Your Kids Don’t Suck: Cultivating Closeness with your Kids through Non-Coercive, Conscious Parenting

S3EP23 — Content Advisory: This episode discusses healing from childhood sexual abuse. While co-host Cara is on maternity leave, Rythea welcomes in Season 4 with a solo episode. Rythea weaves in and out of her horrific upbringing, her loving relationship with her daughter, the temporal news of the release of the Epstein files and how it is impacting her at this time. As she shares more about her abusive childhood and how she copes, she links her experiences to parenting and helping other parents.

Not only does Rythea draw parallels to details within the Epstein files to her own life, she also offers a bright light of hope, showing that unfreezing past wounds can—and inevitably will—lead to a more free, full, and beautiful experience of life. Rythea doesn’t sugar coat how difficult recalling suppressed memories has been (which are still happening to this day), but amidst a deeply difficult topic of abuse comes a passionate and inspired message of healing.

In this loving and generous episode, Rythea talks to you like a friend, allowing her vulnerability to lead her (and you) through questions and answers that cut to the core of what it means to be conscious, awake, and fighting the oppressive systems we live in, as a parent and as a person.

Key Topics

• Unfreezing past wounds
• Suppressed memories
• Healing from a traumatic childhood
• Breaking the cycle to generational abuse

Parenting Resources

• Vivek Patel
• Facebook Parent-Support group
• Rythea’s parent-mentor sessions
• Cara's Relationship Toolkit
• Rythea's Support Material

Support YKDS: We (Rythea and Cara) are white, cis-gender, straight, middle-class women living with financial and societal privilege. Our perspectives are limited. We are committed to featuring guests from diverse lived experiences to reflect the realities of a broader parenting community. 25% of proceeds from this podcast go to creators of color who have shaped our work.

Rate & Review: Your feedback helps us reach more families who are parenting with presence, resistance, and love. Let us know what this episode stirred in you.

S3EP22 — We are joined by Amy Niemczyk, a parent (just like you!) whose family dynamic has drastically shifted since adopting the non-coercive, collaborative parenting philosophy. This is an excellent episode for parents who are searching for concrete tools for navigating kids’ physical expression (like biting) and resolving sibling struggles.

Amy and her partner are the parents to four young children who have been on this journey for just over three years. Amy shares how she struggled with letting go of screen time control as her seven year old autonomously navigated balance, and how she turned toward love and not shame to work through weeks of her three year old pinching her. Her stories go deeper than the parent-child dynamic, seeping into the sibling relationships as well.

Rythea and Cara are moved by Amy’s earnest and heart-felt admission of the changes she’s experienced with her children: how removing authority from her parenting paradigm revealed a deep love both with her children and within herself.

Key topics:

• The tornado faze
• Guiding kids toward their autonomy
• Collaborative parenting as a model for repair after rupture
• Non-coercive parenting as a deep act of self love and personal healing

Resources mentioned:

• Vivek Patel
• Rythea’s Facebook Parent-Support group
• Rythea’s parent-mentor sessions
• Cara's Relationship Toolkit

Support YKDS

We (Rythea and Cara) are white, cis-gender, straight, middle-class women living with financial and societal privilege. Our perspectives are limited. We are committed to featuring guests from diverse lived experiences to reflect the realities of a broader parenting community. 25% of proceeds from this podcast go to creators of color who have shaped our work.

Rate & Review: Your feedback helps us reach more families who are parenting with presence, resistance, and love. Let us know what this episode stirred in you.

S3EP21 — How do attachment wounds impact our ability to see our children as separate from us, and even from our own parents? We discuss the incredible, unconscious urge to replay our attachment pains onto our children, and what it takes to recognize (and change) those impulses within the non-coercive, collaborative approach.

Join Rythea and Cara as they get vulnerable about their personal attachment histories and current struggles as parents. They go deep about self-love and the challenge to heal after a childhood of broken attachments. Rythea offers a powerful parenting tool she calls “The Psychic Apology” where parents can take accountability through intention and visualization. Cara discusses life with a free-feeling toddler and how to recognize covert blocks to healthy attachment.

