The episode of the Tell Me It Will Be Okay podcast features an interview with New York–licensed psychologist and psychoanalyst Dr. Michael Schwartzman about his book The Anxious Parent: Freeing Yourself from the Stresses and Fears of Parenting and how parents can separate their own anxiety from their child’s needs through reflection and child-development awareness. Schwartzman discusses how modern parenting includes more unknowns, why consistency matters more than occasional “perfect” responses, and how children learn through experience, including useful failure, risk-taking, and independence. He shares personal stories of his own anxious parenting and explains how parents can avoid over-identifying with their child while still providing empathy and guidance. We discuss how “the problem is the point,” encouraging experimentation, tolerating discomfort, and authoring one’s own parenting based on values rather than quick-fix advice.

You can connect with Dr. Schwartzman and learn more about his books at his website, MichaelSchwartzmanPhD.com. He also mentions two books in his podcast. They are:

• The Blessing of a Skinned Knee: Raising Self-Reliant Children by Wendy Mogul PhD
• The Ordinary is Extraordinary: How Children Under Three Learn by Amy Laura Dobro and Leah Wallach

00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro

02:34 How Parenting Changed

06:00 Separating Parent vs Child Anxiety

07:40 Social Media Parenting Fixes

10:55 Consistency Over Perfection

12:50 Developmental Expectations

16:09 Shaping Child and World

17:59 Anxious Parent Origin Story

21:36 Time Travel and Triggers

27:03 Letting Kids Own Their Lives

28:35 Raising Kids to Leave

32:16 Learning Through Adjustment

33:29 Letting Kids Struggle

35:19 Confidence Through Parenting

37:38 Working With Resistance

40:16 Benign Versus Harmful Neglect

43:05 Try It Your Way

43:52 Parenting Resources

46:39 School Psychologist Role

48:15 Becoming A Parent

52:56 Parenting Is Messy

55:06 Problem Is The Point

58:15 Author Your Parenting

01:01:03 Learning Is The Point

01:03:15 Final Takeaways