The Awakened Family: Real change begins with three kinds of letting go

Click here to read the book

Psychologist Jane Nelsen once said, “If teaching your child feels painful, you’re probably using the wrong approach.”

We parents reflect again and again, yet fall into the same patterns. What’s going on?

Shefali Tsabary, author of The Awakened Family, offers a clear answer:

“When we shift the focus from the child to the parent’s inner awakening, the entire family has the chance to transform at its core.”

Instead of pouring all our energy into “fixing” kids, we come home to ourselves—and begin there.

After reading this book, I realized: the earlier we let go of these three things, the sooner the path toward an awakened family opens.

---

01

Let go of control

There’s a story in the book about a mom—let’s call her Carla—who made a list for her fourteen-year-old daughter. It was a running tally of everything the girl hadn’t done:

Didn’t study. Didn’t do laundry. Didn’t exercise. Didn’t make new friends… The list went on and on.

The truth is, many of the things we demand our kids do right now aren’t actually urgent. Through a parent’s lens, “not working hard” looks like “wasting time,” so we pack their schedules with tasks and micromanage both their learning and their lives.

We’re afraid that if we don’t keep a tight grip, our children’s growth will spin out of control. Ironically, it’s our anxiety and over-management that send things off the rails.

In recent years, the parenting industry has pushed a message: to be a “good” parent, you must control everything. No surprise more and more parents slip into the role of helicopter parents—hovering over every assignment, friendship, and activity to make sure each step follows the plan.

It can look like 100% devotion: a parent doing everything “for the child.” But without noticing, we end up stealing opportunities to grow, clipping the very wings they need to fly.

As one educator put it, protecting someone isn’t about shielding them from every hard thing forever; life will bring its own weather. If we use our power to filter out all the “bad stuff” when they’re young, they don’t learn that the world can be messy, that people are complicated, and that they themselves are capable of handling difficulty. Like a hothouse plant, they seem perfect in controlled conditions—then one gust of real wind knocks them flat.

Real love isn’t keeping a child under our wing; it’s helping them grow their own. We coach, encourage, and step back—so they can lift off and chase the life that’s truly theirs.

02

Let go of fear

Shefali Tsabary points out that the root of many parent–child conflicts is a clash of timelines. Parents are future-oriented, focused on reaching an ideal destination. Kids live in the present.

When we fixate on the future, anxiety and fear creep in. If a child doesn’t brush properly tonight, we imagine a mouthful of cavities later. If they dawdle today, we worry they’ll fall behind in school tomorrow. Our fear is contagious—and it often drives us into behaviors our kids experience as controlling or critical.

Tsabary shares a story about her daughter, Maya. One day Maya was chatting about clothes, styling, and how being a fashion model sounded like great fun. Her mother’s first reaction was, “That’s so superficial.” She didn’t want her daughter to grow up and model; it clashed with the picture she held of Maya’s future. Pressure rose. Anxiety spiked. And out came the lecture:

“Maya, you can’t grow up to be an airhead who only cares about outfits and trends. You need to become a global citizen—someone who cares about helping others and tackling poverty.”

Maya pushed back:

“I’m just talking about some clothes, not my whole future. I’m twelve. Every twelve-year-old talks about this stuff. Why are you acting like I’ve done something wrong?”

Exactly. A twelve-year-old seeing a pretty outfit and saying she likes it is perfectly normal. She was trying to share a slice of joy in the moment. It was our fear—of a child not becoming who we imagined—that hijacked the interaction and, unintentionally, hurt her.

One of us is savoring the present; the other is sprinting toward the next checkpoint. So the slightest breeze in a child’s life makes us tense, afraid they’ll veer off course if we don’t correct them immediately.

Planning ahead is wise. But it’s not the same as sacrificing the present on the altar of the future. Nature isn’t binary; life isn’t just black or white. When we obsess over a single moment of a child’s behavior, we deny their capacity to keep unfolding into something new.

Rather than sketching a future full of IOUs and expectations, pour your attention into the life that’s happening right now.

03

Let go of fantasies

More and more parents believe it’s their job to raise a “standout” kid. But when the goal eclipses the child in front of us, we slip into self-made fantasies—and those fantasies cast a shadow over a child’s growth.

Awakened parenting asks for a major shift:
align your expectations with who your child actually is, not with who you imagine they should be.

There’s a saying about three humbling moments in life:
first, realizing your parents are ordinary;
second, realizing you are ordinary;
third, realizing your child is ordinary.
The last one can be the toughest for parents to accept.

A writer once shared a story about a couple—both brilliant, both PhDs who stayed on as university faculty. Their relationship nearly fell apart over their child’s education. The child’s grades were average, and at one point the parents even wondered whether the child could really be theirs. Eventually they recognized the obvious: their child wasn’t slow—just normal. The pain came from their inability to accept “ordinary.”

Once that clicked, they changed course. They stopped forcing lofty targets and started building fundamentals: doing things carefully, finishing what you start, and practicing with intention. The shift was dramatic—behavior improved, and so did the grades.

Unrealistic fantasies and sky-high expectations set kids up to fail. When nothing is ever “enough,” many eventually give up.

As Shefali Tsabary notes in The Awakened Family, new parents brim with hopes for the future—many of which are really just vague, idealized projections. One of the worst strategies is to overestimate a child and overlook what they’re ready to do well right now; in the end, nothing sticks.

Set down the rigid ideas. Break the unrealistic daydreams. Return to the simple heart of raising a human being.
Understand your child’s wiring, welcome all of who they are, and trust that what they’re showing you has meaning. Only then can we walk alongside them with steadiness and ease—doing the work together.

---

04

A final word

There’s no doubt parents love their children. But love delivered the wrong way turns into mutual strain.

The Awakened Family puts it plainly:
the more awake we are, the closer we draw to our child’s heart—and the more our guidance becomes both gentle and strong.

There’s no such thing as perfect parenting. Celebrate what’s joyful. Learn from what’s hard.
If you want to change, start now. It’s never too late.