Guardians, Parenting Types Series #59

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In this episode, Jon introduces the Guardian parent, the first of four parenting types, describing caregivers who lead with responsibility, structure, and a deep commitment to safety. Grounded in the idea that “control produces order, but trust produces rest,” he explores how early experiences shape a Guardian’s instinct to hold everything together. Parents will walk away feeling deeply seen, with language for their patterns, compassion for their nervous system, and clarity about how to loosen their grip without losing what matters most.

Chapters

• 0:00 Series Kickoff And Quiz Overview
• 2:30 Why Four Parent Types, Not Six
• 3:32 Meet The Guardian Parent
• 4:10 Pillar One: Safety Through Order
• 8:40 Slippery Slope Thinking And Structure
• 12:20 Validating The Quiz And Results
• 15:20 Pillar Two: Worth Tied To Responsibility
• 20:40 Oldest Children, Leadership, And Labor Load
• 27:16 Pillar Three: Hypervigilance And Anxiety
• 30:46 Bluey’s Pool Lesson On “Boring Things”
• 33:56 Never Off Duty And Domestic Fairness
• 38:26 Pillar Four: Emotional Containment

Transcript

Jon @WholeParent: 0:00

Welcome to the Whole Parent Podcast. My name is John. This is a little bit of a different sort of episode than I normally record, but I am excited about it. And that is because for this week on the Whole Parent Podcast, for the next three episodes, this one and then the next three after this, we are going to be going through something that I have been working on for literally years. I've spent over a hundred hours uh working on a quiz that I have been slowly researching and then like trying, running it through tests, and then fine-tuning it, and trying to nail down essentially some personality types, but that are specific to parents. And I rolled this out with my membership uh probably oh a couple months ago, and the results have been amazing. People have been feeling really seen and valued, and just understanding they the idea that they can understand themselves more and understand why maybe they do the things that they do. And so this episode is gonna be about guardians. Uh that's the first type that of the four types. And I hope that this episode, if you are a guardian, there's gonna be a link at the bottom in the show notes that you can go and you can take the quiz yourself. And so that it's I think it's 20 questions, and you can go and take it and you can find out which type you are. And once you know, if you've turns out that you're a guardian, you can come back and listen to this episode again. But I think it's really important that you listen to all of the episodes because even if you're not this type, or you're not one of the types later in this week, it's possible that one most parenting uh relationships requ have some form of co-parent involved, whether that's a partner or a spouse or uh a dad to a mom or whatever. Uh whatever that looks like, most co-parenting relationships have people who are different types, even if they are pretty similar people, they have different ways of engaging with kids, and so they have they they're gonna have different types. And if not, you know, okay, so John, that's just two of the types. If you have your partner take the test, well, then you get involved with grandparents, and you have grandparents who who, you know, whether they take the quiz or not, are are gonna be a type. You have caregivers who are gonna be a type. And so once you understand that there are going to be all four of these types of people who are going to be caring for your kids, and it helps to understand each of those. So if that sounds good to you, if you want to hear more about these types, let's get into it. Welcome back out of the porch. So, like I said, I have been working on this. I've spent over I I thought I wrote down a hundred hours. I don't know exactly how many hours I've spent because this has gone through many iterations. At one point, there was five types, at one point there were six types, at one point there was only three types. What I've really landed on is these four types. And the first type that we're going to be talking about today is the guardian parents. And guardian parents, it they all have good names. So if you are listening to this and you're like, oh man, I really hope that I'm a guardian parent, uh, you don't have to hope that you're any of them. You'll be one of them. You might have some traits or tendencies that go with another one. You might kind of have a secondary type, but the guardian parents out there, uh, these are the parents who really, really thrive in organization and they they thrive through control. And so I, at least for this first episode, I have five pillars of what I think is kind of centrally important to understanding as a guardian parent. And the first pillar that I have is this idea that safety is paramount, safety is really, really important. I think for all parents, they feel that safety is important, but that's especially true of guardian parents, and that safety comes through predictability and specifically control. And I don't want to say that that means that all guardian parents are controlling. It's that guardian parents understand that when things are orderly, when things are systematized, when things are predictable, then we can have fun within those systems. And what you're gonna notice as I talk about guardian parents, but as I actually talk about, because obviously this is the first episode of four, is that all