Show Notes
You sit down last. You eat on the run. You can’t remember the last time you did something just for you. You might call that being a good mum. But what if you’re not just bottom of the list? What if you’re not on it at all? In this episode, I talk about why taking even ten minutes for yourself can feel like stealing from your kids, and where that guilt really comes from. I look at why “it’s good for the kids” is still the wrong reason to rest, and the one sm...
More from The CALM Parent - with Katie McKenna
Guilt says I did a bad thing. Shame says I am a bad person. If you grew up being shamed for so much as wanting to be seen, you probably can’t tell them apart. You’ve been swimming in shame so long it doesn’t feel like an emotion. It feels like who you are. In this episode I unpack the difference. Guilt is specific, temporary, and it moves you towards repair. Shame is global. It’s the feeling of wanting the ground to open up and swallow you. I also share what happened when, at eleven, I spent ...
You were the responsible one. The one who knew your mother's mood before she'd said a word. The one who kept the peace, said sorry for things you didn't do, and made sure nobody outside the house ever knew. Now your child comes home from school with that look, and something in you is already scrambling to fix it. It's the same on a Sunday. You've cooked the dinner, pictured everyone chatting around the table, and instead they're bickering, moaning about the food, or scrolling under the ...
They ignore you the first time. So you repeat yourself or start explaining — three or four different ways, making sure they understand why this matters. And somehow, the more you say, the less they listen. This week, I get into why over-explaining backfires: it overwhelms them, gives them something to tune out, or worse, hands them the exact ammunition they need to argue you out of the thing you were asking for in the first place. I talk about t...
You've said the same thing a hundred times. It's the same conversation — and now you're standing there thinking, this can't be my life. Surely it's easier in everyone else's house. This week, I name the trap almost every parent falls into without realising it: denial. Not the big, obvious kind — the quiet kind, where you're standing at the bottom of the stairs for the third time going, I can't believe he's doing this again, right before you start bargaining, pleading, ...
This week, I get into the tug of war on power — the daily battles where so many of us hand our authority straight back to our kids without even noticing. I introduce dropping the rope: not giving in, not going passive, but the real shift from pleading with your kid to holding a limit that isn't coming from fear. It's the difference between managing their reaction and actually holding the line — and once you can see it, you can't stop noticing how often you've been doing the first one. T...