Parents Are Required To Do The Impossible: Parent!

Remember that moment when your infant was first put into your arms? Remember that sense of love and how you vowed you would keep him happy forever?

Hah! Little did you know, right? Five years later, as you drop your child off at Kindergarten, his backpack hanging down to his ankles, there are tears in his eyes and he’s begging you please can he stay home with his little sister?

Your heart pounds, you want to cry yourself and bravely you shore yourself up. “No,” you say praying your tone of voice doesn’t betray your own desire to keep him home (no matter how much you wanted him out of your hair yesterday) “You are a big boy now, And Big boys go to school. Come on, get in the car.”

And then the visits to the nurse start, the stomach aches, the calls home from the principal. You’re dying of embarrassment. This is only the first week of school too. What’s wrong with you, you ask?  And your own stomach hurts now. You are quite sure you are thee worst parent in the world, and convinced that the entire school staff has their eyes on you.

What do you do?  Well before I tell you, be reassured that this experience is common! You are not alone, and you are certainly not the worst parent that ever lived! It’s just that parenting is impossible! And yet we, as parents, are required to do just that, the impossible!

Did you know that when we are experiencing our worst parenting moments it’s usually an indication that we were also hurting at the same age our children are?

It may well turn out to be that you had a severe stomach illness at age 5, or that something awful happened to you, maybe a parent became ill, or your sibling was born with an illness at that time. 

Here is what happened to me.

Toward the middle of first grade, my daughter was flailing in math and being teased terribly. Daily notes were sent home from the teacher, she was brought to the guidance counselor daily, and the teacher suggested to me that she repeat first grade the following year, and be tested for learning problems in math.

And of course Sarah was a wreck. She cried every night, telling me she had no friends and that she hated school.

Now my stomach was churning as I fought back tears and the lump in my throat.

“She is a November baby,” her wonderful teacher tried to reassure me. “She needs time to emotionally develop. And this class has already formed clicks, and your daughter can’t stand up to them.”

I sobbed in my car. What had I done?  My daughter stay behind, what?? Staying back when I was a kid meant that you were really a mess. Many a child had skipped a grade due to their intelligence. I must be truly failing as a mother. And I couldn’t bear to see Sarah in so much pain.  Would  keeping her back make her feel even worse?  

And then I learned about a method called the Inner Child Work.  This method is about freeing yourself from your own childhood pain so that you can parent your child without your own emotional entanglements.

Remember, when we are experiencing our worst parenting moments it’s usually an indication that we were also hurting at the same age our children are.

For example, when I applied this method to myself, I found out that my first grade year was horrible also. My best friend moved away without saying a word to me, and I was having great difficulty in math.  My older sister teased me non-stop.. Unbeknownst to me, I had a learning problem in math, and mild ADD. So, I daydreamed away in first grade except for those subjects I could really excel in like reading and writing. Because I was so sad at home due to my sister’s teasing, and even sadder at school because I didn’t have a best friend, and no one to “hang-out” with I often cried myself to sleep at night, with no one knowing.

Re-experiencing these first-grade moments as an adult showed me how similar my issues were then to my daughter’s now.  It was upsetting enough to see how unhappy my daughter was, was I adding my own historical pain to the situation?

Yes, our situations were similar, but the times we were growing up in and the parents we had, were completely different!

Learning issues and Add were not in our vocabulary at that time. There wasn’t the help or the knowledge back then that there is now! By the end of first grade, I felt different, alone and stupid   Not only did I not have language to express this, but the adults around me hadn’t either.

As I parented the inner first grader within me, validating the experiences I had then, and separating them from the here and now, I could see that Sarah was a completely different being than myself. Yes, we shared similar issues, but as I have already stated, the circumstances and the times were so different.

I felt freed to see her clearly, the inner work providing not only compassion for Sarah but self-compassion as well! An entirely new experience for me!   I was able to see Sarah as a separate being.  Her experience of her own pain was not the same as my own. She could express it, and had support in the way I hadn’t! 

And sure enough, her testing proved that she had an L.D in math, but was over the top in reading, writing and verbal self-expression. She also had mild ADD. Her learning issues, gifts in reading and writing and mild ADD were the exact same as mine! But she was different from me too!  I was overjoyed that there was help for her and saddened that there hadn’t been this for me. As I felt the truth of both of these realities, my new-found self-compassion flowed into compassion and joy, and back again; this was an incredible experience!

Plans were put in place for her repeating the first grade, and when I told her she was going to do that, I explained that she would now know all of the second graders and ALL of the first graders. The joy I was feeling spilled into her, and had an unexpected influence: to my great surprise, she was relieved! But wouldn’t I have felt the same? Wouldn’t you have? 

I was able to tell her about my own experiences in first grade, but as a story, something that happened long ago and in a far away place. And the ticklish thing about that was, it felt like a story to me as well!  It’s true! Our childhood does come from a distant and far away place!  It happened that long ago but will continue to affect the present moment if we don’t consciously do something about it!

The stories I told were pure balm for both of us. And between her teacher, guidance counselor and myself we all empowered Sarah to feel more confident.

And sure enough, at the beginning of her second year of first grade, she came home with a new song. She was receiving help for math, and extra support from her guidance counselor. They all “got” her, and like me were pulling on her writing, reading and acting skills to empower her. 

She stood up and began to sing in a bluesy tone, “I’ve go the math blues…I’ve got them all over me…”

We laughed and laughed. She ran into my arms for a hug, and then she whispered joyously,  “I sang this to some of my new friends too.” Her smile was as wide and sparkling as her huge brown eyes.

That night, in bed, I cried. I was so thankful for the inner child work.

And while those wounding feelings rose up during the year, each time I was able to comfort and bring self-compassion to my sad little six-year old inside of me. By doing this work, I didn’t have to identify unconsciously with Sarah’s problems, and complicate them by emotionally entangling myself. It hurt enough to watch her in pain.  I didn’t need to add my own to the situation.  And in fact, I was able to heal my own childhood wounding over and over again that entire school year.

Our children are here to teach us about our own childhood so that we can heal the difficulties we unwittingly went through and learn about self-compassion, which translates into deep compassion for others.   The more we work on ourselves, the more help our children receive.

Parenting is impossible and yet It is a deep, powerful and positive process.  If you want to learn more about this method with other parents with elementary school aged children then sign up for my Conscious and Creative Parenting Support Groups again this September.  They are back by popular demand!

If you’re interested in joining this group please send an email to MollySalans@MollySalans.com and I’ll send you the flyer.

You can also visit me on the web at MollySalans.com or call me at 978-392-5988

Molly Salans is a licensed social worker and marriage and family therapist. Currently in private practice at the Westford Center for Counseling and Holistic Therapies, she has been serving the Greater Boston Area for over 20 years. She has also authored Storytelling With Children in Crisis.