By Jan Hittelman
Is anyone really ready to be a parent? There’s a shared experience among most new parents; a sense of disbelief that the hospital staff will simply let you walk out with a newborn child. It’s like giving a set of car keys to someone who hasn’t learned how to drive. Yet our parenting has a profound impact not only on our children’s development but also on our own. The challenges of parenthood provide us with an opportunity to grow as individuals. Like our children, we also have developmental tasks. From the first moment, we have no option but to be role models. How and what we model is totally up to us. The same is true of the relationships we develop with our children. If our primary focus is disciplining undesirable behavior, then our long-term relationship with our children will be negatively impacted. It takes conscious effort to focus more on the positive within our children and within ourselves. This brings us back to the developmental task of parenting. Our own level of emotional development impacts the relationship we develop with our children. The more emotional, social, and behavioral issues that we are struggling with, the less capable we will be to develop a healthy relationship with our child (or others). Thus parenting provides us with the opportunity to mature and address issues that we may have previously avoided. But the choice is ours. If we choose not to deal with our own anger problems, for example, we will likely have a higher level of conflict with our already challenging adolescent. If we regularly drink alcohol, our ability to positively impact our child’s view on substance abuse may be compromised. Sometimes our toughest challenge as parents is not our children’s behavior, but our own.
As parents it’s natural to focus on and correct children’s behavior. We rarely consider, however, how our own day-to-day behavior impacts that of our children. Children are extremely sensitive to their parents’ subtle moods, actions, and words. They internalize these characteristics as they develop their own identity and approach to the world. Of course our children bring their own emotional, behavioral, and social issues, in addition to what they learn from us and others. But even if they have significant issues from birth that are uniquely their own, our behavior will still have a significant impact.
Consider channeling your desire to be a good parent into taking better care of yourself by identifying and addressing your own issues and challenges. The better adjusted and happier you are, the healthier your parent-child relationship will be.