Connection-Based Parenting with Wendy Snyder

Wendy Snyder of Fresh Start Family shares how connection-based parenting, nervous system healing, and compassionate discipline can help families thrive without relying on control or fear.

Wendy Snyder is a certified parenting educator, family life coach, podcaster, and founder of Fresh Start Family, a movement that empowers parents to raise their children with compassion, connection, and courage. Her work blends research-backed tools with real-life experience, helping families break free from reactive parenting patterns and step into more peaceful, respectful relationships.

Our Conversation with Wendy Snyder

Amity: How did your passion for working with parents and children develop?

Wendy Snyder: I’ve always been drawn to working with kids. Whether it was coaching springboard diving, nannying through college, or eventually becoming a mom myself, it’s been a constant in my life. Over time, that passion evolved into supporting parents, too. Now I’m a parenting coach, author, podcaster, and family life coach. But at the heart of it all, I’m a child advocate.

Amity: Your kids are now at ages where you can fairly confidently say that connection-based parenting works?

Wendy: If anyone can ever say that – yes. They are 17 and 14 now. But when you’re a parenting educator, it’s hilarious how often you think, Who am I to be teaching this?

But over time, you start to see how much it actually works. Not perfectly, but powerfully. I actually think the most imperfect parents make the best coaches – the ones who live it, mess up, own it, and keep learning.

Amity: Your concept of cactus kids is pretty enlightening. Can you share more?

Wendy: Identifying cactus kids is really about seeing strong-willed children as a blessing, not a curse. I had a teacher early on who told me, “The world needs cacti.” We can’t just have orchids and daisies. 

I live in Southern California, and succulents and cacti are basically the only plants I keep. They’re incredibly hardy, but if you overwater them, they won’t thrive. And if you try to move them without gloves or understanding how they work, you might end up with bloody hands.

It’s the same with strong-willed kids. Once you learn what makes them tick, everything changes. They have a need to feel powerful because they are our future leaders. When you nurture that and help them feel understood and supported, you start to see all of the beauty they bring.

But if you come at them trying to force compliance, using punishment or shame, things can spiral quickly. They weren’t designed to blindly obey. They were designed to be empowered, to collaborate, and to show up in the world with strength and purpose.

Nervous System Healing in Parenting

Amity: You also talk about nervous system healing. How does that tie into parenting?

Wendy: Nervous system work has been so much fun to explore these last few years. In the beginning, we focused mostly on mindset tools which are about mentally resetting when you’re triggered.

What we’ve discovered now is that when parents combine mindset tools with nervous system regulation, everything comes together. Suddenly, you’re not just trying to “think” your way out of a triggered state, you’re actually calming your body in real-time.

Parents ask, “Why do I get so frazzled when my kid spills something or hits their sibling?” It’s a huge overreaction… like a bear is chasing you. That surge of emotion, that urgency to fix it or scold or make it stop takes over.

What we’ve found is that this is a conditioned nervous system response. For many of us, our bodies learned early on that mistakes or pushback meant danger. Maybe we were raised in autocratic homes, where discipline was all about fear, force, bribery, and rewards. These are external control-based systems. Some families used physical punishment like spanking. Others used emotional pain like shame, separation, disappointment, and “What’s wrong with you?” So the nervous system was wired to associate mistakes or misbehavior with real danger.

Then we grow up, become parents ourselves, and we want to do things differently. We read the books, get inspired by conscious parenting, and we want to be peaceful and intentional. But then we find ourselves snapping and doing something like yelling or grabbing a wrist too tightly.

Once we start learning that it’s actually safe to have imperfect children – kids who misbehave, cry, throw fits in the grocery store – we can start to signal safety to ourselves in those stressful moments. That’s what helps shift us out of reactive parenting and into responsive parenting.

Reactive parenting is what most of us grew up with: control through fear, force, bribery, or rewards. Responsive parenting happens when we can slow down, connect with our body, and remind ourselves this probably isn’t an emergency even if it feels like one.

The body will choose a comfortable hell over an uncomfortable heaven. Yelling might not be what a parent wants to do, but it feels familiar. I used to get really triggered when my kids would misbehave in public. I’d think, Everyone’s judging me. I must be a bad mom. Or maybe I just have a bad kid. Or both.

Amity: I think we’ve all had those moments of feeling judged when our child melts down in public.

Wendy: Yes. One day when my kids were about six and nine. We were at this little farm where they could run around, pick wildflowers, and play with the chickens. They started bickering, which wasn’t unusual. I was thinking, This is great. This is a perfect place for them to practice peaceful conflict resolution. 

