Stop Following Random Parenting Advice: Do These 5 Things Instead

If you're exhausted from every random parenting tip on Instagram and still melting down with your kids, you don't need more tactics — you need a system.

Clinical psychologist Dr. Lindsay Emerson (Better Behavior Blueprint) joins The Parent Tap to install the 5Cs Framework: Communication, Consistency, Choices, Checkpoints, and Consequences — plus the missing piece most parents skip: Check Yourself.

In this episode we cover:
• Why bite-sized social media advice keeps high-performing parents stuck
• The two failure modes: permissive vs. authoritarian
• "Amazing parenting" (authoritative) vs. the myth of perfect parenting
• Ryan's real-talk: broken TV, spectrum meltdown, losing cool
• Acknowledge & Respond — the immediate day-one communication tool
• How consistency turns standoffs into relationship builders

GUEST
Dr. Lindsay Emerson, Clinical Psychologist
Instagram: @Dr.LindsayEmerson
Free workshop: https://drlindsayemerson.com/workshop

HOST
Ryan McDonough — The Parent Tap
Site / blueprints: https://parenttap.io
YouTube: The Parent Tap

CHAPTERS
0:00 – Random tactics, no strategy
0:39 – Social media parenting noise
2:17 – Who to trust for advice
3:57 – Permissive vs. authoritarian mistakes
7:39 – Amazing parenting (the middle lane)
9:19 – The 5Cs Framework walkthrough
14:37 – When you lose your cool
17:33 – Amazing vs. perfect
20:50 – Social media & kids (forward look)
21:18 – Acknowledge & Respond method
23:47 – Find Dr. Lindsay + Better Behavior Blueprint

KEYWORDS
parenting tips, toddler discipline, how to get kids to listen, authoritative parenting, child behavior, consistency, parenting framework

Transcript

– Random tactics, no strategy

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If you are exhausted from trying every random parenting tip you see on Instagram, reading conflicting advice in books, and still feeling like a total failure when your kid melts down in the grocery store. You are not alone. You are drowning in random tactics, but you have no cohesive strategy. Today we are fixing that. Joining us today is Dr. Lindsay Emerson. She is a clinical psychologist with a PhD who specializes in translating complex behavioral research into simple, actionable frameworks that parents can actually use in heated moments. She is the creator of the better behavior blueprint in the five C's framework. Dr. Emerson, thanks for joining

– Social media parenting noise

SPEAKER_00 0:39

us today. You call out parents who are exhausted from trying every parenting tip they find, you know, on Instagram in particular. Um, so why is the current landscape of bite-sized social media parenting advice actually setting type A parents up to fail in their own homes?

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Great question. So there is just a plethora of parenting advice out there. And honestly, a lot of it's good. I'm not going to tell you that everything you're hearing is bad and you shouldn't follow those tips. It's really the problem, the crux of the matter is there's just too much. And you can't try everything. It's overwhelming for, like you said, all of us type A parents who are, I gotta make sure I find the right approach. I'm gonna try it all. And so you end up cycling through these different strategies. And maybe one works today, but then it doesn't work tomorrow. So you move on to the next one, and maybe you don't give it enough time to really last, or maybe it works for one of your kids and not the other. And so you end up just trying all these things or getting overwhelmed by how many ideas there are and putting them all in your saved reels folder and then never coming back to it. And so what parents actually can benefit from is honing in on a particular parenting coach, hopefully someone with some actual training and some solid advice, honing in on them, somebody who they messed with, who they feel like it's a good match and their values and their approach matches with their family, and just focusing on what they have to offer if they have a complete system. And it doesn't have to be me, it can be any number of wonderful parenting coaches online. But if you can hone in and get rid of all the distraction, you can make so much more forward progress than if you

– Who to trust for advice

SPEAKER_01 2:17

jump around.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

I mean, you need to kind of, I feel like you need to kind of vet who you're getting your information from. Just because there's a lot of likes or a lot of comments or a lot of engagement on certain posts doesn't necessarily mean it's like the greatest um advice.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

