Thus praising takes away our kid’s curiosity to explore challenging tasks.

Moreover, when adults who are usually very vocal in their praise are silent in their response to a child’s task, it sends a message to the child that they are not good enough. Further, in the case of activities where there aren’t any opportunities for praise, kids may tend to avoid it or be apathetic about it.  No matter how young our kids are, they are in the process of finding an identity for themselves and can quickly latch on to labels like “smart or intelligent, or kind.” This dependency or addiction on others’ praise to feel accomplished doesn’t serve kids well in their self-growth. Kids can lose their internal compass in assessing themselves and may not build the ability to self-evaluate. Another side effect is that it creates “people-pleasers” who tend to go out of their comfort zone to do things for others to receive acceptance and maintain desirable labels! 

So, what’s the alternative to motivating our kids?

The best alternative is not to say anything when they do something. The idea is not to ignore them or their work but to stay away from any kind of evaluation, positive or negative. It’s best not to say anything because the completion of the task or activity without any external influence will provide the child with an opportunity for self-evaluation. If that feels like a difficult transition for you and your child, then participate and engage with the kid and get curious about your kid’s activity in the task. Instead of telling them what you think, you can ask them what they think about it. For example, in the case of the puzzle example, you can say, “How do you feel about completing the puzzle? Did you use any strategy to work through it?”. These questions try to bring the child’s focus back on their own actions, as the parent provides the scaffold for their thinking processes. 

Parents have shared with me that in their relationship with kids, offering praise or showing approval for a job well done is the only time they feel like they are connecting with kids. However, if we think deeply, this conditional connection is not our intent for our kids. Conditional acceptance kills our kid’s curiosities, depriving them of developing the critical qualities that make them lifelong learners!

So, if you are, as I was, in the “good-jobbing-camp,” I would encourage you to reconsider your approach. As parents, we want to consider our motives for offering praise. Let us ask ourselves if our comments will give them a sense of control or if it will make them seek us for approval. As parents, we are all doing the best we can to ensure that our kids can achieve their maximum potential. I hope this revelation helps you in this endeavor!

About the Author

Namitha Raju is a Certified Master Parent Coach. She coaches parents to develop deep connections and peace in their relationships with their kids. Her company, Beautiful Bonds, is based on the principle that emotional growth, healthy relationships, and personal transformation are the keys to fulfilling parenthood. Dr. Raju received a Ph.D. in Psychology, where she studied early development. As a mom of two kids, she found that her academic experience couldn’t rescue her from her day-to-day parenting challenges! Her curiosity led her to garner the expertise necessary to inculcate deep connections between parent and child. She serves parents virtually throughout the US.  If you would like to find out more, please visit https://beautifulbonds.me.

Most of us are aware of the controlling parent and the lenient parent. A controlling parent manages their kids’ behaviors using dominating techniques such as threats, yelling, shaming, sarcasm, or punishments. Parents who use control don’t like it but feel compelled to use it. Moreover, with time, the threats go up in intensity. Otherwise, they don’t work. While this method might produce obedience, it doesn’t teach kids why the desired behaviors matter. Further, kids learn to find less desirable ways to get the things they want, such as sneaking or lying.

Lenient parenting, on the other hand, has its own pitfalls. A lenient parent may decide not to be involved in actively managing kids’ activities (e.g., getting homework done, screen time decisions, junk food) to avoid conflict. They let kids make their own rules! This early and absolute independence can affect kids negatively in the long run. With an underdeveloped brain, kids often cannot make safe or healthy decisions and have a hard time with limits as they grow into adults. 

In today’s age, most parents unconsciously swing between these two parenting styles! Let’s understand how. Even though most of us don’t agree with the controlling style of parenting many of us were raised with, it can be really difficult to invent a different parenting style for our kids. We end up employing a milder version of the same controlling style! We leave out the harsh punishments that were aversive for us, but we find it difficult to get rid of the milder counterparts, such as sarcasm, shaming, or lecturing, which serve a controlling role. And we feel justified in doing so because we think kids need to learn the right way! 

But any form of control inevitably leads to a disconnection from our kids. When the disconnection becomes too bothersome, many parents stop controlling and let the kids take control instead. This shift into a permissive style continues until the parents realize that kids can’t manage on their own, ultimately bringing out the dominant parent once again. 

If you find any of this familiar, don’t fret. Such “pendulum parenting” is more common than you think. More than anything, it is important to realize that these alternating parenting styles we adopt over time are simply coping mechanisms to manage our own emotions! This leads us to the question: What’s the right way to parent? How do we get our kids to listen to us without being dominating or lenient? 

The answer to these questions is a transformational way of parenting that has evolved by diving deep into the world of emotions, feelings, and needs. This new style emphasizes that the feelings and needs of every member of the family matter. The practice of accepting what you are feeling and needing and what your child is feeling and needing allows you to shift your focus from behavior-based parenting to connection-based parenting. When you parent from curiosity and connection, kids are receptive to parents because they don’t feel judged. 

Making the shift from behavior-based parenting to connection-based parenting, however, isn’t easy. It takes practice, patience, and a willingness to mess up! You can start by self-examining your fears concerning your child, expectations from your child, expectations from yourself as a parent, your own disappointments, and your history and conditioning. All this is a lot to unpack, and it can be overwhelming without an objective and trained guide. It is usually helpful to seek structure and support. While this journey toward transformational parenting can be bumpy, I highly recommend it to parents who want to enjoy their parenting and see their kids living fulfilled lives. 