Key Topics:

• Attachment to our caregivers is a survival need
• Can we REALLY heal our attachment trauma?
• Attachment styles and its relation to Internal Family Systems

Resources Mentioned:

• The Will to Change by Bell Hooks
• Vivek’s Parent-Support group
• Rythea’s Facebook Parent-Support group:

Support YKDS

Book a mentor session with Rythea

Explore Cara's Relationship Toolkit

We (Rythea and Cara) are white, cis-gender, straight, middle-class women living with financial and societal privilege. Our perspectives are limited. We are committed to featuring guests from diverse lived experiences to reflect the realities of a broader parenting community. 25% of proceeds from this podcast go to creators of color who have shaped our work.

Rate & Review: Your feedback helps us reach more families who are parenting with presence, resistance, and love. Let us know what this episode stirred in you.

S1 EP7 re-release — We dive into a Q&A format addressing two thought-provoking questions from our listeners.

Question one comes from a non-parent who comes to terms with the ways in which their own parents hurt them. Many of us grapple with the realization that our parents may have unintentionally or intentionally hurt us in the past, but the decision to confront them as an adult is a complex one. We share our insights on whether it's the right time for one listener to tackle this emotionally charged issue. Drawing from our experience as therapists, we discuss the potential benefits and risks of such a conversation.

Question two, we discuss another listener’s question around effective ways to apologize and reconnect with your child after moments of rupture where we feel we’ve acted out of alignment with our values. We provide practical tips for repairing the parent-child relationship and explore what a sincere, relationship-focused, and deeply meaningful apology looks and sounds like.

Stay tuned for more Q&A episodes in Season 4, and write us your questions at [email protected]

Key Topics:

• Confronting parents about past harm: timing, risks, and potential benefits
• Navigating the complexity of deciding whether or not to bring up a painful history with your parents
• Therapist insights on healing past wounds without re-traumatizing yourself
• Repairing connection with your child after rupture
• What a meaningful, values-aligned apology to your child sounds like in practice
• Practical strategies for rebuilding trust and modeling accountability between parent and child

Support YKDS https://buymeacoffee.com/yourkidsdontsuck

Book a mentor session with Rythea https://calendly.com/rythea

Connect with Cara https://www.caratedstonetherapy.com/

We (Rythea and Cara) are white, cis-gender, straight, middle-class women living with financial and societal privilege. Our perspectives are limited. We are committed to featuring guests from diverse lived experiences to reflect the realities of a broader parenting community. 25% of proceeds from this podcast go to creators of color who have shaped our work.

Rate & Review: Your feedback helps us reach more families who are parenting with presence, resistance, and love. Let us know what this episode stirred in you.

S2 EP1 re-release: Let's talk coparenting relationships and collaborative parenting! Joined by Rythea's partner Will and Cara's husband Sanjay, the conversation unfolds into a heartfelt exploration of parenting dynamics and philosophies.

Sanjay and Will offer unique perspectives on parenting, bringing diverse backgrounds and value systems to the table. Together, they share their personal journeys into the realm of non-coercive parenting, shedding light on the challenges and triumphs encountered along the way. Listeners gain insight into the reasons behind Will and Sanjay's embrace of non-coercive parenting as a guiding philosophy. Drawing from their own experiences and upbringing, they reflect on how traditional parenting models shaped their worldview and the pivotal moments that led them to explore alternative approaches. You'll hear about the nuances of non-coercive parenting, with Will and Sanjay candidly discussing the toughest aspects of adopting this mindset.

From confronting societal norms to reconciling with their own upbringing, they offer a raw and honest portrayal of the obstacles faced on their journey. Tune in to this heartfelt and illuminating episode of YKDS to discover what it's like for non-mothers to parent in a way that challenges convention and nurtures connection!

