Ever find yourself deep in the trenches of parenthood, wondering if you’re supposed to be quoting a parenting expert, a viral Instagram reel, or that one book you read (half of) last year? We’ve all been there—trying to keep up with the tidal wave of advice coming from social media, experts, podcasts (hi!), and even that random stranger in the grocery store. It’s a lot…
Listen anywhere:
In this episode, Jenna sits down with Washington Post Columnist, Author, and Parenting Coach Meghan Leahy to tackle a truth many parents don’t know they’re wrestling with: too much advice can actually make us worse at parenting. Meghan and Jenna dig into why trusting your instincts is the ultimate parenting superpower. You’ll learn how to cut through the noise, let go of the guilt, and lean into what you already know about your child as the guiding principle.
Together, they explore how the constant stream of “helpful” tips can drown out the one voice we should be listening to most—our own.
To learn more about Begin’s expert-designed digital and hands-on learning products, visit beginlearning.com
Recap
Guest: Meghan Leahy (Parenting Coach, Author, & Washington Post Columnist) Host: Jenna Bush Hager
In this episode of Let’s Begin, host Jenna Bush Hager chats with Meghan Leahy, author of Parenting Outside the Lines. Together, they tackle the overwhelming “noise” of modern parenting and the pressure to raise perfect children. Meghan, known for her candid and humorous advice, encourages parents to trust their intuition, stop viewing parenting as a “project” to be managed, and accept that struggle is a natural part of the human experience—not a sign of failure.
The Problem: Parenting as a Project
Meghan Leahy identifies a core issue in modern parenting: we have “corporatized” raising children. Parents often view their kids as projects to be optimized, checking off milestones like items on a to-do list.
- The Trend: We have moved from “free-range” parenting to “helicopter” parenting, and now into an era of intense anxiety where parents feel responsible for every emotion their child feels.
- The Result: Parents are exhausted, anxious, and disconnected from their own intuition. As Meghan notes, “We love our kids so much, it gets in the way.”
The Philosophy: “Seeds Know What To Do”
Meghan uses a powerful gardening metaphor to shift our perspective. Just as you don’t need to teach a seed how to grow, you don’t need to micromanage your child’s development.
Meghan’s Insight:
“Seeds know what to do… The orchid and the dandelion… Dandelion kids can have a lot thrown at them and they just tumble along… Orchid kids are finicky from jump… but like an orchid, when they bloom, it is spectacular.”
3 Key “Parenting Hacks” from Meghan Leahy
1. Stop Trying to Fix Feelings (Emotional Resilience)
The Issue: Parents rush to fix their child’s sadness or frustration because it makes the parent uncomfortable. We view negative emotions as problems to be solved rather than natural experiences.
The Solution: Recognize that “all feelings are mutual” but you don’t need to fear them. Allow your child to be sad or scared without jumping in to save them.
The Lesson: “If you have a nervous system and you are alive, you are going to suffer… Nobody will end that for you ever.”
2. Return to Intuition (Trust Yourself)
The Issue: We rely too heavily on experts, books, and social media trends, drowning out our own gut instincts. We ask for permission to parent our own children.
The Solution: Ask yourself, “What don’t I know?” or “What is definitely not working?” Trust the discomfort—that feeling of being lost is actually your intuition talking.
The Lesson: “We have to break the myth that we’re ever going to know what we’re doing… It feels like lostness, but that is the intuition in there.”
3. Embrace the Mundane (Finding Ease)
The Issue: We treat daily chores like loading the dishwasher or driving to school as obstacles to “real life,” making us resentful and rushed.
The Solution: Reframe these moments. Treat the mundane tasks as opportunities for meditation or connection.
The Lesson: Life isn’t just the big milestones; it’s the quiet Tuesday mornings. “When there’s joy, let there be joy. When there’s sorrow, let there be sorrow… Do the basic shit.”
Final Thought: Do No Harm
Meghan’s main parenting mantra is simple: “Do no harm.” It’s not about constantly improving or optimizing; it’s about not making things worse in the moment.
“My main parenting saying is ‘Do no harm’… If I die and just don’t make sh*t worse, winning.”
