Three weeks ago, I logged into my first class in Seattle University's Clinical Mental Health Counseling program. Back in 2011, I started studying for the GRE with a similar intention. Then life happened, and that path got set aside before I ever sent an application. So opening my laptop that first night felt bigger than the start of a semester. It felt like picking up a thread I'd put down fifteen years ago. I expected to be busy, and I am. What I didn't expect was how quickl

Somewhere in the third trimester, people start saying it. Let me know if you need anything. Your mother-in-law says it. Your coworkers say it. Your neighbor says it over the fence. And most of us answer the same way. Thanks! We're good. We plan for the baby's needs. Ours are harder to say out loud. There's a registry for the baby. There is no registry for the person who will be awake at 3 a.m. wondering if she's allowed to wake someone up. Meal trains. Night help. Someone to

You snapped. It was a long day, the ask was small, and your voice came out harder than you meant it to. Your kid's face did the thing. And now it's twenty minutes later, and you're standing in the kitchen with a feeling you can't quite set down. Most of us know what we're "supposed" to do next. Go back. Say sorry. Repair. And a lot of us find that surprisingly hard to do. Not because we don't love our kids. Not because we think we were right. It's hard for a quieter reason: m

People are sometimes surprised by this. They book a call expecting a list. What to say at bedtime. What to do about the hitting. The three steps for getting out the door. It's a fair thing to expect. Most parenting help comes in that shape. And when you're tired, and it's the fourth rough night in a row, a script sounds like mercy. Here's my hesitation with tips: they work right up until the moment you need them. In a calm moment, you can remember the script. In the moment th

Almost every parent I sit with has said some version of this to me at some point: "I said the exact thing my mom used to say, and I hate that I said it." It's usually a small thing. A tone. A phrase. A way of going quiet instead of talking something through. And it comes out of nowhere, mid-sentence, mid-moment, and lands with this strange double feeling: it worked, in the sense that the kid stopped whatever they were doing, and it also felt like betraying something you promi

There's a voice a lot of parents carry that says some version of: you don't know enough, you're not doing enough, if you were really good at this it wouldn't be this hard. I hear it almost every week, in different words. A parent will tell me about a hard morning, a meltdown, a missed moment, a short temper, and somewhere in the retelling, the voice slips in. Not loud. Usually just a quiet aside, almost apologetic: I should know how to handle this by now. Here's what I don't

There's a question I ask almost every parent in our very first session together, before we've talked about bedtime, or siblings fighting, or the thing that made them finally reach out. Most people can't answer it right away. Not because it's complicated. It's actually a short question, six words, maybe seven. But it tends to land somewhere people haven't been asked to look in a long time, and I watch it happen almost every time: a pause, a little laugh that isn't really a lau

Think of the last small moment that knocked you off center. Not a crisis, something tiny. A shoe that wouldn't go on. A question asked for the fifth time. A tone you didn't love. And something in you got sharp, or cold, or tight, in a way that felt just a little bigger than the moment deserved. Here's what most of us do next: we go straight to the fix. We rush to smooth it over, get the shoe on, get everyone out the door, and quietly file the moment away as "not my best," so

I spent my twenties and a good part of my thirties as a nanny for families across Seattle. Most of them were first-time parents, and they were prepared. The car seat was installed weeks early. The sleep books were read. There were lists, and there were lists for the lists. Then the baby came home, and the questions started. Is this normal? What do I do when she won't stop crying? How do I handle this? These were smart, loving people who had planned for everything. What I noti

When something isn't going well with our kids, it's pretty natural to start with the kid. How do I get her to stop melting down? How do I get him to listen? What should I say when she talks to me like that? How do I get them to stop fighting? What consequence should I use? I've asked those questions, too. But what if sometimes we're starting in the wrong place? What if, before asking How do I change what my child is doing?, we got curious about what their behavior is doing in