3 ways ‘peaceful parenting’ helps us heal alongside our kids

Peaceful parenting sometimes feels like an oxymoron. Sure, we can feel peaceful—but can we do it alongside our actual children?

That may ring true especially if you weren’t raised by peaceful parents. It may feel downright hard to address your kids’ challenging behavior without repeating the cycles that you know didn’t really “work” for you.

Perhaps you lacked the emotional safety and connection-based guidance you needed from your own parents’ parenting style. Understandably, you want better for your children. 

When you choose a different path, you become a “cycle breaker.” You consciously choose a different approach than what you experienced growing up. 

In parenting your own children, you might now choose a parenting method that you wish your parents had given you, likely one based on compassion and connection (as in peaceful parenting) rather than one based on punishments or shame. Cycle breaking means replacing unhealthy patterns with healthier ones. 

Related: 9 simple habits to practice peaceful parenting

Cycle breaking is brave work

Perhaps your family of origin embraced permissive parenting, which left you floundering, wondering what healthy boundaries look and feel like.

Alternatively, maybe your parents were harsh and knew nothing about what was actually going on in child development. They lacked the emotional intelligence and emotional regulation skills to guide you without pain and disconnection.

Although it may be “easier” (on the surface, at least) to simply repeat the patterns you learned growing up, you also know your family deserves better.

With cycle breaking, you’re taking brave action on the following:

• Helping your children to experience unconditional love, not just in what you believe you’re showing them, but helping them feel your unconditional love, as well. It’s all about their perception.
• Understanding that when your child’s behavior is tricky or problematic, they’ll want to run to you for support and guidance, rather than run from you for fear of how you’ll react. You want to raise well-adjusted, happy kids who know they can truly count on you, and that peaceful discipline is the evidence-based way to do this.

To do this, though, you have to be brave enough to break the cycle, look beneath the surface of your child’s behavior, understand your own emotions, and model the emotionally intelligent behavior you want your children to emulate. That’s where peaceful parenting comes in.

Related: 13 realistic ways to transition to peaceful parenting

How peaceful parenting works

In very practical terms, peaceful parenting refers to parenting with the good of the long-term relationship in mind. 

Specifically, a peaceful parent will:

• Understand that children learn best by what you model, not just by what you say
• Be accountable, take responsibility, and repair with an authentic apology when you mess up
• Refrain from punishing your children, remembering that to “discipline” means to “teach”
• Embrace the idea that kids do well if they can (a concept attributed to Dr. Ross Greene)
• Trust that all emotions—your own emotions as well as your children’s—are just messengers, and none are “good” or “bad”—they’re just information
• Commit to growth alongside your children, knowing that the most emotionally intelligent parents are the ones who are willing to be wrong, and who will learn and adapt to what their child needs over time

When you do these things—with the grace to do them imperfectly—you have achieved peaceful parenting.

Not only does it help your children, but it helps you heal alongside them, too.

Related: 12 tips for peacefully parenting your strong-willed child

How peaceful parenting helps you heal alongside our kids

Unlike permissive parenting, authoritarian parenting, and other parenting approaches, an evidence-based, respectful and authoritative parenting style heals your family from the inside out. 

1. Every time you show up with peaceful parenting for your actual child, your inner child is also taking note of how they always deserved to be treated 

It’s as if the part of you that longed to be nurtured with gentleness and compassion witnesses the tenderness that you always craved. In short, you get to reparent yourself.

In doing this, you learn to consider your children’s perspectives, and set limits alongside them in developmentally appropriate ways. You learn that healthy boundaries get to feel peaceful to parents and children, and that you no longer need to spend your time living in fight-or-flight mode.

Perhaps you learn more about your own emotions, realizing you weren’t “too sensitive”— you had a right to feel things deeply. You realize that you always made sense just as you were and didn’t need to be “fixed.”

In short, your nervous system gets to relax, because you, too, are reaping the benefits of a more peaceful co-existence with your children.

2. When you create more peace in our home, you can heal your body in measurable ways

It’s common knowledge that long-term stress isn’t good for your mind or body. If your family of origin’s approach was a source of stress, and you’ve carried stress responses into your own parenting, it’s time to undo that for your physical and mental health. 

Lowering stress can improve a host of chronic stress-related maladies, including: 

• High blood pressure
• Mental health challenges
• Poor quality sleep: Recent research from Oxford University found that stress can make falling and staying asleep difficult. It may also reduce sleep duration.

At least in part through peaceful parenting, you get to release chronic stress from your family of origin’s parenting style and other sources, and replace it with the physiological benefits of leading calm lives.

Related: To the mom who believes in peaceful parenting—but struggles to actually do it

3. You heal future generations by changing your children’s “wiring”

This has to do with the science of epigenetics. In simple terms, this means that you’re born with all your genes, but certain genes turn “on” or “off” depending on a wide variety of factors. 

According to Tufts University, “…children who experience extreme and adverse stress in their early years are at greater risk for developing cognitive, behavioral and emotional difficulties, delaying and reducing their overall developmental processes. In turn, when these children themselves become parents and caregivers, they are more likely to be stressed and depressed, and thus less able to provide their own children with positive and emotionally nurturing environments.”

When you break unhealthy cycles, you have the opportunity to change your children’s genetic expression—and their long-term ability to support their own children someday.

This means that your family, overall, takes your healing and “pays it forward.” How incredible to see intergenerational healing in action!

3 steps to get started with peaceful parenting

There are many ways to get started with peaceful parenting, and you don’t need to do all of them. Find what feels right for you and start small. Here are some steps you can take to be a more peaceful parent.

1. Read up

Read parenting books that are evidence-based, emotionally accessible, and highly practical, such as Peaceful Discipline: Story Teaching, Brain Science, and Better Behavior

2. Focus on one specific habit 

For example, rather than resolving to “stop yelling” (which implies don’t ever yell—which may cause shame if you catch yourself inadvertently yelling), try, “Stop yelling when it’s time to leave for school. When I’m tempted to yell, I’ll be aware of my own feelings and will choose to journal, pray, or meditate for a moment instead.” Once you master this small change toward being a more peaceful parent, move on to your next specific objective.

3. Collect resources

Get support from reputable online resources so you have regular reminders of what to do as a peaceful parent, and unfollow sources that promote punishing children. A few reputable sources include the American Society for the Positive Care of Children and the Raffi Foundation for Child Honouring, as well as my evidence-based platform, Dandelion Seeds Positive Parenting.

Most of all, give yourself grace. Cycle breaking (and parenting in general) can be hard work. However, the small steps we can take toward peaceful parenting can make a huge difference over time.

According to research from UC-Davis, being a compassion-filled peaceful parent is linked with only positive outcomes, and it’s the key to helping our children learn best—while healing yourself in the process.

A version of this story was originally published on April 19, 2023. It has been updated.