July 30, 2025 • 11 mins
Ever been halfway through a parenting reel thinking *“Oh wow, this is gold”… only to realise it’s actually terrible advice dressed up with pretty music and a pastel background? We’ve been there too. In today’s episode, Justin and Kylie unpack six pieces of popular parenting advice they’re choosing to ignore forever—and why you should too. From controlled crying to timeouts, “spoiling” kids with love, and the classic “just ignore the tantrum” strategy, we’re calling out the myths that sound helpful but harm connection. This episode is your permission slip to parent with heart, not hacks.
KEY POINTS:
- Controlled crying is not independence training — It misunderstands attachment and ignores babies’ real needs.
- Timeouts don’t teach, they isolate — Punishment in disguise erodes trust and connection.
- Responsiveness isn’t spoiling — Kids thrive when we tune in, not tune out.
- Ignoring tantrums doesn’t make them go away — Empathy teaches emotional regulation.
- “Seen and not heard” is still hanging around (and still harmful) — Kids need space to be curious, push back respectfully, and develop their voice.
- Self-soothing is a myth for little ones — Kids learn to calm down with us, not alone.
QUOTE OF THE EPISODE:
“Abandoning children in their most vulnerable moments teaches them nothing—except that our love is conditional.”
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
- The Whole-Brain Child by Dr. Daniel Siegel
- Attachment research by Dr. Allan Schore
ACTION STEPS FOR PARENTS:
- Challenge bad advice — When you hear advice that feels off, trust your gut and check the research.
- Choose connection over correction — When your child is distressed, meet them with empathy instead of isolation.
- Be responsive, not reactive — Show up consistently so your child learns to regulate through co-regulation.
- Make space for their voice — Let your kids respectfully question, push back, and express themselves.
- Ditch the naughty chair — Find real discipline strategies that teach, not punish.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
There is so much helpful parenting advice out there, so
much that makes you go, oh, that's definitely going to help.
It's going to make me a better parent, it's going
to increase the quality of my connection between myself and
my children. I need to do this. And Instagram, TikTok
and the other social platforms are some of the places
where you get that advice. But my goodness, there's some
(00:21):
bad stuff out there as well, not helpful at all.
And today I'm the Happy Families podcast where you get
real parenting solutions every day because we're Ausralia's most downloaded
parenting podcast, Kylie and I are going to walk you
through our three what would you call it, the three
pieces of parenting advice that we're going to ignore forever
and teach our kids to ignore and hopefully help you
(00:42):
encourage you to ignore as well. Stay with us. So, Kylie,
I'm going to get you to kick it off with
your first one, and we're going to go like you me,
you me, you me, and let's share the three things
each that we think we should ignoring as parents because
the parenting advice is terrible.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
So my first one is the whole myth that controlled
crying is an opportunity for babies to learn independence. Yeah
through distress.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Yeah Yeah, that bad idea.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
And fundamentally misunderstands how attachment works.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
I've got to jump in really quickly. I spoke to
somebody just the other day who was all for control crying,
and I asked them how old their child was, and
it was like a three month old child or something
like that, and I was just like, I'm totally against it.
But even if you are going to do it, research
in this specific area is actually quite clear. There's not
a lot of good research on control crying, letting them
cry it out, but there is clear research that if
(01:44):
your child is under six months, you don't do it, it's
bad for the child, full stop, end of story. Just don't.
I just wanted to put that in as a public
service announcement. But anyway, back to you, So there's a
reason that you don't like it.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Well, when we ignore our babies prime reform of communication,
what are we teaching them. We're teaching them that they
don't matter like it just it breaks my heart and
I can't. I can't do it.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Yeah, And we've been there and we've been through it,
and it's It's pretty brutal, isn't it like a really
really rough, rough thing to do, Kylie. My first one,
My first one is that timeouts teach consequences. I mean,
I've been on a personal mission to eradicate super nannies
you need a timeout thing from the Parenting Resource Manual
for about twenty years now. Timeouts are essentially punishment disguised
(02:35):
as pedagogy. That is, I'm trying to teach you something here.
But you know what they do. They prioritize adult control
over any learning and relationship repair. When you put a
child in time out, you just make them into the victim,
and they you make yourself their enemy. The only learning
that happens is a plot revenge, like they learned.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
I was about to say, like, who in their right
mind things that getting their child and try and then
isolating them is going to create any positive feelings in
their relationship.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
I'm glad to use the word isolation. So doctor Daniel Siegel,
who wrote The Whole Brainchild, he highlights that isolation during
emotional distress actually impairs the developing brain's capacity for self regulation.