of these types have really, really positive aspects to them. And also they they have their kind of uh neuroses and their complications and their uh challenges, things that are challenging. And the thing that why why I say that the first pillar is that safety comes through predictability and control is that when when you are a guardian parent, you realize that you are the parent, you have a keen sense that you are responsible for this child, that they are not responsible for themselves, and in that way you want to keep things ordered and you want to keep things predictable, and is it's a part of your it's it's kind of you it's your form of regulation to keep things regulated, if that makes sense. And letting go does not feel freeing to uh a guardian parent, it feels irresponsible. It feels like if you let it up and you give in on boundaries, and which I'm not saying is a good thing, right? It's not saying that we should give in on boundaries, but oftentimes guardian parents will feel like if they give in on boundaries, boy, it's just a slippery slope. And that's one of those phrases. There are a lot of phrases that I use with different with these different types as I've been counseling parents who are in these different types and who are identifying with these different types. And like I said, it's been so helpful for those parents for whom these are when when they take the quiz and they go, Oh my gosh, I I never knew that there are other people out there who see the world this way. Or in some cases, it's wow, I didn't know that everybody didn't see the world this way. And uh one of the phrases that I use all the time with guardian parents is slippery slope, right? Everything is a slippery slope for a guardian parent. If if you you you if you give an inch, then it's gonna wind up just everything is gonna fall apart. And so they like highly ordered, highly structured environments. They really like doing parenting the right way, in other words. And one of the questions that are even on the quiz, although I probably shouldn't tell you what the questions are in case you go back and take it later, one of the questions that kind of leads me to understanding or or to guessing that a person might be a guardian parent. Although I don't know if this question is still in the quiz. This might have been an earlier iteration. I used to have part the quiz used to be what's called an adaptive quiz, where depending on the answers that you got, it would, it would, it would kind of branch off into hundreds of different types of like variations of questions. So literally like it it wouldn't take you hours, there were you would never go through a hundred questions, but like if you answered this, then I could like kind of ask you clarifying questions within the quiz. And it's much simpler now. And I haven't had a big my my fear when I made it was that if if I make it too if I make the quiz too simple, then then people will get inaccurate results. They'll they'll be lumped into a category. But I've had a bunch of people test this and take the quiz repeatedly and they get the same response, even if they don't always give the exact same answers. And I've also really the way to test this, and this is the way that I I prefer to test it, is that when I work with a parent for any period of long time, which for the membership, I mean, it's not like they're paying extra, but the longer that you're in the membership, the more I get to know you, and the more we can go back and forth, and the more that we can have these long conversations, and I learn your kids and I learn how to, you know, counsel you through longer, you know, and longitudinally. And when I've had parents who have been in the membership for a long time, who I've counseled for a long time, I already know which type they are, and then they take the quiz and they go, Oh, look, I'm this type. I go, okay, then that it's that it's working. But one of the questions in the early phases that was like a filter question was is parent, can you do parenting the right way? And for some of the other types, that is not like a given that parenting is something that you can do the right way or the wrong way. There are lots of people say things like, and you'll hear this as a common phrase, there's a million ways to be a great parent. And that's true. But I for a guardian parent, they often feel like there is a right and a wrong way. And I don't want to say it's all binary thinking, but but frequently that's one of the setbacks with guardian parents is that they tend to be more binary thinkers. A right way, a wrong way, there's the right process. Um, if you're not going to do something right, don't do it at all. Like these are the types of phrases that that those parents will come up with. They also tend to have a layer of anxiety when things don't go well. And we'll kind of get into that in some of the future pillars as well. Uh, the second pillar, so I said the first one is safety through control. And when I when I'm saying safety through control, I want to be clear here, I'm not saying that they're controlling, I'm saying that they understand that uh order is not preferential, you don't you don't have a preference for order, order is how we make things predictable. Some people feel like they can predict like other types might feel like they can be that life can be predictable, whether or not that uh like the there's order and structure to it. Like I that's kind of how I feel often. I I'm not a guardian parent, but I often feel to myself, like, oh