About Hunter Clarke-Fields
Hunter Clarke-Fields is the host Mindful Mama Podcast , global speaker, number 1 bestselling author of Raising Good Humans and Raising Good Humans Every Day, Mindfulness Meditation teacher and creator of the Mindful Parenting Course and Teacher Training.
Hunter has over 20 years of experience in meditation and practices and has taught mindfulness and Mindful Parenting to hundreds of thousands worldwide.
About the Book
“Most parenting books don’t tell you that all their good advice goes out the window when your stress response kicks in — as in, you literally can’t access the areas of the brain where your good new skills are stored. That’s why this book will show you how to quiet your stress response (the reactive, raging banshee inside) and teach you how to communicate with your child effectively (so you stop triggering so much resistance).
Reduced reactivity and effective communication are taught via eight skills that you can implement, even in your busy life, starting right now:
- Mindfulness practices to calm reactivity
- Awareness of your story
- Self-compassion
- Taking care of difficult feelings
- Mindful listening
- Speaking skillfully
- Mindful problem solving
- Supporting your peaceful home
Many parents look at the challenges, irritations, and frustrations of parenting and blame the child. If we can only “fix” our children, life will be better. But instead of blaming your child — or yourself — I invite you to look at the difficulties and stresses of parenting as your teachers — as something to learn from, rather than something you wish would just go away.”
Raising Good Humans by Hunter Clarke-Fields had been on my radar for a while. It kept appearing in searches for the best gentle parenting books, and after one lovely mummy from my very secret book club suggested it, I finally decided to read it.
In this book, Hunter offers practical mindful parenting tools to help parents become less reactive, communicate more effectively, and build a calmer, more connected home. The exercises are simple enough for real family life, which is important because no one needs parenting advice that only works when everyone is well-rested, emotionally regulated, and magically wearing both shoes.
I especially liked the journaling prompts and practical exercises throughout the book. My advice? Don’t just read them and nod wisely. Try them.
The book is packed with great insights, and in these notes I’ll share just a few of my favourites.
Let’s dive in.
P.S. If you enjoy this book, you may also like Calm Parents, Happy Kids by Laura Markham, Good Inside by Dr Becky Kennedy, The Conscious Parent by Dr Shefali Tsabary, and The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read by Philippa Perry – check out our notes!
Key Insights
Mindfulness is Your Superpower
“Mindfulness meditation can significantly change how reactive our brains are over time. We aren’t 100 percent sure yet how this happens, but MRI scans show that after an eight-week course of mindfulness practice, the brain’s fight-or-flight centers, the amygdalae, actually appear to shrink. Not only that, but as the amygdalae shrink, the prefrontal cortex (again, the area associated with more-complex brain functions such as awareness, concentration, empathy, and decision making) becomes thicker!
What’s more, the “functional connectivity” between these regions— how often they are activated together-also changes. The connections between the amygdalae and the rest of the brain weakens, while the connections among areas associated with attention and concentration get stronger (Ireland 2014). This means that meditation is physically changing the brain (wow!) in a way that weakens our reactivity! This ability of the brain to change is called neuroplasticity, and it can happen throughout an individual’s life. With mindfulness meditation, our reactive responses to stress can be superseded by more thoughtful ones.
Because of these changes, mindfulness meditation is the foundation we’ll develop to help us think more clearly in difficult parenting situations.
With reduced reactivity, you’ll be able to access the logical, rational, and empathetic prefrontal cortex, allowing you to use the new communication skills you’ll learn soon. With some practice in mindfulness meditation under your belt, as well as other practices to lower your stress response, your intention to parent thoughtfully will no longer be hijacked by your reactivity.”
Hunter begins Raising Good Humans with a truth many parents know painfully well: when we’re stressed, tired, rushed, or triggered, we don’t parent from our best selves. We parent from survival mode.
