I see every day that parents want to control their children. They want them to do what they’re told to do because if you can control your children, then you are a good parent. And that’s what we tell ourselves.

It’s okay that your child doesn’t clean their room, not eat the food you spend all day preparing or even throws a raging tantrum in Target.

None of these are reflections of how good you are as a parent. These are age-appropriate behaviors. Parents often attach our parent report cards to how well our children behave and listen to us.

Your child comes THROUGH you, not from you, more true in adopted children. Your children are not a mini version of you or an extension of you. Your children also are not here to please you or make you happy. They come into your life to help you become a better version of yourself because taking care of another human being is a selfless act.

Your child is an individual with their own needs and wants. Your job as a parent is to provide a safe environment for your child to learn and discover who they are and help our children navigate the world on their own, and build self-esteem and confidence. We did a good job as parents when our children grow up to be happy and healthy adults who make good choices on their own.

Becoming a better parent to your child means working on ourselves instead of focusing on what’s wrong with our children because nothing is wrong with our children. They came to this world as a clean slate.

Free your child from the need for your approval. Instead, connect with your children from a place of love, compassion and acceptance rather than fear, ego, and control. By letting go of the idea that your kid needs to do certain things and behave a certain ways, ie eating all the food you prepare, listening to all your commands, following the rules, getting all A’s, etc, you allow your child to feel loved, heard, accepted and appreciated for being themselves.

I know these may be hard to accept and get used to because, as a society, we’re hardwired to believe and abide by certain societal and cultural rules and that children should be seen and not heard.

Choose Your Battle Wisely

Let go of struggles around what the kids wear and eat every day. Put your energy where it’s worth it. I let my daughter wear whatever she wants to school, a t-shirt and shorts and mismatched socks. Having mismatched, wild-haired little girls is a small price to pay for empowering them with self-expression and autonomy. I also allow her to skip showering sometimes. Just one less fight and argument with little subsequence. But I won’t let her go to sleep without brushing her teeth. This is the battle I chose because not brushing her teeth can affect her health.

We have to acknowledge that some children, especially those with special needs, are more challenging to parents than others, some parenting stages are proven to be more difficult, and some families are grappling with extraordinary needs and circumstances. We have to recognize how hard parenting is and that everybody gets it wrong at some point.

Set and Maintain Boundaries

Children pick up on our inconsistency, especially when it’s based on fear. That’s when they “push your buttons” because they know if they push that button many times enough, one time will work.

Creating clear, consistent, and compassionate boundaries, so discipline is unnecessary. When we’re inconsistent with communicating our “non-negotiable” boundaries, such as brushing teeth, getting enough sleep, tidying up, and limiting screen time, it may be because we ourselves lack that discipline or we’re unconsciously afraid that if we don’t give our kids what they want, they will reject us. Just like connecting to our children makes them feel safe, healthy boundaries make them feel secure.

Punishment, time-outs, and arbitrary threats are not only ineffective in the long run, but they can also be damaging to their delicate self-esteem. I have many memories of being punished growing up, both at home and at school. All I remember from those memories were how scared I was, how much guilt and shame I felt because I was not good enough, something was wrong with me, and I was a disappointment.

Looking back, punishment and discipline do not work. It does more harm to the soul than actually “teaching a lesson” because I learned no lesson. In some cases, I was so scared that I didn’t even remember what trouble I got into. Other times, I was punished for just being a kid, little things like talking in class or leaving things behind.

Parents often punish their children or “teach them a lesson” out of their own anger at themselves and fear of being a bad parent. It’s okay. As parents, we do what we know to the best of our knowledge.

Does this mean parents should never get upset? No.

One of the biggest challenges when it comes to parenting a strong-willed child, it feels like some of their developmentally appropriate antics push my buttons way more than they should. When they fight for your attention and don’t listen to me, instead of going into problem-solving mode, you feel instantly defeated and lose your temper. This pattern is getting us nowhere—it makes me feel weak and helpless, guilty, and shame, and when you resort to threats and taking away privileges, we all feel terrible. I need to figure out how to fix it.

What are parenting triggers?

