Every parent knows that they're going to make mistakes when it comes to raising their kids.

But sometimes our shortcomings and failures as parents can haunt us,

leaving us feeling overwhelmed with remorse and even shame.

And sadly, our own struggles with shame can then contribute to counterproductive shame that

our kids feel as well.

In our interview today, I'm talking with Heather Nelson, a writer, a counselor, and a mom,

about what it looks like to pursue shame-free parenting that we might have joy-filled homes. Heather is the author of Unashamed,

healing our brokenness and finding freedom from shame from Crossway. Let's get started.

Well Heather, thank you so much for joining me today on the Crossway podcast. It's great to be here, Matt.

Thanks for having me.

So we're going to talk today about shame-free parenting.

And I wonder, before we kind of jump in, there's so many different angles there that we would

want to explore.

But how would you simply define that?

What is shame-free parenting?

I would say shame-free parenting. You can look at it a couple different ways. So shame-free

parenting from the perspective of the parent is being able to a parent in a way that doesn't

cause you shame. Like, oh, darn, I just yelled at my kids, or I just said that thing. I never

want to, I thought I would never say.

So I would say that shamefully parenting is parenting in a way that won't bring you shame

as a parent.

It's also from the children's perspective, it's parenting in a way that is keeping them

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