If you're burned out, you're not alone. Parenting is just plain hard, and trying to parent while you're also trying to work is impossible.

So it makes sense that you're depleted and end up yelling. But if you don't address the source of your child's challenging behavior, it doesn't go away. And if you don't take care of you, you just get more burned out.

There's a better way. I have two secret weapons for you: 

  • Self Care
  • Connection

Let's take these step by step.

Self care may seem impossible. But leaving yourself off your list just isn't sustainable. You need to do a few basic things to take care of you, or you can't expect to show up as the emotionally generous parent your child needs.

Children love our joyful presence. They respond by becoming happier and more cooperative. By contrast, when we're stressed, children get stressed, too. They don't feel our love, so they often conclude that somehow they aren't good enough to cause us to love them. They get anxious, needy, defiant, difficult.

The solution is to put ourselves back on the list, and tend to ourselves as well as we can each moment of the day, just as we do our child. To honor both our needs and theirs. Here's a whole series of posts on how to do that.


Connection, even while you set limits. That may seem tame, but it's the most powerful tool you have. And it's the only way you have any influence with your child (or anyone else). 

What does that look like in practice? Start by seeing the situation from your child's perspective. Wouldn't it be wonderful if your child could tell you how things feel to them right now?

"Hey, Mom, Dad? You yell a lot more than you used to. I know I'm on the ipad more, but the only thing that's fun is getting to the next level of my game and you're always making me turn it off! School is so much harder now. I think I fell behind. The kids at school are meaner than they used to be. You're always working and grumpy. Nobody seems to care what I want or how I feel." 

You may be thinking, what's wonderful for a parent about hearing all that?

But when children can't articulate something, they "act it out." And since your child can't explain all these big feelings to you, those feelings are driving your child to act badly. So they....

  • Fall apart when you ask them to start their schoolwork.
  • Purposely interrupt your work call when you told them not to.
  • Scream at you when you tell them it's time to turn off the screen.
  • Tease their siblings to the point of tears, just because they're bored.
  • Sneak off to play Minecraft with their friends.

Then, when you reprimand them, they yell "I hate you, I want a new Mommy (or Daddy)!"

How should you respond?

Should you ignore the infraction since you know your child is having a hard time right now, given all the disappointments and tensions of the moment? 

NO, not unless you want your child's misbehavior to escalate. You child is trying to tell you something, and their "misbehavior" will get louder if they don't feel heard. Understanding WHY your child is acting out doesn't mean that you don't set limits.

Should you crack down, so your child understands that your limits still hold? 

Well, you definitely want your child to listen to your limits. But your child is "acting out" big emotions they can't express. They need your help to manage those emotions, if you want them to follow your limits. So cracking down on the behavior with threats and punishment won't keep the behavior from happening; it will only increase the drama.

The only way to put a stop to "misbehavior" is to address the needs and feelings that are driving the behavior. That's about much more than the immediate limit. You need to connect with them at the same time. But of course you still need to set limits on behavior in the moment. 

Here's your blueprint.

1. Calm yourself first.

Remind yourself that your child is having a hard time and needs your help. Yes, even if your kid just lied to you about spending the last three hours playing Minecraft with his friends instead of doing his homework. What's done is done; you want a different result tomorrow. More drama won't help.

2. Consider what kind of intervention will be most effective.

Whether your intervention will be effective depends partly on how calm you're able to stay at this moment. If you're not, your intervention will usually backfire. One dad told me that he was irritated to find himself cleaning up the house while his son loafed on his ipad, so the dad started a fight that ended up with the kid throwing things at him, and him sitting on his son. There's nothing wrong with insisting that your kids help clean up, but don't provoke a fight because you're out of sorts.

Instead, shift yourself back into an emotionally generous mood. Then have a family meeting about the schedule, be sure that clean-up is part of the routine, and do it with your kids, with a sense of humor. You get the result you want, and a closer relationship with your kids, so you have more influence when you need to set the next limit -- as opposed to more tension and less influence, which is the result you'll get from screaming and power struggles. 

So, for instance, you'll always set a limit when one of your children teases or is mean to the other, but you'll also need a more systemic solution (more on this below). In fact, most limits, like turning off screens or keeping kids from interrupting your work calls, are best solved with systemic intervention instead of crisis management.

3. Start by connecting and empathizing before you correct or redirect:

  • "You really like playing that game online with your friends. It's hard to turn it off, I know."
  • "So you felt like you REALLY needed me right then, and it was enough of an emergency that you had to interrupt? It's hard when I'm on zoom calls so much. I wonder if you want to make sure I'm still here to help when you need me?"
  • "It just seems like too much to have to do schoolwork right now, huh?"

