I’ve received a lot of questions about “restorative parenting,” so I decided to dedicate an article to what I believe is the BEST way to discipline your kids in a restorative way, something I call Collaborative Discipline.

If you’re here, chances are, you’re done with the punishment and control, “command and demand,” paradigm for parenting... even if sometimes you slip back into that once in a while. You want a better way that doesn’t look like compounding threats, escalating conflict, and doesn’t turn “get off your iPad” into something rivaling mutually assured destruction.

But how do we do that? How do we break the cycle of control that almost always backfires during the teen years without going full on “permissive parent”?

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We all have moments in life that change the way we think about a problem or even the world. In fact, it’s such a fundamental human experience, that half the movies you’ve seen revolve around this “perspective shift.” The protagonist begins to see that the problem all along was the way they were engaging the conflict, not the conflict itself. They change the way they’re thinking about it and it all drops into place: Neo freezes time and stop bullets; Luke surrenders, stops trying to seek revenge and lays down his weapon; Mulan stops trying to overcome her place as a woman in a patriarchal society and leverages it as her greatest strength. Perspective shift.

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I’m a nerd

I’ve always been a nerd and loved nerdy things. Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, you name it. I don’t just like nerdy stuff for the epic action and impossible magic and tech, I love it because I’ve often found that the simplest and deepest truths of life are best explored in the realms of the impossible.

When I eventually embraced the ultimate nerd right of passage and read Dune (long before Timothée Chalamet made it cool) the litany against fear immediately intrigued me. The protagonists of Dune, in moments of fear, often repeat the litany in order to not act rashly out of their own fear and return to a regulated state.

The litany begins:

I must not fear.

Fear is the mind-killer.

Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

Bringing it to Parenting

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I am the first to say there’s more than one way to peel a potato. It’s why I don’t like giving “scripts” or “quick fix” parenting advice. The method you use to teach (aka discipline) your kid might be quite different than what I use for my 6 year old... which is totally different than what I use for my almost 3 year old... or my one year old.

So if you’re following people who give you info that works, GREAT! Keep doing it. But if it seems like some of there stuff just doesn’t stick... well this might help you understand why.

The problem with MOST methods of discipline

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Kids get scared. They get anxious. Sometimes they probably should be. But nevertheless, as their parent, it’s our job to help them navigate it.

In this week’s article, we’re diving in head-first into some of our kids’ most vulnerable emotional places...

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I recently encountered a mom overwhelmed with four young kids. Although I’m no better parent than she is, especially not for her kids, my experience in researching effective strategies for tantrums helped because her two-year-old was in a meltdown. She had her hands full, managing four kids under the age of six, a challenging situation for anyone.

It’s hard not to help when you see that.

But with our partners, it’s counterproductive.

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Your kid comes home from school, slams the door, and collapses onto their bed or the couch (usually buried in a phone or tablet). You know something’s wrong.... but when you ask, all you get is a muttered, “Nothing.”

If our kids are more in the 2-5 range, maybe this plays out differently. When they arrive at home, they either bounce off the walls or just melt down over how you sliced their sandwich.

For many parents, the knee-jerk reaction is to either press for answers or let them stew in their emotions, hoping they’ll come around eventually. But what if we could approach this differently?

Introducing... Empathy. You’ve probably heard of it and, yes, it lives up to the hype.

Gone are the days of parents just reigning themselves to the old cliche’s “You’ll get over it” or “It’s just a phase”. Empathy is about connecting with your child on a deep emotional level, fostering trust, and most importantly, helping them navigate their feelings and recognize them....

Here’s a brief rundown of how you can be empathetic with kids of ALL ages with five simple rules:

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Kids “not listening” is a virtually universal experience of parents, not only for millennial parents, but going back for literally millennia. Before I jump into some practical strategies for more effectively communicating with the tiny humans, I first want to clarify something…

Most of the time, we say our kids won’t “listen,” it’s really not so much about listening as obeying. Now, there is no doubt that if your kid is engrossed in their iPad, you could probably tell them you were taking them to Disney World RIGHT NOW and they still might not look up, but this is the exception, not the rule (don’t worry, I have a hack for that too, later).

Most of the time though, it’s less about “not hearing” than it is about compliance.

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Play is EVERYTHING for kids. It’s how they learn in so many facets of their lives and the benefits of intentionally prioritizing play are overwhelming. That’s why, if you ask me, kids under 12 actually have the potential to learn MORE in the summer months when they don’t have formalized/organized education than they do the other nine months out of the year.

(Trigger warning: this may make you question the formalized classroom 7 hour schooling system... sorry, not sorry.)

I say “the potential” because that learning isn’t guaranteed by any stretch. If we pack their summers with structure and constant organized, adult driven activity, it won’t happen. So let’s dive into why play is important and how we can get the most out of it for our kids while social convention and schedule allow.

The Science of Play

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If your child is melting down after school, refusing to listen, or suddenly “shutting down” around learning, this conversation will likely hit close to home. We unpack what’s really happening beneath behaviors like school resistance, emotional …

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Don’t worry, friend. I got you.

Sibling conflict is unavoidable. There is no mythical “perfect age gap” that prevents it and as a result of reading this will not miraculously go away. That said, as with all things in parenting, there are things we can do that can:

• Help reduce avoidable sibling conflicts

• Help reframe sibling conflict into learning opportunities

• Help reduce the potential long term relational affects of sibling conflict

And wouldn’t life be a whole lot better if we could [at LEAST] do that?

So in an effort to keep my weekly to less than a length of a book chapter, let’s just jump into it.

Here are my three rules to raise good siblings.

Rule 1: No Comparison

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Most parenting advice focuses on what to do when your toddler refuses to listen, has meltdowns, or pushes every limit. But what if the real challenge isn’t just their behavior, it’s what gets act…

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I want you to close your eyes after you read this paragraph and count 10 breaths, as slowly as you can. When you’ve done that, search your mind and memories, and contemplate (for as much time as you can devote to it) the following:

“What did my parents/care giver tell me about who I am?”

Your thoughts and feelings about the above question probably only scratch the surface of the reality of how your primary caregivers shaped with their words. Most people spend years or decades slowly unpacking these things to fully comprehend the immense impact of what our default most trusted sources of information shaped in our self-identity with what they said.

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