And if there's no self regulation, there's not going to
be any learning. Children when they're struggling with their behavior.
They don't need banishment. They need connection, they need problem solving,
(03:27):
They need someone to help them understand their feelings, not
just suppress their behavior. So my first one is, let's
let's just not take any advice. Pairing advice that I'm
ignoring time out is good for kids? Not true. I
can't believe I just made that noise. All right, what's
your second one?
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Number two for me is responsiveness spoils your child? Just
this advice that just treats love like this finite resource.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Oh, you're spoiling them, You're giving them attention, You're going
to spoil them.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
I yeah, And I think that the idea that giving
our children attention is actually going to do them damage
is so far from the truth it breaks my heart.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Yeah. I think it's like this old fashioned traditional concept
that if you spoil your child, it's basically saying your
kid's naturally manipulative, as opposed to your children are naturally
seeking connection and security. To me, that's the central thing there.
You are not spoiling your child if you give them
attention they need. Your responsiveness would be my response to that.
(04:34):
After the break, my last two, including what to do
about tantruming children. Apparently if you ignore it, it'll stop.
And the myth that we're supposed to let our kids
learn to self soothe. And I know you've got a
classic that you might read about in Jane Austen. Okay, Kylie,
(04:59):
I've got to You've got one piece of pairing advice
that we've decided that these things just need to be ignored.
There's so much good advice out there, and yet the
bad stuff persists and prevails all too often.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
You say ignored, I say abolished.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Okay, abolished, ignored. Anyone who does this needs to sit
in the naughty chair for forty No, that doesn't. I
thought that was really funny. I thought that was really funny.
All right, here's my next one. Just ignore the tantrum
and it will stop. Is pairing advice that I think
needs to be thrown in the dust bin and we
need to come up with better solutions. What do I
(05:34):
mean by that? So research shows that kids who receive
empathy when they're emotional learn to develop better emotion regulation
of skills than kids who are ignored, which makes sense, right,
Like if you're having an outburst and somebody comes to
you with a little bit of softness and validation. It
says you having a really tough time, aren't you? Or
you're really upset, aren't you. It helps your system to
(05:55):
reset and recalibrate all of those stress hormones, all of
that adrenaline and nore adrenaline of the cortisol at all subsides.
Because now you feel connection, and you feel security, you
feel empathy. It just feels good. Is my analogy. If
I've got a friend who is distressed, I'm not going
to ignore them. I'm going to go to them and
(06:16):
put my arm around them and say, you look like
you're having a really bad day. I'm here for you.
I don't understand why we think that abandoning children in
their most vulnerable moments teaches them anything except that our
love is conditional. Some one goes in the bin. Just
ignore the tantrumental stop wile I out of garbage. We
need to consign that to the annals of parenting history.
(06:38):
What's your last one?
Speaker 2 (06:39):
You tease? This has been something you'd find in Jane Austin,
and yet it's still prevalent in today's society that the
idea that children should be seen and not heard. And
I would think that often most parents would actually push
against this idea that they support it. But the reality is.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
In practice, in practice.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
We hate it when our kids push back. We hate it.
We call it disrespectful, and we call it backchat.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Right, we just want compliance, We just want to get
us to do as they're told, to be quiet and
make life easy.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
But what we actually do is when we silence our kids'
voices and we don't allow them a safe place to
work through their emotions and they're questioning their curiosity around
this and they're pushback on it, we're actually teaching them
that their opinions don't.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Matter, and that ignoring their voice, to.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Ignore their own voice, and to never question authority just
because someone's in a place of authority doesn't make them right.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
We need to teach them to be respectful when they
push back. I mean, we've just done a podcast about
that on Monday. Kids need to be considerate, and all
too often they're clumsy in the way that they push back.
