Breaking Generational Trauma: Dr. Robyn Koslowitz on Effective Parenting and Healing

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/08/15

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, clinical psychologist and author of Post-Traumatic Parenting, discusses how unresolved trauma shapes parenting styles, leading parents to react from trauma adaptations like perfectionism or dissociation rather than authentic self-regulation. She emphasizes conscious parenting’s unique power to help trauma survivors recognize and heal their internal triggers, ultimately breaking generational trauma cycles. The book is for everyone, by focusing on fostering self-awareness, emotional regulation, and authentic connections. Dr. Koslowitz introduces practical strategies grounded in neuroscience and psychology, stressing the importance of acceptance, integration, and meaning-making (AIM) in trauma recovery. Highlighting the role of community, cultural sensitivity, and supportive networks, she advocates for recognizing parenting as a communal rather than solitary endeavour, empowering parents to nurture emotionally resilient and connected families.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Today, we are speaking with Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, Ph.D. She received her doctorate in Clinical Child Psychology from New York University in 2009. Licensed as a school psychologist since 2002 and as a clinical psychologist since 2017, she serves as Clinical Director at the Center for Psychological Growth of New Jersey, which she founded. Dr. Koslowitz is the author of Post-Traumatic Parenting: Break the Cycle and Become the Parent You Always Wanted to Be, a guide combining neuroscience, psychology, and practical tools to support trauma survivors in raising emotionally healthy children. She frequently contributes to NPR and Parents magazine, appears on outlets such as Fox, CNN, and NewsNation, and hosts the Post-Traumatic Parenting YouTube channel. She blogs for Psychology Today too.

Drawing on over two decades of clinical experience, including work in schools and private practice, as well as her journey as a parent, Dr. Koslowitz empowers individuals to break free from generational trauma and build joyful, connected families. Her foundational model, Responsive and Responsible Parenting (R² Parenting), helps parents heal and grow while raising their children. She is a sought-after speaker and educator, featured in media and at the annual Post‑Traumatic Parenting Summit, where she leads workshops that equip parents with strategies for regulating emotions and setting boundaries amid triggers. First question: How can trauma that is never explicitly discussed still shape the way a parent raises a child?

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: Here’s what I’ve found clinically and personally: as parents, we wake up with good intentions—“I’m not going to yell today.” “Even with my teenager’s eye-rolling, I’ll stay calm.” But then something triggers us, and we find ourselves yelling, snapping, dissociating, or giving in when we’d intended to hold firm boundaries. What if that reaction isn’t you but your trauma? Often, early experiences taught you patterns like yelling when stressed or people-pleasing under pressure. 

These patterns stem from trauma—not only from dramatic events like accidents or violence but from any experience that your developing brain couldn’t fully process—something that left you asking, Who am I? What’s happening? That istrauma. Much of it is hidden because, as children, we accept what happens. A four-year-old doesn’t know when things are “messed up,” and even at fifteen, you might take specific experiences without labelling them as wrong. With time, you realize That shouldn’t have happened. So you might say, “I’m not traumatized—I wasn’t in a bombing.” But perhaps your mother was a functional alcoholic who frequently forgot to pick you up from school, leaving you stranded for an hour. That’s a traumatic experience as well.

If you’ve been rehearsing that for thirty years, it’s going to take a minute to unpair those two things. It’s going to take a second to change that. People say, “Oh, yay, your brain’s neuroplastic.” That’s true, but that’s also why therapy takes a long time. That’s why we have to change things actively—because it’s hard to unwire something once we’ve rehearsed it so many times.

Jacobsen: What makes conscious parenting uniquely powerful for those with unresolved trauma?

Koslowitz: So first of all, what happens when we’re traumatized—in my book, I use a metaphor that resonates with people: the idea of a “trauma app.” It’s the moment your brain experiences something overwhelming. I use the example of a time when maybe I’m not sure, Dad puts his fist through the wall. Your body goes into alarm mode, but your mom seems perfectly calm. Everyone acts like it’s just Tuesday morning. So, your brain creates a trauma app. It says, “This is scary. I need to solve this.”

It’s your survival instinct on steroids. Your brain creates an algorithm: “If Dad’s mad, I need to soothe the waters.” Or, “If someone seems threatening, I need to make jokes.” Or “If someone is angry, I need to lash out.” And you rehearse that algorithm over and over and over. Sometimes, you do not even realize it is a trauma adaptation. You think it is just who you are. You say, “I’m a control freak. I’m just really good at reading the room. I speak my mind. I’m an angry person—that’s just me.” You think it’s personality, but it’s an adaptation. It’s the trauma response so deeply practiced that it becomes identity.

Jacobsen: So you internalize it as your personality?

Koslowitz: For myself, one of my significant trauma adaptations—as a child raised in a home where my father was chronically very ill—was dissociation. My trauma story is that he died in my arms. I performed CPR on him when I was sixteen. I could go into that whole story, but one thing I learned how to do well was dissociate.

I could be in an emergency room—because my father had constant cardiac episodes—and I was the only child at home. My three older brothers had already moved out. So my mother would take me along. I could sit in a hospital waiting room and do my homework like I was sitting at the kitchen table. I could completely block out the world.

Yes, disconnect. I could dissociate so deeply that during my dissertation, I would sometimes work through the entire night. I thought of it as adaptive dissociation—a kind of superpower. I could concentrate anywhere. I could easily enter a state of flow. For me, the challenge is not getting into a state of flow. It’s getting out of it.

I always thought that was a good thing—until I had kids.

One day, my son, who was about ten years old at the time, looked at me and said, “Mommy, where do you go when you go away behind your eyes? Sometimes you’re talking to me, but you’re not here.”

Jacobsen: That’s powerful.

Koslowitz: He was ten years old—and now he’s a college student. So it’s like, wow, how much older he is. But I remember he started to cry. It was painful for him. And I thought, Wow, I do this dissociation thing. I could be giving a speech in front of a large audience—people will comment on my quality of presence—and I’m completely dissociated. But my kid saw it. It bothered him. And I realized I needed to take action.

I remember thinking at the time, It’s as if my son said to me, “Mommy, you’re five feet tall. You need to be six feet tall so you can reach the upper cabinet. So figure that out.” I was stuck. What should I do—stop dissociating and feel my feelings?

But then, if I did that, my other trauma adaptation—perfectionism—would kick in. I’d yell. I wouldn’t be this “perfect mom.” That wouldn’t work, either. So I didn’t know what to do with that.

Years later, it became a complete healing journey. Children are usually the map, the mirror, and the motivator of our trauma. A child will hit that trigger. Parents often judge themselves—“Why does my kid trigger me? What’s wrong with me?” I always say: It’s not that your kid triggers you. It’s that your kid reveals your triggers—and you’ve got to be willing to heal them.

If my son hadn’t said that to me, I would have stayed dissociated. I would have thought, This is great—I never feel stressed out in the moment. But that’s also why, at the time, I was morbidly obese. I was unhealthy in many ways. I didn’t feel stressed, so I thought everything was fine. But it wasn’t. If my kid hadn’t said, “This isn’t good,” I don’t know that I ever would have changed it.