well, if things things are predictable, if things are out of order, it doesn't mean that they're not gonna be predictable. But my dad was a guardian parent, and I can tell you without a shadow of doubt that my dad was like, no, the way in which we know how things are gonna go is by like having some systems and structures, and so it's not it, I maybe I shouldn't even have said safety through control, I should have said safety through order, and often order comes by means of control because the adult knows that they're the ones who are who are ultimately responsible for that. The kids, you know, can't always be trusted to to follow all of the directions in the right way. Uh pillar number two, I'm gonna keep going here. Pillar number two is that, and this is one of the setbacks. So I don't want to make it sound like all of these are good or bad, but pillar number two has is one of the setbacks for guardian parents, and that's that oftentimes they can feel like their worth is earned through their responsibility or their consistency. Somewhere early in their childhood, in their upbringing, they learned that responsibility was what made them or what made them feel valuable. And so this idea that you're needed is what keeps you in the tribe. And one of the things we're gonna talk about with all of these is that there are childhood experiences that lead us to parenting in these ways. There's birth order that comes into this. There is like just, you know, introvert, extrovert. There's so many different like manifestations of these. And so this isn't gonna be like a perfect, perfect, you know, I'm not gonna try and turn this into some horoscope where I say, and tomorrow your kid's gonna do this, and then that's gonna make you feel this way. It's not like that. But one of the things that I've noticed often with people who are guardian parents is that early in their childhood at some point, they had this experience of learning that responsibility was what made them valuable. And so it's often oldest children. My dad was not an oldest though, and he was a guardian parent, so it's not an always thing. Uh, but it this idea of like what keeps you in the tribe, that's that's a common refrain that I talk about a lot. And it's this idea that humans are inherently social creatures and we're always trying to like keep our spot in the tribe, whatever that is, and you're terrified of being, you know, uh excommunicated from the tribe, being kicked out of the tribe. The thing that guardian parents think is going to keep them in the tribe is this ability to like stay organized and and and be responsible and be in charge. And all of these different types of parents have the ability to be a really effective leader, but guardian parents, and then there's another one, uh, tend to be more easily like naturally leadership types. And the way that guardians do this is through having responsibility, and so they're the ones that like never ever, you know, forget the sunscreen and you know, always have the permission slip in on time, like their kid is never gonna lose that. And and that type of stuff feels like it's adding value to them, and so simultaneously they can run into this problem where if the other co-parent is not doing those things and maybe is seen as having a lack of responsibility, then they can start to say, well, they're not as valuable. Similarly, guardian parents tend to do this with older kids in their own life, so they might have you know two or three kids, and then they might place more responsibility as if that is going to add additional value to the oldest child, and sometimes it's the oldest girl, to be, you know, completely frank here. Like a lot of times it's like if there's a even if it's not she's not the oldest, but if she's like the second oldest and it's a girl, oftentimes guardian parents or all parents actually will do this where they kind of place an additional burden of responsibility. But guardian parents do this the most, and that's because they see value in responsibility intrinsically, and so worth is earned through your ability to be responsible. Uh pillar number three is that they tend to be a little bit more hyper-vigilant, and oftentimes this is disguised as maturity, but hypervigilance is a common adaptive response to anxiety in both children and adults. And I'm not gonna lie, of the types, the the types that tend to be the most naturally anxious are the guardian parents. And that's because of that need for safety and and like I said, order. And it's also because of that feeling of deep responsibility that they become hyper-vigilant. They they don't ever let anybody else there, they tend to not be great delegators and they don't let other people do things. Now, at the same time, it also means that, like I said before, and this is like where it's a double-edged sword, right? It's not only a bad thing, that hypervigilance also means that you're not gonna be like John, who again, I'm not a guardian parent, and I am the type of parent who finds myself out frequently without a diaper when I'm with my one-year-old little girl. And like I have had to bum diapers like their cigarettes on the subway. I've had to bum diapers off of like much more responsible guardian parents out in the world because I didn't have my stuff together. So just understand, like, like even the even when we say hypervigilance, people go, oh, I don't want to be hypervigilant. Yeah, but it also means that you're not gonna forget the silly stuff. You're probably not gonna find your skid yourself, you