Yeah, it's not to say that you need a PhD to give good parenting advice. I may be overqualified for this, but the idea is to get somebody where you really feel like they have some knowledge base and there's some sort of reference that's credible behind it. And that's my whole platform is really based on psychology-backed parenting support. And so all of the strategies that I use are based on years and years of really strong psychology research. So they're not coming out of nowhere. And then of course they're also tested in my own family. I'm a mom of four, and so I know that they have practical applicability. They're just just drawn from a textbook.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Yeah, and I think that's useful to know is like, you know, you also you have obviously the background with the education, but you also like you're putting these into practice with your four kids at home and you're seeing the results. And I think that, you know, as a dad of two kids right now, one in four, you know, I kind of want to, I'd rather learn from people that are actually going through it or actually like, you know, because it I I don't know about you, but my house is like straight chaos sometimes. It's just like this complete wave of chaos. The kids come home, one's having a meltdown, one's wanting milk right away. And if you don't get him milk because he's one year old right away, he throws a fit, and then the dog's jumping on the kids, and then it's so it's like this constant in motion thing. And so that's why you know I love having people on like you that really get it and understand it and can help me reduce that chaos and have a blueprint for success. Like, what do I do to kind of alleviate

– Permissive vs. authoritarian mistakes

SPEAKER_00 3:57

that? So, one thing like a big part of your methodology addresses what parents are unknowingly doing that makes behaviors were so for instance, my kids come home screaming and crying. I, you know, sometimes that makes me want to just like retort back with like a hey, knock it off, or you know, raising your voice. And obviously those tactics do not work. I've tried that. So, what is the most common operational error you see executive parents making right now that actually actively escalates a standoff with their kids?

SPEAKER_01 4:26

Great question. And just addressing what you just the whole scene you just helped us to visualize, Ryan, it's so common for parents to just feel like life is chaotic because it is to some degree with kids. I talk a lot about calm parenting parenting and bringing calm confidence to your parenting, but I'm not envisioning some Zen moment that lasts all day. The reality of parenting is it's a little chaotic, but we just want to try to bring a controlled chaos to it so that parents feel like they are in control, not in an authoritarian, bossy way, but just they're in control of the environment, they're in control of their own behavior, and they feel confident that they can navigate even the trickiest parenting situations in the right direction. Okay, so getting back to that, your question. So standoff moments are tricky. I'd say that really there are two common mistakes. In a standoff moment, a true like parent-child, like, I want you to do this, no, I don't want to do that. One of those parent-child standoff moments, whether it's a one-year-old who doesn't want to put their shoes on or a teenager who wants to stay out past curfew tonight. Same principles apply. Most commonly, parents shift, or they swing too far in either direction. One direction is the permissive approach of fine, just you don't have to do it, we'll go barefoot, which is is okay to go barefoot, but not after you've said we need to wear shoes. It's important we should wear shoes on this outing. And so if you are going to draw the line and choose that that's a boundary that you want to uphold, then you need to consistently uphold it. So one of the biggest mistakes is sort of this permissive approach and being inconsistent with the boundaries that you state. Honestly, if I could give any parent of any child, any age, one tip, it would be just be consistent. When you say you're going to do something, do it. And of course, there are caveats and you have to be really thoughtful about what boundaries are important. Things like safety, respect, responsibility. You don't want to be overly controlling. You want to have your kids develop a sense of independence and you want to give them autonomy so that they can get to where you want them to be when they're 18. But to do that, you also need to set the boundaries and help them to know what's okay in your household. So you have to pick your battles. If you pick that battle, be consistent. So that's one direction. That's kind of shifting too far in this permissive parenting approach. The other direction is the authoritarian parenting approach, the strict I said so because I said so, and yelling and threatening and shame-based discipline, blame, and all those things that a lot of us were raised with, right? Um, dad says so, and that's why. And so if we shift in that direction, then these standoff moments become relationship breakers instead of relationship builders. And our kids may do what we want in that moment, but they're not learning anything from it. And so later on, when you're not there hovering over them with your threats and your consequences and your harsh punishments, then they don't do what they actually should be doing. They don't learn, they don't internalize, they don't benefit from that experience. So the alternative is to find the

