It’s hard for us—just like it was for our parents—to know how to allow rough-and-tumble play. For one thing, many of us never did it—either because it was stopped by our parents or, in some cases, because we were raised as girls, and “girls don’t roughhouse.”

This post will help you learn why roughhousing —when we do it WITH our kids—can be such a great thing to try. And it will help you get started (and keep going!) in a way that is safe and helpful for everyone.

My sweet, physical, fierce, tender kid turned 10 two weeks ago. 

One decade of him.

Ten years of: 

Late nights—oh no, he’s up too late; why won’t he sleep?; reading books x 1 zillion; “come on kid, let’s get those teeth brushed!” 

Middle-of-the-nights—feedings; diaper changes; bad dreams; rocking rocking rocking; “I don’t know why I’m awake mama I just am;” phone scrolling; wondering if we’re doing it right/doing enough

Early mornings—sweet baby smell; bright eyes; new words that weren’t there the night before; quiet playtime; exhaustion; Special Time x 1 zillion; rushing rushing rushing to daycare/preschool/school/bus

… and so much time in between full of H, the way he is, the way he has always been.

We’re about a month into a move from the US to Spain, and I’m using all my parenting tools to get through it. It’s been hard on me, and on my husband. But our 9-year-old is having the hardest time by far.

In this post, I’ll talk about one tool I’m finding particularly useful as we navigate the inevitable ups and downs of parenting a deep-feeling kid in the midst of a big transition.

That tool is play, or playfulness.

Here in San Francisco, this coming weekend is Pride weekend. I love this month and the ways I get to see queerness on full display throughout my city.

As a hetero-passing queer person (yes, JIC you didn’t know, I’m partnered with a man but I’ve known I was queer since I was 11), celebrating queerness is important to me. 

One day, toward the end of my mom's recent trip, she came into the kitchen chuckling after a typical display of feeling from our son.

“I can’t get over it. You were just like him,” she said.

Before last summer, I would have scoffed at the comparison. I remember myself as a kid who knew from an early age that there was a right way to be and a wrong way to be. And I was going to be right. Which made me good.

I taught a class—online, of course—on Sunday and as soon as I saw the lovely faces popping up on my screen, I was hit by a wave of longing for the beforetimes when I got to see and talk to and work with parents in person.

That’s the funny thing about this extended time, isn’t it? How it keeps unfolding and showing us where we have sore spots, even after almost a year at it.

We can find joy again in a thing that has felt so much like a “have-to” this year, especially in recent months.

So, here’s my suggestion. Let’s find a way to play in our parenting again, and see if we can do more than just “make it through” the holidays and the end of this very strange, very trying year.

To be listened to makes us feel seen, understood, and valued.

To be ignored or have our listening go unanswered makes us feel hurt, afraid, and sometimes enraged.

And, when our kids don’t listen to us, it can trigger a cascade of feelings and worries that reach both backward into the past and forward toward the future.

Let’s take a closer look at listening, and at what happens to us and to our kids when listening falls apart.

Eating—and what, how, and when our kids do (or don’t do) it—is one of the things that many of the parents I support also spend considerable time observing and thinking about.

There’s nothing like a pandemic and a complete shutdown of life as we know it to test our mettle as people and as parents. This may be the truest, most direct experience of “parenting as path” that we will ever encounter.

Is it possible to continue to be the parents we want to be right now? Ask me again in a few months, but right now, I feel that it is.

Here’s what I’m practicing and finding useful right now when it comes to my parenting.

Since I started working with families, I have felt committed to helping parents access two primary things: more ease, and more joy. I’m not sure why these became my words. Heaven knows there’s a list of things as long as my arm that we need more of when we’re parenting. But it felt to me like these were the two things that were hardest for me to come by once my son came along, even if it sounded a bit different when I talked about it.

I often think about something a very thoughtful dad of two said to me during a coaching session last year. We were talking about his transition home after long days at work, and how hard he tried to come into the house with an open heart and mind.

Things had been very challenging with his 5-year-old son, and he worried about what he might encounter when he opened the door. He worried too about how triggering his son’s behavior often felt.

He tried to shed his day on the commute home, and plug back into family life with energy. But, he said, as soon as he stepped through the door, he felt as if he were “back in the lion’s den again, ready for war.”

Last month I went on a weeklong silent meditation retreat. I’m fortunate to be able to do this once or twice a year, and to have a partner who supports me in doing it.

I noticed how much lighter I feel after a week connecting with my deeper self. How much more like Me. Not the little “me” that runs around trying to be perfect and please everyone at work and at home, but the Me that can really connect authentically with people, not feel worthless if I fuck up, and offer something meaningful to the people I am trying to help.

But, since I can’t live continuously on retreat—nor would I want to—it begs the question: how can I (re)discover this authentic Me when I’m walking around in my daily life?

We were traveling last weekend, visiting my parents in Florida to celebrate my dad’s 90th birthday. It was lovely, but possibly slightly boring for a 5-year-old. So, the day after the party we hit the mall to find some play spaces for him to move his body a bit. (That’s how they do it in Florida!)

The mall had a High Jump—one of those contraptions where they hook you up to a harness and some bungee cords and you can jump super high on a trampoline. Naturally, our kid was like a moth to a flame.

My son had to wait for a couple of other kids before it was his turn, sitting in a little chair inside the ring containing the High Jump. At one point, excited by all the jumping, he stood up. The ride operator immediately barked, “sit down!” He did, chastened.

