We often hear the cornerstone of healthy parenting quoted as consistently “responding with sensitivity” to our infants’ and children’s emotional and physical needs in relation to their biological-developmental stage. And while I agree this overarching idea is at the core of healthy parenting, I do not feel that it is necessarily as instinctual as many authors and parenting experts claim.
Depending on life circumstances, our individual attachment quality, the patterns of our relationships from childhood on, communication style, coping skills picked up along the way and other factors, even the most balanced people among us can still have areas in their emotional life needing attention. And every one of us always has room to improve, just because we humans are like that—if we’re not intentionally moving forward, we’ll slide backwards.
No matter what parenting style or approach we are planning or are trying to implement with our children, it is imperative for each of us to identify and study what makes us tick as individuals, what we want to keep and change, and what we want to pass down to our children or not.
Perhaps you feel that while there may be better ways of coping with stress, you don’t see your coping skills as bad as some. Maybe you tend to overwork or eat too much ice cream or chew on your fingernails. And your child may pick up these same habits, but not always—depending on your child’s individual temperament, she may internalize how you cope but choose other behaviors that may be far less benign. And who’s to say that these anxious behaviors are any worse than another’s habit if any of them are unhealthy and there are better skills to learn to cope with stress?
Click on the link below to read the full article
Category(s):Parenting, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) / Trauma / Complex PTSD
Source material from Psych Central