But I just love that. I think that's exactly right
and a little bit less Jane Austen because it's twenty
twenty five.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Yeah, the goal is quiet compliance, it's raising humans who
can think for themselves, think critically, and communicate clearly.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Okay, I love it. Here's my last one. The advice
that's out there, I hear it all the time is
that kids need to learn to self soothe. All right,
so you've got a child who's emotionally disregulated and they
need to learn to calm themselves down. The reality is
it's really helpful if they can. But when you've got
a four year old who's having a tantrum because they
got the wrong color mug or bowl, or they didn't
(08:28):
get what their brother got or their sister got, and
they're having a tantrum, that's they're not going to learn
to self soothe in that moment. And the time that
they're most likely to learn to self soothe is when
they have a parent who's willing to pause, be in
that tough space with them and show them how it's
done to coregulate with them.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
I'm so got to use that word, because that's exactly
what I was thinking. We're not actually supposed to do
this on our own, We're actually supposed to do this.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
I was going to say that, I went on, yeah
exactly right, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Yeah, coregulation is how we do it. We catch other
people's car, we catch other people's piece, we catch other
people's love. And it's not about codependency. It's acknowledging that
when we have big emotions, we just need someone to
see us.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Yeah. I soothe myself way better if I'm emotionally distressed
when I spend time with you, or if I'm emotionally
distressed because of you, which happens very very infrequently. I
soothe myself better when I get to just be in
the company of others.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
And sometimes you don't even need them to do anything.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
We are ultra social people. In fact, just talking about
this now it reminds me of so the guy behind
attachment parenting, that parenting style that you hear about from
time to time. Doctor Alan Shaw. His research on attachment
shows that emotion regulation develops through thousands repeated experiences of
(09:52):
coregulation with caring people around you.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
You think about, you're having a bad day, you don't
want to be around anyone, but somebody love pushes you
out the door and says, come on, we're going to
go and do something. Nine times out of ten you
have the best day ever, and not because you've talked
about anything particular, but you've actually you've gone through a
coregulation process together without even knowing that that's what you've done.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Yeah, I just had a thought about that. How you
have to have the repeated, thousands and thousands of experiences
of coregulations so that you can learn how to do it.
Expecting a child to calm themselves down without first learning
how to have being shown how to with somebody else,
like how it feels to be calmed is kind of
like expecting them to learn how to read without ever
having been read to just doesn't happen anyway. They are
(10:40):
our well, my three and your three so six parenting
ideas paring advice that we are ignoring forever and ever
and ever. And we really hope that our kids listening
to this podcast for the rest of their lives so
that they can learn how to not do those things.
We really hope that you like that. Jump onto Facebook
and tell us what do you reckon? Jump onto Instagram
and let us know what do you reckon? Is the
best pairing advice that should be best pairing? What is
(11:01):
the pairing advice that should be ignored? I got that
round the wrong way hunt you did. Yeah, what is
the pairing advice that you're ignoring? We want to know
on our Facebook and Instagram pages. Jump on there now
and let us know tomorrow. On the pod, I'll do
better Tomorrow. It's where we draw life lessons from all
the mistakes that we've made as parents. Hopefully we can
give you some good advice tomorrow. I can't wait for
that one. The Happy Family's podcast is produced by Justin
Roland from Bridge Media. Mim Hammond's provides admin support and
(11:24):
additional research. If you would like more information about making
your family happier, visit us at happyfamilies dot com dot au.
And if you've loved this pod and you reckon you
know someone that might benefit from it and use it
to make their family happier, click the shared button and
spread the news around. We love how many new people
are finding the Happy Families podcast. See you tomorrow.
There is so much helpful parenting advice out there, so
much that makes you go, oh, that's definitely going to help.
It's going to make me a better parent, it's going
to increase the quality of my connection between myself and
my children. I need to do this. And Instagram, TikTok
and the other social platforms are some of the places
where you get that advice. But my goodness, there's some
(00:21):
bad stuff out there as well, not helpful at all.
And today I'm the Happy Families podcast where you get
real parenting solutions every day because we're Ausralia's most downloaded
parenting podcast, Kylie and I are going to walk you
through our three what would you call it, the three
pieces of parenting advice that we're going to ignore forever
and teach our kids to ignore and hopefully help you
(00:42):
encourage you to ignore as well. Stay with us. So, Kylie,
I'm going to get you to kick it off with
your first one, and we're going to go like you me,
you me, you me, and let's share the three things
each that we think we should ignoring as parents because
the parenting advice is terrible.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
So my first one is the whole myth that controlled
crying is an opportunity for babies to learn independence. Yeah
through distress.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Yeah Yeah, that bad idea.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
And fundamentally misunderstands how attachment works.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
I've got to jump in really quickly. I spoke to
somebody just the other day who was all for control crying,
and I asked them how old their child was, and
it was like a three month old child or something
like that, and I was just like, I'm totally against it.
