The Sacredness of Constancy

“Talons gripping the edge of the nest
wings spread, gauging the wind
the young osprey pushes off,
soaring.

With each practice flight,
the young bird returns to the nest
and places at his mother’s feet,
one twig.

Every evening
in the dark, bright, quiet
of the moonlight the young bird
sleeps.

While his mother,
taking his twig,
builds a nest in
his heart.

So when he flies away
wherever he lands
the young bird
is home.”
— Gretchen Schmelzer

Up here in Maine, the tides go out, and the rocky shoreline appears and then the water comes back in, right up to the shore. It may be a small thing in the grand events of the world, but there is such solace in that constancy—in knowing that as you watch the water go away from shore, you also know it will return. It is a twice-daily event, which adds to the experience and learning of the constancy that nature provides. The moon disappears from view and it comes back. The sun disappears from view and it comes back.

The very best of parenting is like the constancy of the tides. Children are their own force of nature. It is the sacredness of constancy that helps hold them and shape them. You are the tides for your children. You are the air.  You are the sun and moon that their world revolves around.

Constancy isn’t cool, or hip, or sexy, or most importantly, marketable. “Hey, let me sell you a ticket to watch the tide roll back in over the course of hours!” Constant moments aren’t Facebook postings: The First Day of School, Graduation, Soccer Championships, Recitals. These are all wonderful and I personally love to see the pictures whether I know you or your kids or not: there is such joy and humanity in those photos. But these aren’t pictures of tides, they are pictures of special events: like meteor showers and rainbows—the colorful moments of life that occur, but you catch them and enjoy them when you can.

I can market Disney and make you feel great about being the kind of parent who takes their kid to the Magic Kingdom. But there is no equal marketing for you getting the 5th glass of water that night. Even if that 5th glass of water is actually the thing that will become part of the fabric of your daughter. Even if that act is the nutrient all children need. Much like there is marketing for Sugar Cereal and Junk Food and not carrots.

The sacredness of parenting rarely shows up in pictures, it’s hard to share on Facebook, it’s hard to see when you are in it. The sacredness of the everyday—the mundane, routine, constant all-of-it—that is what makes the warp and weft threads that create a person. The sacredness of the everyday of parenting is what makes up the fabric of who a child is, the self and worldview they rest in, the blueprint for relationship they will carry with them.

There are no pictures of you putting a Band-aid on arm that actually doesn’t have a cut on it. Of picking up cereal, or socks, or Legos off the floor. The endless laundry, dishes, trash. There are no pictures of the hundredth viewing of ‘Frozen’ or reading of ‘Goodnight Moon.’ The seventeenth math problem. The tears after a fight with a friend. There are no pictures of bedtime after bedtime, and breakfast after breakfast. Of the wrestling matches of putting on socks and finding shoes and NO I WON’T WEAR THAT COAT. Your ability to shepherd all of these things are the tides that come in and out.

I have such a perfect image of my niece as a toddler, all wrapped up in a towel after a bath at night, sitting on my sister-in-law’s lap. She was just hanging out, her wet hair slicked back, pink cheeks, sucking on her fingers, her blue eyes looking out, but not all that interested in the grown-up conversation around her. This was one of those sacred moments of childhood—where it was nothing special—to the outside world--but it was everything special to her inside world. This is the sacred everyday act of parenting. The absolute building blocks of safety and security and contentment and confidence. This was just the end of bathtime, the beginnings of bedtime, the transitions of the everyday. But they are the bricks of healthy capacity—put thousands of them together and you have a foundation that can hold anything.

The very definition of this constancy is that you can take it for granted. You believe in its existence utterly. I don’t worry whether the tide will come back in. I know it will. I don’t worry that the moon will reappear. I know it will. And the constancy you provide your children is something that they can and should take for granted. I am not talking about material things or that they will never learn to pick up their own Legos. I am talking about the constancy of asking for help and hearing a response (even if that response is age-appropriately telling them they can do it themselves). I am talking about the constancy of nighttime after nighttime of good-night, and morning after morning of good-morning, of bath, books, and bed; of lunch boxes and walks to the school or bus stop; of someone who listens again and again to the same story, the same movie, the same knock-knock joke. Of whatever it is we will figure it out.

