How to Lose Your Should, Tame Your Inner Critic, and Enjoy Parenting - with Dr. Alison Escalante

We all have “To Do” lists—sometimes several of them at once. 

But do you have a parenting To Do List? And of those list of things to do—whether they’re short-term or long-term—how many of them are things that NEED to get done, versus things you WANT to see happen, versus things you feel like you SHOULD be doing?

See, there’s a big difference—and my guest today will argue that all those “shoulds,” all those pressures we guiltily put on ourselves but are neither real needs nor wants, those “shoulds” just might be 

Alison Escalante, MD believes our culture of anxiety is stealing parents' joy and telling them they can never do enough or get it right. She is a Pediatrician, TEDx Speaker, Writer and the Creator of the 3S method to help parents raise their kids skillfully AND enjoy doing it. 

Dr. Escalante has degrees from Princeton in the history of ideas and Rutgers in medicine, and did her pediatric training at Duke and University of Chicago. 

I found our conversation in Episode 101 of The Child Repair Guide to be quite a compelling argument for reassessing the personal and family goals we all set—and I bet you’ll find something in it compelling, too.

In our conversation, we talk about:

• How the United States is tied for #1 in the world when it comes to anxiety—and why anxiety is so natural for parents to feel
• Dr. Escalante describes the parenting “Should Storm”—and how our “shoulds” impact our kids and keep us from enjoying them as much as we could
• The problem with “catastophizing”—how the small parenting choices you make AREN’T actually going to mess your kids up for life
• How studies show that getting it wrong 70% of the time is actually good for your kids
• Taming your inner critic
• 3 steps to ending the “Should Storm”—with real-life examples
• Why so many parents feel the weight of Imposter Syndrome
• How to prevent your kids from developing Imposter Syndrome, and grow up confident and resilient instead
• We cover research showing that kids at high-achieving schools are as at-risk for mental and behavioral health problems as kids who suffer from poverty and abuse
• And how the parenting experts don’t always get things right with their own families all the time (ahem!)

While you’re listening, if there’s a moment that really stands out to you, take a screenshot of your podcast player and post it to your Instagram Story and tag me in it—@zendocsteve—and I’ll share it out, too!