Latest / Thinking Out Loud | Kimberly / What's Labeled Lazy Parenting When We Stop Parenting for Other People's Comfort? | Thinking Out Loud
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- Kimberly: What gets labeled lazy parenting when we stop parenting for other people's comfort? My kid draws on the wall. To some people, that's a problem that requires correction, discipline, and maybe a whole emotional response scene. I'm standing there thinking, I don't need to make this a moral issue. I don't need to shame my kid. I don't need to turn. A Sharpie into a character lesson about respect for property, I can just clean it. Or have them help me clean it up even better. I can redirect them with an oopsie teach them the social norm without giving them a panic attack. What I feel in that moment isn't failure, it's relief. I didn't have to fight my kid to prove I'm a parent. Welcome back to Thinking Out Loud. Hi, it's me Kimberly. Before we go any further, quick note, this podcast is for reflection and conversation, not professional advice. Take where it resonates and leave the rest. Here we slow down and we explore life's gray areas, especially in relationships and behavior patterns we can observe and reflect on. I am not here to tell you what to think. I'm here to offer framework that helps you understand your relationships, strengthen your thinking. and hold space for complexity. Let's get the thinking out loud. I don't need to scream at my child to earn their respect. I don't need to get angry at my child because their timing is inconvenient. I do need to address their struggles. I do need to help them on their timeline, not mine. Sometimes I do need to advocate fiercely like a broken record to doctors or systems that aren't hearing me when I say, This is beyond typical. My child is struggling. In those moments, it's not about being easygoing. It's about making sure my Child is safe, supported, and understood. That takes energy, not laziness. I think that's one of the first distinctions we need to make. Doing less isn't automatically lazy parenting. Sometimes doing less is the more intentional choice. Sometimes the parent is choosing not to escalate, Choosing not to turn every inconvenience into a lesson. Choosing not to make their child's behavior carry a moral meaning that it doesn't need to carry. That doesn't mean doing nothing. They're still teaching. boundaries, correction when correction is necessary, advocacy, responsibility. The difference is what does this situation require from me? Not what reaction would prove to everyone else that I'm taking this job seriously? Because those aren't the same things. Maybe I'm a passionate person when it comes to protecting children, even into adulthood. Maybe that comes from not always being protected myself. Even when people tried, something still missed the mark. Over time, I learned what it feels like to not be protected all the time. I noticed something in myself now. I will protect my children. I will protect them from expectations that take their autonomy away. Sometimes if I'm being honest, even from myself when I'm overwhelmed, I'm also learning that protection and panic aren't always the same thing. Sometimes the urgency is necessary. Sometimes it's fear talking. And that distinction I'm still learning because sometimes I want to respond to everything like it's an emergency. I want to fix it immediately. I want to Prevent every possible problem. I want to make sure my child never experiences the kind of harm I experienced. However, protecting my children doesn't mean removing every uncomfortable experience from their lives. It doesn't mean teaching them that every mistake is dangerous. Sometimes protection looks like stepping in. Sometimes it looks like teaching. Sometimes it looks like setting a boundary. Sometimes it looks like saying, This isn't an emergency. We can handle this. That's the kind parenting, I'm trying to learn. Not parenting without boundaries, not parenting without expectations, parenting without the constant need to perform stress. Sometimes I need to stop listening to the voice telling me I'm too soft, too lenient, or lazy because I'm not performing stress. That brings me to something I think we don't talk about enough. Is it really that you can't gentle parent a child because the child isn't gentle? Or is it that sometimes we were never taught how to be gentle with ourselves? Because it's difficult to offer a child regulation when every mistake we've ever made has been treated like a character flaw. It's difficult to teach emotional regulation if the only model we were given was punishment after dysregulation. I'm still learning that. I was lucky in a way. I had someone model in my life who didn't follow the norm. They were labeled difficult. Maybe even the problem. Maybe even they thought, fine, call me lazy. Call me whatever you want. I don't want to become my child's monster. I understand that now in a different way because I'd rather be misunderstood than recreate the harm in the name of control. If someone looks at my life and calls it lazy parenting, they might see a child drawing on the wall and think that's chaos. I might be thinking I can clean that. I don't need to make it a crisis. I don't need to make my child feel like their curiosity is dangerous. Not every moment needs escalation. Some moments just need cleaning up. I think that's where contacts matter. My child's room doesn't look like a Pinterest aesthetic. It's not curated, it's not staged, and I'm okay with that because she's not developmentally ready for that kind of environment. Too much visual input overstimulation. Her It affects her sleep. Her regulation matters more to me than presentation. We adapt, we compromise, we adjust. That's not neglect. That's care with context. Yes, she sometimes watches a show a day. I don't need to shame myself for that either. There were times I was surviving pregnancy over