Tag Archive for: Parenting

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The Complicated Truth About Second Chances in Relationships 

Some people’s stories don’t come with clean endings. They don’t tie up neatly or offer us a clear hero and villain. They just sit with us, heavy, complicated, and unresolved. 

Recently, my family lost someone like that. 

They were the kind of person you wanted at your dinner table. Funny, warm, generous, compassionate. The first to make you laugh. They were deeply loved. And also, if we are telling the whole truth, they made choices that left a long trail of hurt behind them. 

They walked away from a young spouse and child early on. A decision they spent much of their life regretting. There were attempts at rebuilding, but also more instability. Another marriage. Another divorce. Years marked by alcoholism, substance abuse, DUIs, jail time, and consequences that stacked up across states and decades. 

Eventually, they did get sober. In their late fifties, something shifted. But sobriety came late, and the cost of those earlier years remained. Their body was worn down. Their finances were gone. By their sixties, they were largely alone, relying on siblings for shelter and support. 

And while they wanted, really wanted, to reconnect with their child and grandchild, that door never fully reopened. 

That is the part some family members are struggling with. They feel the child should have forgiven more freely. That keeping distance was too harsh. Even cruel. 

But I find myself sitting in the middle, seeing something more complicated. 

Decades of research on parental substance abuse show that addiction does not only harm the person using. It reshapes the whole family system. SAMHSA’s guidance on substance use disorder and family therapy notes that families are both affected by and influential in recovery, and that healing often requires more than sobriety alone. It requires repair, honesty, changed patterns, and time.

For a child, especially one who experienced abandonment, inconsistency, or fear, the wound is not simply, “My parent made mistakes.” The wound is, “The person who was supposed to be safe was not safe for me.” 

That is a hard thing to unlearn. 

Psychologist Dr. Everett Worthington, known for his research on forgiveness, makes an important distinction. Forgiveness and reconciliation are related, but they are not the same. Forgiveness can be an internal release of bitterness. Reconciliation requires restored trust. And trust is not rebuilt by regret alone. It is rebuilt through consistent, trustworthy behavior over time. 

Still, I do believe reconciliation can happen for some relationships. 

I have seen families repair things I thought were beyond repair. Research-backed family care approaches for substance use disorder suggest that when the person in recovery takes responsibility without defensiveness, listens without demanding immediate forgiveness, and allows the harmed family member to set the pace, relationships can improve. Family-based treatment models also show that recovery is stronger when healthy family support is involved, though that support cannot be forced. 

In other words, hope is real. But hope cannot be hurried. 

A parent in recovery may need to say, “I hurt you. I understand why you don’t trust me. I will keep living differently whether or not you are ready to have a relationship with me.” That kind of humility is powerful. It does not guarantee reconciliation, but it creates the safest soil for it. 

And the adult child may need space to decide what healing looks like. For some, it may mean a slow reconnection. A birthday card. A short phone call. A supervised visit with grandchildren. Coffee once a year. For others, healing may mean distance and peace. 

Both can be legitimate. 

So when the opportunity for reconciliation is gone, how do you process and handle the grief? 

First, resist turning grief into a courtroom. Just state the facts. One person created the original fracture. The other inherited the consequences of it.

Second, hold compassion in both directions. Compassion for the parent who changed late, tried hard, and died with some regrets still unresolved. And compassion for the child whose trust was broken so deeply they could not simply will it whole again. 

Third, stop confusing boundaries with bitterness. Sometimes boundaries are what make a person healthy enough to keep loving from a distance. 

My family member’s life held joy and sorrow. Humor and heartbreak. Effort and consequence. And maybe the most honest way to honor them is not to force a tidy ending, but to tell the truth about all of it. 

Even the part where reconciliation was hoped for. Even the part where it did not come.

Lauren Hall is the President and CEO of First Things First. Contact her at lauren@firstthings.org

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What Will This Generation Not Hear from Their Parents?

A friend recently posed a question to me that I have not been able to shake. He said that for many Boomers, the phrase they rarely heard growing up was, “I love you.” For many Gen Xers and older millennials, the missing phrase was often, “I’m sorry.”

Then he asked: What will this generation say they did not hear from their parents?

It is such a smart question because every generation tends to correct the mistakes of the one before it. And, being human, every generation also manages to create a few fresh ones of its own.

