part one your parenting legacy the cliche is true children do not do what we say they do what we do before we even consider the behavior of our children it's useful essential even to look at their first role models and one of them is you this section is all about you because you will be a major influence on your child in it i'll give examples of how the past can affect the present when it comes to your relationship with your child i will talk about how a child can often trigger old feelings in us that we then mistakenly act on in our dealings with them i'll also be looking at the importance of examining our own inner critic so we do not pass too much of its damaging effects onto the next generation the past comes back to bite us and our children a child needs warmth and acceptance physical touch your physical presence love plus boundaries understanding play with people of all ages soothing experiences and a lot of your attention and your time oh so that's simple then the book can end here except it can't because things get in the way your life can get in the way circumstances child care money school work lack of time busyness and this is not an exhaustive list as you know but what can get in the way more than any of this however is what was given to us when we ourselves were babies and children if we don't look at how we were brought up and the legacy of that it can come back to bite us you might have found yourself saying something along the lines of i opened my mouth and my mother's words came out of course if theirs were words that made you feel wanted loved and safe as a child that would be fine but so often they are words that did the opposite what can get in the way are things like our own lack of confidence our pessimism our defenses which block our feelings and our fear of being overwhelmed by feelings or when it comes specifically to relating to our children it could be what irritates us about them our expectations for them or our fears for them we are but a link in a chain stretching back through millennia and forward until who knows when the good news is you can learn to reshape your link and this will improve the life of your children and their children and you can start now you don't have to do everything that was done to you you can ditch the things that were unhelpful if you are a parent or you're going to be one you can unpack and become familiar with your childhood examine what happened to you how you felt about it then how you feel about it now and after having done that unpacking and taken a good look at it put back only what you need if when you were growing up you were for the most part respected as a unique and valuable individual shown unconditional love given enough positive attention and had a rewarding relationship with your family members you will have received a blueprint to create positive functional relationships in turn this would have shown you that you could positively contribute to your family and to your community if all this is true of you then the exercise of examining your childhood is unlikely to be too painful if you did not have childhood like this and that's the case for a large proportion of us looking back on it may bring up emotional discomfort i think it is necessary to become more self-aware around that discomfort so that we can become more mindful of ways to stop us passing it on so much of what we have inherited sits just outside of our awareness that makes it hard sometimes to know whether we are reacting in the here and now to our child's behavior or whether our responses are more rooted in our past i think this story will help to illustrate what i mean it was told to me by tay a loving mum and senior psychotherapist who trains other psychotherapists i'm mentioning both her roles to make it clear that even the most self-aware and well-meaning of us can slip into an emotional time warp and find ourselves reacting to our past rather than to what's happening here in the present this story begins when tay's daughter emily who was nearly seven shouted to her that she was stuck on a climbing frame and she needed help to get off i told her to get down when she said she couldn't i suddenly felt furious i thought she was being ridiculous she could easily get down herself i shouted get down this minute she eventually did then she tried to hold my hand but i was still furious i said no and then she howled once we got home and made tea together she calmed down and i wrote off the whole thing to myself as god kids can be a pain fast forward a week we're at the zoo and there's another climbing frame looking at it i felt a flash of guilt it obviously reminded emily of the previous week too because she looked at me almost fearfully i asked if she wanted to play on it this time instead of sitting on a bench looking at my phone i stood by the frame and watched her when she felt she got stuck she held out her arms for me to help but this time i was more encouraging i said put one foot there and the other there and grab that and you'll be able to do it by yourself and she did when she had got down she said why didn't you help me last time i thought about it and i said when i was little nana treated me like a princess and carried me everywhere told me to be careful all the time it made me feel incapable of doing anything for myself and i ended up with no confidence i don't want that to happen to you which is why i didn't want to help you when you asked to be lifted off the climbing frame last week and it reminded me of being your age when i wasn't allowed to get down by myself i was overcome with anger and i took it out on you and that wasn't fair emily looked up at me and said oh i thought you just didn't care oh no i said i care but at that moment i didn't know that i was angry at nana and not at you and i'm sorry like tay it's easy to fall into making instant judgments or assumptions about our emotional reaction without considering that it may be as much to do with what's been triggered in our own background as with what's happening now but when you feel anger or any other difficult emotions including resentment frustration envy disgust panic irritation dread fear etc in response to something your child has done or requested it's a good