Love, shelter, play, acceptance, healthy boundaries, time. The file of what children need is quite the checklist, and if life could be clearly defined and categorised, parenting would be quite straightforward. End of story - do X and Y, get Z = a happy, well balanced child.

If only there were no curve balls!

One of the big things that can get in our way as parents (discounting any big external traumas of course) is how we ourselves were parented - this has an impact on our own personalities and how we think about love. Maybe you have felt rejected or unheard as a child.  You’ve opened your mouth to say something and realise you can hear your own mother or father’s voice.  If those voices spoke kindness and understanding, and made you feel of value and safe - fantastic. For many of us, sadly, it is the opposite. 

Do you love as a reaction or an action? Perhaps you’ve a tendency to lean towards performative-based parenting because that’s how you were also raised, and it’s left you with that niggling feeling: “I am only worth loving if I am productive.”  It is so easy to pass on these internalised rules to our own children.  

Maybe you’ve lacked confidence as a parent, and in trying to deflect your own feelings of disappointment, you have become overwhelmed and reluctant to see your own emotional role in your parent-child relationships. We are a link in a very long multi-generational chain, forwards and backwards. 

When you get angry (or any of the big, hard emotions like revulsion, jealousy, frustration, fear etc.) when your child asks a question or does something, this is an alarm bell. Your parental fight or flight kicks in and you respond through those emotions. At times like that (and as a parent they are multiple and overlapping some days) remember - the alarm bell isn’t necessarily about your child’s actions, it’s about you.  They’ve just pressed one of your big, red, childhood-memory buttons. 

It’s not too late. Links can be replaced. Unpack those memories as if it were an old case - examine and remember your childhood and how you felt about it as a child. Consider how you feel about your childhood now. After you’ve done that, only put back what you need. You can throw out the behaviours and patterns that didn’t work for you as a child.  

Maybe you have a fresh appreciation of your own parents now you have children of your own after this process. But don’t stop now. Recognising how your young self might have felt around the same age as your own child will help you be more empathetic towards them. Understand that you can accommodate their feelings when you are feeling those big, hard emotions without also feeling you have to push your child away.

You don’t have to repeat the same patterns with your own children.