In many families, earlier generations were not especially verbal with affection. Love was often present, but it was shown through sacrifice, duty, provision and perseverance more than spoken aloud. Then many of us came along determined to become more emotionally fluent. We wanted our children to know they were loved. We wanted them to identify their feelings, name their struggles and feel seen.

That is not a bad correction. In many ways, it is a very good one.

But I wonder if the phrase this generation may not hear enough is this: I believe in you.

Maybe even more fully: I believe in you, and I will support you while you do hard things.

Parents today hear a great deal about helping children identify and process emotions, and that matters. Children should absolutely learn to recognize fear, disappointment, anger, embarrassment and anxiety. They should know that feelings are real and that they are not shameful. But somewhere along the way, many families seem to have absorbed a second message that is less helpful: that feeling uncomfortable is itself a reason not to proceed.

It is not.

A friend told me recently about a family vacation where her 8-year-old son (a rambunctious, brave, beautifully wild little boy in most settings) froze at the idea of doing a high ropes course. He got scared and immediately said, “I’m not doing it.” His mom, to her credit, did not instantly rescue him from the challenge. She told him he could choose the ropes course or the rock wall, but one way or another, he was going to face a fear that day.

He protested. He resisted. He did not feel ready.

But what mattered most was not simply that she pushed him. It was that she stood beside him with the clear message: I believe in you. She was not mocking his fear, dismissing his feelings or throwing him to the wolves. She was supporting him through something difficult and telling him, in word and deed, that he was capable of more than his fear was telling him in that moment.

And he did it.

That is such an important message for children to hear.

Because emotions are important, but they are not dictators.

Fear can be real without being right. Anxiety can be loud without being wise. Discomfort can be intense without being dangerous. Children need help learning that they are not helpless in the presence of strong feelings. They can feel afraid and still move forward. They can feel embarrassed and still try. They can feel unsure and still begin.

Usually, they do that best when a steady adult is nearby saying, “I believe in you.”

That is how resilience is built. Not by shaming children for being afraid, and not by removing every obstacle before they have to face it, but by helping them discover that they can survive challenges and come out stronger on the other side.

Of course, this takes wisdom. Parenting is not about pushing children harshly, humiliating them or ignoring genuine limits. It is about refusing to let a child’s first impulse of fear become the final authority. It is about teaching them that courage is not the absence of fear, but the willingness to act in spite of it, especially when someone loving is there to help steady them.

Maybe that is one of the great parenting assignments of this era: to care deeply about our children’s emotional lives without raising them to believe that their emotions should run their lives.

Yes, help them name their feelings. Yes, sit with them in their struggles. Yes, be a safe place.

But also tell them the truth: I believe in you. You can be scared and still be brave. You can feel deeply without being ruled completely. You can try, fail, recover and try again. And I will be here to support you as you do.

That may be one of the most loving things a parent can say.

Because what children need is not just protection from hard things. They need a parent who believes they are capable of facing them.

And in a world increasingly tempted to treat discomfort as danger, that may be one of the most necessary messages of all.

Lauren Hall is the President and CEO of First Things First. Contact her at lauren@firstthings.org

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When Your Adult Child Hasn’t Launched

There is a particular ache in parenting adult children: they are old enough to vote, drive, and ignore your excellent advice, yet sometimes not quite old enough to stop making decisions that make you want to stare at the ceiling and reconsider every permissive moment since preschool.

The job has changed, but the love has not.

Psychologists call this season “emerging adulthood,” a stretch of life, often from the late teens through the twenties, marked by freedom, instability, and uneven progress. Temple University psychologist Dr. Laurence Steinberg has noted that the path to adulthood now takes longer than it once did, and that many parents and grown children are trying to build a new relationship while the old one is still rattling around in the trunk.

That helps explain why so many parents feel confused. We were trained for bedtime, broccoli, and booster seats. Nobody really prepared us for a 22-year-old with a fully formed opinion, a half-formed plan, and a habit of making choices that leave the family group text one message away from combustion.

The research is surprisingly clear on one point: love helps, but over-control does not.