stimulation, exhaustion, And I used tools like that to get through a day safely. Not as an avoidance, as regulation support for both of us. The goal was never perfection. The goal was stability, safety, getting to the next day. I think we confuse two different things. Parents who are trying to escape parenthood and parents who are in survival mode while still deeply showing up. those aren't the same. A parent can be exhausted and still be attentive. A parent can need accommodations and still be responsible. A parent can have a messy house and still be deeply engaged with their child. A parent can use screen and still be emotionally present. A parent can choose not to fight over every little thing and Still have boundaries. Struggling isn't the same thing as not caring. Needing help isn't the same thing as being a bad parent. I'm grateful when regretful parents share their story because I can hear the love underneath them too. what I heard is I didn't know what I needed. I didn't know what I was stepping into. I didn't know how hard this Would be, and I can understand that because I did want my children deeply, fiercely, fully. I didn't stumble into this accidentally. I fought for it even while navigating autism, undiagnosed for 33 years. CPTSD, and a nervous system that could get overloaded by something as simple as a cry. Parenting is hard. Our children should not become casualties of that difficulty. That's where I think we need more distinction. Being overwhelmed isn't the same as being disengaged. Sometimes what looks like lazy parenting from the outside is a parent using the limited energy they have to prioritize what matters most to them. They're not doing everything, they're deciding what actually needs to be done, and that's a very different thing. Context doesn't mean everything is okay. I think that's important to say. If someone Has 17 diapers sitting around. That's not something we should normalize as just messy. That's not about aesthetic. That's a sign someone is struggling. Depression, overwhelm, burnout, survival mode. Something is happening and that matters. The answer isn't shame, it's support. It's how can we make this easier right now? Not what's wrong with you? Maybe that means helping cleaning up, dropping off supplies, Sitting with someone while they reset their space, bringing gloves, trash bags, laundry, help, a mop. Whatever reduces the barrier to get back to baseline because it isn't about perfection, it's about sanitation and safety. When waste is built up in a home, diapers, mold risk, bacteria That becomes a health issue for everyone in that environment, especially children. We can hold two truths at the same time. This is a sign someone is not okay, and this situation still needs intervention. Those things don't contradict each other. In fact, I think that's where real compassion lives. Because if I see someone struggling and my only response is judgment, I may make it harder for them to get help. If my response is nothing. Nothing matters, it's fine. I haven't actually helped them either. empathy can't mean pretending nothing needs to change. Understanding that someone is struggling doesn't mean pretending the impact isn't real. It means we stop leading with judgment and we start leading with support. Because if we only ever respond with shame or only ever respond with acceptance, we miss the middle ground where real care happens. the place where we can say, I see that you're struggling and this still needs to change. I know this because when my own home is out of order, I'm usually not okay either. I'm usually depressed. I'm burnt out. I understand how quickly things can spiral when you're trying to survive the day. The days become into two days, to a week, to a month, to a year. What worries me is how quickly people turn moments like this into judgment instead of curiosity. Or worse, how one viral example turns into a stereotype about every mom who is struggling in a similar way. Seventeen diaper moms becoming a label instead of a person, that's where we lose the point. the goal shouldn't be to shame people for falling apart. The goal should be noticing when someone is falling apart and making it easier for them to come back up. This connects to something else I've been thinking about a lot. How quickly we assign adult meaning to children's behavior. A child can play with a Barbie because they like the doll. A child can tell you shh Because they heard adults do it. A child can imitate something without understanding the social meaning adults have attached to it. a child telling an adult to shh Isn't automatically disrespect. We shush babies all the time. We use it to sooth them, to regulate them, to help them settle. when a child imitates it, it can simply be imitation, communication, an attempt to regulate the environment, not malice. I think we need to stop assigning adult meetings to childhood behavior. And that includes sexuality, personality labels, Moral judgment and All the other things we put on children that are actually just childhood. A child isn't automatically manipulative because they learned what gets a reaction. A child isn't automatically disrespectful because they don't understand why something matters yet. A child isn't automatically bad because they're struggling to regulate. A child isn't automatically a problem because their behavior is inconvenient. That doesn't mean we ignore the behavior. It means we ask better questions. What is this behavior telling me? What skill is missing? What need isn't being met? What expectation is developmentally appropriate? What boundaries need to be taught? What support is needed because children are learning? I know, shocker. if our response to every difficult behavior is to assign a character flaw, we're not teaching them what to do. We're teaching them who we think they are. those are very different things. A lot of parents aren't lazy, they're overwhelmed, under-supported, trying