Healing Your Inner Child to be a Better Parent

Healing the inner child, through family counseling, can profoundly impact parenting. It allows adults to form healthy parent-child relationships rooted in empathy, acceptance, and understanding. A person’s inner child encompasses their inner state of being, including emotions and memories that originated during childhood and continue to influence them. When a parent has unresolved wounds from their own childhood, it manifests in their parenting styles.  These wounds may present themselves in various ways such as: .  These wounds may present themselves in various ways such as: 

1. Overprotectiveness: A parent who experienced neglect or abandonment as a child may be overly protective of their own child. For example, constantly monitoring their activities and worrying about their safety.
2. Enmeshment: A parent who lacked boundaries in their own childhood may struggle with setting healthy boundaries for their child. This leads to an enmeshed relationship where the child feels suffocated and unable to develop their own sense of self.
3. Emotional Instability: A parent who experienced trauma or abuse in their childhood may struggle with regulating their own emotions. Consequently leading to impulsively or excessively reacting to their child’s behavior, leading to an unpredictable and unstable environment for the child.
4. Avoidance: A parent who experienced emotional pain or shame in their childhood may avoid addressing their own feelings and struggles. Which can lead to a lack of emotional attunement with their child’s emotional needs.
5. Control: A parent who felt powerless or out of control in their childhood may attempt to control their child. Leading to a rigid and authoritarian parenting style that stifles the child’s autonomy and independence.
   
   

With a healed inner child, you can develop a better relationship with your own parenting.  Improved awareness allows you to understand your children’s feelings from their perspective and respond to them in a compassionate way.  Seeing events from your children’s perspective allows you to be consistent in discipline. To give you the ability to empathize and be responsive rather than reactive with emotionally charged situations.  By understanding the often complex feelings and needs of both children and parents, improved awareness can allow you to remain firm in disciplinary issues while remaining loving and supportive.

Ultimately, healing the inner child enables a renewed sense of compassion and understanding when it comes to parenting.  This type of compassionate parenting relies on open communication between parents and children to promote an environment of acceptance, security, and safety.  Parenting with a healed inner child allows you to be more open to teaching moments and to form meaningful, life-long relationships with your children. The ability to foster a secure and safe space for your children to express their feelings, beliefs, and opinions creates a platform for mutual trust and understanding, leading to healthier and more meaningful interactions.

By healing the inner child, you can learn to become a better and more mindful parent. Becoming aware of past unresolved emotions allows for more meaningful communication and understanding. Additionally, it creates a foundation of trust and safety in a nurturing environment that is essential for any successful parent-child relationship.

It takes a village and HopeNation is igniting a movement to support families on the journey to better mental health. 

Want to get started? Here’s how.