“I had to love her enough to let her hate me.” It was a stunning and very wise thing that Carol Burnett said to the ladies on The View. Burnett said she was scared of her daughter — of saying the wrong thing, making her angry, pushing her away. (She was talking about her late daughter Carrie’s three-year struggle with addiction when she was a teen.)

While Burnett’s situation was extreme, her experience isn’t unusual. Scared, stressed-out parenting has become epidemic: many parents today feel overwhelmed and under-adequate. Always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Navigating life with kids as a series of crisis management incidents and tactical maneuvers. Not only is that an unpleasant way to live, research shows that parental stress reduces children’s wellbeing. A powerful antidote for stress is action, when it cultivates mastery. (more…)