idea to think of it as a warning not a warning that your child or children are necessarily doing anything wrong but that your own buttons are being pressed often the pattern works like this when you react with anger or another overly charged emotion around your child it is because it's a way you have learnt to defend yourself from feeling what you felt at their age outside of your awareness their behavior is threatening to trigger your own past feelings of despair of longing of loneliness jealousy or neediness and so you unknowingly take the easier option rather than empathizing with what your child is feeling you short circuit to being angry or frustrated or panicked sometimes the feelings from the past that have been re-triggered go back more than one generation my mother used to find the shrieks of children at play irritating i noticed that i too went into a sort of alert state when my own child and her friends were making a noise even though they were enjoying themselves appropriately i wanted to find out more so i asked my mother what would have happened to her if she had played noisily as a child she told me that her father my grandfather had been over 50 when she was born he often had bad headaches and all the children had to tiptoe around the house or they got into trouble maybe you're scared if you admit that at times your irritation with your child gets the upper hand thinking it will intensify those angry feelings or somehow make them more real but in fact naming our inconvenient feelings to ourselves and finding an alternative narrative for them one where we don't hold our children responsible means we won't judge our children as being somehow at fault for having triggered them if you can do this it makes you less likely to act out on that feeling at the expense of your child you will not always be able to trace a story that makes sense of how you feel but that doesn't mean there isn't one it can be helpful to hold on to that one issue might be that as a child you felt that the people who loved you perhaps didn't always like you they might sometimes have found you annoying hard work disappointing unimportant exasperating clumsy or stupid when you're reminded of this by your own child's behavior you are triggered and you end up shouting or acting out whatever your default negative behavior is there's no doubt about it it can feel hard becoming a parent overnight your child becomes your most demanding priority 24 7. having a child may have even made you finally realize what your own parents had to deal with maybe to appreciate them more to identify with them more or to feel more compassion for them but you need to identify with your own child or children too time spent contemplating what it may have felt like for you as a baby or a child around the same age as your own child will help you develop empathy for your child that will help you understand and feel with them when they behave in a way that triggers you into wanting to push them away i had a client oscar who had adopted a little boy of 18 months old every time his son dropped food on the floor or left his food oscar felt rage rise up in him i asked him what would have happened to him as a child if he dropped or left food he remembered his grandfather wrapping his knuckles with the handle of a knife then making him leave the room after he got back in touch with what it had felt like for him as a little boy when he was treated like that he found compassion for his own self as a toddler which in turn helped him to find patience for his child it's easy to assume our feelings belong with what's happening in front of us and are not simply a reaction to what happened in the past as an example imagine you have a four-year-old child who gets a huge pile of presents on their birthday and you sharply call them spoilt for not sharing one of their new toys what is happening here logically it's not their fault if they are the recipient of so much stuff you may unconsciously be assuming they are undeserving of so many things and your irritation at that leaks out in a sharp tone or by you unreasonably expecting them to be more mature if you stop to look back to become interested in your irritation towards them what you might find is that your own inner four-year-old is jealous or feels competitive maybe at the age of four you were told to share something you didn't want to share or you simply weren't given many things and in order not to feel sad for four-year-old you you lash out at your child i am reminded of the hate mail and negative social media attention anyone in the public eye receives from anonymous sources if you read between the lines what it seems to be saying more than anything is it's not fair that you're famous and i'm not it's not so unusual to feel jealous of our children if you do you need to own it not act out negatively towards your child because of it they don't need parental trolling throughout this book i have put in exercises that may help you have a deeper understanding of what i'm talking about if you find them unhelpful or overwhelming you can skip them and perhaps come back to them when you film already here's an exercise where does this emotion come from the next time you feel anger towards your child or any other overly charged emotion rather than unthinkingly responding stop to ask yourself does this feeling wholly belong to the situation and my child in the present how am i stopping myself seeing the situation from their standpoint one good way to stop yourself from reacting is to say i need some time to think about what's happening and to use that time to calm down even if your child does need some guidance there's not much point in doing it when you're angry if you give it then they will only hear your anger and not what you are trying to tell them you can do a second variation of the exercise even if you do not yet have a child just notice how often you feel angry or self-righteous or indignant or panicky or perhaps ashamed or self-loathing or disconnected look for patterns in your responses look back to when you first felt this feeling tracing it back to your childhood where you began to respond like this and you may begin to understand to what extent this reaction has become a habit