The Five Principles of Parenting

A Q&A with developmental psychologist Dr. Aliza Pressman.

Happy last week of January, everyone! I mean, I guess next week is technically the last week, but who cares about reality when it gets dark at 4pm?

Today, I’m thrilled to be running an interview with one of the wisest developmental psychologists I know: Dr. Aliza Pressman, whom you might know from her popular podcast, Raising Good Humans. (Which I was a guest on, once up on a time!) She also writes the wonderful Substack

Raising Good Humans with Dr. Aliza Pressman

. Aliza is the founder of the Mount Sinai Parenting Center, and she is wonderful, and today is the book birthday for her first book, The Five Principles of Parenting: Your Essential Guide to Raising Good Humans, which I highly recommend.

We talked about so many things in this interview, including the value of reflection, discord, repair and rules. I’m certain you’ll learn something from it, and I hope you’ll check out her book, too — which, incidentally, is one of the books I’m giving away in my January giveaway! If you’re a paid subscriber, don’t forget to enter before the end of the month.

Without further ado, here is our conversation, which has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Aliza, what inspired you to write this book?

I have said, for many years, “I'm never writing a book.” Because I don't want to add to the to do-list if it doesn't feel very necessary. But then I started to feel like, first of all, some people really just want a resource that houses information that’s accessible and that they can grab at different times throughout their parenting journey.

And then also, I just had one of those moments of thinking, “Okay, we've gone off the rails.” That’s more of my the motivation behind it — [to highlight] what really matters. I feel like we've lost the plot in this whole support-for-parents thing. I wanted to bring it back to that space between being so helpful that it's actually rigid, and being like, “I don't want to talk about anything, I'm not going to look at anything, I'm not going to read anything” — and then it just feels very chaotic and scary. I wanted to find the parents and caregivers who are looking for the space between those two things.

I love that about your book — you've got these five principles that encompass what really matter. The messages parents get from parenting influencers is very micro: You better get things exactly right or you going to screw up your kid. And you're really macro, pushing against that chaos in such a reassuring and important way. So. What are the five principles of parenting?

Relationship, reflection, regulation, rules and repair. I wanted things that you could easily remember. And those are the five core principles that really matter that lead to resilience, hopefully bring relief, and that are in our control.

I remember looking at the five and thinking, “Oh, resilience isn't there.“ And then in like the second sentence of the book you were like, “No, these are what lead to resilience.” So — how did you kind of come to these five?

In terms of core principles that really matter, I didn't feel like it was a hard choice. I drew from the developmental science the things that are super foundational, that are replicated in droves, and that are in our control as the caregiver — because what I didn't want was a bunch of things that felt like they were not manageable.

That's the worst thing for parents, when they feel like they don't have control. So these are all under our control and all things that any of us can really achieve.

Yeah, the bar isn't at too high. It's totally achievable. I think it's really hard to believe that these kinds of things can move the needle until you realize that this is actually what really matters. And they're applicable in any setting, at any age, and in any kind of relationship, frankly.

They're universal. So I want to talk about one of your R’s — reflection. I love how much attention you give to the importance of reflection. I think it's one of those things that parents may not think about as being crucial. Can you talk a little bit about it? And maybe give a couple of examples of when it can be especially helpful?

Reflection is overlooked and I think that's because reflection feels so luxurious. There's something about it — seeing and thinking back on your experience being parented or why you might be bubbling over with resentment — like, who has time for that? Reflection in the long form is really paying attention to what your experiences were, paying attention to why things might be happening, getting underneath the meaning behind what all of us come to experience. That's the deep work that you do. But there's also the short version, in the heat of the moment. If you can reflect even for three seconds — I wonder why I'm set off right now? — you are giving yourself the biggest freedom to make a parenting choice that you're going to feel good about.

I say this as a joke, but I kind of mean it: For someone who has the tendency to fly off the handle, if you pay attention to those moments and what is setting you off and ask yourself why — then, if you still want to yell at your kids, go for it. But then it’s intentional and you don't feel that shame spiral about it because you really made the decision. Like, “No — I've thought about why it has to do with this moment, not the past, not the future, and I'm still going to yell.” And there's just something that feels freeing about that.

Right, it's an active choice, rather than a reaction. Reflection can just for a minute pull you out of what you're in and help you get a little bit of perspective.

That, to me, is the most powerful. You can't really self-regulate without it.

So reflection helps you get to the third R, regulation, a little bit more easily.

And, by the way, it's how we can have deeper connections with people. It also deepens relationships.

And relationship is the first R! Okay, I'm going to highlight a sentence that I read from your book that I just loved, and I would like for you to talk a little bit about it. You wrote: “Repair is the space in which we grow, so misattunement is a necessary part of healthy development.” Can you unpack that? It implies that making mistakes is actually good for kids, which is something I've said before, but for different reasons.

I mean, pile this onto the reasons why making mistakes in front of our kids is actually beneficial. And why perfect, if it were attainable, is harmful. Luckily, it's not attainable. I don't think it's something anybody needs to worry about. “Uh-oh, I hope I’m not too perfect.”

