A brilliant parenting expert named Abigail Wald single handedly changed my relationship to parenting.

When my eldest daughter Sarah hit the three-nager stage and my gentle parenting tactics failed, my therapist suggested I consider embarking upon Abigail’s six-month program. Having just left my high-octaine job, I poured all of my energy into this program.

Abigail specializes in coaching parents on how to manage their strong-willed and highly sensitive children. I entered the program convinced Sarah was textbook strong-willed. By the end, I realized she wasn’t (surprise, surprise) but Abigail’s program gave me a framework for parenting that was far more valuable and wise than triaging my daughter’s behavior.

I didn’t know it at the time, but her philosophy and approach deeply influenced why and how I’m building my company, Mother of Invention. Thank you Abigail.

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Special Time

One of the most potent kernels of wisdom that stayed with me was her concept of special time.

Abigail taught that most parenting friction stems from lack of connection. To get your child to become more pliant and stay within the boundaries you set for them, she believed that you needed to consistently fill up their emotional cup. How? You set a timer with your child and say,

“For the next five minutes, we play however you want. You make the rules.”

Push the timer, put away your phone and for five minutes, you immerse yourself completely in their world. You defend against any distractions letting them lead the play. When the timer sounds, special time is over and you transition to whatever you need to do next.

Abigail’s concept of filling the emotional cup with special time is profound: it’s like putting money in your child’s piggy bank that you can spend later on when holding the line or facing resistance.

Special time shows your child they aren’t just another demand on your attention. You care about who they are. You want to see what gives them joy, and you’re willing to join them in it.

But the unlock for me, however, was the timer. It created a container. Because I knew special time was finite, I was incentivized to immerse myself in play (and enter “micro-flow”) more quickly: for 5 or 10 minutes all my text messages, emails and household tasks could wait.

By way of Abigail, I experienced my first ritual as a parenting concept.

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Repetitive Tasks vs. Ritual

Webster defines ritual (in the non-religious sense) as an act or series of acts regularly repeated in a set precise manner.

The act of using a timer—whether set for 5, 15, or 50 minutes—makes special time repeatable. No, we can’t control the play in between the timer’s start and stop, but time box is the ritual container for play and connection.

Let’s take this concept and zoom out a bit.

Doesn’t every repetitive caregiving task in early childhood follow a set, precise pattern? Of course, these patterns change over time. But we do bedtime routine in (roughly) the same order every night to give predictability and consistency to our children. The sameness is safety to them.

The sameness for parents? The endless repetition? With the proper lens, these can become rituals for us.

My biggest A-HA moment as a parent was reconciling that the difference between a repetitive task and a ritual is the intention.

Repetitive tasks are meaningless loops. You perform them because they must be done. Diaper changes, feedings, and cleanings, as tasks, can be mechanical, draining, and endless.

OR you imbue them with meaning and they become a bit more improvisational, playful, occasionally joyful.

Rituals are repetition with intention. The physical actions are identical. The agency is completely different.

Other Examples:

• Brewing coffee can be to caffeinate quickly or engage in a morning meditation.

• A shower can be functional hygiene or an embodied reset.

• The gym can be a task you do to look good or an act to nourish your body.

Same actions. Entirely different experience.

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Consider the Diaper Change

There are few people in this world more obsessed with the act of diaper changing than me. (It’s an unconventional badge of honor to wear, but I wear it proudly!)

As you can imagine, I’ve talked with hundreds of parents about their experience of diaper changing. And I can report that most parents don’t easily recall specific cherished memories of a specific diaper change… memories usually are associated with negative experiences like an epic blow out or wrestling match. Most parents who are out of the diaper stage report to be grateful the phase is over.

And I get that! I’m not suggesting every diaper change needs to be a ceremony in care and connection.

But parents do have a choice: many approach diaper changes as an “somewhat ick” task to power through and return to regularly scheduled programming. The diaper change interrupts another more savory activity.

But what if each time a parent laid their baby down on a diaper changing pad, parents acted as if they were laying their child on a playmat? Play first, clean when it feels right.

There is no other act in early childhood caregiving performed more frequently than a diaper change. If the average potty-learning age in the United States is three years, the average parent changes between 5,000–8,000 diapers per child.

So what if parents approached these 5,000 - 8,000 opportunities to play and connect?

Through that lens we choose to ritualize the diaper change and imbue it with meaning, and purpose and connection.

That’s the concept I’m designing The Nest to facilitate.

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The Motherhood Agency

I’ve written before about agency in motherhood, and I want to link this ritual concept back to it.

A ritual can follow the same structure as a task but feel novel each time. It can change, morph, evolve organically. Rituals inherently don’t demand a success metric.

This makes rituals the practice ground for Motherhood Agency.

• You’re writing the story of meaning.

• You’re iterating and experimenting—trying different rhythms, different pacing, different ways of engaging.

• You’re learning what creates connection with this specific baby on this specific day.

• You’re practicing the core skill of Motherhood Agency: being the gamemaster.

If you can practice Motherhood Agency in small moments such as diaper changes, feedings, the tenth explanation of why we don’t throw food—you build capacity for it in larger ones.

Bigger kids, bigger problems as they say. But this can spill over into your work, your relationships and even your sense of who you’re becoming.

The small moments are where practice happens. The small moments build the internal feedback loop that says: “I’m choosing this. It feels aligned. I’m moving toward connection.”

Because you’ve practiced it 5,000 times.