in other words the response is at least as much due to it having become a habit in you than it is to do with the situation in the present rupture and repair in an ideal world we would catch ourselves before we ever acted out on a feeling inappropriately we would never shout at our child or threaten them or make them feel bad about themselves in any way of course it's unrealistic to think we'd be able to do this every time look at tay she's an experienced psychotherapist and she still acted on her fury because she thought it belonged to the present but one thing she did do and what we can all learn to do to mend the her is called rupture and repair ruptures those times when we misunderstand each other where we make wrong assumptions where we hurt someone are inevitable in every important intimate and familial relationship it's not the rupture that is so important it is the repair that matters the way to make repairs in relationships is firstly by working to change your responses that is to recognize your triggers and use that knowledge to react in a different way or if your child is old enough to understand you can use words and apologize as tay did to emily even if you only realize that you acted wrongly towards your child many moons after it happened you can still tell them where you got it wrong it can mean a tremendous amount to a child even an adult child when a parent makes a repair look at the belief that emily was carrying she assumed tay on some level did not care about her what a relief to learn her mother did care and had merely been in a muddle a parent once asked me whether it was dangerous to apologize to children but don't they need you to be right otherwise they won't feel secure she asked no what children need is for us to be real and authentic not perfect think back to your childhood were you made to feel bad or in the wrong or even responsible for your parents bad moods if it happened to you it is all too easy to try and repair your feeling of being wrong by making someone else feel wrong and the victims of this are far too often our children a child's own instincts will tell them when we are not in tune with them or with what's happening and if we pretend that we are we will dull their instincts for example if we pretend that as adults we are never wrong the result can be a child who over adapts not only to what you say but to what anyone may say they can become more vulnerable to people who may not have their best interests at heart instinct is a major component in confidence competence and intelligence so it's a good idea not to damage or warp your childs i met mark when he came to a parenting workshop i was running his wife tony had suggested he attend at the time their son toby was nearly two mark told me he and his wife had agreed not to have children but that at the age of 40 tony changed her mind after a year of trying and a year of ivf she got pregnant considering we worked so hard in getting there it surprises me now looking back how hazy i was about what life with a baby would be like i think i must have got the idea of parenting from watching television when the baby is miraculously mostly asleep in a cot and hardly ever cries once toby was born the reality of no longer having any spontaneity and flexibility of the tedium of a baby one of us always being on baby duty around the clock meant i began to swing between feeling resentful or depressed or both two years on i'm still not enjoying my life tony and i don't talk about anything other than toby and if i try to talk about something else it reverts to him in under a minute i know i'm being selfish but that does not stop me feeling like i'm on a short fuse i don't see myself living with tony and toby for much longer to be honest i asked mark to tell me about his childhood all he could say was that he wasn't very interested in exploring it with me as it had been completely normal as a psychotherapist i took not being interested as a clue he wanted to distance himself from it i suspected that being a parent was triggering feelings in him that he wanted to run away from i asked mark what normal meant he told me that his dad left when he was three as he grew up his father's visits became less and less frequent mark is right this is a normal childhood however that does not mean that the disappearance of his father didn't matter to him i asked mark how he'd felt about his father's desertion and he couldn't remember i suggested it was perhaps too painful to remember and perhaps it felt easier to be like his own dad and leave tony and toby because then he didn't have to unlock his own box of difficult emotions i told him i thought it was important that he did indeed unlock and open it because otherwise he wouldn't be sensitive to the needs of his own son and would pass down to toby what had been passed down to him i wasn't sure from his response if he heard what i actually said i didn't see mark until six months later at a different workshop he told me he'd been feeling depressed and rather than just dismissing it he decided to start having therapy to his surprise he told me he found himself crying and shouting in the therapist's room about his own father leaving him therapy helped me to put the feelings where they needed to be with the desertion of my dad rather than thinking i just wasn't cut out to be in this relationship or be a parent i'm not saying i don't still feel bored or resentful sometimes but i know that resentment belongs in my past i know it's not about toby i can see the point of all the attention i give to toby now is to make him feel good not just now but in the future tony and i are filling him up with love and hopefully that will mean he has love to give when he's older so he will feel valuable i have no relationship with my own father i know toby is getting from me what i didn't get from my own dad that we are laying the foundations of a great relationship seeing the point of what i'm doing has turned most of my discontent to hope and gratitude i feel closer to tony again now too now i'm more interested in and present with toby it has freed tony up to think of other things apart from him mark repaired the rupture with toby his desire to desert him by looking into his own past