For Parents: Healing Yourself

by Dr. Laura Markham

"Our wounds transform and become our source of power."
--Gail Larsen

The famous psychologist D.W. Winnnicott said that children don't need perfection from their parents; all we need to do is avoid harming them, and to offer them the "ordinary devotion" which has always been required of parents.

But unfortunately, most parents don't find this quite so easy.

Because, first of all, there is nothing ordinary about devotion. Devotion, as parents know, is walking the floor at 2am holding a screaming baby with an ear infection. Devotion is putting down that delicious novel to play a board game with your kids. Devotion is forcing yourself into the kitchen to make your kids dinner after a long day, when all you really want is to curl up on the couch and return a phone call to a friend. Devotion is taking off your jacket on a cold night to tuck it around a sleeping child in the back seat of the car.

This ordinary devotion is the same intense love that has caused parents throughout human history to hurl themselves between their child and danger, from flying glass to snarling wolves to enemy soldiers.

But even if, most of the time, we express our devotion in our willingness to put our children first, it is still not easy to be a "good enough" parent.

Because even we devoted parents often inadvertently scar our children. This includes parents who adore their children, who would be completely heroic and self sacrificing if the situation called for it. The reason is that while we would never consciously hurt our child, so much of parenting, like every relationship, happens outside of our conscious awareness.

The truth is that virtually all of us were wounded as children, and if we don't heal those wounds, they prevent us from parenting our children optimally. If there's an area where you were scarred as a child, you can count on that area causing you grief as a parent -- and wounding your child.

We can all think of examples: the father who unwittingly repeats his father's judgmental parenting with his own sons, or who becomes formal and rejecting with his daughter when she reaches puberty because of his own repressed sexuality. The mother who can't set limits on her children's behavior because she can't bear their anger at her, and ends up raising selfish brats. The parents who work long hours at their jobs, leaving their babies in the care of nannies, because they doubt their own ability to be interested in (translate: to love) their infants.

That's the bad news: Unless we consciously examine our own scars, we are doomed to inflict similar ones on our children.

But the good news is that being parents gives us an opportunity to heal ourselves. Most parents say that loving their children has transformed them: made them more patient, more compassionate, more selfless. Our children have an unerring ability to show us our wounded places, they draw out our unreasonable fears and angers. Better than the best zen master or therapist, our children give us the perfect opportunity to grow and heal. Almost magically, as our wounds transform, we find that these hurt places inform us, motivate us, make us better parents.

So how can we heal our own scars, and become the parents our children deserve?

1. Parent consciously. If we pay attention, we find the wounds that need healing; we know where we are over-reacting, where we need to examine our own "stuff."

2. Break the cycle by using your inner Pause button. You don't have to repeat history with your kids. Take a deep breath, and hit the pause button. Remind yourself of what is about to happen unless you choose another course.

3. Understand how emotions work. Anger is a biological state. When we are in the grip of the chemical reactions that make us "angry," we do and say things we would never choose to do otherwise. Take a breath and wait till you calm down.