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The Whole Parent Podcast
The Whole Parent Podcast
What to do when we mess up [featuring an excerpt from Punishment-Free Parenting] #37
Get your own copy of the audiobook HERE
What do we do when we mess up as parents?
In this Episode of the Whole Parent Podcast, I read a long section from the Chapter on Repair from my brand new book Punishment-Free Parenting: The Brain-Based Way to Raise Kids Without Raising Your Voice.
Every parent has moments they wish they could take back. Maybe it’s the sharp tone, the overreaction, or the moment frustration boiled over. But what happens next matters even more than the mistake itself. In this key section from my book, Punishment-Free Parenting, all about reconciliation and repair—how to rebuild trust, reconnect with your child, and model emotional responsibility.
Parenting isn’t about perfection; it’s about showing up, even after we mess up.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
✔️ Why mistakes are inevitable in parenting—and why that’s okay
✔️ How rupture and repair strengthen your relationship with your child
✔️ A step-by-step approach to making things right after a parenting misstep
✔️ The power of modeling apologies and accountability for your kids
✔️ Why repair isn’t just about saying sorry—it’s about rebuilding trust
Key Takeaways:
- Rupture is normal. Repair is what builds resilience.
- Apologizing to your child teaches them how to take responsibility for their own actions.
- Connection, not control, is what makes discipline truly effective.
- It’s never too late to make things right.
Resources & Links:
📖 Punishment-Free Parenting
📩 Join the Whole Parent Newsletter for weekly parenting insights – CLICK HERE
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Welcome to the Whole Parent Podcast. My name is John. There's this moment that I think about a lot. Maybe you have some version of it too. It's late one night where bedtime had somehow stretched into an eternity. My oldest was four at the time, which means that his little brother, my second oldest, would have been basically a newborn, and because of that I think we were trying to get him to kind of go to bed independently, without the need for us being in the room with him, which has been a struggle for him for a long time. It's only something that we've really been able to tackle recently, and even still to this day.
Jon @wholeparent:There are nights when it can be a challenge, and I don't exactly remember how it went, but he was pushing back. You know we wanted more water or the blanket wasn't right, it was too dark, it was too light and I had been really patient. At first I had used all of my whole parent techniques although I didn't call them that back then because whole parent hadn't been started. You know I used the calm voice, the deep breathing. But patience for all of us has a limit and when you have a newborn, that limit tends to be a little bit quicker maybe than you'd like. At some point I snapped. I don't even remember exactly what I said, but it was harsh, really harsh. But I remember his face how it kind of crumpled in on itself and his eyes got real wide. He had this Star Wars quilt that he like pulled up over himself and as scared as he was of the dark and of being left alone, in that moment he was actually more scared of me. I don't think he came out again that night, which some parents might consider a win, but I didn't. I just remember this weight on my chest felt like I was being crushed by my own guilt. That was exactly the opposite of the parent that I wanted to be. That was the worst of what my parents who by and large did a pretty good job had been.
Jon @wholeparent:Here's the thing In my years working with parents, what I've learned is that no one parents perfectly. In my years working with parents, what I've learned is that no one parents perfectly. All of those experts that you hear about the psychologists and psychiatrists who write parenting books and have podcasts and are famous on social media they screw up too. We all have these moments when we wish that we could go back the yelling, the punishment, the exasperated sigh, that sharp comment that lands way heavier than we meant it to. And yet so many of us grew up in homes where parental mistakes just weren't acknowledged, let alone repaired. Parents didn't apologize, and when they did, they used what I call in the book Trojan apologies Apologies weaponized, designed to teach a lesson rather than build connection.
Jon @wholeparent:For many parents today, when they were kids, there were no do-overs, no moments of reconciliation and repair. When a parent screwed up, there was no acknowledgement. You just moved on. But the thing is, what research tells us is that parenting doesn't work well like that. Relationships don't work well like that, because rupture in relationships is inevitable. But repair, repair is where the real work of parenting happens.
Jon @wholeparent:On this episode of the whole parent podcast, we're talking about what we do when we don't do our best parenting. How do we rebuild trust? How do we show our kids that love isn't about perfection or achievements or accomplishments. It's about showing up even when we've messed up. And today's episode is going to be a little bit different.
