Why Parenting Feels Harder Than You Thought (And What Actually Helps) Ep 137

Many parents enter early parenthood expecting exhaustion — but not the constant feeling of being on edge, unsure, or reactive, even when they’re trying their best.

In this episode of Talking Toddlers, we take a step back from tips and tactics and look at what often gets missed in conversations about parenting young children: where we place our effort matters just as much as how much effort we give.

Through real-life stories and a prevention-first lens, Erin explores how everyday rhythms — including sleep, food, play, movement, and pace — quietly shape a child’s behavior, attention, learning, and emotional regulation.

Rather than encouraging parents to do more, this conversation focuses on becoming more intentional — starting in the places that support a child’s nervous system and create steadiness for the whole family.

If parenting feels harder than you expected, this episode is designed to help you understand why — and to offer a calmer, clearer starting place.

🔗 Discovery Calls: Looking ahead 

As we move into the new year, I offer Discovery Calls for parents of babies & toddlers. These are free, one-to-one conversations designed to help determine whether a focused 6-week parent coaching format would be helpful for your family at this time. Not evaluations, not therapy - just space to reflect and be heard.

There’s no pressure and no obligation. 

January is now open, and you’ll find all the details here: 👉 Start here to request a Discovery Call

🌟 Join the Inside Talking Toddlers community for exclusive deep dives and get Erin’s free guide: Top 10 ESSENTIAL Skills For Talking.

CLICK HERE FOR: Building Vocabulary: Single Words to 2-Word Phrases

Because the little years are the big years.

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Disclaimer: 

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your pediatrician or a qualified health provider with questions about your child’s development or health. The views shared are based on Erin Hyer’s professional experience and are intended to support informed parenting, not to replace individual consultation or care. Every child and family is unique — please use your discretion and consult trusted professionals when making decisions for your child.

📩 Questions: contact@HyerLearning.com
 🌐 www.HyerLearning.com

Thank you for being here — and for caring so deeply about your child’s well-being.

