20 parenting lessons across 20 years

Happy birthday, Laurel!

Sep 06, 2024

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I don’t tend to make a big deal about milestones in a material sense but I do appreciate milestones as an opportunity for reflection and sometimes awe. And today, I am very much in awe of the fact that my firstborn is 20 years old—and that as a result, I have been a parent for 20 years.

Both Laurel’s and Violet’s births were eventful and full of surprises, and my personal and professional circumstances around their arrivals were so different. When Laurel was born I was a postdoctoral fellow and delivered in the same building in which I worked (Massachusetts General Hospital). The professional misery was no joke and her birth, coupled with my dad’s deterioration in health, were significant factors in my decision to leave academia. In contrast, when Violet was born I was five years into a new and fulfilling career that I had built from scratch. I felt joyful showing up to work, which makes a huge difference in overall well being.

The sisters meet for the first time, March 2011.

Irrespective of work circumstances, the constant in parenting, of course, is that while personal/professional context informs one’s baseline level of stress and content in any given moment, the journey is always humbling. There are inevitable stumbles, course corrections, small victories, and moments of both exasperation and elation.

And so today, on this big milestone, here are 20 parenting lessons I have learned in my 20 years of parenting. This is not an exhaustive or “best advice ever” type list; but these are the first 20 things that sprang to my mind, which I do think is indicative of importance.

1. Work on checking your baggage at the door

We all bring baggage to the table in any relationship, and one of the toughest and most common examples of this is as a parent. For example, having grown up in a household of very humble means, one of my biggest stumbling blocks was in the overcompensation department. Pretty much nothing good has come from trying to push my kids towards things I wanted but couldn’t have as a kid. Life got a whole lot easier when I reckoned with my baggage and just stopped doing that.

2. Support your kids for who they are, not who you want them to be

I grew up with the traditional Korean narrative that the only path to success was to become a medical doctor or lawyer. There are, of course, so many fulfilling paths a person can take. My approach with my kids has always been to encourage exploration, and that every experience—love it, hate it, or somewhere in between—offers helpful information to figure out what lights you up and where you might want to put your energy.

3. Step back from directing

Over the years I have seen so many instances in which parents try to step in and direct; for example, how a kid tackles a project or interacts with a friend. Unless something is on fire, step back and let kids explore, play, and attempt to work out conflict on their own first. They are going to need this practice their entire lives.

4. Make space for rest

I first learned about the incredible Ellen Galinsky through her work with the Families and Work Institute. A nugget from one of her reports has stuck with me through all of my years of parenting. She asked kids, “If you had one wish to improve how your parents’ work affects your life, what would it be?” The largest proportion of young kids wanted parents to be less tired or stressed, which was well out of joint with what parents assumed (only 2% of parents guessed that kids would say “less stressed” whereas 56% of parents thought kids would wish for more time). Everyone deserves rest in some way, and rest will help you show up better for yourself and your family and in your work.

5. Support your kid’s creativity

Creativity can come in a million forms and fuels humans in countless ways. And when I say support, I don’t mean throwing thousands of dollars at lessons. It can be as simple as asking your kid questions about something that excites them creatively or offering to pick them up or coordinate a ride with other parents after a free after school program.

6. It’s OK to break commitments

I used to be in the “if you asked me to sign you up for it and pay for it, you are going” camp, but over time I have learned that situations aren’t always black and white. My kids do know that commitments matter but I have also learned that sometimes circumstances and interests change and—just as I would want to be given the grace and space to change my mind as circumstances change—sometimes we need to eat a registration fee and move in a different direction.

7. Kids don’t learn well if they are miserable

This one is related to breaking commitments AND checking your baggage at the door and is best served by an example. Because I had adolescent water trauma (a friend drowned while a group of us were swimming at night in a pond), when Laurel was little I was very much like, “MY KID WILL LEARN TO SWIM. WATER SAFETY IS ESSENTIAL” Well, taking swim lessons at 4 years old was not what Laurel wanted to do and the experience was terrible and futile because you can’t learn to swim while sobbing in misery. From that point forward I vowed that I would never again try to force my kids into an activity they did not want to do. (Parenting do-over note: With Violet, I offered the option of swim lessons every now and then and she turned down the offer several times. Once she was ready—the impetus being needing to pass a swim test in order to hang with friends—she was off to the races and able to swim after a handful of lessons.)

8. Extracurricular activities are not forever—which is NORMAL

If your kid has done an activity for a number of years and then decides to try something else, let them. Don’t get caught up in the false certainty and urgency myth that it’s too late to try something new or that a kid will be screwed if they leave an activity. Kids deserve not to be pigeon holed and to have the space to try different things.

9. If your kid saves their worst behavior for you, it’s actually a good sign

Whether it’s meltdowns after a happy day at day care or teen arguments after being a model student during the day, one huge lesson for me was that it’s totally normal for kids to hold their shit together during the day or be pleasant to people on the outside, then let lose it later when they are in the safety zone of home. It’s not pleasant, but just keep breathing and being there. We actually have normalized this reality and often ask on Fridays after a busy week, “Does anyone need a Friday cry down?”—adults included!

