Parenting with confidence: yep, there’s a DC group for that!

Highlighting Washington, DC area resources

Intuitive Parenting DC is a membership community for parents of babies and toddlers who want to let go of overwhelm, connect with like-minded parents, and parent with more confidence. Each month members have access to a pre-recorded special topic, a live, recorded Q&A based on that topic, and 3 parenting circles held over Zoom facilitated by co-founders, Kaely and Kim. We caught up with these knowledgeable and compassionate pros to get their take on what "responsive parenting" means and why it's so important for today's modern families.

What would you say is the most important benefit to adopting a responsive parenting approach?

How you parent directly shapes how your baby's brain wires for life-long functioning. The foundation for emotional, mental and relational health all forms during the early years. This is when the nervous system is wired to be either reactive or resilient. We teach our babies about their sense of self and the world around them. Responsive parenting focuses on the relationship, connection, and attunement. These are critical factors for optimal development. They also are a great foundation for navigating the challenges later on with big kids.

So often "mainstream" parenting feels like a balance between controlling aspects of our kids' behavior and just day-to-day survival mode. But because we don't actually get to control our kids, it can be a recipe for a lot of conflict in a parent-child relationship. If you were raised in a very authoritarian way, it's easy to fall into that with children, but then parents fall into the trap of expecting immediate "obedience" and perfect listening which are not things we typically expect of ourselves as adults even! The connection and attunement is so important. Also it's really helpful to understand how brains function in order to set yourself and your kid up for success.

How did the vision for this community come together? What did you see happening that made you think, "we have to do this!"?

I (Kim) work with a lot of responsive parents. What I hear time and again is how alone they feel. Everyone around them chose more mainstream ways of parenting and managing sleep. They felt alone and like they were the only one not sleep training, with intense children who still needed them, choosing connection focused rather than punishment focused discipline strategies. There was really a lack of community, of peers to share the struggles and joys, and also no models to see how things unfold over time. While responsive, holistic sleep support is great for acute sleep struggles when you don't want to sleep train, it isn't what parents need for the information, validation, and tools to navigate the baby and toddler years as a responsive parent. Thus, the Intuitive Parenting Community! It was a natural step to ask Kaely to join me as we both share and practice responsive parenting values in our own lives.

I (Kaely) was thrilled to be invited to work on this project once I got past the initial imposter syndrome! I work with families in doula care through the early weeks and sometimes months of life, but supporting, educating and walking alongside families for longer is so beautiful. It is a way to have support and continuity for clients I have who are in the vein of responsive parenting and for my parenting journey to be a part of my work in this unique and highly-intense time of life.

If you had to pick, what are two things you think parents need to think about or research when they're expecting a child?

It's important for both of us to have our own answer to this as we have such different roles in this time. Kim says: Realistic expectations for behavior, feeding, and sleep! I don’t know if that’s 1 or 3, but unrealistic expectations are the basis for so much stress as a new parent.

Kaely says: Normal behavior like Kim mentioned and also their parenting style. So much research and preparation goes into the birth and then it's over and so many parents move into parenting kind of working blindly and then in desperation adopt some less than ideal coping strategies because they weren't prepared at all for the work of actually walking this life out with their kid.

At HelloBirth we say this is fantastic advice. We highly recommend giving the Intuitive Parenting Community a try. Get your membership set up now before your baby is born, and you'll know it's already there for you later on when you're busy living your lives. You can thank us later!