This is the third session of a Saturday parenting conference with Adam Young and Dan Allender. This is session #3.
Session #3: When You Realize You've Hurt Your Children
It's easy to get distracted from engaging your own story as you become focused on how you are harming your children.
If you are feeling guilty because you are coming to see how you have harmed your children, there is something holy about that guilt.
Why do we sometimes lose it and not be who we want to be? Most parenting failures are caused by dysergulation inside your body as the parent. Dysregulation in your body is from your past. Children actually raise their parents! Children allow us the opportunity to see the places in our own story that need tending to.
When we feel dysregulated, we act emotionally, impulsively ... not like the parent we want to be. The question is: why?
Answer: issues from your past are being activated. You are remembering something from your past, growing-up years. Your brain is calling something to mind from your past, but you don't have that sensation of recall. That's because it is an implicit memory not explicit memory.
Suppose you were never allowed to cry as a child, and you have a seven-year-old who now cries often. And whenever that crying drags on for longer than you think is appropriate, something in your body begins to change. What's going on? Why does the crying of your child cause your body to become dysregulated? Perhaps, your unengaged heartache of not having space to cry when you were a child is playing a role. "I held it together when I was a kid so why can't they get it together?"
Have you named in your own story the reality of the requirement that you not cry. Have you grieved that? There are losses and costs and unfelt feelings that you have to acknowledge. You need to grieve your particular losses. Without the space for grief, it is very likely contributing to your diminished tolerance for your son's crying. You need to get this story engaged and integrated in your brain.
Because if not, your son picks up on your dysregulation, and the process of generational wounding continues.
So what do you do when you realize you have harmed your children?
As you are engaging your story and doing your own work, it can be so difficult to simultaneously see the ways your parents harmed you AND the way you are harming your children. And it can be tempted to stop looking at your own story and instead start beating yourself up from harming your kids.
But here is the truth: the single most important thing you can do if you are interested in becoming a more loving parent is to explore your own story. And if you've already started that, go deeper. What makes a good parent? It isn't the parenting classes and books they've read or experienced. It's the degree to which they've made sense of their own story. Tend to your younger self so you can be a better parent to your children.
"The best predictor of how our children will become attached to us is how well we have come to make sense of our lives, how well we tell a coherent story of our early life experiences." Dan Siegel
“Moments of joining enable a child to feel felt, to feel that he or she exists within the mind
of the parent. When children experience an attuned connection from a responsive
empathetic adult they feel good about themselves because their emotions have been given
resonance and reflection.” Dan Siegel
Some important points:
1. Explore your own story.
2. Make sure your child "feels felt." When they have big emotions, they need you to join them in their big emotions. They need you to be with them. This is almost always non-verbal communication. Empathy.
ALL FAILURES CAN BE REPAIRED! THERE CAN BE MOVEMENT AND TRAJECTORY TOWARD HEALING AND REPAIR!
We are talking about INTEGRATION.
"The key to staying in connection with your child during times of discipline is to align yourself with your child's emotional state." Dan Siegel
Feeling felt is not about getting what you want. If they want ice cream right before dinner, it doesn't mean you give them ice cream. The magic is in the non-verbal communication of "Man, yeah, I would like to do that too, but we can't do that right now."
Every parenting failure can become the opportunity for REPAIR.
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