But even if you are going to do it, research
in this specific area is actually quite clear. There's not
a lot of good research on control crying, letting them
cry it out, but there is clear research that if
(01:44):
your child is under six months, you don't do it, it's
bad for the child, full stop, end of story. Just don't.
I just wanted to put that in as a public
service announcement. But anyway, back to you, So there's a
reason that you don't like it.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Well, when we ignore our babies prime reform of communication,
what are we teaching them. We're teaching them that they
don't matter like it just it breaks my heart and
I can't. I can't do it.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Yeah, And we've been there and we've been through it,
and it's It's pretty brutal, isn't it like a really
really rough, rough thing to do, Kylie. My first one,
My first one is that timeouts teach consequences. I mean,
I've been on a personal mission to eradicate super nannies
you need a timeout thing from the Parenting Resource Manual
for about twenty years now. Timeouts are essentially punishment disguised
(02:35):
as pedagogy. That is, I'm trying to teach you something here.
But you know what they do. They prioritize adult control
over any learning and relationship repair. When you put a
child in time out, you just make them into the victim,
and they you make yourself their enemy. The only learning
that happens is a plot revenge, like they learned.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
I was about to say, like, who in their right
mind things that getting their child and try and then
isolating them is going to create any positive feelings in
their relationship.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
I'm glad to use the word isolation. So doctor Daniel Siegel,
who wrote The Whole Brainchild, he highlights that isolation during
emotional distress actually impairs the developing brain's capacity for self regulation.
And if there's no self regulation, there's not going to
be any learning. Children when they're struggling with their behavior.
They don't need banishment. They need connection, they need problem solving,
(03:27):
They need someone to help them understand their feelings, not
just suppress their behavior. So my first one is, let's
let's just not take any advice. Pairing advice that I'm
ignoring time out is good for kids? Not true. I
can't believe I just made that noise. All right, what's
your second one?
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Number two for me is responsiveness spoils your child? Just
this advice that just treats love like this finite resource.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Oh, you're spoiling them, You're giving them attention, You're going
to spoil them.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
I yeah, And I think that the idea that giving
our children attention is actually going to do them damage
is so far from the truth it breaks my heart.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Yeah. I think it's like this old fashioned traditional concept
that if you spoil your child, it's basically saying your
kid's naturally manipulative, as opposed to your children are naturally
seeking connection and security. To me, that's the central thing there.
You are not spoiling your child if you give them
attention they need. Your responsiveness would be my response to that.
(04:34):
After the break, my last two, including what to do
about tantruming children. Apparently if you ignore it, it'll stop.
And the myth that we're supposed to let our kids
learn to self soothe. And I know you've got a
classic that you might read about in Jane Austen. Okay, Kylie,
(04:59):
I've got to You've got one piece of pairing advice
that we've decided that these things just need to be ignored.
There's so much good advice out there, and yet the
bad stuff persists and prevails all too often.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
You say ignored, I say abolished.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Okay, abolished, ignored. Anyone who does this needs to sit
in the naughty chair for forty No, that doesn't. I
thought that was really funny. I thought that was really funny.
All right, here's my next one. Just ignore the tantrum
and it will stop. Is pairing advice that I think
needs to be thrown in the dust bin and we
need to come up with better solutions. What do I
(05:34):
mean by that? So research shows that kids who receive
empathy when they're emotional learn to develop better emotion regulation
of skills than kids who are ignored, which makes sense, right,
Like if you're having an outburst and somebody comes to
you with a little bit of softness and validation. It
says you having a really tough time, aren't you? Or
you're really upset, aren't you. It helps your system to
(05:55):
reset and recalibrate all of those stress hormones, all of
that adrenaline and nore adrenaline of the cortisol at all subsides.
Because now you feel connection, and you feel security, you
feel empathy. It just feels good. Is my analogy. If
I've got a friend who is distressed, I'm not going
to ignore them. I'm going to go to them and
(06:16):
put my arm around them and say, you look like
you're having a really bad day. I'm here for you.
I don't understand why we think that abandoning children in
their most vulnerable moments teaches them anything except that our
love is conditional. Some one goes in the bin. Just
ignore the tantrumental stop wile I out of garbage. We
need to consign that to the annals of parenting history.
(06:38):
What's your last one?
Speaker 2 (06:39):
You tease? This has been something you'd find in Jane Austin,
and yet it's still prevalent in today's society that the
idea that children should be seen and not heard. And
I would think that often most parents would actually push
against this idea that they support it. But the reality is.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
In practice, in practice.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
We hate it when our kids push back. We hate it.
