Are Projectors Meant to be Parents?

I’m recording this sitting on the floor of a half-finished room. My house is a mess, laundry everywhere, dishes in the sink, toys scattered across every surface, and everything in me is telling me I should go clean it up before I let myself do this.

But I didn’t. I pressed record anyway.

This episode is really about that moment, the one where you choose to tend to yourself even when everything else feels like it’s asking for you first.

In this episode, I talk about what it’s actually like to move through motherhood as a Projector in a life that constantly requires you to respond.

I share the tension between wanting to slow down and feeling like I’m always being pulled into doing, fixing, managing, and tending. I unpack a concept that used to trigger me deeply: “Projectors aren’t designed to be parents.”

Now that I am a Projector Parent, how do I feel about that concept?

If you’re a Projector mom who feels stretched thin, overstimulated by the mess, and quietly guilty for not having endless energy to give, this episode is for you. When we stop forcing and start listening, our kids will show us exactly where we’re meant to meet them.

Highlights:

• Why motherhood can feel especially draining for Projector energy
• How I’m learning to do less with my kids (and why that actually works better)
• Creating independence in the home to reduce constant demands
• What it looks like to wait for my children to invite me into their world
• How my kids are showing me, in real time, the kind of mother they need me to be
• Letting go of the idea that everything needs to be “in order” before I can show up

You’re Invited is produced by Six-Two Studio.

Transcript

Alex Cantone (00:21.454) Kids just went down for naps. And my house is a disaster. Every single room is cluttered and messy and straight up dirty. Even though the cleaners were here three days ago. There's laundry all over the place, crumbs, pouches, toys scattered everywhere.

dishes piled in the sink and as much as my mind is telling me not to take this space because I need to do all of those things and fix the house and make it right.

I still showed up, which is big. And I'm sitting in an empty room with a rug, with boxes piled up, and a chair sitting on top of a piece of furniture in a room that is supposed to be my studio, our office, a space for us to be creative. And

I've told myself in the past that I can't do anything until it's all put together and complete and ready. And yet I'm sitting on the floor in an empty room with my laptop open and these corded headphones plugged into my laptop because my microphone is nowhere to be found. And I'm doing it.

and it's all okay. And the dishes will get done and the rooms will be tidied and the laundry will get folded and it will all be okay. And I think that's one of the hardest parts for me in motherhood is not just the holding and the managing and the tending to of all of the things.

Alex Cantone (02:38.232) but giving myself that permission to land and to settle in and to chill out and tend to myself, even if everything else needs tending to. It's so funny because I never really thought about the possibility that I would find myself in a situation where I am

constantly having to respond in my life, especially when I discovered human design and it was like, projectors are meant to wait for the invitation and they're not go-getters and they're not initiators in the way that manifestors are, or they're not responders in the way that generators are, and we're this different breed who needs to wait and...

It felt like such a permission to make life more of a luxury experience and such a permission slip to slow down, to slow down and really truly trust that what was for me would not miss me. And it was easy to conserve and spend my energy well. It was easy to manage

my life and my world in a sense, because there wasn't a lot to manage and tend to. And now I'm finding myself in this space where I'm managing and tending to these beautiful little beings and this home that I love so much but requires a lot of work and upkeep.

and suddenly my world has expanded beyond myself and I'm needing to respond all the time. And that really takes a toll. I think that takes a toll on anyone. But in the nature of speaking about this through the lens of projector energetics, because that's what this podcast is about, I'm going to speak to it and

Alex Cantone (04:56.618) let myself nerd out on the projector aspect of all of this parenting stuff that we have to do. I wrote this article on Substack and I named it, projectors aren't designed to be parents. And there was someone who had commented on it and said, I thought this was rage bait before I started reading it. And I had been off the internet for a while and I don't go on TikTok. I've never, like I maybe have been on there, I don't know, years ago. Anyway, all to say I haven't been on the internet in a while.