A trigger is anything you experience in the present moment that activates a feeling from the past. A trigger often activates an old wound from our childhood, like not feeling heard or respected. Because that wound is a story, we tell ourselves, like “No one ever listens to me,” we’re always looking for confirming evidence that that’s the way the world is.

When something happens where we feel not listened to (like we tell our kid eight times to come to the table for dinner), it will activate that old story. You feel angry and frustrated.

These old, visceral feelings from the past can affect your mood, make you irritable and resentful, and stop you from connecting with your child because when they trigger these angry feelings, you see your kid as the enemy.

Your child could even remind you of someone in your life that you have a difficult relationship, such as a mother, father or sibling. But the most common trigger is that the child reminds you of yourself, the very things that you don’t like about yourself.

However, you don’t need to dig too much into your past to figure out what’s really bothering you in order to be an effective parent. You do, however, need to learn to recognize your triggers.

There could be little things that are deeply triggering because of your own childhood trauma or issues that touch a deeper nerve. But parents can find their kid’s behavior really triggering without it necessarily touching these deep issues. Nobody likes not being listened to. Nobody likes doing something for somebody and then never getting a thank you. There are universal behaviors that would drive everyone crazy.

If you find yourself “triggered,” as in experiencing intense emotions when your child won’t listen, won’t clean the room, or refuse to do what you ask, you may be manipulating or lashing out at your kids to compensate for your own issues.

Start with looking at your own issues, triggers, and reactions. This is helpful not only in moving through the day and the schedule with your kids—like motivating them to brush their teeth or go to school—but in feeling happier and closer with them by providing more compassion and patience.

Say you can be triggered that your child refuses to brush their teeth or not clean their room. Ask yourself why you get so triggered. Does your child refuse to do what you ask to make you feel less as a parent? Or was it a previous childhood experience that you have?

They should learn to respond in healthier ways by expressing themselves honestly and authentically versus letting their emotions trigger knee-jerk and charged reactions.

Children refusing to clean or do chores or just being difficult are normal age-appropriate behaviors. The better questions to ask is “why are you reacting so intensely?” “what childhood experience did this incident trigger in you?”

Becoming a parent is not about fixing your child’s behaviors or issues but rather focusing on you, the parents. Because when you change your reactions and behaviors around your child, they’ll change. So you essentially fix your children by fixing yourself first.

You can start by recognizing the difference between reacting to our children from our egos compared to when you respond from a state of love and compassion. It’s all being in the moment, looking at any situation matter of factly.

Do you find yourself losing your cool more than you’d like? Here are six of the most common parenting triggers and tips on how to deal with them:

1. Whining

Whining is a big trigger because it grates on our nerves, and we want our children to be happy. Whining and other frustrating behavior like not listening also often happens when you have tons of things to do, and that can be really aggravating.

When it comes to any trigger, the first step is to check in with yourself, acknowledge that you’re being triggered, and show self-compassion before you try to fix the situation. For example, if your first instinct is to yell, tell yourself: ‘This is just a program. My brain has been firing this way my whole life. It doesn’t have to keep firing this way. You’re not naturally wired to lose your temper and yell; you can choose different behaviors. The more you do that, the more that becomes a neural pathway as well.

2. Disrespect

Many of us were disrespected as children, and when our kids are disrespectful to us, that trigger gets activated. Your child might say, ‘No, I won’t brush my teeth! You can’t make me.” And kids say things like that all the time not because they’re defiant but because they’re learning about how to use power.

When a parent gets triggered by being disrespectful, they get locked into an unnecessary power struggle. If you weren’t triggered, you would go into problem-solving mode, like any confident parent would. You’d say, ‘Wow, you hate this so much that you don’t ever want to brush your teeth again. But you do have to brush your teeth because if you don’t, your teeth can fall out because they get germs eating away at them. So we need to figure this out.”

You might also offer them choices to brush in the bathroom or in their bedroom. Sometimes kids just want to feel a sense of control and being heard. That’s way better than holding your kid down so you can brush their teeth, which is what many parents often end up doing. And I made the same mistakes too.

Every time you get into a power struggle and ultimately force your child to do what you want them to, you’re ultimately making your child smaller and smaller by making them feel powerless, not important, and not heard. This can create more power struggles in the future by being disrespectful.

