If you struggle to give your kids the depth of love and acceptance you wish, this post is for you. So often we look to books and podcasts and memes for strategies and scripts to try only to fall short in the heat of the moment with our poor kiddos who are oh so adept at pushing our buttons. Buried under the weight of mandates from all the experts out there, we can sometimes fail to do the one thing only we can do to make the shift we seek. Unfortunately, it’s not popular, easy to teach, or a quick fix. But it is essential for your confidence and ease as a parent. The truth is, the magic parenting sauce you likely seek from the experts actually can be found in the quality of love you are able to offer yourself. This does not mean that you can’t love your kids if you don’t love yourself. But loving your kids while you reject yourself makes the job much more challenging, confusing, and depleting. Because this topic deserves so much attention and isn’t as simple as it sounds, we’ll only scratch the surface here. But my hope is that the following example illuminates the possibilities that lie waiting for us all in the journey of reparenting ourselves.
Today I was playing tennis with my daughter. Scratch that, I was sitting on the sidelines with a migraine while my husband played with her. She hasn’t played in 6 months and yet, she was so tough on herself. Over and over again she would point out her mediocre shots, feeling worse and worse as the session wore on. I tried pointing out the obvious – she hasn’t played in forever, would she expect anyone else to play their best after a long break, isn’t having fun the important part?, etc… I tried humor – poking gentle fun at her hyper-critical part (which usually breaks the spell), laughing at how badly her dad was playing too, and teasing that I could hear her thoughts and they weren’t nice, so stop that! In the end, she slumped away from the court, defeated and deflated (even though she won two of three games she played with someone 5 times older than her). In the past, I would have reflexively tried to pull her out of it quickly and clumsily, feeling intolerant of this state she’s in. Feeling like it isn’t a valid way to be given the circumstances already described. But thankfully, I’ve done some inner work the past few years which has afforded me fresh perspective. I now know that I am historically intolerant of my own grumpiness, my own self-doubt, my own pessimism. It was not exactly celebrated in me as a child, and for most of my life I continued to carry that intolerance within. Only recently have I learned to love this rejected part of myself. In turn, I have only recently begun truly loving and accepting my daughter’s glorious moodiness too. I’m not reflexively afraid of her facing rejection and therefore immediately trying to fix or squash her attitude.
When we got home from tennis, she curled herself up in a ball with a blanket over her and inched around the house, following me like a pitiful little snail. After a few minutes of this, I got down on the ground, covered her little body with mine and whispered in her ear: “You know one of my favorite things about you? You can be so fiercely determined to get better at things. You can be so focused, so dedicated, that you do such amazing things! And I love watching you when you are like that. AND, I also know that sometimes what comes with that awesome ferocity is that you can be kinda harsh with yourself as you work on getting better at things. Right? Well, I want you to know how much I love that part of you – the fierce yet frustrated part. I also want you to know that I love you just the way you are before you improve anything at all. Because you’re pretty amazing without changing a thing.” The insight that sparked those words came from the powerful work I had done accepting and loving and reparenting myself – contacting and finding a way to welcome my exiled and rejected parts, one by one. Because of this work, in that moment with her I was so clear what my priorities were. I knew that despite my reflexive frustration and concern about her behavior, I needed to summon my clarity and strength to not rescue her from feeling disappointed or bummed, nor from the potential rejection she might face for being a negative Nelly. (Nor to get her to cut it out because I find it so exhausting myself). What she first and foremost needed was to know that in that exact moment, she was ok. Her disappointment, her stuckness, her frustration with her stuckness, her regressed, slinking self as she feels her feels were all ok. I recognized (because of the parallel work I had done on myself) the primary and precious opportunity for her was to feel radical belonging. That every single part of her is held in love. I knew from within my own skin that this medicine of total acceptance could be deeply fortifying, giving her the strength, courage and love to heal her own wounds. She might not be able to do this for herself yet. But that’s what I’m here for. And I have the clarity and confidence to hold that kind of love for her until it stabilizes within herself.
How much are you aware of the relationship you have with yourself? Do you give yourself the benefit of the doubt? Do you trust in your own good intentions? Do you believe that you are worthy of love and belonging? If you don’t, you likely struggle to give these gifts to your kids as well. And even if you have worked hard to bestow love and belonging on your children, you’ll find that love flowing much more freely and easily after also admitting yourself into the field of your own heart. It’s difficult to do this reparenting work on your own, but becoming a parent yourself is such a powerful opportunity to walk through the doors of your own healing work. If you are hearing the call from your own inner children to awaken your inner loving parent, take the leap! If you’re not ready to invest in support for your journey, start with reading the accessible book, No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz. It serves as a wonderful introduction to the multiplicity of parts within ourselves and a roadmap for cultivating the loving inner presence we need in order to heal.