Popular Reviews of Respectful Parenting

I had lots of ideas going into fatherhood about how I would be better for my daughter than what I got as a kid. I should not have been so shocked to find myself reacting to difficult situations with such automatic, disproportionate, and uncharacteristic anger. My innate reactions, left unmanaged, directly mirrored the reactions I myself received. I was horrified by how validated I felt in my anger, as if it was the natural course in order to correct undesirable behavior. This is toxic logic. You cannot correct what you cannot interpret. To do so risks punishing natural behavior and emotions, the latter of which a child has so painfully few tools for understanding and expressing. To do so will only serve to teach a child that their parent cannot be trusted. That isolation, that alienation is an invisible hell one can carry for a lifetime without knowing it.This show has been the most illuminating, unburdening, and empowering resource I've yet found. It sounds like such an obvious oversight to apply adult standards to a child but the mistake is incredibly easy to make. The knowledge, wisdom, and compassion provided here has radically changed my understanding of my child's mind in contrast to my own and in turn, how to interpret her behavior and react to it with kindness, patience, and stability. I still make a lot of mistakes but the ratio to wins continues to shift in favor of the latter. My daughter has noticed the change and our relationship is growing deeper and more nourishing every day. I used to weep from how unsafe of a haven I've been to her, often immediately following an outburst. Now that I can see her trust in me being restored and her love for me on full display, I weep for that instead. Thank you, Janet.