Adapt
This week I invite adapting with compassion instead of compliance as we parent.
Dear fellow parent,
Welcome back. Whether you’re arriving today from a place of peace or from the edge of overwhelm, I want you to know this space is here for you. We are here for each other. Even just reading these words is an act of care. That matters.
We are continuing to travel through the Lead Together framework—each step inviting us deeper into presence, purpose, and relationship.
Today we return to Adapt.
In my last Adapt newsletter we explored how adaptation rooted in resilience helps us bend without breaking. Today, I want to invite you into another kind of adaptation:
Adapting with Compassion.
This kind of adaptation doesn’t just help us survive the systems around us. It helps us to not let the system turn us into someone our child doesn’t recognize. It helps us stay in relationship—with our children, with our own hearts, with the parts of life that ache and still ask for tenderness.
Sometimes adapting with compassion looks like doing less. Sometimes it means saying no to what everyone else is saying yes to. Sometimes it’s as quiet as holding space for a meltdown instead of rushing to stop it.
It is not about surrendering to the system. It’s about creating small ruptures in it—tiny rebellions that say:
“My child is not here to be standardized.”
“We will not trade connection for compliance.”
This kind of adaptation might look like:
Pausing before reacting, so you can respond with softness to your child’s communication.
Changing a routine to create more breathing room, like going to bed 10 minutes earlier.
Listening to your child’s heart more than their results.
Letting go of perfection and knowing that you and your family are enough as they are.
Skipping the homework that pushes your child into anxiety.
Creating tiny rituals of care—like singing a silly song at bedtime or lighting a candle before dinner.
Resting when the world says “push through.”
Listening—not to experts or checklists, but to your own knowing.
It’s not always easy. In fact, sometimes it feels radical. But it is always enough.
If you’re wondering where to begin, try this gentle prompt:
What’s one part of our week that feels like it’s asking too much?
Can I pull back—even a little? Can I meet it with compassion instead of control?
Because when we adapt with compassion, we’re not giving up. We’re tuning in.
And that tuning—toward ourselves, toward our children, toward what really matters—is what lets something truly alive grow.
A Glimpse Ahead
In our next newsletter of this series, we’ll arrive at the last step in the LEAD framework:
D is for Discover.
Discover invites us again into An Seomra Ciúin which offers a space to reflect, learn, and grow from all we’ve walked through together. It invites us to keep our curiosity alive—and to discover new ways of supporting ourselves, our children, and our communities.
And
Before you close this email, I invite you to take a breath—
One for the person you are becoming.
One for the child who is teaching you how to be.
And one for the world we’re quietly remaking through each compassionate choice.
Let that breath be your act of soft rebellion.
Let it be enough, for now.