"The other day, a friend confessed her new nightly routine: hiding in the bathroom for 10 minutes after putting her kids to bed. The reason wasn't to scroll TikTok, but to breathe. "It's either that or cry into the mac and cheese," she laughed. It struck me: parenting in 2025 often looks like quietly triaging our own stress while juggling work deadlines, permission slips, Slack pings, and dinner prep."
"As psychiatrist and neuroscientist Dr. Raghu Appasani explained to me, emotional regulation is contagious. "Both the calm and the chaos are felt by children. When parents experience chronic stress or burnout, it doesn't just live in their nervous system. It shapes the family's emotional climate," he said. Even babies, before they can speak, sense our tension. Over time, parental stress can erode a children's sense of safety, making the world feel less predictable than it is."
Parenting in 2025 often involves quietly triaging stress while juggling work, school, and household demands. Working parents frequently run on fumes, and parental burnout directly affects children's emotional health. Emotional regulation transfers between caregivers and children, with babies sensing tension before they can speak. Chronic parental stress shapes the family's emotional climate and can erode children's sense of safety and predictability. Neuroscience shows children's brains learn self-regulation through co-regulation with caregivers. Small, practical practices — like 60-second micro-pauses between tasks and using digital tools as check-ins rather than crutches — can reset parents' nervous systems and model calm.
Read at Fast Company
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