Reflections on Parenting - Part 1

I work with a lot of parents who are working to better understand and reflect on the parenting they received as children, in hopes of doing some things differently with their own kids. It can be really tough to do things differently because our children do invoke our earliest attachment systems. Our children trigger our earliest circuitry so that they can learn to regulate their emotions with us first. 

You see, before we are thinking beings, we are all feeling and sensing beings. Our young children, babies included, are not thinking through things with complex thought patterns or developing pros and cons lists. They are born with an emotion system in place. They know how to feel right from the get go, and they let these feelings be known through tears, tantrums, squeals of delight, precious smiles, and laughter too! 

Nature gave our children an emotion system so that they would evoke emotion in us. 

And it is that visceral feeling you feel inside when you hear your baby cry that says → I MUST go to them that helps to invoke your caregiving capabilities. Your children’s emotions invoke your own emotion system, and alongside this your attachment system. Nature gave us this system to invite our children to be dependent on us so that we would care for them, and in turn show them, relationships are safe. 

In the little moment to moment emotional interactions you have with your children, important stuff is happening! When your baby cries, you might also feel some sadness or distress. When your toddler is frustrated, you might also feel some frustration. Our children are born with really underdeveloped brains, but with ready-to-go emotion systems. The prefrontal cortex which allows us to think rationally, problem solve, and calm ourselves down in times of stress, is not fully developed in humans until our late twenties. 

We do start to see ‘evidence’ of children having some rational thought between the ages of 5 - 7… but as anyone with a preschooler will tell you, we don’t see a whole lot of this from young children. And babies have even less development in this area. 

Nature designed our children to elicit a visceral response in us so that we would attend to them. Through this attending, we invoke our attachment systems. And in forming this attachment system we engage in a process called co-regulation. Our children borrow from our mature adult brains in a process of co-regulation, and this is how they learn to calm in moments of distress. 

Over time and many many MANY repetitions, our children begin to learn how or what to do with the emotion they feel, because they have seen their big people deal with it. 

But what if you didn’t see your own big people deal with it? Or, you are aware that your caregiver’s approach to childhood emotional expression was less than ideal. Perhaps you had parents who became very anxious when you expressed big emotions, or parents who were not available due to no fault of their own. Some of you may have received parenting that shamed emotional expression. The phrase, “I’ll give you something to cry about…” comes to mind. And if you received these less than ideal approaches, you may be left floundering when it comes to responding to your own children’s emotional experience. 

While we are likely to default to the parenting we received in moments of challenge with our children, it is possible to override these default settings. Parents do have the capacity to choose differently, to shift the cycle, and welcome their child’s emotional experience. And the best indicator of whether or not a parenting cycle will shift with that parent is whether or not the parent has reflected on their own experience of being parented.  

Therapy can be a place to do this. To reflect on the parenting you received, and the parenting you hope to offer your own children. To notice what comes up for you around particular emotions, and how these emotions inform differing wants and needs that you have. You may start to notice the emotions you welcome with your children, and those you are more likely to push away. 

This is some of my favourite work to do with folks. Therapy can be a safe place to feel a full spectrum of emotions, if you have not otherwise had a place to do so. I believe all humans are worthy of a space to explore what is going on for them, how it is influencing their behaviour, and what they would like to be different. I would welcome doing this work with you in the therapy space. 

Take good care, 

Lara