Tag Archive for: Parents

Hope is a Skill, Not a Wish

At a recent conference, I had the privilege of hearing Dr. Chan Hellman speak about the science of hope. Hellman is a professor at the University of Oklahoma and the founding director of its Hope Research Center. His research examines hope as a psychological strength that can help children and adults experiencing trauma and adversity.

One of the most powerful takeaways from his presentation was this:

Before people can change or grow, they must first be able to imagine a new reality.

They need to see that something different is possible.

Hellman challenged us to think of hope as a noun, not merely as a verb we use when we wish for something. Hope is not simply a feeling that appears when circumstances are good. It is something we can possess, develop and practice.

That framing matters because we often talk about hope as though it were little more than wishful thinking.

Psychologist C. R. Snyder developed what is commonly known as Hope Theory. In the foundational 1991 article “The Will and the Ways,” Snyder and his colleagues described hope as a cognitive pattern involving agency and pathways. Agency is the determination and belief that we can move toward a goal. Pathways are the plans and possible routes we identify for reaching it. Both are necessary. A person needs the will to move and a way to move forward. 

The Hope Research Center presents the model in three practical parts: goals, pathways and agency. A meaningful goal gives us a destination. Pathways give us possible routes. Agency provides the motivation to begin, persist and change course when we encounter an obstacle. 

Research also suggests that these capacities can be strengthened. In a 2006 pilot study, Jennifer Cheavens, David Feldman, Amber Gum, Scott Michael and C. R. Snyder tested an eight-session hope-based group intervention focused on building goal-pursuit skills. Participants showed statistically significant improvements in the agency component of hope, along with improvements in life meaning and self-esteem and reductions in symptoms of anxiety and depression. It was a small pilot study, but it offers evidence that hopeful thinking is not necessarily a fixed personality trait. It can be practiced and developed. 

One of Hellman’s examples at the conference helped make this framework especially clear.

Many of us set goals based on what we are trying to avoid.

I want to avoid losing my children. I want to avoid going to jail. I want to avoid getting a divorce. I want to avoid using substances again. I want to avoid another argument.

These goals are understandable. When we are frightened, hurting or facing serious consequences, preventing another painful outcome may feel like the most urgent thing in the world.

But an avoidance goal only tells us what we are running from. It does not necessarily show us what we are trying to build. A forward-looking goal creates a different picture.

Instead of only saying, “I do not want to lose my children,” a parent might say, “I want to become a safe, stable and dependable parent. I want to rebuild trust and create a home in which my children can thrive.”

Instead of saying, “I do not want to get divorced,” a spouse might say, “I want to create a marriage in which we listen, repair conflict and treat each other with respect. I want to build a healthier atmosphere in our home and a brighter future for our children.”

Instead of saying, “I do not want to use again,” someone might say, “I want to build a life in recovery. I want to be healthy, present and connected to the people I love.”

The circumstances have not suddenly become easy. The desired outcome is not guaranteed. But the person now has a vision of something worth moving toward.

That vision creates a destination. Once there is a destination, pathways can begin to emerge. Those pathways might include counseling, treatment, parenting education, accountability, a support group, new daily routines, healthier relationships or one difficult but necessary conversation.

As I listened to Hellman, I became excited because he was giving research-based language to something we have witnessed for years at First Things First. Families need hope.

Parents who have been separated from their children need hope. People struggling with addiction need hope. Couples on the brink of divorce need hope. Separated spouses who genuinely want to reconcile need hope. Blended families trying to create a healthier reality than anything they have previously experienced need hope.

People need more than someone telling them what they have done wrong. They need more than a list of risks, consequences or problems. They need someone who will walk alongside them and help them see that their current reality does not have to be their permanent reality.

They need help seeing what is still within their control. They need help identifying the decisions they can make, the resources they can access and the next healthy step available to them.

Sometimes people need to borrow someone else’s hope until they are ready to carry their own.