Your super powers are your indestructability and your ability to show up over and over again. What makes your work important are the thousands and thousands and thousands of small threads that you weave around their heart, their soul, their growing being. This is what makes constancy sacred. You are building a space in their heart for this constancy—for this ability to hold the world and themselves. You are building this constancy in them so they can hold the rest of the world--which so often isn’t constant. Like the poem of the Osprey above with each mundane, routine, sacred constant act, you are building a nest in their hearts that they can return to for strength and comfort for the rest of their lives.

© 2016 Gretchen L Schmelzer, PhD

 

The Letter Your Teenager Can't Write You

In honor of the one year anniversary of this blog post.

Dear Parent:

This is the letter that I wish I could write. 

This fight we are in right now. I need it. I need this fight. I can’t tell you this because I don’t have the language for it and it wouldn’t make sense anyway. But I need this fight. Badly. I need to hate you right now and I need you to survive it. I need you to survive my hating you and you hating me. I need this fight even though I hate it too. It doesn’t matter what this fight is even about: curfew, homework, laundry, my messy room, going out, staying in, leaving, not leaving, boyfriend, girlfriend, no friends, bad friends. It doesn’t matter. I need to fight you on it and I need you to fight me back.

I desperately need you to hold the other end of the rope. To hang on tightly while I thrash on the other end—while I find the handholds and footholds in this new world I feel like I am in. I used to know who I was, who you were, who we were. But right now I don’t. Right now I am looking for my edges and I can sometimes only find them when I am pulling on you. When I push everything I used to know to its edge. Then I feel like I exist and for a minute I can breathe. I know you long for the sweeter kid that I was. I know this because I long for that kid too, and some of that longing is what is so painful for me right now.

I need this fight and I need to see that no matter how bad or big my feelings are—they won’t destroy you or me. I need you to love me even at my worst, even when it looks like I don’t love you. I need you to love yourself and me for the both of us right now. I know it sucks to be disliked and labeled the bad guy. I feel the same way on the inside, but I need you to tolerate it and get other grownups to help you. Because I can’t right now. If you want to get all of your grown up friends together and have a ‘surviving-your-teenager-support-group-rage-fest’ that’s fine with me. Or talk about me behind my back--I don’t care. Just don’t give up on me. Don’t give up on this fight. I need it.

This is the fight that will teach me that my shadow is not bigger than my light. This is the fight that will teach me that bad feelings don’t mean the end of a relationship. This is the fight that will teach me how to listen to myself, even when it might disappoint others. 

And this particular fight will end. Like any storm, it will blow over. And I will forget and you will forget. And then it will come back. And I will need you to hang on to the rope again. I will need this over and over for years.

I know there is nothing inherently satisfying in this job for you. I know I will likely never thank you for it or even acknowledge your side of it. In fact I will probably criticize you for all this hard work. It will seem like nothing you do will be enough. And yet, I am relying entirely on your ability to stay in this fight. No matter how much I argue. No matter how much I sulk. No matter how silent I get.

Please hang on to the other end of the rope. And know that you are doing the most important job that anyone could possibly be doing for me right now.

Love, Your Teenager

© 2016 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD

 

What to do when your kids leave home.

“If ever there is tomorrow when we’re not together... there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we’re apart... I’ll always be with you.”
— A. A. Milne

They are leaving home.

The move feels so big. Sometimes it’s bigger for you. And sometimes it’s bigger for them. Camp, School, College, Apartment. Doesn’t matter. It feels huge, transformational. But even though it feels like it’s one big move, that’s actually not the way it happens. Leaving home is really done over years in the smallest of steps. Mundane steps that you don’t see as the runway to independence. It is a runway that was built brick by brick--with every goodbye and every goodnight. You and your child have been building the muscles for departure with every hello and good-bye; we are apart and we are connected.

With each drop-off and pick-up at school and at camp, your child has been building the capacity to hold his world and be held by yours—building the muscles to hold all of that in his heart. You forget that in addition to the many things your child is learning at school or at camp: math, science, history, swimming, archery—they are also learning attachment.

