“Good parents don’t get it right all the time. Good parents repair.””
Can you relate to this? Your child is having a meltdown in the store, and you don’t handle it well. In fact, you essentially have a meltdown of your own. How about coming home after a long stressful day. Your child asks you a question, or wants to share something with you, and you snap! These are the actions of loving, caring parents...who also happen to be human. The good news is you don’t have to get parenting “right” all the time. Reconnecting after a moment of disconnection is a powerful way to strengthen the relationship with your child and model how to deal with mistakes.
It is normal to lose your cool sometimes.
Let me be clear, I am not talking about a pattern of anger and frustration directed at your child. If there is an ongoing difficulty with regulating your own emotions, then I urge you to seek the support of a professional to work with you on this. However, even the calmest, most patient, loving parent gets overwhelmed sometimes. We intend to be our best selves but fall short. Other times we may make incorrect assumptions or misinterpret the actions of our children. Be gentle with yourself. These incidents offer an opportunity for your child to see that even parents lose control sometimes. More importantly, they can have the vital experience of someone making amends to recover the connection.
Repair helps to “reconfigure” the experience that caused the relationship rupture.
A child may experience guilt, shame, fear, confusion, or hurt when a parent reacts to them in anger. This child needs to make sense of the experience and find a way to cope with their feelings. Depending on the developmental age of the child, and the nature of the parent-child relationship, what they take away from the experience will vary. One child may blame themselves for making their parent mad and begin to internalize negative self-concept. Another may find the emotions too much to endure, and so creative a narrative that it is not a big deal to them. This child may develop a pattern of suppressing emotions. A parent’s actions to repair the relationship offers another dimension to the experience for the child. They can learn that they are not responsible for their parents’ feelings and that relationships are not irreparably damaged by conflict.
How do you repair the relationship?
The process of repairing a relationship rupture will look different for each person. The age of the child, the nature of the relationship, the severity of the incident, and the time that elapsed since the incident all factor in. There are certain core elements however that apply to every situation:
Ensure that you are regulated and in state where you are open and receptive.
Acknowledge what you did. Be specific, for example, “Earlier I shouted my voice at you.”
Reflect on how your child may have felt. For example, “You probably felt hurt when I did that”.
Offer an apology. For example, “I am sorry that I shouted at you.”
DO NOT offer any excuses or justifications. If you find yourself saying “but” after the apology, STOP.
Offer space for the child to express feelings and thoughts.
Make it clear that you are responsible for managing your emotions, not your child.
Depending on the circumstances, make amends, problem solve and/or discuss how you can better handle similar situations in the future.
Parents are constantly striving to be better in their role. Thankfully most of us are no longer trying to achieve perfection, but we do want to learn and improve. It is important to remember that learning and growing often occurs in those situations where we feel that we “messed up”. Sometimes there can be benefits, not only for us as parents, but also for our children who look to us to provide guidance through the missteps.