know, at the pool. There's a great episode of Bluey called the pool, where the dad goes to the pool with like none of the required equipment. Like he brings swimsuits, he brings him, Bluey, bingo, they run out the door, they don't bring snacks, so they're starving, they don't bring sunscreen, they don't bring bingo's floaties, and the time at the pool is objectively not a great time. And it's all the whole episode is framed around Bluey, with Bluey's mom going, like, oh, boring things aren't important, and Bluey's mom saying, No, boring things are important. Spoiler alert, Bluey's mom is a guardian parent. And so Bluey's mom sees these problems are going to happen, and Bluey's mom shows up halfway through the episode, or two-thirds of the way through the episode. It's hard to remember because the episodes are like seven minutes long, so it's like two-thirds of the way in, is like I've probably been talking about the episode for half of how long the episode actually is already on this podcast. But Bluey's mom shows up halfway through the swim uh experience with all of the things that they had forgotten, and Bluey kind of comes to this revelation oh, actually boring things are important. Uh you didn't have to tell the guardian parent that the boring things were important, they showed up with their kids in you know, ready. Now, the downside to that is that guardian parents tend to not be feel like they can go off duty, right? Like they're not ever punching the clock, they're always on top of it. And even when their kids are in bed at the end of the night, they're not relaxing, they're starting to prepare and plan for the next day, they're getting lunches ready, they're uh organizing things around. And you might be hearing all of this right now and saying, John, this just sounds like, you know, uh unfair labor, domestic labor. This just sounds like you're uh, you know, creating personality types out of the the mom and saying, well, moms are responsible for all of these guardian tasks that I'm that I'm listing. I'm not saying that that the guardian parent and or the mom, whatever, however you want to say it, it's not however you want to say it, because there's lots of guardian parents or a lot of moms who aren't. My mom was not a guardian parent, period. End of sentence. She just wasn't. Um my dad was, like I said, but my mom wasn't. So my mom was not necessarily going to make sure that I had the permission slip in my backpack. Uh, my dad, because of the unfairness of domestic labor, often didn't even know that I needed a permission slip. But had he knew known, he certainly would have had it. And it's not surprising that in my life growing up, it was my dad who took me to school more often than my mom. Because he was the type who is never late to things. Again, guardians don't tend to be late to things, they tend to be on time either because they're anxious about being late or because they they see being on time as like a very deep, important value in their life. And so if you're hearing this and going, John, you just sound like you're assigning all of these tasks to women. Um, I will admit that there is an unfairness, and not admit, I'm the first to say that there is an unfairness in domestic labor. Eve Rodsky, who I've had on the podcast, talks about this extensively. But that does not mean that all women are guardians and there none of the dads are. It's that we there are certain types that find things more simple to deal with and manage, and others that don't. In our relationship, neither me nor my wife is a guardian parent, and my kids frequently go to school when there is no school. Thankfully, we drive them there, so we're just driving around the parking lot, nobody's there because we forgot to check the Slack channel or something. We're just not that hyper vigilant, and because of that, we miss things, and so it's not always a good thing. But on the flip side, again, you also are never off the clock if you're just constantly worrying about things. And this was my dad to a T. He was not only a guardian parent, he was also a guardian just person. So he was a guardian worker too. And so uh he was on top of the business, the hid the business that he was the chief operations and chief financial officer of. He was like running reports at night to be ready for the next day. He never wanted to be underprepared for anything. So that was a big piece of it. And he was it meant that he wasn't always as uh present, let's say, in the moment, because he was always preparing for the future. And that is one of the the pieces of this, and uh that's kind of where I'm gonna get to in my last pillar, is the the struggle with presence. But before that, I want to take a quick break so that we can listen to our sponsor, which for right now is just me. Alright, I'm back. And if in some future episode I get ads, and that was actually an ad that was read by me about somebody else, go and buy that product. I don't know. Hasn't happened yet, but maybe one day. Alright. Pillar number four. We've been talking about guardian parents, one of the four types of parents that you can be if you take the quiz that is at the show notes in the in the bottom in the link in the show notes. And that will be the first link, by the way, in these four episodes. Pillar number four. Emotional containment over emotional expression. I am not going to say that guardian parents do not have emotions. I think that that would be a very unfair and just frankly inaccurate depiction of what it is to be a guardian parent. But