Parents of adult children. How “self aware” are you? Are you aware enough to know when you are or have triggered your children? Are you able to admit your own faults and where you could’ve done better or that you only knew what you knew. Have you ever apologized to your children?
There is no reason for us parents to act like we were the perfect parent or that you did no wrong where your children were concerned. Shoot many of us were just winging it and hoping for the best. Some of us were looking for unconditional love and thought that a baby would do that, not thinking about how to give of ourselves that unconditional love and putting the responsibility on someone too small to even know what you need because they can only be concerned with their own. Most of us did the best we could with the information we had. It’s okay to say I could’ve done better though, or that I made some mistakes. I know our children think the world of us and sometimes it’s hard to admit that what we did during their childhood will have an effect on them and we would be the one to inflict that trauma but it will and the best thing we can do for them is help them deal and heal with whatever has come their way by way of trauma or deep seated issues. Professional help for them and you such as family counseling can be of great importance especially when you and your children have issues. Ignoring them only makes them worse and create shadows within the psyche. The more I’m around my adult children I can see where I could’ve done better, or what my actions habe done to them over the years whether they say something or not. I could say that I was too young to have children but that doesn’t seem to cut it to me. Young…old, it doesn’t matter what does matter is your ability to have in-depth conversations with your children at any age. Using the parent card, however does NOT heal wounds but keeps your adult children stuck at whatever age they were in childhood during the trauma. So parents, get vulnerable. Allow yourself to open up. Some of the things your children might tell you about their childhood might sting or hurt or surprised by but allowing them to get those things off their chest helps the generation coming behind them. Our goal should be to raise more conscious healthy children with optimal mental health. And we cannot do that keeping things buried inside.