– Amazing parenting (the middle lane)

SPEAKER_01 7:39

middle point. And so, in between permissive parenting and authoritarian parenting is what's called authoritative parenting. And I don't like that term. It's very hard to wrap your head around. It's too similar to authoritarian. So in my parent coaching, I just use the term amazing parenting. And so amazing parenting balances the two. It balances warmth with structure, it balances flexibility with demands. And so you're finding that point in your parenting where you're going to choose what's important to you, make sure your kids know what's important to you, clearly communicate that to them and let them know that if they don't stay within these boundaries, then this is what will happen. And so you hold, do uphold those consequences. And that is really the goal for every parent today, because authoritative parenting or amazing parenting is backed by six years of psychology research. It's very clearly the parenting style that's associated with the best outcomes for kids. Everything from parent-child relationships to academic achievement to mental health, to future career success. I mean, you name it. Kids who are raised by at least one authoritative parent have markedly better outcomes. And they have better better experience in the home. So parents are happier. Parents are experiencing less of that chaos because those moments that used to feel out of control come back into control and they become more of a warm teaching experience rather than a, well, I'll just give up or I'm gonna hold the line and this is gonna go badly.

SPEAKER_00 9:13

Yeah, no, I can tell you from experience, the two extremes you mentioned there um don't

– The 5Cs Framework walkthrough

SPEAKER_00 9:19

work. Can you get into the five C's framework? I know that you talk about um communication, distances, choices, boy, and squinces. Maybe just run us through that briefly, like what those mean, and then like which point of failure do you see the most in the five, like out of those five C's?

SPEAKER_01 9:34

Great question. And so what you described there, Ryan, is really this pendulum swing. Very common in for parents to go between the permissive and the authoritarian style because they don't have an organized framework. They don't have an approach to use every day when those challenges come up. And so they either are being too focused on warmth and just making everything go perfectly, and then they use up all of their own resources and they're just completely burnt out and then they have nothing left to give, and then they just shift over to the authoritarian approach. And so what parents really can benefit from is learning a system, a framework. And going back to your question at the very beginning, this is why we want to avoid just taking every tip off the internet and trying it all, because it's only going to get you so far. It might help you solve today's problem, but then what do you do tomorrow? How do you replicate that when your child's a little older? So if you have a framework, then it changes your entire approach to parenting. And this is what I, you know, I'm sort of a uh type A, get really deeply immersed into something in a very organized person. And so I definitely benefited from a framework. And I find that a number of parents who are this sort of intellectual type, I think a lot of the parents listening to your podcast would would appreciate this concept of an organized approach. And so I sat down one day and I said, okay, what's going well in my parenting and why is it going well? And so I came up with a system that involved five categories. And these five categories are where I feel if any parent puts their effort, they're going to see meaningful outcomes, meaningful change in their parent-child relationship, meaningful change in their child's behavior, in their child's social emotional development. And so we have these five categories. So communication is the first one. And that's everything from the actual words you say, your presence about it, your nonverbals, the values that you express to your child, how you set up expectations. So it's really setting yourself up for success in how you communicate with your child. So when you have a request as simple as putting shoes on or going back to bath, that it's actually complied with more much more often than not if you use these communication strategies. And a lot of that is based in some core psychology stuff that's not advanced, not PhD level, like stuff you may have learned in a high school introcyte class. Communication stuff, personalized to you, parenting consistency. Here you're setting your child up for success. And here we're talking about things as basic as making sure that we have an adequate amount of sleep and a really effective bedtime routine. Because bedtime routine, if you have a smooth bedtime routine, life is so much easier for the whole family. And talking about the regularity of your meals, talking about the flow of your day, all these consistency things that add up over time to help to create a much more regulated child so that they're much more able to get through the day without having these tantrums and meltdowns and standoffs. So consistency. Choices and checkpoints. This is where we're giving our children autonomy. We're using choice appropriately. And that's going to look different for a one-year-old than a seven-year-old than a teenager. And so we're learning about developmental stages. That's the checkpoints part. So where's your child along this developmental stage? And how do we navigate choices based on that? Consequences. So once you've learned to effectively communicate with your child, you're setting them for up for success with communication or with consistency strategies, and you're using choices appropriately so they have autonomy. Then when you do encounter these problems, because they don't just go away, but sometimes you do encounter these standoff type moments, then you know what to do about them. And I have a series of sort of a tiered consequences approach to use in different situations so that you can lovingly enforce boundaries. So you're maintaining the relationship, but also maintaining your role as the loving authority leader in the family. And then finally, the missing piece that I struggled with for years actually, because I was very focused on sort of the uh child development aspect and the behavioral management aspect. And then similar to what you're saying, with that sense of just the chaos and it's overwhelming. And oh, now I'm I'm gonna pivot in the other direction, depending on what's gonna sway. So this is where I integrate what I call check yourself strategies. And honestly, these go back to things that I learned in grad school. I worked with a number of vets at the VA hospital in San Diego and taught them anger management. Those strategies are in my course because the emotions that you feel as a parent can really floor you sometimes and be shocking. Like, how can I be so upset over this child's behavior? But it but it really has a huge impact on you. And so when you learn some emotion regulation of your own and some anger management of your own, you can then be able to stay in that middle ground of amazing parenting so much more effectively and avoid that pendulum swing. So it's that missing piece that you're talking about, Ryan, that lets you stay in that middle ground, which is so important.