I haven't been clued into like these social media things. So I had to look that up. And I was like, okay, cool. But it wasn't. It was, of course, like a play on words, you know, because I don't believe that projectors aren't designed to be parents. But a lot of us have heard that phrase or that notion in the realm of human design, and it's made us really upset. I know that it's made me.

angry and charged up at times. And I didn't really understand it fully. I just thought, oh, this is some limiting narrative that this old guy created and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then it was just taken out of context and all of this stuff. what I really understand it as now is that projectors aren't designed to respond and parenting requires a ton of responding from us day in.

day out and that can be draining and so it's not that projectors aren't designed to be parents. It's that projectors aren't designed to parent alone. There's a reason why that age-old phrase, it takes a village lands so hard every single time because we're truly not designed to do it alone.

I have times where I watch my generator husband respond to my children's needs so easily and so effortlessly.

Alex Cantone (07:06.134) and it infuriates me, because I'm like, how do you have it in you to keep doing this over and over and over and over again when it feels like these demands and requests and just all of the things that are constantly needed can feel like it's genuinely eating me alive? Because I don't wake up with this tank every single day just ready to rock.

And it's not that he does either, but we've had these conversations and come to the conclusion that he's just a little more rhythmic than me. He can really get into the groove with the kids really, really well and do the doing and do the responding and do all the things that need to happen. And I think that when...

you're in a co-parenting dynamic with someone, it's really important to get clear on who plays what role in the dynamic. Because I can totally fall into the trap of trying to be the generator parent when the reality is I'm just not built to respond. Does it mean I can't do it? Absolutely not. But I have to be aware of the

whole that it's going to take on me. I have to be aware of the consequences and therefore I need to work with my partner to create a setup that keeps both of us operating with capacity. It needs to feel coherent. It needs to feel sustainable with the understanding that it's not going to feel like that all the time no matter how much we work.

to nail that formula down. Because the reality is kids aren't always going to be predictable. And we don't know what kind of day they're going to have, especially with toddlers. I have no idea what's going to throw one of them off at any given moment, right? Or if the nap schedules don't align just so. And I keep going back to this thing because it's like this pattern that I noticed with myself when things

Alex Cantone (09:29.362) aren't arranged or aligned or put together just so, I default to this version of me that makes excuses, that tells stories that I'm not ready, that it's not time. And the way that I break that pattern is by sitting on the floor in an empty room and turning on and pressing the record button.

and just speaking, even though there's no desk, no chair, no microphone in sight. Because what is it that I actually need to make this operation function in a way that works for me? For me, that's not responding to the messes around the house, to offloading

all of that right now and reminding myself it will get done eventually. There will be a time when the house is tidy again and feels clean and is reset even if it only can exist like that for an hour and probably not in every single room for that long. And this is the phase that I'm in and can I be

okay with that for the sake of my own sanity. Because running around the house, spiraling over what's imperfect, what needs to be fixed, how it needs to look, and making it this story that it needs to look a certain way for me to feel good is just another version of overworking and over-responding.

And there's a reality to it for me where when it's too messy and it's too chaotic, it truly takes a toll on my mind. And it's like, I can't think if there's clutter. And my practice is truly like sweeping it into a corner of my mind just so that I can carve out this 30 minutes or this hour to land to

Alex Cantone (11:56.814) process to reflect on my experience and to give myself the space and permission to project it outward. That's the way that I strike a balance in this dynamic where I'm always responding, where I feel like there are parts of my life where I do have to kind of be that generator energy.

But that doesn't mean that parenting as a projector by nature is always going to feel heavy and challenging and bad and wrong or misaligned or any of those things. Because there are ways to reframe it. Something that I have noticed is really helpful in my dynamic with the kids is when I don't try to

reach into their world without their invitation. And so even though my instincts or, you know, the little voices in my mind are telling me, and I think it's just old stories of like, you want them to know that you care and that you're interested in all of these things and granted they're toddlers, right? But I have all of these things that are telling me like, reach in.

help them with this, suggest that. And instead, I've made things accessible for them so that they don't always need to come to me to initiate whatever it is that they want to do. Right, and those are simple things like how we arrange the playroom environment. And I feel like these are things that are more widely known now. Like how do you make, how do you

arrange the toys or the learning environment in such a way where your kids don't need to ask you every single time they want to use a certain toy because it's within reach, right? Unless like for my kids, it's like if it's markers or chalk or something, then that's going to be something that they have to ask me to do or bubbles or whatever it is, the things that create a mess. But for me, it's setting things up.

