I recently came across the podcast, ‘Raising Good Humans with Dr Aliza’.

Dr Aliza Pressman is a developmental psychologist, parent educator, assistant clinical professor, co-founder of Mount Sinai Parenting Centre and SeedlingsGroup, AND a mum!

Phew! Talk about high achieving, right!

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE.

Dr Aliza is the author of the book, The 5 Principles of Parenting Your Essential Guide to Raising Good Humans, which I haven’t read YET but it’s definitely one on the list.

Anyway, where am I going with all this?

Well, firstly, the title: ‘Raising Good Humans’ caught my attention because obviously I/we (J and I) are in the process of raising a human — almost a whole year in, can you believe it! — and we’d love to raise a good one!

And babies don’t come with a manual … who knew!

Secondly, when I had a little peruse through her podcasts one morning on a recent walk with Miss A, I came across Dr Aliza’s conversation with author and podcast host, Jay Shetty (who I also really like listening to – score!) … and well … WHAM BAM THANK YOU MAM … (*cough* sorry, couldn’t help myself – ha!) a few moments later I was in my own little podcast heaven, learning invaluable parenting tips and tricks while Miss A said “hiiiii” and “byyyyye” to all flowers, plants, palm trees, puppies and even sometimes people that we walked passed — SO CUTE!.

In all seriousness, because I found this conversation super useful — and have since started following and listening to Dr Aliza’s podcast regularly — in today’s blog I bring you some of the key highlights/takeaways I took from the episode: ‘How to raise confident and resilient kids with Jay Shetty‘.

what i took away

• Are you ready to be a parent? It’s important to do some self-reflection ideally before becoming parents and certainly while parenting. And self-reflection means taking a good look at why we are the way we are, and how we came to be the way we are. This is something I’ve certainly found super important in my life, not only to enable me to become a better version of myself and to understand myself and how I came to be, but now so that I don’t pass my baggage — particularly my self-esteem and anxiety issues — onto Miss A. Self-reflection is about letting go and being “intentional with our parenting”.
• What’s your parenting mission statement? Elaborating on the intentional parenting idea, creating a mission statement for yourself as a parent is all about you and how you want to raise your kids and how you want to give love regardless of how you were raised. This level of thought and reflection about how you want to parent and show up for your child, Dr Aliza says, can lead to “secure attachment relationships”.

“Having a secure attachment relationship with your child […] it’s so deeply protective. It buffers the impact of trauma, it’s so important. And not everybody grew up with that […] If we didn’t and we reflect back and we think through what was going on, how we came to be, who we are, how we learned how to be loved, how we experience love, how we gave love, we then have a much higher chance of turning what could have been just an autopilot to a different kind of relationship, into this secure attachment.”

• One-way parenting doesn’t work! As parents we need to remember our children are born the way they are: some are orchids and respond as orchids do to their environment, and others are dandelions. As parents we need to learn to be sensitive to each child’s needs, individually. Dr Aliza says, “ask yourself what you need to give in order for this flower to bloom”. And remember: “it’s going to be different for every child” — one-way parenting doesn’t work! Taking this a step further it’s also important for parents to remember that your children are also different from you! As cute as it might be to have a little mini me, in reality your children are individuals, they are their own people with their own interests, desires, strengths, temperaments, journeys … We, as parents, are there to guide and support and love, not to force.

“Alright, my tendency is this. I’m going to go on the other side of it and challenge myself. More often than not […] I think you can really develop incredible relationships with your partner, with your kids, because you’re basically saying, ‘I’m not going to assume that you and I are the same person, I’m not telling the same story, I’m going to let you unfold as you are and I’m going to give you a little bit of my […] what I can offer.’”

• Release control. Dr Aliza says it’s important for parents to release the tendency to control and to remember that, really, we can only control ourselves. We need to be humble as parents and realise that, while we’re there to love, to guide and educate, to support, and to provide safe boundaries, we don’t have totalitarian-level control over our children — we need to allow them to evolve and grow into the people they’re born to become.

“It’s the thing you want to control the most because it’s the most important thing. And it’s like, if we can accept that we can only control ourselves our parenting flourishes.”

Listening to Dr Aliza and Jay Shetty’s insights was a reminder that parenting isn’t about perfect control or raising a “mini-me.”

It’s about fostering our child’s unique growth while we evolve as parents.

From self-reflection to releasing control, every step is a learning experience — for them and for us.

So, here’s to parenting with purpose, embracing our imperfections, and letting our little humans bloom into their own wonderful selves.

x G.

View the entire conversation here, it’s a long one but definitely worth listening to it all!

Margaret Mielczarek

editor, journalist, digital content creator with a background in nutrition & dietetics.