Understand

"I've heard you have a different take on parenting..." Yes, apparently I do.

I often find myself inside funny conversations.

"Parent coaching... is that a thing?" Yes, it is. Has been for more than twenty years --and I'm not the only person who created it back in 2001...

"Oh, I know parents who need you!" Yes, so do I --they disagree with us: they don't believe parenting is a 'thing' to get better at, and their standards are often as low as 'whatever kids survive is good enough.' It's not an argument I have time for.

I work with good parents, the kind who say 'I'm totally failing' when onlookers shake their heads and say 'no, no, you're a great parent...'

This is where I work: in the gap between the 'great parents' people know and their own sense of efficacy in the task.

Not because I agree with them (that they're totally failing) but because they have standards of their own that they're struggling to live, and I can help.

Tips and Techniques

I don't offer many of these ... mostly because, as I told a friend 'on a quest to fill her parenting toolbox,' the problem with tools is that they come with the need to use them. Once you have a hammer, as they say, every problem starts to look like a nail.

Then there's the issue of recall: What phase / stage of this is the problem; which of these tools is for that; what was I supposed to remember not to do...

... in the heat of the moment, while a parent's cool is on a very fine thread...

I find it more helpful, in general, to step back a moment --mentally, and sometimes physically.

The Discovery

Stepping back on its own is helpful, to calm the moment, take a breath and let the panicked survival brain fade and let executive function take over...

This can help with 'trying something new.' Not a tip or a technique, exactly. A new framework of intervention.

For years, I found myself collecting voices from the widest range of the strangest places. Sometimes they were parenting writers. Sometimes educators. Sometimes pro sports coaches, leadership mentors, or even poets. They didn't agree on methods, but they shared something much deeper: a profound respect for the people they were trying to help. Their questions were curious rather than controlling. Their goal wasn't compliance... it was understanding.

Over the decades, I have noticed a framework underneath parenting that feels ... different.

It doesn't support many of the things our culture says about children, for one thing. It doesn't align with the idea that a parent's primary role is directive, or controlling.

It doesn't even go along with a lot of the premises under headings like 'gentle' and even 'attachment' parenting, so over the years I have moved further and further from those categories, too.

I didn't set out to create a new way of thinking about parenting. I was simply trying to understand why so much well-intentioned advice worked inconsistently, or only in the short term --or not at all.

The deeper I looked, the more I realized I wasn't just questioning individual techniques... I was questioning the assumptions underneath them.

If you're curious about that journey, that's what the rest of this site is for.