The Parenting Pattern You Don’t Realize You’re Repeating

Sometimes the parenting problem isn’t actually the parenting problem.

You think the problem is that your kid won’t listen.

Or that every boundary turns into a negotiation.

Or that your child gets angry when you say no, and suddenly you’re explaining, bargaining, softening the boundary, and offering twelve alternatives because you just want everybody to calm the hell down.

And yes, those things matter. We need parenting tools that help us navigate behavior, create boundaries, and make family life feel less chaotic.

But sometimes you make one small change in how you respond to your kid…and suddenly you see something much bigger happening underneath.

That happened recently with a mom in my group coaching program.

At one point in our conversation, she stopped and asked:

“How did I live my life this way for so long and not realize it?”

I knew exactly what she meant.

Because when you finally see one of your own patterns clearly, it can be a little mind-blowing.

Sometimes You Need the Parenting Tool First

I occasionally forget this.

When my oldest was a toddler, I was losing my mind.

He was extremely active, into everything, and seemingly hell-bent on his own destruction. I spent my days telling him no, trying to control what he was doing, and getting increasingly frustrated when nothing seemed to work.

Eventually, someone introduced me to Love and Logic.

I didn’t start using those tools because I had some profound understanding of attachment, consciousness, or personal growth.

I used them because I was desperate.

I needed my kid to behave differently.

And, somewhat irritatingly, the tools worked.

Things got calmer. My kid became more cooperative and independent. I stopped feeling like my hair was on fire all day.

And only then did I have enough space to notice myself.

My need to control.

My reactivity.

My anger.

My discomfort when things didn’t go the way I thought they should.

The parenting tool created breathing room.

The breathing room created awareness.

And the awareness opened the door to much deeper work.

As a coach, I sometimes want to skip right to that deeper layer. But sometimes we can’t.

Sometimes we need to get the fire under control before we can start asking why we keep finding ourselves standing next to the gas can.

“I Don’t Want My Kids to Feel Bad”

The mom in my group had been working on something that sounds fairly simple:

Letting her kids have negative emotions.

She noticed that she often tried to prevent her children from being upset.

One example was introducing math tutoring to her daughter. She anticipated that her daughter probably wasn’t going to love the idea.

And immediately the worries started.

What if she gets angry?

What if she’s upset?

What if she hates it?

At first, the realization was:

I don’t want my child to feel bad.

Which makes sense.

Most loving parents do not enjoy watching their children struggle.

But our kids are going to experience disappointment, frustration, anger, sadness, embarrassment, and every other uncomfortable human emotion.

We cannot parent those feelings out of them.

And we shouldn’t.

Our job isn’t to make sure our kids never feel uncomfortable.

It’s to help them learn that they can handle being uncomfortable.

A short time later, this mom knew her kids needed some quiet time after a long, overstimulating day.

She also knew they were going to hate that idea.

Normally, that might have pulled her straight into negotiating, explaining, or trying to make the boundary more palatable.

Instead, she prepared herself.

They’re probably going to be mad about this.

And that’s okay.

She told them it was quiet time.

They were unhappy.

And the world continued spinning.

She didn’t have to convince them to like the boundary.

She didn’t have to fix their feelings.

She described feeling this enormous sense of relief.

And that relief created enough space for her to see the next layer.

“I’m Not Only Protecting Them From Their Feelings”

At our next session, she told me something had clicked.

She realized:

I don’t just block my kids’ negative emotions because I don’t want them to feel uncomfortable.

I do it because I don’t want to feel uncomfortable when they’re upset.

There it is.

That’s the moment when parenting work becomes personal growth.

Now we’re not really talking about math tutoring.

We’re talking about what happens inside of us when someone else is angry, disappointed, frustrated, or unhappy with us.

For this mom, that realization opened an enormous door.

She started noticing how much of her life had been organized around managing other people’s emotional states.

Keeping the peace.

Being agreeable.

Preventing conflict.

Anticipating what other people might feel.

And when she couldn’t prevent the intensity, she would sometimes emotionally check out so she wouldn’t have to feel it.

Eventually she said:

“That’s where all my energy goes.”

Managing.

Avoiding.

Numbing.

Keeping everything smooth.

No wonder she was exhausted.

The Hidden Work of Managing Everyone Else

A lot of parents are doing this without realizing it.

You’re already remembering the appointments, packing the lunches, finding the soccer cleats, answering the emails, doing the laundry, and figuring out who needs to be where at 4:30.

But you may also be running an invisible emotional management department.

Is everyone okay?

Is my kid mad at me?

Did I disappoint someone?

Should I explain more?

Should I soften the boundary?

Should I fix this?

Should I just say yes?

That is a shit-ton of work.

And the sneaky part is that we can mistake it for being caring.

Sometimes we are trying to make our kids feel better because we love them.

But sometimes we’re trying to regulate everyone else because we don’t know what to do with our own discomfort when they’re upset.