Often, our kids are the first people we care about enough to make significant changes for. If a boss had said that to me, I would’ve responded, “Look, this is how I work. Take it or leave it.” I was a valuable enough employee that many would take me as I was. A romantic partner could have broken through. But for me, it was my son.

Jacobsen: What happened when you were sixteen?

Koslowitz: My father had a bad heart condition for most of my life. He developed it when I was around five years old. One of his first cardiac episodes happened when he was tossing me up into the air during play. For years, I carried the feeling that it was somehow my fault—that I had roughhoused with him and caused it. It took me years to unpack that in therapy.

He kept having severe cardiac events. He was a smoker. He lived a high-stress lifestyle—he was a securities trader. That kind of stress was constant. Throughout my childhood, these cardiac events were a regular part of my life.

When I was sixteen, I happened to be a lifeguard. I was sleeping. I heard my mother screaming in the middle of the night. I ran to their bedroom. My father was holding his nitroglycerin in one hand and the phone in the other. He was trying to call 911. I immediately started CPR. Unfortunately, I was not successful.

So, for years, I carried a deep sense that I needed to be perfect because I believed my mistakes could harm or even kill people. I must have done CPR wrong. I did not know at the time that female upper body strength—especially at sixteen—is significantly limited. I’m much more fit now. Back then, I was an aerobics instructor. I worked out a lot, but I did not have the muscle mass I have today. It was the ’90s—everything was cardio, and girls weren’t lifting weights. I was strong for my age, but still, performing CPR on a large man while on a mattress? If you’re not breaking ribs, you’re probably not doing effective CPR.

However, I wasn’t aware of that at the time. I didn’t know that until a good friend of mine, who is a trauma nurse, pointed it out to me recently. She said, “There was no way the CPR was going to work. There was no way you could have moved him to the floor. No way, at your age, with your strength, you could have successfully performed CPR on him.”

I had never even known that. So, for years, I carried this shame and guilt and perfectionism. I believed I had failed. Everyone was telling me I was a hero—I tried to do CPR, and the paramedics had to pull me off his body to defibrillate him—but I knew I had failed. I believed I had killed my father. That became a core belief.

Coincidentally, shortly after that, a schoolmate of mine—not a classmate, but someone in my school—had a fatal aneurysm in class. She was a sophomore, and I was a junior. She suddenly collapsed. Everyone was screaming. I think it was lunch or something because I don’t recall teachers being in the room right away.

I ran in and realized instantly—because I had seen death—I realized there was no one home behind her eyes. She didn’t need CPR because her heart was still beating, but she wasn’t breathing. I started to provide rescue breaths and began screaming at the teachers. All the teachers were standing around, asking things like, “What period is this?” or “Did she eat lunch?” or “These girls are always dieting.” And I’m like, “Call the paramedics! Get 911!”

I shoved a teacher. And I was a well-behaved, straight-A student. I was the geeky kid—the kind who sat in the back and was an active listener. I was not the type to shove a teacher. But I did. I shoved the teacher (to snap her out of it and get her to call 911). Eventually, the paramedics came. She was in a coma for a week, and then she died. Again, it was that same feeling—I was in a life-saving situation, I was the only one who realized how serious it was, and I failed. Again.

I did not stop to think; She was probably already brain-dead. The aneurysm had already done irreversible damage. In my mind, it was Robyn, the girl whose mistakes kill people. It took me a long time—and a great deal of therapy—to embark on that hero’s journey and reframe it. I had to shift that narrative to Robyn, the woman who can take uncomfortable action.

It took many years to process all of that. And remember, at the time, I was sixteen, with undiagnosed PTSD. And this was before 9/11—before people talked about PTSD in the way we do now.

This was before Google—this was the mid-1990s. I had no idea that PTSD even existed. How would I? It’s not like I could Google it. Nowadays, kids can look things up. Some TikTok influencers will diagnose you with anything if you want. But back then, the only thing I knew about was schizophrenia. I had a distant cousin with schizophrenia, and he would sometimes come to stay with us on weekends when he had supervised release from the institution where he lived.

I was already interested in psychology at that point. I volunteered at a nursing home, and there was a floor for people with dementia and mental illness. So, schizophrenia was the only mental health condition I was even vaguely familiar with. I remember thinking, Oh, my poor mom—her husband died suddenly, and now her daughter has schizophrenia because I was seeing things that weren’t there, hearing things that weren’t there. What else could it be?

I had this lightbulb moment in undergrad. I was sitting in class, and the professor was talking about PTSD. He told the story of a Vietnam veteran who accidentally shot his wife after hearing a car backfire—he thought he was under enemy fire and had a flashback. I raised my hand and asked, “Is that only from being in war, or can that happen to people in other situations?” And the professor said, “No, anything terrifying where you think you might die can trigger it.” I asked, “What if you see someone else die?” And he said, “Yes, that could cause it.”

And I thought, “Oh. That’s what I have.” But until then, I was convinced I was mentally ill and that schizophrenia was my trajectory. I had no idea that PTSD could even be an explanation. And it’s ironic because my mom was a guidance counselor. She would’ve been the perfect person for me to talk to. But I was such a perfectionist—I wasn’t going to add to her burdens.

She had just lost her husband. There was a whole legal dispute with his business partners. She was overwhelmed. And I didn’t want to pile more on. It didn’t even occur to me to say anything to her. Not that she necessarily would have known—it’s not like PTSD was widely known or well-understood in the 1990s.

Jacobsen: Following that and your work, was there ever another event that would have been traditionally traumatic—but because of the healing you had done, your physiological response and flashback response diminished so much that it was no longer a problem?

Koslowitz: Yes. One thing I still have is this trauma adaptation where, in real moments of crisis, I’m extremely calm. So if one of my kids is choking, I’m relaxed. I do the Heimlich maneuver. I’m quiet and focused. I’ve developed a decision tree for emergencies.

I’ve been in situations of real threat where I reacted calmly, and afterward, I didn’t flash back. Because I’ve done a lot of healing work, I was able to process it, handle it, and not spiral into panic attacks or flashbacks.

Now, when I get triggered, it’s more like, Oh hey, trigger, you’re here. Welcome. You’re trying to get me to do this thing. Thanks for the info—but I’m not going to. I’m a grown-up now. I know how to handle this, and here’s what I’m going to do instead.

Even things like hitting submit on the book—Post-Traumatic Parenting—that was hard. A manuscript is never perfect. It’s never truly done. You can revise it endlessly. I write a lot, so I know that feeling well.

I blog. I have a Psychology Today blog, and I write regularly. The big thing, yes, is recognizing when hyper-perfectionism shows up. I say, “Thanks for the information. Yes, I could spend three more hours making this 2% more perfect—or I could own those three hours and do something else with them. So, I’m going to hit submit now. Good enough is going to have to be good enough.”

