Clearing Our Own Emotional Baggage So We Can Clear Our Kids'

I wanted to share with you some examples of parents' baggage getting in the way of their parenting.

I had a client whose teenage daughter wanted to sleepover at a good friend's house where she had often spent the night before.  This is roughly how the conversation went:

Daughter:  Mom, I want to sleep over at Sally's tonight, okay?

Mom: No, that's not going to work.

Daughter:  Why not?

Mom: Because you'll stay up too late and will be tired in the morning.  

Daughter: We will probably stay up late, but we can sleep in in the morning.

Mom:  You promised to clean out the garage.

Daughter: I haven't forgotten that.  I was planning on doing it after lunch. 

Mom: Well, what about your homework?

Daughter: We've been at the library all afternoon.  The only thing I have left is about an hour of math.  I can do that Sunday no problem.

Mom: Well, you've been out every night this week.  I think you need to stay in and rest.

Daughter: Yeah, it's been a busy week, but I'm not tired and I can sleep in in the morning.  Mom, I don't get what the issue is.

The mom repeated this conversation to me, and I probed further (think of last week's blog post on Clarity Through Self-Awareness)  What is another reason you might not want her to sleepover?  What else could it be?  Are there any other possible reasons? 

When Mom really thought it through, she realized that she was feeling like she hadn't seen much of her daughter and was really missing her. In her own mind, she had thought that snuggling up on the couch with one of the chick-flicks she and her daughter loved would make the perfect evening.  Exploring a little further, Mom realized she truly did want to give her daughter space and at the same time was really missing the close buddy-buddy relationship that they had had before.  Therefore, when it came to saying no to the sleepover, Mom was looking for an excuse to say no that she could justify that didn't come from her own neediness.

 Intellectually she recognized that it was natural for her daughter to want to spend more time with friends, but emotionally Mom wasn't quite ready to accept it.  Had Mom recognized what she was feeling in real-time, she might have been able to say to her daughter, "I miss you and was hoping we could hang out and watch a movie together tonight," her daughter might have made a counteroffer like, "Why don't you and I watch a movie after I finish cleaning out the garage tomorrow."  

The example above is a pretty innocuous one.  But here is an example that was causing much more stress in the family:

 A 10 year who has always loved her horseback riding lessons fell off her horse last August.  Ever since she fell off her horse, she has put up serious resistance to going to her riding lessons.  Once there, she loves her lessons and seeing "her" horse, but the weekly battle to go has been really hard for Mom to handle.  Mom is trying to be empathetic and understanding, on the other hand, she doesn't want to keep paying for lessons and then not have her daughter go.  

Mom has been assuming that the reluctance to go horseback riding is about fear of falling.  The mom and I were brainstorming ideas for making it easier for her daughter to go, when Mom shared the additional information that riding lessons are on Fridays, and Dad picks the daughter up on Fridays and takes her home to his house AND that this is now a long drive because he now lives with his girlfriend. 

When Mom shared that the fall from the horse happened about the same time as Dad moved in with the girlfriend, that was a big aha moment.  I asked, is it possible, Mom, that you are having a hard time letting your kids go to the girlfriend's house and that your very sensitive daughter is picking up on your negative energy and THAT is why she makes a fuss about horseback riding?  That possibility struck Mom hard as for the first time she admitted to herself how many sad and angry feelings she has about sending her kids to a stranger every weekend.

Can we know for certain whether the girl's reluctance to go horseback riding was because of tension about going to her dad's and not fear of falling off her horse again?  No, we can't.  But Mom did find that when a) she did some of her own personal work around accepting the current situation and b) moved the handover location from the horse barn to a restaurant closer to Dad's that both going to horseback riding and going to Dad's got a lot easier.  

When it comes to parenting, we are always only making our best guesses.  But both of these examples illustrate how when some piece of the parenting still isn't working despite our best arguments and creative solutions that our own emotional baggage or needs might be getting in the way. 

The good news is that if we are willing to be open and curious about our own reactions, we have the potential not only to become more effective parents but to heal our own wounds at the same time.  

Can you think of a time when your own feelings have gotten in the way of your parenting?