Time's A'wastin'!
Dec 02, 2025
Time's A'wastin'! - "I know I need to deal with my inner stuff in order to improve my parenting, but that will take a long time, and I feel like my kid needs me to fix my parenting NOW."
This was how one of the moms at the retreat back in October felt. Her goal was to stay calm and connected to her son during his frequent meltdowns, and she had created some shifts using Internal Family Systems (IFS). She was starting to understand the parts of herself that took over during her son’s meltdowns, leading her to lose her temper, then beat herself up afterward.
The Path Forward
The path forward was becoming clear, but she also saw that, for these parts not to take over, they needed time and attention from her, which she felt she didn’t have. She wanted to be the parent her kid needed her to be NOW, and any process that didn’t result in immediate parenting improvement felt like a luxury she couldn’t afford.
That feeling of urgency is a blessing and a curse. I invited her to consider that her urgency was another part of her - a part that helped her take parenting seriously, invest time and money into figuring it out, and notice some of her unhelpful habits. But it was also a part that could sabotage her - by making her rush through things that would have made a huge difference in her parenting, or abandon effective, slow and steady approaches to parenting, in favor of quick fixes that repeatedly failed.
In fact, she realized that the part of her that wanted urgently to improve her parenting actually had the opposite effect: keeping her stuck in the parenting she was trying to leave behind!
The Power of IFS
This is the power of IFS. We can understand the workings of our minds and behaviors. We start to care for that system so our parts can soften and not take over. Instead of forcing herself to be a “good mom” through panic and self-criticism, my client can attend to her urgent needs so they don’t hijack her efforts to create meaningful, lasting change in herself and her parenting over time.
And it’s faster than you’d think! If even a few of our parts feel just a little less frantic, it translates into outward change. Which is exactly what this mom reported a week after the retreat. She told me about a dinnertime wrestling match over applesauce that resulted in her kitchen and several people being covered in apple goo, but this story was a WIN:
“Because of the work we did over the retreat, I was able to anticipate exactly what was going to happen, and just be amused by the whole thing. I have so much more spaciousness around myself…it’s hard to explain, but it’s definitely changing my parenting.”
Are you craving this kind of inner (and then outer) transformation? Set up a free Discovery Call today, and I’ll show you how to make it happen.
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