Ep #143: You Are NOT Your Parents

Welcome to Real World Peaceful Parenting, a podcast for parents that are tired of yelling, threatening, and punishing their kids. Join mom and master certified parent coach Lisa Smith as she gives you actionable step-by-step strategies that’ll help you transform your household from chaos to cooperation. Let’s dive in. 

Welcome, welcome, welcome. Welcome to today’s episode. I’m going to start today by asking you this. Tell me if you can relate to this statement. I don’t want my kids growing up feeling the way I felt when I was growing up. Many of us who meet here each week and listen to this podcast, myself included, were raised by at least one dominant parent. 

We can easily recall hearing things during our childhood like go ahead and cry. I don’t care if you sit there all day. I don’t care about your feelings. Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about. I don’t care if you’re sad. I don’t want to hear what you have to say. Don’t talk back to me. Because I said so. Because I’m the parent. You’re stuck with me. Too bad. Why can’t you do anything right? What is wrong with you? You’re too this or you’re too that or you’re not enough this or you’re not enough that. Yeah?

I bet as I’m saying this and you’re recalling, you can still hear the tone of your parent’s voice and see the look in their eye, and their body language when they used to spew these thoughts to you in the heat of the moment. I know personally the effects these statements can have on kids. How they create feelings of insecurity. They create feelings of being less loved, or unloved, or unwanted, or unseen, or unheard, or unvalued that grips us to this day.

Maybe some of you have been working through these statements and the hangover, the resulting effects of them for years with your therapist. I get it, believe me. If these comments from a dominant parents still ring in your years and now you’re a parent, it is likely that you are desperately trying to parent your own children out of fear of being anything like that parent. Yeah?

Then maybe, much to your surprise and self-loathing, some days in the heat of the moment, you hear these very same words come out of your mouth. You hear the threatening tone or the cadence fall from your own lips. Or maybe it’s not you, but maybe it’s your co-parent saying these things that reminds you of the dominant cycle you grew up in. 

I get it. I totally get it. You are not alone. That’s why I’m here. That’s why you’re here. That’s why week after week I offer you a fresh new episode that opens the window to new possibilities for becoming a peaceful parent with new thoughts and new tools that were not modeled for you when you were a kid, a fresh start, a new way to parent that leaves that old dominant parenting paradigm behind and allows you to feel connected to your kids. 

So how’s this sitting with you? Are you with me? You might be uncomfortable right now. You might be connecting these dots for the very first time, or you might feel like you’re in fight or flight after listening to me make all those statements. They might harken back some real trauma for you. Or you might be really upset that you swore you would never be your parents. Now you hear the same exact things come out of your mouth. So maybe you want to just close out this episode, and tune back in next week for a less sensitive topic. 

But here’s what I would offer up. If you’re feeling uncomfortable right now, you are exactly where you need to be. I invite you to hang with me here over the next few minutes while we dive into this important topic. When you hear your own parent’s dominant voice in your voice while you’re parenting your kids or in the voice of your co-parent, your brain tries to convince you that you or your co-parent are exactly like your parent was to you. Then it takes the next leap and tells you that your kids are going to have the same mucked up experience that you had.

This can cause all kinds. It’s a crippling feelings to bubble up, like fear and shame and guilt and disgust and frustration. I get it. If you believe that you or your co-parent is exactly like your parent was to you, that’s a belief. That’s a belief. Your brain is going to seek evidence to find it true. To support it, to support that belief. I’m exactly like my parent. 

Here’s the crazy thing, your brain will find that evidence 100% of the time, and that will cause suffering in your parenting. But here’s the thing, it doesn’t mean it’s true. It doesn’t mean that you are your parent, and it doesn’t mean that your kids are going to have the exact same experience you had. 

In fact, your brain is lying to you. Because telling you this feels safe, even in all the suffering, because you haven’t given it something new to believe yet. Yet, yet. Remember, a belief is not a fact. It’s a thought. Now, here’s what you need to hear above anything. You have 100% agency, choice, dominion over your brain. You, yes you right now, have the power to change the belief that I am just like my parents or parent, and that my kids are going to have the exact same experience I had. 

In fact, if you sincerely want to become a peaceful parent, you have to change his belief. You have to, and I’m going to teach you how to do it right here in this episode. I would argue to your brain that right now, right here, there is a ton of evidence that proves that you are not your parent. You are not, and that your kid is not your inner child. That your child is not having the experience you had. They’re having their own experience. Our brain doesn’t know this because we’re holding on to the old belief. So it skips over any evidence that’s contrary to our current belief system. 

So here’s what you got to do. First, you’ve got to recognize in all reality that you and or your co-parent actually are not in cannot be your parent, cannot be that dominant parent. Each human exists individually. Each human exists in a unique way that is irreplaceable and unduplicable. Try saying that word really fast. Here’s what I want you to hear. You are not your mom, you are not your dad, and neither is your co-parent. Really choose to believe this. You are not. You are not your parent. You are your own soul who’s come here to have your own experience, 

Then what I need you to do is seek evidence. Let your brain find evidence that this, in fact, is true. I am not my parent. I am not my dominant parent. Actively look for ways that you and or your co-parent are different from your dominant parent from the experience you had growing up. 

