When my kids were babies, attachment parenting was all the rage, and I was fully on board. I devoured books and blog posts written by Dr. William Sears, who encouraged practices like baby-wearing, co-sleeping, and generally being responsive to your child’s needs. The more I learned, the more it made sense. I wanted to form a close attachment with my child, and this seemed like the best way. What kind of parent would leave a fussy infant unattended, or worse, let the child cry it out at bedtime? The idea was horrifying.
I remember my dad’s skeptical expression when I explained why this style of parenting was superior to the no-nonsense, pragmatic approaches that he and my mother embraced in the 1980s. Our oldest daughter was eight weeks old and already settling into her intense personality. She never did anything halfway, whether it was eating, sleeping, or wailing at the top of her lungs. My dad observed that my husband and I made parenting her look like a full-time job for two people. If that was a dig on my parenting style, I shook it off. So what? I thought, as we buzzed around our infant daughter like dutiful worker bees. It’s worth it!
That passionate infant and her younger sister are teenagers now, and it seems the parenting pendulum is swinging back. Scrolling online parenting forums after one particularly tough day, I flicked through discouraging sentiments that echoed my own. One commenter wondered if responsive parenting had backfired, calling it joyless, grueling work.
When your kids are infants, you look forward to the day when they grow up a little and gain some independence. It sounds absolutely dreamy.
But the teenage years have been hard in ways I didn’t expect. Though less exhausting physically, riding the rollercoaster of the developing adolescent brain is giving me emotional whiplash. I look back wistfully on the days when a problem could be solved with a hug, or a tantrum vanquished with a favorite toy or snack. Now, there’s rarely a quick fix for my daughters’ bad moods. Every frustration or disappointment lingers over the household like a heavy storm cloud.
Empathy Overload
I was not prepared for how I would get pulled into my children’s complex emotional worlds, and how my heart would suck up their emotions like a sponge.
Emily Edlynn, PhD, a clinical psychologist and author of the book “Autonomy-Supportive Parenting: Reduce Parental Burnout and Raise Competent, Confident Children,” points out the pitfall of too much empathy. In a 2025 Instagram post, Edlynn writes, “With our cultural swing towards more emotionally connected relationships between parent and child (a very good thing), the downside is when we feel our child’s feelings so much that we need to make them better so we can feel better.”
Sometimes we’re so good at empathizing with our children’s feelings that the lines between their emotions and ours start to blur. But when we jump in and try to fix what’s wrong, we’re not helping our kids learn to cope with negative emotions. Ultimately, they might sense we can’t handle their bad moods and stop turning to us for support.
And all of this helps no one.
Insights and Mantras
In The Vampire Diaries, a show my oldest daughter and I used to watch together, characters have the ability to turn their emotions on and off at will. But since I can’t do that, I’m finding other ways to cope.
While interviewing therapists for a different story about empathy burnout, I learned more about how other people’s emotions impact us. One helpful insight: When someone you love is struggling — a child, a friend, a partner — you can’t help but feel affected. That’s normal. The key is to let yourself feel whatever you’re feeling without responding behaviorally. We always want to jump in and fix things, but the best way to help is to let the person experience what they’re going through. We can be there and be supportive without diving headfirst into that swirling storm with them.
Cheesy though it may be, I’m also turning to mantras that evoke strength and resilience. I imagine myself calm and steady, unmoved by even the most spectacular display of teenage angst. One quote I like is this one: “Like a rock, I am solid and unyielding in the face of life’s storms.”
I know this is mostly wishful thinking. Training myself not to feel the intensity of my children’s emotions seems as farfetched as teaching a duck not to quack.
Still, I hold the words in my head, repeating them often and channeling them in difficult moments. When a meltdown feels imminent or I think I might snap after hearing yet another snarky comment, I try to remain strong and unflinching, like a rock. Or at least a sponge with some tough edges. It’s worth a try.
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