Why All Those Parenting Tips Aren’t Actually Changing Anything

At many points in everyone’s parenting journey, they are met with a challenge or issue and most of us immediately go looking for a fix.

Maybe you’re yelling more than you’d like. For many of us, our children are melting down, arguing, refusing to cooperate or struggling with something you’re expecting that they should be able to handle. Because the issue is causing friction, frustration, embarrassment or slowing you down, you understandably aim to fix that thing. How do I stop my child from hitting? How do I make my child listen? How do I get myself to be more calm?

For many of us, the first thing we do is head to the internet where there is no shortage of information & advice. Most of us, growing up, were not shown healthy, connected ways to handle hard behavior. Instead, we saw that yelling, threats, punishment, fear, shame, or “because I said so” was the way to teach kids. As a generation of parents, we don’t want to parent that way. It doesn’t feel good or right, we want to give our children respect. But unfortunately, knowing how we don’t want to parent is not the same as knowing what to do instead. So we go back to social media/the internet for allllll the expertise.

We save the reel with “three phases to use instead of yelling.” We listen to the podcast about getting kids to cooperate. We buy the mini-course on setting calm limits. We try scripts, routines, consequences, reward systems, time outs. And often we change our tactics faster than it would take for our children to learn something new because we aren’t seeing the results we NEED. Not all of these tactics are bad, some of them are helpful and useful. The problem comes when we expect the strategy to promote true growth and learning in our children (or ourselves.)

I call this The Silver Bullet Loop.

The loop looks something like this: we notice a pattern of behavior, feel uncomfortable or frustrated by it and then search for something that will make it better, desperately! Once we find the strategy that speaks to the problem, we feel hope! This is the thing that is going to work! This is the fix that will help me feel calm, get my kid to listen, stop the power struggles. Sometimes it might help for a little bit, sometimes nothing happens, so we go back and try the next thing.

We have all the information in the world at our fingertips– all the parenting styles, all the opinions. And this keeps us in this loop. There’s always another expert, perspective, framework, script to try- it’s infinite. We spend all our energy consuming information and pivoting to these new tactics. We rarely stop to connect with what feels good or right or what we intuit about our kids. After all, we were taught that the answers are not within us– someone ELSE knows. And all this business prevents us from really observing, getting curious, asking good questions and checking in with how things feel.

In my coaching, I see parents spending years inside this loop, working SO HARD, burning out and feeling like the cannot close the gap between the parent they are and the one they want to be. And the gap will never close unless we can change this strategy, understand what’s going on underneath these behaviors, who are children are and what they need. And we often need to re-learn these things for ourselves as well.

The problem underneath the problem

When we go to social media looking for the answer to “how do I get my child to listen?” we are focusing on the surface level of the issue- we so badly want the problem to go away and for our lives to be easier. We are trying to change that behavior without understanding the factors that are contributing to it.

We need to get into a solid process of observing and asking “what happened before I yelled?” “What was I expecting my child to do - are they capable of this thing?” “Why is this particular behavior feel so frustrating to me?” “What am I afraid will happen if I don’t immediately get things under control?”

Yes, these questions are harder to answer than “What should I say instead?” But they tell us so much more valuable information that will be useful for many situations and years to come.

With our children, if our question is always, “How do I get them under control?” or “How do I get them to stop doing this?” we can miss the information under the behavior itself. Maybe the transition is difficult for them, maybe they are dysregulated when they’re overwhelmed. Or maybe they are tired, disconnected, seeking more autonomy or communicating something they don’t know how to say yet. When we find these answers, we learn about our children and help them learn about themselves.

I’m not suggesting every behavior needs to be endlessly analyzed or that because of these types of questions we let them do whatever they want. Sometimes families do need clearer boundaries, routines, firmer limits or more effective responses. But if we need to teach new skills or support our children through tough moments, this level of understanding is invaluable.

That Silver Bullet Loop just keeps us stuck in the mini-hopes, the promise of a new approach and unfortunately, outside of the experience of ourselves and our child. At some point, how do we say it’s ok to do less? Maybe we observe more and get more curious and do less things. From my many years in education, I know that true learning does not come from an influx of information. It comes from experience, from great questions, from critical thinking and from feeling. You are in a relationship, with yourself and with your child. The giving and receiving that that entails is not necessarily doing, it’s more related to being.

You’ve been here a million times, taking in all the information and the new ideas and you can feel that you’re still reacting and you don’t know why. I’ve been there, I get it. Our generation understands peaceful, respectful, conscious parenting and still not be able to access these approaches in the hard moments.

Eventually, we have to shift the question from “What should I do?” to “What is actually happening here?”

A different kind of support

I learned through my own coaching experiences how powerful it can be to work through real parenting issues with someone who can help you see the patterns you’re too close to notice.

Getting trained as a Jai coach and working with my own parent coach not only transformed my parenting, but also my relationship with myself. The experience wasn’t just about someone helping me see my blind spots but also about learning processes and tools that I could come back to again and again. With a coach, you dig into these individualized moments with you and your child, see where the patterns are, understand what’s underneath and create so much clarity on how to approach the challenges. Through my own coaching, I also learned how to manage expectations, how to separate my own stuff from my child’s and how to respond in a way that actually reflected what I wanted to teach.

In this day and age, this is the kind of work that gives us any real impact. Not one more strategy for one more behavior. But the time and attention to understand yourself and your child more deeply, learn how to model the skills you want your child to develop and know what to do when things get hard.

And yes, that kind of work asks something of us. It takes time. Attention. Commitment. Money. But I think that investment is what can finally get us out of the Silver Bullet Loop so that we can feel clarity, connection and sometimes joy(!) in parenthood.

Instead of bouncing from hack to hack, you begin to build a steadier and more mindful way of parenting—one that gives you something to return to no matter what the next challenge looks like.

That is where the lasting changes we actually want can happen: deeper connection with our children, more clarity about how to hold boundaries and teach new skills, and a better understanding of how to support ourselves through motherhood too.

Groundwork- 8 Weeks to Clarity

Groundwork is eight weeks of private coaching, built in the order I’ve been describing — what’s underneath first, the words second. You finish with a plan that fits your actual family, and a way of understanding what’s happening, so the next time something shifts you’re not back on your phone at ten at night.

Three coaching spots this fall. A Groundwork Reset Call is thirty minutes, and I’ll tell you honestly whether I can help.

Schedule a Call