Bonus: Releasing Control as a Spiritual Parent: Helping Sensitive Kids Find Their Own Strength

The first day of school isn’t just a milestone for our kids—it’s a deep emotional moment for us as parents. The mix of excitement, pride, sadness, and worry can feel overwhelming. In this heartfelt and honest episode of The Spiritual Parent, Carrie Lingenfelter shares the raw, real journey of releasing control and trusting her children to grow into their own strength.

Carrie opens up about her personal struggle with control—how it first showed up in motherhood and how it resurfaced recently with her 10-year-old son. What started as a “gluten experiment” turned into a profound lesson in letting go, guided by intuition, and allowing her highly sensitive child to truly feel the impact of his choices.

You’ll hear how a simple but powerful moment—watching her son connect the dots between his own body, emotions, and decisions—shifted the way she approaches parenting. She talks about the challenge of stepping back without stepping away, setting safe boundaries while still giving children space to explore, and why this balance is crucial for highly sensitive and neurodiverse kids.

This episode will help you see:

• How our kids feel both our fears and our strength
• Why letting go of control is often the most loving thing we can do
• Ways to use spiritual tools and affirmations to stay grounded through change
• How empowering your child now can help them stay conscious, confident, and connected into adulthood

If you’ve ever held your breath as your child stepped into a new school year—or struggled with giving them more independence while keeping them safe—this conversation is for you. It’s a reminder that parenting isn’t about perfection. It’s about connection, trust, and guiding our kids to stand tall in their own light.

New! Conscious Family Travels Channel on YouTube with Carrie:
https://www.youtube.com/@consciousfamilytravels

Connect with Carrie:
*Website: https://hearttoheartlife.com/
*Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thespiritualparent
*YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheSpiritualParent
*Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/The-Spiritual-Parent/61554482625081
*Email: info@hearttoheartlife.com

**Please remember that the information shared on this podcast is educational in nature and does not constitute licensed mental health advice. If you need such advice, you should speak with a licensed professional about your unique situation. Thanks so much happy listeners.

© 2024-2025 Heart to Heart Life LLC

Transcript

Episode 95 — Releasing Control as a Spiritual Parent
By Carrie Lingenfelter

Carrie Lingenfelter (00:01.388)
Hi there everyone. I'm so excited to be live today. It's Carrie, your active, friendly, spiritual mama here. And it is the first day of school and I had a lot of mixed emotions sending my kids today. My kids have the same teacher this year that they had last year. So it was a little bit easier for us. So that helped my mama heart as I have mainly sadness as they enter into a new year.

So, it's releasing all of that. And that brings me into what I wanted to talk to you guys about today. And as a spiritual parent, it's learning to release control. So that's a big one. Control is something that I did not realize that I really had a grasp on until I became a mom. Even as a teacher, I didn't realize how much control I really needed in my life.

It wasn't until I was holding my baby kid and noticing that control was a huge piece of maybe a weakness in me, right? A weakness of what I wanted to control in my life. So as we're talking about control, I want to share a story that recently happened to me like two days ago in our house. I have highly sensitive kids and my 10-year-old is now coming into that adolescent era of wanting to control what he wants in his life, right?

And as a spiritual parent, I'm understanding in my world that the harder I fight control, the harder I want to control and tighten my world around me, the more that the universe and spirit is going to be sending me opportunities to release control, to grow in this, right? So my kids and my husband are all really sensitive to gluten.

And it was something that my son is now becoming his own, finding his own at 10 years old, going into fourth grade, he is really adamant about not wanting to be gluten free. And it's something that I've tried talking to him about. And recently the pediatrician was like, just let him try it. Let's see what happens. And although my intuition has always said, don't do the gluten with him, even since he was three months old, I had this feeling in my heart: don't do gluten with him.

It was really interesting. We tried it. And I could see the change in behavior, emotions, socialization. There was just this impulse control challenge. It was this heart-centered challenge for him where life was hard and life was more painful for this 10-year-old. And as a parent, you're sitting there watching this and you're trying to find this balance between what you can control for your 10-year-old and what you have to release control of, right?

So we tried it and I instantly locked down and said, we need to stop this. This is not looking pretty. He is, he's lashing out at his sister who's seven. He's lashing out at me and everybody had shortness of temper. So we stopped doing it. And then my husband who is a science-based person was like, we need to try this again. I'm not seeing the science. There could be other factors weighing in.

So I was like, OK, let's try it again right before school starts, right? Great timing, Carrie. So we tried it again. And I noticed in this time, I was connecting to the universe and asking the universe: help me to show my son. Help us to see the true colors of what this can do on his system. Because he's not listening to me. He has to hear it for himself.

And it was really interesting because after eating gluten—and it might not be for every kid, this is our life, our scenario—but I want to share with you how we can show our kids, we can give them some control and some exploration in their lives so they can learn how to tune in and learn how to connect to themselves, right? It's all a balancing act.

So he instantly had these pieces where he was crying in public. He couldn't hold it together. He was feeling all of these sensations in his body that he couldn't hold and he couldn't control. And I said, do you like feeling out of control? Interesting—control again! I didn't even think about that till right now. Sorry guys, that was hilarious. I love synchronicities, right?