They were yelling and waving big sticks at each other, but I was managing okay. Then I turned around and realized a couple had come out to the edge of the field and stood there, arms crossed, watching us. That’s when I lost it. I went straight into panic mode. I yelled, told the kids to get in the car, shoved them in, and stayed angry for way too long. The next morning, I woke up and was like, Oh wow, I need to call my coach. That was a mess!

When you feel like everyone’s watching and judging, the fear of that judgment is so intense. It can override all the tools, all the progress. And that’s why nervous system work is so important. Without it, you just go right back into those old patterns, even when you know better.

Understanding Compassionate Discipline

Amity: Can you talk about compassionate discipline?

Wendy: There’s something so satisfying about replacing punishment with compassionate discipline. It just feels better for everyone.

In our work, compassionate discipline includes three core tools.

Self-Calming Discipline

The first is self-calming. This is step one whenever there’s misbehavior or mistakes. When emotions are high, learning doesn’t happen. We swap timeouts for self-calming. It helps kids learn to regulate from within, instead of relying on someone else to control their behavior. It takes practice, but it works.

Natural Consequences

The second piece is natural consequences or letting life do the teaching. Strong-willed kids especially respond to this. Say your child keeps forgetting their lunch. After a few reminders, one day you don’t bring it. They make it through with a granola bar or an apple shared by a friend. And they’ll probably remember next time. That real-world experience is more effective than, “I told you so.”

Of course, natural consequences aren’t always safe or appropriate. You wouldn’t let your child skip brushing their teeth just to teach them about cavities.

Logical Consequences

That’s where the third piece comes in: logical consequences.

Logical consequences are about teaching life skills. Think of Olympic athletes. They fall, get coached, try again, and learn. Punishment looks backward. Discipline looks forward.

We ask parents, “Where did we get the idea that to help kids behave better, we need to make them feel worse?” The truth is, we don’t. We can teach responsibility, hold boundaries, and build skills all without shame or fear.

But we have to remove hypocrisy. If you say, “We don’t hit,” and then you spank, it sends mixed messages. Kids notice.

To help guide logical consequences, we use the Four R’s:

• Related to the behavior
• Reasonable in scale
• Respectful to the child
• And teaches Responsibility

If it checks those boxes, it’s likely a logical consequence. If not, it’s probably punishment.

When Parents Get Triggered

Amity: Our kids’ Montessori school taught about logical consequences. But in a triggered state, it’s easy to take away screen time even when it’s completely unrelated.

Wendy: Right. If it isn’t tied to the behavior or handled respectfully, it doesn’t teach the lesson you’re hoping for. And it often backfires.

It’s not to say you can’t create a related consequence around screen time. But most parents haven’t learned how to do that yet. That’s one of the things we teach, among other strategies that go beyond punishment.

Some of our go-to tools are role plays, redos, and makeups. These give kids a chance to repair, learn, and build new habits. And they’re often more effective than any traditional consequence.

We also love using visual charts, especially for younger kids in their first decade. Charts like “When I feel angry…” or “When I feel hurt…” help children name their emotions and choose healthy responses. Anger and hurt are two of the most common emotions that drive destructive behavior, so learning how to move through those is huge.

“I am” statements are another powerful tool. These work best during calm moments, when you can remind your child of who they are and help them reconnect with that identity. It might be something like, “I am kind,” or “I am learning to be a good listener.” These affirmations build emotional resilience.

Makeups are actions that repair the relationship after a rupture. They work best when we model them first. For example, if I yelled at my child and later realized I overreacted, instead of just saying sorry, I might do something more intentional, like doing something fun with them. Then I’d say something like, “I want to take responsibility. You don’t deserve to be talked to like that. My mom yelled, my grandma yelled, and I’m trying to do it differently. Thank you for having grace with me.”

That kind of action speaks louder than a quick “sorry” ever could.

Role plays are great for teaching new life skills, especially with younger kids. You can use toys or dolls to act out a challenging situation. Replay the mistake and then practice the new behavior. We’ve found that touch and play are both direct roads to a child’s mind. They remember what they feel in their body.

Redos are similar, but instead of play-acting with toys, you have your child physically redo the moment, using their own body to walk through what a better choice looks like. That physical repetition helps create new neural pathways and rewires the pattern.

All of these tools offer something punishment never really does: real, embodied practice. And when we give kids the chance to practice, they actually grow.

Amity: That’s such a hopeful way to look at discipline. It’s not about control, but growth.

Wendy: Exactly. The goal isn’t perfection. It’s connection, repair, and helping our kids (and ourselves) keep growing.

You can find Wendy’s quick start parenting resources here. Learn more about her podcast here.