in order to understand what was happening in the present then he was able to change his attitude towards being with his son it was though he could not unlock his love until he had unlocked his grief repairing the past some time ago a mother-to-be asked me what my one suggestion for a new parent would be i told her whatever age your child is they are liable to remind you on a bodily level of the emotions you went through when you were at a similar age she looked at me a bit bemused a year or so later with a toddler at her feet that same mum told me that she hadn't understood what i meant at the time but she'd remembered it and as she grew into her new role it had begun to make so much sense and had helped her to feel for her child as well you won't remember consciously what it's like to be a baby but on other levels you will remember and your child will keep reminding you it is common for a parent to withdraw from their child at a very similar age to when that parent's parent became unavailable to them or a parent will want to pull away emotionally when their child is at the same age as they were when they felt alone mark is a classic example of someone who didn't want to face up to the feelings his child was bringing up in him you might want to run away from these feelings and from your child too but if you do you will pass down what was done to you there will be plenty of good stuff you will be passing on to all that love you received but what you don't want to pass on is your inherited fear hate loneliness or resentment there will be times when you feel unpleasant emotions towards or around your child just like you occasionally made towards your partner your parent your friend or yourself if you admit this then you'll be less likely to be unthinkingly punishing them for whatever feeling they have brought up in you if you find as mark did that you resent family life because you feel pushed aside it could be because you were pushed aside as a child and not considered in one or both of your parents lives sometimes this resentment can feel more like boredom or a feeling of disconnection from your child some parents think i'm exaggerating when i use words like desertion and resentment i don't resent my children they say sometimes i want to be left alone in peace but i love them i think of desertion as a spectrum on the most severe end there's the actual desertion of physically removing yourself from the child's life entirely like mark's father did but i also consider desertion to include pushing a child away when they want your attention or not really listening to them when they are trying to show you for example their painting which is your child trying to show you on one level who they really are this feeling of wanting to push children away of wanting them to sleep long and to play independently before they are ready so they don't take up your time can come about when you're trying not to feel with your child because they're such a painful reminder of your childhood because of this you're unable to surrender to their needs it's true we may tell ourselves we push our children away because we want more of the other areas of our lives such as work friends and netflix but we are the grown-ups here we know that this needy stage is just that a stage whereas our work friends and other leisure pursuits can be picked up when this small person does not need us so much it is hard to face up to this to stop how we ourselves were treated being passed on to another generation we need to notice how we feel then reflect on that rather than react to any feelings we don't properly understand facing up to the less acceptable ways we might want to act in mark's case for example running away can also bring up feelings of shame when this happens there's a tendency to get defensive so as not to feel the shame and if we do that we change nothing and we pass our dysfunction onto another generation but shame doesn't kill us when we realize what is happening we can turn our shame into pride because we noticed how we felt compelled to act and became aware of how we needed to change what really matters is being comfortable with your child making them feel safe and that you want to be around them the words we use are a small part of that the bigger part is our warmth our touch our good will and the respect we show them respect for their feelings their person their opinions and their interpretation of their world in other words we need to show the love we feel for them when they are awake not just when they look beautiful asleep if you feel yourself wanting a break from your children every hour of every day what you probably need is a break from the feelings they trigger in you to avoid being controlled by those triggers look back at yourself as a baby or as a child with compassion once you've been able to do that you will be able to identify with the need and longing your children have for you it is of course important to get a babysitter from time to time and enjoy some adult pursuit but be aware if the feeling of wanting a break feels particularly charged and seems to be there for most of the time then dare to remember what it felt like when you were the same age as your child is now time for another exercise looking back with compassion ask yourself what behavior in your child triggers the strongest negative response in you what happened to you as a child when you demonstrated the same behavior exercise message from your memories close your eyes and remember your earliest memory it may be just an image or a feeling or it may have a story what is the predominant emotion in your memory what relevance can you trace from the memory to who you are now how does the memory influence how you parent remember if anything comes up when you do this exercise for example a fear of being ashamed which may now be causing you always rigidly to cling on to being right perhaps at the expense of your child feel proud of yourself for having spotted it rather than feeling like you will collapse under the shame or defensively steering away and carrying on with the behavior you enact in response to that feeling how we talk to ourselves as i said at the start of this section children do what we do rather than what we