Jon @wholeparent:Rather than writing an episode on this topic, I'm actually going to share with you a 10-minute segment from the chapter on reconciliation and repair in my new book, or rather audiobook Punishment-Free Parenting. Most of the time that you hear a chapter of an audio book or a section of a chapter of an audio book on an author's podcast, they usually start with chapter one, but I actually don't think that that's the most helpful tool for you as a listener. I think this section on reconciliation and repair is the perfect place to get a taste of what the book is like. And if you wind up never getting the book, never listening to the whole thing or reading the whole thing, this is the section that I really want you to internalize. It's the section that changed me while I wrote it, because if there's one thing that I need to remember so that I can pass that on to my kids, it's this. Love doesn't mean never getting it wrong. Love means making it right when you do. Oh, and one thing the way that audiobooks are recorded. You might want to speed this up to like 1.25 speed. It tends to be a little bit slower than the way that I record the podcast.
Jon @wholeparent:Chapter 8.
Jon @wholeparent:Repair and Reconciliation. Reconciliation does not mean forgetting or trying to bury the pain of conflict. Reconciliation means working together to correct the legacy of past injustice. Nelson Mandela, what do we do when we don't act like the parents we hope to be? What do we do when our impulses get the best of us, when we lash out and punish or otherwise fail to live up to the unachievable perfect standard of parenting we see on social media and read about in parenting books? What can we do when we inevitably make mistakes? The answer we've established cannot be to punish ourselves for those mistakes. Punishing yourself is no more effective than punishing your kids. Neither brings positive results. Instead, we have to learn to reconcile and repair what we rupture, being willing to extend to ourselves the same grace and forgiveness that we aspire to extend to our children. After all, we cannot give to our kids what we have not first learned to give to ourselves. The uncomfortable truth is we, like our children, are all still very much works in progress. We're all still learning and growing. I'm no exception.
Jon @wholeparent:If many of you saw me parenting on my worst days out in public, you would never guess that I wrote this book. All of us have days when we fall short of our own standards of parenting. All of us have days when we fall short of our own standards of parenting. All of us will have moments when we let the way that we were conditioned rather than our values run the way that we react, and as uncomfortable as it may be to accept, that is okay. You are not defined by your worst parenting moments. This is the first and often most difficult hurdle for those of us raised in punishment paradigms to get over.
Jon @wholeparent:Many of you, having made it this far in this audiobook, are hoping to kick punishment to the curb for good. You now realize that ensuring your child feels bad enough has little to do with growth or learning. Feeling ashamed and afraid is not the key to moral development or empathetic connection with peers or the world. Unkindness does not teach one to be kind. Disrespect does not teach one to be respectful. The question is can you believe that about yourself? Too Many of us are our own worst critics.
Jon @wholeparent:When we mess up, we get down on ourselves mercilessly, shaming and punishing ourselves for our mistakes and actions. Because we were raised on punishment. This self-flagellation feels necessary for change. We believe we must make ourselves feel bad enough to inspire ourselves to change. I urge you stop. Stop believing that. Stop believing in the myth of punishment, even where it concerns you. Punishing yourself has nothing to do with creating positive, lasting change. That myth is just the meaning you had to make out of the painful memory of experiencing punishment at the hands of the people you most loved. You will make mistakes, and beating yourself up as penance will not help you become the parent that you so desperately desire to be for your kids.
Jon @wholeparent:The relentless pursuit to achieve parenting perfection is not good for us. All it proves is that we have yet to deconstruct the punishment paradigm where it concerns ourselves. In truth, as hard as you might try, there is no avoiding all the mistakes in the game of parenting, and the good news is, even if we somehow could, being the perfect parent wouldn't be good for your kids either. As we've talked about throughout this book, kids learn as much or more from observing how we exist in the world as anything else. This is why it's impossible to become the parent you long to be without first learning how to reparent yourself. If you can't live the principles and values that you're trying to instill in your children, there is just no way to effectively instill those values in any lasting way. It is perhaps this, above all else, that makes parenting the single hardest and yet most rewarding thing that most of us will ever do. That said, the moments when you mess up and fail to live into your parenting values are, ironically, some of the most potentially positive and transformative parenting experiences you'll ever have.