We call it disrespectful, and we call it backchat.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Right, we just want compliance, We just want to get
us to do as they're told, to be quiet and
make life easy.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
But what we actually do is when we silence our kids'
voices and we don't allow them a safe place to
work through their emotions and they're questioning their curiosity around
this and they're pushback on it, we're actually teaching them
that their opinions don't.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Matter, and that ignoring their voice, to.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Ignore their own voice, and to never question authority just
because someone's in a place of authority doesn't make them right.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
We need to teach them to be respectful when they
push back. I mean, we've just done a podcast about
that on Monday. Kids need to be considerate, and all
too often they're clumsy in the way that they push back.
But I just love that. I think that's exactly right
and a little bit less Jane Austen because it's twenty
twenty five.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Yeah, the goal is quiet compliance, it's raising humans who
can think for themselves, think critically, and communicate clearly.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Okay, I love it. Here's my last one. The advice
that's out there, I hear it all the time is
that kids need to learn to self soothe. All right,
so you've got a child who's emotionally disregulated and they
need to learn to calm themselves down. The reality is
it's really helpful if they can. But when you've got
a four year old who's having a tantrum because they
got the wrong color mug or bowl, or they didn't
(08:28):
get what their brother got or their sister got, and
they're having a tantrum, that's they're not going to learn
to self soothe in that moment. And the time that
they're most likely to learn to self soothe is when
they have a parent who's willing to pause, be in
that tough space with them and show them how it's
done to coregulate with them.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
I'm so got to use that word, because that's exactly
what I was thinking. We're not actually supposed to do
this on our own, We're actually supposed to do this.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
I was going to say that, I went on, yeah
exactly right, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Yeah, coregulation is how we do it. We catch other
people's car, we catch other people's piece, we catch other
people's love. And it's not about codependency. It's acknowledging that
when we have big emotions, we just need someone to
see us.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Yeah. I soothe myself way better if I'm emotionally distressed
when I spend time with you, or if I'm emotionally
distressed because of you, which happens very very infrequently. I
soothe myself better when I get to just be in
the company of others.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
And sometimes you don't even need them to do anything.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
We are ultra social people. In fact, just talking about
this now it reminds me of so the guy behind
attachment parenting, that parenting style that you hear about from
time to time. Doctor Alan Shaw. His research on attachment
shows that emotion regulation develops through thousands repeated experiences of
(09:52):
coregulation with caring people around you.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
You think about, you're having a bad day, you don't
want to be around anyone, but somebody love pushes you
out the door and says, come on, we're going to
go and do something. Nine times out of ten you
have the best day ever, and not because you've talked
about anything particular, but you've actually you've gone through a
coregulation process together without even knowing that that's what you've done.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Yeah, I just had a thought about that. How you
have to have the repeated, thousands and thousands of experiences
of coregulations so that you can learn how to do it.
Expecting a child to calm themselves down without first learning
how to have being shown how to with somebody else,
like how it feels to be calmed is kind of
like expecting them to learn how to read without ever
having been read to just doesn't happen anyway. They are
(10:40):
our well, my three and your three so six parenting
ideas paring advice that we are ignoring forever and ever
and ever. And we really hope that our kids listening
to this podcast for the rest of their lives so
that they can learn how to not do those things.
We really hope that you like that. Jump onto Facebook
and tell us what do you reckon? Jump onto Instagram
and let us know what do you reckon? Is the
best pairing advice that should be best pairing? What is
(11:01):
the pairing advice that should be ignored? I got that
round the wrong way hunt you did. Yeah, what is
the pairing advice that you're ignoring? We want to know
on our Facebook and Instagram pages. Jump on there now
and let us know tomorrow. On the pod, I'll do
better Tomorrow. It's where we draw life lessons from all
the mistakes that we've made as parents. Hopefully we can
give you some good advice tomorrow. I can't wait for
that one. The Happy Family's podcast is produced by Justin
Roland from Bridge Media. Mim Hammond's provides admin support and
(11:24):
additional research. If you would like more information about making
your family happier, visit us at happyfamilies dot com dot au.
And if you've loved this pod and you reckon you
know someone that might benefit from it and use it
to make their family happier, click the shared button and
spread the news around. We love how many new people
are finding the Happy Families podcast. See you tomorrow.
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