Time to let out a big sigh of relief: peaceful parents get to make mistakes. Not only do you get to make mistakes, but this is actually the most effective way to help your child develop a secure attachment and thrive in all relationships throughout their lives. 

Being human is complex and confusing, so messing up your parenting will happen. How you handle your mistakes will determine what your children learn about safe, loving relationships. Being perfect is impossible, and even if you pulled it off as a parent, you’d have raised children who then expected everyone else to be perfect, too. That is a recipe for disappointment and loneliness.

When – not if – you make a mistake with your children, there is a process that converts your failure to connection: repair. Acknowledging your mistake, taking responsibility, and renewing your commitment to try and do it differently the next time helps assure your child that whatever happened wasn’t their fault. They see and feel you are still here to love and support them. And that’s exactly what they deserve to expect from any important relationship for the rest of their life: imperfection that returns to connection.

Mistake #2: Dismissing Your Feelings In the Name of Staying Calm

Remember that point about how being human is so complex? Feelings and emotions are at the heart of this complexity (pun absolutely intended). Feelings are sensations you experience in your body, and emotions are the responses to your environment that stimulate feelings. These signals inform you about your inner and outer world, which makes them an essential part of being fully human.

Dismissing or ignoring your feelings is a common mistake because you’ve most likely heard from parenting experts that you need to be calm before responding to your child. There is truth to that, but there’s also a risk of suppressing big emotions that must be felt. 



The bigger truth is that emotions don’t just evaporate. Suppose they can’t healthily move through your body. In that case, they’ll either simmer under the surface until they erupt uncontrollably, or they’ll linger and create physical and psychological symptoms that are often uncomfortable and even painful.

So, how do you feel all your feelings and keep a goal of staying calm in the most challenging parenting moments? Maybe you don’t.

You have permission to share what you’re feeling in a safe way. You get to grit your teeth and grunt, “I’m feeling more and more frustrated here. I’m stepping away, and I’ll be back soon. I need a minute to take care of myself.”

You have every right to be honest with your child about your emotions. “There’s anger rising into my throat, so I’m going to let it out. AGGHH! Ok, I’m moving the anger and starting to feel settled enough to stay here with you.” 

You get to be vulnerable and share your inner experience. “I’m starting to spiral into anxiety, and my thoughts are running way ahead of me. I’ll give you some space while I get myself back into the present moment.”

A surprising reality about emotions is that as you build your capacity to feel a broader range at a greater depth, you won’t be caught off guard (as often) and explode in reactivity. You are also teaching your children that people have all kinds of emotions, and they don’t last forever. You are modeling how to feel emotions and be supported through them.

If you want your child to feel anger and express it without violence, feel sadness and be open to comfort, and feel fear and find courage, then you get to be the person who feels and expresses those emotions, too. At the Jai Institute for Parenting, we guide parents to feel safe with all emotions so they can still do their best parenting while feeling all the feels.

And for those times when you still flip your lid? See #1 above. Reflect, repair, and connect.

Mistake #3: Trying to Keep Your Child Happy

You’ve most likely committed to peaceful parenting because you want your child to have all the joy and happiness they possibly can in childhood. Maybe you experienced neglect or violence, and you understandably want to protect your child from that harm.

Child development studies show that children with a reliable and supportive caregiver who offers empathy have more resilience later in life. It’s not the absence of pain or suffering that helps a child thrive. It’s the presence of a loving adult during pain and suffering that helps a child develop the capacity to self-regulate and self-soothe as adults. 

Again, trying to create a “perfect” childhood through constant happiness is impossible and sets up children to have unrealistic expectations and unhealthy relationship patterns throughout life. 

The well-intentioned mistake of telling a child, “You’re ok,” when they’re in pain, or “Don’t be upset,” when they feel sad creates deep disconnection that can lead to future mental and physical health problems. At the very least, it blocks them from trusting their feelings and dims their experience of vitality, pleasure, and joy in life.

