Sometimes parents worry that they are ‘messing up’ their kids. They might worry that they aren’t providing their kids with enough extracurricular activities, whether that be sport teams, church groups, art and music instruction, or experiential events. They might worry that they aren’t spending enough time with their kids, or spending too much time with their kids. They wonder, are we providing adequate encouragement? Are we disciplining enough? Do they see us arguing too much? Are we modelling a ‘good enough’ relationship that they’ll be okay? Have I been impatient with them one too many times, wrecking them in the process?

Parental worries probably begin from the child’s conception, and I’m not sure when they end. A parent’s concerns might change over time, but there seems to be a common and consistent question in parenting worries: are we doing a good enough job?

It’s a rather interesting question, actually. And there are so many possible ways to answer it. We might look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to examine what a child actually needs? Or we might consider educational resources that would suggest a child needs to learn to excel in reading, mathematics, sciences, technology. We might even consider parenting experts who suggest certain parenting approaches are absolute requirements for healthy development.

Often our worries about being good enough parents stem from our own childhood experiences of our own parents. Those of us who experienced neglect and abuse might respond with an overcompensating emphasis to avoid repetition of that pattern. Others might have had an overly supportive parenting experience that leads us to holding exceedingly high expectations of ourselves. It can be quite useful to evaluate your own family of origin with curiosity towards consideration of what style of parenting you come from and how it influences your own style of parenting.

I might suggest that the fact that a parent is asking this question puts them ahead of the questions actually, and maybe even the worry. When we are alert to and aware of the potential for making mistakes as parents or having problems in our relationship with our kids, it might cue us to readiness for exploration and openness to change. This process likely will involve intentional discernment in examining one’s own parenting approach. 

Fostering a Safe and Supportive Environment

Parents generally want to foster a safe and healthy home environment for our families. We’re likely able to readily identify what negative characteristics we don’t want to have in our homes. We might be less able to identify and know how to create the characteristics of a safe and healthy home.

An Emotionally Focused Family Therapy approach suggests that a family with these characteristics has trust, is experienced as safe and supportive, fosters strong bonds of connection, and allows for repair and forgiveness when hurt and/or harm occurs.

When trust exists in families, we might see and experience one another as reliable, positively consistent and predictable, respectful, and empathetic. When our children witness and experience these traits in our interactions with our partner and with themselves directly, they are more likely to replicate these behaviours and value these traits themselves.

Safety and support in a family extends beyond having a roof over your head and food in your belly. It extends beyond avoiding yelling and physical aggression. Safety and health involve whole person wellness: spiritual, physical, intellectual, relational, and emotional. Often the acronym SPIRE is used to capture this. An environment where each of these attributes is encouraged to grow will support the individual to thrive in the collective community. 

Safe Haven and Secure Base

At the core of healthy bonds of attachment is the idea of safe haven and secure base. The idea of providing a child with safe haven suggests that the parent or main attachment figure is available to provide comfort and safety, particularly when the child is experiencing fear, worry, or difficulty themselves. The child knows that their parent cares about their well-being, will respond in useful and safe ways to their distress, will help them regulate their emotions, and provide a source of physical and emotional comfort when indicated.

A secure base allows the child to develop healthy independence and autonomy, a curiosity towards exploring their world, all while recognizing the parent remains available and secure for the child to return to. A secure base supports the child’s personal growth, helps them to identify and develop their perspective and worldview, supports their preferred activities, and encourages building healthy relationships with others outside of the parent-child relationship. 

Key Qualities in a Parent-Child Relationship

Key qualities in the parent-child relationship, and any healthy relationship, include compassion, validation, and empathy. A child will experience the parent’s compassion in the parent’s response to the child’s emotional needs when parents respond with kindness, comfort, curiosity, and empathy. The key indicator is whether the child experiences a sense of connection fostered through the parent’s compassionate posture.

A compassionate parent/caregiver approaches with a desire to alleviate the child’s suffering, discomfort, and distress, offering soothing in ways that are experienced by the child as safe and healthy.

Validation means acknowledging and accepting a child’s feelings, thoughts and experiences as real and true for the child, even if the parent doesn’t agree with them. Being able to hold this posture requires the parent to not minimize or dismiss the child’s experience, but recognize that the child’s experience and the accompanying feelings need to be acknowledged and attended to without judgment or criticism.