Hellman’s research helps explain why this matters. In a 2022 article in Advances in Social Work, Hellman, Angela Pharris and Ricky Munoz proposed hope as a framework for responding to adverse childhood experiences. They argued that hope can offer useful guidance for building trauma-informed approaches that help people respond to adversity and pursue greater well-being. 

This does not mean we minimize trauma or pretend that serious problems can be solved through positive thinking. Hope is not denial.

Hope does not erase consequences, remove obstacles or guarantee that other people will make the choices we want them to make. Some circumstances require professional treatment, legal guidance, safety planning or long-term support. Hope simply gives us a way to begin moving.

Here are two ways to practice the skill of hope:

1. Rewrite an avoidance goal

Think about an area of your life in which you have been saying, “I do not want,” “I need to stop” or “I am trying to avoid.”

Then ask yourself a different question: What do I want to create?

“I do not want us to fight so much” might become, “I want us to learn how to disagree without attacking each other.”

“I do not want to be an absent parent” might become, “I want to be a dependable and emotionally present parent.”

Make the goal specific, meaningful and focused as much as possible on actions within your control. You cannot control every outcome or another person’s decisions, but you can identify the kind of person you want to become and the next choice you want to make.

2. Create a hope map

Write your goal at the top of a page. Underneath it, list at least three possible pathways toward that goal. Do not rely on only one route. Hopeful thinking includes the ability to find another path when the first one becomes blocked.

Next to each pathway, identify the obstacles that might get in the way. Then write down one possible response or detour for each obstacle.

Finally, choose one small action you can take within the next 24 hours. Identify one person who can encourage you, hold you accountable or help you find another pathway when you feel stuck.

A small step may not feel dramatic, but it matters. Every completed step becomes evidence that you are not entirely powerless.

Hope does not promise that every story will end exactly as we want it to. It reminds us that the future has not been fully written and that our choices can still help shape what comes next.

At First Things First, that is a significant part of our work. We help people imagine what could be, identify possible paths toward it and recognize the agency they still possess.

Hope is not passive. It is practiced.

And when people practice hope, change becomes imaginable. Then, through one decision and one step at a time, it can become possible.

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

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The Stories That Make Us Strong

A dear friend of mine, who is a marriage and family therapist, recently sent me a piece of research because, as she put it, it reminded her of my family.

This is both a compliment and a small accusation.

I’ve often felt I know more family history than the average person should. Not just the sweet stories. Not just the “your great-grandmother made the best biscuits” stories. I know the uncomfortable ones, too. The ones most families might tuck away in a drawer labeled “Let’s not bring this up over brisket.”

One of those stories is about my paternal grandparents. When I was seven or eight years old, I learned they had once been on the brink of divorce. This was decades before I was born, and the story was shared at a family gathering over barbecue with the same casual tone someone might use to discuss a Christmas memory.

I was stunned.

We had recently celebrated their 45th wedding anniversary. They seemed so in love. Even in their early 60s, they held hands, laughed together and seemed genuinely delighted to be in the same room. This stood out to me because many of my friends’ grandparents appeared more “mildly annoyed roommates” than “true life partners.”

As I got older, I asked more questions. I learned their near-divorce was not the end of their story. In many ways, it became the turning point. The almost collapse of their marriage helped catapult them into the beautiful relationship I later witnessed. It also explained why they were so adamant that my dad and his brothers not only “get married and stay married,” but adore their wives. Date them. Laugh with them. Play together. Enjoy each other.

I did not realize how much that story shaped my own understanding of marriage until I was married myself.

This is exactly the kind of thing psychologists Robyn Fivush and Marshall Duke at Emory University have studied for years: the power of family stories. Not just the shiny stories. The whole story.

Duke, Fivush and their colleagues developed what is called the “Do You Know?” scale, a set of 20 questions designed to measure how much children know about their family history. The questions are simple. Do you know how your parents met? Do you know where your grandparents grew up? Do you know the source of your name? Do you know about an illness, injury, hard time or lesson your parents experienced when they were younger?

