Difficulties in your past can impact how you parent today
The past can have a significant impact on the present and future. For example, How you parent is sometimes directly related to the way, you experience your parents as a child. For change to occur, you need to begin to recognise and acknowledge the brokenness that you experienced in your childhood and try to identify how it is showing up in your relationship with your children.
If you can relate to this, here is what you can do today to make a difference.
1. Take an inventory of your relationship with your kids and make a decision to get to change.
Accountability & support
Find a trusted person to offer accountability and support; this might be the help of a therapist or trusted friend.
Sometimes shame will interfere and try to influence you not to share. It will tell you that everyone else is doing great and you are the only one who is struggling. What the truth is parenting is challenging for many, and it takes courage to acknowledge the areas where you need help and ask for it.
I love listening to other mothers as they interact with their children; it helps me feel normal. If you are ever in doubt about your parenting or wonder if everything that you do is wrong, take the kids to the park and listen and watch the interaction between parents and their children.
Recently I heard my neighbour talking to her daughter; it was interesting to note that their conversations had a similar theme to ones I have with my children. It was a relief to hear that others had it. When we talk to others something incredible happens when we realise we are not alone.
When we suffer on in silence, the past is repeated and can be passed on to the next generation. However, when you reach out, you are breaking the cycle and leaving a richer legacy for your children. Do not allow shame to prevent you from taking the step that is necessary to get the resources and support that you need to make a difference in your life and that of your children.
Parent with confidence
You can also parent with confidence. For more information on how to successfully deal with childhood difficulties and show up different for your kids join me in the course Parenting After Childhood Trauma. Leading up to the course I will be hosting daily pieces of training in the private Facebook group Wounds that Heal.
I love this. I was just talking with a friend over the weekend who has been having trouble with her sons. She’s a single mother of 2 boys. It’s difficult and she’s struggling because she thought she didn’t have any support. After talking she realized she did have the support, she just couldn’t see it at the time.
Is is so easy to miss the support that we have around especially when our heads are down just trying to get through each day. I hope your friend is able to tap into the network that is around her.