Empathize
After hearing about the past experiences, we should empathize with the parent regarding pain experienced as a child in the past (“That would be very scary for any child”) and ask “How much is this a burden for you now?” to see if help is needed. But this is a key educational moment for us as child development experts to suggest how children of the age they were then might process the events. For example, one might explain reaction to abandonment by a father by saying, “Any 6-year-old whose father left would feel sad and mad, but also might think he had done something wrong or wasn’t worth staying around for.” One might react to a story of abusive discipline by saying, “Children need to feel safe and protected at home. Not knowing when your parent is going to hurt you could produce lifelong anxiety and trouble trusting your closest relationships.” Watch to see if this connects for them.
Selma Fraiberg, in the classic article “Ghosts in the Nursery,”1 noted that if parents have come to empathize with their past hurting selves, they will work to prevent similar pain for their own children. If they have dealt with these experiences by identifying with the aggressive or neglectful adult or blanking the memory, they are more likely to act out similar practices with their children.
For some, being able to tolerate reviewing these painful times enough to experience empathy for the child may require years of work with a trusted therapist. We should be prepared to refer if the parents are in distress. But for many, getting our help to understand how a child might feel and later act after these experiences may be enough to interrupt the transmission. We can try to elicit current impact of the past (“How are those experiences affecting your parenting now?”). This question, expecting impact, often causes parents to stop short and think. While at first denying impact, if I have been compassionate and nonjudgmental in asking, they often return with more insight.
Help with parenting issues
After eliciting perceptions of the past, I find it useful to ask, “So, what have (the two of) you decided” about how to manage [the problematic parenting situation]?” The implication is that parenting actions are decisions. Making this decision process overt may reveal that they are having blank out moments of impulsive action, or ambivalence with thoughts and feelings in conflict, or arguments resulting in standoffs. A common reaction to hurts in the past is for parents to strongly avoid doing as their own parents did, but then have no plan at all, get increasingly emotional, and finally blow up and scream or hit or storm off ineffectually. We can help them pick out one or two stressful situations, often perceived disrespect or defiance by the child, and plan steps for when it comes up again – as hot-button issues always do. It is important to let them know that their “emotion brain” is likely to speak up first under stress and the “thinking brain” takes longer. We, and they, need to be patient and congratulate them for little bits of progress in having rationality win.
Dr. Barbara J. Howard