Jacobsen: I’ve been doing a series of long-form interviews—at least five figures in word count—for a book project that’s breaking some new ground on the global humanist, atheist, and agnostic communities, particularly among Indigenous populations. “Indigenous” here is defined by standard metrics used by the UN and other international bodies.

There’s one man I interviewed from New Zealand—he’s Māori—and he wrote the first and only book specifically for Māori atheists and secular humanists. It was published about ten years ago. No other book like it has come out since. He told me it took him a year and a half to write the 18,000-word book—a slow pace, for sure. But he had the same hesitation when it came to clicking the submit button.

He told me, “What is everyone going to think? Am I going to be rejected by my community?” That’s community trauma—”I won’t be accepted. Who’s going to come after me?” But he clicked submit, and then… nothing. Some time went by, and he told me, “I guess no one cared. It wasn’t a big deal.”

In New Zealand, things are taken lightly. The Māori are a sizable population, and while most people still hold traditional spiritual or cosmological beliefs, there’s a live-and-let-live attitude in the culture. Ultimately, publishing his book didn’t result in the backlash he had feared. It’s interesting—there’s a wide range of human experiences that can still produce that same feeling of anxiety over clicking “publish.”

Koslowitz: Yes. That’s exactly how it felt with this project—launching the book. I remember telling my agent and the editor at Broadleaf, “Okay, so the hard part is over. The book is in.” And my agent turned to the editor and said, “Should we tell her?” Because launching the book is significantly harder.

For the launch, I organized a free online summit featuring interviews with sixteen individuals whose work I admire, focusing on the intersection of trauma and parenting. We hosted the summit to promote the book. There were a lot of moving parts—plus, I’m not exactly the most tech-savvy person on the planet.

Running a free online summit meant juggling lots of details. I made some mistakes. Someone sent me an angry email, and I responded with, “I apologize. I didn’t mean to make you feel that way. There were a lot of moving parts. This was an error, and I take responsibility for it.”

And they were still mad. I asked, “What can I do to fix this?” but it did not help. And I had to accept; okay, I erred. I made a mistake. But there was a part of me that wanted to say, Never do a summit again. Never try this again. Don’t risk making mistakes.

But the truth is—that mistakes happen. Nobody died. And for me, that’s a hard thing to process and reprocess constantly.

Jacobsen: Yes. It reminds me of universalizing the Winnicott approach—”good enough” parenting. I often find that “done is better than perfect” applies to most things. Some things need to be exact, but you can usually gauge it.

Koslowitz: Yes, exactly. Parenting is one of those things you cannot do perfectly. And many post-traumatic parents are perfectionists. That’s why they love those “gentle parenting scripts”—because they want to parent perfectly. But when you’re trying to parent perfectly, you’re not present. You’re present with the script, not with the child in front of you. So ironically, you become an imperfect parent—but in the wrong direction.

Instead of connecting, you’re performing. It’s better to say, “Let me have this conversation with my child and see how it goes.” I’ve had parents come to me and say, “Because of my hang-ups—because of my history of sexual abuse—I’m uncomfortable giving my child the puberty talk. Can you do it for me?”

And I tell them, “We could—but what if we processed your discomfort? What if we explored your triggers and the pain around this topic and then helped you give that talk yourself?”

Yes, it might not go perfectly. But isn’t that better than communicating—however subtly—that this topic is too big to talk about? Because what happens if your child experiences something big and they sense it’s “too big” for you?

Wouldn’t it be better to say, “My trigger was revealed. Let me reprocess this,” and then move forward with intention?

There’s grief and shame that can come with that. Thoughts like, “Why didn’t anyone have that conversation with me?” or “Wow, eight is young—do I have to talk about this with my eight-year-old? They’re practically still a toddler.”

I recently spoke to a mom who said, “That’s the age I was when my abuse started. When we asked, How do you explain confusing touch to an eight-year-old? she said, My child is still a baby.”

So we had to process that grief—and everything that comes with it. But it would be a real loss, in terms of intergenerational transmission, if I were the one to give her child that puberty talk. Or the good touch/bad touch talk. Or the “You’re going to summer camp for the first time—if there’s a confusing touch, here’s what you do” talk. Or “These are the kinds of things tricky adults might say or do.”

If I’m the one who has that conversation with her, we’re reifying the idea that this is way too big a topic for Mom. As opposed to: Let’s process it. Let’s work through it. I can also teach you the essential points.

There are better and worse ways to discuss these topics with children, and guidance is available on what is developmentally appropriate. We can go over all of that. I can give you the information. We can process it together. We can talk to your inner child and say, “Yes, it’s sad that no one did this with you.”

We can do all of that. And when you have the conversation with your child, you’re going to start healing, too. I include a lot of practices like that in the book—ways you can clue your inner child into what you’re doing with your real-world child. Because in parenting, we are also being parented.

We can heal. Which sounds so “woo-woo.” Inner child work is often dismissed in this way. But to me, it’s a great metaphor. Just like the trauma app—it’s a metaphor for how the brain processes overwhelming experience.

Jacobsen: Anytime you talk to an expert. You’re talking to someone who knows what’s DSM-based and what’s a metaphor—what’s grounded in clinical research versus what’s just being used illustratively. You touched on something important there: some things that sound like “woo-woo” are helpful metaphors. They’re meant to be educational, providing someone with a structure that helps them build insight or change their behaviour. But there’s also nonsense being pushed—things based on thin or no evidence, which are being asserted as 100% truth. That can be harmful.

Koslowitz: Yes. That’s a significant risk. Much psychotherapy is based on metaphor and story because a substantial portion of healing is rooted in narrative. But, as you said, when the metaphor becomes reified—when it’s treated as literal fact—that’s where it becomes risky.

That’s where psychology trickles down, and people forget the metaphor was never meant to be fact. It’s not like I can put you in an MRI and find your “inner child.” She’s not perched in some region of your brain.

I had a cute little boy say to me once, when we were talking about “Mr. Worry” in his brain, “No actual Mr. Worry is sitting in my brain.” And I said, “Yes! Exactly!”

Jacobsen: Kids are often more sensible than adults sometimes.

Koslowitz: Yes. They are.

Jacobsen: So, why is self-regulation a good first step to effective parenting? And I also want to tie that into being authentic as a parent. You mentioned scripts earlier—so if we remove the scripts and deal with the real person, then we can focus on what works for effective parenting. That’s the kind of connection I want to draw.

So, yes: Why is self-regulation important for effective parenting? And why is it essential to get rid of the scripts and be a real, present person with your kids? Authentic parent, effective parent, self-regulation.

Koslowitz: I feel that when you have a trauma app in your brain, it can cause you to look at your child as a problem to be solved instead of a person to parent—a person to engage with. So when people say, “Help me deal with my emotions,” what they’re saying is, “Help me deal with what emotions are doing to my body.”