Attachment is one of the most important things we learn --and, unless there is a problem, one of the most invisible things we learn. Attachment is learned in the everyday back and forth of life. We teach it with peek-a-boo when they are babies and hide and seek when they are older. We teach it with every good-night and good-morning. We teach it with every mistake and every repair. It is hard to see because it changes shape all of the time. As a parent, attachment means being ballast—leaning to the side of the boat that needs to be brought in to balance. Sometimes it looks like holding and soothing and picking them up in your arms, wiping away tears. And sometimes it means holding the line, having the hard conversation, making them stretch: join a sport, get a job, pay your bills.

But at each milestone of stepping out and away, your child will walk on their new legs of attachment and feel them for the first time, again. They will wonder, “Can I do this? Can you? Will you remember me? Will everything be okay when I return? If I forget you, will you still be there? Who am I without you?” They will feel joy and pride in their new steps away, and fear and sadness at the loss of the more secure time they felt before. It is both. And holding both is really hard to learn. It takes most adults until mid-life to really have the ability to hold two truths in their arms at the same time and most kids can’t. They swing wildly between the poles—one day all excited and proud about the new adventure and the new friends, and the next day full of despair at the prospect of leaving.

And here’s the paradox for parents. We think that leaving home and the big milestones of our lives are about independence—but they are really about connection. Whether they are two, ten or twenty, your job is the same. You are already good at it. It is simple but not easy. You keep up your job as ballast. You help them hold both by holding the other: the other truth (yes, I will remember you), the other emotions (I know it’s hard, but you are learning so much), and the other end of the rope (I’ve got you, and you’ve got this, we are doing great, even if it doesn’t feel like it).

So as you send them off: to camp, to school, to college, to their new lives. Remember this. They are learning so many new things, but they are also, most importantly, learning attachment. They are learning how relationships hold over space and time. They are learning that love and care can stretch far and wide. They are learning that they exist, even when you can’t see them, and that you can hold them in your mind and heart—and they can do the same. They are learning that they carry all of the love and knowledge and resourcefulness of home in their own legs—that they can stand on their own feet and feel the sturdiness of them. And they are learning that home is woven through every cell of their bodies.

© 2015 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD

For a longer, wonderful read on attachment, here is an article by Robert Karen in the Atlantic. Or purchase his book, below.

The Letter your High School Senior Can't Write You.

Dear Parent-

Stop talking about next year. I mean it. Stop it. I can’t deal with it right now. You ask me about my applications, my essays, my recommendations, and ‘have you talked to your guidance counselor?’ You see this as my job and all I can see is loss.  I can’t stand your excitement because it isn’t how I feel about it. Can you please stop talking about it?

I know. I know. I know all of the things I have to do, but it's hard enough doing what I need to do for tomorrow, let alone next year. I am swamped with everything I have to do right now –how do you expect me to do all of this work for next year at the same time? And I know. This is what I have been working for. And this is what I do want. And I know it’s hard for you. And it’s a big sacrifice for you and it’s what I have asked for. But not right now. I want it and I don’t want it.

Every time you talk about next year my stomach drops. I feel empty. I know I act like I can’t stand you sometimes but when you talk about next year all I can feel is fear and panic. I can’t imagine myself living anywhere else—when I try, it is as if I have just disappeared. It’s like I don’t exist. I feel desperate. When you talk about next year what you are really talking about is me moving out, being gone. Leaving you and everyone here. Leaving my friends.

I am afraid of having to leave and I am afraid that I won’t be able to. What if they don’t like me? What if no one wants me? I want to stay and I want to be chosen. I want both. I want to be wanted. Somewhere. Right now, you are pushing me to go and no one has taken me in. I am nowhere. Absolutely nowhere.

How did you do it? How did everyone else do it? Leave? Leave everything behind? It looks impossible. It hurts. All I want to do is cry and ask you to stop. Beg you not to forget me. I want the impossible: I want to stop time so everything stays the same. I just want to stay here.