to juggle far too much alone. Food, stability, rest, routine, health care, work, child care. Emotional labor of trying to keep an entire house functioning, especially in a time when so many families are struggling financially, survival has become hard for a lot of people, not easier. Yet the conversation often becomes, well, don't have kids. As if it's a simple solution to systemic strain. If we're going to talk honestly about parenting, we also have to talk about responsibility Parenting isn't only meeting a child's immediate needs. It's helping them become capable of meeting their own needs over time. That's where I think another kind of lazy parenting can show up. Not when a parent does less because their child doesn't need them to do more. When a parent consistently refuses to teach, support, or adapt because doing so requires effort. To me, that's an important distinction. Doing less isn't automatically lazy. Sometimes doing less is exactly what your child needs. Consistently refusing to do what your child actually needs because it's inconvenient, that's different Because children aren't roles you assign. They're not the responsible one, the difficult one, the liar, the problem child. Those labels aren't a child's identities. Those are often snapshots of how an adult has learned to understand that child. Sometimes those labels make parenting easier for the adults because everything has a category. Children aren't categories. They're people. They're changing. They're developing. They're becoming. Their needs change too. Saying, I don't have favorites while consistently treating each child as a fixed category rather than an evolving person with different needs isn't necessarily active parenting. Sometimes it's simply patterning children into roles so life feels more manageable for the adults. Children aren't built to stay in those boxes. They are not meant to be treated like children forever. Autonomy isn't something we discourage. It's something we build. Independence, emotional skills, decision making, those Those things don't magically appear when a child turns eighteen they're learned slowly. Sorry, it's not like the Sims. It's through trust, guidance, boundaries, and room to try. Sometimes that means getting help early. Sometimes it means advocating fiercely when something isn't being taken seriously. Sometimes it means stepping back, even when it's messy. Even when they're going to do it differently than we would. Because part of parenting is learning when your child needs you to step in and when they need room to become themselves. That means the role of a parent isn't supposed to stay stagnated. It shifts. you move from being a full-time caregiver of a dependent child through years of teaching and scaffolding into something different over time. Still present, still loving, No longer the center of every decision. Eventually, if things go as they should, you become something simpler, not less important, just different. Mom, dad, parent, not controlling of every outcome, a trusted adult in a life of another adult. Back to the question. What gets labeled lazy parenting when we stop parenting for other people's comfort? when we shift away the judgment, what we often find isn't laziness at all. We find parents making constant microdecisions. what needs a reaction? What can I let go? What needs teaching? What needs cleaning? What needs advocacy? What needs patience? What needs support? We find parents who aren't ignoring their children. They're trying to meet them in real time, in real life, without turning every moment into a performance of control or perfection. Yes, those are moments when things get messy. There are moments when the system fails, when support is missing, when survival takes priority over presentation. Even then, maybe the question shouldn't be how do we label this parent? Maybe it's what support is missing here and what would actually help. Because children don't need a performance. They need help. They don't need a curated version of parenting that looks impressive from the outside and feels tense Inside the home. They need presence, responsiveness, safety. They need to know that their needs matter even when meeting those needs isn't convenient for you. Maybe that's the shift, not from lazy to perfect, rather from performing parent to being in a relationship with your child. Because at the end of the day, children don't grow up inside our reputation. They grow inside our homes. What matters most isn't how it looks while we're doing it, it's what it felt like to live there when no one else was watching. I want to leave you with this. Are you parenting for your child's needs Or performing parenting for another person's comfort. Maybe that question is telling you that something needs more structure. Maybe it's telling you that something needs less pressure. Maybe it's telling you that your child needs more support. maybe it's telling you that you need more support. maybe it's reminding you that not every mess needs to become a Crisis and not every imperfect moment means you're failing. You don't have to have all the answers immediately. You can start by asking a different question. What does my child actually need from me right now? Not what would prove that you're a good parent? Simply, what does my child need? Because parenting isn't a performance, it's a relationship. Our children won't remember every clean wall, perfect room, or perfectly handled moment. They'll remember what it felt like to be known, to be safe, to be supported, to be loved, even when things were messy. Whether you leave a comment, send me a message, or simply sit with that question yourself. I hope this conversation stays with you. Thank you for slowing down and thinking out loud with me. Until next time, take care of yourself. Remember, you don't have to perform good parenting. You have to be in a relationship with your child, though. I'll see you in the next episode.