People often dislike the feeling of being overwhelmed with anger, sadness, or fear. They want that to go away. Here’s where it might sound “woo-woo,” but it is grounded in solid science: There’s no such thing as pure self-regulation. What we call self-regulation is mentalized co-regulation—meaning, at some point in your life, someone regulated with you. A parent taught you how.

For example, a child falls and skins their knee. A parent—who could be a mom, dad, or other caregiver—says, “You fell. Your knee hurts. You’re bleeding. Let’s get a bandage.” Then maybe they say, “Oh, you’re sad,” or, “That’s frustrating,” or, “You’re angry.”

The child starts to understand: This overwhelming sensation in my body has a name. When they learn to name it, the sensation becomes manageable. That’s what Daniel Siegel calls “Name it to tame it.”

When we label our physical sensations, the left prefrontal cortex is activated, and our emotions don’t need to keep yelling at us to be noticed. When that happens enough—through a strong, safe attachment relationship—you internalize it. You no longer need Mom to narrate your emotions. Your inner mom does it for you.

You might think, “Oh, I fell. It’s a scrape. I’ll be fine.” And you move on. Then, as an adult, you can do the same for your child. But here’s the problem: If no one ever co-regulated with you, then you never learned to self-regulate. You may have learned to suppress your emotions, to shut them down, but not how to say, “I’m angry right now.” And then process what that means.

Anger identifies a problem. The way they acted—that was a boundary violation. I’m not okay with that. But now, how do I want to respond?

I could yell. I could write a strongly worded email. I could calmly state my boundaries. I have many options. Which one do I choose?

If no adult ever taught you that the feeling you’re experiencing is anger and that anger has a function—that it gives you focused energy and an action imperative—you may never learn that you have a choice. You might believe the only options are to stuff it down or explode.

It may never have occurred to you that self-regulation is even something you can learn. But it is. It’s what Viktor Frankl described—between stimulus and response, there is a pause. No one ever gave you that pause. No one ever handed that to you. That’s what self-regulation is. And now, you’re supposed to be doing that with your child.

But your brain is priming you to co-regulate with your kid—and if you were never taught how to do that, it becomes tough. So what happens? You go back to your trauma app, and it says, Well, either I’m going to do this perfectly… or, as I describe in my book, one of five types of post-traumatic parents emerges. You either go into perfectionism, or you disengage entirely, or you become paralyzed and try to do ten contradictory things at once. None of those approaches are currently effective.

Parenting becomes the perfect opportunity to say, I need to learn how to self-regulate. Maybe I did not experience mentalized co-regulation growing up, but I can be my co-regulator now. I can be my own “inner parent.” Again, metaphor—not hard science—but I can be my inner cheerleader.

It’s my voice. I can say to myself, “Robyn, you’re feeling under threat right now. That’s why you want to do everything perfectly. But you don’t have to. It’s okay if you make a mistake.” I could do that for myself if I didn’t have a parent who did it for me. And that’s what we want to teach our kids. Emotions are not the enemy. Emotions are not the problem. That’s what we want to pass on.

I had this experience when I was a new mom. I already knew I was a post-traumatic parent—I didn’t have that term yet, but I knew I had PTSD. I knew I was dissociating. I didn’t know how my body felt when I experienced strong emotions, so I avoided feeling anything too deeply.

Then I had these adorable twin boys—huge bundles of emotion that they just threw out into the world. I remember one of them would get so frustrated trying to put two Duplo blocks together. If they didn’t fit, he would shriek, pull his hair, or bang his head on the wall because he was so mad.

I had a supervisor, Dr. Esther Buckholtz, a child analyst who was a student of Winnicott’s. I asked her, “What do I do with this kid?” At the time, I had four children—two older daughters who were very well-behaved and expressed only socially acceptable emotions. Things like, “My dolly broke,” and I’d say, “Oh, you’re so sad.” That I could handle.

But what do I do with this anger?

Esther said, “Hold his hands, look him in the eye, and say: “Angry, angry, angry. You’re feeling angry. Say ‘angry.'”

So I did that. And eventually, he’d say, “Angy,” then he’d cry, and then he’d calm down.

But I needed Esther to teach me how to do that—because I had never been taught how to do that for myself. In teaching my son, I was learning too.

I recall a humorous moment—my mom used to watch my kids while I was in graduate school. She always drank her coffee from these delicate china mugs. One time, one of the twins pulled the tablecloth, and the mug went flying. Hot coffee and broken china were everywhere. My mother started screaming at the kids to get away—she was freaking out.

My son went over to her, held her hands, looked her in the eye, and said, “Angy, angy, angy.” It was like, “Wow—he gets this.” He understands loud voices. He understands fear, but was mislabelling fear as anger. But he also understands the concept of autonomic arousal—Say “angry,” and then you feel better. That’s huge. He taught it. This is good.

Jacobsen: Why is the reclamation of joy, spontaneity, and playfulness important for people who have experienced any variety of trauma?

Koslowitz: Some people have minimized problems, and things can go pretty well for them—and good for them. However, I want to focus on those who have truly experienced it. So, let’s look at this through a parenting lens.

There’s a concept in attachment theory that Dan Siegel talks about—the four S’s of attachment: safe, seen, soothed, and secure. If a parent can make a child feel those four things, then you have the foundation of secure attachment.

So, you want to ensure your kids are receiving those four S’s. Think about it: “safe,” “soothed,” and “secure” are all about sharing your calm with your child. That’s co-regulation. That’s about ensuring everybody is safe and that their basic human needs are met—eating, sleeping, and maintaining a routine. That helps them understand how to manage their emotions. It’s all about stability.

But “seen”—that’s different. “Seen” is about sharing your joy. It’s about delighting in your child. It’s that attunement: when the child finally clicks two Duplo blocks together and holds them up proudly, and the parent says, “Yes! You did it!” Or the kid yells, “Look, Ma—no hands!” while riding a bike, or they make it across the monkey bars for the first time.

And the parent is right there with that gleam in their eyes—“You did it! I see you!” It’s that cheerleader energy. That’s being seen. But here’s the thing: trauma robs you of both your calm and your joy. So, how do you share your calm and joy if you don’t have access to either?

That’s the fundamental attachment problem for any post-traumatic parent. Everyone keeps saying, “Share your calm, share your joy.” That’s the bottom line of every parenting book. If you boiled down the whole shelf of parenting literature, you’d get that mantra: “Share your calm, share your joy.”

“Share your calm” might show up as structure, rules, and discipline. In a more somatic or trauma-informed parenting model, it may mean co-regulating with your child. Either way, the principle is the same: Make your child feel safe. Make your child feel seen.

But those are the two things PTSD robs you of. That’s why so many post-traumatic parents read parenting books and end up feeling more shame, more self-doubt, more self-blame—because the book is telling you to do something that feels impossible.

The metaphor I like to use is this: Imagine you’re in a mall, and you need to get from the second floor to the roof. So you go to the map, and it tells you—go left, find this bank of elevators, take the elevator up, then go up one more flight of stairs, and you’re at the roof. Great.

