Hello again!
If your parents are around, when you spend time with them, do you ever have big feelings come up?
The day before yesterday I spent a lot of hours with my Mum, and at the time I noticed myself doing an old repression mechanism that I haven’t done for years – playing with my hair.
At the time, I didn’t invite in my ILM to listen to me; I just noticed the hair-playing.
And yesterday morning I felt really upset.
I had a couple of broken cookie moments – I bumped my back (quite lightly) whilst I was cleaning out our bunny area, and roared.
I told my lovelies that I had some big feelings coming up, and it was nothing to do with them.
As I was driving to our homeschooling meet up (an hour away), I listened in to myself.
I realised it was feelings bubbling up from yesterday that I hadn’t listened to!
So I listened in, and felt immediate relief!
I wonder if you’ve ever thought how being with your parents (if they are still around) can mean being right in our sweet spots.
When we’re with them, all our unheard hurts can come up to be heard and healed.
As much as they love us, our parents will have done things that we didn’t enjoy, and not done things that we really wanted and needed.
And when we’re with them, those feelings will come up to be heard.
And it’s just the same for our child/ren.
If you easily judge yourself and hit yourself with emotional sticks, this next part might not be so helpful for you to read.
However much we love and adore our children, and however much we aim to be aware, meet their needs, listen to their feelings, avoid doing things that our parents did that we didn’t enjoy, and do things that our parents didn’t do that we longed for, all of us will at times do things that are painful for our children and at times won’t do things that they really need us to do.
The most helpful thing we can do here is set loving limits with any temptation to judge ourselves.
And to invite in heaps of self-compassion.
If all our needs had been met and were being met now; if all our feelings had been listened to with compassion as we were growing up, and were still listened to like that now; if we grew up in a culture that was based on meeting the needs of everyone, and in particular, parents and children, and was also all about listening to uncomfortable feelings as well as happy ones, and if we had lots of accurate information about birth and babies and children and needs and feelings, then things might be different.
But because of our own unmet needs in the present and the past, and our own upset feelings in the present and from the past, we will at times not meet our baby or child’s needs, or we’ll misinterpret what’s going on for them and what they really need.
At times we’ll repress painful feelings that they’re trying to express to us, and at other times we might try to encourage them to express feelings in ways that aren’t helpful for them.
At times we’ll be distracted and won’t give them the presence and aware attention that they need.
At times we’ll respond in annoyed or harsh ways or will have reactions which are all about us.
I include myself in all of these.
I’ve done all of these, many times with my children, despite parenting being my deepest passion.
And I believe that is why relationships between parents and children are so complex.
Our children depend on us for love, for survival, to be seen and heard and understood.
They learn their core beliefs about the world, human beings and themselves, from us.
When they are babies and small children, we are their sun and our moon.
They love us so much.
I’m sure you remember your baby gazing into your eyes.
So, as parents we are the source of our child’s greatest love and also are often the ones that do the most things that are painful for them.
That’s also because, especially when they are small, we often spend the most time with them, so there’s more opportunities for missing things and doing unwanted things to them.
And even if the hurts are from other children or teachers at daycare or school, sometimes our children will also feel pain that we didn’t protect them from those things happening.
And if your children are homeschooled like mine, it’s even more likely that the majority of the hurts of omission and commission are from us.
My children have had so few hurtful things happen with other children, (I checked this out with them and they agreed); so the majority of their emotional hurts have come from me and their Dad and each other (and also things like falling off their bike).
If we can hold this knowledge without judging ourselves, it can be a great gift for our children.
For many of us, it is painful for us that our parents don’t understand the feelings that we felt in response to what they did or didn’t do.
Imagine if they could simply hear how it was for us; how we interpreted things and how we felt, and what we really needed at the time, without judging themselves or judging us.
The more we can compassionately take responsibility for what we didn’t do for our children and what we did that wasn’t helpful for them, the more free they are likely to be to express those to us, and the more likely we will be to able to respond with compassion, empathy, and taking responsibility without being harsh to ourselves, and the more likely they will be able to heal from those experiences and be freed from them.
And I think this can explain some of the behaviours that we find challenging to understand, like hitting or biting or avoiding eye contact or not speaking to us or seeming not to listen, and also them having their biggest cries and tantrums with us – because we are often both the person who led to the hurt happening, as well as the person most willing to listen to the resulting feelings.
I’ve been talking to quite a few mothers recently who’ve shared how painful it is for them that their parents aren’t able to hear how their childhood was for them.
As parents who are wanting to be more aware and more present and listen more and understand more, I think it can be easy for us to have a blind spot to the places where we aren’t hearing our children or where we do things that are hurtful for them.
So, I invite you to listen in to how you feel reading this.
The beautiful thing is, being aware of these things means we are more likely to be able to help our children.
Today we were at a homeschooling meet-up, and my teenage daughter was playing board games with the other teens and my son was playing board games with the other similar aged children.
And whilst they were doing that, I listened in to the hurts that I imagine that they are still holding on to now.
And in each case, I imagined being them, to see if I could get more insight into how I could help more.
For both of their main sweet spots, I did an Inner Loving Presence Process, with me going through, listening to what I thought they might need to say about those situations.
I find that often inner work like that leads to outer work – and us having more capacity to help them on an outer level too.
Understanding our children’s hurts and the ways in which we have contributed to those is a gift for them AS LONG AS WE DON’T HIT OURSELVES WITH EMOTIONAL STICKS.
We may need to receive listening and empathy either from outside or inside to do that. We may need to feel the grief or sadness and mourning that those things happened or didn’t happened.
I wonder if any of this resonates with you?
And if so, what action would you like to take?
Would you like to offer yourself some self-empathy?
Would you like to feel in to your child/ren and what might be most helpful for them?
Would you like to brain and heart-storm some ways to help him or her heal from that (through things like Present Time, attachment play, or listening to crying or tantrums that come out as the result of broken cookie moments or tiredness or loving limits).
I believe it takes courage to take this kind of responsibility – to be able to apologise and repair, without feeling guilty.
I celebrate and honour you.
Love,
Marion
xxx