Parenthood confronts us with our childhoods

The decisions we make around our parenting are deeply influenced by our own childhoods, both by the things we perceived as positive and by the fears we carried as children. How many times have we found ourselves overprotecting our children because of our own fears? How many of our actions are reflections of our own childhood projected onto our children?

Motherhood and fatherhood stir an endless range of emotions and feelings that rise to the

surface from the very moment pregnancy begins. Fears and anxieties appear that we may never have realised we carried within us.

No one teaches us how to be parents, but it is within our power to change by caring for our mental health, so that we do not repeat old patterns or place wounds that belong to us onto our children’s shoulders.

Healing childhood wounds allows us to see our children for who they truly are, without clouding our view by trying to fill emotional gaps that belong to us, or comparing them to ourselves as children, wishing for them to resemble us or to have what we did not have. It means accepting our children as they are. Without a doubt, they may share certain traits with their parents or grandparents, sometimes physical features, sometimes attitudes, but they are still individuals entirely separate from us.

Our children will have their own path, sometimes very different from our own. Working through our childhood experiences allows us to open the door to new possibilities for them, giving them the freedom to make mistakes and learn in their own way, not ours.

Caring for our mental health as parents helps us break the patterns we have unconsciously created in our minds, while respecting the psychology and individuality of this new human being. It allows us to forgive and understand our own parents, continue healthy traditions, and begin a new generation with greater awareness.

Autor: Ana Charles