But what if you’re in the sub-basement, and the lights are off, and there is no map? You understand how to get from the second floor to the roof—but you’re not even on the second floor. You’re trapped below, trying to figure out how even to reach that starting point.

And I feel like every parenting book misses that—how to get from the sub-basement to the second floor. That’s why I wrote Post-Traumatic Parenting—to get you from the sub-basement to the second floor.

And then—then—pick the parenting approach you want to use. But that’s why people feel blocked. That’s why people who read parenting books say, “I can’t do any of this stuff.” Because they’re in the sub-basement.

If you were already on the second floor, it would be fine.

So it’s hard when people say, “Self-regulate. Be that authentic parent.” If you don’t authentically know who you are—if you don’t know how to self-regulate—how are you supposed to co-regulate with a child?

If your body is still your enemy—if your trauma tells you that anytime you feel stress, you must get rid of it immediately—then how can you develop emotional resilience?

Your body never told you that there is such a thing as good stress. But stress is not inherently bad. Your stress response is your body’s way of helping you rise to meet a challenge. But you have to know that. You have to reinterpret that experience.

Sometimes, that’s why I recommend re-engaging with your body—through exercise, movement, or sensation training. Because you have to get reacquainted with your body. You have to look at your stress response and say, “Oh, this isn’t dangerous. This is just my body helping me. Now—what do I want to do with it?”

Jacobsen: What is the role of therapy in that process? What other support systems help?

Koslowitz: Therapy is very much about reprocessing, reinterpreting, and reintegrating what happened to you. It’s about working with someone who already knows how to do these things and who can guide you through the process.

Sometimes, people come into therapy and say, “But I could figure this stuff out myself.” And sure—you could.

But here’s an analogy: Imagine you go to a potluck dinner in your neighbourhood, and someone brings this fantastic cake. And you think, “Wow, this cake is incredible—she put something in it, but I can’t figure out what.” You could try to reverse-engineer it. You could do what they do on those British baking shows—pull apart the crumbs and guess whether there’s baking soda or a fruit purée. Try to think if there’s some special ingredient.

Sure, you could do that. Keep going back to the store, buying ingredients, experimenting, baking cake after cake, trying to recreate it.

Or—you could walk over to the person who made it and say, “That was a fantastic cake. What’s your recipe?” And she’ll say, “Oh! The secret ingredient is prune juice.” And you think, I never would’ve guessed that—but now I know. I can do that, too.

That’s what therapy is. It is not that you can’t figure out the thermostat or the ingredients. It’s just that treatment gives you access to someone who already has the recipe.

I like that better—it’s probably less offensive to therapists. But it’s similar to saying, “I could figure out how to do my taxes.” For example, I have a podcast, and I have someone who posts it online for me. I could figure out the tech. It would take much time—but I could do it. Or I could hire someone who’s done it two million times already.

All of that stuff—multimedia, tech, production—is undervalued. Totally. Props to those folks.

Yes, I could figure out how to program my website and not need a web admin. But given that I’m highly trained as a psychologist and not trained at all in coding, it makes more sense to hire someone who knows how to run a website—so I can focus on doing what I’m trained to do.

There is a great deal of mystique surrounding therapy and therapists. But really, therapy is just about going to the person who has the recipe. The person who knows how to do it. Meanwhile, all these clocks are ticking while you’re trying and failing to figure this stuff out. If you have kids, it might make sense to hire someone who already knows how to guide you through this.

In my book, I talk about what I believe is true for all trauma-informed psychotherapy. Every legitimate trauma therapy I know—whether it’s Internal Family Systems, EMDR, Cognitive Processing Therapy, or Trauma-Focused CBT—has three core components: acceptance, integration, and meaning.

That’s what all of them aim for.

First, acceptance: stopping counterfactual thinking—shutting down the part of your brain that’s trying to undo the trauma or rationalize why it happened. We stop that. We say, “This is what happened.”

Then comes integration: weaving that trauma into your sense of self and your ongoing story.

And finally, meaning: making meaning or finding a mission from what happened. What have I learned from this? That’s a favourite question my therapist asks: “So what have we learned?”

AIM—Acceptance, Integration, Meaning.

If you examine any evidence-based trauma therapy, they all have some form of AIM. Perhaps there’s a therapy I’m not aware of, but I’m not referring to things that are non-empirical or outside the accepted schools of thought.

If someone says, “I went on a crystal healing retreat,” and it has no AIM component—well, I don’t know how crystals work. That’s not what I do. But are trauma therapies grounded in science? They all include these core elements.

Now, one particular therapy might not work for you. The metaphors may not resonate. The delivery might not land well with your nervous system. However, there is likely another therapy that will work. It’s about calling the person with the recipe.

Jacobsen: How do you overcome, with the help of the “chef,” those internalized voices that are not helpful—so you can regain your authentic voice as a parent?

Koslowitz: That’s an important question. One of the things trauma can rob you of is your sense of self. You start to confuse your trauma adaptations with your identity. You think, “This is just who I am.”

I used to consider myself a determined and driven person. Sometimes, it takes a therapist to ask the question that gets you to see things differently. One of my therapists once said to me—after I had just said, “I’m a driven person”—she asked, “When do you get to be the driver?”

That was a great question.

Jacobsen: That hits the nail on the head. That’s great. I love that.

Koslowitz: Right? Because you are not always going to see those things from within. When you’re inside the maze, it’s hard to know where you’re going. But someone who’s watching from outside the maze can say, “Hey, turn left—that’s a blind alley.” A therapist can do that for you.

Sometimes, therapy is about giving your inner voice an actual voice. Like—who told you that about yourself? Who said you were only valuable if you never made a mistake? Or only lovable if you were always calm?

Sometimes, it’s just a therapist opening the door to say, “That’s one way to handle that problem—but are you aware there are other options?”

And people are often stunned. “What? I can do that?” They’ll say, “I could just tell my friend that what she said hurt my feelings?” That idea never even occurred to them.

Not because they’re not intelligent or self-aware—but because, going back to neuroplasticity, if you’ve rehearsed one way of responding for your whole life, it may not even occur to you that another path exists—until someone helps interrupt the pattern.

And sometimes, your brain is capable of finding that path. In EMDR—Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing—it’s not always the therapist who says, “Here’s a new way to look at it.” It’s your brain that begins to say, “Wait a second… I should have known better.” And then another part of your brain says, “But I was only eight. Eight is young. Maybe I couldn’t have known better.”

That belief begins to evolve into something more realistic, compassionate, and accurate. That is reprocessing.

It’s similar to Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy. The person’s system often comes up with the answers. The therapist helps guide the process along.

In more traditional approaches, such as Cognitive Processing Therapy, it may be more therapist-directed. The therapist might say something like, “I wonder—at eight years old, could you have known not to believe your stepfather when he said this is a normal game that people play?” Maybe eight-year-olds don’t know that. Could it be?

Every culture has foundational similarities—we’re all the same species, doing the same human stuff. But there are cultural seasonings and icings layered on top.