At the Jai Institute for Parenting, we understand the hidden patterns that become painfully clear when your child mirrors them back to you. This is why our education and programs are parent-centered: when you can feel your emotions and be in connection with yourself, you can be a more reliable and supportive source of security for your child.

When your child feels angry, helpless, afraid, or anxious, it is not because you fail them. It’s because they are human. They need you to be with them to feel, period. Not to make them feel better.

Mistake #4: Expecting This to Be Easy

Hard truth: Peaceful parenting requires tremendous commitment, energy, and perseverance. And a healthy relationship with your child is worth all of it.

A common misconception is that when you parent peacefully, your child will respond peacefully. Yes, that is possible, and it’s the long-term goal, but it’s actually not likely to happen consistently for quite a while. Of course, it’s confusing, frustrating, and even humiliating when you parent peacefully, and your child responds with bigger, louder, and scarier behaviors.

Peaceful parenting can feel really hard for several reasons. First, if you are shifting your parenting style, the newness and lack of familiarity send signals of danger to your child’s nervous system. Even if they cried every time you yelled, it was a familiar pattern that they could rely on. When you stop yelling so often, even though it’s a healthier response, the newness of it may raise alarm bells in your child’s system, and they may react accordingly – with bigger and louder behavior until you get to the familiar place of yelling. 

Perseverance is crucial. Knowing that your child is reacting to your changing patterns can bolster your commitment to stick with it until the new pattern becomes familiar. Human growth and change are nonlinear, so things may seem worse before they feel better. Having a parent coach to help you remember this perspective is one source of reassurance on this bumpy journey.

Another reason peaceful parenting feels so rough is that you are allowing your child to express themselves fully. They feel safe enough to scream at you. They trust you enough to slam the door and not get punished. They know you have the capacity to sit in a meltdown until it runs its course, still loving and holding them when it’s over. 

Children who experience a foundation of trust, acceptance, and safety will express themselves fully. Ouch. And, thank goodness. Allowing children to feel and process their emotions with your support maintains their connection to themselves. Meanwhile, you continue to teach healthy ways to express emotions, which they can do when they are developmentally capable.

As a peaceful parent, you are in this for the long haul. To borrow a metaphor from Buddhist poet and peace activist Thích Nhất Hạnh: “The beauty of the lotus actually gives value to the mud.” When you are in the muck of parenting, remember you are creating space for a beautiful relationship to bloom.

Mistake #5: Giving Yourself Less Compassion Than You Give to Your Child

As a peaceful parent, you likely offer compassion to your child daily: seeing them in a challenging situation and taking action to ease their pain. However, you might be giving yourself criticism rather than compassion.

As an adult, you deserve the same tenderness and care you give to your child. If you believe that shame and fear are not the path to a healthy relationship with your child, does it make sense to use shame or loathing as a way to create a healthy relationship with yourself? While it makes sense to offer yourself compassion, putting it into practice can be difficult.

If you were raised with shame-based punishments or fear-inducing threats, it’s natural that your inner voice lacks compassion. One of the hidden gifts in conscious parenting is that when you offer compassion to the child in front of you and offer the same compassion to yourself, you are healing your inner child while you parent your actual child.

When you toss and turn in bed at night, with thoughts like, “I should know better,” or “I’m such a failure,” self-compassion can be a cozy blanket that brings emotional connection and loving kindness into your heart. You can rest easier when you remind yourself, “I’m doing the best I can,” or “I’m a work in progress.” 

You can take another step forward from your awareness of common “mistakes” to knowledge of what to do differently. Join the Path to Peaceful Parenting (a free 90-minute class) to discover three shifts that will bring more peace, connection, and confidence into your parenting. 

The Jai Institute for Parenting believes that building awareness, knowledge, and skills is the first step to shifting your perspective and changing your relationship. We also believe in the power of coaching to translate your knowledge into action. Practicing peaceful parenting skills with a coach is the key to transformation in parenting, which is why we train parent coaches. When you have hard days in parenting (because you will), you deserve to believe you are still on the path to creating a healthy, loving relationship with your child.