Jon @wholeparent:When we learn to embrace mistakes as opportunities for growth and learning and shepherd our children to do the same, the results can be astonishing. This is called adopting a growth mindset. The term growth mindset coined by Dr Carol Dweck in her book Mindset, the New Psychology of Success, is at its core the choice to believe that intelligence and skills are not fixed qualities. A person, through intentional hard work and perseverance, can grow beyond their current capacity, especially by embracing failure, challenges, mistakes and setbacks and choosing, in spite of those, to continue to grow. Fixed mindset is exactly the opposite. It's choosing to believe that skills and intelligence are inherent, fixed qualities. To be clear, many people mistake just trying harder with having a growth mindset. This is far from the truth. A growth mindset is less about trying hard and more about how you view your mistakes and setbacks. The people I've worked with who have a fixed mindset close to 50%, if not more don't really believe that they have the capacity to grow from their mistakes and failures and therefore get down on themselves whenever they inevitably make a mistake. Mistakes in the view of someone with a fixed mindset, are evidence of character flaws, not opportunities to learn. Those with fixed mindsets are, intentionally or not, choosing to contradict what we know about the brain's ability to change and adapt neuroplasticity and are often on a trajectory towards the pitfall of perfectionism that we discussed earlier. It's not entirely surprising that many parents today struggle with having a perfectionist or fixed mindset around parenting.
Jon @wholeparent:One of the hallmarks of 1980s and 1990s parenting was the rise of near-constant supervision and assessment. Many of us were constantly watched and assessed in every aspect of life, from sports to academics and even artistic expression. As far as academics is concerned, there has perhaps never been a more tested generation than millennials. From the popularization of the SAT and ACT in the mid-20th century to no Child Left Behind, which passed in 2001, most millennials, at least in the United States, took far more standardized tests than their parents or grandparents. Moreover, no Child put the burden on schools and teachers, who could see the consequences, up to having their school closed as a result of their students' poor performance on standardized tests. The result for many of us and the generations since was the standardization of curriculum and the increased emphasis on doing things quote the right way, creativity and nonlinear thinking became secondary to obedience and compliance to the way that we were being taught. Today, valuing mistakes and failure as learning opportunities is foreign to so many children and parents. But if we can break free of that fixed way of thinking, the resulting change can be unimaginable.
Jon @wholeparent:Some years ago, I had the opportunity to coach a girls' volleyball team and inadvertently wound up employing this mindset. They were high school freshmen and they were, let's just say, not great. These girls had tried out and been placed on the C team, where their coach was also not great. About halfway through the year he was fired because of some personal issues and I was brought in. They had yet to win a single game. The club director pulled me aside to tell me that she didn't expect or even care about their success, team or individual. None of these girls were on scholarship and the C team cost a lot less to run than it brought in in club dues. She implied that these girls were never going to be any good. They were just there to keep the lights on for the one or two players at the top who would grow six inches and play at Northwestern.
Jon @wholeparent:Fixed mindset, given that I had just begun to learn about growth mindset, though in not such clear terms, and that one of my abiding core beliefs in life is that it's never too late. I took this as a challenge. The thing I noticed immediately was that these girls were terrified of making mistakes. If they hit a ball into the net or served one out, even in practice, they would look at me and apologize. All eight of them were far more concerned with what their coach, their authority figure, thought of them than having fun, getting better or even winning a game. So I instituted a new policy Coach doesn't care about mistakes.
Jon @wholeparent:I never subbed a girl out or called a timeout to criticize them for making mistakes or even a series of mistakes, which was basically the standard practice for volleyball coaches at all levels. Instead, I reframed everything as a learning experience Growth mindset instead of fixed mindset. I also began to model what healthy processing mistakes looked like. If I chose to start in a certain defensive position that hurt us, I would explain that it was my mistake and that I now know better. If I asked a girl to play a position or take on a task that she was uncomfortable or unfamiliar with, I would take accountability If I used all of my timeouts and didn't have one when we really needed it.