About the Author

Namitha Raju received a Ph.D. in Psychology where she studied early development. As a mom of two kids, she found that her academic experience couldn’t rescue her from her day-to-day parenting challenges! Her curiosity led her to garner the expertise necessary to inculcate deep connections between parent and child. As a Certified Master Parent Coach, she helps parents bring communication, connection, and peace into their relationships. Her company, Beautiful Bonds, is based on the principle that emotional growth, healthy relationships, and personal transformation are the keys to fulfilling parenthood. She serves parents virtually throughout the US.  If you would like to find out more, please visit https://beautifulbonds.me.

A clever advertisement recently released (https://youtu.be/36SDHEwSA_U) by Bournvita, a children’s health drink company in India, promoted a social message. In this ad, they changed the packaging of their health drink and presented it in unimaginable containers (such as a glass cleaner, a soap box, a toilet cleaner, a tissue box, etc.) to see how someone would react to a different container shape instead of how it is meant to be. They used this analogy to urge parents not to force kids to choose a profession against their will and make them something they don’t want to be! The ad ended on a note urging parents to show “Faith not Force.” My article today is inspired by this advertisement. 

A survey by joblist that interviewed working people and parents found that 40 percent of working people felt pressured to follow their parents’ career advice, while 2 out of 3 parents said they were disappointed when their children didn’t pursue their desired careers. It is thus no surprise that many parents, despite their best intentions, end up feeling misunderstood by their kids and their kids feel unsupported in their career choices. As parents, we want the best for our kids. For many parents, one way to define best is by seeing their kids achieve financial success. There is no typecasting or judgment here. This definition reflects a valid need. We all know how hard it is to live without financial security. 

Some parents are so concerned about their kid’s future that they take it upon themselves to make career decisions for their kids and expect kids to implement them! There are also many other parents who encourage kids to pursue their interests but keep reminding their kids of their goals so often that kids start to rebel and lose interest in pursuing anything well! So while a huge parenting objective is to help kids be financially secure, it is often executed using some form of force. 

Let us first ask ourselves, “what is our real goal as parents?”. We all want our kids to lead happy, fulfilled lives. I don’t think any parent would disagree with me on this. And as parents, we consider financial stability as a means to help our kids become happy adults, and this is something kids also understand. What then is lacking in the process that leads to rifts instead of collaboration between the parent and child?

The inability of the parent to express their best intentions to kids without using force or control is at the core of this issue! Parent-child connection is directly linked to the quality of decisions kids make as they grow. Parent-child relationships that are collaborative open a child to receiving their parent’s ideas and life experiences and using them to evaluate their own emerging ambitions and interests. Even if parents are unfamiliar with their kid’s area of interest, faith in their child can inspire parents to support their kids. Then what stops parents from building that great relationship with their kids? What stops parents from showing faith over force?

Actually, it’s not surprising that force overtakes faith in our parenting. This is how most of us were raised; it’s the traditional way of parenting, a style carried out for many generations! In traditional parenting, compliance is seen as respect and often extracted through forcible means (shame, threat, yelling, comparison, nagging, sarcasm, etc.). Previous generations have followed the rules and complied with authority to survive. We end up repeating the same cycles because that is what is familiar to us. 

Further, while complying, one cannot be creative or courageous. Especially in today’s age, success comes from collaboration, innovation, and courage, not compliance! Whether you pick a career in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) or non-STEM fields (Arts, Sports, etc.), success will come to you through your passion, not just a college degree. Our job as parents is to kindle our kid’s interests so that they grow to feel more passionate about it.  

Research in the last two decades from neuroscience and child development identifies the drawbacks of traditional parenting. Any parental consequence that affects a child’s self-worth or self-esteem, even if it’s not harsh, leads to kids’ non-compliance with parents. Other negative effects the child experiences might include depressive feelings, behavior problems, and poor conscience development, making them incapable of making sound decisions. 

And suppose you do attempt to be aware of some of the conditioning patterns and don a new face to parent differently. In that case, you are quickly caught in the ‘scarcity’ trap, another facet of traditional parenting. The scarcity mindset is the belief that there isn’t much to go around and only a few can succeed. So naturally, this mindset breeds competition and  the other hand, an abundant mindset developed by adopting a peaceful parenting style allows one to view the world differently. We can start to see non-hierarchical relations and infinite resources, and possibilities and drop the constant fear that lingers about our child’s future.

Our kids need us to be their safe harbor, their guide so that they can navigate the complexities of life and make good decisions for themselves, especially their career decisions since that will dictate the direction and quality of their life. So it is upon us to transform how we parent, making our kids feel seen, loved, and empowered by moving away from the traditional, controlling style and towards a transformational, peaceful parenting style. Because … if we can’t provide it to them, who will?

About the Author

Namitha Raju is a Certified Master Parent Coach. She coaches parents to develop deep connections and peace in their relationships with their kids. Her company, Beautiful Bonds, is based on the principle that emotional growth, healthy relationships, and personal transformation are the keys to fulfilling parenthood. Dr. Raju received a Ph.D. in Psychology, where she studied early development. As a mom of two kids, she found that her academic experience couldn’t rescue her from her day-to-day parenting challenges! Her curiosity led her to garner the expertise necessary to inculcate deep connections between parent and child. She serves parents virtually throughout the US.  If you would like to find out more, please visit https://beautifulbonds.me.