In other words, your child refuses to put their shoes on, and suddenly your brain acts like you’re being chased by a tiger. This is not because you’re a bad parent. It’s because your stress response has taken over. Your emotional brain sounds the alarm, your rational brain goes offline, and the calm, wise, gentle parent you planned to be disappears somewhere behind the laundry pile.
That’s why mindfulness is such a powerful parenting tool. Mindfulness meditation helps us pause before reacting. It gives us a tiny but life-changing space between the trigger and the explosion. Over time, it can help reduce parenting reactivity, calm the nervous system, and strengthen the part of the brain responsible for empathy, decision-making, and self-control – what Dan Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson call the “upstairs brain.”
And this is the whole point: mindful parenting is not about becoming perfectly calm all the time. That would be lovely, but also slightly suspicious.
It’s about noticing your automatic reactions before they take over. It’s about getting off autopilot. It’s about being able to choose your response instead of being hijacked by stress.
Hunter shares practical mindfulness exercises throughout the book, and I really recommend exploring her free meditations too. She has a lovely 3-minute meditation, which is perfect for busy parents who don’t exactly have a spare silent hour between school runs, snacks, sibling fights, and bedtime negotiations.
You can find them on Hunter’s website.
Create Your Personal Yell-Less Plan
“Our responses to difficult parenting moments are as varied as ourselves and our personal stories. You may have grown up with a parent who withdrew or became passive-aggressive when angry. Or you might be playing out the generational pattern of the adult temper tantrum, yelling like I did. Because our experiences are so varied, there’s no perfect one-size-fits-all solution to yelling less.”
Here’s the uncomfortable truth from Chapter 2 of Raising Good Humans: there is no magic parenting tip that suddenly makes you stop yelling. Annoying, I know.
To yell less, we first need to understand what makes us yell in the first place. Our triggers. Our stress patterns. Our old stories. The moments when our nervous system decides that a child refusing to brush their teeth is somehow a fire-alarm emergency.
Once we know our triggers, we can create a plan.
Hunter suggests building your own personal yell-less plan – a practical strategy for what you will do when anger, frustration, or overwhelm starts taking over. Think of it as an “if-then” plan (implementation intention):
“If I feel angry or triggered, then I will…”
That tiny plan matters, because in heated parenting moments, your calm brain is not exactly running the meeting. You need something simple, realistic, and ready to use. Here are a few ideas from the book:
- Master your self-talk. Choose a calming mantra, such as: “This is not an emergency,” “I can handle this,” “Choose love,” “Peace begins with me,” or my personal favourite, “I’m a ninja mum.”
- Take a break. When you feel like you’re about to lose it, make sure your child is safe, then step away for a few minutes. Sometimes the most loving thing you can do is not say the thing you’re about to say.
- Try mindful walking. Walk slowly and deliberately to release anger and frustration from your body.
- Think like a teacher. Instead of taking your child’s behaviour personally, ask: “What does my child need to learn here, and how can I teach it?”
- Whisper instead of yelling. It sounds strange, but lowering your voice can help lower the emotional temperature in the room.
The point is not to become a perfect parent who never shouts, but to become a more aware parent – one who notices the storm coming and has a plan before it takes over the whole house.
Challenge for you: create your own yell-less parenting plan. Write down your biggest triggers and choose two or three calming strategies you can actually use in real life.
P.S. You may also find my article Break the Cycle: How to Rewire Your Reactions and Become a Calmer Parent helpful. It’s a great resource for understanding parenting triggers, reducing reactivity, and learning how to become a calmer parent.
Give and Receive Kindness
“Why kindness? Shouldn’t we be talking about respect and authority when it comes to parenting? Though we all want our children to be kind to themselves and others-and we know that kindness helps us all get along in the world and live a happy life-sometimes as parents we think that we have to use force, manipulation, and fear to get our kids to do what we want. That is, to get them to respect our authority. However, force and manipulation are not the same as authority, and fear is not the same as respect. We forget that if we use force, manipulation, and fear with our children, they will learn to use these tactics with others. Instead, if we want them to value kindness, we must practice kindness—even while we hold limits. Plus, kindness and empathy drive connection, and connection drives cooperation.