Jon @wholeparent:I would own it If you just checked down to your podcast to see if you just accidentally paused. You didn't. That was it. That was the clip that they gave me to share with you, a clip that ended not only in the middle of a section of Chapter 8, it ended in the middle of a story. Unfortunately, according to the policies of the owner of the audio recording, they can only share a maximum of 10 minutes of the audio recording for free. Luckily for you, while they own the audio recording, they don't retain the copyright of the words in the book. The words in the book still belong to me. It's basically the same thing as what Taylor Swift has been going through for the last decade. Someone else owns the master recordings of her original albums, but she still owns the songs themselves, which means that she can re-record those on what we're seeing as the Taylor's versions of all of those albums and re-release them or give them away for free, or put them up on a podcast if she wanted to. They belong to her. And so, picking up from the middle of page 144, in the middle of chapter 8, in the middle of the section titled the Power of Mistakes. In the middle of a story about me being a volleyball coach and implementing some of the parenting techniques that I am trying to teach you in this book, here is Punishment-Free Parenting John's version.
Jon @wholeparent:Soon, the girls started to mirror what I was modeling. When they made mistakes on the court, they might say something like I could feel that in my shoulders weren't squared up. That's why I missed or I missed that serve long, because I got greedy. Over the next few weeks, each of them began to trust their own ability to critically think, problem solve and make adjustments. Most importantly, they stopped trying to make me happy and began to lean on their own internal assessment of their performance. As a result, they made strides in performance well beyond what anyone had expected. They even started to win, and not just a little. Our season culminated in a second place tournament finish, including winning a hard fought match against the B team girls that had been picked over them at tryouts only a month or so before I had simply started offering them the freedom to stop caring so much about what I, the coach, thought.
Jon @wholeparent:If this was a Disney movie, you would have chalked it up to them having more fun, or you'd see a training montage where they learn that defense is more important than offense. But it was actually much deeper than that. Their success was born from their own mindset shift to trust their own perspective and experience and to use it to innovate and think critically instead of defaulting to obedience to the adult in the room. I was let go two weeks later when the C-team was disbanded and the girls were pulled up to the higher level teams. Those teams had started to struggle down the stretch and the C-team girls were so confident, optimistic and, inexplicably, somehow now so talented that it became evident that their presence on the more competitive teams would be a huge boost and it was Now.
Jon @wholeparent:I'm not saying that this is always going to be the case. You're not always going to see massive competitive, academic or achievement-based improvements when you start to empower your kids to move outside of a fixed mindset, but should that really be the goal anyway? These are the mindsets and neural pathways that lead to incredible lifelong resilience. What many parents seem to fail to grasp is that resilience, self-esteem and a willingness to make mistakes and learn from them are far more important than a perfect SAT score or making the varsity team when our kids are 16. The goal for our kids and ourselves should be growth, not perfection. Good enough parenting. Growth, not perfection. Good enough parenting.
Jon @wholeparent:Ever heard the aphorism perfect is the enemy of good? It's especially true in parenting, as we already talked about in the chapter on modeling. Perfection and even striving for perfection in parenting is self-destructive. It's not good for you, it's not good for your kids and it leads itself to the exact antithesis of growth that we should be prioritizing. That's not to say that we shouldn't try to improve as parents. In fact, I doubt you would be listening to this right now if you were totally uninterested in trying to improve as a parent. We just have to remember in the process that our goal is not perfection, but good enough parenting.
Jon @wholeparent:Good enough parenting looks like giving yourself a break when you don't do things perfectly all the time. Some days you're going to watch two or five extra episodes of Bluey. Other days you'll reflect after bedtime and realize that your kids ate nothing but granola bars all day. Still others you'll realize that you've been missing out on that one-on-one time with your middle child for the last two weeks. In fact, typing this right now, I'm not exactly sure when the last time is that I gave my oldest a bath, pretty sure last week, tonight, I guess, actually reading this right now, I don't know when the last time was. I guess that'll have to be tonight too. Where was I? Oh yeah, and what about the parenting tips that you've read about in this book or other books or seen on social media?