say so if you are in the habit of beating yourself up in your head your child is liable to adopt the same potentially damaging habit one of my earliest memories is my mother looking in the mirror and picking fault with herself and when years later i did exactly the same thing in front of my astute teenage daughter she told me she didn't like it when i did this and i listened and i remembered how i hadn't liked it either our inherited patterns of being and behaving can often be found in how we talk to ourselves especially via our inner fault finder almost all of us have in our heads a sort of continual chatter or commentary that we're so used to we don't really notice what it's saying but this voice can be a harsh inner critic maybe you tell yourself stuff like that's not for the likes of me or it could be you can't trust anyone i'm hopeless i'm never good enough i should just give up i can't do anything right i'm too fat or i'm useless be careful of such inner talk because not only will it have a powerful steer on your own life but it will also have an impact on your child's life influencing them to judge themselves and others apart from teaching your child to make harmful judgments that inner negative voice finds ways to exaggerate a low mood not confidence and make us feel generally inadequate and there's another good reason for you to catch how you talk to yourself it seems that we pass on our inner voices to our children as well as our habits in plain sight if you want your children to have the capacity for happiness the thing that may get in the way more than many others is your self-critic we are formed into adults by our childhood experiences it's the fundamental way in which we humans develop but it's hard to shake off it can be difficult to stop this inner critical voice but what you can do is notice when you are doing it and give yourself a pat on the back for noticing elaine is the mother of two children and works as an art gallery assistant she is aware of her inner negative voice it's usually about failure that i shouldn't try something because it won't work i'll be bad at it i'll embarrass myself so i dissuade myself from doing things then i criticize myself for being unadventurous and not applying myself i tell myself i don't stick at things that i'm shallow and have no real passion for or expertise in anything just saying this to you now i can hear the voice in my head saying yeah well all those things are true i feel guilty when i think about who this voice may have come from because i love my mum very much i have always known she loves me always felt very loved but mommy's a warrior has never felt good enough has a lot of negativity she is and always has been hard on herself she can never take a compliment to what a delicious lasagna she'll reply no flavor too much cheese somehow she's passed on this not good enough vibe to my sisters and me we dwell on our failures and use them as evidence that we're no good and shouldn't even bother once i got a b in french and it felt like the end of the world mum does try to be positive but it'll be undermined with an unguarded comment at the final fitting for my wedding dress i came out of the changing room and mum pursed her lips looked worried and said yes yes on the day with flowers and fail and everything that'll do unwittingly her own anxieties and insecurities can lay waste to the people around her as well as having a self-torturous inner critic elaine said her mother also got a lot right and i in no way want to demonize her but like most of us it seems she may have been unaware of how she talked to herself and especially how her inner critic could be passed on to her children when you notice how you talk to yourself it gives you more choice about how you listen to that voice this is how elaine has learnt to deal with her inner critic i'm determined not to pass it on to my children i do not want them to have my fear of failing it's so demoralizing i used to argue with what the voice said and i always lost plus this used up so much energy and attention recently i found the best way is not to engage with the voice i almost treat it as i would a difficult work colleague tell it well you're entitled to your opinion i try to do the things the inner critic tells me i can't do i make myself override my fears in order not to discourage my kids to show them it's not so bad to fail i have taken up painting again despite the voice telling me to give up rather than judging what i paint i am training myself to notice what i enjoy about it and which bits of each painting please me an unexpected side effect of this has been more confidence not only about my painting but about life in general if we separate the content of what elaine is doing into a process it goes like this one first recognize the voice two don't engage with it or argue with it instead treat it like somebody awkward who you can shake off if you acknowledge what they've said but without colluding with them by thinking for example you are entitled to your opinion three expand your comfort zone by doing the thing your inner critic says you can't you'll find more confidence it's a real thing you can remember when self-doubt creeps in four being aware of the dangers of passing your inner critic onto your child will give you an extra incentive to be mindful of it here's an exercise reveal your inner critic keep a pencil and pad to hand and note down any self-critical thoughts you have throughout the day do you recognize these criticisms as ones you have seen others articulate in your past think of something you would like to achieve and the steps you would need to get there now notice how you talk to yourself about this thing are you saying anything to stop yourself does this voice remind you of anyone else good parent bad parent the downside of judgment the very fact you're listening to this means you want to be the best parent you can one of the things that stops this is judgment both of yourself and of other people how we judge ourselves as parents is my bug bear good parent bad parent labels are not helpful because they are about extremes it's impossible to be perfectly attuned to our children all the time and even some good intentions can have harmful