often, emotions are contained and suppressed before they eventually come out in really big and explosive ways. And again, this kind of goes with the whole guardians being more about order and about process and about doing things the right way. But guardians often, because they have that early experience of feeling like responsibility is part of what gave them value and worth, often will have this experience also that their emotions should not be other people's problem. And they've learned to suppress those emotions. And by the way, all of the types can have this wound. It's just that the way in which guardian parents manage that is by staying very composed and in control until the containment eventually breaks and they snap. And this can come out in a couple of different ways. It can either come out in some like bitterness and resentment that you've held up and you finally say that thing that's been eating at you. It can come out very viscerally. That was how it came out for my dad. He was a guardian parent who kept his emotions in check until he didn't, and then he would yell. But over time, the important piece of this is that that type of containment and suppression that that cannot replace processing through your emotions. And so it you can grow this experience of feeling like, boy, everything is just kind of bubbling beneath the surface. And it I can keep it all, I can hold it all. I'm gonna be okay. I just gotta make sure that the lunches are packed, and I just gotta make sure that the plans are made. And these tend to be planning parents, right? So they're they're big planners. They like to plan the play date. We're gonna do this and this and this and this and this. And then when things don't go according to the plan, instead of naming that disappointment or that frustration or that whatever, they push it down. The problem is emotions that are not felt are felt by everybody else down the road. You can either let your you can never pro you can either uh work through your emotions or they will work through you. And so not only does this happen with guardian parents, then it begins to happen with guardian parents and their children, starting with the oldest. So because they feel that they are not allowed to express emotionally because it's an inconvenience to others, because it interferes with their logical processing, because it interferes with kind of how they go about the world. And by the way, some guardian parents can be very extroverted and be very out there and social and kind of getting into conversations with lots of people. There are other guardian parents, I would say, of all of the four types, the most highly introverted among us tend to be the guardians. They tend to be the ones because people who are very, very, very introverted have that degree, and they'll and they'll very much often name this, have that degree of like when introversion goes to an extreme, it becomes social anxiety. And so there is this kind of anxious underlying tendency to guardian parents, often, not always, but often. And so that can also be a piece of this, is that guardian parents don't want to be seen in the same, like they want to be seen as in control, as in being responsible, as mature, right? A lot of times that hypervigilance is disguised as just like I'm just mature and I take care of things and I'm good at adulting. They're really good at adulting. I wish I had a guardian parent around that could like make sure that I paid my taxes and stuff. Like, geez, am I bad at some of this stuff? Um, and so it might sound like I'm like dissing it. I'm not dissing it. I like wish I had more guardian parent bones in my body. But oftentimes all of that maturity and responsibility and and order and and you know safety via like really keeping things on lock, that then means I don't want to show vulnerability and I don't want to show my emotions. And then we pass that down to our kids because whatever we don't do our work on becomes a thing that we pass down, right? Either you can work it out, you can do the work to process and work through your stuff, or your kids are gonna have to work through it. The reason that I have to work through yelling at my kids and work through bec being a yeller is because, like with all due respect to my dad, he he broke many cycles, generational cycles. He did an amazing job in so many ways, and he was my best friend until he passed away. Um, but he one thing he didn't do was break the yelling cycle for our family. I'm gonna have to do that. And guess what? I'm probably not even doing that to the extent in which I really wish I was. And so my kids are gonna have to do some of that work too. They yell too, and part of that is that I do. And so I'm I'm I'm ashamed to admit that, but I'm also willing to be vulnerable to say that that's my journey and that's my struggle. Oftentimes, guardian parents, they don't want to be seen as out of control because they've built their value system around being in control and being mature and being responsible. And so they will suppress those emotions and then they pass them down to their kids of saying, like, especially, like I said, starting with the oldest kid, hey, you you need to get it under lock. There's no there's no crying in baseball, right? There's no crying around here. You don't need to this is not something to cry about. And it's it's actually it comes from a really whenever we I hear a parent say that out in public, I try and remember that that comes from a really good place. That's like a really