Episode Transcript
Meghan: One of my favorite books is The Orchid and the Dandelion. Right? That there’s orchid kids and dandelion kids. Right? And all these studies and this pediatrician found, right, like these dandelion kids can have a lot of shit thrown at them and where they land, they grow. And they just tumble along. And they’re cute. And these are the kids that come out of like terrible situations and still they bump along.
And then you have these kids that are finicky from jump. Sensitive. Need more, need less. Need this, need that, need this. But like an orchid, when they bloom, it is spectacular. It is an amazing bloom.
Jenna: I’m here with Meghan Leahy, who is a writer, parenting coach, and a mom. On a prep call, she explained how she was calling her daughter to reprimand her. And as soon as her daughter picked up, instead of presenting the issue at hand, she said, “Hey, I was calling to tell you you did something wrong, but instead, I’m just calling to tell you I love you.” I realized quickly, my ego would not be able to do that. I was impressed.
Meghan is a contributor for the Washington Post, and she wrote a phenomenal book called Parenting Outside the Lines: Forget the Rules, Tap into Your Wisdom, and Connect with Your Child. Meghan, thank you for being here.
Meghan: Thank you so much for having me. This is… this was so much serendipity and it’s a joy.
Jenna: A joy. A joy that often doesn’t feel like it lives in the angst-ness of whether or not we’re doing the child-rearing, self-raising correctly. And I’ve loved how you brought so much humor to this. And I’m wondering if like the witty comments that you offer yourself or the like laughing at yourself about not actually knowing what you’re doing even though you’re one of the like foremost authorities on the subject has helped you take yourself less seriously.
Meghan: I don’t know if I told you this story, but I was taking a values sort quiz. And I of course wanted my values to be generosity, kindness, uh, compassion, justice. And I took it and I got my results. I was so disgusted. I threw them out. I retook it three more times. My top two values are humor and then beauty.
Jenna: No.
Meghan: Yeah. That’s hysterical.
Jenna: Generosity and kindness and justice. Of which like, those are always the words that people put out about who they want their kids to be and who it is that they think of themselves.
Meghan: Yeah, and you know, it’s funny cause since we’re, you know, obviously talking about parenting and authenticity and being ourselves and accepting ourselves and… it’s pretty deep into the culture around what’s acceptable and what isn’t, right? And the fact that I even was like, “Nope, those aren’t my values.” You know, you’re implicitly and explicitly living that non-acceptance of who you really are, right?
Um, there’s just like a saying, like, “Oh, how you do one thing is how you do everything.” I’ve come to think that’s bullshit, but um… because I know a lot of people who honestly don’t love themselves and love their children. And and they very much love and live for their children in a way that does not seem to come back to them.
Um, and, you know, to try and live your most authentically is really the goal because then you’re living with ease. And when you live with ease, that’s your energy. That’s the energy in the house.
Jenna: One of my aunts friends suggested a book to me… I don’t know what the title of the book was, but it was something like, Mom Controls the Energy in the Home or something like that. So you have to be prepared for when your kids come through the door every day and be welcoming even if they’re tonal or rolling their eyes or they’re annoyed that you’re about to put broccoli on their dinner plate. And I felt like… Oh my God, I have to control my energy, my ease. I don’t really feel like I’m easy to be around.
And one of my kids, I was in the car a couple days ago and I turned around to like hand them a bottle of water or something. And they said, “Mommy, why are you so sad?” I’m like really honest with my kids about the state of the world and concerns that I have and the role that I think they’re meant to play or that we all have to try to play. But like we were not in that department. We were not at that meeting. And they could see how I was feeling inside and I felt so bad that I couldn’t more easily put on an honest face for them or that they could see it in my eye.