Jacobsen: What are things to keep in mind about cultural sensitivities and inclusivity of approach when you’re working with someone from a particular culture—someone who has experienced trauma that’s negatively affecting their parenting and making them less effective than they could be?

Koslowitz: First of all, you have to remember that parenting is a form of acculturation. A considerable aspect of parenting involves transmitting cultural truths and wisdom. Too often, we focus on the negatives of culture—the things we want to dismantle or challenge—and forget there are also positives.

There are truths and wisdom about the world that parents want to pass on—what I think of as the inherited wealth of generations. Parents are trying to transmit that legacy.

My dissertation research was based on something called the core cultural assumptions method. The idea is that every culture has a set of core assumptions. And if you try to offer a parenting intervention that doesn’t take those assumptions into account, it simply won’t land well.

So, the first step is to ask people about their cultural assumptions—curiously and respectfully. Every single psychotherapeutic interaction is a cross-cultural interaction because every human being is a culture unto themselves—a culture of one.

So you have to stay curious. Ask: How do things function in this culture? And—before you try to “take down a fence,”you need to understand what that fence is protecting.

There’s a famous quote that says: “Before you take down a fence, find out what it was built to protect.” And that applies deeply to therapy. Sometimes therapists are trained in this very old-school, psychoanalytic idea that we’re going to break down the defences, storm the emotional beaches—”We’re going in.”

Let’s not. Instead, let’s ask, “Why is this defence here?” Then we can ask, “Is there another way to still honour this cultural value in a way that causes less harm?”

Let’s say, for example, someone comes from a family where they were repeatedly fat-shamed. Older relatives made passive-aggressive comments, and now this client feels threatened because they’re bringing their daughter into that environment.

However, there is a deeply rooted cultural value of respecting elders. You don’t just confront your great-aunt directly. You respect your great-aunt.

So the question becomes: Is there a respectful way to communicate a boundary? You are not going to say, “I’ve been in twenty years of eating disorder therapy because of you, so don’t you dare talk to my daughter that way.”

That is not going to work. It’s not culturally appropriate.

Instead, can you say something like, “We’re trying something new with our daughter. We’re focusing on health and happiness and not commenting on appearance.”

That keeps the value of respect intact—but also protects your child. That’s what culturally inclusive, trauma-informed parenting work looks like.

Because that is not honouring the cultural value of respect, so you’re going to feel bad. But at the same time, your anger has a place here. What is the most innovative way to handle that? Is there something you could say to your great-aunt that will honour your experience and your boundaries but also not be read as disrespectful?

We’re not going to take down the system just because it is flawed. That rarely works. Sure, it might be a great adolescent fantasy to bring Alice Cooper to your family holiday party and scream, “We’re not gonna take it anymore!”—but that is not effective long-term.

Jacobsen: Well, that connects with how you’re responding here—because when you’re building the argument for the approach, people reading that will begin to get a sense of what effective therapy, communication, and therapeutic strategy looks like. You are incorporating culture, the individual, and treatments that work—sort of as a package.

Koslowitz: Yes, it takes a trained professional to do that. It takes much work to ask: Is there another way to accomplish this? You completely understand that cultural value is essential. But is there still a way to uphold that value that doesn’t harm you?

Often, there is. And often, when you do that, it’s hard at first. The first time you try it, it might feel impossible. But like we said earlier—because of neuroplasticity—the more you rehearse it, the easier it becomes.

The first time, it’s tough. By the fifteenth time, though, it starts to feel natural. So, if someone is making a passive-aggressive comment about how you’re parenting your kids, you might say, “This is what works for my family.” You say it kindly, respectfully, and leave it there.

Jacobsen: Right. And they may not like it.

Koslowitz: They may say, “You’re not answering my question.” And you might respond, “I love that you love me. I love that you’re curious about this.” You can respond with warmth while still maintaining your boundaries. For example, “Yes, I’m not answering your question about whether my kid is on Ritalin, or a diet, or whatever else.”

Jacobsen: When I used to work in high-stress environments—restaurants, horse farms, construction—seven days a week in some, I had to learn how to respond to those nosy, sly comments. Sometimes I’d say, “I love you too.” That was enough. It can diffuse the situation. That seems to diffuse it with warmth and humour.

Koslowitz: It can. And the bigger idea here is that any therapist who comes in with respect and curiosity—rather than an imperialist attitude of “I am the healer, and I know what is correct”—is going to be more effective. That imperialist mindset does not help.

Instead, come in with: “I wonder why it feels so scary to go to the family holiday party. I wonder why you feel like you have to answer all of your great-aunt’s questions. And I wonder if she’ll feel disrespected if you don’t.” Okay, well—is there a way where she won’t feel disrespected, and you also won’t have to answer those questions?

That kind of approach can be collaborative.

Jacobsen: Are there particular quagmires you encounter, where even though you try to integrate various approaches and understandings, the situation is just inevitably going to be a headache? As a therapist, I cannot imagine that every cross-referenced method is always foolproof.

Koslowitz: Absolutely. There are always times when you mess up. You misread something. You misunderstand something. Especially in psychotherapy—particularly when using a family approach—sometimes you do have to privilege the needs of one person over another. That is part of the complexity.

This means that I could help this parent come to an understanding of how they need to parent their teenager over a long period—but much damage is being done quickly. So, I may have to step in a bit more. I may have to help them get there faster than I ordinarily would, as we are dealing with a teenager who is currently acting out.

There are times in therapy when the idea that we can represent everyone’s interests equally at all times is simply not accurate. Sometimes clocks are ticking—urgent timelines where we must make a decision. I recently had a case like this: a mother was in a real psychiatric crisis. Her psychiatrist wanted to admit her, but she felt this was a crucial time in her kids’ lives and said, “I can’t abandon them.”

As the professionals, we had to say, “This is heading in a dangerous direction.” So we helped her troubleshoot—who could be with the kids, how she might participate in the graduation remotely or at another time—but ultimately, the hospitalization had to happen.

Sometimes, there are these moments when a psychiatric or psychological consideration must be prioritized because real harm could result otherwise. That’s just the reality. Timing can be awful, especially with children. It’s never an excellent time for a mother to have a breakdown—there’s always a child with a need. However, if a meltdown is imminent, all we can do is minimize the harm surrounding it. We should not lie to ourselves and say, “It’ll be fine; just go to the graduation.” That is not always possible.

Jacobsen: That connects with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, not the parent—which implies it’s the responsibility of the parent and the rights of the child.

Koslowitz: Yes, particularly in individualistic cultures, we tend to forget that. I have a core belief: adults are responsible for protecting children. Children should not be protecting adults. Sometimes, we put children in the position of defending themselves when that burden should fall on the adults in their lives.

The more healed people are, the more they can protect their children. Self-care is childcare—on a fundamental level.

Jacobsen: This may be more of a cultural psychology or social psychology comment as well as a question. If people have done that work—whether consciously through therapy or even by accident—they tend to have more emotional and cognitive reserve. They are not constantly stressed or depleted. So, generally speaking, they become more productive and proactive citizens, more engaged and healthy contributors to both social and family life.