This will begin to retrain your brain to believe this new belief. I am not my parent. Your brain will get retrained by repeating it over and over and over again. I am not my mother. I am not my father. He is not my father. She is not my mother. By repeating this over and over and over again, you will literally rewire your brain to believe this new truth. 

Your brain will be given the new assignment to find evidence that you are not your dominant parent, and that your children are here to have their own experience. This is not the sequel to your childhood experience, but a whole new movie with a whole new plot and a whole new ending. 

If you believe that you or your co-parent are causing your children to suffer on a deep level because you are still suffering from the way your parents showed up for you, you will create the suffering you are trying to avoid. 

Now, let’s be totally honest here for a minute. Your children are going to suffer. They are. It’s part of the human experience. We make mistakes. We do things wrong. We don’t get what we want. We feel our feelings. We feel disappointed. We feel rejected. We feel angry. We feel left out. We don’t get all of our needs met. 

Suffering is part of the human experience. Absolutely. But you are not your parent. We don’t need to thrust that onto you, and your kids are having their her own experience. When we entangle or mesh all of this, it gets really complicated and causes further suffering. So what I suggest to clients all the time is instead let’s focus our energy on how we do want to show up in ways that help our kids feel seen, heard, and valued. 

That starts with believing at a core level that your children are going to have a completely different experience than you. You have to believe even before you have complete proof by them becoming adults. So if your child is two or four or eight or ten or 12 or 19, like mine, you have to believe at a core level that they are going to have a completely different experience than you had. That it is possible for them to grow up happy, healthy, successful, grounded, and emotionally intelligent. 

You have to believe that. You have to hold space. That creates new beliefs and new evidence that your brain goes out and finds. You’re here. You’re listening to this episode. You’re opening your heart and mind to learn new things and internalize new thoughts and create new beliefs. That is the beginning of the change out of the pattern of dominant parenting. Your dominant parent didn’t have this podcast. No one was talking to them about new beliefs and showing up in a whole new way. But you’re here and you’re doing it, and your kids are already benefiting from it right now. 

Now, I couldn’t present this information without being completely honest with you. Your kids are going to have their own wounds from their childhood. It is inevitable. No kid escapes a childhood without some wound. It may not be inflicted by you. It may come from an experience at school. Maybe it’s not making a team or losing a friend or feeling left out or being picked on repeatedly at school or not getting something they wanted or being the middle child. 

They’re going to have some wound from their childhood. Chances are you have no idea what it’s going to be. Every human has wounds. It’s part of the human experience. Life is difficult 50% of the time. As I say all the time, we are not meant to have every single need of ours met. It’s not how it works. 

Sometimes we have to struggle. We have to face adversity. We have to feel all the feelings on the feelings wheel, even the negative side. Sometimes all of that leads to wounds. Sometimes they’re small ones. Sometimes they’re big wounds. 

But here’s the aha moment. Their wounds are not going to be your wounds. They’re not. They’re going to have their own experience. You can’t prevent them from having their wounds, and you’re making a ton of progress by listening to this podcast, week in and week out. 

You’re changing the way you language and show up for your kids. We know more than your parents knew 20 years ago. We know that yelling does damage to the brain. We know how to stay connected with our kids. We know the difference between discipline and punishment. I know your home may not look perfect, but it is definitely different than the home you grew up in. 

So your homework assignment from today’s episode is to recognize, if nothing else, that your kids’ experience is different from yours completely, completely. Remind yourself of this. Tell yourself this, train yourself. Let your brain absorb this belief so it can find evidence that your kid’s experience is different from yours. Otherwise, you’re on high alert all the time.

When you step in while your co-parent is parenting or you beat yourself up, you’re getting in the way of progress. You are not your parent, even when the exact same words come out of your mouth. How do I know? Because you’re here. You’re on the journey. You’re making progress. You’re learning new things. Do not beat yourself up. Progress is limited when we’re flogging ourselves along the way. 

We all have progress to make. We all have things we can learn and change. That’s part of the human experience. Another part of the human experience. Give yourself and your co-parent and your child the space you need to allow growth to happen, and recognize that I am not my parent. That I’m here to have my own parenting experience. I’m not doomed to repeat the mistakes. 

My child is not having the exact same experience I had because they are their own soul who’s come to earth to have their own experience. They’re not going to react the way I reacted. They’re not going to think what I thought, and they’re not having the exact same experience that I had. 

I’m here to have my own parenting experience. They’re here to have their own childhood experience. I accept that. Let that sink in. Work with that, noodle that, assign your brain to go find evidence that they’re having their own experience. It’s an absolute game changer. Okay, until we meet again, I’m wishing you peaceful parenting.

Thank you so much for listening today. I want to personally invite you to head over to thepeacefulparent.com/welcome and sign up for my free peaceful parenting minicourse. You’ll find everything you need to get started on the path to peaceful parenting just waiting for you over there at www.thepeacefulparent.com/welcome. I can’t wait for you to get started. 

Thanks for listening to Real World Peaceful Parenting. If you want more info on how you can transform your parenting, visit thepeacefulparent.com. See you soon.