Key Topics:

• What non-coercive parenting looks like within co-parenting relationships
• How traditional parenting models shape current parenting choices
• The pivotal moments that led Will and Sanjay to embrace non-coercive parenting
• Challenges of practicing non-coercive parenting in a society built on control
• Honest reflections on reconciling past experiences with new parenting philosophies
• Building connection and collaboration in parenting while resisting convention

Support YKDS https://buymeacoffee.com/yourkidsdontsuck

Book a mentor session with Rythea https://calendly.com/rythea

Connect with Cara https://www.caratedstonetherapy.com/

We (Rythea and Cara) are white, cis-gender, straight, middle-class women living with financial and societal privilege. Our perspectives are limited. We are committed to featuring guests from diverse lived experiences to reflect the realities of a broader parenting community. 25% of proceeds from this podcast go to creators of color who have shaped our work.

Rate & Review: Your feedback helps us reach more families who are parenting with presence, resistance, and love. Let us know what this episode stirred in you.

S3EP18 — Many parents who reject authoritarian parenting don’t have a clear model to follow. It can feel isolating, overwhelming, and exhausting—especially in a society that prioritizes punishment, control, and individualism over connection and collaboration.

In this confronting and compassion-filled episode, Rythea speaks with Yolanda Williams, an activist and single parent raising her neurodivergent child with intention, autonomy, and resistance at the core. Rythea asks about the connection between facism and childism during this moment in history, and Yolanda expertly breaks this down. How is our parenting directly related to fighting against or participating in fascist patterns?

Yolanda expands on the need for building a village—a local community that supports her child while also inviting her child to actively participate in building that community. She speaks about the moment she refused to let survival mode sever her bond with her child, how she is intentionally shaping her physical environments to support her values and her family’s needs, and how community-building has become part of her parenting practice.

Yolanda’s insightful vision weaves its way through this conversation as she talks about parenting an autistic and developmentally delayed child—and how conscious parenting looks different when collaboration cues are not available. She brings voice to the reality of being a Black, disabled, solo parent, and the ongoing work of balancing self-responsibility with survival, in an unsupportive social and political system.

Key Topics:

• Building intentional community as a parenting practice
• Parenting while disabled, solo, and under-resourced
• Refusing to let survival disconnect you from your child
• Creating physical spaces that reflect anti-oppressive values
• Conscious parenting with neurodivergent children
• Redefining the “village” as real, local, and reciprocal

Yolanda Williams is the founder of Parenting Decolonized, and is currently documenting her journey of building a farm.

Follow along Yolanda's farming journey https://www.youtube.com/@WildandFreeFamilyFarm

Listen to Parenting Decolonized podcast https://parentingdecolonized.com/podcast/

Support YKDS https://buymeacoffee.com/yourkidsdontsuck

Book a mentor session with Rythea https://calendly.com/rythea

Connect with Cara https://www.caratedstonetherapy.com/

We (Rythea and Cara) are white, cis-gender, straight, middle-class women living with financial and societal privilege. Our perspectives are limited. We are committed to featuring guests from diverse lived experiences to reflect the realities of a broader parenting community. 25% of proceeds from this podcast go to creators of color who have shaped our work.

Rate & Review: Your feedback helps us reach more families who are parenting with presence, resistance, and love. Let us know what this episode stirred in you.

S3EP17 — Disclaimer: This episode includes discussion of sensitive topics, including abuse, sexual abuse, and childhood sexual abuse. Although there are no explicit descriptions of child sexual abuse during the episode, please take care of yourself as you listen. If this content feels overwhelming or triggering, we encourage you to pause or take a break. Your safety and well-being matter more than anything we share here.

In this potent and deeply personal episode, Cara and Rythea sit down with Abigail Gunn, MsEd, LMHC, LPC, licensed therapist and founder of People Make Sense. Abigail is changing the way we talk about childhood trauma, dissociation, and recovery—with compassion, sharp clarity, and a commitment to truth.

This conversation explores how parenting can become a powerful catalyst for facing your trauma. Abigail shares how having children of her own helped surface repressed memories, and how her time in Al-Anon played a key role in awakening her from long-standing dissociation.

Rythea also shares her experience of retrieving her own repressed memories through dreams, writing, and reenactment in therapy. Together, Cara, Rythea, and Abby explore what happens when a child is forced to choose between their own humanity and the perceived humanity of the adults around them. They discuss how trauma shapes the developing brain, and how dissociation becomes a survival strategy that can last long into adulthood.

