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As a parent, you may often find yourself asking how to stop your child from doing something or other. Perhaps they are hitting or hurting others, not listening, or falling apart in response to something that feels completely disproportionate. It’s natural to want to stop the behaviour and prevent it from happening again. But in moments when your child’s behaviour is most testing, it might be more helpful to pause and understand what might be happening beneath the behaviour.

When your child was a small baby, you were probably already co-regulating with them without even realising it. It happens in the tiny, everyday things you do almost without thinking — rocking, singing, responding to their sounds, softening your voice, matching their expressions or gently soothing them when they become overwhelmed. Your baby doesn’t have the capacity to say to you, “Everything feels a bit too much right now!” Instead, they communicate through movement, facial

There are moments in parenting when we get it wrong. We lose our patience, misunderstand what our child needs or realise afterwards that our own feelings shaped our response. These moments can leave parents carrying a great deal of guilt, particularly when they care deeply about being emotionally available and responsive to their child. It can be easy to assume that a strong parent–child relationship depends on getting these moments right, but research into parent–child inter