So there’s a cascading effect—a series of positive knock-on effects—from even one person doing that inner work. Whether it happens in a structured therapeutic space or as an organic response to life forcing them to confront something they had been avoiding, they eventually come to a healthier state. Even if the process is imperfect, it can still be transformative.

Koslowitz: Yes. That’s the essence of Post-Traumatic Parenting. When your kids reveal your triggers, acknowledging them can help you heal. That moment—when your child’s behaviour triggers something in you—is not just a crisis. It’s also an opportunity. It is not, “Oh no, I’m being triggered just when my kid needs me.” It’s, “This is the moment where healing can happen.”

It is the opportune time to heal. Research shows that the brain—particularly a mother’s brain during matrescence and in the early years of her child’s life—is more neuroplastic. Your brain is already rewiring itself, so it is an excellent opportunity to rewire some of those trauma responses. Your brain is primed to regenerate.

When working with children, it is often easier in some ways because their brains are so neuroplastic. They are constantly forming new connections. It is significantly easier to help a seven-year-old with severe anxiety than a 37-year-old who has been rehearsing that anxiety pattern for 30 years.

Jacobsen: Yes. And not many people are going to throw themselves into something as intense as Navy SEAL training or astronaut training to reprogram their response patterns.

Koslowitz: Exactly. However, parenting is a form of training. It is the boot camp. It is a complete emotional reset for everything: your emotional responses, your trauma reactions, and your regulation skills. Until you’ve felt the intense frustration of, say, a three-year-old who takes off their socks and shoes for the 30th time while the school bus is already honking outside and you’ve got to get other kids ready—you do not know what that’s like. The level of irrationality a small child can present, and the intense rage it can provoke, is unparalleled.

Jacobsen: I would add one more layer to that. North America has made progress on gender parity, but that parenting boot camp is still disproportionately thrust on women. There has been movement forward, absolutely—but in many households, it is still women bearing the brunt.

Koslowitz: Yes, and there’s the additional cultural pressure on women to be nurturing, kind, and calm at all times. So, it becomes a double burden. You are carrying more of the mental load, and you are supposed to smile through it. The cultural expectation is that the mother finds it adorable when her toddler throws their shoes off for the 30th time—even if she’s late and everything is falling apart.

Jacobsen: And that combination—the emotional and cognitive labour of parenting—has become such a political flashpoint in recent years. In many regions, particularly in North America, women are expected to balance the full professional burden of emancipation alongside the domestic and emotional labour still expected of them.

And unlike in many Western European countries, North American women often do not have the same institutional and financial support—such as universal childcare and parental leave. So, the demands are higher, and the support systems are weaker.

Koslowitz: Yes. And then layer in the added awareness around gentle parenting and conscious parenting, which are good in theory but can become yet another way to feel like you are falling short. It becomes a perfect storm for shame—especially for women. All these competing expectations create a setup for self-blame.

Because you’re somehow supposed to—well, you could take that whole Barbie monologue and swap in parenting; you’re supposed to be professional but not care too much about your career. You’re supposed to love your kids but not talk about them all the time. And it’s… okay?

And there is probably that one person in your social circle who, at least on the surface, looks like they are pulling it all off. And then you add social media into the mix—you’re looking at everyone’s best moments, but you’re only experiencing your own worst moments. And somehow, you’re comparing your worst to everyone else’s best.

Jacobsen: Yes. The social media comment—that’s more pronounced for Gen Z, mostly. It’s typically around aesthetics: how do I look, and how do I look in some other beautiful place?

That said, there is a fetishization of parenting on specific social platforms. There are two primary caricatures: one is the “boss babe” in the professional realm, and the other is the “trad wife” in the domestic sphere. That idealized, perfectly curated image of motherhood aligns with the traditional narrative of the wife.

Koslowitz: it is not just a Gen Z phenomenon. Even millennials and Gen X, who mostly use Instagram and not newer platforms, get caught in that. There are so many pressures. The aesthetics of how your home looks, how your body looks, how you talk to your kids, how your playroom looks—or even how their lunchboxes look.

And what about that gray, hyper-minimalist landscape of children’s playrooms? Because some influencers decided that they should all be in neutral tones, such as beige or gray. For three-year-olds! It’s ridiculous. 

Jacobsen: Who was that Japanese woman who said everything should “spark joy”?

Koslowitz: Marie Kondo.

Jacobsen: Yes! Marie Kondo. I am unsure if this is apocryphal or not—if it is, I will include that disclaimer—but supposedly after she had her third child, she gave up trying to keep everything perfectly clean. Someone commented on that and said, “This is my mood right now.” It’s a very North American commentary on a Japanese icon.

Koslowitz: But the truth is, kids accumulate stuff. And some of that is developmentally appropriate. Ten-year-olds have their collections. And people are constantly handing children randomly shaped bits of plastic that are not going to fit your playroom’s beige aesthetic.

If you are going to feel bad about yourself every time that happens, and if your kid is in love with something—like some hideous plastic poo figurine that sings a song when you press its belly—then maybe it is time to log off that social media feed.

Especially if your feed is all boss babe aesthetic, gorgeous playroom aesthetic, organic cooking bento box lunches that look like Sleeping Beauty—whatever, and if you have all of those in your feed, all they do is feed your perfectionism. Telling you: you’re a bad mom. You’re a bad mom.

So maybe—going back to Marie Kondo—if that person’s feed isn’t sparking joy, perhaps stop following it.

Jacobsen: Philip Zimbardo, before he passed, talked about how we live in societies in transition.

So, there’s this whole commentary about men in crisis—blah blah blah, but what he was more getting at was the idea that when society is in transition, parenting becomes a much more plural affair—it has to meet children where they are, societally.

We’re seeing a wider acceptance of single parents, single moms, single dads, gay marriages, gay parenting, and so on. I would also appreciate your commentary on some of those aspects.

Because traditionally, the single mom was divorced, gave up her educational or professional life for the kids and the husband—and now she’s divorced. She hasn’t had the time to retrain, and she’s having to take jobs that practically guarantee poverty. The man may or may not—most often not—pay child support.

And so, you have this context of effective parenting. Not every society is entirely on board with this from a cultural sensitivity perspective, but much of global culture has been moving in that direction. It’s bumpy and fragmented, yes, but it’s moving.

I’m currently in Reykjavik conducting fieldwork on gender parity. It’s been number one in the world for fifteen years straight—a quarter of a century now. So it’s kind of at the heart of things. The only contradictory point I’ve found regarding Iceland’s comprehensive gender parity is that few women I know enjoy being cold all the time.

In North America, there is a broader acceptance of various family styles and family formations. If we’re thinking of two parents, we’re thinking of gay marriage—so lesbian and gay men parenting. We’re also thinking of trans parents and single parents. And particularly, we’re seeing more economic emancipation of women.

