How Not to Repeat Your Parents’ Mistakes (with Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach)
Hello Happiness Lab listeners,
This season of The Happiness Lab is all about the science of happier parenting—and it pairs perfectly with my new (and free!) Coursera course, The Science of Well-Being for Parents. The podcast brings you thoughtful conversations with guests like former Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy and NYU professor Jonathan Haidt, while the course gives you practical, science-backed tools you can start using right away.
In this week's episode, I chat with podcasting superstars Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach, hosts of the award-winning We Can Do Hard Things Podcast. In the episode, we explore how some of well-intentioned parenting strategies may unintentionally shape our children into people they're not meant to be—creating what Glennon calls "facades" that disconnect our kids from their authentic selves.
How can we overcome these challenges and, in the spirit of Glennon and Abby's popular podcast, "do hard things" as parents? Here’s this week’s companion guide for the episode, “How Not to Repeat Your Parents’ Mistakes”:
Nurture Intrinsic Motivation
We don’t want our children to learn that love is transactional. But some of our parenting strategies can teach this lesson if we’re not careful. Abby shared how her father used to pay her for scoring goals—tying her worth to her performance.
When she joined Glennon's family, Abby's first instinct was to "court" the children with treats, once trying to buy every single cake pops at a coffee shop! While coming from a place of love, this approach teaches children the wrong lesson about connection.
Instead of saying "I'm proud of you" (which contains the hidden message: "I'm proud of you because you did well"), Abby now says "I'm happy for you" — putting the focus on the child's experience rather than parental approval.
Remember Your Children Are Seeds, Not Clay
As Glennon explains, children aren't lumps of clay for us to mold, but rather seeds with everything they need already inside them:
“Our job is just to create fertile soil that allows them to grow into whatever they were meant to be without pruning too much.”
This means letting go of the stories we create about our children and encouraging them to disappoint others—even us—if that's what they need to appoint themselves as the guides of their own lives.
Reparenting Ourselves and Modeling Self-Compassion
Parenting offers us a chance to heal our own childhood wounds. As Abby shared, at forty years old, she had her first experience apologizing to her child—something her own parents had never done for her.
By modeling self-compassion and vulnerability with our children, we're not just teaching them how to handle mistakes—we're rewiring our own responses to failure and imperfection.
We can ask ourselves, "What do you want your kids to have as their inner voice when they screw up?,” and then model this behavior for our children. This profound question invites us to recognize that the compassion we want our children to show themselves must first be embodied in how we treat ourselves.
Want to learn more science-backed strategies for happier parenting? Enroll in my free course, The Science of Well-Being for Parents on Coursera, where we explore the "cognitive triad" of happier parenting: thinking differently, feeling differently, and acting differently. You can sign up at drlauriesantos.com/parents.
Looking for more?
You can find all our companion guides from this season of The Happiness Lab on DrLaurieSantos.com/Newsletter.
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