Parents pass on aspects of themselves to their children. For better or worse (hopefully more of the former than the latter), we project our prior life experiences on to our kids. Since no one makes it out of childhood completely unscathed, we are right to expect less than perfect parenting from ourselves. And that is okay, because to expect perfection would be unrealistic and a lead us down a path toward misperceived failure. As I discuss at length in Help From the Principal’s Office , sometimes, parents just need to be good enough. I have worked with parents who were in my opinion, too hard on themselves, taking blame for all of their children’s struggles. Yes, there is always room for improvement for the parent seeking out ways in which to best prepare their son or daughter for adolescence and adulthood. The idea, as I see it, is to never be satisfied with the quality of our parenting while simultaneously keeping in mind that our kids are benefitting from our guidance and support.
One of the primary goals of parenting is to meet the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of our children as best we can. And that is what we do: the best that we can. Our personal ‘best’ is influenced by the degree to which we have worked through our own childhood challenges. A question we may want to ask ourselves is To what extent are we aware of unresolved childhood issues adversely impacting us as adults? This is an important question to ask. Reason being, unresolved childhood issues tend to impact our approach to parenting. The impact can be ‘positive’ or ‘negative’, but our experiences from early life are relevant either way. To illustrate this point, I will provide a low stakes example of how this phenomenon can unfold for us as adults.
Let’s say when your were 8-years-old, you really wanted to learn how to play the piano. You begged your parents to sign you up for piano lessons, so they did. After taking a couple of lessons with an instructor, your interest and motivation to learn and practice began to dissipate. The learning tasks became increasingly complex and demanding of your time and effort. So, you told your parents that you no longer wanted to take lessons; and essentially quit.
Fast forward 25 years.
You are now the parent of an 8-year-old daughter, and for a reason you can’t quite explain, you have this strong inclination to have your daughter learn how to play the piano. Although she has not expressed any interest in this endeavor, after broaching the subject with her, she reluctantly agrees to take piano lessons. Although your daughter isn’t particularly interested in learning to play the piano, she wants to please you and make you proud so she gives it a go. A few lessons are taken and you sense that she is not enjoying the process. You therefore try to talk it up by telling her how great it will be once she learns how to play and that she will be grateful later in life for having learned. The only problem is, she is only going along with the lessons because it is apparent to her how important the lessons are to you. You are now faced with a difficult parental decision. You can either continue to strongly encourage your daughter to persist with the lessons, in hopes that she will eventually enjoy doing so. Or, you can let her stop taking lessons just as your parents allowed you to stop taking lessons 25 years ago.
The gist of the lesson from the piano example is more common than some may realize. Perhaps the trickiest part of breaking this parental tendency is becoming consciously aware of what we are doing. It may take someone explicitly pointing the matter out to you, but that would require another adult identify this subconscious process playing out AND having the courage to bring it your attention. After all, no one (that I know of) enjoys having psychologically repressed material pointed out to them. Therefore, our best bet is taking an honest look at ourselves to consider why we feel as strongly as we do about certain aspects of our parenting. This is not an easy task. Reflecting on our approach to parenting will make us feel vulnerable, and vulnerability often leads to a sense of being placed at risk. I would then pose the following question: What or who exactly is at risk? There are a couple of answers to that question.
For one, honest self-reflection of how we are doing as parents puts us at risk for coming to unfavorable conclusions about our parenting abilities. So, we are taking the chance of identifying areas in which there is room for parental improvement. Secondly, by NOT honestly assessing why we parent the way we do, there’s an inherent risk that our own unresolved childhood issues will be passed down to our kids. Sometimes, parents attempt to vicariously live out their youthful aspirations through their own children; without realizing they’re attempting to do so. It takes a conscious effort on our part to not pass our childhood “baggage” on to our children. Being a parent forces us take brutally honest stock of ourselves. There is little room to hide when all eyes are on us as we model for our sons and daughters how to be functioning adults in the world.
There are many ways in which unresolved issues from one’s childhood can influence how we raise our children. Here are a few examples:
• The boy who wasn’t allowed to eat sugary cereal is now a father who allows his son to eat as much Lucky Charms as the youngster wants (probably to the chagrin of his spouse).
• The girl whose parents were overly strict about what she was allowed to watch on T.V. is now a mom to children who are allowed nearly free reign with Netflix (again, probably to the chagrin of her spouse).
• The child who grew up with emotionally absent parents has turned into a “helicopter parent”. *Check out my previous blog entry entry on this topic
• The kid who did not have many friends growing up is now a parent who’s incessant about his or her children making as many friends as possible.
The above examples illustrate how adults can often veer in the opposite direction of what they experienced when they were young. There is an element of overcompensating involved with these and similar examples of how we try to right the wrongs from our past. Of course, this does not work, and is inevitably impossible. The next best solution, as concocted by our subconscious minds? Have our own kids right our previous wrongs! Except, this doesn’t help anyone. In fact, once adults realize what they are doing, it is easy to become embarrassed. Plus, we cause confusion and uncertainty with our children since they do not know what the heck is going on.
The solution? Work on our own psychological baggage as best we can so as not to pass our psychological it down to our kid. Again, this is hard work, but the benefits are twofold.
For one, confronting lingering frustrations from our childhood will improve the quality of our current relationships. Below the surface, that which continues to plague us from decades ago interferes with our present day functioning. Often, these interferences are so deeply ingrained that we do not even notice they exist. But that doesn’t mean the interfering memories don’t exist – they do.
Secondly, when kids observe their parents genuinely attempting to improve themselves, this has a lasting, positive effect. The perceptive child will then intuit that self-improvement doesn’t end during adulthood, rather, continues for the rest of one’s life. If children sense complacency from their parents, they will grow up to be complacent adults. If children observe their parents taking steps toward self-betterment, they will grow up to be adults focused on bettering themselves. Please know that I am not casting judgment here, rather, pointing out just how influential we are on the maturation of our young children.
I hope that the main points from this article has helped shed some light on what was previously below your level of your awareness. Look, we have all made many parenting mistakes, and will make plenty more before all is said and done. As covered in Help From the Principal’s Office , sometimes we need to cut ourselves some slack. Doing so allows for the natural qualities and strengths of our kids to propel them toward greater heights. Our children do not need us to be perfect. Our children need us to be authentic. They need to see how we are comprised of both strengths and weaknesses so they do not think something is wrong with them once they mature into imperfect adults.
I hope you found this first blog entry of mine helpful. Please let me know your thoughts on my Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn pages. Also, if you have suggestions for future blog entry topics, please share them with me so that I can maximize my ability to help you.
Scott