Alex Cantone (14:24.5) in a way that allows them to be independent as possible within what is developmentally appropriate for where they're at. Same thing with our pantry. The lower shelf of our pantry has all of the kids' snacks. I put fruit down there. I put all kinds of things down there so that when they feel hungry, they can go in there and grab a pouch, grab a snack.

grab whatever it is that they want, right? And then they might come to me and ask me to open something. But by making kid appropriate items and creating an environment in as many rooms as possible that allows them to foster that independence and experience that independence and recognize that there are things that they can do.

on their own without needing the grown-up in the room to do it for them. It's like my hack for creating so much less work for myself. Does it lead to more messes, more crumbs all over the place? Yeah. But am I willing to trade off the work that it takes for me to have to do all of those things and my kids to be so dependent on me?

you know, for a little bit of a mess that I have to clean up, yeah. And something that I really notice is my kids get into such a flow in the playroom by themselves when I'm not there. Now I really am just getting to the point where I can leave them unattended for short periods of time because they're three and almost two and will brawl like to the death.

you know, if no one's watching them, but not always, not always. You just have to have, you know, a little ear close by. And I noticed that when I'm out of sight, when I'm not trying to poke and prod into their space, that they actually seem much more peaceful and much happier. And that tells me something, that when I'm around the dynamic,

Alex Cantone (16:45.31) is that they feel me and they need something from me. And it is the best thing in the world to feel needed and wanted by my children. But I also know the importance of them learning how to make decisions for themselves and be bored and come up with their own ideas about how they want to engage with the environment.

and one another. And so really taking a backseat and reminding myself every single day when I'm with my kids, do less, do less, poke less, prod less, engage less, let them come to you, is actually doing the projector strategy within my parenting dynamic. It's waiting for my children to invite me into their world

to engage with them. And oftentimes, one of them will come up to me with a toy and prompt me to sit down. Hartley will ask me to build something with him or to watch him play cars. He'll actually ask me to observe him and be seen by him, which I think is the most brilliant example of a human design dynamic happening without the awareness itself. Because my manifesting generator child

is asking his projector mom to be seen by him and to be guided by him. And in those moments, it's so energy-giving to be a parent because I haven't inserted myself in a dynamic where I'm not invited and I'm not welcome. And every single time I try to insert myself, Chris and I laugh because he's like, you're being desperate. And I'm like, you do this all the time.

You like scoop them up and you're like, hey, we're going to go somewhere. We're going to do this thing. And if I do that, they're like, no, like it's really just so funny to see how it works, how they just know without knowing that dad is the doer and mom is more of the guy and the person who like sits in the background and waits around. And I'm the one who stays at home more. And dad is more of a novel item.

Alex Cantone (19:08.082) And it's just this really fun thing to witness the dynamic and to be able to reframe this concept that can keep me sometimes in this space where I'm like, I'm not a good enough parent because I don't have enough energy to respond. When in reality, when I'm invited into the world of my children on their terms, the energy exchange that happens in those moments is so much more potent.

and so much more aligned, I would say, and just feels like I'm really having a moment with them that I didn't manipulate, I didn't force. I felt invited. They want me versus me being like, come give me a hug, come give me a kiss, please, please, please, please, please, please. I love you, love me, love me, love me. Like it feels very needy when I'm like that.

And it's such a reminder when I do try to insert myself and when I do try to be the generator and I'm like, let me just be fun generator dad like Chris. And then I leave either just so exhausted or it falls flat because my kids are like, uh-uh, this is not how we do things with mom. You know, they get into much more of an independent flow with me because of the way that

I interact with them versus my husband. And neither one is better or worse than the other. It's just about how my energy map engages with the world and with the people I'm in relationship with versus his. And it's so wonderful and so beautiful that we get to strike a balance in that way. And I get to serve them in one way and Chris gets to come in

and give them something that I might not see or I might not recognize or that my kids might not recognize in me as something that I can wholly and fully give them to me in the way that Chris can. And so it's not that projectors aren't designed to be parents. I just think that we're not designed to be parents in the way that we've been taught or told that parenting is meant to be. And quite frankly, I really don't know what that is.

Alex Cantone (21:33.922) But what I do know is that when I pay attention to how my children want to engage with me and I follow their lead, they actually end up showing me what kind of parent they need me to be for them.