And I love one of the threads that we spoke about earlier around the mundaneness of life actually being a place of real healing and rest and the purpose of it all. That the like, the daily activities of driving them to school, filling up their water bottle, cleaning their disgusting water bottles… that like, those kinds of things sometimes have felt like a waste of time for me. And they’re now things that I want to look at as being like a gift and a blessing that I’m able to experience. And then in that mundanity, that’s where I can be more ease-filled is in the mundane moments where it’s like loading the dishwasher is actually like a meditation. It’s actually part of the generosity and the kindness, dare I say justice, that I want to offer, that I want to be instead of feeling guilty that I’m not like doing the email box or sitting down and doing some complex math game for them that’s going to make them brilliant and have an ease-filled life.
Meghan: Yeah, and you know, it’s funny cause it’s a funny mental gymnastics that moment right there. Because your child feels your energy and says, you know, why are you sad? Right? And the the mental gymnastics we’ve grown up with from our culture, our systems, our families of origin, whatever, right? Is that that’s bad. That sad is bad. And instead it’s like, oh, you’re such a good noticer.
Jenna: Damn it. I should have said that.
Meghan: I am sad. The deepest human need is to feel safe. And that’s obvious physically safe. But they’ve come to realize it’s emotional safety that’s actually even more primary over physical safety in terms of the first like moments of life. And a child can handle the feelings of the adult, any feelings, as long as they feel safe within them.
So if you are crying or you’re upset or you’re sad, a child can handle that when there isn’t cognitive dissonance. And what I mean by that is, you know, if you’re thinking of something and crying, you just say, “I’m fine. Everything’s fine.” Okay like… what? Okay, right. Now we’re going… Oh.
Jenna: What doesn’t map. Right.
Meghan: Right. The energy is not fine. She has tears leaking out of her face. She’s fine. Right? Kids can handle like truth and hard things and bad news that is not going to get better when the adults are A, honest in an age appropriate way, and B, remain in their alpha. Right? And what that means is that you’re not like, “I am sad! And I don’t know what’s going to happen! I’m scared!” Right? Like chaos. Right?
And so I think, you know, um, for a lot of us, we think that if we say I am sad, right? Um, that that’ll panic our kids. When in fact what panics them is if if we lie and they know it. And if we don’t seem self-aware that we are owning what we are in. When there’s a sense of ownership and self-awareness within us, the kids can handle it. Now, this is not to say that chronic sadness and depression doesn’t affect a kid.
Jenna: And that’s also not this conversation, but yes.
Meghan: I would even be tempted to say that unloading the dishwasher can be meditation. It’s also just unloading the dishwasher.
Jenna: Right. Like even in describing this, I’m constructing outcomes. I’m I’m adding language. I’m making it a project. And I also feel like we fulfill our lives with projects and to-do lists just so that we almost don’t have to sit with ourselves.
Meghan: Yeah.
Jenna: But the other thing that you said, Meghan, that really had me so concerned… and hitting the nail on the head… is you talked about how parents are afraid of their kids. Is that because we built this scaffold around parenting as if it’s like a project that we’re either going to succeed at or fail at?
Meghan: This is true for everything. It’s very, very slow and all of a sudden. Um, I think as long as people have been having kids, they’ve been afraid of them. You know, like what isn’t to be afraid of, this wet squealing thing that comes out of you, you know, in whatever direction or is handed to you. What isn’t fear making about it? You know, whether it’s the first time the kid kind of gives you the no and walks away. Or they say they hate you. Or they lie to you. Or they leave, right? And there goes your heart out out to the world, right? For everyone to hurt. Anybody who’s just like ambivalent about that is… I just want their drugs.
Meghan: We used to very effectively beat our children to make them stop doing things. Highly effective, turns out it has some outcomes. Right? So don’t soundbite that one. Um, it has some outcomes around depression, anxiety, violence, addiction, all the things. All the things you don’t want. Right? So in lieu though of quote unquote disciplining our kids, we swung as we always do to the other extreme. Which is, when you smack mommy in the face, I feel sad. Right? Now you see the parodies on the Reels. Right? Now you see you starting to see the jokes around quote unquote positive discipline, conscious discipline. Whatever whatever they’re calling it. Right? It just it has like a new week new name.
