I believe the following and it is the backbone of Deep Dive Parenting:
Everyone, everywhere is always doing the best they can given where they come from and what they have experienced.
This isn’t just a belief in the good of people. It’s a belief that we are formed by our past experiences, and that these past experiences shape everything we do and, more importantly, how we feel. Most often, it’s how we feel that determines what we do.
For example, the sibling who steals from his brother is acting out his feelings, whether jealousy, anger, or even sadness. He not only wants what his brother has, but he wants his brother to experience having less than others. Even if he knows that stealing is bad—and punishable—his feelings overwhelm his thoughts, and so he steals. And here’s the point: regardless of age, we all do bad things based on our feelings overwhelming our thoughts.
Let’s take another example: a parent who loses control and hits a child. Here, when the parent loses control, it’s not just that the feelings overwhelm the parent’s judgment, it’s very likely this parent was also hit as a child. When a child is hit, he learns that it’s okay to hit—and especially that it’s okay for parents to hit. Our childhood experiences create patterns for us which we repeat as adults. They form our habits and our expectations.
A woman who finds herself in one abusive relationship after another isn’t wanting to be abused. It’s just the opposite, and yet every relationship is abusive. Why? So often, the relationships we have mimic the kind of relationships we experienced as children. It’s what we know and are accustomed to—just like the parent who hits a child and was hit as a child. In the end, it comes back to the narratives we have not just about relationships, but who we are and who we expect others to be.
When I say that everyone, everywhere, is doing the best that they can, I could really put it this way:
We all want to do good, but our feelings and early narratives can get in the way.
I have never met a so-called “evil” person. I have met many people who have been seriously damaged by their past and are trying to heal. Ironically, the experiences of their past directly interfere with their ability to heal and change, leaving them stuck and repeating the past.
How then does this relate to children and parenting?
It means that kids, too, are doing the best they can given their developmental limitations, especially in their difficulties with managing emotions and controlling their impulses. It also means that what kids learn—and what we teach them—will help determine who they become and how they will behave as adults.
Yes, the pressure is on, but the task is manageable, especially when we understand what’s going on inside our kid and ourselves! We need to understand where we come from, to recognize what was good about our childhood and what wasn’t so that we don’t repeat it.
But a word of warning here: parents who want to undo their own past often go too far in the opposite direction. Here’s an example.
A kid grows up in poverty, never getting a birthday present because his family is too poor. When he becomes a father, he spends $700 that he doesn’t have on his two-year-old’s birthday presents because he’s determined that she not grow up as he did. Now he’s in debt and can’t buy her new shoes when she outgrows the old pair without putting himself in further debt. The sad irony here is that while he’s trying to undo the past, he’s risking recreating it.
The good in you
I believe you as a parent are doing the best you can, even when you yell or scold or make fun of our child. When you find yourself not being your best self, think about how your own past is creeping in and getting in your way. Understand yourself and your past. Do some work. Read up on your issues. Talk to a friend, a therapist, an aunt or uncle, a clergyperson. Approach it all with curiosity and with as much openness as you can. Because the truth is, you are a good person, and you’re doing the best you can given everything that’s happened. Don’t let your past get in the way of your present.
Do it for yourself. And do it for your kid, and her kid, and so on down the generations.
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