The point was not to see which children had memorized the most family trivia. This was not Ancestry.com meets standardized testing. The researchers wanted to understand whether children who knew more about their family’s past also showed stronger emotional well-being.

In one study, Fivush, Duke and Jennifer Bohanek looked at 66 adolescents, ages 14 to 16, from broadly middle-class, mixed-race, two-parent families. The teens completed the “Do You Know?” scale along with standardized measures of family functioning, identity development and well-being. The results were striking. Adolescents who knew more about their family history showed higher levels of emotional well-being and stronger identity achievement, even when researchers controlled for general family functioning.

Earlier work found similar patterns among younger children. Higher scores on the “Do You Know?” scale were linked with higher self-esteem, a stronger sense of control over life, better family functioning, lower anxiety and fewer internalizing and externalizing behavior problems.

But here is the important part: Fivush and Duke were clear that simply stuffing a child’s brain with facts about Uncle Larry’s old Ford truck does not magically make them resilient.

The power is not in the facts alone. The power is in the process.

Families who tell stories are usually doing something deeper. They are creating connections. They are showing children where they come from. They are giving them a larger narrative to stand inside when life gets hard.

And, according to Duke, the healthiest family narratives are not only ascending stories, where everything gets better and better. They are not only descending stories, where everything falls apart. The most helpful stories are often “oscillating” stories: We had hard times. We got through them. We had good times. We lost our way. We found our way again.

That matters because children do not need a family tree full of perfect people. In fact, good luck finding one.

Children need to know their family has survived real life. They need stories of grandparents who struggled, parents who made mistakes, relatives who repaired relationships, people who changed, families who grieved and laughed in the same kitchen.

Of course, this does not mean every story is appropriate for every age. We do not need to hand a six-year-old a full documentary on generational trauma while they are trying to eat macaroni and cheese. But we can tell the truth in age-appropriate ways.

“We had a really hard season, and we had to learn how to love each other better.”

“Grandpa made some mistakes when he was younger, and he worked hard to make things right.”

“When I was your age, I felt left out sometimes, too.”

“Our family has been through hard things before, and we know how to take the next right step.”

So how do we use this research in real family life?

First, tell stories at ordinary times. The best family storytelling often happens in the car, at the dinner table, on the porch, during holidays or while washing dishes. You do not need a formal family history night, although if your people will tolerate that, bless them.

Second, tell the whole story, not just the polished one. Share the wedding day and the almost-divorce. The job promotion and the job loss. The answered prayer and the season of waiting. Children learn resilience when they hear that struggle is not proof their family is broken. It is proof their family is human.

Third, connect the story to meaning. Do not just say, “Your grandmother lived through a hard time.” Say, “That taught her to be generous,” or “That is why she cared so much about keeping family close.” The lesson helps the child carry the story forward.

Fourth, ask questions. Try a few from the “Do You Know?” scale. Ask your children what they know about where you grew up, how you met their other parent, what you were like as a child or what mistakes taught you the most. Let them ask follow-ups. Let the conversation wander.

Finally, remember that family stories are not about creating pride in perfection. They are about creating belonging.

When I think about my grandparents now, I do not think less of their marriage because it almost ended. I think more of it. I saw the fruit of repair. I saw two people who had weathered something hard and built something beautiful on the other side.

That story gave me more than information. It gave me imagination.

It helped me believe that love can mature. That repair is possible. Those hard seasons do not have to have the final word.

And maybe that is one of the greatest gifts we can give our children: not a flawless family history, but an honest one sturdy enough to hold them.

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

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Dad’s Earliest Job May Be More Important Than We Thought

Last Sunday, we celebrated Father’s Day.

There were cards with handprints, neckties that may or may not ever be worn, backyard cookouts, phone calls, social media tributes and children proudly presenting homemade gifts involving glue, glitter and questionable spelling.

Father’s Day gives us a chance to say what should probably be said more often: Dads matter.

But sometimes I wonder if we say it so often that it starts to sound like a greeting card instead of a truth with real weight behind it.