We went from kind of kids are seen and not heard, strong discipline, strong monoculture around what kids can do and what they can’t… expectations, right? And then we move into this extreme where children along with women started to go up the the ladder of having rights. Who’s going to say that’s a bad thing? Nobody. Nobody. Right? Children deserve to not work in factories, uh not be beaten, not be like left behind, right? Deserve to have feelings. Deserve respect.
And then because we have less kids, because we make them into projects… nobody wakes up and chooses this life, but we slowly put them above ourselves in the hierarchical ladder of importance. Which can’t happen if you want to raise healthy children. Biologically speaking, they’re not mature enough to be at the top of the ladder. It’s Lord of the Flies.
Jenna: Can you describe as a parenting coach some of those trends that you’ve seen where parents put them at the top of the ladder?
Meghan: Girl. All of them.
Jenna: You’re like 100% of parenting today. Great, Meghan.
Meghan: How do I put this very carefully? All of them are a little bit right and a little bit wrong. So take free-range parenting. One of the OGs. Which is your kids should be free to explore. Right? We just babysit them too much. Great. Right? Absolutely. There are children right now in other countries, like six years old, fetching water two miles away. They go there and they come back. They are well equipped to do it. Right? They’ve been trained, they’ve been apprenticed, they know how to do it, they know their way. Cool.
Right? And Americans, all we do is really kind of pick up our kids, drive them somewhere, pick them up, drive them back. Our kids are freaking useless. Right? Our kids is never have put in a day’s work on anything.
Jenna: Oh my God, Meghan.
Meghan: Our kids are useless when they’re actually very able bodied and one of the purposes of humans is to do. Right? We um derive a lot of satisfaction from work.
Jenna: Unloading the dishwasher.
Meghan: Yes. And kids we rob our children of that. Not because we wake up and decide, but because we’re so busy. I don’t have the time to train you on the dishwasher. I don’t have time to train you how to pick up dog crap. I don’t have time to, right? So I’ll just do it myself. It’s easier. I’ll just have I’ll hire someone. I’ll have someone else do it. Meow meow meow. And then we wonder why our kids are like, “Nah.”
Back though to the parenting trend. Out the kids go, they need to be independent, we need to get off their jock, we need to let them figure it out, the world is a kind place, meow meow. Okay great. Well, is it? Is it? Do you want to say that to like my cousin whose son is so dark black… is he going to go running out in the suburbs where they live in a certain state where maybe it’s not safe? I don’t know. Is that reasonable? Is it reasonable for kids with executive functioning issues? Because a trend says they need to be out? Right?
So the trend on its face looks great. Yeah, of course they should be more independent. Of course. But then if you don’t actually look at the considerations of your family, of your culture, of where you live, then it’s just something else to fail.
Helicopter parenting. Got nailed. Right? This is when parents go in and mess with all the kids. The kid is suffering at school, the parents just land in, parachute in, meow meow, get rid of all the problems. Right? Yeah, it’s a disaster. Everyone wrote the think pieces. Uh, we’re stopping resilience. Our kids don’t have any, you know, a strength to go through hard things. Absolutely true. Except for if your kid is neurodivergent and literally on the edge. Don’t they need helicoptering?
All the trends are true unless they’re not. And at the source of it is that if you if you don’t take the time to be like, “Is this what my family and child need?” they will always be mirages. They will always be oases that you reach and go, “Oh shit, there isn’t any water here.” Even more to the point, what your kid needs at one point isn’t what they need six months later.
Jenna: Have we lost a relationship with our intuition that, like social emotional learning that we’ve talked about in previous episodes where it’s we don’t need to teach social emotional learning, we need to protect it… sometimes we need to add language to it, but it’s like part of the DNA. Is there some returning to our intuition that needs to happen?
Meghan: Yes and. Right? Because it’s one of those things that’s very memeable.
Jenna: What? Returning to intuition?
Meghan: Yes.
Jenna: Okay.
Meghan: And then you talk to a struggling parent… and they’re like, “What the hell does that mean?” Right. Everything I’m doing isn’t working, and I think that’s my intuition. That is like the actual the jewel right there. That’s actually the meat. Right? Like, oh good. That discomfort, that like lostness, that like I don’t freaking know… that is that that liminal space… that is the intuition in there.