We couldn't possibly grow humans in a world where there were no ruptures to repair. We want our kids to have deep confidence in their foundation being unshakable. So we we want to have little earthquakes. We need to have that to see how strong our foundation is and that it's not going anywhere.

When you start to think about it, you realize: How would a child do if they didn't experience those ruptures? If there was no discord to come back from? How could they grow up in a world in relationships with others and in jobs and in school and just in life? How would they even have the muscle memory to go through those inevitable moments? So that's the first thing. They need the muscle memory to believe that’s survivable.

You could think about it as, if you never witnessed or experienced any [discord], and then you have your first boyfriend and you get into a moment of disconnect — it doesn't even have to be a fight, it could be just like where you feel distant from one another and you're not attuned — and you think, “I guess it's over.” You just don't have a reference for the fact that that's just part of life.

When there’s someone that you have a deep conversation with, a hard conversation with — a moment when you've gotten much closer with someone — it probably wasn't a moment where you were like, ”Oh my god, I totally agree with you.” Maybe that was that was how you became friends, because you had this connection. But how you became deep friends who are, like, together for life — there was discord and you guys made the commitment to each other to get through it and now you're closer than ever because you both found out you love each other so much. You're not going anywhere.

I love that. That's so true. Discord is essential. I want to talk a little bit about another of your Rs — rules. Because I think it goes with what you were just saying about the value of discord. I was recently on Instagram talking about this article that came out in The Cut about how there's so much fear among parents of doing the wrong thing — of being too harsh, mostly. Some parents are feeling like, well, maybe we aren't supposed to have any kinds of rules or limits. And that's not really true. I would love to hear your your take on rules and why they're good and important. I mean, they make our lives easier as parents, as well, so there's that.

If for no other reason, yeah, it makes your day easier and then it makes us nicer people. But, okay, first of all, we need rules for safety — like physical safety, but also emotional safety. When there's no rules, it's so unsafe-feeling. It has that chaotic feeling of uncertainty that we all have learned brings out the part of us that is just very uncomfortable. And so for that reason, we need rules for the adults to understand what's going on and, as you said, to make the day easier and for kids to make their day easier, even when they don't like it.

I will tell you: I'm not I'm not super proud of this, but during the pandemic, I was —well, we were all — struggling at the beginning. And so every single night I was addicted to watching Grey's Anatomy with my 13-year-old. She wanted to watch it and [at first] I was like, “You can't watch Grey's Anatomy because it's inappropriate.” But she argued, “We should just watch it together and then you can fast forward anything.”

So one episode turned into many seasons. My younger one would go to bed and I would have my older one watching TV with me till too late at night. And just — I just didn't care about any rules. And she turned to me after a couple of weeks, with tears in her eyes, and she was like, “I need you back.” And I was like “You're right. I'm sitting here, we're eating in bed, watching TV like it's a special occasion every night and staying up late and breaking every day-to-day limit that I set around screens and around everything — bedtime, whatever. And she was like, “I need you back. I'm not going to do this for myself.” And it was really not my proudest moment, but it was also so important that she felt safe enough to say that to me.

That is powerful. Wow.

Again, I'm not really proud of that. But the rules are not just about safety for ourselves and convenience for ourselves, but also for our kids — and also, there's meant to be pushback. It's part of the deal. Kids aren't supposed to be like, “I love this rule.” And I think the accidental permissiveness comes from misunderstanding that you can be sensitive and attuned and loving and still, you're not going to make your kid happy all the time because the rule is not going to make them happy.

And so your sensitivity is letting them feel their feels, and the limit that you're setting stays the limit. And that's much harder on us because we have to sit through the discomfort of our kids being uncomfortable or angry or scared or mad or whatever it is because of something that we've made a decision about. But it's so crucial — and there's so much literature on this one, that we best support our kids and ourselves with rules.

And then, I guess, if you're too controlling or if you’ve gone too much in that direction, that's where reflection comes in. And you say “Well, are all of these rules necessary? What is the meaning behind them? Is it something that I'm going to commit to? Is this important for my family values?”

That was another part of your book that I dog-eared — I loved how you discussed the importance of talking about family values. I think one of the things that you suggested was — and I'm going to try this with my kids — ask kids to list what five things they would guess each parent holds dear. I'm kind of terrified about this, actually. But I'm very curious to see what they say.

It is so fun to ask your kids when they're at an age when they can really answer and then find out that it's so closely aligned with, or so far away from, where you thought you were.

Exactly. I mean, if my kid says, “Well, clearly, one of your values is to be everywhere on time, even if it means that you're sacrificing things you care about,” which I think is something that they might say, then I'm going to have to really reflect on that — like maybe this does not actually reflect what my values are.

I think it's so interesting. Maybe that’s an example where it's like, “Okay, am I overemphasizing this?” Or maybe not. Maybe it's like, “You know what, you fucking do respect people's time.” And this is really important to you. But yes: Be very afraid.

Yes. I’ll be afraid, but I’m going to try to do it this weekend. We’ll see how it goes.

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