A Gen X Parent's Playbook to Restorative Parenting
A Gen X Parent’s Guide to Restorative Parenting is a riotously honest, deeply insightful, and darkly humorous survival guide for parents who were raised by latchkey norms, emotional repression, and microwave dinners, and who now find themselves trying not to pass on the family trauma torch. With a Gen X voice soaked in sarcasm, nostalgia, and a dash of leftover 90s rebellion, Jennifer Tollefsrud offers a blueprint for raising emotionally intelligent kids without losing your own last shred of sanity.
This isn’t your average parenting book. There’s no toxic positivity, no judgment, and definitely no pastel bullet points about “gentle parenting.” Instead, this book invites readers aboard the Hot Mess Express and navigates the chaos of modern parenting using the science of brain development, attachment theory, and practical restorative strategies, all wrapped in the verbal equivalent of an oversized flannel shirt and Doc Martens.
Jennifer kicks things off by introducing the foundational pillars of restorative parenting, respect, empathy, accountability, and repair, with brutally honest and often side-splitting anecdotes from her own parenting battlefield. From cleaning toothpaste-and-soap science experiments out of the carpet to negotiating with a tiny revolutionary who believes pants are optional at the grocery store, readers get a crash course in how to parent with compassion without enabling miniature tyrants.
She moves into the neuroscience of connection, breaking down complex brain processes like co-regulation, neuroplasticity, and the almighty power of oxytocin (spoiler: it’s basically nature’s duct tape for emotional meltdowns). With every banana-induced tantrum and broken-toy existential crisis, Jennifer explains how parents can help rewire their kids’ brains for resilience, not just through soothing tones and sensory calm-downs, but by modeling messy, human moments and then making repair.
Communication gets its own chapter, aptly titled “The Art of Communication (or How to Decode Tiny Humans Without Losing Your Will to Live).” Here, Jennifer shows how to ditch outdated scripts like “because I said so” in favor of curiosity, humor, and strategic open-ended questions that actually get responses beyond “fine.” Tips include turning nonverbal meltdowns into teachable moments, translating sock-based tantrums into emotional insight, and deploying humor as the ultimate pressure valve.
Emotion regulation is where the book really hits its stride, particularly in guiding parents through the hormonal hurricane of adolescence. Whether navigating a preschooler’s peanut butter Picasso moment or a teen’s Oscar-worthy performance over a lost hoodie, Jennifer offers science-backed tools (like the Feelings Thermometer, “Name it to Tame it,” and Emotional Mad Libs) to help kids of all ages build emotional fluency. Parents are reminded that they are, in fact, brain architects, and every moment of connection or repair lays neural track for future emotional competence.
Throughout, Jennifer balances laugh-out-loud storytelling with actionable tips grounded in real research and lived experience. Her ultimate goal? To help fellow Gen Xers break generational cycles, raise kind, connected kids, and maybe even enjoy the ride, mismatched socks, yogurt-painted dogs, and all. In the end, A Gen X Parent’s Guide to Restorative Parenting isn’t about perfection. It’s about realness, radical connection, and keeping both your child and your sense of humor alive. If you’re looking for a parenting book that’s equal parts psychology and comedy special, this is the anti-heirloom you didn’t know you needed.