And all at the same time, I don’t. I can feel myself excited for next year. How can you want both? To go and to stay?  It makes me feel crazy. But I do. There are times when I am excited about next year. I’ll get to meet new people. I will get to do new things. I can see myself in my new world. I can feel a bit of the confidence I have. And the clearer the picture is, it can suddenly switch: I see myself doing well, feeling excited and then in a flash it switches to loss. I will lose you. I will lose all of this. And I want to crawl under my covers. I want to stop everything. Most of all I want to stop you from talking about next year. Because when you do, it feels too real.

I know you can’t. And I know I can’t. It feels like this kind of loss is not survivable. I know other people have done it. But I can’t imagine how.  I am not sure that I understood as much as I do now that there is loss in moving forward. In getting what you want. I know you can’t stop asking me about next year. And I don’t really want you to. I need your help. I need your nagging. I need your editing. And what I really need is your reassurance. I can’t do this by myself because I want both things: to stay and to go, which makes me kind of freeze up and go no where. I need your help and I need you to hear my frustration in this conversation as a backwards compliment: as much as I am excited to go, I want to stay. This is my way of surviving good-bye. 

Love, Your High School Senior

© 2015 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD

What if I think he lied?

What if he lied about what he did?

I have been asked twice in the last three weeks about what to do when your 8-11 year old does something wrong (breaks a rule or an object) and then either refuses to “fess up” or lies.

Here’s the thing. As a parent its always best to simply deal with the infraction when you can and not get caught in the ‘he’s lying’ trap. If you know or are pretty sure that your child has done something wrong—they are simply busted—they don’t need to confess, parenting isn’t a democracy and there’s no need for the confession. If you find that eventually you are wrong about the charges you can simply apologize and model being wrong graciously.

Here’s why not to get caught or worry about the whole lying thing. Children and even young teens don’t have brains that are that well set up to deal with big stress. They have limited options compared with adult brains. Adult brains can manage stress a number of ways. If you as grown up mess up something big you can laugh at yourself, you can remember times when you actually did the right thing, you can imagine making up for your mistake, you can rationalize why you made the mistake, you can plan for ways that you can do it differently. Children mostly have two options: they can choose denial that it happened or they can say the thing they wish happened, or they can go numb and not feel it.  To parents this looks and feels like lying or a lack of remorse. And most parents panic that this means their child will grow up to be an axe murder. Truth be told, most adults try this first as well (think of all the politicians and sports figure who say “I don’t’ recall” or “I didn’t’ do it.”

If you know they did it. Just say so. If you track your teens whereabouts on your cell phone, then don’t ask. Just say it. Let the problem be the problem: the broken ipod or the broken rule. Don’t add “lying’ to the mix because then you are trying to solve two problems at once. Not to mention that when you pretend not to know as in “where were you?” when you actually know, you are lying to get to some ‘truth’ which you have to admit is confusing.

The kids who have the easiest time telling the truth are kids with hot-headed tempers who often don’t care about the consequences and really, really easy going kids who roll with consequences. All the other kids in the middle tend to struggle.

Remember that kids have a hard time holding both sides of a problem (I can be a good kid and do a bad thing) so if you want to help your children to speak the truth, then you have to help them hold both of those things at the same time. And learning to speak the truth takes as much time as learning everything else, maybe more. We don’t expect that they get it right with math all the time, and they aren’t going to getit right with this either all the time. Your honest reaction to the infraction “I am really disappointed that you didn’t follow the rule” is often enough to have real conversation about the broken rule or item. The calmer the conversation and the child, the more likely you will have a real conversation.

Five Things to Help our Children (and Ourselves) after a Traumatic Event.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkeness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.

We have witnessed so many shootings. So many struggling refugees. “How do I help my children understand the violence?” “How do I help them understand the struggle and the grief?” “How do I protect them from the news?” What can I do to help them feel better?” What can I do to help myself feel better?”

Trauma shatters. That is true regardless of the trauma. It shatters our sense of trust. It shatters our sense of stability. It shatters our sense of safety. The physiological responses to trauma set off alarm systems in our bodies that make us capable of running away or freezing on the spot—which is designed to help us survive. But trauma shuts down our ability to take in a wide variety of information, and it often has us in survival mode of shutting down and avoiding, rather than staying active and reaching out.