In a 2016 study in the Journal of Child and Family Studies, Kayla Reed and colleagues found that helicopter parenting was linked indirectly to worse outcomes for emerging adults through lower self-efficacy, while autonomy-supportive parenting was linked to better life satisfaction and physical health. A newer review in Youth likewise found that parents still matter a great deal in this stage, but the healthiest approach balances warmth, expectations, and autonomy support.

The more troubling findings involve psychological control, using guilt, intrusion and manipulation tactics, or treating a grown child’s mind like it is still your rental property. Developmental psychologist Brian Barber famously described psychological control as parenting that “constrains, invalidates, and manipulates” a child’s emotional and psychological experience. In real life, it sounds like: “After all I’ve done for you, this is how you repay me?” or “If you loved this family, you wouldn’t do this,” or “I guess you just don’t care about us anymore.” The key difference is this: behavioral guidance says, “If you live here, you need to follow these rules.” Psychological control says, “I will make you feel guilty until you think and feel what I want.” Research has long distinguished those two forms of control because psychological control is more strongly tied to internal distress, while healthy behavioral limits are a separate thing altogether.

That distinction matters when an adult child has not launched well, or is making decisions that are harmful to themselves or others. Parents are still allowed to have standards. In fact, they need them. But a boundary is not a guilt trip in pearls. “You may not live here rent-free if you are using drugs,” is a boundary. “You are breaking your mother’s heart, and good children do not do this,” is emotional pressure wearing a church hat.

If you are in this season, the research points toward a hard but hopeful middle path: support without rescuing, honesty without humiliation, and love without emotional takeover.

Bowen family systems theory, developed by psychiatrist Murray Bowen, warns that in anxious families, the person who does the most accommodating can end up absorbing everybody else’s anxiety. That is a helpful reminder for parents who have become full-time fixers, financiers, or emotional paramedics. Steinberg makes a similar point in gentler language: the task is not to dominate your adult child, but to learn how to resolve conflict and build a strong adult relationship.

Which is another way of saying: your grown child may still be on the runway, but you do not help the plane take off by tying yourself to the landing gear, screaming directions along the way.

Love them dearly. Tell the truth calmly. Set boundaries you can actually keep. Refuse to confuse rescuing with helping.

That is not giving up on your child. It is making room for them to become an adult, which, in the end, was the assignment all along.

Lauren Hall is the President and CEO of First Things First. Contact her at lauren@firstthings.org

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The Long Shadow of Harsh Parenting

Most parents have had that moment.

You are tired, running late, already stretched thin, and your child does the very thing you asked them not to do. Again. The milk spills. The attitude appears. The shoes are still not on. And suddenly, before you can even catch it, your voice is louder than you meant for it to be. Your words are sharper. Your patience is gone.

Most of us know what it feels like to parent from frustration instead of wisdom.

That does not make someone a bad parent. It makes them human. But it is also worth asking an uncomfortable question: when does discipline stop being correction and start becoming harm?

That question matters because there is a real difference between raising children with strong boundaries and raising them with strong fear. One builds character. The other can quietly chip away at it.

Researchers generally define harsh parenting as discipline that relies on fear, pain, shame, or intimidation. That can include physical punishment like spanking, hitting, or grabbing, but it also includes verbal and emotional aggression: yelling, threatening, insulting, humiliating, or regularly tearing a child down. In simpler terms, it is parenting that tries to control behavior by overpowering the child rather than guiding the child.

That is not the same thing as being firm. It is not the same thing as setting rules, following through on consequences, or expecting respect. Healthy parenting can absolutely be strong. It can be clear, steady, and unmoving when it needs to be. But it does not require cruelty to be effective.

That distinction is important because decades of peer-reviewed research show that harsh parenting is linked to poorer outcomes later in life, especially in the areas of mental health and substance abuse.

Large reviews of the research have found that children exposed to harsh parenting are more likely later to struggle with anxiety, depression, aggression, and difficulty regulating emotions. That makes sense when you think about what children are learning at home. A child’s earliest lessons about love, safety, authority, and belonging are not learned in a classroom or from a podcast. They are learned in the living room, at the dinner table, and in the moments when something has gone wrong.

When discipline is consistently wrapped in fear or humiliation, the lesson may not simply be, “I made a bad choice.” The lesson can become, “I am a bad kid,” or “The people I trust most can turn on me when I fail.”

That message has staying power.

