The Unstoppable “Reset” Mindset

What feels motivating on January first often becomes a distant memory by Spring Break.

By now, you’ve probably heard that for most people, New Year’s resolutions don’t survive past a few weeks. From my brief professional career and personal hobbies in the fitness industry, I learned through daily practice, what many of us discover the hard way: long-term consistency is the real key to change. There’s no mystery and no magic pill. At least, none that’s healthy or sustainable.

When progress is slow or unglamorous, inconsistency creeps in. We fall off track not because we lack willpower, but because we lack planning or support.

Parenting can feel much the same.

But raising a child, especially one developing their sense of self, safety, and confidence, doesn’t allow us the luxury of resolutions that quietly fade away. There’s no “start fresh next month.” We need tools that stay with us. Tools that work on ordinary days, hard days, and especially the days when we lose our cool.

There’s no pause button for parenting.

I didn’t always have the right language for it, but over time this one word became one of the most valuable tools in my parenting toolbox. Reset.

As it turns out, the idea that you can reset anytime, on any day, is especially useful for busy parents, which, if we’re honest, is every parent.

The reset is for anyone who knows the strain of balancing life on the tightrope of being everything to everyone. For moms trying to reclaim confidence or autonomy. For dads wondering whether you’re even allowed to say out loud that you’re struggling. Under pressure, the reset became my way back to connection with my daughter when every other tool felt like it was failing.

Especially in those moments when I quietly wondered if maybe… just maybe… my child and I were a bad fit.

Yes. I said that out loud.

It began early on. By the time my firstborn (and only) was almost three, I sensed I was on the brink of being challenged in ways I’d never experienced before. One Friday after a hectic workweek, I picked her up from daycare and started our long but familiar drive home between my office in Richmond, across the web of Lower Mainland bridges toward the North Shore.

Normally, those drives were our time. I’d ask about her day, sing songs, play “I Spy.” But that evening, I was exhausted.

She sat in her bright, flowery car seat, chatting away in her sweet voice. About thirty minutes into our regular commute she told me a short story, and when she finished, I smiled at her through the rearview mirror. I thought we’d had a lovely exchange.

Then she shouted, “Mama! You’re not listening to me!!”

“I was listening, sweetheart. I smiled at you,” I replied, calm on the surface, distracted by traffic and fatigue.

She fired back instantly: “But you didn’t talk. You have to talk!”

That moment stayed with me for years, marking the quiet beginning of our true temperament divide that only picked up from there. I was learning how she needed to be met, and how differently my brain works.

I’ve always processed the world creatively, internally, and quietly. I’m a divergent thinker, often overstimulated by my own senses despite my ability to play the extrovert when needed. To survive and thrive, I’d built a life and career adapting to complex environments.

Parenting her was the most complex environment of all.

My little love, once labeled “shy to warm up,” was becoming a vibrant, deliberate communicator. She started to need faster verbal feedback, and sustained engagement, hour after hour, day after day. She was never much of a sleeper either, so I was a mess on the inside.

I remember thinking, I love my child… but this feels suffocating.
And then, What’s wrong with me?

What I did have was pressure. And under pressure, unhealthy coping mechanisms surfaced. This was long before consistent days in the gym lifting heavy weights. I was lifting the weight of feeling not enough, especially for her, as my anxiety grew.

Eventually, through counseling, I instinctively reached for the one thing that had guided me long before I became a parent: my values. I had lost touch with them in the noise of daily life. I needed to return to them, values I shared with my husband, and build a roadmap for our family.

Defined family values help anchor you when everything else feels upside down. Ours turned out to be respect, patience, and empathy. We didn’t find them neatly at the beginning; we backed into them through conflict, repair, and reflection.

Respect meant learning that our child’s experience of the world wasn’t smaller or less valid than ours, just different.

Patience meant accepting that all brains move at different speeds, process through different senses, and define success differently.

And empathy, something I once believed was innate, turned out to be a skill that had to be modeled, taught, and practiced. Our daughter learned it equally from what we said and how we spoke about others, and ourselves.

None of this came easily.

Raising little humans can feel like carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. I knew listening mattered in adult relationships; I learned it mattered just as much to children.

When a child feels that you get them, they’re more likely to trust you when their world feels big or broken. You become their first line of defense. And as children grow, especially through puberty, if they feel unheard or emotionally dismissed, parents need a way back in.

This is why the reset matters.

Over time, I learned that my fit with my daughter was adaptable. I came to understand temperament, how deeply children can differ from their parents. Temperament is something you’re born with, rooted in the nervous system, shaped by experience. Parenting isn’t about fixing it. It’s about anticipating each child’s unique temperament and responding thoughtfully instead of reacting emotionally.

Professionals call this Goodness of Fit. I prefer Ease of Fit. Nothing is “bad” when things are hard. Some combinations are simply more challenging!

When the parent-child fit feels strained, it’s like forcing a square peg into a triangular hole. Misunderstandings pile up. Stress rises. Everyone feels like they’re failing.

But parents can adapt to these differences and overcome them.

Parents hold the key to adjusting the parent-child fit.

I could have shut my chatty little girl down to protect my own limits. Instead, because I refused to make her smaller, I chose to grow. While I taught her empathy, she taught me more about leadership than any Masterclass ever could.

And when I lost my patience, as all parents do, I reset.

I took a breath. I reopened doors that had closed emotionally. I apologized first. “I’m sorry I reacted that way. When ___ happened, I felt overwhelmed. Do you want to tell me how you felt?” Then I listened, or invited her to talk later, when she was ready.

Over time, I learned to sense when things were going sideways and think reset before they escalated. That single word helped me change gears, even if it meant slowing everything else down.

The small resets mattered. One by one, they taught us that repair is possible, conflict doesn’t mean disconnection, and relationships can bend without breaking. They helped us start fresh.

With that kind of support, children learn to honour their temperament, adapt to different environments, and develop a sense of belonging in the world, as they are, not who we wish they were for our own convenience.

The “reset” allows for repair and reconnection.

Children grow, and we have to grow with them. So when you lose your cool, when everything feels sideways, when you think you’ve failed—

Take a deep breath and reset.

About the Author

Penny Greening is the founding board member of Reframe Voices, a BC nonprofit changing how families talk about food, body image, and mental health, with openness and compassion. Drawing on her own lived experience with eating disorders since childhood, as well as the loss of a family member to anorexia and bulimia, Penny frequently writes and speaks about eating disorder prevention and the importance of starting stigma-free conversations at home as early as possible.

Her work blends personal insight with research-informed practice to help families recognize warning signs in children and youth, and seek help sooner. Penny continues to practice the “Reset” mindset with her teenage daughter, who is a first-year university student.
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