Calm Parents, Happy Kids – book summary
The secrets of stress-free parenting
American version: Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting
Dr Laura Markham
Ebury Digital (4 Sept. 2014)
About the author
Dr Laura Markham earned her PhD in Clinical Psychology from Columbia University and has worked as a parenting coach with countless families. She writes extensively about parenting as the editor-in-chief of AhaParenting.com, and also she serves as an expert for Mothering.com and Pregnancy.org. She translates proven science and child-development research into the practical solutions you need for the family life you want.
About the book:
“We all want to raise children with whom we stay close, children who adore us, children who carry on our legacy of love when we’re gone. We all want our grown children to flourish with the roots and wings we gave them, to look back on childhoods brimming with the love and laughter of parents who made them feel so good about themselves that anything seemed possible. Every day of your kid’s childhood, you’re creating that future.
There are no perfect parents and no perfect children. But there are many families who live in the embrace of great love. This book is dedicated to you creating one of those families.”
If you are looking for a very practical book on positive parenting, Calm Parents, Happy Kids is a great start. Here Dr Laura Markham introduces an approach to parenting that eliminates threats, power struggles and manipulation in favour of setting limits with empathy and communication. Her big idea is that children’s behaviour only changes when their relationship with their parents changes. And this change is possible when we shift our perspective from controlling our children to coaching them.
This book is a practical guide on how to give our kids roots (secure attachment and unconditional love) and wings (socio-emotional and life skills to thrive in life). And it is absolutely packed with ideas and real-life scripts that you can implement straight away.
We personally use many ideas from this book, and they really work! In these notes, we’ll share our favourite big ideas, but definitely grab the book for more (especially if you are a new parent).
Let’s jump straight in.
Key Insights:
Three Secrets of Calm Parents
What do great parents have in common? Dr Laura Markham says that they:
- Regulate themselves. “Your own emotional regulation – a fancy way of saying your ability to stay calm – allows you to treat the people in your life, including the little people, calmly, respectfully, and responsibly.” And this, in turn, helps children become emotionally regulated, respectful, and responsible. It all starts with us.
- Foster connection. “Children need to feel deeply connected to their parents or they don’t feel entirely safe, and their brains don’t work well to regulate their emotions and follow parental guidance.” Children who feel connected to their parents are not only happier but also easier, as connection leads to cooperation.
- Coaching, not controlling. “What raises great kids is coaching them – to handle their emotions, manage their behaviour, and develop mastery – rather than controlling for immediate compliance.” Any human being rebels against force and control, so trying to force your child into obedience is very short-sighted. By coaching, you teach your child all the necessary skills he needs to grow into a self-directed adult.
Sounds very straight forward. But in practice may be tricky ☺ Below are a few ideas on how to eat this elephant.
Becoming a Mindful Parent is Your Number One Responsibility
“Your first responsibility in parenting is being mindful of your inner state. Mindfulness is the opposite of ‘losing’ your temper. Don’t get me wrong – mindfulness doesn’t mean you don’t feel anger. Being mindful means that you pay attention to what you’re feeling, but don’t act on it.”
All parenting starts with re-parenting our inner child. Sometimes, we feel that we don’t want to raise our kids the same way as our parents raised us, but some particular behaviours just start popping up (like nagging, yelling, punishing, etc.), and it seems we have no control over it. That’s because some reactions and behavioural patterns were installed in our brains in our childhood, and if we want to break this cycle, we need to start with healing our own wounds. Mindfully. Here are a few practical ideas on how to do it:
- Parent consciously. That means pay attention to your “triggers” – what your child does that makes you feel angry and frustrated? That will be a red flag that there is an unresolved issue from your childhood. (For example, a messy home is a big trigger for me!)
- Use your inner pause button. To break the cycle, we need to stop for a moment and remind ourselves what would happen if we react in a usual way.
- Understand how emotions work. That’s why every parent needs to go through an emotional intelligence crash course. In a nutshell, when we are in a fight-or-flight mode, our child (or anyone else) looks like an enemy to us. Once we take our emotions under control (e.g. with a few deep breaths), we react better and take better decisions.
- Hit the reset button on your own story. “If you had a painful childhood, you can’t change that. But what you can change is what you’re talking with you from that childhood: your ‘story’.” Reflect on your childhood, feel all those painful feelings, but also consider the new angles (you can use the coping strategies from Sonja Lyubomirsky’s great book The How of Happiness – check out our notes)
- De-stress. It’s much easier to be a calm parent when you have a repertoire of self-care habits that help to de-stress. Yoga, meditation, walking in nature – whatever makes you happier. Your non-anxious calm presence is the greatest gift you can give to your child.
