Ep. 24 Can Parenting be a Portal to Our Own Healing? w/Iris Chen

Today we got to sit down with Iris Chen, of the wildly popular website and social media account known as “Untigering.” Iris also recently authored a fantastic book by the same name. Iris is an American Born Chinese who ended up raising kids who are Chinese born Americans. She considers herself a deconstructing tiger mother who is doing her best to become a gentle parent. As she learned to honor her children’s individuality and autonomy, she felt it no longer made sense to subject them to a system that wouldn’t do the same. Iris began to trust in her children’s innate ability and motivation to learn, and found she no longer believed in a compulsory education that forced children to learn according to arbitrary adult standards. Iris practices unschooling with her children and has a second book by that name coming out soon.

Today’s discussion covers these topics:

• Reparenting and how becoming a parent can be a portal for our own healing
• Tiger moms and what the Untigering movement is
• How culture plays a role in parenting
• The need to do less “reading” and “research” and focus a bit more on our intuition as parents
• How resentment can impact the parent-child relationship
• The need for awareness and being proactive when it comes to our own personal boundaries as a parent
• Viewing gentle parenting as a practice, as opposed to something we have to get exactly right
• How adult expectations may impede our relationship with our child
• Unschooling: what it is, what it could look like in practice, and why you may want to consider it

Untigering: Adventures of a Deconstructing Tiger Mother

Untigering Book – Untigering: Peaceful Parenting for the Deconstructing Tiger Parent

Iris is reading: Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

Iris is watching: The After Party, Severance

HER Health Collective

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