3. “I hate you”

Parents freak out when kids say, ‘I hate you” because it so painful to hear that coming from someone you love. As hurtful as it is when your child says, “I hate you,” your child often doesn’t mean it. Your child is just expressing how hurt and angry they feel, they reach for the most explosive, the meanest thing they can say to you because they want to show you how unhappy they are.

When a child says, “I hate you,” it doesn’t mean they don’t love you anymore. What they’re really saying is, “I’m so angry, I’m afraid I can never work things out with you.

An appropriate response from a confident parent would be, “You can be as mad at me as you want. I will always love you. And you still can’t have another cookie (or whatever the child is asking for).’” Make sure you say it in a calm and matter-of-fact way.

4. Being physically hurt

When kids do anything physical to you, whether it’s to get your attention or by accident, parents often really lose it. When they’re kicking the back of your seat when you’re driving or pulling on your sweater… kids can go to great lengths to get our attention. Or when your kid is flailing around while you’re trying to get their jacket on, or you’re trying to get them in the car seat, and they head-butt you in the face. You have a flash response, which is totally limbic.

And it’s OK to get mad sometimes. The important thing is to repair the relationship later, once you’ve had a chance to calm down. Healthy adversity and natural bumps, like somebody screaming at you when you’re nasty to them, are part of life. There are consequences to your behavior. Those triggers are totally normal human responses. They have nothing to do with being a bad person, or being tired or mean or traumatized. They’re just crappy things that make you feel terrible.

5. Siblings fighting

Another really big trigger is when one of your kids is being aggressive or rude to the other. Especially if one is really targeting the other or being unreasonable; that tips off the mama bear response. Or maybe it has to do with your childhood family dynamics, where a sibling of yours got away with things that you didn’t. Again, responding in a protective way is natural. There is room to be both compassionate and defensive. We really have to trust that our children are stronger than we think, so we don’t have to feel guilty if we get upset with them.

When it comes to one sibling constantly creeping on the other and annoying them, that’s when you rely on limits. Your job is to protect the child from being crept on and to set limits with the four-year-old. She also recommends a few minutes of one-on-one time with each of them before storytime so they feel connected to me and don’t compete for my attention.

6. Spills and accidents

When it comes to spills and accidents, if your usual response is to immediately blame and criticize, look back on when you were a child and somebody spilled something. It was probably treated as an emergency. Is it actually an emergency? No. Somebody spilled something; you clean it up.

Recognize your trigger, then you want to practice a different response. Take a second to relax your breathing, drop your shoulders and have something that you have literally practiced saying.

Something like: ‘It’s OK. spills happen. Let’s clean it up together” or “No worries. This happens to everybody; we’ll clean it up.’ When you practice that a few times, it will start to be fairly automatic. Later in the day you can problem solve with your kid about how spills can be prevented in the future.

To try to reduce how much your triggers affect you, start out with just one trigger and work to change that hardwired reaction. Set an intention for a week or two. You’re trying to create a different set of responses in order to build new neural pathways.

After working on my biggest trigger (not feeling heard), I don’t dread bedtime as much as I used to—and I’m definitely not as provoked by their badgering as before. The most important thing is just to notice when you get triggered and use your pause button: Stop, take a deep breath and start over. Each time I correct my reaction, I’m lessening the power of the trigger.

Being a confident parent to kids with ADHD all boils down to searching deeper into your own childhood to find the origination of those triggers. Once you understand when, where and how those triggers originate, then you can consciously unlearn the trigger pathways by interrupting it.

Every trigger we have will tap into some issues that can run very deep. And for every human, those deep issues are about how we are not good enough. And therefore, our very survival is at stake. But do you have to—at the moment when you’re having a problem with your child—get into all that stuff in your head? No. Instead, we need to rely on tools to stop flying off the handle.

Enjoy your children now when they’re still young. Before you realize, they’ll be in college and away from home. They won’t always be desperate little monkeys climbing all over you, and they definitely won’t always want you to help them drift off into la-la land.

Want to better understand your ADHD Child, Have Better Communication, and Calmer Family Life, and be Less overwhelmed? If yes, join our Confident ADHD Parent Group Coaching.