– When you lose your cool

SPEAKER_00 14:37

Yeah, I need that missing piece. I went a little uh Bobby night uh this weekend, like not even kidding, because my my kid broke my hundred-inch TV. Um and it was, yeah, it's a it's a tough pill to swallow. And it's one of the like I know, you know, I have a five, you know, almost a five-year-old now, so it's like she went through that phase too where I was always like apprehensive, like please don't, you know, like I just you know, I kind of took it for granted, like, oh it's not gonna happen. And I'm like, oh my god, it happened. And like I just like I I lost, absolutely lost Michael.

SPEAKER_01 15:07

And it happens, it happens.

SPEAKER_00 15:10

Like I feel obviously very, very stupid. Obviously damaged relationships, and the kids probably were like, oh my god, dad like turned into Hulk. But um, yeah, no, and that's the last one that I just wanted to kind of focus on the check yourself, because I'm like, that is the one, at least for myself, is the one that that thalls out of balance the most. And it's like when things are going well, the kids are good, and you know, they're behaving, all that, like it's easy to be a parent. Like it really is. Like, I I get overconfident, I'm like, oh, I got this. We could probably have another three, you know what I mean? Like I kind of get into that mentality, but then like, you know, when there's a day like that when your kids like breaking your TV and you know, my daughter threw something at me this weekend because she's on the spectrum, and so you know, we I was I talked about that question before, you know, escalating um a meltdown. And I was the enforcer in that situation, and I actually escalated it into the point where she kind of got like physical with me, and then you know, it's kind of like one of those situations, and so like I obviously I didn't handle both of those the best way, and I'm I'm saying this for my audience to give you a little bit of vulnerability and let you know that, like, hey, even people that you know, this is my 30th episode or so, and like even people that are dedicating their time to be better parents, that you know, I've had two kids, I've been a teacher, like I, you know, I have a lot of experience with kids. Like, you still lose your cool, you still like fail constantly, and it's just about like picking yourself back up, reflecting on all this. So, I think that the framework that you just explained is exactly what people need because there's so many aspects to it. Like, you talked about bedtime routine. I mean, that literally could just be a whole show in itself because there's so many intricacies about it, especially, you know, uh, you know, every kid's different, and it's like, you know, my my one-year-old's starting to gain the system and try to like, you know, he knows that like if he can pick out like book after book after book after book that like he can stay up later. And then my daughter is just like, she'll throw every excuse out the book, too, of like, oh, I don't know how to sleep, or you know, like, oh, there's monsters in my bed. I need to sleep with you, mom and dad. And so it's like, oh my god, this huge cycle. I I feel like I need a PhD sometimes. But it's good that we we have somebody on the show with a PhD who can kind of break this down for us and give us like the simplified, you know, digestible blueprint for what we can kind of do and not rely on those Instagram mom influencers. Yeah.