How do you feel when you are not in control? And he's like, that is overwhelming mom. That is too much for my system. Does it feel overwhelming when you cannot control your body? Yes, I don't like that feeling. I don't feel secure. I don't feel safe.

So I said, this is what gluten is doing to you. It's not for everybody. Unfortunately, this is what it does on your body. We'll try it again in a year or two. We'll try it again eventually. But right now, your body is showing you that this is what's happening and we're seeing these signs and these symptoms. And he agreed, he said, yeah, mom.

And so, interesting thing—I said, let's cut it out. The next day instantly he is happier, he's connected, he's able to stay calm and resonating in that connection with mom, sister, dad. He's able to have more impulse control and these were all things that he wants forever actually. I've been trying to have him see this, he saw it in himself.

So it's interesting to see when we release some of that control, we allow our child to take some of the reins within our boundaries, right? We create these boundaries and we let these kids—because we are here to guide them, right? We're still looking at safety, we're still looking at these pieces—but when we release these controls and we allow them to take the control so that they can learn whatever they're meant to learn in this era, in this life for themselves, then we can truly see so much growth.

Now, that's a reflection for you parents—if you are not at a point where you can let your 10-year-old take the control, if you're not in a point where you can release the reins, if it feels painful in your heart, if it feels like I can't do this—guess what? The universe is gonna continue to send you signs. So look within.

Why can't I control this? What do I need to do in my life? What do I need to do with my inner child pieces? What do I need to look back with my day to day? Am I trying to control other pieces besides my parenting? Maybe in my work, maybe in my relationship with my partner, maybe with my other kiddo. What in my life is having me try to control these pieces?

And I have a little affirmation that I thought of this morning as I was driving home from dropping my kids off at their first day of school. I was thinking in my heart: thank you, universe, for helping me to connect to the higher consciousness so that I can release control and truly shine in my own light. And so it is.

That's something that I'm saying in my heart because as you're taking kids to school—maybe you haven't started yet, in Colorado we start August 14th today—we are releasing control to the school. We're releasing control to the teacher. We are giving that time, so much time, with our children.

My little one said, “Mom, I spend more time at school than I spend with you.” And you know, that's a big piece for us controlling parents that want the reins, right? We're finding where's the best place that we trust to have control with our kids in these times.

So think about the energy pieces of releasing that control too. If you're feeling nervous about releasing the control, you're also sending these messages to your kiddo: I don't trust you as a 10-year-old to have control of yourself right now. I have to be in the control.

One other thing that I'm thinking about with this is there's a label that's going around. It's big in Europe, I think it's big in the UK, and it's starting to come over here more and more. I'm finding that the psychologists who are more up to date—thank you so much, so much, I love this, thank you, I love that, it's one of my first times going live so I really appreciate it—but some of the psychologists that are in the UK and now it's coming over to psychologists in the US that are more up to date: it's the Pathological Demand Avoidance.

And I've really been reading up on it. And I'm thinking in my mind, this kind of describes a lot of humans, right? Like when we're children, even adults, but even children, when we say, go do this, and these strong personalities and spirits that are coming into these kids—that these kids are being born with—these personalities, they're really wanting to push back, right? They're really wanting to be their own and come in with their own light and their own purpose in life.

And if we're saying you have to behave like this, you can't have gluten, and we don't tell them why, we don't try the experiment that we did—the gluten experiment—if we're saying you have to behave like this, isn't that putting out some of their light? Isn't that putting out some of their purpose that they are born with, this divine presence that they come in with?

Really seeing that light in our kids and understanding that yes, we have to control when they're going to cross the street, we're going to have the boundaries, we're going to parent and guide them. But guiding them doesn't mean taking their control. Guiding them doesn't mean taking away their purpose and hindering them from their connection of their hearts.

Because these little people—amazing people—that are coming in, are born so sensitive and so connected to themselves, connected spiritually to the universe and connected to nature. They're born with this energy and this vibrancy.

And one thing that comes with being so sensitive and having this heightened sensitivity—it can be hard to maintain that connection to our hearts. It can be harder when we're sensitive like this. I, as a highly sensitive kid, went through life and I disconnected to some pieces of myself because it was so hard to be human and to be in this human experience.

It was so hard at times. And I really didn't have control as a human. I lived in a very sheltered, controlled environment where my parents really had the control and I didn't experience these things. So as things got harder in life, I disconnected.

So think about these young spirits, these amazing spirits here. If they are not given these opportunities to experience life and to have some control of their own existence, then they're going to be hindered. It's going to be hard for them to stay connected into adulthood. And then they're going to have to find themselves. They're going to have to find that conscious connection again.

If we can keep them conscious now, think of where they're going to be when they are 42 years old. They're not going to have to rediscover that for themselves as a lot of us parents and adults are doing today.

So give that affirmation prayer a try if you can. If you're coming up to the first day of school and you're relinquishing control to that teacher and that school as they're going in, just think about: is there a piece of my heart that needs to heal because I don't have control? Is there a piece of my heart that needs to heal so that way I can let my child have some more control?

Happy times, peaceful change makers. Thanks so much for tuning in. I'm Carrie and I really enjoy connecting with you.