Transcript

Erin: 0:00

Development isn't about trying harder. It's actually about less. But timing is important. Child development unfolds in these overlapping stages, not neat, tidy little steps or checklists when one system is overloaded. Sleep, digestion, sensory processing, emotional regulation, all of the higher level skills temporarily Hello and welcome to Talking Toddlers where I share more than just tips and tricks on how to reduce tantrums or build your toddler's vocabulary. We're gonna cover all of that, but here our goal is to develop clarity because in this modern world, it's truly overwhelming. This podcast is about empowering moms to know the difference between fact and fiction, to never give up, to tap into everyday activities, so your child stays on track. He's not falling behind, he's thriving. Through your guidance, we know that true learning starts at home. So let's get started. Before you had your baby you probably imagined parenting a certain way. You knew it would be tiring. You knew it would stretch you. But I don't think most of us expected it to feel this heavy. The love is real, overwhelming even. And at the very same time so is the weight of it all. I believe many moms quietly wonder something that we don't always say out loud why does this feel so hard if I'm doing everything I can? If that thought has crossed your mind, even once, you're not alone. If you stay with me today my hope is not that you leave with more things to do. My hope is that by the end of this episode you feel more settled because you understand why certain things feel hard and where it actually makes sense to begin. Not from a place of fixing, but from a place of understanding. Sometimes when something isn't working, it's not because we lack effort. It's because things are happening out of sequence. Let's think about cooking a meal. Let's say you're a pretty good cook. You can use good quality ingredients, and you care deeply about the process and the outcome, and still we end up with something that doesn't turn out quite right, not because you did anything wrong per se, but because things went into the pan at the wrong time. You don't saute garlic. After the sauce is finished, you don't bake before. Everything is mixed well and integrated and you don't rush the simmer and expect depth of flavor. No shame. Just sequence. Children's brains and their nervous systems have a sequence too. And when we understand what needs to come first and what can only come later, a lot of what feels confusing or exhausting starts to make sense. I wanna tell you a story about a little girl who I had the privilege of working with. Let's call her Marilyn. Marilyn was in preschool. She was bright, curious, eager to please lots of energy. She had an older brother, loving parents, and a family that truly cared about health and community and connection. Actually, her parents owned a very popular restaurant. They were natural cooks and really created a lovely family style atmosphere. Which meant that their kids and extended family were often involved. They were very well known and loved in our community. Excellent work ethic, and a true love for service. They were thoughtful, intentional people. Well, our past crossed naturally at the gym, at school events, at social gatherings, and over time her mom began to share what was happening at school. Almost every day there was a new concern. She doesn't listen. She doesn't follow directions. She plays too rough. She's too sensitive, she's too demanding. It was always something different. And yet what struck me was this, the system was looking at Marilyn as the problem. Now, her mom knew her daughter quite well. She knew Marilyn was gentle and kind and loving. She knew she was bright and she knew she wanted to do well, and yet the harder her parents tried, more structure, more conversations, more effort. The more things seemed to backfire. Some days were okay, and some days were truly awful. And then the school began pushing for a label. But by the time I was called in, I didn't want that. I didn't want to start there. I wanted to look under every rock. And this is where I think I need to pause and tell you a bit why I look at situations a bit differently. I'm Erin. I'm a speech language pathologist, and I've spent over 35 years working in early intervention, sitting on floors with babies and toddlers and preschoolers, and walking closely with families when things don't quite add up. Over the years, I learned that when children struggle, it's rarely because they don't want to or lack the effort. It's usually because something earlier in their developmental process was getting in the way, building blocks that support the skills above it. Those academic, those social skills, need a strong foundation. So instead of starting with behavior charts or consequences or strategies, I asked everyone to step back. We began to look at Marilyn's daily rhythm. What was her environment? And how is that impacting her? Let's look at her sleep, her morning and evening routines. Restaurant life is demanding even when the food quality is good and there's rich family involved. The pace and timing can be hard on young nervous systems. So we started with her sleep and her sleep patterns. That's a solid place to investigate, to tweak, to begin regulation. We as human beings are designed to rest and recover one third of our day, that must be important. And only after that did we begin to look at food, not from a perfectionistic standpoint, but from regulation and nourishment. Good nutrients, fuel our systems from the inside out. That's how we grow. That's how we attend. That's how we learn. So when we stepped back from Marilyn's behavior and began asking, Hmm, what's happening underneath this? We didn't start with strategies. We started with her environment. Let's talk about something that almost never gets, clearly named, but quietly shapes how your child behaves and sleeps, eats, listens, and connects, and that's your child's environment. And when I say environment, I don't mean the types of toys or the color scheme or Montessori shelves, I mean, the conditions your child's nervous system lives inside all day, every day because children don't experience their day in categories. And in these compartment, uh, compartmentalized organizations, they don't experience, oh, this is sleep time or nap time. This is meal time and play time. This is learning time. They experience their day as one continuous load. A cumulative load. Everything stacks upon everything else. How they slept last night impacts them, how rushed the morning felt impacts them, whether breakfast stabilized them or spiked, and then dropped their energy to nothing flat. How many transitions were they expected to move through? How noisy, bright or busy, socially demanding was their day. By the time your child melts down in the afternoon, what you're seeing isn't that moment. What you're seeing is the sum total of that day and probably the days before it. This idea lines up closely with what we now refer to as total load theory. It was first introduced in my kind of clinical world by a woman named Patricia Leer. And here's the simple way to picture it. When a bridge collapse, we don't usually blame just one thing. It's not only the traffic or the weather or the design, it's the cumulative effect of stress. Over time, human bodies and developing brains work the same way. Every child has a limit to how much input, stimulation, stress, and demand they can carry before something gives. And when that limit is exceeded, the body speaks through fragmented sleep patterns, demanding behaviors, meltdowns, high emotion. Poor attention, slow talking, slow to learn. Their body is telling us something underneath isn't lining up. So when we talk about load, we're talking about the cumulation of the sensory processing system, the emotional demands, cognitive effort, physical fatigue. And young children, especially sensitive, bright, perceptive ones, feel that load. And this is where Marilyn comes back into the picture. Marilyn wasn't living in a chaotic home. She wasn't neglected. She wasn't lacking for love or connection. This was a thoughtful family in a small Vermont town, people. A close-knit community, strong values, good food, hard work, everything we, we describe as ideal living. But Marilyn was living in a very full environment, some late evenings, often adult pace schedules, lots of stimulation, lots of social interaction. None of it is bad, but all of it was adding up. And here's the key. Children don't yet have the neurological maturity to filter that load. They just absorb it. So before we go further, let me pause for just a moment. If this conversation already feels like it's putting words to