Every mom makes mistakes that can’t be erased, but what about learning from the mistakes our parents made? Chloe’s story today is about her friend who is trying to heal from the wounds of her childhood. She loves her parents, but she noticed that she’s repeating some patterns that were set when she was a child. Don’t worry—this isn’t an episode where we claim to have parenting all figured out. We aren’t going to point fingers at our parents or grandparents, but we do want to do what we can to parent well with the knowledge we have.
You don’t have to look far to find parenting advice on the internet. There are Instagram accounts that, if followed loyally, will make you feel like you’re a step away from being a licensed counselor. As moms today have access to oodles of information, wisdom, and insights that reveal how our actions impact our children, it’s natural to look back at our younger years and see how our parents made some missteps. But as we try to parent better than the generation before us, we often swing too far in the other direction. So how do we attempt a parenting do-over and not mess up, too?
One idea our podcast team talks about is how our children are like little mirrors. They can force us to face parts of ourselves that we wanted to keep hidden. Maybe you were raised in a home where you only received attention when you achieved something. Now that you’re a mom, you see yourself putting up charts and talking about goals nonstop. Our kids can help us with self-awareness, which is a great step toward better parenting.
Articles We Mentioned:
How to Be a Good Mom Even if You Had a Bad Childhood
In what ways are you trying to parent differently or similarly to your own mom?