A recent Penn State study gives us another reason to take fatherhood seriously, not just as a sentimental idea, but as something that can shape a child’s health years down the road.

Researchers looked at how mothers and fathers interacted with their babies at 10 months old, how parents worked together when the children were toddlers, and then how those children were doing physically around age 7. They were especially interested in markers connected to heart and metabolic health, including inflammation and blood sugar regulation.

What they found was striking.

Fathers who were warm, responsive and developmentally supportive with their babies at 10 months were more likely to have healthier dynamics with the child’s mother when the child was 2. In those families, children showed better health markers years later.

In other words, the way a father interacted with his baby before that child could walk, talk in full sentences or form lasting memories was still connected to the child’s physical health in second grade.

That is worth sitting with for a minute.

We often talk about fatherhood in terms of provision, discipline, coaching, teaching life skills or showing up at big events. And all of those things matter. But this study points us back to the earliest, quietest moments of fatherhood.

A dad getting down on the floor with his baby.

A dad responding gently when his child fusses.

A dad noticing when the baby is overstimulated and needs a break.

A dad making silly faces, reading the same board book 400 times, changing diapers, singing off-key, offering comfort and delight.

Those moments may not look impressive from the outside. They do not usually make it into baby books. Nobody gives a trophy for calmly rocking a tired infant at 2 a.m.

But children’s bodies are listening long before children have the words to explain what they are experiencing.

Babies learn whether the world is safe. They learn whether their needs matter. They learn whether the big people in their lives are predictable, warm and available. They learn, in the deepest parts of their developing brains and bodies, whether stress is something they have to manage alone or something loving adults will help them carry.

This does not mean fathers are solely responsible for a child’s health. It does not mean mothers matter less. It does not mean every later health issue can be traced back to whether Dad was cheerful during tummy time.

Research does not work that way, and families do not work that way.

But the study does remind us that fathers are not background characters in a child’s development. They are not occasional helpers, backup babysitters or comic relief. Fathers help create the emotional climate of the home. They influence how parents work together. They shape the environment where a child’s nervous system, relationships and health begin to develop.

That should encourage dads, not crush them.

Because the takeaway is not that fathers have to be perfect. No parent is warm, patient and developmentally appropriate every minute of every day. There are days when the baby will not sleep, the toddler melts down in public, work stress follows you home and everyone in the house needs a snack and an attitude adjustment.

The point is not perfection. The point is presence.

A father’s consistent warmth matters. His tenderness matters. His ability to repair after frustration matters. His willingness to learn his child, not just manage his child, matters.

And this is where mothers, grandparents, employers, faith communities, schools and neighborhoods have a role to play, too. If we believe dads matter, we have to do more than applaud them once a year over barbecue.

We need to make room for fathers to be involved from the very beginning.

That means encouraging dads to take parental leave when it is available. It means not treating fathers as incompetent when they show up at the pediatrician’s office, the preschool classroom or the grocery store with a baby carrier strapped to their chest. It means workplaces understanding that fathers have sick children, school meetings and bedtime routines, too.

It also means helping couples build healthy co-parenting patterns early. When parents are competing for a child’s attention, withdrawing from each other or undermining one another, children feel that tension. When parents cooperate, encourage each other and share the work of caregiving, the whole family system becomes healthier.

So maybe one of the best gifts we can give children is not just an involved dad, but a supported dad.

A dad who is invited in, not pushed to the margins.

A dad who is allowed to be nurturing, not just strong.

A dad who knows that holding a baby, soothing a toddler and working as a true partner are not side jobs. They are central to fatherhood.

Since we just celebrated Father’s Day, it is tempting to pack the gratitude away with the cards and move on. But the real work of fatherhood happens in the ordinary days after the holiday.

It happens in the bedtime routine.

It happens in the car seat buckle.

It happens in the kitchen while cutting grapes into impossibly tiny pieces.

It happens when a father puts down his phone, looks into his child’s face and says, with his attention as much as his words, “I’m here.”

