Reflections

Some of the most confusing moments in my parenting have come when I’ve been sitting across from a teacher, therapist or another adult who tells me my child is doing really well.

They’re participating. They’re smiling...

Families like mine are watched closely.

How we eat, sleep, learn, wash, leave the house, spend time together and speak to one another is often measured against a very particular idea of what family life should look l...

There have been many times in our family where life felt so hard and stayed feeling so hard for much longer than I expected it to.

I would spend weeks thinking that once we got through a particular thing, once everyo...

For years I thought good parenting meant staying calm on the outside no matter what I was carrying underneath.

I got that from everywhere. Hold it together. Don't let them see you rattled. Be the steady one. And I tr...

I have never trusted the panic around screens.

Screens aren't harmless. But every child's relationship with gaming, YouTube, social media, streaming, chatting, scrolling, or online worlds is also not automatically un...

There was a long stretch of years where I believed I was failing my children because I couldn't get up.

I'd absorbed all the messaging about play. Get on the floor. Follow their lead. Be animated, be available, enter...

There was a season I couldn't shower alone. Couldn't use the bathroom alone. Couldn't go for a walk or make a cup of tea. I could barely do a single thing, honestly. My nervous system, and my children's nervous systems, ...

When my child had an accident, I used to read it as a step backwards, as a failure, as a sign that we were behind and that I'd missed something or needed to try harder to get them across some invisible line into independ...

I will yell sometimes. I'll say things I wish I hadn't. I'll definitely regret my behaviour from time to time because I'm human. More than one PDA nervous system in one house means rupture is inevitable, no matter how...

When my child asks "how long?" five times in a row, they're not being annoying or trying to rage bait me. Their nervous system loses its grip on time the moment it feels under threat. The question is the brain trying ...