Lately, both personally and professionally, I've been thinking a lot about the capacity it takes to be a parent.
Parenting is a wild ride. You can read the books, learn the strategies, understand child development, and know exactly what you're "supposed" to do. Then your actual child walks into the room with an actual problem and an actual personality, and suddenly knowing what to do is only half the work.
Especially with multiple kids, parenting can feel like being a first responder, project manager, mediator, teacher, chauffeur, and crisis manager all at once. Someone forgot something. Someone is crying. Someone needs to be somewhere in twelve minutes. Someone is furious about a perfectly reasonable boundary you just set.
And underneath all of that, you're a human being with your own work, relationships, and needs.
I sometimes laugh because a lot of us spend years building relatively reasonable adult lives. We choose work that fits our strengths. We surround ourselves with people who communicate well. We build routines that give us some sense of predictability.
Then we have children. And children are beautifully, spectacularly unpredictable.
Parenting Is a Roller Coaster You Have to Ride With Them
Kids don't arrive knowing how to regulate their emotions, tolerate disappointment, communicate respectfully, or understand our perfectly reasonable adult logic. They're developing.
A toddler's development might look like screaming "NO!" while lying on the kitchen floor. A teenager's might look like questioning your judgment, pushing against your boundaries, or directing a lot of frustration at the person trying hardest to love and guide them.
Even healthy development can feel chaotic when you're the parent living inside it.
And if we want to stay connected to our kids, we can't just get off the roller coaster. We have to ride alongside them. We hold on. We offer guidance and limits, and we try to stay steady while they're anything but steady.
That requires more than parenting knowledge. It requires capacity.
Every Stage of Parenting Has a New Growing Edge
I've been thinking about the idea of a growing edge lately. There's always something in parenting that asks us to stretch beyond what's comfortable.
Infancy asks something of us. Toddlerhood asks something different. The school years bring new challenges. Adolescence changes the relationship again. We don't master parenting once and then coast for the next twenty years. Our kids keep developing, so we have to keep developing too.
My own growing edge lately has been parenting a teenager. Understanding intellectually that adolescence involves a growing need for autonomy is one thing. Actually being the parent they push against is another.
I'm continually experimenting with the balance between kindness and firmness, listening and leading. Sometimes I need to understand. Sometimes I need to negotiate. And sometimes I need to say, calmly and confidently, I hear that you're upset with me, and this boundary is still going to stand.
That doesn't always feel good.
Doing the Right Thing Doesn't Always Feel Good
This is something parents need to hear more often. Sometimes you can handle a situation beautifully and your child will still be unhappy with you.
A toddler might scream that they don't like you because you won't give them another cookie. A teenager might tell you that you don't understand anything because you set a limit they strongly dislike. Your child being upset with you isn't automatically evidence that you handled something wrong.
This has become an important growing edge for me too. The courage to be disliked.
Parenting can't always be about preserving harmony. Sometimes loving our kids means tolerating their disappointment. Sometimes being a safe parent means being strong enough to hold a boundary while they have feelings about that boundary. For those of us with sensitive hearts or people pleasing tendencies, this can be especially hard. We want everyone to be okay. We want connection restored quickly.
But part of becoming a stronger parent is learning: my child can be angry with me, and I can still be okay. My child can dislike my decision, and I can still believe in it. My child can have big feelings without me having to make those feelings disappear.
That takes courage.
Bigger, Wiser, Kinder, and Stronger
Despite how complicated parenting can get, I keep returning to something surprisingly simple. Our children need us to keep practicing how to be the bigger, wiser, kinder, stronger person in the relationship.
Not perfect. Not emotionless. Not endlessly patient. Just grounded enough to remember that when our kids lose their footing, we don't have to lose ours with them.
I want to be kind enough to listen. Wise enough to understand development and look beneath the behavior. Strong enough to hold necessary boundaries. Calm enough not to turn every emotional reaction into a power struggle. And humble enough to recognize when I need to repair, apologize, or change my approach.
That last part matters too. The courage to be disliked doesn't mean becoming rigid. Sometimes courage means holding the boundary. Sometimes it means admitting, you know what, I thought about what you said, and I think you have a point.
Strong parenting requires both.
Sometimes I Have to Parent Myself Through Parenting
This is the part I've been practicing a lot lately. When parenting hurts, I need somewhere for my own emotions to go too.
I have a sensitive, loving heart. I think that sensitivity is part of what makes me a compassionate mother. But it also means words can hurt, even when I understand developmentally where they're coming from.
When your child says I hate you, you're a bad mom, or the classic I like Daddy better, knowing you shouldn't take it personally doesn't magically mean you won't feel anything.
Sometimes I put my hand on my heart and talk to myself with the compassion I'd offer someone I love. Of course that hurt. You're doing your best. You can feel sad and still hold the boundary.
That self-compassion helps me process my own emotions so I don't need my child to take care of them for me. They're allowed to be frustrated. And I'm allowed to be human.
Double Down on Caring for Yourself
This is also why I don't see self-care as separate from parenting. When parenting gets harder, I need my wellbeing practices even more.
I exercise. I walk. I move my body. Sometimes I imagine sweating out the stress while becoming physically stronger and steadier. Movement reminds me I have strength in my body even when I feel a little shaken emotionally.
I practice mindfulness and self-compassion. I connect with people who support me. I make room for joy and laughter, and I give myself space to process what I'm carrying instead of letting it pile up.
None of this makes parenting easy. It increases my capacity to do hard things well. And I think that distinction matters. Self-care isn't always about escaping the roller coaster. Sometimes it's how we become strong enough to stay on it.
Calm, Confident, Compassionate, and Courageous
The more I parent and the more I coach parents, the less interested I've become in the idea of perfect parenting. I'm much more interested in building capacity.
Can I stay calm enough to respond instead of react? Confident enough to trust my own judgment? Compassionate toward my child and myself? Courageous enough to do what I believe is right, even when my child doesn't like it? And can I stay open enough to learn when I get something wrong?
These are practices, not personality traits. Some days we'll do them beautifully. Some days we won't. Then we repair, take care of ourselves, and try again.
Because maybe one of the great surprises of parenting is that while we're so busy trying to raise our children, they're continually giving us opportunities to grow too.
From toddlers to teenagers and beyond, there will always be another growing edge. We don't have to meet it perfectly. We just have to keep becoming a little calmer, a little stronger, a little more compassionate, and a little braver as we go.