And unfortunately, these events seem to be happening more frequently so it seems important that parents and really, all of us, understand the impact of these traumatic events and how best to recover, heal and strengthen our resilience. What can you do as a parent to help your children and yourself during these stressful events?

First: Turn off your television. Do not reinforce the traumatic experience at the emotional or neurological level. Our visual systems are highly connected to our amygdalas –the fear centers of our brain. Constant watching of traumatic images helps strengthen a neural pathway for a frightening event. News is 24 hours and the event already happened. You and especially your children do not need to watch the events of a shooting over and over. A different camera angle may help the FBI catch the perpetrator but all you will get is another experience of fear and helplessness. For you as an adult you will be activating your stress response system each time you watch it—and this will not help you create a calming environment for your kids or anyone around you. Television is problematic for children for different reasons.  Because they are more reliant on imagination and fantasy they may not understand that what is being shown repeated footage—they may believe that it is continuing to happen.

Second: Trauma shatters our experience of safety so we all seek some reassurance that our loved ones are okay, and we want to believe that this will never happen to us. While you can’t promise them that nothing bad will ever happen to you or to them, you can reassure them that you will do everything in your power to protect yourselves and them. You can say that there are bad people in the world who do harm to people, but that most of the people in the world aren’t like that. You can talk about all of the people who helped the people who were hurt: the policemen, the nurses, the doctors, the men and women of the national guard, the FBI and law enforcement. You can talk about how quickly people helped. You help the children see that in bad situations people can help.

Third: Trauma shatters our sense of trust and stability. The antidote to this is to attend to your routines. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Bath, books, bedtime. Consistent routine help all people, not just children, feel more solid and secure. If trauma is about being caught off guard and thrust into the unknowable, familiar and nurturing routine help us feel more contained and safe. It can be tempting to let them slide and you may get more push back to the usual routine. Don’t give in if you can help it. Stick to the routine. Let them cry. Hug them tighter. And the routines apply to us as adults too—go to work, attend your meetings, keep up with the routines and rituals of your life.

Fourth: The hallmark of trauma is helplessness. At the moment of trauma we are rendered helpless to protect ourselves and others. Often this experience of helplessness is the most significant symptom. One of the greatest antidotes to trauma and the experience of helplessness is to help. Be active. Reach out. Especially for children it can be very healing to be able to do something to help. I know most people think, “What can children do?” But they can do a lot. In response to the actual traumatic event they can draw or paint pictures for the victims and you can mail them to the hospitals near the tragedy—or for the nurses and doctors and physical therapists or counselors who will work with the victims Or for the firefighters or police officers. Or for the other students and professors at the school. There isn’t a teacher or a police officer in the world who isn’t moved by a thank you card painted by a child. It helps your child feel better and it reinforces for the helpers their passion for what they do.

Or, you could look around your world and think about the people who need help closer to home? Who might need a picture, or cookies, or a song? What relative haven’t you connected with in a while?

Which brings me to my last and Fifth point that can help all of us. True to Martin Luther King Jr.’s words—only light and love can drive out the darkness and hate. This week we experienced this darkness again, and once again we all need to work together to bring in the light.  Let’s resolve each day to bring a little more light and a little more love: smile more, let the person in front of you pull in to traffic, pay someone’s toll or coffee, offer to get up and let someone who looks tired sit down, bring dinner to a friend or neighbor in need, call your pastor or minister and ask of there is someone who could use a little more support this week, plant a few more flowers. As a Girl Scout we were always taught to leave a place cleaner than we found it, and perhaps more now than ever we need the corollary—to leave a place ‘lighter’ or ‘more loving’ than we found it. Talk to each other. Reach out.

© 2015 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD

 

The Parent Achievement Trap

When I was in kindergarten, if I did a good job on my worksheet, I got a pumpkin sticker. I loved those pumpkin stickers. I wanted a sticker on everything I did.

