Why parenting advice seems to work for others, but not for you (and what to do instead)

Have you ever wondered why certain parenting advice seems to work wonders for other families... but when you try it, nothing really changes?

You’re still stuck in the same chaotic mornings, tense weekends, and endless negotiations about getting in the car or turning off the iPad.

You may have read the books, done the courses, joined the facebook groups (and promptly left some), followed the “gentle" parenting tips (and the not-so-gentle parenting tips). But in the day-to-day course of your family lives, none of it seems to stick.

It’s frustrating. It’s exhausting. And it can all start to feel pretty defeating.

In our work with parents, we've noticed some pretty reliable patterns about what works - and what doesn't - when it comes to helping parents to bring about lasting change with challenging family patterns.  

A striking pattern that we’ve noticed is that most of us are trying to make change in our families from the top down — focusing on our children's behaviour — without realising there’s a whole cake (yes, cake) underneath that needs to be baked first.

It turns out, it’s not just what you do that creates change in family life — it’s the order you do it in.

🍰 The Parenting Pyramid (A 4-Layer Recipe for Change)

In this article, I’m going to walk you through the reliable process we use in our courses to support families to make lasting change —a 4-layer pyramid that shows what actually needs to happen for real, sustainable change to take root in family life.

Think of it as a layer cake. A messy, delicious, pointy, metaphorical cake that, when assembled right, leads to a calmer, easier to manage, more peaceful family.

We can start at the top layer, which is where most of us seem inextricably drawn to focus when we’re in survival mode...but by the end, you’ll know how to figure out which layer you need to start at—based on your particular needs.

Layer 4: Managing Behaviour and Conflict

This is where most parenting advice starts - and much of it finishes. It’s the layer that includes all the tricky stuff—tantrums, screen time battles, bedtime resistance, picky eating, sibling fights.

When we’re overwhelmed, our tendency is often to focus all of our energy here, on trying to fix our children’s behaviour. When stressed, we pull from what we know—patterns from our own childhood: yelling, punishments, bribes, judgment and blame, threats, rewards, time-outs, or just good old-fashioned giving in.

But (as you may have observed in your own experiments) these reactive approaches often make things worse, not better. For example, if my child throws their bag on the ground for the hundredth time this week, and I say “What the h*#% are you doing?! Pick it up!!” (with the full judgemental tone…yes, you know the one) there is a high degree of likelihood that they will respond by:

a) Rolling their eyes and ignoring me,

b) Picking it up with a depth of resentment that matches mine, which will leak unpleasantly out over the next few hours, or

c) Starting a fierce argument about how they have had a hard day and don’t I remember what its like to be a teenager and I've never really listen or cared or loved them and….etc....ya know. 

In our courses, we teach a variety of more peaceful and effective approaches we can take when managing challenging moments with our children, including skills like:

• Empathic listening (e.g. I see that you just put your bag on the ground, and I wonder if you are feeling tired and are wanting some rest right now?)
• Expressing yourself honesty - without blame or judgment, using clear, respectful requests (e.g. When I see you put your bag down, I feel a bit tired because I really want some support to keep the house tidy. Are you willing to hang it on the hook in the next 5 minutes?)
• Engaging in empathic problem solving (“It looks like when we both get home, I’m wanting cooperation with keeping the house tidy and and you’re urgently wanting some rest. Can you think of some ways we could care for both of our needs?”)
• Creating routines, rituals and agreements - so that you don’t have to repeat the same conversation everyday (e.g. When we get home, how about we all collapse for an hour, then set the timer for 10 mins to tidy up before dinner? Shall we try it for a week and see if it works for both of us?) 

Learning peaceful ways to navigate these challenging situations can be life changing for parents and children alike. But sometimes, when people try to implement these methods with their children, they get a bit stuck. 

Why is this? 

Here’s the catch: if you’ve been trying to integrate these kind of approaches and got a little stuck, it is very likely to be because you have skipped some vital foundational layers.

Because it turns out that this "managing challenging behaviour" layer is actually just the icing on the proverbial peaceful family cake.  When we focus here first, we’re effectively trying to slap icing on a cake that hasn’t been baked yet.

(Pro baking tip: icing spreads much easier on a baked cake).

Layer 3: Reconnecting with Your Child

A vital foundational layer that is so often missed in mainstream parenting advice is connection with your child. Yes, connection. That warm, playful, cosy, cuddly stuff.

There's now an abundance of research and evidence available about the importance of building strong attachment with our children: books, articles, longitudinal studies, brain imaging evidence, even whole parenting methodologies that focus on the importance of connection (I will some of my favourites below :).

But somehow, when we’re stuck in the chaos of our daily parenting challenges, this step can seem...frivolous somehow. It’s not that we don’t want closeness and affection with our children. It's just that we often assume that this connection will come after the "good behaviour".  You might even fear that affection and closeness would reward "bad" behaviour. (Thanks, behaviourism.) 

The reality is the opposite: connection is actually the root of cooperation. When children feel safe, seen, and valued, their behaviour tends to naturally shift to a more cooperative place.

They’re wired for connection—just like you. Some of the most dramatic changes we have seen in the families we've worked with is when they start to integrate small, consistent efforts to reconnect with their children, leading to radical shifts in the family dynamic.

Still, for many parents, connection doesn’t come easily. The pressures of modern life—work, screens, commutes, schedules—place strain on this connection, making it hard for us to provide the time, energy and presence our children are craving. 

