Your child is happily playing but it's time to put their shoes on. Suddenly, everything is wrong. The shoes are wrong. You’re mean. They’re not going anywhere. Their sister looked at them funny. And somehow the fact that you bought the wrong kind of yogurt three days ago has entered the conversation. Sound familiar? Irritability is a normal part of childhood. Kids have developing brains, big emotions, limited control over their lives, and regulation skills that are still very

Every August, I have some version of the same conversation with parents in my office. "He was fine last week. Now he says his stomach hurts every single morning." "She won't even talk about school. If I bring it up, she shuts down." "I don't know if this is normal nerves or something bigger." If you're standing in your kitchen right now, watching your kid refuse to put shoes on, wondering if you're doing something wrong — I want you to hear this first: defiance is often fear

When I work with parents raising neurodivergent children, one thing becomes clear very quickly: they've heard it all. Advice from teachers, family members, strangers - even people who barely know them. And yet, despite all that input, many parents tell me the same thing - they don't actually feel supported. Instead they feel pressure, judgment, fear and loneliness. When Parenting Expectations Don’t Fit Your Child Parenting is often shaped by culture—by what is considered resp

"I'm such a bad mom..." I cried to my mother on the phone. I was a month postpartum with my third baby and I was failing. I was hurting my kids. I was traumatizing them. I was ruining our relationship. I was yelling and reactive and awful. I was impatient and harsh. "You are not a bad Mom," she assured me. I didn't believe her. I promised myself I would never yell at my kids. I was sure that I would never tell them to stop crying or get over it. Yet, here I was doing everythi

"Mom! MOM.. can I come out? Mom!" I was sitting on the porch with my best friend trying to have a five minute conversation without any little ears listening or interrupting. I kept telling her different versions of not yet, and she kept asking to come out. Finally I turned to her and sternly said "No! Go talk to your Dad." She started crying and yelling at me. I had no energy to figure out how to handle it. I looked at my best friend exasperated hoping to find an answer in h