So you can actually begin by asking yourself, “What don’t I know?” What don’t I know? Or what is definitely not working? Okay, well I repeat myself every day, get your shoes on, get your shoes on. That’s not working. I double down, I take away the iPad, I take away this, I take away that. Right? Which is only by the way a nightmare for parents. When you take technology away, you are just punishing yourself. Because you’re just inviting hell. Okay. Like just keep all that crap. Just find another way to make them miserable.
Jenna: Selfless plug, the the former episode was about screens. So if you want to know how to navigate that…
Meghan: Oh man. I wish… I love that Instagram is like now we’re going to protect kids. I’m like great cause my kids are now older and they are screwed. Okay. That’s fine. Every generation will get theirs.
Jenna: But is the intuition sometimes the “I don’t know what I’m doing” and like that’s actually the thing?
Meghan: What we believe is our intuition could be the dysfunctional voice placed in us by someone else, by culture. That we created to protect ourselves from people and things and systems that were hurting us. It served a purpose. It feels like intuition. It feels like safety and goodness. Right? You know your intuition is talking when you hit a kind of rock bottom with it. The first time you can say to someone like, “I don’t know what I’m doing” or “I’m miserable.” Or the first time somebody even writes me an email.
Right? Like I’ve been doing this it feels like a hundred years and I forget. But I really do and write back to people when they’re like, “I feel really lost.” Whatever, this is my business, everyone’s lost. But I’m like, “Thank you for writing. This is really brave.” That’s the intuition of I can’t do this alone anymore. Or I need somebody else’s viewpoint. The love gets in the way. We love our kids so much, it gets in the way. It gets in the way of of our decision making, of clarity, of like… you know, if I asked you what I should do about my kid, you’d be like, “Oh girl, blank blank blank.” I’d be like, “Right.”
Jenna: You couldn’t do it for yourself.
Meghan: Right. And so they call me and I’ve had like lifers for clients, which I’m like, am I is this a failure? But the way I see it is… and I know we discussed this… you’re on a journey. I’m on a journey. Um, I reach out hand, you know, I’m holding a lantern. I reach out my hand to you, bring you with me, give you the lantern, you keep going. You’re going to reach out help someone else. And then maybe you’re like, “Oh, I’m lost again. I’ll call Meghan.” And I’m still on the path.
Jenna: And it was so imperative that the logline for this podcast be how we raise our children and ourselves at the same time. Is that we have to break the myth that we’re ever going to know what we’re doing. And that there’s some project to complete. There’s always the like… the sporting event or the dance event or this accomplishment or they’re getting this into this school or this wedding or like this partnership or this job or whatever it is… it just feels like there’s these false milestones that have become weaponized and really harmful.
And I think we are meant to be in constant development. And until we get back to the grace of like, I don’t know-ness… the sacred and… it’s just loading the damn dishwasher, you don’t have to turn it into a levitating meditation exercise, Jenna… that like, if it’s not messy, you’re not evolving. And the whole objective is to evolve.
Meghan: Yes, and… when you are in the midst of a beautiful graduation and your kid has worked hard and everyone’s there laughing and clapping… to actually treat that as pure joy. To treat it for what it is. To not minimize it. To say, “This is beautiful. It’s okay to be at the top of the mountain and look around.” That’s good. That’s life’s sweetness. Right? It’s just to not judge it either way. Right? So I practice Zen Buddhism. I’m terrible practitioner. But and every time I talk to my teacher, she’s like, “Why do you put a head on your head? Why do I judge the judge?”
Jenna: Meghan you are kicking my ass today.
Meghan: Isn’t that… when there’s joy, let there be joy. When there’s sorrow, let there be sorrow. When there’s just a random Thursday, it’s not that sunny, there’s just the basic shit to do in the house… do the basic shit.
And when you feel lost or you feel scared or unsatisfied or worried… feel scared, unsatisfied, and worried. Feel that. Don’t bully yourself with toxic positivity. Well, no, I have a beautiful life, I’m lucky, I’m meow meow meow meow. Right? Just… hmm. Stay curious. May not give you an answer. Why am I so tired? Why am I so why am I so angry? Why am I so Oh, well this this and this. Yeah, those are good reasons. Carry on.
