Parents Are Wiring Their Children for the Rest of Their Lives
by Sabrina Gallegos
One thing that strikes me about the discussions we are so fortunate to have at Health: It’s Personal, is the reoccurring theme that the work we are doing to improve our health is helping prepare us for future events and strengthening us for who we are meant to become. Mixed Up Money founder, Alyssa Davies teaches us that we can save for our future family. Behavioral Profiler, Lily Walford shows us that we can approach new relationships from a place of wholeness. Dr. Becky Kennedy demonstrates how successful parent-child communication takes practice. She breaks down the impact that three simple phrases, mentioned in our story-time blog, can have on the evolution of conversations between parents and their children. I am not yet a parent, but if I choose that path, I want to be prepared for healthy practices with my child from day one.
Open dialogue can be difficult on its own, but imagine how difficult it can be for a child to open up to their unsupportive parent or for a parent to gather necessary information from an unwilling child in order to support them. No one is given a how-to-parent pamphlet, so many of us rely on our experiences to guide us through the journey of parenting. Some parents follow suit with how they were raised. Others completely abandon their upbringing and create something new for their children.
Often, parents are juggling the many aspects that encompass life while trying to be effective parents, such as work and home life responsibilities, financial and health stressors, and so on. In light of effective parent-child communication in addition to the balancing act that is life, Dr. Becky illustrates how we can be “wiring kids for the rest of their lives.” Equipping children with the right tools and skills to be effective humans impacts their relationships and their ability to be positive contributors to society. Our emotions are a visceral component of our beings, but they still require an investment in learning how to regulate, process, and communicate them. This investment begins at an early age, through the interactions with our parents.
I was told as a child that I needed to demonstrate character. If I were upset about something and we were in a public setting, demonstrating character meant putting up a front that said everything is great when, in reality, it wasn’t great, and I just needed to be upset for a while. This lesson taught me to save my emotions for a later, more convenient time, when I was home, alone. It taught me that people don’t want to hear about my emotional response to a given situation. It set an expectation that relationships with people don’t involve the vulnerability that is human emotions. What I needed at that moment was to be acknowledged. I needed to feel connected to those closest to me. I needed to feel safe. Instead, I felt ashamed, alone, and like a nuisance. Throughout the years, I became exceptionally good at pretending like everything was okay. I became a silent sufferer. I still am to a point. I smiled through the pain. When I began opening up later in life, many people told me they had no idea. They would have never guessed how alone I felt.
Eventually, we become adults, capable of restoring our individual power by becoming the “pilot of the plane,” a great analogy shared by Dr. Becky. Maybe our childhood didn’t effectively prepare us to regulate our emotions, but the plasticity of our brains allows us to learn to be different, to be the best versions of ourselves, despite our past. Through the rewiring of our minds, we can establish a better environment for the next generations or repair relationships that we’ve convinced ourselves to be too far gone. This rewiring of our minds can begin with changing the way we think about things or maybe changing the way we behave. The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz was one of the many resources that guided my journey and helped to rewire my mind. Practicing mindfully, intentional behaviors like being impeccable with my words - one of the four agreements - has made a significant impact on my life, resulting in accountability for my actions, thoughts, and words.
Though rewiring the mind is very much possible, I think feeling secure in expressing or regulating my emotions would have been a nice tool to have while growing up. I would have liked to feel deeply connected with the people around me. I would have liked to have experienced effective parent-child communication. And so, I close this blog with this final statement. Parents are wiring their children for the rest of their lives, laying a foundation for emotional regulation and relationship expectations. This is an important lesson - one I plan to consider and prepare for in advance when starting new relationships with future friends, partners or children.