One of the most important things we can do for our child is to form a trusting, attuned relationship with them. That said, we all regularly make parenting mistakes that affect our child’s relationship with us. I’m not talking about big mistakes—just times when we’re tired or distracted and we say or do something that doesn’t feel right.
That’s normal. It happens.
Just know that as we become more aware of these ruptures—these so-called parenting mistakes—we’re more likely to catch ourselves before they happen.
With that in mind, here are the four most common ruptures parents experience, along with what they can do after the rupture.
1. “Life” interferes
This is probably the most common and often experienced type of rupture between you and your kid. It likely happens throughout the day because life simply gets in the way. For example, your two-year-old wants to be picked up, but you need to answer an important email first. It’s reasonable; your kid can wait. “Just a second,” you tell him. (And when you’re done with the email, you do need to come through on your promise and pick him up!)
Though a few minutes of waiting doesn’t feel like a rupture to you, it does to your child. He’ll let you know by whining and fussing, but when you pick him up, he’s learning that he can reconnect with you, that he can trust a reunion will follow a rupture.
What you can do: At these times, it will be helpful to name the feelings (i.e., the rupture) for your child. You might say, “I know it was hard to wait for me, and you were sad to feel separated from me, but now I’m here. I always come back.”
2. We’re unable to accurately tune in
Sometimes we simply don’t understand our child. It happens when our newborn is crying and crying, and we don’t know why. Other times, we misread our kid. For example, when they’re angry and refuse to stay in their bed at night, we discipline them for their anger rather than realizing they’re actually sad to be separated from us.
Sometimes we don’t have it in us to show up for our child—when they’re afraid and wake us in the middle of the night, we’re too exhausted, so we tell them to go back to sleep and stop worrying.
When we’re not able to tune in or show up for our child, they experience a break in the connection with us. They feel alone, lost, and scared.
What you can do: At these times, it’s best to do a repair with your child. What this looks like is covered in detail in the post, “Ruptures and Repair: The 4 Steps You Need to Know,” but repairs essentially entail owning your part and acknowledging how your child felt.
3. We’re physically separated
It gets harder for kids when there’s an actual, physical separation. Parents have to go to work, kids have to take naps, and so on. How then does a kid tolerate this kind of separation, which feels huge?
For kids under five or six, they’re still developing their ability to keep a mental image of us in their minds, which they can go to for comfort.
What you can do: Help your child develop their ability to carry the idea of you in their head. Try these:
- Give your kid a long hug, then ask them where the hug is inside their body.
- Ask your child if they can summon the sound of your voice in their head. Where exactly do they store your voice inside their body?
- Ask them to close their eyes and picture what you look like. Ask them to describe one thing they see in their head.
- At bedtime, ask them, “When I leave the room, can I still be somewhere inside of you? Can you keep me there? Where do you think that spot will be? Tonight, when you’re missing me, can you go to that spot and find a little bit of me there?”
4. We get mad
All parents lose their cool with our kids. (For more on this, check out the post, “What Our Child Experiences When We Lose Our Cool.”) We yell, we scold, we shame. We do things we regret. We’re not perfect by any means. So be it.
Kids feel scared of parents when they get super mad. It’s like their parent has become a different, unpredictable person. This ultimately threatens the child’s trust in the parent and deals a serious blow to the relationship.
What you can do: First, just know that even when we screw up, we can repair things. And just because we’ve screwed up doesn’t mean our kid will therefore be screwed up, too.
Most importantly, for this type of rupture, naming the child’s feelings is a key part of the repair. (Everything you need to know about repairs is covered in the post, “Ruptures and Repair: The 4 Steps You Need to Know.”)
Check out the related short-short story, “Peek-a-boo,” about what happens when a young boy, having just watched his estranged father die, encounters an infant on the plane ride home.
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