Kindness begins with ourselves, so working to interrupt and replace our harsh inner critic is a great start. We can look at our other attitudes and beliefs as well. For example, do you think taking care of yourself is selfish?”
In Chapter 3 of Raising Good Humans, Hunter takes the idea of compassionate parenting one step deeper: before we can offer kindness to our children, we need to notice how we speak to ourselves.
And wow, that inner voice can be brutal.
Many of us would never speak to a friend – or a child – the way we speak to ourselves after a hard parenting moment. We snap, then beat ourselves up. We lose patience, then call ourselves terrible parents. We make one mistake and turn it into a full personality assessment. Helpful? Not really.
Drawing on Brené Brown’s research, Hunter reminds us that shame doesn’t lead to change. It usually leads to hiding, defensiveness, or giving up. When we feel deeply flawed, it becomes much harder to repair, reconnect, and try again.
That’s why self-compassion matters. Not as an excuse, but as a reset button.
A calmer parent is a parent who can say, “That wasn’t my best moment. I can repair. I can learn. I can do better next time.”
In the book, Hunter shares a simple way to begin your own kindness practice: loving-kindness meditation.
And if you’d like to understand the science behind it, I highly recommend checking out our notes on Love 2.0, where Dr Barbara Fredrickson explores love as a positive emotion and explains the research behind loving-kindness meditation.
Let it RAIN (a Tool to Process Difficult Feelings)
“RAIN is an acronym that can help you remember the mindful way through difficult emotions:
- Recognize
- Allow or accept
- Investigate
- Nurture”
In the book, Hunter dedicates a whole chapter to one of the hardest parts of parenting: difficult feelings.
Our children’s feelings. Our feelings. The big, messy emotions that usually show up when everyone is tired, hungry, or refusing to put shoes on. The goal is not to fight these emotions or push them away. It’s to notice them, accept them, and move through them with more awareness.
That’s where RAIN comes in:
- Recognize – Name the emotion. “I’m feeling angry.” “I’m feeling overwhelmed.”
- Allow or accept – Let the feeling be there without judging it. “It’s okay that you’re here. I can handle this.”
- Investigate – Get curious. What triggered this feeling? What story am I telling myself?
- Nurture – Offer yourself kindness. “This is hard.” “I’m not alone.” “I can take care of myself.”
RAIN doesn’t make difficult emotions disappear. It helps us stop being hijacked by them – which, in parenting, is already a pretty big win.
This chapter reminded me of Susan David’s brilliant book Emotional Agility – check out our notes.
Mindful Problem Solving
“You don’t have to solve or fix all of your child’s problems.
What? Isn’t that what being a “good” parent is all about? No. In fact, if you take on and solve all of your child’s problems, it never gives him the opportunity to come up with solutions himself. It’s like a vote of no confidence in his abilities. […]
It’s true that when children are helpless infants, we should endeavor to solve all of their problems. However, as they grow, our role changes. Instead, we shift toward becoming mentors, helping them solve their problems. […]
Start to ask yourself, Whose problem is it? If your child has a problem, think of yourself as a helper rather than the one who has all of the solutions and answers. This can be wonderfully freeing, because in all honesty you don’t have all of the answers. Take that weight off your shoulders!”
This idea feels incredibly freeing and also slightly uncomfortable.
Because many of us don’t jump in only because our children need help. We jump in because we feel uncomfortable watching them struggle. Their frustration triggers our anxiety. Their disappointment feels too heavy. Their conflict with a sibling makes us want to become judge, jury, therapist, and UN peacekeeper in one exhausted body.
But when we rush to fix, we often rob them of something important: the chance to practise.
Practise thinking. Practise problem-solving. Practise tolerating frustration. Practise asking for help without collapsing into helplessness.