Child development experts have long noted that repeated harsh treatment can shape how children respond to stress. Kids raised in tense, explosive, or emotionally unsafe homes may become overly alert to conflict. They may struggle to calm themselves, trust others, or manage strong feelings. In childhood, those patterns may look like acting out, shutting down, or living constantly on edge. In adulthood, they may show up as anxiety, depression, anger, or unstable relationships.

In other words, what starts as survival can later become suffering.

This is one reason harsh parenting is connected to later mental health struggles. A child who grows up bracing for criticism may become an adult who expects rejection. A child who is constantly shamed may carry that shame into friendships, marriage, work, and parenting. Sometimes the wounds are loud and visible. Sometimes they are quiet and buried under achievement, busyness, or a good sense of humor. But hidden pain is still pain.

Research also shows a connection between harmful childhood environments and later substance use risk. That does not mean every child from a harsh home will struggle with addiction. It does mean the odds are higher. And honestly, that is not hard to understand. Alcohol and drugs often offer what wounded people have been needing all along: relief. Relief from anxiety. Relief from shame. Relief from emotional pain that never had a safe place to go.

For someone who never learned how to calm distress in healthy ways, a substance can feel like help before it becomes harmful.

That is one of the heartbreaks here. A child who needs comfort may grow into an adult who goes looking for comfort in dangerous places.

None of this is meant to heap shame on parents. Parenting is hard, and many mothers and fathers are trying to raise children while carrying their own exhaustion, wounds, and family histories. Some are repeating what they were shown because it is the only model they ever had. But love alone does not cancel impact. Good intentions are important, but they are not the same as good outcomes.

The hopeful news is that families are not stuck.

Parents can learn to correct without crushing. They can hold boundaries without humiliation. They can lead without threats. They can apologize when they get it wrong, repair what has been damaged, and create a home where truth and grace live together. That is not weak parenting. That is deeply strong parenting.

Strong families are not built on fear. They are built on trust, consistency, accountability, repentance, forgiveness, and love that knows how to stay calm. Children need rules, yes. They also need dignity. They need guidance, but they also need safety.

Because in the end, the goal is not just a well-behaved child at the moment. The goal is to become a healthy adult later on.

And that kind of future is shaped, in part, by what kind of home we build now.

Lauren Hall is the President and CEO of First Things First. Contact her at lauren@firstthings.org

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The Mental Load Behind the Mess

Clutter looks harmless until you live with it.

It’s the shoes by the door that turn into a pile, the mail that never quite lands in a folder, the laundry that migrates from basket to chair to “I’ll deal with it later.” For some people, that’s background noise. For others, it’s like trying to relax while an alarm quietly beeps in the next room.

A 2025 study in the Journal of Environmental Psychology by researcher Francis Quinn helps explain why clutter can feel so heavy. In a survey of 501 adults, people who reported more clutter also reported worse mental well-being, lower life satisfaction, and more negative emotions.

The study found an important “middle step,” too: clutter tended to make people see their homes as less beautiful, and that loss of “home beauty” partly explained why well-being dropped. In other words, clutter didn’t just take up space, it changed how home felt, and that mattered.

Now, if you’ve ever thought, “Okay, but why does this stress me out more than it stresses my spouse?” you’re not imagining things. One of the most talked-about studies on this comes from psychologists Darby Saxbe and Rena Repetti. In their 2010 research, they asked dual-income couples with children to give video tours of their homes while describing what they saw, then the researchers tracked mood and measured cortisol, a stress hormone, over several days. The pattern was clear: wives who described their homes with more “stressful” language, words like cluttered, messy, or unfinished, showed less healthy daily cortisol patterns and worse mood. For husbands, the link between home conditions and stress was much weaker.

That doesn’t mean men don’t care about home, and it doesn’t mean women are simply “pickier.” It points to something deeper: clutter is rarely just clutter. It often stands for unfinished tasks, and unfinished tasks usually have an owner in the family system, even if nobody ever said it out loud.

This is where the idea of the female mental load connects to the mess on the counter.

Sociologist Allison Daminger, in her 2019 paper in American Sociological Review, described “cognitive labor” as the work of noticing what needs to be done, planning it, deciding how it will happen, and then monitoring whether it actually gets done. That’s the invisible job behind the visible chores, and it’s one reason clutter can feel like more than “stuff.” It can feel like proof that the whole mental checklist is still running.