– Amazing vs. perfect

SPEAKER_01 17:33

Many of them are wonderful, so I definitely don't want to knock them. But um uh before we move on, Ryan, I just wanted to touch on what you're talking about. Here um you uh brought up a really good point that you know we all I don't know any parent who has never had a moment that they regretted in their parenting where they lost their cool, flipped their lid, and said the wrong thing. It's just part of parenting, right? And so I'm not here to shame anybody for that. And I never want people to confuse amazing parenting with perfect parenting because we are not striving for perfect parenting. Amazing parenting came from the term came from this concept of modeling, Albert Bendura's social learning theory. And if you're at the playground and you're looking at parents who are interacting with their children and you're saying, wow, like that's a really beautiful interaction. They seem to have this calm presence, their kids listen to them, they seem to have a loving relationship. How do I get that? And that I wrote a blog post years and years ago, and that's where this idea of amazing parenting came from. It's like go to the playground, see who you admire in their parenting. They're amazing parents. How can you pull from that and replicate that in your own parenting? And then it kind of morphed into this idea of becoming intentional in your parenting. And so amazing parents are not perfect parents, they're intentional parents who come in with this goal every day to do the best they can to stay in this authoritative parenting lane and to try to stay away from the permissive side and stay away from the authoritarian side and just do your best to stay in the middle. And the the tools that I empower them with are the five C's. And so within each of the five C's, there are strategies. And by the end of my Better Behavior Blueprint course, parents come out feeling like, okay, any major issue that comes up in my parenting, I can take a beat. I can think through the five C's. Okay, what am I gonna use right now? What am I gonna pull from? It gives you this organized framework. So you're not just randomly out of nowhere, how do I deal with this? Instead, you're saying, okay, what communication strategies work here? Okay, how's consistency playing? Do I need a consequence? And so they think through in that way. And it just, it just makes it more manageable. So it's not that overwhelming chaos that parenting really can feel like. I was a stay-at-home mom for 14 years, Ryan, with four kids. I definitely get that feeling by the end of the day of just being exhausted and like, I don't have much left in my bucket, but I'm gonna do my best to stay in this middle lane.

SPEAKER_00 19:56

Yeah, it's sometimes it. And that works too. That's perfect.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Yeah, nobody should ever feel like they have to stay home or they have to work. You find the balance that works for you. As long as you use a reputable daycare provider and have some consistency, it's absolutely the research supports. It's just fine to have kids go to daycare. It was just my choice to stay home with mine.

SPEAKER_00 20:13

Yeah, no, totally. And that makes sense. I'm hearing a lot more about that too, with um some other guests I've had on of yeah, no, it's crazy. And it seems like it's happening sooner and sooner. And um, you know, even if you can if you bring in the social media aspect of kids and you know, kind of like having cell phones, it seems like that's the norm. Is like, you know, a fifth grader and not and be an above is like they're usually getting cell phones or at least access to some sort of social media platform. And, you know, what are what are they saying on there? What are what are kids seeing? It's just like this whole, I don't know. I'm trying to prep myself for when I get there because I'm like honestly, like I'm a little concerned about

– Social media & kids (forward look)

SPEAKER_00 20:50

how I even handle that stage.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

The best tip I have for you on the social media front is make a pact with your child's friends because their closest friends are going to have the biggest impact on when they start asking for a phone and whether that's phone gonna have is gonna have access to social media. And the more that you can have your little community, and it'll be a different community for each child, just whoever they're friends with towards the end of elementary school. If you can get on board with just their handful of closest friends, you can put that off

– Acknowledge & Respond method

SPEAKER_01 21:18

much longer.