- Get support in working through old issues. Raising kids is tough work, so make sure you ask for help when you struggle emotionally (even if that involves just talking with a friend).
One thing to remember is that there are no perfect parents. The whole point is to pay attention, pause before you act and manage your own stress. This is the way to GROWTH.
It also reminds of Hal Runkel’s wisdom in ScreamFree Parenting (check out our notes): parenting is not about the kids, it’s mostly about us, parents. To become a successful parent, you need to: 1) focus on yourself; 2) calm yourself down; 3) grow yourself up.
Question for you – what are your triggers? How can you become more mindful of them?
Connection is The Secret to Happy Parenting
“The security of knowing that someone is on his side, watching out for him, is what allows a child to risk bumps, scrapes and disappointment – in other words, to learn, grow and develop resilience. When children feel securely connected to us, they learn to love themselves and to love others.”
Dr Markham writes that our ability to enjoy our children may be the most important factor in their development. A strong and loving relationship with our child is one of the best investments in life, and it has long-lasting benefits.
This idea is deeply rooted in the well-researched attachment parenting theory. In a nutshell, research shows that when children feel connected to us, they behave better, have higher self-esteem, feel more confident and less stressed, and are more resilient. These are all the necessary factors for optimal development.
Dr Markham also shares a secret of raising an independent child:
“What makes a child independent? Roots and wings. Independence is rooted in secure attachment – knowing that Mum and Dad are there when needed. Once children know we’re available if they want us, they can focus on their appropriate developmental tasks, which include becoming more independent in handling their responsibilities.”
Guess what happens when kids don’t feel connected to their most important people in life? They waste their precious energy on gaining attention and approval from parents rather than on age-appropriate developmental tasks. And if they don’t get this affirmation from parents, they become preoccupied with getting it from peers (and the results might be ugly).
Therefore, it’s one of our key parenting goals to create opportunities for closeness, connection and relationship building every day (e.g. family mealtime, special time, play, conversations, walks, etc.).
One more important point here: defiance from your child is most likely a sign that your relationship needs work rather than it’s a discipline problem. Here Laura makes the same point as Jesper Juul in Your Competent Child (check out our notes): in most cases, children want to cooperate with us. But this cooperation highly depends on our relationship with them.
Emotional Bank Account
Imagine that your relationship with your child has an emotional bank account. All the positive experiences, loving and affirming interactions create a positive balance (hence, fostering connection). When we have less than optimal interactions with a child, our account dips into the red.
Therefore, when you have some frictions with your child or face challenging behaviour, it’s most likely a signal that your relationship account is in red. Have a think about what contributed to this overdraft? What can you do to refill the relationship account with your child?
Special Time
“Every child benefits from Special Time to reconnect with each parent often, if possible every day. Think of it as preventive maintenance to keep things on track in your family.”
Preventive Maintenance. Love it. Special Time is one of the best relationship-building activities with your child. Here is how to rock it:
- Announce that you want to have Special Time with each of your children,
- Choose a time when any other children are being looked after by someone else,
- Set a timer for 15 minutes with your child,
- Let your child decide what you’ll be doing during this special time (but leave an opportunity for your suggestions as well),
- Give your child 100% of your attention with no agenda and no distractions,
- If your child wants to do something that he isn’t usually allowed to do, have a think if there is any way to do it safely since you are there to help him,
- When it’s your turn to decide what to do, initiate games that build emotional intelligence and bonding (e.g. wrestle, pillow-fight, “bumbling monster”, role-play with stuffed animals, etc.),
- End the special time when the timer buzzes.
Obviously, it’s much harder to do when you have more than two children, but nothing is impossible. The whole point is to regularly have this quality one-to-one time with each of your children.
Coaching, Not Controlling
“Most parents think it’s our job to control our children, but when we try we’re bound to fail. […]
By contrast, when we think of ourselves as coaches, we know that all we have is influence – so we work hard to stay respected and connected, so our child wants to follow us. Like an athletics coach who helps kids develop strength and skills to play their best game, coaching parents help kids develop the mental and emotional muscle and the life skills to manage themselves and live their best lives.”