10. There is no “right” age gap

So many people cautioned me about the big age gap (6.5 years) between my kids—which, by the way, is the dumbest thing you can say to a person who is already pregnant. There is no “right” age gap and the bond between Laurel and Vi is a joy to behold.

One of my favorite pictures from the early days.

11. Sometimes you just need to be there

Not every kid is going to want to talk it out, nor does every moment require you to espouse wisdom. Sometimes, one of the best ways I support my kids is to sit with them and say, “I am here for you, no matter what, if and when you want to talk about something.” And then say nothing at all unless they initiate and ask me a question.

12. Get your kids into the kitchen early

People ask me all the time why and how my kids are both so facile in the kitchen. Part of it is their natural interest and skill (their detail work is incredible!) but it’s also because I had zero patience for playing on the floor with toys when they were little. Instead, I made the kitchen our playground starting in toddlerhood. Being able to cook is a life skill with awesome rewards—meals always taste better when my kids make them for me!

13. Find overlapping areas of fun

There are plenty of things that parents need to do and might resent at times (say, chauffeuring) so as with the above cooking point, I recommend finding ways to connect with your kids that are actually fun for you too. Board games are one of those things for us and over the Labor Day long weekend we just said yes to Violet’s cheerful requests for board games. In one instance we set up a game so it was ready and waiting when she woke up—the surprise and delight on her face was priceless. In total over that long weekend, we played six rounds of Clue, one round of Guesstures, and two rounds of Ticket to Ride (one United States version and one European). We freaking leaned in LOL.

14. Feeding kids, part 1: It helps literally no one to be judgy about whether a parent chooses to breastfeed or formula-feed

Judgy comments usually have more to do with the person who is being judgmental than you, so if you receive inane commentary in this vein, I am sorry and I really hope that person learns to do better. Do what’s right for you and your baby.

15. Feeding kids, part 2: You don’t need to feed kids “perfectly” every day

A piece of transformative advice I heard and adopted when my kids were little is that the goal is to shoot for decent nutritional representation, say, across a week, versus trying to make every day perfect—the latter of which, as anyone with a toddler knows, is an exercise in continual self-flagellation.

16. Feeding kids, part 3: It is not your job to make multiple meal options or force food in

Related to the above, a parent or caregiver’s job is to offer healthy options to a kid, not make a million options to choose from or force the food in. If your kid does not like a meal, you can direct them to where the cereal (or whatever) lives. Learning how to procure one’s own food options is a valuable life skill. Yes, both of my kids went through a typical phase of eating only white foods and regarding vegetables with disgust and yes, I wondered whether they would develop rickets. And yes, they eventually became more adventurous and both eat vegetables now and their food exploration continues. Just keep putting good options out there.

17. It’s OK if you never log in to the school portal (and are more hands off in general at school)

As someone who did not excel at secondary school (as in, Cs and Ds except for music class) and believes that there’s a lot more to kids than grades, I have worked to foster an environment in which my kids know that I am here to support them no matter what, that I believe mistakes and struggles are a necessary part of any process, and that I would never judge them based on their school grades. I also have encouraged my kids to practice communication with teachers (hello, life skills), vs. me stepping in, though they know I am here if they need backup. I suspect I am in the minority when I say that in 21 completed school years across two kids, I have never logged in to the school portal to check on their business, and I can count on one hand the number of times I have stepped in to communicate with a teacher regarding some kind of conflict resolution. It’s not easy to ride against the tide, but if this sounds more like your roll, know that it is perfectly fine to do you.

18. For adolescents, think about behavior change across a longer time span

Tina Payne Bryson’s genius advice helped me reframe and embrace the power of six month intervals when it comes to adolescent development. It took the pressure off, and I have called on this grounding advice repeatedly over the years. Read all of Tina’s work—she is a genius and one of the nicest people out there.

19. Soft skills matter a lot

In our accolades and metrics focused world, I have felt even more deeply appreciative and aware of kids who have a handle on “soft skills”—the relational capacity that enables them to interact well with other people. Keep fostering these skills in your kids.

20. Parenting is about trust

This ride can be uncertain and scary. It is a massive job to raise a human being. Your kids will invariably do things that frustrate, confuse, and terrify you. Strive to get to a necessary place of trust. What you have control over is giving them a caring, compassionate foundation to learn to explore, make decisions, navigate challenges, and engage in healthy risk taking. The rest is out of your hands.

Laurel and Violet, thank you for trusting me. Thank you for (unknowingly) being the testing ground where I figured out how to do better, be better, live better. I love you both to the moon and back.

And happy 20th birthday Laurel! You are a kind and generous family member and friend, and an adventurous, driven, optimistic person. I have learned so much from you, and know I will continue to do so.