Think back to the drive home from the hospital with your first baby. The whole world moving in slow motion. That fierce love, that quiet promise to yourself that you would be the calm, patient parent this little person deserved.
And then, somewhere in the exhaustion of real life, you hear it. Your voice rising. Words you swore you would never say. Maybe even an echo of the way you were spoken to as a child. The love is still there, but so is the yelling, and right behind it comes the guilt.
In this LiveTalk Replay, Lorena Seidel (a social and emotional learning consultant, Montessori and positive discipline educator, and mother of three) names the cycle so many of us live in, and shows why it is not a willpower problem. This session is part of our ongoing series inside the Childhood Potential Club, where members gain access to expert talks, community support, and resources designed for real life with young children.
How the cycle starts
Lorena grew up in the south of Brazil, in a culture where raising your voice, threats, shame, and punishment were simply how children were raised. She carries one vivid early memory of being made to kneel and apologize, feeling small and humiliated, and promising herself that she would do it differently one day.
Then she became a mother of two babies just eighteen months apart, sleep deprived and stretched thin, and heard that same old anger coming out of her own mouth. It broke her heart. It also became her life’s work. Today she can hold two truths at once: her mother was doing her best while overwhelmed, and the cycle can end with us. We are not doomed to repeat it.
Four obstacles that keep us stuck
After working with thousands of families, Lorena found that nearly every parenting struggle falls into one of four categories. Naming them is a relief, because it moves the problem off of “what is wrong with me” and onto something we can actually work with.
1. Our state of mind
This is the big one. We can read the books, take the notes, fill our feeds with good advice, and still watch it all vanish in the heat of the moment. It is not that we lack a strategy. It is that we cannot reach it when we are tired, stressed, and triggered. As Lorena puts it, most of our success starts in the space between our ears.
2. The strategies we inherited
Most of us were handed two toolboxes, and neither one serves us well. On the punitive side there is yelling, threatening, bribing. It may buy short term compliance, but it invites rebellion, sneaking, and emotional distance. On the permissive side we give in, rescue, and slowly become a bit of a doormat, which leaves children without the guidance they need.
The answer is not to balance the two, being harsh one hour and sweet the next. That is just inconsistency. Lorena points to a sweet spot where we hold high standards and high support at the same time, kind and firm together. She calls it the mentor mindset: instead of being the enforcer or the protector, you step in as a coach, guiding rather than simply managing behavior.
3. Disconnection
Sometimes we do everything right, we stay calm and use a good strategy, and it still bounces off a wall. That wall is disconnection. When a child does not feel connected to us, they shut down or push back, and even our best advice gets rejected. None of us take guidance well from someone we are not feeling close to. Connection has to come first.
4. Emotional intelligence on the floor
In the hardest moments, both of our nervous systems crash. We become, in Lorena’s words, instant opponents. The angry disciplinarian or the defeated doormat on one side, the “bad kid” on the other. And from opposite sides of a battle, you can never get to the bottom of what is really going on. The work is learning how to stay emotionally intelligent enough to troubleshoot together, even when it is hard.
Where to begin
If four obstacles feels like a lot, start where Lorena starts: your own state of mind, and your connection with your child. Those two shift the ground under everything else. You do not have to be a perfectly calm parent. You just have to keep coming back, and let each repair teach your child that the relationship is bigger than any hard moment.
Meet Lorena Seidel
Lorena Seidel is a social and emotional learning consultant, a Montessori certified and positive discipline educator, a mindfulness based stress reduction teacher, a TEDx speaker, and a mother of three. She has worked with thousands of families around the world, connecting psychological research with the realities of everyday family life. Her own journey, from the anger she inherited to the calm she chose to build, sits at the heart of everything she teaches.