Achievement is one the three main sources of motivation according to the psychologist McClelland.* Achievement is the need to do better than you did before, the need to master skills, the desire to be the best you can be. It is a great source of motivation and can be a great strength: it can help you learn things and do things. It can help you persevere when the learning curve is hard. Honestly, it can be pretty addictive. Yes, you start off small with pumpkin stickers as the gateway drug, but pretty soon you are learning languages, mastering scales in music and getting good grades—you are hooked, with each achievement giving you the hit you are looking for. If I were to be really honest, I would have to admit that I am always jonesing for that pumpkin sticker.

But the problem with achievement is that like all strengths—when you overuse them—they kick you in the pants. Your strength—achievement--actually becomes your weakness. Achievement becomes your trap.

Achievement works for a lot of things. But it doesn’t work for everything. It works great for things that are in your control—and for things that you can see, hear or touch. For example, if I want to organize my pantry—I have control over how fast or slow I want to do it—and when it’s done I can stand back and take pride in the accomplishment. I can give myself a pumpkin sticker. But achievement is much more complicated when something has a timeline of its own—like growing vegetables or flowers. I can plan my perennial border based on colors and what will bloom with what in my typical achievement mode, but Mother Nature rarely cooperates with me. This year, due to the temperature and precipitation, the grape hyacinth that were supposed to bloom with the daffodils waited an extra month and bloomed instead with the hardy geraniums. It was still pretty, but not what I had planned. Similarly, when I plant corn, I can do everything I can to support its growth, but it’s going to take between 60-80 days to get an ear of corn. I can’t just work harder, or put in more effort to get it to produce corn in a week.

One trait of humans is that whenever we run in to hardship and what we are doing isn’t working, we don’t stop doing that thing. No, instead we typically do that thing harder. It always makes me think of the times when I was younger and I locked my keys in my car (when you could still do that) and I could see them in there, and see that the locks were down and yet I would pull on the car handles anyway, hoping that maybe this time, when I pulled the door handle the car would open.

And achievement is one of those things that even when it isn’t working anymore, we do it harder, because achievement oriented people believe in hard work and “Hey, it’s always worked for me before, right?!”

My first clinical internship as a therapist was at a residential treatment facility—I would be doing individual, group and family therapy. And I met with my supervisor, Ann, eager (maybe even overeager) to do a great job. But after our first conversation, Ann had some paradoxical advice. She said, “I want you to get a ‘B’ in this internship. I am sure I looked at her like she had 2 heads. It was the first semester of graduate school and I was still trying to get in to the doctoral program. Anything less than an 'A' was out of the question. In fact, had there been a grade higher than an “A”-- I wanted it. Like all achievement oriented people, I had the belief that an “A” was good and meant your life would turn out the way you planned. And anything less than that was bad and meant that you would automatically go from graduate school to being homeless on the Boston Common, pushing a shopping cart and talking to streetlamps. Achievement people have no belief in a middle ground.

But Ann was absolutely right. You actually can’t get an “A” at helping other people. You can’t work harder to make other people grow, or heal, or develop. You can’t do more—because actually—all of the doing belongs to the other person. You can put effort in to creating a good environment for growth and learning, much like you can when you are growing vegetables—but you can’t put your effort into someone else’s growth. It isn't actually about you at all.

This is an incredibly hard lesson, and one you typically refuse to believe at first. Like Robin Williams talking about how he feared that when he stopped using drugs and alcohol, that he would no longer be funny—I feared that if I gave up achievement, my wonderdrug, there was no possibility of success.

Learning this was one of the most important things I came to learn as a therapist. I had compassion, I had hope, I understood the underpinnings of change. But I had to learn the patience of being, the ability to sit and witness another’s growth, struggle, and development—without the ability to be the one doing something. Really, I had to learn to trust in other powers in the world besides my own effort—to trust in the power of growth and development, to trust in the power of relationships and groups and communities, to trust in a power greater than myself.

And in working with parents I have come to see that getting out of the achievement trap is as difficult for many parents as it was for me as a therapist. High achievement parents want to parent well (okay maybe even perfectly), you want your children to be happy and successful, and you want to be able to use your strength—your achievement—to make it all happen.

