Respectful Parenting: Janet Lansbury Unruffled

A parent writes that with her firstborn, she had listened to Janet’s advice and used many of her parenting methods with great success. To her surprise and relief, motherhood was relatively easy, and “I had friends comment how amazing I was as a mother.” After the births of her second and third child, however, things deteriorated. Tantrums, fighting, screaming, hitting, throwing, and all the typical toddler behavior. Gradually, she found herself yelling, threatening, using time-outs, and even spanking. She says she felt terrible and hated her life. As a veteran with 4 deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, she says ironically, “That life was easy. Being a mom is hard.” Recently, however, she remembered “Unruffled” and the experience she had with her firstborn. She started devouring episodes and says that it all started coming back to her. Her letter describes how she adopted a new perspective and applied Janet’s methods and advice immediately—with miraculous results. “It has been an amazing shift in the hou