More recent research has put numbers to the emotional cost. A 2024 study in Archives of Women’s Mental Health examined cognitive household labor and found it was linked to women’s depression, stress, burnout, overall mental health, and relationship functioning. The point isn’t that women are destined to carry this burden, it’s that many do, and clutter can become a daily trigger because it’s a constant visual reminder of all the managing that remains undone.

So what do couples and parents do with this information without turning it into a blame game?

Start by translating the fight. Many “clutter arguments” are really arguments about support, responsibility, and rest. A helpful sentence sounds like, “When the house is cluttered, my brain won’t shut off. It feels like a list I’m still responsible for.” That’s different from, “You’re a slob,” and it gives your partner something real to respond to.

Next, move from “help” to “ownership.” Helping is doing something when asked. Ownership is noticing, planning, and finishing without being managed. If the mental load is part of what makes clutter

 so stressful for women, then the solution can’t be one partner acting as the home manager who hands out assignments. A fairer approach is agreeing on a few areas that each person fully owns, like school papers, laundry start-to-finish, lunches, bedtime reset, or the kitchen close-down, and letting the owner decide how to handle it.

Then, lower the temperature by defining what “good enough” means in this season. Not your ideal house, not your childhood house, not the one on social media, just a shared minimum standard that protects peace. When couples don’t define the standard together, the more stressed partner often becomes the default enforcer, and that role is exhausting.

Finally, make it routine, not personal. A short daily reset, ten minutes after dinner, everyone involved, can do more for harmony than one big cleaning sprint on Saturday that ends in resentment. The goal is not a magazine-ready home. The goal is a home that feels livable to both of you, and restful to the person whose body treats clutter like a stress signal.

If the research teaches us anything, it’s that home isn’t just where we keep our stuff. Home is where our nervous systems try to recover.

When couples take clutter seriously as a mental load issue, not a character flaw, they stop arguing about piles and start building partnership, and that is the kind of clean-up that actually lasts.

Lauren Hall is the President and CEO of First Things First. Contact her at lauren@firstthings.org.

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When “I Don’t Want to Parent” Goes Viral, Kids Still Have to Live There

Every few weeks, social media serves up a new kind of honesty: parents saying they love their kids… and also don’t want to be around them.

Not “I need a break,” but “I only have about 10–15 minutes in me a day,” or “I don’t want to play,” or “My kids irritate me nonstop.”

I believe parents should be able to say out loud: This is hard. We should be able to confess the parts that feel boring, repetitive, loud, sticky, and mentally exhausting. We should be able to admit that sometimes we do not want to build the Lego city, host the 17th tea party, or hear one more dramatic retelling of a playground injustice.

But here’s the line I don’t want us to cross: normalizing the feeling is healthy. Normalizing the withdrawal is not.

Because kids don’t experience our disengagement as a trendy hot take. They experience it as their home.

And right now, families are carrying a lot. In 2024, the U.S. Surgeon General released an advisory focused on parents’ mental health and well-being, pointing to high stress levels among parents and calling for stronger support systems. That doesn’t surprise anyone who has ever tried to answer work emails while cutting grapes into legally safe sizes.

That same advisory highlights something else that matters: many parents are not just tired, they’re lonely. When you parent in isolation, every normal challenge feels like a personal failure. And when parenting starts to feel like constant failure, emotional distancing can start to feel like relief.

Psychologists even have a name for a pattern that includes this kind of chronic exhaustion and “backing away” emotionally: parental burnout. Researchers describe it as intense exhaustion related to parenting, emotional distancing from your children, and feeling like you’re not the parent you used to be. And here’s the part that should sober all of us: studies have linked parental burnout with higher risks of neglectful and harmful parenting behaviors, not because most parents want to hurt their kids, but because overwhelm can erode self-control and compassion. 

So when the internet shrugs and says, “It’s fine to check out,” I want to say, gently but clearly: it may be common, but it’s not harmless.

Now, about that “10 minutes a day” idea.

Focused time matters. A short window of undistracted attention, phone down, eyes up, child-led, can be powerful. But it’s not a magic spell that covers the other 23 hours and 50 minutes.