With that, we expect to see a wider acceptance of these realities over time. So, “effective parenting” is a broad term—and it must take into account broader cultural contexts. Are there specific considerations we need to take into account at the family level when dealing with one parent or non-heteronormative parents?

Koslowitz: There are a few things to think about. First of all, parenting is something that’s meant to be done more communally. We’re wired to parent in groups—not to do it all by ourselves. So if you’re a single parent—whether that’s by choice or by circumstance—obviously, that’s going to be a little bit harder because there’s only one person to carry what can be a heavy load.

In those situations, it’s about choosing family—figuring out who your people are. Who’s in your neighbourhood? Perhaps it’s different people in the same building who share specific parenting responsibilities, such as “I’ll watch the kids on Tuesday, you watch them on Wednesday.”

There are ways to find support even when you don’t have a natural village—meaning you’re not living near lots of great aunts, grandmas, or other family members who can help out. Then we have to create our villages. That’s just an acknowledgment that parenting is not meant to be a solo task. It’s a difficult task to carry on your own.

So, who else can help carry that? Who are the people? Because there are people. If you look around, you can find them—because you can be their people too.

I remember when I was a grad student and didn’t have a budget for anything. A few of my friends were in the same boat—we were all parents, all at the beginning of our careers, with little kids and no budget. We figured out these ways: “I’ll take all the kids today if you take all the kids tomorrow.” That way, I could get some focused work done, and then she could. And honestly, it’s as easy to entertain four kids as it is to engage two—sometimes easier.

Or: “I’m going to the grocery store—can I take everyone’s list, load everyone’s boxes into my car this week, and you’ll do it next week?” The idea is that’s how it always was supposed to be. Parenting was always meant to be a shared experience. Sometimes, we have to look beyond that individualistic cultural assumption and ask for help, ask for support—and also be that help and support because that helps us, too.

When you give kindness, you feel the world is a kinder place. Looking outside yourself for support can be super helpful. It’s not necessary to have a need. And some humans will be there for that need. That’s one thing. The other thing I want to talk about is this: your biological plumbing doesn’t matter when it comes to being an attachment figure. Yes, the attachment literature is super gendered because Bowlby and Winnicott were parents and psychologists in the 1950s when everything was quite gendered.

However, it doesn’t matter what your plumbing is like. If you are the person providing the Four S’s of attachment to a child, you are an attachment figure. We say “mom” in the classical literature as a shortcut for “primary attachment figure.”But mom doesn’t have to be that. Dad can be the primary attachment figure. Grandma can be. Two dads can be.

Jacobsen: That must be why gangs and cartels work. This is their new family.

Koslowitz: Yes. The attachment system—people often talk about it as if it’s this fragile thing, that if you don’t have that specific maternal attachment object, then your attachment is doomed. But if you have a caregiver who is consistently providing the Four S’s—someone who is there, who is present, who co-regulates with you—that’s what you need.

So this idea that if you’re not co-sleeping with mom until you’re four years old, living on a farm where she’s feeding you produce made with her own hands—you’re not attaching properly—is misleading. It is perfectly okay for a child to have a couple of attachment figures as long as those people are loving, stable, and kind presences in their life.

High-quality daycare, where the teacher remains the same every day and where it’s predictable, stable, loving, and kind, is unlikely to harm attachment. The attachment system is designed to accommodate multiple users. It’s designed to know: these are my attachment figures, these are my people. So when we mysticize this “mother figure” concept and make it exclusively gendered, we lose sight of the fact that anyone who is that stable presence in a child’s life—providing the Four S’s—can be the primary attachment figure.

This is not a biological thing. This is a psychological thing. The question is: am I providing this or not? And anyone can learn how.

I had this experience working with a family where the mom had a terminal cancer diagnosis. Many of her sisters—so the aunts—were all saying, “Which one of us is taking the kids?” But the question was never: “How do we support Dad in raising his children?” The kids were about to lose their mother, and no one even thought to ask how the father could be supported in becoming their primary attachment figure.

And when I raised that question—”I wonder if, instead of deciding who gets the ‘Best Mother Replacement’ crown, we could ask how to help Dad remain the primary attachment figure”—the entire conversation changed. That was ultimately the decision that was made.

Dad thought it over and realized: “Wait a minute, I’m their father. There’s no reason why I can’t do this.” Some of the objections were things like: “Well, he doesn’t know how to cook.” Okay—but if you can read, you can cook. You don’t need female plumbing to cook. And there’s Uber Eats. And if this extended family is truly so supportive, they can pitch in with meals. There are many ways to get food into children. Then it was: “What else don’t you know how to do, Dad?”And we just worked through it from there.

So now you will be the one who does this, that, and the other thing. Can you do that? Are you capable of remembering that bath night should be every other night? Does that homework need to be done? Are you capable of doing that? It was so interesting how, in that family system, the question had not even been raised: “How do we support Dad?” The question was, “Which aunt is taking the kids?” It did not even occur to them.

I had a similar experience that I wrote about in my book. One of my children’s camp forms automatically populated “Mother’s cell” as the emergency contact. I called the camp office and said, “I need you to undo this because my husband is the emergency contact—I’m frequently with patients, and my phone is off.”

The secretary, rather than hearing me out, got judgmental. She asked, “What kind of a mother doesn’t want to be the first one informed if her child is in a medical emergency?”

Thankfully, I’ve taught people how to deal with bullies, and I no longer have much self-doubt about my love for my kids. There was a time when I was told that being a career woman meant I didn’t love my kids as much as a stay-at-home mom. But I said to her, “A mom who wants her kids to survive.” Because if there’s a medical emergency and you call my cell—which is off—that would be a bad thing.

Then it turned out the whole reason she was bullying me was because she did not know how to change the form. And I thought, “So you’re going to make me question all my life choices because you need a computer programmer?” That was the real issue—not sociology, not parenting philosophy—just someone needing tech support.

Jacobsen: I know what some of your go-tos are going to be, but let’s see if you surprise me. As a psychologist, what are your favourite quotes—on psychology or parenting as a whole?

Koslowitz: Let me put some thought into that. Obviously, as a psychologist, I love the quote: “Between stimulus and response, there is a pause. In that pause lies your humanity.” It’s often attributed to Viktor Frankl, though there’s some debate about that. Still, it’s a beautiful and powerful idea.

Another quote I love for my own life is from Eleanor Roosevelt: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” My follow-up is: So stop consenting. That applies in so many situations.

On social media, if some influencer’s curated reel is making you feel inadequate about your life choices, stop following her. If someone is questioning your decision to parent in a gentle, responsive way and making you feel judged—do not consent to feeling judged.

And finally, there’s that Winnicott quote: “Even the beneficial is toxic in excess.” The idea that trying to be perfect is toxic—it is one of the worst things you can do to yourself.

Between those three quotes, I can reset my mindset and ground myself again. I remind myself that I don’t have to be perfect. That would be toxic.

Jacobsen: Robyn, thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate your expertise, and it was nice to meet you.

Koslowitz: Same here. I enjoyed our conversation.

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