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| |    Why You Are the Parent You Are by Robert Needlman, M.D., F.A.A.P. reviewed by Robert Needlman, M.D., F.A.A.P. Parents learn how to be parents by being children. This idea might seem ridiculous to you, or it might seem completely obvious. Most parents have had the experience at one time or another of saying something to their children and suddenly realizing that they (the parents) sound exactly like their own parents. Even when parents make a conscious decision not to be like their parents, they often still find themselves "slipping back" into a style of thinking and acting that is all too familiar. Take a minute to think about your childhood. How did your parents respond to your needs, both physical and emotional? How did they teach you discipline? How did they show warmth? What behaviors or impulses of theirs are you repeating in your own parenting? What do you want to change in yourself? Cast in a certain mold For some of us, we can only hope to be the kind of parents that we, ourselves, had. But for others who were raised in less fortunate circumstances, a replay of past experiences is anything but desirable. As a striking example, I remember very well a young mother whose baby was terribly underweight. The baby would cry with a weak, irritable voice that made everyone around feel very sorry for her, and very uncomfortable. But her mother didn't seem disturbed. She didn't even seem to hear her baby. This woman's concerning behavior made more sense when I found out that her own mother had been unable to care for her, and so she had been placed in a foster home when she was two. For this young mother, the experience of being loved was all mixed up with being rejected and sent away, and she gave the same sort of mixed-up, rejecting care to her own daughter. Believe it or not, babies seem to take in information about parenting and store it away for later reference. While this concept may seem far-fetched, concrete examples are everywhere. If you watch young children with their dolls, you can see this process take place. Witness a three-year-old with her doll. She slaps the doll on the hand and says, "no, no, don't touch!" in tones that mimic her mother's; the next minute, she is cradling her doll and singing it to sleep. She is practicing for her later role. While boys "play parent" too, it may be harder to spot, since many moms and dads don't let their boys play with dolls. Early lessons are hard to unlearn Try as you might, it's likely that your first impulse in any parenting situation will be to respond the way your parents did. With effort you can train yourself to do things differently, but the new ways may not feel completely natural or comfortable to you for a long time. It's like trying to speak a foreign language that you've only studied in school: You might know all the rules, but the language doesn't really flow until you've worked on it for a long time. Why is it so hard to change your parenting approach? As children, we learn through repeated experience what to expect from our parents. If we're hungry or wet, does a parent come right away most of the time to make everything better; or does the parent only show up after a long time, or bring tense feelings instead of comfort? Those early lessons, which are so important to us as infants, don't go away. They live under the surface, and then show up suddenly in our spontaneous responses to different parenting situations. They supply us with our gut feelings about parenting. We know what our children need, whether it's a warm hug or breezy reassurance, because a deep part of us remembers very well what it was like to be a young child. What you can do Most of us were lucky to have good parents, even if they weren't perfect. So the changes we feel we need to make as parents are actually fairly small. For many men like myself, the major change involves assuming a more hands-on role with our own children than our fathers did with us. For many women, the change involves finding ways to balance outside careers with the constant demands of parenting, as well as feeling comfortable with those decisions. Many parents I know, however, had very hard childhood experiences that left them without good role models for parents. They may have grown up with parents who were emotionally distant, frequently angry and abusive, or who left them, died, or were addicted to alcohol and drugs. These parents, when they make the conscious decision to be better parents than their parents were, face a tough struggle ahead. But with hard work, determination, and help from friends and often professionals, they can change. These parents truly are heroes. For those of you who face such a challenge, rest assured that there is no shame in asking for help with this task if you need it. Looking hard at yourself in this way takes courage; making changes takes even more.
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