Even research on parent-child time tends to land in a nuanced place: quantity of time isn’t the only ingredient. In some studies, the amount of time moms spend with children isn’t strongly tied to every outcome people assume it is, especially once you account for the bigger picture of resources and family context.

But nuance is not the same as permission to disappear.

Kids don’t only need “connection time.” They also need availability through a parent who is emotionally reachable enough to notice, respond, repair, and guide. In early childhood especially, Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child describes “serve and return” interactions (those back-and-forth exchanges between a child and a caring adult) as a key building block for healthy brain development. 

That doesn’t require you to be Mary Poppins all day. It does mean your child should not feel like they have to audition for your attention.

So what do we normalize instead?

Let’s normalize saying: “I’m maxed out.”
Let’s normalize saying: “I feel irritated.”
Let’s normalize saying: “I need help.”
And then let’s normalize doing the next part, the part social media rarely films:

Finding a safe place to tell the truth without making your child pay for it.

Sometimes that safe place is a friend who won’t judge you. Sometimes it’s a parenting group, a faith community, a coach, a therapist, or a support circle where people can say, “Me too,” and then move toward skills and support, not just venting and resignation.

Because here’s what worries me: we are raising kids in a culture that already preaches individualism like a religion. “Protect your peace.” “Choose yourself.” “Do what’s best for you.” Some of that language has helped people escape truly toxic situations. But applied carelessly to parenting, it can turn into something ugly: My comfort is the highest good, even when I’m the adult and you’re the child.

Parenthood changes your identity. Not because you stop being you, but because you become you-with-responsibility. Love isn’t only a feeling; it’s a practice. And kids can’t thrive on a practice we only do when we feel like it.

If you’re reading this and thinking, “I relate a little too much,” I’m not here to shame you. I’m here to name what might be true: you may be depleted, depressed, anxious, unsupported, or burned out. And you deserve help.

But your child deserves something too: a parent who doesn’t just normalize the urge to check out, who learns how to come back.

Not perfect. Not performing. Just present.

Lauren Hall is the President and CEO of First Things First. Contact her at lauren@firstthings.org.

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Why Mattering Matters, Especially for Children

Most of us learned “basic needs” as a short list: food, water, shelter, safety. Useful, yes. Complete? Not really.

Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child is asking us to widen the list with something that sounds soft but works like a load-bearing wall: mattering. In their working paper Mattering in Early Childhood, they define mattering as the feeling that we are valued and that we have value to add. Put simply: “I’m important to you, and what I do makes a difference here.”

What caught my attention is how direct they are: mattering isn’t a “nice extra.” It’s an essential human need. That doesn’t replace food or housing; it explains why some kids can have the basics and still feel shaky inside. A child can have a full fridge and still quietly wonder, Would anyone notice if I wasn’t here?

Harvard also clarifies a common mix-up. Belonging is about fitting in. Mattering is about significance. You can belong to a family, classroom, or team and still not feel valued. And you can feel loved but never trusted to contribute, which also chips away at mattering. Their paper keeps returning to the two parts: feeling valued and adding value.

This connects to the Center’s long-standing “serve and return” concept: the back-and-forth exchanges between a child and a caring adult. When a baby coos and you respond, when a toddler points and you name what they see, when a child is upset and you help them settle, those moments shape brain architecture and build early language and social skills.

Mattering grows in those ordinary, repeated returns: I see you. I’m with you.

It also helps explain why chronic stress hits kids so hard. Harvard defines toxic stress as prolonged activation of stress response systems, especially when a child lacks supportive relationships to buffer that stress. Support doesn’t erase hardship, but it helps a child’s body return to calm, again and again, which supports resilience.

That’s why “mattering” is so important for kids in vulnerable neighborhoods, or in families with chaos, conflict, untreated mental illness, or substance use. In those settings, mattering can be the first thing to slip, even when adults love their children. When life is unpredictable, kids often stop asking, “Do you love me?” and start asking, “Do I count? Will anyone show up consistently?” The Center’s resilience paper notes that children who do well despite serious hardship often have had at least one stable, committed relationship with a supportive adult. 

So what do we do on a normal Tuesday? Start small on the “valued” side. Make eye contact. Put the phone down for one minute. Notice what they’re trying to tell you beneath the behavior. Comfort first, correct second. That’s serve and return in real life. 