well-intentioned thing, even though it comes out sounding just like so 90s and gross and bad. Like no crying around here, like nobody wants to see you cry. It comes from that parent feeling a supreme level of discomfort knowing that the world is not kind to those who show emotions, that bullying does occur, that you don't really know if a kid is going to be made fun of for crying and made fun of for having emotions, and you don't know how other adults who are unw able to process emotions well are going to see that child and react to that child. And so oftentimes that that emotional suppression and that willful like you need to stop crying right now, no crying around here. I remember my next door neighbors, they come over and they say something to the effect of you need to be like an egg where the yolk on the inside is protected by a hard outer shell that nobody can get back through. To which I always want to say, right, except for eggs crack really easily and then the root yolk goes everywhere, right? Like it's hard, and but it's also brittle. And so oftentimes guardian parents will do that where part of being the guardian is guarding them from themselves, guarding your children from their own problems. These are the same parents who, you know, when your kid's gonna go out looking like an like a fool with you know wearing their shirt on backwards and um, you know, wearing dorky looking clothes that they like, or you know, they give themselves a mohawk. That that when you're you watch your kid walking out the door, you're like, honey, come here, I gotta, I gotta fix this before you leave. I don't want you to be made fun of, I don't want you to be bullied. But sometimes that guardian can come in that way. And remember, we started with the pillar of safety being in control. This is where that control comes in. Control is looks like for guardian parents, I'm not gonna let you have anything bad happen to you. And if it does, I'm gonna make sure that you control your emotions so that the next bad thing doesn't happen to you as a response to that. So that's where that all comes in, and and it can look like this emotional suppression and containment. And that's a growing edge for guardian parents. Learning to let go is a growing growing edge, also learning to let yourself feel before it becomes so big, right? Like let yourself feel when it's a little feeling. Don't only feel the ones that get so big that you they break out of containment and they explode out of you. And so, or the anxiety just drives you into a panic attack. Like, feel the feelings when they're still small, and don't shy away from them. Like I said, some guardian parents really will hide from their feelings deeply, and they'll say, like, I they'll they'll deny that they even have feelings at all. They do, you do. The last pillar, as we're kind of coming to the close to the end of our time on this one, is this underlying fear, and I'm gonna have an underlying fear for each of the parents, and it's my fifth pillar for guardian parents, and the underlying fear goes all the way back with my first pillar, which was safety comes from control, and safety comes from order, and safety comes from process, doing things the right way, and the fear here for guardian parents is the fear of letting go. That if you let go, if you let your kids go out into the world without you, if you let your kids make mistakes, if you let your kid fail that test, if you let your kid um do that thing that you probab that isn't done done the right way, doesn't learn to do the math problem the right way, they're they're not you let your kid fall behind in their reading, that everything is just gonna fall apart. And it really comes from this feeling of projection because you feel yourself like if you don't hold everything together, everything falls apart. And so guardians, in a way, don't entrust that safety exists outside of their own effort and control. And I want you, if you're listening to this, to to hear that that is not true. That safety does exist in spite of your control and outside of your control, and also in some ways because of your control. It's not that you can't keep your kids safe, I believe you can in many ways, but you can't keep your kids safe from everything, and actually keeping kids too safe sometimes as guardians can lead to worse problems down the road. This is where we get into things like the Harvard study that talks about kids who uh don't have enough opportunities for good stress and failure early in life become kids who lack resilience and confidence later in life. And so the thing with a guardian parent is realizing you have to kind of take your hands off the wheels a little bit. You have to let your kid make some mistakes and learn from some natural consequences that you're not gonna save them from. You have to let them go a little bit. And this is true of another of some other types of parents as well. This is not the only, this is not, you're not alone in this. There are other types of parents who do this as well. But you have to let your kid do that and and experience those things because like it's going to be okay. And so that's the mantra for you is that it's going to be okay. It's going to be okay, even if I'm not in in charge, even if I'm not holding everything together, even if the permission slip is meshed, even if the lunch is not packed fully the day before, even if the plans change, and this is a big one, right? The fear of plan of letting go extends to the fear that plans might change. And this is the