Kaleidoscope Parenting: What If Your Child Isn’t a Puzzle to Solve?

When we think about parenting complicated kids — kids with big feelings, different wiring, or behavior that doesn’t “fit the mold” — it’s easy to fall into the mindset that there must be a magic formula, one “right” approach. A fix.

But here’s what I want to propose today: kids are not puzzles to solve, and parenting is not about completing that puzzle. 

Kids (all humans, actually) are more like kaleidoscopes. Our job isn’t to crack a code — it’s to turn the scope, gently and with curiosity, until the patterns begin to emerge.

Some patterns will feel messy or even chaotic. Others will take your breath away with their beauty. None of them are wrong — they’re all part of how your child’s mind works.

Just like a kaleidoscope only makes sense when you hold it up to the light and give it time to settle, kids require the same. They need light, warmth, presence, steadiness. And they need time to grow, to unfold, to be seen, to settle into a particular pattern.

Too often we’re handed rigid systems and strategies that assume there’s one "right" way to parent. Do this, not that. Eat this, not that. Be here, not there.

But your child isn’t a machine. They’re not a test you pass or fail. They’re a living, breathing work of art in progress.

And so are you.

There are tools, yes. But the tools don’t work without the knowledge that you and your child are on the same team (even when it doesn’t feel like it). The foundation of parenting isn’t strategies. 

The foundations of parenting are relationship, attunement and trust.

So if things feel hard right now — if the pattern you’re seeing in the kaleidoscope looks jagged or upside down — that’s not failure. It’s a signal: slow down, stay curious, hold it up to the light. Shift just a little.

Your child is not broken.

You are not failing.

You’re just in the middle of the turn.

If you want company to help you hold the kaleidoscope a bit more lightly or to help you see a pattern that you can’t quite make out just yet, I’m here for it. 

You can schedule a 15-minute conversation with me by clicking on the orange button above  ⬆️

xo
G

PS - the conversation is free and I’ll tell you that the vast majority of people I talk to say that they felt better just from scheduling the call. (How’s that for a hack? 😉)