• I thought it was important to teach my three kids obedience.
• Now that they're older, I know it's important to teach them boundaries, too.
• When one of my children respectfully says no to something, I make it a point to validate them and their choice.

As soon as children learn to follow instructions, we start teaching them obedience. I know that's what I did with my kids.

I asked them to share their things, take turns, and compromise even when they're not always ready to do so willingly. I pushed them to cooperate not only because I felt it was the right thing to do, but because I wanted to keep the peace and be seen as a good parent.

Sadly, it seems society only sees agreeable, generous children as good ones, so parents raise them with a give-in mindset. I followed that path until I realized just how my actions were shaping my children's personalities.

Now I am strongly focused on improving myself while developing a parenting approach tailored to what works best for my children.

I wasn't seeing the whole picture

At some point, I realized that constantly pushing my children to say yes to everything, acting like good children are meant to, is affecting their personal boundaries.

When my children were not allowed to say no, I noticed they felt uncomfortable, frustrated, and even angry. My older son had no interest in his weekend archery class, yet I kept forcing him to attend. Every Saturday morning became a struggle, as I spent a lot of time convincing him to go. Within a few weeks, I realized that instead of building discipline or a skill, it was creating unnecessary stress for both of us. So I let him opt out.

Since then, I make it a point to ask my children before enrolling them in extracurricular activities, so they spend their time doing things they genuinely enjoy rather than ticking boxes for me.

They're learning to set boundaries with others, too

I also noticed that my children were happy to share snacks from their cabinet with visiting friends, but became upset when someone opened it without asking. I taught them that there is nothing wrong with saying no when someone crosses a boundary or takes something that belongs to them without their permission.

Setting physical boundaries was another challenge. When relatives and friends would lovingly ask my children for a hug or a kiss on the cheek, I could see them becoming uncomfortable. I could see that they felt obliged to agree, not wanting to be impolite. Without questioning anyone's good intentions, I now let my children decline physical affection when they are uncomfortable. I simply remind them that they can respond with a high-five, a wave, or a smile instead. It helps them respect others' kindness without feeling they have to give up their own boundaries.

People sometimes judge my approach

I have been told I am spoiling my kids by letting them have their say. But because my children know their voice matters, I have watched them handle peer pressure with remarkable maturity.

Recently, when my son's friends urged him to climb a high wall and jump off it to retrieve a lost ball, he confidently refused. They began teasing him, but he later told me he stayed calm and simply replied that he wasn't going to risk a fracture for a ball. Standing up to peer pressure is hard, but because he knew he could set a boundary, it made things easier.

This practice starts at home, even with me. I now allow my children to respectfully say no to low-stakes matters involving personal preferences. Like it's fine if they choose to stay behind with their grandmother rather than attending an outing they won't enjoy. As their parent, I want to teach them that respectful disagreement is acceptable.

I'm also validating their choices

Whenever one of my children respectfully says no to something, I make it a point to validate them, reinforcing that their boundaries matter.

Of course, setting boundaries isn't a free pass for entitlement. It doesn't mean being extra picky about eating or saying no to their assigned homework and household chores. They know that while they are developing these healthy boundaries, I still expect them to demonstrate basic manners.

I want them to be confident individuals who show genuine kindness, but no one should be allowed to exploit it. They should be able to resist unhealthy pressure and hold firm even when saying no feels uncomfortable. I hope that this helps them live a life built with courage, clarity, and true self-worth.

• On paper, everything was going well with breastfeeding.
• However, even with a good milk supply and a latching baby, I felt intense rage during sessions.
• When I learned that there was a name for it, I realized I wasn't alone.

I had finally gotten the hang of breastfeeding: My milk had come in, I had a solid supply, and my baby was latching well. On paper, everything seemed to be going smoothly. But during nursing sessions, I wrestled with a nagging agitation I hadn't been prepared for. Sometimes, during the final feed of the day, it bordered on rage.

"I don't know if I can do this anymore," I texted my husband one afternoon while he was at work. "I feel like my skin is crawling. I want to run through a wall."

Though those feelings went away as soon as the nursing session was over, they kept returning during feeds more often than not.

Finding a name for what I was feeling helped me feel less alone

When I brought this up to my doctor during a postpartum checkup, she seemed puzzled. Eventually, Googling "breastfeeding rage" led me to accounts of "breastfeeding aversion" that sounded startlingly familiar.

One 2023 survey of more than 5,500 Australian women found that about one in five respondents had experienced this.

Finding a name for what I was feeling was validating — it helped me to stop questioning my love for my baby, or spiraling into shame every time I watched the clock, desperate for a feed to end.

But it also left me wondering: Why hadn't I heard of this before?

I tried to make nursing more manageable

After I learned a little more about breastfeeding aversion, I experimented with a few different strategies to help me cope with the negative sensations and emotions that kept coming up.

Distracting myself — say, with a podcast, a show, or soothing nature sounds for those middle-of-the-night feeds — definitely helped.

