How connection with your kids can bring more calm and less power struggles

If you’re seeking a more peaceful home - with less shouting, more listening and more ease, connection is a huge part of the puzzle.

Whilst I can’t offer you a magic pill that will solve all your problems overnight, what I can offer you is an understanding of why connection is so important - and absolutely vital if there’s any chance of meeting your desire of a better relationship with your child.

Are your expectations too high?

Kids are kids - they’re developmentally meant to be loud, playful, argumentative and energetic (omg their energy! What I’d do to have more of that energy!!). Some kids are naturally quieter, sure.

But trying to change kids rather than accepting them for who they are is only benefiting us for our convenience - and actually causes more disconnection later on as a result.

What we gain in that moment causes bigger issues in the relationship with them… and the one they have with themselves. It sends a message that they are only accepted ‘if’.

And look, I totally get it. Life would be a lot easier if they’d just do what we ask first time. If I had a pound for every time I heard a parent say the words, “I just NEED them to bloody LISTEN,” I’d probably be lounging in Bora Bora sipping from a coconut right about now.

Connection, not control

The key to getting closer to collaboration - the secret sauce that many parents don’t realise they are jeopardising when using control and fear - is connection. Whereas control, punishments and fear literally disconnects.

If you’re on socials, and you’re interested in learning more about how to parent more consciously or gently, then there’s a pretty good chance you’ve come across someone banging on about connection and ‘attachment’ with our kids (maybe even from me, because I do talk about it A LOT).

The simple reason being - it’s the foundation where your entire relationship is formed.

Connection is the glue that holds everything together

Without feeling truly connected - to your kids, to your partner… to yourself - that relationship will wobble.

And to be totally clear, of course, it’s completely natural that your connection to all of these people will fluctuate based on a variety of reasons as we navigate life… hormones, lack of sleep, work, mental overload, overstimulation, arguments with your parents, financial worries, disagreements - the list really is endless and so dependent on each individual’s capacity to juggle it all.

I’m talking as the overall pattern - the majority.

The authenticity of kids

Kids are incredible at connecting with themselves - they know what they need, what they want - even if the logical part doesn’t always make sense.

Whilst young children under the age of 7 don’t yet have the ability to foresight their impending needs, they do have this magical ability to be exceptionally present in the moment and feel into their bodies minute by minute.

They are not yet afraid to show you (and everyone else) exactly how they are feeling.

You know when a toddler will fling themselves to the ground and hit, scream and kick their legs with frustration? And then they just spot a bumblebee like nothing has happened?

That’s a fully embodied, somatic, authentic response to their feelings. They are giving themselves precisely what their body needs to regulate and recalibrate in that moment. They don’t yet have the brain development to think how this impacts others, or to handle the big feelings in a more socially acceptable way (obviously!), but it’s so powerful to compare how they express with their entire body and voice… and how adults just don’t. Until they are at bursting point - hence seeing so much verbal aggression and venomous comments online, or road rage for example. Frequently in the safety of behind a screen or car!! Take those things away and it’s a different story of course.

It’s triggering as hell to adults when kids act this way because most of our generation were likely reprimanded and shouted at when they expressed their emotions and behaved - well, like a children. There was - and still is in most western parents - a belief that ‘kids should know better’.

And if you're thinking, ‘Quite bloody right too! You can’t just go about chucking yourself on the floor having a hissy when you don’t get your own way,’ I would ask you, with your fully formed adult brain - when do you ‘lose your shit’?

How do you handle it?

When do you scream at your kids to ‘LISTEN TO ME!’ with a whole-bodied exasperation?

It’s the same dysregulated, fear driven and involuntary behaviour as the toddler having a tantrum.

It’s just you have years of conditioning stopping you dropping to the floor - and a more rational brain, given you have a few more decades of development than your child.

Parenting from a place of connection takes enormous self-awareness, especially when you weren’t raised that way.

When your child is melting down, or refusing, or yelling that they hate you… every alarm bell inside you goes off.

