Half of Parenting Is Learning to Regulate Yourself, Not Your Child

Someone told me this when Emma was about five years old.

An older mom, the kind who had clearly been through the fire and come out the other side, told me, “Most of the work you'll do as a parent is training your own emotions. You're not training a child. You're training yourself.” She also said we're all just practicing parenting. None of us has ever done this before. And she said most parents are lazy because they are not willing to parent themselves. (If you don’t have a friend who can cut it to you straight like that, you’re missing out.)

I didn't fully understand what she meant then. I do now.

Sometimes we have to be willing to be the problem.

That may be the most humbling part of parenting.

There will be moments when our kids misunderstand us. And then there will also be moments when they understand us perfectly and what they're reflecting back isn't flattering. I've had hard seasons with both our older teen girls, in that 13 to 15 age range where everything comes to the surface. I had to look honestly at where I went wrong. I had to humble myself. I had to go back and apologize.

We can defend. Explain. Remind them of everything we've done. Make ourselves the victim of their pain.

Or we can get curious. We can listen. We can sit with our own discomfort without making everyone else in the house responsible for making it disappear. We can be the ones to change and mature. We’re the adults, not them!

Our children are going to grow up. They're going to become adults with their own boundaries and beliefs and lives that don't belong to us. I don't want our kids to stay connected to me because they feel guilty. I don't want them calling because they're worried about how I'll handle it if they don't. I want a relationship with them where they know they can be whoever they want to be. Dress how they want to dress. Love who they want to love. Choose the career path they want to choose.

I also want them to know they are allowed to be themselves in our house even when they're struggling, even when they're angry with me, even when they're becoming someone different than the person I imagined they'd be.

Our kids don't owe us emotional stability. We owe them ours.

Your child should be allowed to love people you struggle with.

This one is everything. Especially in a blended family.

Children should never have to prove their loyalty to us by rejecting someone else. They should be allowed to love Mom. Love Dad. Love Stepmom. Love Stepdad. Miss one house while they're sitting in the other. Come home from an amazing weekend somewhere else and tell you all about it without having to manage your emotions while they do it.

Kids should be able to be angry with you and still know they're safe with you. They should be able to choose the other parent sometimes without having to absorb your disappointment.

When Emma was six, she got a stepmom. I made a decision early on that I was never going to make her feel like she had to choose. I told her that her stepmom was her other mom too.

She's sixteen now. Out of nowhere recently, she said to me, “Mom, you never made me feel like I had to pick one house or the other.”

I remember thinking wow, this is when all the hard work pays off. That's the long game.

Could your child look at you and say, “Mom, thank you for never making me feel like I had to choose. Thank you for never speaking ill of my other parent. Thank you for being my safe space.”

So what does is actually look like to be the safe parent?

It looks like doing the ongoing internal work. Going to therapy. Honest self-reflection. Learning to notice when you're triggered before you react from that place. It means being the regulated person in the room when your child is not, because a dysregulated kid AND a dysregulated adult is a storm with nowhere to go. It’s toxic.

We work hard to make our home a safe space. We know our kids don't always have that somewhere else, so ours has to be it. We don't always get it right. We've had to come back to kids and say I handled that wrong and I'm sorry.

We are practicing this, the same as everyone. That’s why we don’t miss our therapy appointments.

We keep practicing. And that's the whole point.