Jenna: I’m recently obsessed with the concept of seeds. And when I say seeds, I mean actual like planting seeds. Totally. I I used to use or well, I say I used to because my kids are very clear on this concept now… around what abortion is. I would often take out like I would cut an apple or if we were eating an apple and there was an apple seed I’d be like, “See this seed? That’s not the same thing as the apple.”
Meghan: Jesus Jenna. You’re having a nice snack and you’re doing an abortion lesson with the apple?
Jenna: Listen, it’s exhausting to be me. And it’s exhausting to be my children. I get it. I was recently sent a screenshot by a friend of mine who knows my obsession with seeds. And uh, it was a a story about a this part in China, a relatively rural part in China where like a hundred years ago there was a mandate where when people would eat fruit… in my head it’s plums and nectarines, so like single seed items… that they weren’t to throw the seeds in the garbage. They had to throw the seeds outside in the grass when they were walking along the road. And this one province in China has these beautiful fruit bearing trees for the population to eat.
But the message was is that seeds know what to do. That seeds know what to do. And when I think of like my kid and their resiliency and my ability to like admit that I’m sad even though I’m like owning my alphaness and even though I’m saying “I don’t know, but Mommy’s making a plan. I have a plan. You’re safe. We’re going to help other people be safe.” So I started collecting all of our nectarine and plum seeds and avocado seeds. And you had mentioned how seeds in order to actually get to that green sprout need to crumble. And they need to their their outer shell crumbles and then they then they know how to like grow themselves.
And it’s almost like I have to give myself my inner seeds the credit to know that I know how to grow myself. I also have to have that and that I would call intuition and being sturdy with my two feet on the ground being alpha with my kid. And I also need to know that my kid has that capacity too. In some areas. And in some areas they might need a little bit of help and support. And that that’s where the messy development is is because there’s something else coming out. And we also know what to do. Seeds know what to do.
Meghan: One of my favorite books is The Orchid and the Dandelion. Right? That that there’s orchid kids and dandelion kids. Right? And all these studies and this pediatrician found, right, like these dandelion kids can have a lot of shit thrown at them and where they land, they grow. And they just tumble along. And they’re cute. And these are the kids that come out of like terrible situations and still they bump along.
And then you have these kids that are finicky from jump. Sensitive. Need more, need less. Need this, need that, need this. But like an orchid, when they bloom, it is spectacular. It is an amazing bloom. Our job is to raise our children to their fullest maturation.
So I love seeds. When I coach, we start with and I’m about to do a really big talk at a conference and it’s all about seeds. It’s all about being responsible as a parent for what you are responsible for. Which is first yourself and then gardening for the kids.
Jenna: Which is now my ungraceful plug to encourage everyone to take all of their nectarine and plum seeds and do what I do and throw them out the window in random grassy spots as you’re driving.
Meghan: You’re the little hummingbird throwing water on the burning forest. And I am for it. I love the idea of whether you are Jenna or a hummingbird of throwing seeds out the window. It’s like throwing little literal seeds of hope. And they may not land how you think. Which is also life. But my main parenting saying is “Do no harm.” Not like, “How are you going to improve?” but how are you just not going to make it worse? That’s like my my main goal in life. If I die and just don’t make shit worse, winning.
Jenna: I think the most powerful thing in reaching out is to realize that all feelings are mutual. No matter what you are going through, you are not the only one. Even if your circumstances are highly specific, all feelings are mutual. But the more you stay alone, the more you think it’s just you and the brain just eats that up. It just goes wild. It just creates story on top of story.
Jenna: I am so grateful to your contribution at the Washington Post. Having you there taking up space is a national treasure and something we are so grateful for. Thank you so much for your book and continuing to put out all of the ideas that you will in the future. Your humor um is also appreciated on this gray day. And uh yeah, all of your clients are really lucky. Meghan, thank you so much.
Meghan: Thank you and thank you to your team. It’s been an absolute joy. Keep keep throwing seeds.