Your nervous system is screaming at you to take control.
Your childhood conditioning is saying ‘They’re being disrespectful - how dare they speak to me like that!’
The fear in you whispers you’re doing this all wrong.

The power of connection

Connection is literal survival to human beings. Especially to babies and young kids who quite simply wouldn’t survive on their own.

Which is why kids will do anything they can to keep hold of it.

Do you find the more you try and be by yourself, the more they ask for you?

Yeh, here too. It’s so bloomin’ exhausting sometimes.

Connection-seeking sometimes looks confusing - maybe it seems to you like they are pushing you away. Maybe they’re whining, poking you, doing everything you’ve asked them not to.

Because, as the old phrase goes - any attention is better than none.

So, the trick is… if they feel connected, then they won’t need to keep seeking it, and they’ll actually relax more. ‘I see you building that tower!’ before they say “mummy watch!”

“That feel’s so hard. Do you want to tell me more?” - to show you understand their experience.

Spending 15 minutes showing an interest in their current special interest or whatever they are doing.

Letting go of the arributary rules that you don’t even know why you have them in the first place - sleep in the lounge together for novelty using torches to find things.

Have pudding before main course - just because your connection and joy is more important than the ‘shoulds’!

Doing this once is not going to ‘make a rod’ - it just shows there is flexibility and FUN.

When your emotions take over

When - because it is a when rather than if - you find yourself reverting to powering over your kids, just notice it. Resist the habit of judging it and just realise it’s happening again. Name out loud how you are feeling WITHOUT making it about your child. Just doing that alone helps to separate yourself from the emotion and model to them.

Take a moment to reconnect with yourself. Slow your breathing. Step away. Start again.

You’re allowed to mess up - and accepting that you will is a large part of it.

There is sooooo much gold in the repair part of this, don’t

In those moments of desperation when your kids aren’t listening - what is it that you need? (Other than your kids listening and doing as they’re told!) What are you afraid of? What is driving your urgency in that moment? And how is your urgency contributing to the chaos?

Can you use this as an opportunity to lean to connection through play and see how what happens instead?

“I think there’s 27 steps to the car. What about you? Let’s see who’s closest?!”

“What game shall we play on the way - rainbow car or eye spy?”

Prioritising connection over control

Control might get quicker results, it might even get obedience, compliance and what seems like ‘respect’, but what’s often happening underneath is actually a lack of respect being replaced by fear, resentment and a whole lot of disconnection.

Our child might “listen” because they’re afraid, overwhelmed or simply giving up - not because they’ve actually understood, grown, or learned something helpful.

Control creates distance.

It says: I don’t trust you to get it unless I make you.

Your behaviour is more important than your needs.

My authority matters more than our relationship.

And that’s the part that makes your stomach sink, right?

Because what most of us want - what brought you to read this blog in the first place - isn’t a child who jumps when you say jump. It’s a child who feels safe enough to say, “I’m struggling. I need help”

Connection is presence

Connection isn’t about being a pushover. It’s not about saying yes to everything or letting chaos take over.

It’s about creating a space where our children feel seen, heard and loved - even when they’re losing it.

Connection says: I’m here. You’re not too much. We’ll figure this out together.

Sometimes that sounds like:

“I won’t let you hurt your brother. Let’s find another way to show you’re angry.”
“You’re having a hard time getting ready. What’s going on inside? Want to snuggle before we try again?”

It’s slower. More curious. Often messier.
But in the long run, it builds something unshakeable.

This work isn’t about perfect scripts or perfect parenting moments.

It’s about showing our kids how to accept their humanness.

It’s repairing when we mess up. Giving them grace when they mess up.
And being brave enough to choose relationship over control, again and again.

Sometimes you’ll lose it. That’s ok.
Sometimes they won’t respond how you hoped. That’s ok too.

And one day, they will reflect back to you what you show them and it will all suddenly make sense.

What matters most is the relationship you’re building beneath it all and connected, trusted and special bond.

If they don’t get this from you, they’ll find it from someone or something else the moment they can when they’re older.

So, using control for that quick compliance today, ask yourself is it really worth it?