consequences but because nobody wants to be labeled a bad parent when we make mistakes and we all do wanting to avoid the label makes us pretend we haven't made them partly due to these labels of good mother bad dad or vice versa existing to avoid the humiliation of being in the bad role we can get defensive about anything we might be doing wrong that means we do not examine or look at the ways we are misattuning to our children or neglecting their emotional needs we don't look how to improve our relationships with them it may also mean we hide from ourselves the things we may be doing wrong behind the things we do right so we can cling to the identity of good mother or father parental fear of facing up to where we might be going wrong doesn't help our children either mistakes pretending our child's feelings don't matter or whatever else we've done wrong matter so much less when we change our behavior and repair any rupture but we cannot put anything right if it feels too shaming to admit our faults and then this label of bad adds to that shame let's drop good and bad as attributes for mothers and fathers no one is holy saint or sinner a grumpy honest parent normally written off as bad may be a better parent than a frustrated and resentful parent hiding behind a facade of syrupy sweetness i'd go further just as we shouldn't judge ourselves we should try not to judge our children it is satisfying to put something in a box label it and forget about it but it is not good for us and it certainly isn't good for the person in the box it's not helpful to judge a child as bad or good or indeed to judge them as anything because it's hard to thrive with the restriction of a label the quiet one the clumsy one the noisy one human beings change and grow all the time especially small ones it is far better to describe what you see and say what you appreciate rather than judge so say i liked how hard you were concentrating when you did those sums rather than you're great at maths say i'm impressed with how much thought you have put into this drawing i like how the house looks like it's smiling it makes me feel happy not lovely picture praise effort describe what you see and feel and encourage your child without judging describing and finding something specific to appreciate is far more encouraging than a non-specific judgment of great job and far far more useful than criticism if a whole page of writing is nearly a completely untidy mess but the letter p is perfectly formed all you need to say is i like how neatly you've written that p hopefully next time you'll like another letter as well here's an exercise no more judging instead of judging yourself on what you make and do observe and appreciate what you get right instead notice the difference in how it makes you feel for example rather than saying or thinking something like i make great bread try concentrating on my baking is paying off rather than i'm bad at yoga try instead i've made a start at yoga and i've improved since last week it's not so much the words i'm not totally banning good or bad it's about suspending judgment or holding our conclusions lightly rather than rigidly this will do less harm to ourselves and to our children i have started this book by looking at you rather than concentrating on your child because what makes a child the unique individual they are or will be if they are not yet with us is a matchless mix of genes and environment and you are a major part of your child's environment how we feel about ourselves and how much responsibility we take for how we react to our children are key aspects of parenting that are too often overlooked because it's much easier to focus instead on our children and their behaviors rather than examining how they affect us and then how we in turn affect them and it is not only how we respond to children that shapes their personality traits and character but also what they witness and feel in their environment i hope i've convinced you to examine how you react to the feelings your children trigger in you be aware of how you talk to yourself look out for your inner critic and be less judgmental about yourself your parenting and your children part two your child's environment a counsellor recently told me a story about working with a refugee family he was trying to empathize with them and to understand what it must be like to have no permanent home one of the children piped up oh we've got a home we've just nowhere to put it yet i was moved when i heard this remark it sums up how the love and care between family members can be a safety net which is something we all need so how can we take steps to ensure the relationships that make up being a family feel like a sanctuary this is what i'll be looking at in this section how to build a family environment where your children will thrive it's not family structure that matters it's how we all get on you and whoever you live with is your children's environment a large part of how your children go on to feel about themselves and how they interact with others will form in relationship to you and the small circle around you that's your co-parent if you have one siblings grandparents paid help and close friends it is important to have awareness about how we behave in these relationships for example do we bring our appreciation to the people close to us or do we dump our anger onto them these familial relationships are influential in determining how a child's personality and mental health develop children are individuals but they are part of a whole system too as well as close family relationships a child's system also includes school their own friendships and the wider culture it makes sense to look at that system and do what you can to make it the best possible environment for you and for your child it doesn't have to be perfect perfect doesn't exist it's not the structure of the family that matters which is good news if you're not in a nuclear family the arrangements can be as conventional or as unconventional as you like parents can live apart or together in a commune or a menage a trois they can be gay straight or bisexual it doesn't matter research has shown that family structure itself has little effect on children's cognitive or emotional