4. Set your limit.

Set the limit clearly, calmly, firmly. If possible, tell your child what they CAN do. 

  • "It's time to turn off the screen now. I see it's too hard for you to do it, so I'll do it for you. We have an agreement, remember, about how to make it easier to turn off the screen when it's time. Your choice -- run around the house three times or do five push-ups?"
  • "You do need to get your homework done. I can see you feel overwhelmed right now. Let's take a break for a few minutes for some roughhousing. I think some laughter will help us both feel more ready to tackle that schoolwork."
  • "When I'm on the phone and you need me, you need to stay very quiet, but you can write me a note about what you need and put it in front of me. I will aways read it and try to help." (What if your child is too young to write even a simple note? Then they're too young to manage by themselves for long while you're working, so you need another plan.)

5. Address the needs behind repeated misbehavior.

If your child is teasing their sibling, you do need to set a limit in that moment: "Those are words that could hurt. Our family rule is Be Kind, and that means no teasing." You probably also want to coach the child being teased to stand up for himself: "You can tell your sibling: I don't like it when you call me names!"

But if you really want the behavior to stop, you'll need to address the source. Maybe your child is trying to get your attention, which means you need to step up your Empathy and Special Time.  Maybe there's some long-standing Sibling Rivalry that you need to address. 

Or maybe your child is just bored or having a hard time with their own unhappy emotions, in which case your best bet is to scoop them up and say "Hey, are you out of hugs again?! Let's see what we can do about that!"

6. Use daily Preventive Maintenance to keep your kid out of the breakdown lane.

Your "discipline" -- or guidance -- in the moment will be a lot more effective if you use Preventive Maintenance daily to stay connected and help your child with big emotions.

We know that children's mental health worsened dramatically during the pandemic. School personnel say that many children seem to have lost a year of social skills and are now meaner to each other. So all children need daily support to work through big emotions and feel connected. Here are some best practices. 

  • Train yourself to respond to everything your child says or does with empathy, even if you then need to set a limit.

  • Roughhouse daily with lots of laughter to reduce the stress hormones circulating in the body, and increase the bonding hormones.

  • Use Routines, which help kids know what to expect so they feel safer and less anxious, and give you regular connection opportunities.

  • Welcome all emotions. Remember that behind anger you will usually find fear or sadness, so if your child is angry, resist taking the bait. Breathe deeply, stay calm, and invite your child to show you all that upset: "You must be so upset to speak to me like this...  Tell me more, Sweetheart....  I'm listening." The more safety you can create with your tone, the more likely that your child will move past the anger to the tears and fears beneath. (Does your child gets stuck in anger but can't cry?)

  • Before you sit down to work, be sure to "fill your child's cup" so they can do without you for a bit. If you're trying to get work done at home on a regular basis with your kids there, remember that kids don't feel safe when you're there but distracted -- they need to know that you're there for them if they need you -- and be sure to read this.

  • Make it a priority to spend one-on-one time with each child to strengthen your relationship with them and help them open up to you.

  • Talk to your child about their feelings. That means when they get upset, listen. Under the anger you'll notice fear or sadness. Expressing fears, even unreasonable ones, to a caring witness (you!) has a way of making them more manageable. And when we allow ourselves to feel and acknowledge our big emotions, we start to gain conscious control over them, so their power begins to dissipate.

  • Teach kids to manage their worries, with skills like Stop, Drop Breathe, Focusing on what they CAN control, rather than what they can't, and Noticing how upsetting thoughts lead to upsetting feelings. (For more on Helping Your Child Feel Safe & Learn to Manage Anxiety.)

  • Keep reminding yourself that kids pick up on what we're feeling. If you're feeling overwhelmed by work, your children will feel the stress. Take responsibility for the mood you're radiating to everyone around you. That means developing a repertoire of practices to manage your own stress.

  • Start a family mindfulness practice, like listening to a guided meditation together every day or doing a gratitude practice at dinner every night.

When your family is stressed, it's the perfect opportunity to develop new family habits that help you connect more. It also means that you'll need to take your parenting game up a notch if you want to be a good role-model for your child about how to manage work stress and exhibit grace under pressure.

That brings us full circle, back to Self Care. Because your most important discipline strategy is actually for yourself. Use whatever self-discipline and self-compassion you need to, every single day, to replenish yourself. It's not self-indulgent; it's essential. It's the only way you can stay emotionally generous with your child, yourself, and everyone else. 

That's the kind of discipline that will help you get through tough times in a way that makes your whole family stronger:  With love.