So instead of offering instant solutions, Hunter encourages us to slow down and use mindful communication: listen first, reflect what you hear, validate the feeling, and then gently support the child to think through the next step.
Not: “Here’s what you need to do.”
More: “That sounds really frustrating. What do you think might help?”
This is where connection and cooperation begin. When children feel heard, they are much more likely to engage their own thinking brain instead of digging into resistance.
In the book, Hunter’s communication tools are rooted in mindful listening and nonviolent communication – which I love. They also reminded me of Dr Ross Greene’s Collaborative Problem Solving approach from The Explosive Child.
So the next time your child has a problem, pause and ask: Whose problem is this? Then try switching from “chief problem-solver” to “empathetic helper.”
Consciously Cultivate Connection
“The relationship we have with our children is the glue that holds us together.
It’s truly the very foundation of raising a good human. That is why all the work we’ve done with mindfulness and self-compassion comes foremost, to ground us—so we can connect and show that love. The more our children experience our unconditional love, the safer and more relaxed they feel.
When they see the love in our eyes, they feel valued and value us back. They feel trust and trust us back.
All of this love creates a positive feedback loop, making parenting easier over time. We can create strong relationships not only by using the tools in the previous chapters but by intentionally spending our time and attention to cultivate a loving connection.”
This is such an important reminder: parenting tools only work when they land inside a safe relationship.
A clever script, a calm boundary, or a brilliant consequence won’t mean much if our child feels unseen, criticised, or constantly managed. Connection is what makes guidance easier to receive.
And one of the simplest ways to build that connection is mindful listening.
Not half-listening while checking messages. Not nodding while mentally planning dinner. Not jumping in with advice before they finish the sentence.
Just presence.
When your child comes to you, try giving them your full attention: eyes up, phone down, judgement paused. Listen to understand, not to correct.
It sounds almost too simple. But to a child, being deeply listened to can feel like love in action.
P.S.: one of the best tools to cultivate connection with your child? Special time!
Action Steps For You:
- Make mindfulness a daily habit. Start small – even three minutes a day can help you pause, notice your reactions, and respond more intentionally instead of parenting on autopilot.
- Create your personal yell-less plan. Know your triggers and decide in advance what you’ll do when you feel yourself losing it. A simple “if I feel angry, then I will…” plan can help reduce reactivity in difficult parenting moments.
- Become an empathetic helper, not a problem-solver. When your child struggles, resist the urge to fix everything. Listen, validate, and guide them to find their own solutions – this builds confidence, resilience, and connection.
Quotes From The Book:
“What do you want for your kids? After you answer that, the big question becomes, Are you practicing these things in your own life?”
“When we get overwhelmed and angry at our kids, most of us find ourselves yelling — especially if a parent yelled and shouted to control the situation and dominate us when we were children. However, it rarely solves the situation. Yelling may quiet children and make them obedient temporarily, but it won’t correct their behavior or their attitudes in the long run.”
“I want you to realize that self-care is not selfish. On the contrary, it’s your parental responsibility. It’s time to take responsibility for the stress levels in your life and make some choices to reduce your overall stress.”
“Once we have established the foundational belief that all feelings are acceptable, we can become helpers and coaches, modeling for our children how to take care of their strong feelings. When those strong feelings come up, our own first step is to get centered ourselves and notice any emotions and old stories that have been triggered by their big feelings. We can check in and ask, “Am I able to help my child now? Do I need to take a moment to calm down and reduce my reactivity?”
“Kids need unconditional love, mentorship, and healthy boundaries. When we’ve focused on mindfulness, skillful communication, and positive connection, setting limits becomes easier, but it’s not always a walk in the park.”
“When we can be fully in the present moment and accept ourselves exactly as we are now, then we’ve gone a long way toward reducing the stress and anxiety that makes us reactive in the first place. So I invite you to be disciplined about your practices… and relax.”