SPEAKER_00 21:18

Because real quickly, I know I know we're out of time here, and I'm so sorry for going a little over. Um, but I want to I wanted you to walk us through real quickly the acknowledge and respond method of the three two thank you. Um, how would that play out in a heated moment?

SPEAKER_01 21:32

Okay, so acknowledge and respond is more effective before a heated moment. It's really a prevention strategy. So acknowledge and respond is in a communication strategy. So parents often complain, my kids not listening to me. They're just ignoring my request, they're not doing what I want. And sometimes the kids are actually ignoring the requests, and sometimes the kids haven't actually processed the request because they're in the middle of a task and they don't have the attention span to even process what their parents are saying. So if you're actively focused on playing a video game or watching TV or building a block tower that is getting really high, kids have a limited attention span. And so if you say from the kitchen, time to clean up those blocks now, and maybe, maybe they don't respond at all, or maybe they say, uh-huh. And then three minutes later you go in, why aren't these blocks cleaned up? That's not a kid not listening a problem. That's a miscommunication problem. And so acknowledge and respond is simply a process where parents, especially the younger children under age six, seven, but continuing up till 10 or so, depending on your child and their attention capacity, where they are going to change the way that they make requests. So they're going to approach their child as closely as possible, not holler from another room. They're going to get to their eye level, they're going to make eye contact, and they're going to make their requests. They're going to say it as a statement, not a question, not, hey, do you think we should clean up these blocks now? Time to clean up the blocks now. So very clearly communicate this is a request, not a question. And have your child, if they, if they might immediately say, okay, I'll clean up the blocks now. That's not common. They usually say, okay, and they're still focused on their blocks. So you have you look at your child, you say, please acknowledge and respond. And you teach them what that means. It takes a few times for them to learn. But what they learn is that they need to acknowledge, okay, mom, I heard you. I I heard you ask that I want maybe you want me to clean up the blocks now. And then you respond by committing, I'm gonna do that right now, or I'm gonna put on two more blocks and then I'm going to do it. So they learn this process to let you know that A, they heard you, B, they processed it, and C, they're going to verbally commit to it. And so now they're far more likely to actually listen to you and do what you want them to do. Simple communication strategy that makes a huge difference in just daily stress levels.

– Find Dr. Lindsay + Better Behavior Blueprint

SPEAKER_00 23:47

Yeah, I could see how that could stop the heated argument from even happening of like, hey, how many times did I tell you to clean up those blocks or did you hear me? Or you know, that kind of talk that our parents passed on to us. And sometimes I think it's cool to say because I'm like, oh, I remember when I was a kid and my parents said, because I said so kind of thing, or whatever. But yeah, I know it's not effective, and I know like, you know, it again, those interventions we can put in place and those just better communication aspects, like like the three, two, cue, um, acknowledge and respond. I mean, that's that's that's genius, just to kind of like it kind of prevents things from escalating into a heated argument or into like, you know, especially with my my child on, you know, on the spectrum, you know, like that's that's one of those things where that could definitely evolve into a huge meltdown or something like grand scale, maybe an hour or two, like like thing. And where can our listeners go to find the better behavior blueprint and get into your ecosystem?

SPEAKER_01 24:44

I would love to share with everybody my social handles are at Dr. Lindsay Emerson. And then I have a free workshop that really goes into depth in some of the concepts we touched on today, and then talks a little bit about that better behavior blueprint program. And you can find it at dr lindsayemerson.com forward slash workshop.