Whether you are a first-time parent or an experienced caregiver, parenting children of any age can be challenging, difficult and a significant source of stress and anxiety. For the first time parent, this can be particularly daunting as you try to get to grips with expectations and roles that are new and unfamiliar. For some, it can be quite disturbing and result in pronounced mental health challenges to the young parent.
The biggest challenge and threat for young parents is not just handling the everyday stressors that can affect your child physically, emotionally or psychologically, but the unseen obstacles that cause you emotional disturbance. Young parents want to become more effective, more skilled, and more competent in their roles as caregivers but ensnare themselves into self- defeating non-conscious traps that lead to complications in their own mental health. This guide will inform you on what you need to do to overcome this daunting challenge. It will help you to spearhead an effective understanding of your non-conscious motivation that all too often interferes with your conscious logical wish to improve, grow and learn to be “good enough”. Hopefully, you will benefit from this guide in the following ways:
You will learn about -unconscious motivations in acting the way you do with your children.
You will understand how this consequently creates more problematic emotions based on how you were raised yourself.
You will benefit from a psychological explanation as to why traditional parenting or coaching based services often fail to produce improvements for first-time parents and how you can overcome these unseen obstacles, maintain healthy emotional wellbeing for yourself as you take on this significant life transition.
I have heard and encountered many difficulties and reasons why young parents consistently have difficulty implementing any parenting training tips and skills that lead to frustration and early disengagement from therapy. I have observed that the sole reason for this can be attributed to the following conclusion: Their OWN SHAME.
Before we look at typical parenting scenarios it is important to address what we mean by affect based parenting. This is parenting that extends beyond the normal, in the moment reactions to everyday occurrences that our children do, like spilling the milk all over the breakfast table or being difficult during feeding. Consciously we want to become better parents, but our own shame prevents us from doing this. It is this unseen factor that makes all the difference and what consistently leads to premature termination of therapy and skills training. The first step in this process that is taught in therapy is learning to recognise this pattern when it happens. Affect based parenting is separate from those normal parental reactions we already spoke about.The motional response is typically more intense than normal. In these circumstances it is likely that the young parent’s unconscious reenactments have been triggered. The young parent is not to blame for this. This is simply how they were raised and based on their OWN parental attachment relationships. The self- criticism is disproportionate to the wrongdoing.
Tip 1: Learn to calm/soothe the child you.
Like any frightened child we need to calm, reassure, and soothe ourselves the same way that we would if our children come to us when a bee has stung them, or if they had a scary nightmare or if they are worried that you are going to leave them. I teach clients to soothe their child self when faced with a difficult parental task and the intensity of their own affect based unconscious pattern. Try the following for example.
“I will never get my baby to stop crying, its useless, I am a hopeless mother”
Soothing/Calming adult you:
“ I CAN do this, this is just my own child self being activated.”
“ I just need to know HOW to do it”
“ I am a self sufficient adult now, I am no longer a child, I have control now”
If I discipline my child then I am a bad mother! “
Soothing/Calming adult you:
“ I am no different to any other parent”
“ If I DONT discipline Tommy then I am not doing my job as a parent”
“ I will not sacrifice my child’s future development to my own childhood struggles”
Tip 2 : Become friends with GUILT!
The next step in learning to address affective parenting is to become friends with the emotion of guilt. Let’s ask ourselves what is the function of guilt? This is to correct yourself when you have made a moral transgression and is not something that you wish to do again. Consider the following:
Parent A: “ I shouted at Katy today because she was restless. All she wanted was to be changed. I am such a terrible mother”
More than likely this client’s affective child self has been activated and she will no doubt experience an emotion that is very familiar to her – SHAME.
GUILT promotes healthy self-correction, whilst the child based affective SHAME cannot lead to behavioural change and keep the parent stuck in their own childhood unconscious struggle with their own parents, convincing themselves that they are BAD parents.
New adult dialogue for the young parent:
“ I am a self-sufficient adult now and I am NOT a helpless child anymore”
“ I can do this, like any skill I can learn”
“ I am going to get it wrong more times than right. It’s about learning”
“ Do the best I can, I am doing MY job”.
The ability to recognise that you are doing something RIGHT as you see it for your children and for you over time will flourish as you are now breaking long-standing patterns of behaving and feeling that no longer apply as you are building your self-confidence and no longer working through your own non-conscious childhood struggle with your own parents. Guilt is appropriate if you are doing something wrong, it is NOT about doing what you believe is right for YOU and your children. Make friends with guilt, NOT SHAME!
“ Why can’t I do this RIGHT! I can never do ANYTHING RIGHT!”
This young parent is typically repeating to herself/himself a familiar self- dialogue that is a longstanding attachment conflict with their own parents simply to avoid their own childhood shame by trying to be a PERFECT parent. The ultimate fear here in this parent’s case is that he/she is failing in his/her job to be the perfect parent and to do what is RIGHT!. This young parent will typically feel angry and powerless to the constant barrage of self-doubts and critical condemnations. The new parent will usually continue with this unconscious benchmark of what he/she considers the perfect or right way to be for the young infant. Young parents need to listen to their own rational adult voice. This all too often requires the young parent to embrace failure as the inevitable cost of the worthwhile rewards that parenthood brings. Do what is right for YOU as YOU see it, give yourself credit for the effort and not the end result. Cheerfully embrace the inevitable struggles and reward yourself for the effort in getting it wrong Calm the child in you first and let the adult counterpart begin this trip. If something is worthwhile then it is worth doing imperfectly! Once you expect and accept that the road is going to be littered with obstacles, then you can have the confidence to get up and walk it again.