Understanding Emotional Needs in Positive Parenting Your child throws their plate across the table. Or refuses to get dressed for the third morning in a row. Or hits their sibling over a toy. Your first instinct? Address the behavior. Stop the throwing. Enforce consequences. Make it clear that's not acceptable. But here's what positive parenting asks you to do first: look underneath the behavior to the emotion driving it. Because that plate didn't fly across the table because

The Thing Nobody Tells You Here's what most parenting advice skips over: your child's nervous system is constantly scanning yours for safety signals. This isn't conscious. They're not thinking "is mom stressed right now? Is dad upset?" Their body is reading your body - your tone, your breathing, your muscle tension, the energy you're putting out. When you're dysregulated, your child picks up on that. Even if you're using all the right words and doing all the right things, the

The Day I Stopped Trying to Fix Everything I remember the exact moment I realized I was doing emotional support all wrong. My child was having a complete meltdown over something that seemed small to me - a slight change in the afternoon routine. I was doing all the "right" things: offering solutions, suggesting coping strategies, reminding them of their tools. And it was making everything worse. My child didn't need me to fix it. They needed me to just be there while they fel

You're Already Doing More Than You Realize Let me guess - you've read the parenting books. You've sat through the parent training sessions. You're implementing strategies at home and trying to stay consistent with what the therapists are doing. And some days, you still feel like you're getting it all wrong. If that sounds familiar, take a breath. You're not failing. You're navigating something that's genuinely complex. Positive parenting for ABA families isn't about being per