This week my guest is Iris Chen.

Iris is a writer, unschooler, and founder of the Untigering movement. After starting out as a hardcore tiger mother, she began to untiger when she saw all the negative effects of her authoritarian parenting. Now she’s on a mission to empower others families by promoting mental health, peaceful parenting, and educational freedom for children. She recently moved back to California with her husband and two sons after 16 years of living in China. 

Takeaways from the show

• Tiger parenting and its cultural meaning
• Iris’ experience growing up and how that played into her parenting
• How patterns of how you were parented can show up into the subconscious
• Shifting to a different way of parenting
• Doing the inner work so your relationships with your kids can improve
• Holding space for your emotions 
• Learning to filter assumptions about children and parenting through a lens of love and respect and anti-oppression
• The swing from demanding parenting to permissive parenting
• Leaning into trust and connection 
• Having a positive way to manage dysregulation
• Taking apart the baggage around making mistakes in parenting
• Making mistakes is an opportunity to model ownership, responsibility and humility
• Holding mutual respect in the relationships with your children
• Bringing awareness to the fact that children are worthy of honor and dignity and certain rights

For more show notes, including transcripts, visit our website here.

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