I’ve been thinking a lot on this trip about parenting styles.
You know the categories: Gentle parenting. Traditional parenting. Strict parenting. Attachment parenting. Free-range parenting. Somewhere out there, I’m sure there’s a parenting method involving crystals, wooden toys, and homemade goat milk too.
And honestly? I don’t fully belong to any one camp.⛺️
I agree with a lot of things from a lot of approaches. I think being gentle matters- kids deserve respect, emotional safety, and parents who try to understand before reacting. I think nature matters, slowing down matters, experiences matter more than stuff and sometimes a simple walk in the sun can improve mood, health and overall wellbeing. I think boundaries and structure matter too, because children need someone steady holding the edges of the world when things feel big, even if they don’t know it at the time.
But if I had to define the parenting style, I couldn’t. I try (and often fail) to practice just being as happy and good as possible, so maybe I’d call it joyful parenting. Or hopeful parenting. Or maybe just raising-good-functional-people-while-also-trying-to-enjoy-the-ride parenting.
Not perfectly. Definitely not perfectly.
Especially lately.
Because let’s be honest — the world feels a bit like it’s running on survival mode. Wars. Climate change. Political chaos. Uncertainty stacked on uncertainty. Sometimes it feels like every week brings a new reason to panic about what kind of future our kids are inheriting.
And coming from Israel, “survival mode” isn’t just a phrase people casually throw around. It’s a real feeling. A familiar one.
But here’s the thing I keep coming back to:
I don’t actually believe survival mode should become a way of life.
Even when life is survival mode.
I don’t mean pretending everything is fine. Or toxic positivity. Or forcing gratitude while internally screaming into the void (though some days… relatable).
I mean actively trying to protect joy.
Trying to create moments where our kids still laugh until milk comes out of their noses. Where we stop to look at a crab on the beach like it’s the most important meeting of the day. Where dinner becomes a picnic because everyone is too tired to cook and somehow that becomes the memory.
Trying to remind ourselves (and them) that uncertainty and happiness are allowed to exist at the same time.
Recently, I listened to a podcast talking about the philosopher Thomas Hobbes.
Hobbes believed humans need order to stop the world from descending into chaos. That without shared rules, shared fears, shared systems, we end up in anarchy. He talked about how people create a kind of social contract: we agree to live inside an order because it protects us.
And science is kind of a way to discover that natural order of the cosmos(not create it) while politics tries to create a social order between humans.. in a way 😉
And honestly? I think he’s probably onto something.
To some extent, we need order.
We probably need governments, routines, schools, social norms. It lowers stress, the order illusion. Parenting itself is full of little acts of creating order — bedtime routines, family rules, snack times, trying to convince tiny humans that brushing teeth is somehow non-negotiable.
But at the same time, I keep thinking that maybe order is also a bit of an illusion. Maybe a lot of an illusion.
Because life changes constantly.
Hobbes talks about people coming together around common fears. Fear creates a common enemy which in turn creates order. Shared beliefs create order. Society creates order.
But then suddenly someone gets sick. Someone unexpected is born into your life and changes everything. A war starts. Someone you love passes away. Plans collapse. Earthquake, tsunami, meteor. Things surprise you all the time, and dreams change.
You move countries. You get on the motorhome. You realize the version of life you carefully planned somehow quietly disappeared while you weren’t paying attention.
And you realize how fragile our sense of certainty actually is.
The future has always been unpredictable, even when we plan it really well.
So maybe the goal isn’t to perfectly control life or force certainty where there isn’t any.
Maybe the goal is to hold order lightly.
To build routines and safety and structure but not worship the illusion that we’re fully in control.
Maybe the real skill we want to teach our kids isn’t just how to survive uncertainty.
Maybe it’s how to live inside uncertainty.
How to laugh anyway.
How to find beauty anyway.
How to stay hopeful anyway.
How to enjoy the unpredictable parts too.
Because maybe resilience isn’t becoming angrier, harder, serious.
Maybe resilience is staying soft enough to keep finding joy in a world that refuses to stay orderly. While keeping a realistic view on life.
I don’t always succeed at this.
Sometimes I’m impatient. Sometimes I’m overwhelmed. Sometimes I’m just trying to get everyone buckled into the motorhome without somebody crying (including me).
But I think this is the parenting style I keep coming back to:
Not perfect parenting.
Not survival parenting.
Hopeful parenting.
The kind that quietly says:
Yes, the world is messy.
But even in the mess you can always find beauty.
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