That doesn’t make you a bad parent.

It means you have patterns.

We all do.

Where the Enneagram Comes In

This is one reason I use the Enneagram so much in my coaching.

Not because I want to slap a number on somebody and explain away their behavior.

It helps us see strategies we’ve been using for so long that they feel like reality.

This particular client is an Enneagram Type 9.

Nines tend to deeply value peace, harmony, and steadiness. When life gets emotionally intense, they may protect themselves by smoothing things over, accommodating, disconnecting from their own preferences, or numbing themselves to the intensity.

The goal becomes something like:

Can everybody please just be okay?

Which sounds lovely.

Until maintaining “okay” becomes your full-time job.

My client realized she wasn’t simply someone who preferred peace.

She had organized huge parts of her life around preventing emotional ripples.

But being alive creates ripples.

Having boundaries creates ripples.

Having opinions creates ripples.

Parenting creates a hell of a lot of ripples.

Your child is going to be affected by you.

You are going to be affected by them.

That isn’t a failure of the relationship.

That is relationship.

Why Do We Keep Repeating These Patterns?

Once we see the pattern, there’s often a painful question right behind it:

Why did I let myself live this way?

This is where we need some compassion.

You probably didn’t sit down at seven years old and consciously decide to become a people-pleaser, perfectionist, controller, or emotional avoider.

These patterns formed because, at some point, they worked.

Children don’t have the emotional resources adults have.

We depend on the people around us for safety, love, and belonging.

So we adapt.

One child learns:

If I’m easy and agreeable, everything stays calm.

Another learns:

If I stay in control, I’ll be okay.

Another:

If I do everything perfectly, I’ll be safe.

And eventually the strategy becomes automatic.

Then we grow up.

Unfortunately, nobody sends our nervous system an email saying:

Hey! Great news. You’re an adult now. You don’t need to keep doing this.

So the old strategy keeps running.

You Probably Did Realize It—A Long Time Ago

So when my client asked:

“How did I live like this for so long and not realize it?”

In some ways, she did realize it.

Very early on, she realized emotional intensity felt like too much.

She found a strategy that helped.

The strategy worked well enough.

And eventually she stopped noticing she was using it.

That is very different from spending your whole life oblivious.

You adapted.

And now you’re waking back up.

So What Do You Do Once You See the Pattern?

Usually the next question is:

Great. I see it.

How do I stop?

At first, you don’t.

You notice.

Oh, I’m trying to make my kid happy with this boundary.

Oh, I’m explaining way more than I need to because I want them to agree with me.

Oh, I’m trying to control this because uncertainty makes me uncomfortable.

Oh, I’m saying yes when I actually want to say no.

That noticing matters.

You can’t choose differently from something you can’t see.

Every time you notice the pattern, you create a little distance between you and the pattern.

Eventually, that distance becomes choice.

Maybe your kid can be mad.

Maybe someone can misunderstand you.

Maybe you can disappoint somebody.

Maybe you can set a boundary without giving a twelve-slide presentation about why the boundary is reasonable.

Maybe someone else’s emotions don’t actually belong to you.

And maybe you can handle the ripples.

Parenting Is Often the Doorway

This is what I find so fascinating about parenting.

We usually enter this work because we want our kids to behave differently.

Less yelling.

Less fighting.

Less defiance.

More cooperation.

More connection.

And those things matter.

But then our kids hold up this giant freaking mirror.

Suddenly we’re looking at our own control.

Our people-pleasing.

Our perfectionism.

Our fear of disappointing people.

Our discomfort with anger.

Our difficulty saying no.

The practical parenting work gives us enough breathing room to actually look into that mirror.

And then the work becomes bigger than parenting.

It becomes about having more access to yourself.

More awareness.

More choice.

More presence.

More ability to stay grounded while someone you love is having a hard time.

And that changes a whole lot more than bedtime.

Your Kid’s Feelings Aren’t an Emergency

If you take one thing from this, let it be this:

Your child is allowed to feel something about your parenting.

They can be disappointed.

They can be angry.

They can think your rule is unfair.

They can hate quiet time.

They can hate math tutoring.

And you can still be a loving, connected, attuned parent.

You don’t have to make the emotion disappear.

Sometimes your job is simply to stay.

Stay connected.

Stay clear.

Stay present.

Let them have their feelings.

And pay attention to what happens inside you while they do.

Because that may be where the most interesting work begins.

Ready to Look at the Pattern Underneath the Parenting Problem?

This is exactly the kind of work we do inside my group coaching program.

We absolutely talk about the real-life parenting stuff—the boundaries, behaviors, power struggles, and moments where you have no freaking idea what to do next.

But we also look at what those moments are showing you about you.

Because sometimes one small change in how you respond to your child creates enough breathing room for a much bigger change in yourself.

If you’re curious about the group, reach out and let’s talk about whether it’s the right fit for you.

https://www.annkaplanparentcoach.com/groupparentcoaching