Hey moms. Reacting to your kids? That makes sense.
I remember the moment I became a mom thinking to myself, “moms have been doing “this” this whole time and I had no idea?” Raising these tiny babies, who grow into talking machines, and then become teenagers overnight is wonderful; and it is also the most tiring, stressful, keep you up at night (in more ways than one) thing we will ever do.
The emotional and physical energy required to care for our kids, along with sleep loss, and the stress of all of our other responsibilities is enough to dysregulate us. But there is something additional that is unique to mothering than can make us reactive.
Here’s what I mean by that: when our stress levels are high we argue more with our spouses, get angry at other drivers on the road, feel fatigued… Of course parenting falls under the category of “potential to increase stress.” But mothering also brings with it a unique layer that deserves our attention: The memory of our own childhoods, our own needs and wants as kids, and the pain that our younger selves carry. These wounds are highlighted, or reflected back to us, by our children and in our motherhood.
We will focus on one particular type of wound in this article: the pain we carry from our own childhoods because our parents didn’t always get it right, or got it really really wrong. Some call this our early attachment injuries, or our unmet needs and wants, or our inner child’s pain.
Carrying the missed marks of our own parents.
No matter how our own parents parented, they were human, and so they missed the mark along the way of raising us. This is not a crusade against all parents, nor an excuse, but the reality of living. For some people, harmful wounds were created, and for others, small mistakes were made that were repaired. The range is vast.
So how does this translate now that I’m a parent?
This means that we have likely walked into our own parenting journey with some wounds, both known and unknown to us. Perhaps we have done some self reflection and healing around those missed marks and have shed some things, and are able to move forward in new ways. There are also likely things that we are still working through or have not addressed yet, and those surely are present in our parenting.
This could present itself when we are giving our son or daughter instructions and they will just NOT listen. And they are simple instructions that we have repeated many times. The tape might start playing in our heads, “They never listen to me. No one ever listens to me. I have never been listened to.” And then we are off to the races: yelling, punishing, going inward and shutting down, or withdrawing from our kids… While this interaction is frustrating, when we slow it down, we can see that this may have some connections to past experiences in which we were not listened to or heard.
This is just one example, and if you sit with it for a bit, you may come up with your own experiences when you have seen a reaction in yourself that seems to be stemming from another experience you have had. Or maybe when you’re pushing your kids on the swing, or when they are hurt by a friend, or when they’re asking you for a hug— something bubbles up in you that is from a different time and a different child— yourself.
The ideas shared above are done with much care and gentleness. As you look inward, you may find some things that make total sense, some memories that you are surprised by, some tears that warm your cheeks, or even some anger. Whatever comes, know that you are not alone in those feelings. And if this is something that resonate with you and you would like to explore more I would be honored to do that work with you.
Written by Kelsey Madaj, LMFT