I also suspected that overstimulation might be part of the issue, so when distraction didn't work, I'd try nursing in a quiet room without a lot of sensory input.

But on occasions where I just didn't feel up to muscling my way through the discomfort, I gave myself permission to take breaks. That meant handing the baby off to my husband for bottle-feeding while I pumped.

Switching to pumping brought relief — and some guilt

About three months into my nursing journey, the agitation became so overwhelming at times that I had the urge to abruptly yank my baby off my breast.

And that's when it hit me. Breastfeeding was supposed to be a positive experience for us. But now, I wondered if "pushing through" the distress might actually do the opposite, breeding tension and resentment rather than bonding. I knew it was time for a change.

The decision to stop nursing was a complicated one — and one that came with a gnawing guilt. I knew so many moms who were eager to breastfeed, but struggled with supply and latching issues, so I felt I didn't have a "good enough" reason to stop. Within days of switching to pumping, though, a dark cloud lifted. For some reason, pumping didn't induce the same emotions and bodily sensations that breastfeeding did. More importantly, I no longer dreaded feeding my son.

My only regret now is that I didn't make the transition sooner. The idea that motherhood meant making sacrifices had cemented into my brain before my son was even born. I was so concerned about his needs that I hadn't given much thought to mine. But my experience mattered, too.

Funny enough, the closeness I expected with nursing didn't come until I stopped. One quiet afternoon at home, as I cradled him in my lap and fed him a bottle, he wrapped his tiny fingers around mine. I finally felt the connection I had longed for.

• Lauren Antonoff is the CEO of Life360 and uses the location-sharing platform with her family.
• She says she tried to mimic her mom's somewhat hands-off parenting with her own two kids.
• Giving kids space can help them develop agency and independence, she says.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Lauren Antonoff, CEO of Life360. It has been edited for length and clarity.

My mother was an awesome parent, but she was a person first. It was just the two of us for a lot of my childhood, between the time my dad died when I was 8, and my mom remarried when I was 14.

During those years, my mom was parenting while also in school, working, and dating. She was always there for me, but she wasn't trying to manage my childhood. She didn't do homework with me, for example. She made sure I was happy, loved, and well cared for, all while living her own life.

A lot of single moms might not have been open about things like dating, but mine was always transparent. I liked that I got to do my thing while watching my mom do hers.

My mom's benign neglect helped me develop agency

I didn't grow up knowing I wanted to be a parent. When I met my now-husband, he was already a father. Our daughter, who is now 27, was 5 at the time. I say I got her the easy way.

From the beginning, my husband was the primary parent. That really opened the door for me to feel comfortable having kids. About three years later, we had our son.

Once I became a parent, my mom and I would sometimes talk about this idea of benign neglect — the benefits of letting kids do their own thing, and figure it out. In my childhood, my mom's benign neglect allowed me to develop independence and problem-solving skills.

Because my mom was less involved than some parents, I created a sense of agency that's served me well throughout life.

I wanted to change the world, but didn't expect to be in tech

My interest in tech was an accident. I thought I would become a civil rights lawyer and change the world.

While I was in college in the early 90s, I purchased a Mac to write papers with. I was living in Berkley, and got sucked into this community of Mac enthusiasts. I understood the technology — though not as well as some people — and I could articulate things well.

My techie friends diagnosed me as a product manager. I had a desire to advance technology that was both intelligible to humans and useful to them. I started working at a startup that was bought by Microsoft.

I thought it would only be for a few years, until I went to law school. I ended up spending 19 years at Microsoft before joining other tech companies like GoDaddy and now Life360. I realized along the way that I have an impact on people's quality of life, at scale, by advancing technology that makes day-to-day life easier.

Location monitoring keeps my in-person connections close

At Life360, we talk a lot about agency, which was so important in my childhood, and which I tried to encourage for my own kids. For me, and a lot of our users, the platform creates agency while helping people boost their real-life connections.

Here's my favorite use case: my husband is still the primary domestic partner, and he brings me lunch most days. If I'm at work feeling hungry, I can check his location and see if I need to get myself a snack, or if he's around the corner with my meal.

Recently, I got a flight notification from Life360. It showed that my brother — who doesn't live locally — had touched down in LA. I hadn't known he was in town, but since I got the digital signal, we were able to get dinner. Ultimately, the platform keeps us closer in real life by creating those opportunities for connection.

I'm cautiously optimistic about the future

I've never seen tech as a bad thing. I had a TV in my room growing up, and a simple coding game that was so basic I had to retype the code each time I turned it on.

I was pretty liberal in how I let my own kids use technology. Looking back, I got my son — who's now 19 — a phone when he was probably too young. At the time, we wanted to play Pokémon Go as a family. I didn't think about how harmful some aspects of tech can be. I'm lucky that he turned out good despite that.

I'm cautiously optimistic about the future of technology. I'm also an activist. We get to shape what the future looks like, for our children and us — and there's a lot of power in that.