Dr. Robyn Koslowitz

Sometimes people are like, I'm this with a flavor of that.

This is not a diagnosis.

This is just, oh, yeah, I do tend to do that a lot.

So a perfectionist post-traumatic parent is someone who feels like I'm so damaged by my childhood.

And I am so on guard against ever harming my child that I must do parenting perfectly.

So I'm going to read all the books and I'm going to memorize all the parenting scripts and I'm going to go on to all those forums on social media and I'm going to do it perfectly because if it's not perfect, it's terrible.

Like they have no in between aspect.

The paralyzed parent, it sounds very similar, right?

The paralyzed parent is somebody who is frenetically busy, but they're never accomplishing anything.

And it's usually because they lack discernment.

Like deep down in their gut, they really don't trust their own judgment.

So you might have in the book, I described this woman, Maria, who's

One minute, her kid comes home from school and she's helping one kid with her homework.

And then one of the kids is screaming from another room, but suddenly the rice is burning on the stove.

And then she's cleaning up because her husband hates coming home to a mess.

She's trying to keep everybody happy.

She's never finishing anything.

She's like a real people pleaser coming from her childhood where she was criticized so much.

She doesn't trust herself.

She doesn't trust her own ability to say, the kid who's bleeding is more important than the kid who's screaming for help with their homework, even if they're screaming loud.