In this episode, Tanya talks about radical acceptance, one of the four foundational pillars under low-demand parenting, and why it has to come before we ever try to lower a demand.

This is not acceptance of the surface behaviour. It isacceptance of the root belief underneath it, the belief about how things should be, and about the child we thought we were going to raise.In This Episode

• Why the hardest part of parenting a neurodivergent child is often the unlearning, not the child
• What radical acceptance actually means, and where the word radical comes from
• Why a demand only becomes a pressure when it ismeasured against an expectation
• The grief of losing the imagined parenting journey, and why that grief is not a sign of failure
• How a demand can go quiet on the outside whilestaying loud on the inside
• Why good has quietly come to mean least disruptive in parenting culture, and what that costs our kids
• A gentle starting practice: noticing the wordshould
• A reframe from Kristy Forbes for finding what islivable right now. "If this was the new normal fromhere on, what would I need to put in place to actually make this livable, right now?" Not about your whole life. Just the one demand or moment that has felt hardest to accept lately.

Mentioned in This Episode

Marsha Linehan, DBT Skills Training Manual, thepsychologist who named radical acceptance as a distress tolerance skill

Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha (2004)

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, On Death and Dying (1969)

Kristy Forbes, Intune Pathways, for the reframeon making a season livable

Tanya's related Rehumanising parenting Substack piece, Does Low-Demand Parenting Mean No Boundaries?

Next Steps

You came for your child. Stay for yourself too. The low-demand parenting arc continues week by week inside From Burnout to Balance, the membership home for this work.