something you might be carrying, and you know, other parents, grandparents, caregivers who need this lens, leaving a quick review or sharing this podcast is one of the simplest ways to help this message reach other families so they don't feel alone. thank you for being part of that ripple. Thank you for supporting my message and sharing it with others. None of you have to figure this out alone. So in my story, this is where so many loving parents get stuck, because when things begin to feel hard, our instinct is to do more, more explaining, more talking, more structure, more reminders, more strategies. But development doesn't work that way. Development isn't about trying harder. It's actually about less. But timing is important. Child development unfolds in these overlapping stages, not neat, tidy little steps or checklists when one system is overloaded. Sleep, digestion, sensory processing, emotional regulation, all of the higher level skills temporarily lose access. Those are the skills that we measure, listening language, impulse control, flexibility. So when parents respond to overload with more demand or expectation, it often backfires. Not because the parent is wrong, but because the child's system, her developmental system doesn't yet have the capacity. So let's think about that bridge again. It's still under construction. Marilyn was trying to wire these things up. This is where less is more. And it's not just a parenting trend. It really is neurodevelopmental reality. You can't build higher skills on a taxed foundation. And in Marilyn's case. It was the school system that unfortunately that's how systems work. They focus on managing the behavior. They look at charts, expectations, milestones, compliance. But behavior, human behavior was never the root issue. Yes, it's the outcome. Yes. It's what we see. But that's the byproduct. Marilyn's parents were thoughtful, engaged, willing to adjust and learn. Yet the more they tried to reason, explain structure or correct, based on those school recommendations, the more things unraveled because they were working on top of the load. Instead of reducing the load, so the foundation found stability. So instead of asking how do we fix the behavior, we need to ask a different question. Where can we reduce the load first? Because in the vast majority of cases, truly that I've ever worked in, nothing about the child needs to change intrinsically. We love them for who they are. They bring their personality and their energy and their their subtle nuances. Yes, we want to improve their attention and their communication and their learning, but those are byproducts, their outcome of a regulated, engaged, curious child who can process this three dimensional world in their own timing. So the place to start is always the environment. And here's the empowering part for you as the mom or the grandparent or the dad. This is where you have choice and agency. We didn't start with charts or consequences or labels. We started with the underline foundation first, sleep, because sleep regulates everything. Basic biology at any age, especially for young brains who are still under construction. Timing mattered. Consistency mattered, not perfection, just routine and regulation. Then we looked at food, not for performance, but for regulation. Again, stable blood sugar, predictable meals, eating together when possible. Yes, they had these parts, but it wasn't consistent. Then we looked at movement. We lived out in the country, outdoor play, heavy work, full body input. This child needed that and responded beautifully. It wasn't enrichment, it wasn't even regulation, it was just biological development. That's how we wire, that's how we work at any age. But again, we're looking at that 2, 3, 4, 5-year-old. And then play unstructured pressure free child led, not looking at outcomes or activities, but time together, So we looked at how could we slow some of her day up? How can we make quieter movements that didn't ask Marilyn to perform? Okay. As those supports began to settle in, something very lovely began to happen. Her behavior improved, and we didn't even target behavior. We looked at the environment, the underlying foundations. Her listening increased because her mental capacity began to return. Her curiosity and eagerness to learn, which was very well known, was able to be tapped into emotional flexibility. Also grew her transitions, her ability to, to tolerate when things didn't go her way, because overall her load was decreased. Marilyn wasn't living in a fight or flight state anymore, and so her personality, her skills began to blossom because the system finally gave her room to function to interface with the three dimensional world consistently. And yes, there were still hard days. She, you know, families are human and children are human and they're, we're not striving for perfection, but we're striving for a rhythm that works for everyone. But when things did begin to fall apart, everyone could easily recognize what was, forcing them off that track, right? Looking at sleep, looking at her diet, looking at her socialization, her rest, her quiet time. And, and I want to assure you most of you probably have a younger child who's two or two and a half maybe pushing that third birthday, this applies even more. A toddler who doesn't share books yet or maybe is slow to talk, who perhaps is impulsive in his or her play style, if we try to manage those behaviors first. We miss the fundamental foundation. Those behaviors are communication. They're telling us, ah, something's off kilter here. They're telling us, look, underneath the hood, less is more. So just choose one or two supports at a time. Build more attention, build more engagement. And listening inside their play, be with them. Ask yourself, what does our one-to-one time together actually feel like? Is it too structured? Am I asking too many questions? Are, am I expecting them to perform? Just ask, just inquire, be with them and feel it. So before we close, I want to name kind of the bottom line to to today's episode, right? Because when things feel hard, clarity matters. So like I said in the beginning, this episode isn't about doing more. It's about understanding why effort doesn't always lead to better outcomes, especially in these early years. It is about why modern parenting often feels heavier than we ever expected. Not because parents care less, but because children are carrying more cumulative load, and it's about why starting with behavior is usually backwards when we begin with regulation rhythm. And the environment behavior often takes care of itself. Growing and learning then becomes more natural. That shift from managing behavior to supporting development changes everything. So let me leave you with three things to hold onto. First load matters. Your child's day adds up. Second sequence matters. Regulation and stability comes before expectation or performance. and then third, you have agency. Small shifts in the environment can change everything. And if this story feels familiar, if parts of your day feel harder than you expected, this isn't a sign that you're failing. You're on the job learning, right? It's a sign that something earlier may need more support. And if you'd like help walking through this thoughtfully step by step. I offer discovery calls for parents who want guidance, not guesswork. The purpose of these calls isn't to diagnose your child or tell you what you're doing wrong. There's simply a chance for us to slow things down together. We look at what feels heavy right now, what's been keeping you up at night, or where are you second guessing yourself as you move through these toddler years. the purpose is to decide whether one-to-one coaching would be a good fit. It's not for everyone, but for some families who want steady support, clarity, and confidence as they move forward in their parenting, even that conversation alone often helps parents feel more settled and less alone. If that sounds like something you need, you'll find the link in the show notes down below. So as we close, I want to remind you of something important. Healthy development doesn't come from doing more. It comes from being present enough to notice what your child is showing you and for being open enough to listen without rushing to It also comes from being embedded into the day-to-day life, enough to support development through everyday routines. and nourishing enough to protect the body and nervous system. That learning depends on. You don't need perfection. You need understanding and rhythm. And support, and you're already building that one choice at a time. thank you for spending this time with me and happy, happy New Year. I'll see you in the next talking toddlers.