Jon @wholeparent:So many of us are convinced that if we don't have the right discipline script, or if we praise our children in the wrong way, or if we don't perfectly co-regulate, the next time they have big feelings and snap and just yell at them instead, our mistakes are going to have lifelong consequences. The truth is, none of these things, according to research, is actually going to lead to irrevocable harm for our children or their attachment to you as their caregiver. In fact, according to research into secure attachment in childhood, caregivers only need to be quote in sync and attuned to their children's emotions about 30% of the time to achieve secure attachment Only 30%. I go with the advice from my dear friend, dr Aliza Pressman, who offers us that, if we can live into our parenting ideals more often than not, we are good enough parents. I just want to take a moment to tell you, as you're listening to this, that I don't think you're just a good enough parent. I actually think you're a truly great parent. The things we're covering are not easy. If you apply even 20% of what I've said in this book so far and apologize when you don't, you're going to raise resilient, compassionate and whole people. So if you're worried that you don't measure up to what you see on social media or the expectations of the parenting experts, just know you already far exceed my expectations for the simple fact that you've made it this far. You've got this. I believe in you.
Jon @wholeparent:I am not going to read the rest of the chapter because it goes on for quite some time. I talk about apologizing, the power of apologizing correctly. What else do I talk about? Oh, I have this whole thing about Trojan apologies. Maybe I'll read that section, maybe I'll read that. And then, yeah, and then I go on reconciliation repair. Then I tell a story about the failure relationship paradox, how, actually, when we screw up, those are the times when we can develop the deepest connection. But I'll just read you the cut the butt section. I think that that's a really good section. This is like one of my main takeaways from a couple of people who have read the book and had me on podcast. They said this is like one of the best parts, so I don't want you to miss out on that. Anyway, I'm skipping, skipping. I kind of feel like the grandpa in a princess bride, if you guys know what I'm talking about. Anyway, here we go, cut the butt. Page 151. Page 151.
Jon @wholeparent:Many parents, both in the current generation and past generations, use apologies as Trojan horses for lectures, shame or otherwise, attempting to teach their children. Usually it goes something like this I'm sorry I yelled at you, but you really need to be more diligent about getting your schoolwork in on time. If you continue to not get your work in, your grades are going to suffer and you're not going. Or I'm sorry I slapped you for talking back, but you really need to learn when to stop. You just make me so mad sometimes. Do you see how neither of these examples are really apologies? Sure, they use the right words at the beginning to sound like an apology, but ultimately they're not about taking accountability or responsibility for their harmful actions and seeking to repair with their child. These are Trojan horse apologies Manipulative, rhetorical judo intended to lower the defenses of a child and open them up to receiving parental judgment and correction. I doubt most parents have any idea that they're even doing this. I sure didn't, but I can tell you now that my factory default instincts are to include a but in the overwhelming majority of apologies that I offer to my kids. It's a habit that I'm working diligently to break.
Jon @wholeparent:The other issue with these but apologies is that they often blame a parent's emotional response on the actions of their children. As we talked about in chapter 7, all of us have the ability to stop and reflect before acting on our impulses. This means that, regardless of how your kids have triggered you, you still have the capacity to not react emotionally. Of course you will still lose your cool sometimes, as I just demonstrated, but you always retain the agency not to lose it. This is empowering if you let it be, and it means, if you're thinking about blaming your kid for your own emotional reactions to their behaviors, remember this one's ultimately on you. If you find yourself in the midst of an apology and you have the overwhelming urge to say but just end the sentence, shut your mouth. In other words, cut the but. It's a unique feature of the English language that anytime you're about to use but you've already constructed a coherent sentence, so quit while you're ahead. The word but too often erases everything that came before it, quickly turning apologies into assaults.
Jon @wholeparent:Thank you so much for listening to the whole parent podcast. Make sure that you subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening to it. I'd love to read a review. Rate it five stars so that it can get out to more parents. And, better than that, share this episode with a friend who might benefit from the book that I wrote that came out this week Punishment-Free Parenting the Brain-Based Way to Raise Kids Without Raising your Voice.
Jon @wholeparent:If you enjoyed this part of the audiobook, I know that you are going to enjoy the rest of the audiobook. I've already heard from a ton of parents, just like you, who got it on the first day and have absolutely devoured it. In fact, one of them lives with me. My wife hasn't picked up the book yet, but she's about halfway through the audiobook, because this is one of the best ways to consume this information. Best of luck to you on your parenting journey, and if there's one thing that I hope that you take away from this episode of the podcast, it's that the best parents are not the ones who are perfect. They're not the ones who don't make mistakes. In fact, those parents, frankly, just do not exist. The best parents are the parents who are willing to acknowledge their mistakes and seek reconciliation and repair, and that means your best is always enough. Catch you next week.