Yes! In any kind of relationship, we cannot control other people. We can only influence. And as Hal Runkel noted in Screamfree Parenting, we can only become leaders for our kids and influence them only when we are in control of ourselves:
“To truly be in charge means having the power to create lasting and continued growth, not just exerting power or demanding obedience. It means controlling yourself no matter what, so you can better influence your children to make good decisions. I’ll say that again: To be in charge as a parent means controlling yourself so you can influence your kids. This makes for a radical shift, a shift away from controlling your kids’ behavior. Your goal is not to control. Your goal is to influence. Remember, you are not responsible for your children’s responses. You want to continually hold up and respect their ability to make choices, even choices you disagree with. Unless they’re free to make their own choices, they can’t learn the connection between choices and consequences.”
What we need to do is to become coaches: teach our children socio-emotional skills, teach appropriate behaviour and teach them life skills.
Here is a little table to summarise the difference between controlling and coaching:
| In response to child’s: | Parent tries to control | Parent Coaches |
| Inappropriate behaviour | Works short-term when kids are young as long as parent is present | Raises kids who want to do right |
| Anger | Forces kids to repress anger, which bursts out uncontrolled at other times | Helps kids learn to manage anger |
| Emotions | Child fends off emotion by becoming controlling, but lags in self-regulation | Child develops self-regulation and resilience |
| Developing values | Child is motivated to avoid punishment, not by concern for others | Child follows parents’ teachings |
| Developing life skills | Parent nags child, essentially taking responsibility | Parent provides child with support to enjoy becoming responsible for himself |
| Developing self-motivation | Child resents pressure from parents | Child feels empowered and motivated |
In The Thriving Child William Stixrud and Ned Johnson share a very similar idea: if we want our child to develop a sense of control that is crucial for thriving in life, we need to let go of some of ours. We should become consultants, rather than bosses to our child.
Emotional Backpack
“Like other humans, children also need to feel their emotions before those emotions will dissipate and vanish. But since young children’s rational brains aren’t yet fully online, they can’t use them to feel safer. Instead your child uses you. Your warm presence makes him feel safe enough to experience his tears and fears. If you’re not there or if his feelings disconnected from you at the moment he stuffs those feelings into a figurative emotional backpack, which he lugs around with him. Until the child feels safe enough to empty the backpack, he’s tightly would and emotionally fragile, trying to keep its contents from sloshing out. He doesn’t have normal access to the internal resources he needs to handle the normal challenges of everyday life.”
Love this metaphor – emotional backpack. Young children can’t yet unpack their emotional backpack with words, so they may act out. Therefore, in most misbehaviour, we see signals that our child needs help with processing big feelings.
There are two main ways to help him discharge big emotions: tears and laughter. In a nutshell, we need to help a child play when he can and cry when he needs to.
One of the important notes here is that sometimes our child’s emotions are triggered by essential needs that go unmet. We often focus on physical needs (sleep, food and cleanliness), and their deeper needs remain unmet: the need for unconditional love, worthiness, intimacy and belonging, independence, mastery, meaning or power. Once you figure out which needs aren’t being met and fill this void, your child will be more cooperative and well-behaved ☺
Punishment Doesn’t Work
“The dirty little secret about punishment is that it doesn’t work to teach children better behaviour. In fact, studies show that punishment creates more bad behaviour. Not just that children who behave badly get punished more, but that children who get punished more will behave badly more often over time.”
Force creates resistance. That’s a strong message for all parents. So how shall we react to our child’s inappropriate behaviour? Discipline! (btw, the literal meaning of this word is “to guide”). In a nutshell, it’s all about teaching your child alternative behaviour, rather than just stopping the unwanted behaviour.
But it all should be based on a strong connection with your child.
Mastery Coaching
If we want our child to succeed in life, we need to help him develop mastery. Mastery leads to high self-esteem and achievement. And here Dr Laura Markham draws her ideas on Martin Seligman’s research (check out our notes on his great book The Optimistic Child) and says that for mastery coaching, we need three main things in place:
- Unconditional love
- Respect
- Scaffolding (routines and habits, expectations of behaviour, modelling, a safe environment)
Dr Markham writes:
“The best way to help a child experience mastery is to respectfully observe him, so we see where he needs support and then build scaffolding in those places.”
In the book, Laura gives many age-appropriate strategies on how you can help your child develop mastery, so definitely grab the book!
3 Takeaways:
- What are your “triggers” – what your child does that makes you feel angry and frustrated? How can you be more mindful of them?
- Block your calendar for Special Time sessions with each of your children.
- Think about how you can become less controlling and more coaching parents? Write down three actions you can start doing today: one to coach your child emotionally, second – to teach how to behave, and third – to teach a life skill or mastery.
Quotes From the Book:
