Move Over, Helicopter Moms & Gummy Bear Moms — The ‘Sturdy Mom’ Is Here

It's a classic scene — your kid won't stop throwing a ball inside. You've asked them to stop, but they don't (or, for my own four sports-loving sons, literally "can't"!). Now what? Helicopter moms might have already removed all the balls from the house; free-range moms might not have even noticed. But there's a new type of mom in town: the "sturdy" mom.

She doesn't need to yell, threaten to take an iPad or dessert, or even send someone to their room. Instead, she calmly takes the ball. She tells the over-excited indoor athlete, "I won't let you throw that ball in here. I'm going to take the ball because it's too hard to see it inside and not throw it. You're a good kid. You can throw this outside later."

This is the parenting style Dr. Becky Kennedy, parenting coach, psychologist, and New York Times bestselling author, is teaching a whole generation (or two) of parents. Not sure what to say to your kid in a heated moment? She has an in your pocket app for that. In her membership-only community, she teaches parents what she says they never learned from their own parents and certainly didn't learn in school — connection and boundaries. This one-two punch (minus the punch, of course) is the fresh answer to parents everywhere who get that desperate feeling that their kids are in control, not the other way around.

Why now? Kennedy believes that "we have taken the idea of validating kids' feelings so far, that there are no boundaries and no parental authority," a parenting approach she finds "incomplete."

Here's what sturdy moms know that we don't (yet).

Sturdy moms aren’t scared of their kids’ tantrums.

When that kid with the football launches into a meltdown, sturdy parents aren’t scared or surprised. Instead, they hold their boundary. Kennedy shares, “If your kid was running in the street, and you pick them up, no kid I know would say, ‘Thank you so much, Mom.’ They kick, they scream. So when you take the ball away… kids will protest. They will be frustrated.” Sturdy parents know that this can actually be a win, she shares, indicating that you are holding your boundary.

Sturdy moms don’t rely on traditional “punishments.”

You won’t see timeouts, “grounding,” physical punishment, or taking screen time in Kennedy’s lessons. “Punishment is something you do to a kid. A boundary is something you do for a kid,” she says. Sometimes, punishments come from parents wanting kids to feel bad because parents do when they are overwhelmed. “So they just say a punishment that makes [the kid] upset, even though we know from evidence that no matter how upset a kid gets from a punishment, it has no impact on changing their behavior.” Instead, she hopes sturdy parents will see “bad” behavior as not a sign of who someone is, but rather what skills they need to build (without the shame).

Sturdy moms “frustrate their kids.”

Life won’t always be an easy yes. So why should kids’ every request be met with one? While “bulldozer” parents might try to remove obstacles in their child’s path to prevent them from negative consequences of life, sturdy parents support them through hard things. And sometimes, they provide the training ground for those things. As our own attention spans shorten, Kennedy says parents themselves don’t have as much tolerance for our kids’ frustration.

But frustrating your kids, she shared in a recent Instagram post, might sound like: “I said I wanted that outfit; why won’t you just buy it for me?” Or “Go get me a water; I’m thirsty.” Underneath these seemingly spoiled proclamations lies something much deeper and more revealing — the inability to cope with these uncomfortable feelings when they inevitably arise.”

Sturdy moms are parenting themselves as well as their kids.

Kennedy says 99% of parents would say they didn’t have an “emotional home base” or “sturdy leader” in their own childhoods. So, she has an eye on helping parents as much as their parenting skills. “The word sturdy is the embodiment of your ability to connect to yourself, and know what you want and need and what your boundaries are, and stay connected to the people you really care about,” Kennedy says. “The word brings up a comfort in someone who has an edge, who you can locate, who feels like there’s a stability to them — and they’re so stable that they’re also able to connect, because they don’t see that as a way of losing themselves.”

Ultimately, Kennedy wants moms to be able to make sure that their parenting approach even heals “stuff inside you” and makes you feel like the most confident version of yourself, far beyond parenting.