development and in fact over 25 percent of children are brought up in single parent families in the uk with about half of these single parents having been in a partnership at the time of the birth of their child and they do know better or worse than children from a more conventional setup once factors such as their financial situation and parental education are taken into consideration the people in a child's life comprise that child's world it can be one of richness and love but it can also be a battleground it matters more than most adults think that family life does not fear too far towards the battleground end of the scale if children are preoccupied if they are worried about their security their safety and how they belong they are not free to be curious about the wider world not being curious impacts negatively upon how they concentrate and learn in one survey teenagers and parents were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with the following statement parents getting on well is one of the most important factors in raising happy children seventy percent of teenagers agreed compared to only thirty three percent of parents this could be because the emotional distress children go through when their parents and carers relationships aren't functional isn't visible to the grown-ups you may know how hard it is for you as a parent to look at your child's pain and therefore it's really hard to look at how your own actions may have contributed to that pain you may feel justified in acting the way you do or helpless at the idea of changing your behavior it may feel daunting or even overwhelming for you to look at how you interact with your co-parent and other close members of your family but i hope in this part of the book i can give you some ideas on how to make improvements if you need to when parents aren't together even if you live apart from your child's other parent what matters is that you refer to them in respectful ways that you can appreciate their good points and not always be emphasizing their faults i know this may seem impossible to some people especially after a difficult breakup it may make it easier for you when i tell you how important it is for a child they see themselves as belonging attached to and part of each of you if one half of the partnership that brought them into being is often referred to as somehow being a bad person that is all too often internalized by the child so that they too see themselves as a bad person a child can also be torn apart by the pull to be loyal to both parents so what's the best way to negotiate a split a child fares better afterwards if the parents cooperate with each other and communicate well and if the child continues to have regular close contact with both parents if you can manage that your child is less likely to become depressed or aggressive as for the child's relationship with their non-resident parent this also works better if there is clear positive communication between the parents if one parent it is often the father but not always drifts away after separation the child is more likely to suffer distress anger depression or low self-esteem this is why it's such a worry that in the uk more than a quarter of children whose parents have split up have no further contact with their father three years after the event i understand it is not always possible to get along with an ex as this story i'm about to share shows mel is mum to a six-year-old son noah she had a relationship with noah's father james for five years they often lived in different countries and didn't see themselves as a committed couple but they enjoyed each other's company hugely when they did get together mel's story may sound extreme but anyone who's had parenting disagreements with an ex may find it useful when mel got pregnant james assumed she would have an abortion when she didn't he was furious and tried to sever their connection now he pays minimal maintenance and only agreed to do so after the humiliating procedure of a paternity test he wants nothing to do with noah when i've spoken to people in a similar position to james's they've told me that they like their life as it is they feel threatened and scared by the possibility of it changing if they were to acknowledge the importance of a dependent and yet a child who is not an it but a person in your life albeit one who is dependent upon you for a couple of decades is more than a mere catalyst for change if you were to look at becoming a parent selfishly a child is in fact a source of enrichment also a child does not cease to exist just because they are being ignored sadly some men and women do distance themselves from their children it's as though if they pretend they have nothing to do with them they do not really exist mel instinctively knew that she must not tell noah his father had let her down even though she felt he had if her son asks about him she remembers his dad's many good qualities and talents and tells her son about them if in the future noah's father should ever want to re-enter his life mel being positive about him will help this process as noah gets older and asks more questions it's becoming harder for her she's worried that her son when he does know the whole story will take his father's desertion personally and that it might harm his self-esteem or maybe distort how he regards his gender or even negatively influence his own behavior when he is an adult because mel is aware of these pitfalls she can guide noah around them but even so there can be no guarantee he won't at some stage take the fact that his father isn't there for him to heart sometimes there isn't a prescription to make everything okay mel has a lot of loving and involved family and friends and feels they do go some way to filling in the gap for noah where a father would have been i've told you mel's story because it's not always easy to conjure up a smooth running cooperative relationship with an ex and when one is lacking all we can do is try our best not to run down the other parent to our child or indeed to ourselves how to make pain bearable we want to make our child's life pain-free and worry-free we certainly don't want them suffering because we were unlucky with our choice of the person