Parenting Your Sensitive Child

I have a simple but powerful metaphor I want to share with you this week. It's particularly relevant if you've ever felt like your child was manipulating you, picking on you, or even bullying you. In other words, if your child knows how to push your most painful buttons and it seems like they use that to try to get their own way. How we view triggering behavior in children, especially when...

We had quite a weekend of cookie booths and birthday parties, and I want to share a little bit about our experience in this episode and lead into the question in the episode title, and that's what does a maxed-out nervous system look like for your child? What are your child's tell-tale signs? How do you know if they are feeling something big under the surface? How do you know if their nerv...

It is so easy, as parents, to rush our kids. And when they're resistant? Most often, our first impulse is to stand firm. Push them along. They're fighting you on leaving the house? You've got to insist. You've got to make them. Right? This episode offers an alternate take on how we can handle our children's resistance when it seems like they're making a big deal out of nothing. It's powerful becau...

This is a story about an emotional weekend, some silly putty, and what personal growth as a parent can look like. This is a story about staying present, grounded, and calm, even when they are overwhelmed by emotion. This is the result I hope to create in my life, over and over again, and it is the result I help my clients create, too. I am a better parent because of this work, 100%. And if you fee...

This week we're going to talk about riding the waves instead of fighting them. Life is wavy. It's part of the human experience. We all have highs and lows, good days and bad days, positive and negative emotions. This is normal and we don't need to change it. But I want to share something that I observe over and over again - in myself, my clients, the people around me - and that's that when we feel...

This week on the podcast, I want to recognize there are certain situations in which it is absolutely normal to have an elevated reaction to what you're child is doing. If they are running towards a busy street, for example, or riding their bike and seem oblivious to the stop sign that's right in front of them. Their bodily safety is at risk, and as a parent, that's scary. It is totally normal to "...

Asking for help is a skill that, for many of us, has to be developed. Especially if you are someone who did well in school, was able to fly under the radar and complete the assignments adequately without needing to ask questions or get help from the teacher. For many of us, there is an internalized belief that we should be able to figure it out on our own, especially when it's something as seeming...

There's something so alluring about having rules to guide you. If you know the rules, all you have to do is follow them. So when things feel chaotic, it might seem like you just haven't found the right rules yet. This might be true. BUT The rules are much simpler than we've been led to believe, and they probably aren't what you think they are. They aren't actually about screen time or rewards or f...

This week I'm sharing an interview I did with Hannah Brooks for her podcast, Highly Sensitive, Happily Married. Hannah interviewed me two years ago, and we were both excited to circle back to it and share it with you here! In this episode, we talk about how we sensitive parents can raise healthy happy kids AND have great marriages at the same time. Although it can often feel like a great marriage...

It is not uncommon for parents that I work with to realize that their child might be highly sensitive, look into it a little bit more, and then realize that they might be highly sensitive, too. This might mean that you are easily overwhelmed by the amount of activity and noise in your house, especially when you are trying to do something like cook dinner. It might mean that when your child has a h...

I want to talk to you today about the value of a safe space. Now, it may seem obvious - of course children need a safe space that they can go to! But I've had a few conversations lately and some experiences of my own that have reminded me of the importance o fcreating safe spaces for your child to turn to. I'm going to start by sharing my own story, then talk a little about what constitutes a safe...

I mentioned last week that I wanted to share a story with you about bedtime and problem-solving. One of the biggest things I work on with my clients is including their children in the problem-solving process. We talk about having conversations outside of the moment, when everyone has calmed down. One of the challenges that often arises, though, is time. If you are a working parent, it can feel lik...

Reflection is something that's strongly encouraged this time of year. We are encouraged to look back on all that we did or didn't do and decide what we'd like to do next. It can stir up a lot of emotions: pride, joy, regret, determination... And it's usually from those emotions that we set our intentions for the next year. I want to offer you a slightly different approach, one that you can carry w...

Since last week did not go as I had planned, it got me thinking about how much power we give to our circumstances. For example, we tend to attribute our emotions to our circumstances. Whether you are feeling down because you're sick, or feeling on edge because your child has been having more meltdowns lately, there is a very common tendency to link how you're feeling to what's happening in the wor...

I want to spend our time together today talking about a pattern that emerges when we start doing the deeper work of creating change within ourselves and our families. It's a pattern that shows up when we are making changes within ourselves in all areas of our life, when we start to change our thinking and how we feel in certain contexts. And generally speaking, this pattern shows up as a form of c...

One of my coaches recently challenged her audience to come up with a list of three things that their audiences probably don't know about them that seem really obvious to them and are relevant to their coaching practice. I loved this idea, and I came up with a list of five things because I don't always follow the rules and I didn't want to narrow it down. I'm weaving these tidbits into my social me...

This week I want to talk to you about how your intentions can shape the way your actions land, and I want to talk about this specifically in relation to "First/then" communication. This is something I coach my clients on from time to time, and it's something I do myself. Instead of saying, "You need to do your homework in order to have screen time," for example, I might say, "You really want to sp...

We are approaching our fall break here in the United States, and it felt appropriate to talk a little bit about balanced scheduling. It is so tempting, especially if school has been taxing for your child and you've been dealing with after-school meltdowns on a frequent basis to envision the holidays as a lovely, relaxed time without schedules. A time to reset. Or maybe you fall into the opposite c...

There's so much advice for parents out there. There's the old-school, obedience-focused advice, which often doesn't work so well for sensitive kids, and then there's the new-wave which encompasses everything that deviates from the old norm. Some of it is great, some of it is less-so, but it all represents a shift away from using physical means to control kids. But there's still a strong current of...

This week we're talking about congruence. The official definition of congruence is "agreement or harmony, compatibility," and I want to talk to you today about congruence between your thoughts and your words. Basically, making sure that what you're saying to your kids isn't in conflict with what you're thinking. Listen on for examples. *** Are you on my email list? Claim any one of my free resourc...

One of the most challenging times of day for many parents I work with is bedtime. It's the end of the day, our kids have been through a lot and are not at their most receptive - they might be feeling silly or even irritable - and we're tired, too. By the time bedtime routines roll around, most of us are just ready to be done. Then you layer on the worries that have space to surface when the lights...

I've been thinking for the past few weeks about posing a series of challenges through my podcast. I'm honestly not sure how many I will do, but I've got a couple in mind that I think will help you create positive changes within your family right now. This week we're going to focus on changing what's next to what's now. It's kind of funny when you say it that way, "what's now" isn't really a phrase...

We've been talking about brains a lot over here, and I wanted to share a few of the conversations I've had with my daughter recently because it's not really something that's modeled for us very often, and it's so very useful to our kids, especially if they are prone to overthinking, or black and white thinking, or even anxiety. Honestly, I knew it was something that could be helpful, but I've been...

This episode is about disappointment. Really, the message I want to share with you is pretty concise: You are allowed to feel disappointed. So often, we try to talk ourselves out of feeling disappointment. We might tell ourselves it's not that big of a deal. We might focus on the rational side, the pros of the situation if you will, and try to prove to ourselves that it will be better this way. We...

The idea for this episode initially came from a phenomenon I have witnessed in a lot of new parents who are wanting to parent more gently, and that is an aversion to telling their child no. So I thought about calling this episode the fear of no. BUT the more I thought about it, the more I had to consider all of the families I've worked with whose children push back against hearing NO. So, I want t...