Key Topics:

• Childhood trauma as a profound and formative experience
• The myth of “false memory syndrome” and its negative impact on survivors
• Trauma as neurodiversity—and what it teaches us about the brain
• How trauma interrupts development and distorts the crucial stage of reality testing
• The weaponization of attachment, care, pleasure, and love performed by perpetrators
• Parenting as a trigger and pathway to memory retrieval
• Reclaiming self-worth by placing responsibility on abusers
• The body’s role in healing and bringing forth memories

Abigail shares how recovering memories of her own childhood sexual abuse led her to challenge dominant narratives in psychology, including the myth of “False Memory Syndrome.” She brings a fierce softness to the conversation—grounded in lived experience—and reminds us that trauma is not a disorder, but a normal response to harm.

Get to know Abigail Gunn and People Make Sense https://peoplemakesense.com

Follow Abigail Gunn on Instagram & TikTok @people.make.sense

Support YKDS https://buymeacoffee.com/yourkidsdontsuck

Support the podcast: https://buymeacoffee.com/yourkidsdontsuck

We (Rythea and Cara) are white, cis-gender, straight, middle-class women living with financial and societal privilege. Our perspectives are limited and do not reflect the realities of all our listeners. We’re committed to featuring guests who differ in gender, race, class, ability, sexuality, and lived experience in order to broaden this conversation and reflect more voices. 25% of proceeds from this podcast go to creators of color who have shaped our growth and healing.

Rate & Review: Moved by this episode? Leave a review and help us reach more parents and survivors walking this path. Healing is possible—and no, your kids don’t suck.

S3EP16 —Cara and Rythea dig into how hypocritical they feel as parent advocates when they fall so short on their own commitment to staying loving. They have a good laugh and some deep process about how childhood wounds and unconscious aspects of self show up when they least expect it.

They explore specific situations where they have worked hard to be different, but keep getting triggered into the same kind of reactivity. They brainstorm (and unravel) how the umbrella of non-coercive, collaborative philosophy keeps them grounded and afloat, even as they make constant mistakes.

Cara comes clean about the bedtime triggers she faces with her daughter and how demoralizing her trauma responses make her feel. Rythea exposes how a mother-wound with her own parent blocks her from allowing her child to individuate gracefully.

Together, they ask: how does the parenting approach we use bring us back to our hearts and playful connection with our children through the long haul? What does it mean to model a process for our children when we’re the ones unraveling?

Key Topics:

• Feeling powerless or threatened by your child’s autonomy
• Parenting from your wounded parts
• Modeling emotional processing in real time
• Creating micro-moments of connection, even in rupture
• Honoring your child’s developing identity and values
• The tension between belief and behavior in parenting

If you’ve ever wondered, Am I even doing this right?, this episode is for you. Cara and Rythea remind us that real parenting is messy—and that returning to connection, especially after rupture, is where the healing begins.

Tools & Resources Mentioned:

• The EARS acronym: Empathize, Affirm, Relate, Support/Solve
• Parts Work (Internal Family Systems)
• Co-counseling techniques for emotional processing

Book a parent mentor session with Rythea: https://rythea.com/for-parents

Check out Cara’s Relationship Toolkit: https://www.caratedstonetherapy.com/your-relationship-toolkit

Support YKDS https://buymeacoffee.com/yourkidsdontsuck

It’s important and essential to put our voices (Rythea and Cara) in a context. We are two white, cis-gender, straight, middle-class women living with financial and societal privilege. Because of this, our perspectives are limited and do not reflect the realities of all our listeners. This podcast will feature guests with expertise around conscious parenting who differ in gender, race, class, abilities, sexual orientation, and histories from us, to broaden the conversation and reflect the lives of as many people as possible. 25% of the proceeds of this podcast will go to creators of color who have been mentors and influences on our work and in our growth as parents.

Rate & Review

Share your thoughts! Your feedback helps us reach more parents looking to embrace collaborative, non-coercive parenting.

S3EP15 — How is our parenting an act of resistance or compliance to larger systems that harm? How do we know if we are unconsciously carrying out patterns of oppression in our families? What does it look like to step out of what is expected of us and parent from ancestral values?