the guardians out there, you guys know you were already planning the birthday party a month in advance. You are planning, you you are the ones who are shopping for Christmas gifts, probably in November, right? You are the ones who are doing all of these positive, adaptive things to care for your kids. And so I don't want to say that those are bad things, they're not bad things, but if the plans change, if you are not always in control, it is not all going to fall apart, it's not all going to collapse without you. There's going to be a growing edge and a learning edge for the people around you because they have come to rely on your ability to just do and carry everything. But it's not right for them to do that, it's not right for you to do that. And so, here's my little outro for you. I wrote it out. Listen to this, let it wash over you, and then come back and listen to the next episode tomorrow. For most of your life, safety has felt like something that you create, not something that you receive. You learned early on that stability was built on staying one step ahead of the chaos. So, of course, letting go doesn't feel like relief. It feels like negligence. The very habit that once made things stable no longer delivers the thing that you're actually looking for. Because control produces order, but trust produces rest. And the remarkable thing is this: you don't have to choose between them. Because what you've built over the years, the steadiness, reliability, the capacity to stay grounded under pressure, they don't disappear just because you loosen your grip. They remain. Safety, as it turns out, isn't something that you have to keep manufacturing in real time. It's something that your nervous system can learn to recognize as already present. The shift isn't dramatic, it's subtle, it's even boring. It's the moment you stop tightening when things start to wobble. The moment when you pause instead of scanning hyper-vigilantly for danger. The moment when you realize that nothing essential is actually at risk. It's not an emergency. You don't stop being the guardian. You just stop you simply stop watching alone. And in that recalibration, not through force, but through trust, something long overdue. You get to rest. Not because the world is perfectly ordered, but because you finally believe it won't fall apart when you don't hold every piece together. See you tomorrow, neighbor. Thank you for your time listening to the whole parent podcast today. I hope you got something out of it. I have a couple quick favors to ask of you as we end the episode. The first one is to jump over on whatever podcast platform that you are listening to right now and rate this show five stars. You'll notice there are a lot of five-star ratings on this show, whether that's on Spotify or Apple Music or Apple Podcasts. We have a ton of five-star ratings and it helps our podcast get out to more people than almost any other parenting podcast out there. And so it's a really quick thing that you can do if you have 15 or 20 seconds. And if you have an additional 30 seconds, I'd love to read a review from you. I read all the reviews that come through. If some if you particularly like one part of the podcast or you like when I talk about something or whatever, imagine that you're writing that review directly to me. The second thing that you can do is go and send this episode to somebody in your life who you think could use it. Think about all the parents in your life. Think about your friends, your family members who could use a little bit of help parenting. It's vulnerable to share an episode of a parenting podcast with them. I get it. But imagine how much better your life is as a result of listening to this podcast, following me on social media, getting the emails that I send out. You can share that with someone else too. And so I encourage you, just go over, shoot them a quick text, share this episode with them, or share another episode that you feel like is particularly relevant to them. The last thing you can do is go down to the link show notes at the bottom, and like I said in the mid-roll, you can subscribe on Substack. It's$5 a month or$50 a year. Uh I don't have that many people doing it, and yet the people who are doing it have made this possible. And so if you like this episode, if you like all of the episodes, if you want them to continue, the only way that I can keep making them is through donor support, free will donations to the podcast. Please, please, please, please, as you're thinking about the end of this year, as you're thinking about your charitable giving, I know I'm not a 501c3. You can't write it off on your taxes, but if you'd like to give me a little gift to just say thank you for what you've done this year, the best way to do that is over on Substack. Again,$5 a month,$50 a year. It's not going to break the bank. It's probably less than you spend on coffee every week. Definitely less than you spend on coffee every week. Maybe uh less than you spend on almost anything, right? Five bucks a month is very, very small, but it goes a long way when it's multiplied by all of the different people who listen to the podcast and sending that over to me. I get all of that money. It's just my way of being able to produce the podcast, spend money on equipment, spend money on subscription fees, hosting fees for the podcast, all of that stuff. Email server fees, all that. So if you're willing to do that, I would love it. Thank you so much for listening to this episode, and I'll see you next time.