And it doesn’t work. Because parenting doesn’t lend itself to achievement. In parenting you have to dance with development and personality and whatever happens that day. You have to dance with their decision to wear pink and orange because they are choosing to match the butterflies to the flowers, not the colors to each other. It’s Improv, not Shakespeare in the Park. In parenting you get to create the environment—and you can use your achievement oriented energy to learn about learning or development or attachment. But what will actually create it is letting go. Believing in something bigger than yourself. Believing in something bigger than your kids.

© Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD 2015

*The other two are affiliation and power. You can be motivated by affiliation, by being connected to others as a way to get things done as a great team player. Or you can be motivated by power: either personalized (moving up the corporate ladder and gain new titles and influence) or socialized power—gaining influence for a greater good. And probably some mix of the three, with one taking precedence when you are stressed

The Courage of Parenting When You Have A History of Trauma

This is for all of you parents who lived through difficult childhoods, difficult years--through trauma (however you would define it), through neglect, through war—especially, but not necessarily, as children. This is for all of you who had to do whatever you needed to do to survive and now you are out on the other side. You made it with a lot of grit and effort. Your life is calm. It is good. And you are working hard as a parent to raise your children, whether they are toddlers, teens or young adults.

As a therapist I saw how hard it was for you-- as you work to raise your children in a life of happiness, even as that was something you did not get as a child.

You grew up in the country of trauma—and you managed to emigrate from that land and come to this new country of health—of peace. The country of health where your children are now growing up.

On the outside this sounds like the perfect happy ending. Parents are safe, and children are happy and healthy. It should be easy, right? It’s not. Because if you do it well, if you raise your children to get what you didn’t have –and I am not talking about material things, though they may figure in; I am talking about attention, and consistency, and care. I am talking about help with their homework and going to their games, and friendly dinner conversation. I am talking about the freedom of being a child, of being able to be age-appropriately self-focused; to be able to lean on you and struggle with you, and even ignore you.

If your child lives in this world of health, what’s difficult and painful is that they really will never understand your world—the world you grew up in. And this can be incredibly lonely. And can make a parent feel incredibly torn. On the one hand all you want is for your children to get what you didn’t get and have the opportunities you didn’t have, and on the other hand you worry that they don’t appreciate what they have and that they won’t get the strengths you have that saved your life. Holding these two vastly different worlds is so very hard and takes so much strength.

What I tell parents who have lived through trauma is this: If all goes well, your children will never completely understand you. They will love you and they will learn from you, but your experience will always be foreign to them. Maybe when they are adults they might be able to understand some of it, but they will never know what you really lived through. They will never see the world through the same lenses as you do. They will take things for granted that you see as the biggest gifts. They will not see all that you do for them, because what you do for them is a part of the fabric of their lives. Children only see what they live in. This is as it should be. It means you are doing it right, but it can feel so isolating.

One of the most baffling things for parents who have lived through trauma is this: childhood isn’t always easy, even if everything is going well. Learning is hard work. Growing up is hard work. Kids struggle and wrestle—they cry, they tantrum, they worry, they do thing wrong. They get sad over small things and small disappointments. Even in the happiest of households, it is a long trail with a lot of ups and downs. It takes a lot of learning to build the muscles of becoming a healthy person. And for parents who lived through trauma, this can come as a shock. Many of the parents I have worked with have voiced a similar sentiment: I thought a happy childhood was easy—I never imagined my kids having a hard time if there weren’t bad things happening. I don’t understand them when I see them getting upset over ‘nothing.’ I don’t understand them. And they don’t understand me.

And what I try to help them understand is that in healthy families—the kids are doing the developmental work they need to do. They are working on their growth, not yours. You need to work on your own growth, healing and development—so that you can support the growth and development of your kids.

It is tempting when you have had a difficult childhood to want to give your children the childhood you didn’t have. Yet the most important thing you can do is give your child what he or she needs. Each of your children will need different things—different parenting—than you needed –or even than the other siblings need. A more anxious kid needs different parenting than a more risk taking kid, for example.   