The benefit of an empathetic parent for a child is that there is an understanding and sharing of their experience, perspective, and emotions without criticism, and the child knows that the parent values their experiences. Empathy is not a feeling the parent has for or toward the child, but WITH them. Empathy is crucial for strong connection with another.

As our children experience these qualities of compassion, validation, and empathy from parents, they are also likely to demonstrate these with others and adopt these as valued traits for themselves. What our children experience then is a relationship that allows them to be seen, heard, valued, and celebrated. This in turn gives them a sense of belonging, purpose, and motivation.

We are created for connection in our relationships. When a child feels valued and celebrated for who they are, their self-esteem and self-confidence are strengthened. Parents can contribute in this way to the development of a child’s healthy and positive self-image, encouraging a child’s strong desire to engage with and pursue activities for learning and development as well as healthy relationships outside of the parent-child relationship.

The PACE Model of Care

Dr. Dan Hughes’ posture of PACE can be helpful to parents who desire to have their children experience them as compassionate, empathetic, and validating. This model of care focuses on building trusting relationships, emotional connections, and a sense of safety and support.

Playfulness
The first attribute is playfulness. When a parent approaches a child with playfulness, the child might receive it as an invitation to relax, to have fun, and that interactions with the child are enjoyable and desired even when it’s about correcting a behaviour or addressing a concern. It’s important that a parent be authentic in this posture, preventing or avoiding the child from experience the parent as antagonizing or making fun.

Acceptance
A parent can be accepting of the child’s thoughts and feelings without judgment or criticism, communicating connection with the child that is based on unconditional love.

Curiosity
The third attribute is curiosity. A curious posture allows for collaboration in exploring the child’s experience, breaks down the power dynamic that might be obstructing connection, and strengthens a child’s experience of and ability for self-awareness. Curiosity disrupts a power-over posture that can be unhelpful in the parent-child relationship, and instead invites a ‘with posture’.

Empathy

Parental Alignment

When more than one parent or caregiver is involved, a key element to fostering strong parenting skills is parental alignment. Not to say that parents will agree on every decision as it pertains to their child, but when there is a general alignment in terms of parental philosophy, we can expect parents to navigate decision-making for their children in a smoother way.

Repairing When Parents Mess up

The reality is, as human beings, we are bound to mess up. And while mistakes and errors are inevitable and part of the human condition, we are also created for connection which equips us to foster and invite repair in our relationships.

Relationships that value strong attachment set us up for repair when harm or hurt occurs, and allows for restored connection. Secure attachment relationships hold a safe and healthy assumption of one another that we will mess up, and we will repair. Our relationship is strong enough to do so, will weather the storm of disconnection, and likely will be strengthened by it.

In the parent-child relationship, the responsibility to do this repair is on the parent. Repair in the parent-child relationship involves talking about what happened, acknowledging how the child has been impacted, and working together so that the child’s experience of their parent as their safe haven and secure base is restored.

Shalem therapists are equipped to help support parents, children, and families in this! Using attachment-based therapy approaches such as Emotional Focused Family Therapy (EFFT) and Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP), we seek to help families repair emotional bonds, strengthen a sense of safety and trust, improve communication skills, identify shared family values, and support a sense of connection and belonging within the family.

Want to dig in on your own? Consider these questions:

• What informs your parenting philosophy? Why do you do what you do for/with/to your kids?
• Do you have a parental partnership and alignment with any other parents or caregivers involved? What type of relationships are you modeling?
• What type of relationship are you inviting your kids into? What changes might you need to consider to invite them into the type of relationship you want with them?
• What is your source of encouragement and guidance? It might be said that the health of our roots signals the health of our branches. What are your deep hopes for your child?

Michelle DeBoer is a Clinical Therapist with Shalem Mental Health Network

Resources

Below are some articles for further reading:

• “Am I screwing up my kids?” by Stephanie Cox, MS
• 10 Characteristics of a Healthy Family,  written by Amy Braun, LCPC, PMH-C
• “How to have Healthy Family Relationships with Less Stress“, by Elizabeth Scott, PhD.
• “What Does Secure Attachment Look and Feel Like? Plus How to Develop It” by Sanjana Gupta.
• “What is Emotionaly Focused Family Therapy?” written by Jason N. Linder, PsyD
• “4 Types of Attachment Styles” by Kendra Cherry, MSEd