Why Kids Need Boundaries with Gen Muir

Jen, thank you so much for joining us.

I have followed your content and your interviews elsewhere for a long time and also your book.

So I'm really excited to introduce those people who haven't perhaps come across you before.

And can we talk about your previous book, which has been a huge hit with parents? before we get into your new work.

So can you tell us about Little People, Big Feelings and just why that message of connectedness is one that you feel is so important?

Okay, Little People, Big Feelings is the book that I wished was by my bedside as I navigated the first decade of parenting.

You know, I had read lots of parenting books and when, in hindsight, when you've got more space and you're not feeding small children and you're not under the pump with toddlers, those books can be super helpful and I've gotten so much from parent education that I've sort of worked into.

But I wrote Little People, Big Feelings because I wanted it to be the book that I could have digested in the moment.

So it's written very much with my own narratives, with my own experiences.

Those stories and through my total imperfections and struggles in my parenting, the parents can sort of grasp those ideas when they're tired and they're time poor.

And that's sort of the why about the book.

And I have loved mostly hearing back from parents that the number one bit of feedback I get on the book usually is about in page two.

And parents write to me and say, Jen, I'm at page two and I'm already crying.

Yeah.

And I always,

I know that sounds weird, but I'm always like, yes.

Because for me in my work, I'm trying to shift a perspective and there's a couple of perspectives I'm trying to shift.

One of them is the perspective that we're not enough as parents and the perspective like that there is so much pressure in modern parenting and I need parents to know they're doing way better than they think.

And then the other perspective I'm often shifting is our view of our child.

Sometimes when behaviour just clouds our vision in a world that's dominated by old school ideas around discipline and the way children should be behaving and seen and not heard.

we can get caught up in the idea that our child is giving us a hard time.

And one of the things that happens really early in my book is this idea that the big realisation I had very early with my first child that he wasn't giving me a hard time but having a really hard time.

And I think parents wait because suddenly the relief of not just seeing themselves as a good enough parent doing the best they can but the relief of seeing their beautiful babies as good enough kids doing the best they can and suddenly we're all okay and it's going to be okay.

So that's why the book, and it is written, from the perspective of what do I do when my kid bites, hits, doesn't want to go to school, all of those normal things.

And the second question you asked was why connection? Little story, but my business is called Connected Parenting because many, many years ago, I worked out connection was the foundation of what made everything in parenting work.