Beware of the PARENTAL PENDULUM

Hey, what is up, parents and teachers? I’m really talking to parents today about the “parental pendulum.” I’m going to explain what I mean by that, share what I’ve noticed over many years of doing this work, and tell you my take on what you can do about it.

By the way, my name is Seth. I’m an executive function coach in Colorado, and I help struggling students navigate this thing called school so they can have a great life. When your child struggles with executive function, they can’t get the important things done. That limits their choices, possibilities, and opportunities in life. This is no joke. This is no game. I do this because I want kids to have an awesome future and a great life. If they can’t figure out how to execute, organize, manage time, follow through on commitments, prioritize properly, and so on, it becomes a massive problem.

So here’s what happens with the parental pendulum. Oftentimes, the pendulum swings in one direction where a parent, for a very long time, becomes enabling — and I do not mean that in a positive way. I mean they are doing too much, helping too much, micromanaging too much. They are on top of everything. The parent becomes the executive function for the child. They are giving constant reminders, nagging, bugging, and monitoring everything.

What happens is that the pendulum keeps swinging farther and farther in that direction. The parent becomes more and more frustrated. Eventually, there’s a “straw that breaks the camel’s back.” The parent gets so overwhelmed that they suddenly swing completely the other way and say, “Fine. You be an adult. You do it. I’m not bugging you anymore. You deal with the consequences.” They completely let go.

And honestly, I understand that frustration. You’ve been doing so much, but it doesn’t feel appreciated. It doesn’t feel noticed. Nothing changes. You’ve poured in all this energy, hoping your child will learn from it, feel supported, use the tools, and improve over time — but it’s not happening. It’s like putting money into a vending machine over and over again and never getting anything back. Yet you keep investing and hoping things will change.

Then the pendulum swings the other way. You stop helping, and suddenly everything falls apart. Your child starts getting giant F’s, missing assignments, late work, missed buses, detentions — everything spirals. And naturally, your instinct is to jump back in and rescue them, fix things, talk to teachers, and help them “just see” how easy it would be if they would only do certain things.

So why am I telling you all this? Because I want to suggest that you seek more balance. The goal is not for the pendulum to swing wildly to either extreme. You want to have self-compassion and realize you’ll probably still do this sometimes, but you want it to happen less frequently and less intensely. You’re aiming for more balance.

One tool that can help is what I call a “pre-conversation.” A pre-conversation is when you tell your child that a conversation is coming before you actually have it. Why do this? Because it keeps the conversation from coming out of nowhere. It gives your child some understanding of what’s coming and allows them time to mentally prepare.

You might say something like:

“Hey, we need to talk. We’re going to talk Wednesday night at seven o’clock for about a half hour. As long as you’re open with me, we’ll be done by then.”

Your child may ask what it’s about. You can tell them a little bit without getting too deep. The point is to make the conversation concrete so they know what’s coming. You might say:

“We’re going to talk about how I’m doing too much for you, and it doesn’t feel good for me. It probably doesn’t feel good for you either.”

Then, when the actual conversation happens, follow through. Sit down together, turn off the phones, close the laptops, and give each other real attention. Have a genuine heart-to-heart. Ask your child how things feel for them. Ask what helps. Ask what doesn’t help. Ask whether your support feels supportive, enabling, off-putting, or suffocating.

I know what many parents are thinking right now:

“But if I ask them, they’ll just tell me to back off, and then everything will fall apart.”

You may be right. But what you’re doing now isn’t working either. So the question becomes: how are you going to break the pattern?

During this conversation, ask your child something very important:

“The next time things start falling apart — you forget things, miss the bus, don’t do homework, get zeros or F’s — how do you want me to support you?”

Get buy-in from them. Ask for something concrete. Open up the dialogue and see what they say. Then write it down, because they’ll probably forget they said it. Put it on the fridge or somewhere visible so later you can calmly say:

“Last time we talked, this is what you said you wanted me to do to support you.”

That can help you feel more detached in a healthy way because you’re no longer reacting emotionally in the moment. You’re following an agreed-upon plan.

Now here’s the really important part: the goal of the conversation is not necessarily to find the perfect solution. Even though you may come up with strategies, those strategies might not work right away. They may not work well. They may take time.

The true goal of the conversation is connection.

The goal is hearing each other. The goal is building the relationship. Even if your child doesn’t fully agree with you, they should leave the conversation feeling heard. You should leave the conversation feeling like you genuinely tried to understand them.

That investment in the relationship matters. Sometimes the hardest and most valuable thing we can do is simply try to truly hear one another.

There’s a quote by Melody Beattie that I love:

“We cannot simultaneously set a boundary and take care of another person’s feelings.”

Parents, you need healthy boundaries. Kids will push those boundaries — that’s normal. They’re trying to figure out where the boundaries are, why they exist, and how to become adults with healthy boundaries themselves. They may never tell you they want boundaries, but they do need them.

Setting boundaries is hard. You may need to adjust them sometimes, and that’s okay. Parenting is messy. But when the pendulum swings too far in either direction, we often stop acting in the child’s best long-term interest and instead start reacting in “firefighting mode.”

So anyhow, that’s all I’ve got. My name is Seth, and I’m an executive function coach helping struggling students navigate education so they can have great lives. If you haven’t subscribed on my site, I send out a Sunday update every week with new content for parents, teachers, and kids. And if this resonated with you, leave a comment below:

How does the pendulum show up in your life?