In this episode, Leslie Priscilla shares how being raised by two Mexican immigrants and parenting her own bicultural children inspired her to create Latinx Parenting. She opens up about how parenting in the context of colonization and white supremacy has forced many families of the global majority to adapt their parenting in ways that stray from ancestral wisdom. We talk about how parenting philosophies like attachment parenting and homeschooling are often seen as white-dominated spaces, even though these practices existed in many cultures before colonization disrupted them.

Leslie Priscilla is a Queer Neurodivergent Non-Black Xicana/Child of Mexican Immigrants with Rarámuri lineage. She’s a mama of three, a certified Parent Coach with over 16 years of experience, and the founder of Latinx Parenting—a movement rooted in the liberation of familias through nonviolence, reparenting, and ancestral healing.

In this conversation, Leslie gets personal about how she has been raising her children and how her family follows a flow of collaboration and organic learning. She brings us into the heart of nonviolent parenting, based on the work of Ruth Beaglehole, and reminds us that "at the root of every behavior is a need that is seeking to be met."

Key Topics:

• Colonization’s impact on parenting across generations
• The erasure of ancestral caregiving practices
• Nonviolent parenting as liberation
• Parenting as an act of social and racial justice
• Understanding every behavior as a need trying to be met
• Parenting as a portal to self-healing and collective growth

This episode is a warm, powerful call to the collective healing work needed to liberate future generations—one parent, one family, one kid, at a time.

Get to know Leslie Priscilla and Latinx Parenting https://latinxparenting.org/

Follow Leslie Priscilla on IG @latinxparenting

Support YKDS https://buymeacoffee.com/yourkidsdontsuck

It’s important and essential to put our voices (Rythea and Cara) in a context. We are two white, cis-gender, straight, middle-class women living with financial and societal privilege. Because of this, our perspectives are limited and do not reflect the realities of all our listeners. This podcast will feature guests with expertise around conscious parenting who differ in gender, race, class, abilities, sexual orientation, and histories from us, to broaden the conversation and reflect the lives of as many people as possible. 25% of the proceeds of this podcast will go to creators of color who have been mentors and influences on our work and in our growth as parents.

Rate & Review

Share your thoughts! Your feedback helps us reach more parents looking to embrace collaborative, non-coercive parenting.

S3EP14 — We heard you and you want to know: How the hell do you collaboratively and consciously parent when you have multiple kids?! Non-coercive, conscious mom-to-five, Tanisha Henderson is here to answer this question and SO MUCH MORE.

The episode begins with Tanisha sharing her personal journey to becoming a conscious, collaborative parent. She discusses her inspirations, pivotal moments, and the transformative experiences that led her to embrace non-coercive parenting as her guiding philosophy. She shares how she has come to see each of her kids as a whole person, how she supports the relationships between her children, and guides the flow of a busy and focused household. Tanisha homeschools so her skills are especially impressive when talking about the dynamics of learning and growth. There is no way you will not learn something uplifting when listening to this episode!

Tanisha's work extends beyond her own family - listen as she shares her experiences working with other Black families who face specific struggles and triggers that she is has tackled personally and now professionally. We were utterly moved and uplifted by Tanisha’s passion for her purpose and we hope you’ll feel the same!

Find Tanisha on her Facebook page: "Kid Advice with Tanisha Henderson" https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100095308454472

Support YKDS https://buymeacoffee.com/yourkidsdontsuck

It’s important and essential to put our voices (Rythea and Cara) in a context. We are two white, cis-gender, straight, middle-class women living with financial and societal privilege. Because of this, our perspectives are limited and do not reflect the realities of all our listeners. This podcast will feature guests with expertise around conscious parenting who differ in gender, race, class, abilities, sexual orientation, and histories from us, to broaden the conversation and reflect the lives of as many people as possible. 25% of the proceeds of this podcast will go to creators of color who have been mentors and influences on our work and in our growth as parents.

Rate & Review

Share your thoughts! Your feedback helps us reach more parents looking to embrace collaborative, non-coercive parenting.