Your Child’s Hardest Moments Are Actually Building Connection. Here’s why.
There are moments in motherhood that don’t look anything like connection. Your baby has been crying for what feels like forever, and nothing you’re doing is working. Your toddler is lying on the kitchen floor because you cut the banana in half. Your three-year-old screams, “GO AWAY!” while simultaneously losing it because you walked away. Your four-year-old hits you. Your five-year-old falls apart because their friend got to be first.
These are not the moments most of us picture when we think about building a close relationship with our children. They look messy, loud, unproductive, and sometimes completely absurd. And if you are someone who is very good at solving problems, these moments can feel especially hard because your strategic intelligence immediately goes to work. How do I stop the crying? How do I get her off the floor? How do I teach him not to hit? How do I make sure she doesn’t become a kid who falls apart every time she doesn’t get her way?
These aren’t bad questions. But they may not be the questions the moment needs first. Because some moments need solving. Others need staying.
Some of the most chaotic moments of early motherhood give us an opportunity to practice something many of us were never taught: staying connected to another person when neither of us feels particularly comfortable. That is relational intelligence.
What connection actually looks like
Connection does not mean making your child happy. It doesn’t mean giving them what they want. And it doesn’t mean having endless patience, speaking in a perfectly calm voice, or turning every tantrum into a beautiful parenting moment.
Connection is much simpler than that. It is our willingness and capacity to stay in relationship with our child while reality is not going the way either of us wants it to. And when we begin to see connection this way, some very ordinary moments in motherhood start to look different.
Your baby won’t stop crying
You’ve fed her, changed her, rocked her, walked around the house, and checked everything you can think of. She is still crying. Strategic intelligence says, There must be something else I haven’t figured out.
And sometimes there is. Babies have needs, and of course we respond to them. But there are also moments when there simply isn’t another answer available right now. Relational intelligence allows you to shift from I need to make this stop to I can be here with you while this is hard.
Maybe you hold her against your chest, feel your own feet on the floor, and slow your breathing. You notice how uncomfortable it is to hear her cry without immediately treating your discomfort as evidence that you’re doing something wrong. She may still cry. But she is crying with you. That matters.
Your toddler is melting down over something ridiculous
You peeled the banana. They wanted to peel it. Now they are sobbing as though something terrible has happened.
From an adult perspective, this makes absolutely no sense, so strategic intelligence wants to explain. “We have another banana.” “You asked me to peel it.” “It’s okay.” “Look, I’ll put it back together.”
But your child isn’t asking you to solve the banana. Their nervous system is overwhelmed. Connection might sound more like, “Ohhh. You really wanted to do that yourself.” And then you stop talking.
You don’t need to convince them that this isn’t a big deal, and you don’t have to manufacture a new banana. You are simply letting their experience be real without making it your job to eliminate it.
Your three-year-old doesn’t want you to leave
You’re trying to get out the door for work or drop them at preschool, and suddenly they’re wrapped around your leg. You have somewhere to be, so your instinct may be to reassure them. “You love school! I’ll be back so soon. You’re going to have so much fun.”
Again, none of this is wrong. But connection may mean allowing the harder truth into the room: “You really don’t want me to leave today.”
You can hold the boundary and stay connected to their experience at the same time. “I am going to work, and I know saying goodbye feels really hard this morning.” You don’t have to make them agree with the separation before you leave. You can trust that they can be upset and okay.
Your four-year-old hits you
This is where connection is often misunderstood. Connection does not mean allowing behavior that isn’t okay. Your child swings at you, and you stop their hand. “I won’t let you hit me.” That’s a boundary.
But notice what happens next. Strategic intelligence may want to immediately teach. “We don’t hit.” “How would you feel if someone hit you?” “You need to use your words.” There will be time for teaching. But first, relational intelligence asks you to see the child underneath the behavior. “You are really angry.”
You can stop the behavior without disconnecting from the child. The message becomes: This behavior isn’t okay. And you and I are still okay.
That distinction is enormous.
Your five-year-old falls apart when they don’t get their way
They lost the game. Their sibling got the blue cup. Someone else got to go first. And suddenly you’re watching a reaction that seems wildly out of proportion to what happened.
You might feel an urge to toughen them up. “You can’t always win.” “This isn’t something to cry about.” “You need to learn how to be a good sport.” Those lessons matter, but they are much easier for a child to learn when their nervous system is actually available for learning.
So perhaps the first move is simply, “You really wanted to win.” Not because losing is terrible or because you’re going to change the outcome, but because disappointment is part of being human and your child is learning what to do with it. You are showing them that they don’t have to get rid of a difficult feeling in order to be okay.
Connection doesn’t always look connected
This may be one of the biggest misunderstandings we have about connected parenting. Sometimes connection looks like cuddling on the couch or laughing together at dinner. And sometimes it looks like sitting on the kitchen floor beside a screaming three-year-old while dinner gets cold. Sometimes it looks like holding a boundary while your child tells you they hate you. Sometimes it looks like saying, “I got too frustrated and yelled. I’m sorry. Can we try again?”
The goal isn’t to create a childhood without frustration, disappointment, anger, separation, conflict, or tears. We couldn’t do that even if we tried. The opportunity is to help our children learn something much more useful: hard moments don’t have to threaten our relationships.
We can be disappointed and connected. We can be angry and connected. We can be uncertain and connected. We can disagree and remain connected. And when we lose that connection, as every parent and child will, we can find our way back.
This is where fluency begins
Many ambitious, capable women have spent years strengthening strategic intelligence. We know how to analyze, anticipate, organize, plan, execute, and solve. Those capacities are extraordinary strengths. But motherhood also asks us to develop another kind of intelligence.
Relational intelligence is the capacity to stay engaged with reality as it is, especially when it’s uncertain, uncomfortable, or different from what we expected, so we can choose responses that align with our values and the relationship we’re trying to build.
When we can move intentionally between strategic intelligence and relational intelligence, we become more fluent. We don’t have to stop being problem solvers. We simply become better at recognizing when a moment needs solving and when it needs staying.
And sometimes the moment that looks like everything is falling apart is actually the moment your child is learning that their feelings can be big and they can still be safe, that their parent can say no and still love them, that you can get angry with each other and find your way back, that they don’t have to feel good in order to be okay, and that your relationship can hold hard things.
That isn’t a failure of connection. It’s how connection is built.