Years from now, that child may not remember the moment.

But their body just might.

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

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The Sweet Spot of Growth

We recently moved into a house that is almost 100 years old, which means every day feels like a small adventure in charm, character and “what is that sound?”

It has old floors, old doors, old windows and the kind of quirks you only love after you’ve signed the mortgage paperwork. It also has raspberry vines.

At first glance, they are beautiful. Long, lush, sturdy vines growing in good soil, with plenty of sunlight and the kind of established root system you can’t buy at a garden center. These are not fragile little starter plants. They have been here awhile. They know the yard better than I do.

And yet, for all their beauty and strength, they have produced maybe 10 raspberries.

Ten.

For a family hoping for bowls of fresh berries, this feels a bit like false advertising.

The problem, we learned, is not the soil. It is not the sunlight. It is not that the vines are weak. The problem is that they have not been pruned regularly.

They have been allowed to grow in every direction, long and lovely, but not necessarily fruitful.

As a Christian, I immediately thought of the words of Jesus in John 15: “Every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.” I have heard that verse most of my life. I have nodded along in Bible studies. I have appreciated the metaphor in theory.

But standing in front of my beautiful, unproductive raspberry vines, I understood it a little differently.

Pruning is not punishment. It is preparation.

That is part of why I enjoyed Paul Bloom’s book The Sweet Spot. Bloom, a psychologist, explores a strange but familiar truth about human beings: we do not actually want a life with no difficulty. We may say we do, especially when the calendar is full, the kids are melting down, the budget is tight and the dishwasher is making a sound that suggests it has given up on life. But deep down, most of what gives our lives meaning comes with some level of challenge.

We train for races. We raise children. We commit to marriage. We build careers. We care for aging parents. We apologize. We forgive. We start over. We sit in therapy and tell the truth. We choose the harder conversation because the easy silence is slowly killing the relationship.

None of those things are painless. But they are often where purpose is formed.

Bloom makes an important distinction: suffering itself is not automatically good. Some suffering is harmful, unjust and unnecessary. No one should romanticize abuse, trauma, neglect or hardship that crushes the human spirit.

But there is another kind of difficulty – the kind that stretches us, humbles us, disciplines us and invites us to become more than we would have become if comfort had been the only goal.

That matters in relationships.

A strong marriage is not built because two people never disagree. It is built because two people learn how to repair after disagreement. A healthy friendship is not one where no one is ever disappointed. It is one where people can be honest, accountable and gracious. A connected family is not one where every child is protected from every hard thing. It is one where children know they are loved while they learn how to do hard things.

As parents, this is one of the trickiest lines to walk. We do not want our children to suffer. Of course we don’t. Any decent parent would rather take the pain themselves than watch their child hurt.

But if we remove every obstacle, solve every problem, soften every consequence and rescue them from every discomfort, we may accidentally raise long, leafy vines with very little fruit.

Children need love, safety and support. They also need opportunities to struggle appropriately. They need to lose a game and survive it. They need to apologize when they were wrong. They need to work at something they are not instantly good at. They need to feel disappointment without believing disappointment is the end of the world.

And they need parents who do not simply say, “This is easy.”

They need parents who say, “This is hard, and I believe you can take the next step.”

Partners need the same thing. So do we.

Growth often looks like pruning. A boundary. A hard conversation. A season of waiting. A habit we have to cut back. A dream we have to reshape. A comfort we have to surrender. A truth we can no longer avoid.

At first, pruning can feel like loss. The vine is shorter. The shape is different. What once looked full now looks bare.

But the gardener knows what the vine cannot yet see.

Fruit is coming.

Maybe the sweet spot is not a life with no pain. Maybe it is learning the difference between pain that destroys and discomfort that develops. Maybe it is trusting that not every cut is cruel. Some cuts are careful. Some are loving. Some are making room for what could not grow otherwise.

Our raspberry vines are going to need some work. They will need trimming, tending and patience. They will not become fruitful simply because they are beautiful.

And, apparently, neither will we.

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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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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