I Swore I'd Never Say That! (continued)

How can parents learn to handle the stresses of parenting? Parents benefit greatly from having someone to listen to them as they talk about and release the emotional tension that builds up in their lives. Obtaining this attention for themselves allows them to provide emotional support to their children. Most of us were taught to keep feelings at arm's length, or to keep them to ourselves. But feelings are a big and essential part of being human, and expressing these feelings is how people recover from the hard things, big and small, that happen to them. Both children and parents need relationships that are safe enough to offer room for the unguarded expression of the feelings that are stored after frightening or challenging moments.

Children know how to offload stress. They try to use us as safe harbors. Although conventional wisdom doesn't yet reflect this fact, the crying, tantrums and out-of-control laughter that punctuate the lives of our children are important emotional outlets for them. Expressing their emotions at length helps children to make progress in their ability to tackle everyday issues, like getting ready for school or childcare, with confidence and enthusiasm. If getting ready for school brings up feelings in a child such as "You always rush me" or "No one at school likes me," and her parent listens all the way through a good laugh, a vigorous tantrum or a good cry, a child will, over time, regain her sense of confidence in herself and her parent's love. The feelings that caused her to dawdle or to dread school will have been shed, allowing the child to function more intelligently. This process works best if the adult can remain warm and calm, and get close and listen through these stormy upsets.

Children's emotional challenges often become parents' challenges, too. The situations that are hard in our own parenting are most often the same ones that were hard in our childhoods. Memories and unconscious associations can stimulate the same circuitry in our brains that was active during difficult childhood moments. In simple terms, neurons that fired together are wired together, until someone has fully heard the story of those hard times. For instance, if a parent grew up disliking school but was belittled for expressing feelings about it, it may be tough for him to listen to the feelings and experience of a child who is struggling with school friendships. While feelings from long ago are running the show, we are emotionally disconnected from the present moment. It is more difficult for us to understand our children well or to respond with interest, kindness and a healthy mixture of love and limit-setting.

In their book Parenting from the Inside Out: How a Deeper Self-Understanding Can Help You Raise Children Who Thrive, Daniel J. Siegel, M.D., and Mary Hartzell, M.Ed., say that when we are in a situation and feel angry, frustrated, confused or ashamed, but we aren't exactly sure why, it is probably the result of our implicit memory being stimulated. Fortunately, research shows we can make our implicit memory explicit by reflecting and talking about our feelings and experience. We at Hand in Hand take this concept further and say that it is even more helpful to fully express any of the strong feelings we may have, not to our children, but to an accepting adult.