It might also feel awkward, forced, or even triggering for you to offer connection with your children. You might even notice strong resistance to it. 

So why is this? If connection is so natural and important to humans, and we’re all evolved for it, and our ancestors all did it, why should it be so damn difficult for many of us?

Well, essentially, rekindling this beautiful birthright is, for many of us, going directly against decades of training and habituation into other, more separated, individualised and independent ways of living. 

In our work with parents, we have seen that it is absolutely possible to retrain your nervous systems and subconscious responses to the world around you, and redirect the enormous energy you are currently leaking into managing behaviour challenges and conflict and pour it instead into building this reliable, consistent, joyful daily connection with your children.​

But it may not be easy or habitual for you right now.

This is why this connection layer is the top tier of your family peace cake. Absolutely essential to creating family harmony, but not the easiest first step if you want your cake to hold up. 

Layer 2: Reconnecting with Yourself

Before you can truly connect with your child, you first have to be able to connect with yourself.

If you were born in the last 1000 years or so, it is quite likely that you were raised to live largely in your head, ignoring your feelings, and pushing through bodily signals of stress, overwhelm and exhaustion.

These are skills that serve us well when trying to work long hours and gain promotions, but when we try to “show up” for our children, we may find we’re drained, dysregulated, reactive and distracted.

 As a parent, learning the skills of self connection is an important way to create more family harmony, including:

• Learning to interrupt your habitual patterns of thinking and reacting and build awareness of your feelings and needs.
• Learning to self regulate in stressful moments.
• Creating daily habits that can support you to stay regulated, present and to care for your needs with compassion.

When you’re connected to yourself, you can show up with more presence, calm, and empathy - a solid, stable bottom layer to your cake that can allow you to connect with and care for your child.

But perhaps you have tried this. Maybe you’ve already tried bringing "self care routines" into your life. You've done the journaling, the yoga, the meditation—perhaps many times, and every time given up. It was too hard, too inconsistent, too boring, too... much.  

It just feels unsustainable.  

If so, that’s often because there’s still one piece missing: the foundation the whole cake rests on if it's not to end up on the floor.

Layer 1: Increasing Your Capacity

So what is this essential foundation? The shiny, solid platter upon which we can build our beautiful cake of family bliss?

The essential first layer that so often miss when we try to bring about changes in our family dynamics is our own capacity. Your capacity is:

• your inner resources
• your energy
• your motivation
• your emotional bandwidth
• the support and external resources you have to keep going. 

If you’re chronically depleted, no parenting tool, communication strategy, self connection routine or connection ritual alone will create a shift in your family. You - your life energy - is the foundation.

When you operate within your capacity, your whole nervous system is operating in a very different way.  You are more able to problem solve, be more resourceful, present, access empathy and compassion, and therefore more able to make all of the changes at the higher layers. When you’re operating outside of your capacity, everything is going to feel ten times harder. 

Rebuilding a basic level of capacity for yourself is therefore the first and top priority for making changes in your family life.

This means taking really seriously how important you are to your family functioning, and taking responsibility for how you care for your time and energy, for instance:

• Reassessing what you say "yes" to
• Learning to say “no” to energy-draining commitments
• Getting enough rest (radical, I know)
• Asking for help
• Choosing self compassion over perfection. 

This is the first and most important thing many of us can do to create meaningful change in our families, and it is a step that we will need to revisit over and over again whenever we notice that we are stretching beyond our limits.  

Putting It All Together: The Self-Feeding System

What I have witnessed time and time again, both in my own life and in those I work with, is that bringing these elements together creates a really reliable method for making lasting change in families. It works because each part of the pyramid supports the next. 

When you build from the base up—capacity, self-connection, connection with you child, learning peaceful conflict skills—you create a self-reinforcing system.

• More capacity → deeper self-connection
• Better self-connection → deeper connection with your child
• Stronger connection with your child → fewer behaviour challenges
• Fewer challenges → more capacity to keep going

At each level, the changes that take place also strengthen and reinforce the layers below. Change at any level supports and sustains all of the others.

Where Do You Start?

If you're feeling stuck, whether it's just today or in your life in general, take a moment and think - which levels are you feeling stuck at? 

The secret to making lasting change in your family is to start at the lowest level where you feel stuck. That’s where your energy needs to go first.

• Am I overwhelmed and exhausted? → Start with your capacity!
• Am I feeling disconnected from myself or emotionally reactive? → Start with self-connection.
• Am I lacking a certain quality of close, loving connection with my child? → Start nurturing connection with your child.
• Am I unsure how to manage behaviour challenges and conflict peacefully? → Start exploring some new skills to manage conflict peacefully.  

If you are inspired to do just one thing today to make change in your family, let it be this: figure out the lowest level on the pyramid where you are stuck and make one small change there - any change - and then notice what shifts elsewhere in your life.

If you feel ready to learn how to apply this approach to your own parenting journey and family life, check out our From Chaos to Connection course (we offer this as self-study, community cohort and accompanied versions depending on your particular needs and the level of support you are after). If you let us walk alongside you for 90-days, we can support you to take some practical strides towards parenting in a way that is both easier, and more aligned for with your wish for peaceful, calm and connecting family life. Feel free to get in touch with us if you're not sure which would be the best fit for you!