Peaceful Parenting

What does it mean to be a Peaceful Parent?

What Is Peaceful Parenting?

No human is peaceful all the time. Peaceful Parenting doesn’t mean being a perfect parent who never gets frustrated or raises their voice.

It means that we work on ourselves first — so we aren’t taking our own emotions out on our children.

Instead of trying to control our child’s behavior with fear, shame, or punishment, we focus on building the kind of relationship that makes cooperation possible.

Peaceful Parenting is built on a few simple, powerful commitments:

We take responsibility for regulating our own emotions.
When we stay as calm as possible, we create the safety our children need to calm themselves.

We strengthen and sweeten our relationship with our child.
Children cooperate more when they feel seen, secure, soothed, and safe with us.

We support our child in meeting our expectations.
Rather than forcing compliance, we help children develop the skills that make good choices possible.

We set limits with empathy.
Children need boundaries. But they learn best when limits are delivered with understanding rather than anger.

We reflect before we react.
Instead of seeing only the behavior, we look for the need or feeling driving it.

We connect before we correct.
Connection opens the door for guidance.

We welcome our child’s big emotions with compassion.
When children feel safe expressing feelings, they can work through them and grow.

We repair when we make mistakes.
Every parent messes up sometimes. What matters most is that we reconnect and make things right.

We care for ourselves so we can show up as the parent we want to be.
When our own “love cups” are full, we have more patience, more perspective, and more generosity with our children.

Peaceful Parenting isn’t about perfection.

It’s about creating a family life with more understanding, more cooperation, less drama — and a lot more love.

Start Here:

13 Tips to Make Peaceful Parenting Easier

Parenting is hard, and peaceful parenting can be even harder when you begin. But it gets easier, because you're learning new skills that work better--and you're rewiring your own brain. You can be that peaceful parent! Here's your plan.

The Surprise Side Benefit of Regulating Your Own Emotions

Your emotional self-regulation is the key to helping your child grow a calmer brain!

The Neurobiology of Peaceful Parenting

In these four videos, Dr. Laura Markham gives you parenting hacks to work with your child's nervous system (and your own!) for a more peaceful home and optimal brain development.

Polyvagal-Informed Parenting

Welcome to our latest "Neurobiology of Peaceful Parenting" Challenge! This 3-video challenge will give you quick tips on what we can learn from polyvagal theory that will help us to raise more resilient children.

Today's Challenge explores the role of safety and connection in shaping your child's nervous system. Did you know that creating a sense of safety, and nurturing warm, engaging interactions, can shape your child's nervous system for more resilience?

Your 10 Point Plan To Stop Yelling

When we're angry at our children, most of us burst out with words we would never say if we were calm. At the time, we feel completely justified, because we're in "fight or flight" and our child looks like the enemy.

The Reasons and Research Behind Peaceful Parenting

Why Peaceful Parenting? Because it works, from toddlers to teens. Peaceful parenting raises a child who WANTS to cooperate. More important, this approach raises an emotionally intelligent, resilient child who thrives.

Change Your Child's Behavior--without Yelling, Threats or Consequences

“Where did we ever get the crazy idea that in order to make children do better, first we have to make them feel worse? Think of the last time you felt humiliated or treated unfairly. Did you feel like cooperating or doing better?” – Jane Nelsen

10 Commitments That Will Make You a Better Parent

Being a parent is tough. Most of us feel like we could do a better job, but resolving to be more patient rarely works. That's because sometimes the first step to being a better parent is actually about how we treat ourselves. We can only give what we have inside. And if we can't manage our own emotions. we can't expect our kids to learn to manage theirs.

Mindful Parenting: Your #1 Responsibility as a Parent

"Mindfulness: Allowing an emotion to take hold and pass without acting on it." -Benedict Carey

“Mindfulness: Not hitting someone in the mouth.” -11 year old who completed a mindfulness training at his school, quoted in the New York Times

You CAN Stop Yelling. Here's your plan.

"Dr Laura....I'm trying to stop yelling for the new year, but I can't. And I can't imagine getting my kids to listen if I don't yell at them.... Can you move in with me for a week?!” – Cheralynn

The Secret of Not Yelling When You're Having a Bad Day

"I've been working hard not to yell at my kids. But sometimes I just can't help it. I explode, and then I feel so guilty. I know it isn't really what my kids are doing, it's just me, having a hard day. Is it really possible to stop yelling? What's the secret?"

Does Peaceful Parenting Mean Letting Kids Do Whatever They Want?

"Isn't there a time and a place for a parent to just plain 'be in charge'? So often, and especially now, with this new approach, he pretty much does whatever he wants... I don't want my child to be an uncontrollable brat." - Amber

Healing Yourself So You Can Be a More Peaceful Parent

“In the absence of reflection, history often repeats itself… Research has clearly demonstrated that our children’s attachment to us will be influenced by what happened to us when we were young if we do not come to process and understand those experiences.”-Dan Siegel

Staying Calm When One Child Hurts the Other

“The only thing that really makes me lose it is when my four-year-old repeatedly is physically violent to his two-year-old sister. I try to do what you say, and say, ‘Quick, Sammy, can you get her an ice pack?’ and turn him into a helper. He’s good at it. But it makes me mad if they’re fighting and I say ‘I’m coming to help’ and then he throws her to the ground and busts her head."

How Parents Can Stop The Cycle Of Yelling

Every Parent's Number One Responsibility

Teen's Perspective: What Peaceful Parenting Taught Me

I often get questions from parents unconvinced of the effectiveness of my parenting techniques. Fueled by a steady diet of conventional parenting rules concerning time-outs, control, punishment, and praise, as well as personal reflections on their own childhoods, they ask questions like:

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Parent Reviews

Karina

Liz McIntosh

Makchoon

Chantal Harrison

Andrei

Lisa Fernandez

Jennifer B

Dear Dr. Laura Markham! I am a mother of 2 boys - 16 and 7 years old. I am extremely grateful for all the emotional and relational education that you provide us and also for your incredible loving energy to support our evolution as parents, as human beings. I took your course 3 years ago. Although the challenges of the parent-child relationship change almost every year, your parenting principles are equally valuable and effective. It's hard to reprogram the emotional-behavioral pattern learned in my own childhood... so I find it very helpful to go back to your teachings to regain trust and patience as a parent every time new challenges trigger my anxiety. To have more clarity, to reset my energy. Thank you!!

Janina-Madalina Dobrescu

Dana Questad