What a PhD in Education Actually Teaches Me About Parenting My Own Kids
Last Tuesday, I was kneeling by our front entryway tying my 7-year-old’s sneakers when he burst into tears. His crumpled blue shark water bottle sat between us, the T-Rex sticker he’d earned at the zoo back in April fallen off and nowhere to be seen. My laptop bag was slipping off one shoulder, my advisor had sent three reminder emails about my 9 a.m. PhD cohort meeting, and I was already 10 minutes behind schedule.
Before I started this doctorate in education, I would have patted his back, mumbled “I’ll stick a new one on tonight, buddy” and herded him out the door. That’s what I did for the first five years of parenting, and what I did my first three years teaching third grade too: rush through the small frictions to get to the “important” stuff on my to-do list.
But I’d spent the previous week reading through field notes for my dissertation, interviewing first grade teachers about how they handle daily transitions, and something I’d been turning over in my head clicked. I sat down fully on the stained entryway rug, the one I’ve been meaning to replace for six months, and said, “That T-Rex was your favorite, wasn’t it? You showed it to every person we met at the zoo.” He nodded, still sniffling, shoulders hunched. We spent three minutes crawling around looking for the sticker, and found it stuck to the bottom of the shoe rack, a little crumpled around the edges. I pulled a piece of scotch tape from the junk drawer in the entry table, and we stuck it back on. We were five minutes late dropping him off at school, and his teacher just waved from the door, no harm done.
People ask me all the time what you even study in a PhD in Education. Most assume it’s all fancy policy jargon, or big theories about testing and curriculum, or that it just trains you to be a college professor. A lot of parents even ask me for fancy tips: what’s the best reading program to get my kid ahead, how do I get them into a top elementary school, what’s the secret to raising a high-achieving kid.
What they don’t expect is that the most useful stuff I’ve learned has nothing to do with any of that. Last month, I was sitting in on a 1st grade classroom for my field work, watching a new teacher struggle through transition time after art class. All the kids had put their crayons away except one little girl, who hunched over her paper and refused to move. The teacher’s voice got tighter, she started counting down from five, and I could see the little girl’s jaw clench. I leaned over and whispered to the teacher, “Ask her what she’s finishing.” She did, and the little girl said she was almost done drawing a birthday card for her grandma, who was visiting that night. The teacher gave her two extra minutes to add the candles, and she packed up her stuff without another fuss.
That’s the big lesson I’ve picked up in three years of this work: most behavior that gets labeled as defiance or distraction just means a kid needs two extra minutes, or someone to name the thing that matters to them. It sounds too simple to be a PhD-level insight, but that’s the thing – most of the big problems in parenting and teaching come from us forgetting the simple stuff.
I don’t give out vague advice like “be more present” – that doesn’t help anyone when you’re running late for work and your kid is having a meltdown over a sticker. But the small, concrete changes I’ve learned from my research are things any parent or teacher can try tomorrow. First, build two extra minutes into every transition. That means leaving the house two minutes earlier, starting your math block two minutes later, pausing two minutes before you ask kids to switch activities. It doesn’t sound like much, but it cuts down on 80% of the power struggles I see, both in my house and in the classrooms I observe. Second, when your kid is upset, name the specific thing they care about instead of brushing it off. Instead of “it’s just a sticker,” try “that sticker was really special because you got it at the zoo with grandpa.” You don’t have to fix the problem right away – just naming the feeling takes the edge off. Third, if a kid is refusing to do what you ask, pause before you call it misbehavior. Ask “what are you working on that you don’t want to leave?” Nine times out of ten, they’re not being rude – they’re just wrapped up in something that matters more to them than your schedule.
I still mess this up all the time. Two weeks ago, I was up against a draft deadline for my dissertation chapter, and my 10-year-old kept begging me to come to the driveway to watch his new skateboard trick. I snapped at him after the third ask, told him I was busy and he’d have to show me later. He went outside quiet, and I felt that twist in my chest that I know now means I skipped the small thing that mattered. Ten minutes later, I saved my draft, went outside, and watched him do the kickturn three times in a row. I cheered, I apologized for snapping, and that was that. It didn’t make my deadline any later, but it meant he got what he needed that day.
I’m still writing my dissertation, I still don’t have all the answers, and I don’t know if my work will ever change big education policy or end up in any major journals. But what I do know is that these small lessons have already changed how I show up for my kids, and how I talk to the new teachers I work with through my program. Last Friday, my 7-year-old came home from school and told me he helped a new kindergartener who was crying because his superhero sticker fell off his lunch box. He stopped, helped him look for it, and gave him a piece of tape from his pocket to stick it back on.
That’s the real outcome of this PhD in Education, as far as I’m concerned. It’s not a fancy degree or a big job. It’s learning to stop rushing past the small stuff, and passing that on. Some days it works, some days I’m still running late and snapping, and that’s okay. It’s just a work in progress, same as everything else.
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