Exploring the complexities of parenting, the discussion reflects on how adult perspectives can alter the perception of childhood experiences. It highlights the dual challenge of understanding one's own parents while considering the emotional landscape of children living in the present. Listeners are prompted to confront their flaws and consider how their own behaviors impact their kids. The conversation serves as a reminder that childhood perceptions of normalcy are shaped by parental actions, making self-reflection essential for growth.
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insights INSIGHT
Stressful Parents
Visiting parents as an adult can be stressful, especially with your own kids.
This new perspective reveals how your parents' behavior affected you and now affects your children.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Heal Your Inner Child
Examine these feelings about your parents and heal your inner child.
Use your kids as a second chance to break negative cycles.
insights INSIGHT
Kids' Perspective
Consider how your own anxieties and issues affect your children.
Your kids perceive your behavior as normal, regardless of your intentions.
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Seeing your own parents now, as an adult, is stressful. There’s a great Ram Dass line that the comedian Pete Holmes has used in relation to his own parents: You think you’re enlightened—go spend a week with your family.
The point is, having Mom and Dad come stay with you is few people’s idea of a relaxing weekend. It’s stranger still once you have kids, because suddenly you start to see and think about your own childhood differently. Some insights you get are good, but some of the behaviors you see make you sad. Because you see it through the eyes of your own kids now, you see how it affects them. How could I have handled these people as a child, you think. This is no way to live.
As we’ve said before, each one of us needs to examine these feelings and process them. Your kids are a second chance for you. You have to heal your inner child. You have to wipe the slate clean. But this exercise—of seeing your parents and their flaws through your kid’s eyes—should also humble you.
Because how do you think it is living with you now?Do you think it’s easy to be a kid in your house? Or might it be incredibly stressful and disorienting—what, with all your anxieties and vices and issues? Remember that your kids—like you all those years ago—have no idea that this isn’t normal. They have no idea that you mean well but are flawed. They have no idea that this is stuff you’re working on in therapy or in your journal or with your spouse. All they feel are the effects. The residue of your unaddressed anger. The insanity of your need to control things. The stress of your work.
That’s not fair. They can’t handle it. You have to handle it.
The Daily Dad