Then build the “value to add” side. It’s faster to do everything yourself, but kids need real chances to contribute. Harvard notes that welcoming a child’s contributions helps build mattering. Let them set out napkins, feed the pet, carry in groceries, sweep after dinner, read to a sibling, and say the quiet part out loud: “That helped our family. You made a difference.”

If you’re tired reading this, you’re not disqualified. Mattering doesn’t require perfect parenting. It requires consistent signals, some warmth, some attention, and some real opportunities to help, until kids believe something sturdy: My presence counts, and I can do good here.

Lauren Hall is the President and CEO of First Things First. Contact her at lauren@firstthings.org.

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What High Vs. Low Effort Looks Like in Families

“Low effort family” is a new term trending across social media. With therapists, researchers and relationship enthusiasts weighing in and providing different definitions of what a “low effort family” looks like, I had to do my own research.

Some families run on “auto-pilot.” Plans are last minute. Rules change depending on who’s tired. Conversations are mostly logistics (“Where’s your backpack?”). Conflict either blows up or gets buried.

Other families aren’t perfect, but they’re more intentional. They follow through. They build a few steady routines. They repair after hard moments.

That’s what I mean by “low effort” vs. “high effort” families.

These aren’t official research labels. But they describe real, research-backed family processes that shape how kids and adults do over time.

A “low effort” family often isn’t lazy. It’s usually low bandwidth. Stress, long work hours, money pressure, anxiety or depression, and lack of support can drain a family’s capacity. When you’re running on fumes, you react instead of plan. Limits get inconsistent. Connection gets replaced by correction. And the hard conversations keep getting pushed down the road.

A “high effort” family isn’t a “perfect family.” It’s a family that puts energy into a few basics: predictable routines, warmth plus limits, direct communication, and real repair. Family therapist and researcher Froma Walsh, PhD, describes family resilience as learnable processes—how families organize, communicate, and make meaning under stress. In other words, “high effort” is a set of skills you can build, not a personality you either have or don’t.

Why does any of this matter? Because small, repeated patterns add up. For example, routines aren’t just nice, they’re protective. A large systematic review of family routines (spanning decades of studies) found that routines are linked with positive child outcomes and can be especially helpful in high-risk settings. When a home is predictable in a few key ways, like sleep, meals, school rhythm, kids tend to feel safer and more steady.

Follow-through matters too, especially as kids get older.

A 2025 meta-analysis that pulled together 571 studies with more than two million participants found parental monitoring and behavioral control are associated with lower substance use in adolescents and emerging adults. That’s a research way of saying: when parents pay attention, set limits, and stay engaged, risk goes down.

And the emotional climate matters. A systematic review and meta-analysis found parenting behaviors are meaningfully related to internalizing problems in kids and teens, things like anxiety and depression. Kids don’t need parents who never mess up. They need parents who are present, responsive, and willing to repair.

If you’re wondering where your family falls right now, don’t overthink it. Just look at the past two weeks. Have you had two or three predictable routines most days? Have you followed through on limits more often than not? Have you had any daily connection with your kids that wasn’t correction or logistics, even ten minutes? And when there’s conflict, does it get repaired within a day or so? If you’re answering “not really,” that’s a sign you might be in a low-effort season.

Here’s the good news: moving toward “high effort” doesn’t mean doing everything. It means doing one thing consistently. Pick one routine that causes the most chaos, such as bedtime, mornings, dinner, homework, and simplify it until it’s repeatable.

The goal is not a Pinterest routine. It’s predictability.

Or choose one repair habit and practice it like a script: “I didn’t handle that well. I’m sorry. I hear you. Let’s try again.” That one sentence can change the emotional temperature of a whole house.

And if your home feels stuck with constant conflict, ongoing shutdowns, or mental health concerns, getting support is not a sign you failed. It’s a high-effort move. A licensed marriage and family therapist (LMFT), psychologist (PhD/PsyD), or psychiatrist (MD) can help you build skills and lower stress.

Naming the difference between low effort and high effort matters because it turns “We’re struggling” into something you can actually work with: specific, changeable habits. And families don’t transform in one big dramatic moment.

They change through small choices, repeated often, that make home feel steadier and more connected.

Lauren Hall is the President and CEO of First Things First. Contact her at lauren@firstthings.org.

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