Your child is screaming in the supermarket, you feel the weight of the stares, and your patience is melting away like snow in the sun. Most parents are familiar with this kind of scene. Thriving parenting is not about eliminating these moments, but having concrete tools to navigate them without falling apart. According to an OpinionWay survey from February 2025, more than half of French parents report being on the brink of exhaustion.
Chronic parental stress: understanding what really drains parents
Books on positive parenting often focus on the child, rarely addressing what wears down the parent on a daily basis. Parental stress does not only stem from tantrums or sleepless nights. It feeds on an accumulation: the mental load related to school follow-ups, coordinating medical appointments, and the pressure from social media showcasing perfect families.
A 2025 Inserm study indicates that 67% of French parents report a high level of stress, compared to 52% in 2019. This increase can be attributed to the succession of health crises, economic tensions, and the complexity of digital daily life, without structural support for families.
Before seeking the right educational method, there is a prerequisite: recognizing that exhaustion is not a personal failure. It is a warning signal that requires practical adjustments, not additional guilt. Several parents have reported that consulting the resources from Devenir Parent helped them make a preliminary diagnosis of their own fatigue even before changing anything in their relationship with their child.
Family routines: the most underestimated parenting tool
Have you noticed that mornings where everything is planned in advance go more smoothly? It’s not a coincidence. A routine is not a rigid straitjacket. It is a predictable framework that reduces the number of micro-decisions to be made each day, for both the parent and the child.
How to build a sustainable routine
The classic pitfall is trying to plan everything at once: wake-up, breakfast, getting dressed, travel, homework, bath, bedtime. As a result, the schedule looks like a military timetable, and no one follows it after three days.
Start with just one routine, the one that costs you the most energy. For many families, this is the evening between returning home and bedtime. Define three fixed steps (for example: snack, quiet time, bath) and keep the rest flexible.
- Display the routine visually (drawings or photos for younger children, simple list for older ones) at child height.
- Involve the child in choosing the order of the steps when possible: a child who has participated in the decision cooperates more.
- Reassess the routine every three to four weeks, as needs evolve quickly, especially before the age of six.
Parental coaching confirms this point: families that establish routines and life rules within a supportive framework achieve far more sustainable results than those applying an isolated tool without context.
Managing a child’s strong emotions without losing your own
A three-year-old who is stamping their feet and screaming is not trying to manipulate you. Their prefrontal cortex, the part that manages impulse control, is still under construction. Asking them to “calm down” is like asking someone who cannot swim to cross a river.
The emotional reflection technique
Rather than denying the emotion (“it’s nothing”) or punishing it (“go to your room”), name what the child is feeling with simple words. “You are angry because you wanted to stay at the park.” This verbalization does not solve everything, but it creates a bridge between the child’s feelings and their ability to understand.
Specifically, this involves three steps:
- Get down to the child’s physical level (squat down, sit).
- Describe the observed emotion without judgment: “I see that you are crying, you look very frustrated.”
- Offer an acceptable alternative once the emotion is acknowledged: “We can’t stay, but you can choose a toy for the car.”
This approach requires patience. And above all, it assumes that the parent is not already on the brink of collapse. This is why managing your own energy (sleep, moments of decompression, support from a co-parent or your circle) conditions your ability to welcome the child’s emotions.
Trust and parental authority: setting a framework without power struggles
Positive parenting does not mean the absence of limits. Many parents waver between two extremes: laxity out of fear of conflict or authoritarianism by reflex. Neither builds trust.
A clear, explained, and consistent framework reassures the child. When a rule exists (no screens during meals, for example), it must be applied every day, not just when the parent has the energy to enforce it. Inconsistency generates more crises than the rule itself.
Adapting authority to age
Before the age of three, short and repeated instructions are sufficient. The child does not understand lengthy explanations. Between the ages of three and six, you can start to explain the “why” of a rule in one sentence. After six, the child benefits from participating in the development of certain family rules, which reinforces their sense of belonging and cooperation.
Isabelle Filliozat, a reference in positive parenting in France, emphasizes this idea: the authority that works is the one that grows with the child. A rigid framework eventually cracks. An evolving framework supports the development of autonomy.
The true indicator of serene parenting is not the absence of conflicts. It is the ability to navigate tensions while maintaining the bond. A parent who makes mistakes, apologizes, and adjusts their response the next time teaches their child something far more valuable than a perfect method: the possibility of repair.