How would it feel to do a little less in your parenting today?

I’m asking myself this question a lot lately, because I find I’ve gotten wrapped up in old patterns of doing MORE these last few weeks, and it doesn’t feel great.

I mean a specific kind of “doing more” here, one that looks like:

• Picking out my son’s clothes and putting them on him, piece by piece

• Reminding him to take his plate over to the sink when he’s done eating

• Talking over him in the middle of a big feeling.

I know why I’m doing all of this, despite my belief (and tangible evidence) that most of it isn’t helpful.

Every family has its own heartbreaks, sooner or later.

But how to meet and manage the pain and sadness of these times without shutting down is a whole other story. And having kids complicates how (or if) we are able to work with it. It also raises questions about how much (or whether) to share it with our children.

One of the biggest challenges we face as parents is knowing how to respond when our children have a big feeling—when they get angry, very sad, frustrated, or even super excited.

This work begins for us when our babies are tiny, when they sometimes cry for prolonged periods for seemingly no reason.

And it continues as our children grow into older babies, toddlers, and beyond.

How we meet our child’s big feelings will teach them how to meet their own feelings, and, I’d argue, how to understand themselves as they grow.

As I’ve written about before, play is so much more than meaningless fun for kids.

Just as independent play is an important part of your child’s development, play with you facilitates a greater bond between you and your child, and deepens his trust in you. 

Play is one of the main ways our kids connect with us—their most important grownups. It offers your child some of the warmth and closeness he needs a good healthy dose of daily.

In addition to all of these benefits, play is also an amazing tool to help increase our kids’ cooperation, improve their behavior, and decrease the struggle that we often face with everyday tasks.

I often say to parents that play is like the blood that runs through your child’s veins. He absolutely thrives on it—in fact he needs it to grow, develop, understand the world, and process his experiences.

 Play helps your child discover what he can do, as well as what he can’t (yet) do. It gives him a chance to experiment (will this ball fit into this container? How about this one?), to practice building his skills (if I jump off this sidewalk 100 more times, I will do it without stumbling!), and through this process of discovery, experimentation, and practice, develop his self-confidence.

New parents often tell me that they struggle to get any kind of self-care once their baby arrives. I can relate—after my son was born I felt totally disconnected from the habits that had nurtured me before his arrival.

Here’s a little secret. One of the best things you can do for your young baby also comes with a bonus: it’s self-care for you, too.

That thing that is so good for both of you is simple (and yes, hard too): put your baby down.

There are so many opinions out there about what you need to do to get ready for your new baby. As useful as these tips can be, they overshadow some of the most important kinds of preparation. We need to be prepared for how to be with our babies, not just for what we’ll swaddle or stroll them in.

Luckily, the Educaring Approach® (commonly known as RIE® parenting or respectful parenting) is the perfect support system for the intense early days of parenting. Here’s how you can practice some of the Approach’s most effective—yet quite simple—tools before your baby even arrives.

One of my favorite RIE® Basic Principles is “trust in the infant’s competence.” Starting from birth, we trust that our baby is capable of—and interested in—learning and exploring the world to the degree she is ready. This means we allow her ample space and time to reach milestones on her own, or even to do things like grasp a toy without our help.

The big idea behind this principle is that, if given the space and time to learn and explore on his own, our child will not only develop beautifully, he will also cultivate a sense of his own capacity and capability from a very early age. 

I think this principle is applicable to our children long past infancy—indeed, throughout their developmental years. Here’s how trusting our kids’ unfolding can look as they grow.

Recent studies have shown that parents are spending more time with their kids now than they did half a century ago—a lot more.

This is cause for celebration in my book, but I must admit that it leaves me with a bit of a nagging question.

What is that time really like? 

My son recently got it into his head that he HAD to try ice-skating. So, over the holidays we took him to one of the seasonal rinks set up around the city at this time of year for San Francisco kids who otherwise might never see a real ice-covered anything.

The rink was, as my Irish friends say, chock-a-block with kids and adults of all ages. I’d say the average skill level was Dangerously Unsteady, with a couple of Just-Starting-To-Get-It folks thrown in the mix. One very thrilled, Approaching-Intermediate-Level Dad was zooming around the rink, narrowly missing taking out an unsuspecting skater with each lap.

I took one look at this scene and immediately went into Professor Mom mode. We got my son’s skates on, and I started coaching him on how to walk over to the rink without breaking his ankle. We secured one of those skater-assistance devices that’s a bit like a walker on blades, and bravely hobbled onto the ice.

Ahhhhh, sleep.

It’s one of the first things people ask new parents about, and the focus and source of a lot of our time, energy, and stress during the first years of our kids’ lives.

I recently visited with close friends and their week-old baby. One of the first things Dad said to me was, “wow, the sleep deprivation finally caught up with us. We were fine for a few days and then…” he trailed off. Then: “This is hard.”

It’s upon us: the holiday season! Thanksgiving is around the corner for those of us in the U.S., followed by the winter holidays, which usually means one thing for many of us: time with family.

Before we have kids, this time of year can feel like a lot, even if we have healthy and uncomplicated relationships with our family (ha!).

But when we add kids to the mix, the things we weather during this time of year—travel, delays, long meals, family dynamics, big feelings of all kinds, and increased stress due to all of this—can make us want to put a pillow over our heads until January 2nd.

While we can’t necessarily change our complicated family dynamics or remove all the stress from the holidays, there are a few things we can do as parents to make this time of year easier on all of us, especially our littlest members.