The biggest casualties of a difficult childhood are the emotions. If you grow up in trauma you survive by shutting your emotions down, and then you have kids, and man, kids are nothing if not emotional. And they can trigger yours. How do you suddenly learn to manage your emotions? Find language for them? Tolerate them? One of the best books on emotional coaching is Faber & Mazlish’s How to Talk so Your Kids Will Listen and Listen so Your Kids Will Talk. It is a clear easy guide to talk about and coach kids through emotion. I made it required reading in all of the therapy classes I taught because it was the best guide out there, even for future therapists. And as you help your kids with their emotions. You can learn about your own.

Parenting with a trauma history is one of the bravest things that people can do—and it is invisible. If you are doing it well, nobody knows. Nobody cheers. If you had been physically disabled by a past trauma and chose to run a marathon—people would call you brave. But we don’t do that with emotional wounds. They are invisible and the parents who rise to the occasion—and parent with love and purpose—who give what they never got—they are unsung heroes.  

One of bravest things you can do is to heal from your own trauma—because it allows you to hold your feelings, it allows you to get just a little bit of what your own children are getting—some support and help with the hard things. It allows you to have someone help you and coach you about child and adolescent development and understand what the losses and gifts were in your own trauma. It might help you understand your child’s world, this new world that you created. It is easier to have compassion for your children’s struggles when someone has had compassion for yours.

So I say to you. Stay strong and know you are doing one of the most difficult things I have witnessed. That you may feel alone, but you aren’t alone. That your courage and bravery are creating not only a better world for your children, but for the world right now and for generations to come. And as you teach your children about love, have compassion and love for yourself and the journey you are on. 

© 2015 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, Ph

 

The Letter Your Teenager Can't Write You

Dear Parent:

This is the letter I wish I could write. 

This fight we are in right now. I need it. I need this fight. I can’t tell you this because I don’t have the language for it and it wouldn’t make sense anyway. But I need this fight. Badly. I need to hate you right now and I need you to survive it. I need you to survive my hating you and you hating me. I need this fight even though I hate it too. It doesn’t matter what this fight is even about: curfew, homework, laundry, my messy room, going out, staying in, leaving, not leaving, boyfriend, girlfriend, no friends, bad friends. It doesn’t matter. I need to fight you on it and I need you to fight me back.

I desperately need you to hold the other end of the rope. To hang on tightly while I thrash on the other end—while I find the handholds and footholds in this new world I feel like I am in. I used to know who I was, who you were, who we were. But right now I don’t. Right now I am looking for my edges and I can sometimes only find them when I am pulling on you. When I push everything I used to know to its edge. Then I feel like I exist and for a minute I can breathe. I know you long for the sweeter kid that I was. I know this because I long for that kid too, and some of that longing is what is so painful for me right now.

I need this fight and I need to see that no matter how bad or big my feelings are—they won’t destroy you or me. I need you to love me even at my worst, even when it looks like I don’t love you. I need you to love yourself and me for the both of us right now. I know it sucks to be disliked and labeled the bad guy. I feel the same way on the inside, but I need you to tolerate it and get other grownups to help you. Because I can’t right now. If you want to get all of your grown up friends together and have a ‘surviving-your-teenager-support-group-rage-fest’ that’s fine with me. Or talk about me behind my back--I don’t care. Just don’t give up on me. Don’t give up on this fight. I need it.

This is the fight that will teach me that my shadow is not bigger than my light. This is the fight that will teach me that bad feelings don’t mean the end of a relationship. This is the fight that will teach me how to listen to myself, even when it might disappoint others. 

And this particular fight will end. Like any storm, it will blow over. And I will forget and you will forget. And then it will come back. And I will need you to hang on to the rope again. I will need this over and over for years.

I know there is nothing inherently satisfying in this job for you. I know I will likely never thank you for it or even acknowledge your side of it. In fact I will probably criticize you for all this hard work. It will seem like nothing you do will be enough. And yet, I am relying entirely on your ability to stay in this fight. No matter how much I argue. No matter how much I sulk. No matter how silent I get.

Please hang on to the other end of the rope. And know that you are doing the most important job that anyone could possibly be doing for me right now.

Love, Your Teenager

© 2015 Gretchen L Schmelzer Ph