I’ve been realizing something lately. Parenting is painful. It is not the exhaustion of infancy, or the frustration of toddlerhood, or even the eye-rolling theater of adolescence. It is the quiet, cumulative grief of watching someone you love steadily and necessarily move away from you. It’s come to me as a kind of creeping grief that doesn’t arrive all at once. It comes in waves, at thresholds that we are supposed to celebrate.
The First Letting Go: Early Childhood
Even before the dramatic departures, the letting go begins small. The first sleepover. The first time my child didn’t reach for my hand crossing the street. The tiny acts of defiance that set the stage for individualization.
Each of these micro-separations was a rehearsal. My child was practicing independence, and I was practicing release. What mattered was that I cheered their growing autonomy even as I privately felt the shift. Connection wasn’t disappearing. It was transforming. I was proud of my ability to accept my children’s growing autonomy. Their comfort in separation was a sign that I was doing parenting well. Read more…
Your three-year-old throws herself on the ground at the playground right as you try to leave. Your seven-year-old has a complete meltdown at a birthday party, in front of every parent you know. Your teen yells quite loudly in the restaurant, “Would you just leave me alone. You don’t know anything!” 
Parenting has a way of touching places inside us we thought had long since healed over. Sometimes it brings joy, sometimes tenderness—and sometimes it brushes against old wounds we haven’t dared revisit. Lately, I’ve been sitting with one of those moments. My fifteen-year-old is moving through a stormy season: tears, defiance, pulling away from friends, and slipping into behaviors that seem reckless or self-sabotaging. None of it is extreme, but it’s enough to keep me up at night. And what makes it harder is that it echoes someone else from my past… my sister.
No matter how hard we try to parent without shame, there will be moments when we react in ways we regret. Maybe we snap at our child for making a mess, call them “selfish” when they refuse to share, or roll our eyes when they ask a question for the hundredth time (I have done all of these things at some point in my parenting, BTW). In those moments, shame sneaks into our words and tone, and we see the impact in our child’s face—hurt, withdrawal, or defensiveness. To be fair, parents are just as entitled to their true feelings and emotions as our children are – and sometimes children simply drive us crazy!
Emotional intelligence is a powerful tool for building strong, healthy relationships. It helps us understand our own emotions, empathize with others, and navigate life’s challenges. One of the most important skills in developing emotional intelligence is emotional literacy. Emotional literacy is the ability to recognize, understand, express, and manage emotions in oneself and others. It is truly the foundation for connection. Emotional Literacy starts long before the classroom, at home, with parents modeling and teaching the language of feelings to each other every day. 
As soon as children are born, they begin to recognize and respond to others’ emotions. This is how they secure their survival and ensure that they are fed, cared for, and loved. In fact, the bulk of emotional understanding begins before kids even learn their ABCs. However, emotional literacy is a lifelong skill that evolves with experience and guidance.
Q. My 13-year-old is constantly complaining about things at school. She complains about who is getting away with what, that the teacher is targeting and being mean to her, and that another long-time friend is talking behind her back. She had me ready to barge into school and take down the teachers, administration, and the mean group of girls. Then I checked in with a friend whose son is in the same class and she had a different perspective from a different point of view (her son’s) which made me reevaluate everything that my daughter was telling me. My question is how do you deal with your child’s drama without getting sucked in? 
Q. As I navigate my way through the influence of technology my fears are around knowing that I have a certain amount of control right now while my kids are 5 and 7, but what about later? I’ve taken the “Wait Until 8th” pledge, committing to not giving my kids phones until at least 8th grade. And even then, I would lean toward “dumb” phones. But perhaps what scares me most is how being on social media will affect them when they reach that stage. It’s something I never had to experience myself. The bullying, anxiety, eating disorders, and everything else that stems from the weight of that world frightens me. And what I hear from others and read in