we had a relationship with or because there is conflict in our close relationships but it's impossible to protect them completely no life is without angst unsolved mystery longing and loss how you can make their pain bearable is to be alongside them and with them when they feel it you will need to be present for your child and the people close to you open and accepting to what they show you and what they feel you may not be able to fix their pain but by being with it rather than denying it or pushing it away you can keep them company through it and this kind of attuned company will make anything more bearable i will be saying more about this in the part on feelings when parents are together if you are caring for your child with a co-parent the love good will caring and respect between you will contribute to your child's sense of security and yet as anyone who's had a child knows it puts a strain on your relationship spontaneity may be compromised time alone with your partner or other people you feel close to diminished time on your own reduced or disappear completely your or your partner's relationship with sex may change and opportunities for sex will happen less often sleep patterns will be disrupted and it is likely that you will have to manage on significantly less sleep each member of a couple or of the wider extended family might have different parenting philosophies and the dynamics within the relationships may shift your work habits will change and if you stop paid work that may alter how you see yourself too there will be an effect on your social life there may be less or no contact with former colleagues some friends may seem to recede for a while due to your preoccupation with your baby and so on and this is by no means an exhaustive list if you are in a couple the transition from that partnership to becoming a family takes some getting used to and just when you think you've got used to it it changes again as your child and or your family continues to grow these changes can also contribute to the resentment you may experience towards each other and towards your child by the way it's better to admit any resentment even if only to yourself if you don't you are more likely to justify acting out that feeling rather than taking responsibility for it life is never static and being able to accept work with and embrace change is more useful than resisting it thinking about how you can be flexible may be more effective than trying to regain what was lost this doesn't mean you won't miss your old life sometimes and it does mean you may need to work at surrendering to your new one and embracing it remember mark he resented the way in which his life was turned upside down by the change from being a couple to becoming a family of three and he learned to accept that change by tracing the source of his resentment to his own upbringing and finding meaning in child care rather than just writing it off as a boring chore he also found that when he accepted joint and equal responsibility for his child with his partner this freed her up to be more of her old self again rather than being wholly preoccupied with her baby how to argue and how not to argue most families argue but it's how you work through any conflict or don't and how it's resolved or not that matters differences in and of themselves do not have to damage your relationship and therefore your child's environment people with successful partnerships and functional families have disagreements and argue that's a fact but when they do they continue to respect and appreciate each other and to have their differences acknowledged and their feelings heard now let's talk about the nuts and bolts of arguing in any conflict there is the context that is what you are arguing about then there is how you feel about the conflict and how the other person feels about it and then there is the process which is how you go about solving the problem to tackle difference it's important to know how you feel about the context and to share that the next step is to learn how the other person feels about the context and to take their feelings into consideration if feelings are left out of it both sides can get more and more heated as they play what i call fact tennis lobbing reasons over the net to each other finding more and more to hit the other person with in this style of arguing the aim of the conflict becomes to win points rather than find a workable solution finding out about differences and working through them is about understanding and compromise not about winning let's take a typical family argument about the washing up the washing up is the context then there's how people feel about it this is what happens when the process becomes fact tennis server the trouble is if you leave the washing up not done the food hardens on it then it is harder to wash up so do it straight away 15 love responder it's a better use of my time if i leave all the washing up during the day and just do it all together at once fifteen wall server it is unhygienic to leave the washing up undone 3015 responder any accumulated bacteria will be killed when it is eventually all washed up 30 all server the dirty dishes attract flies 40 30 responder it's winter no flies have accumulated around the dirty dishes juice and so on when one person eventually runs out of reasons and is therefore deemed to have lost they do not feel loving or warm towards their opponent and if the winner feels good it's at the expense of their partner another style people use to deal with difference and conflict is what i call look squirrel or distraction this is when instead of talking about what is bothering you or someone else you change the subject so you see that the washing up has not been done but rather than address that problem you say or do something else this may be fine it may be appropriate to delay talking about something but it is not okay to avoid discussing differences altogether if all conflict is avoided what tends to happen is that intimacy is avoided as well because when too many subjects become taboo politely skirting around each other can make things lonely a third arguing style is being a martyr this is when you say as you arrive home don't worry about the washing up i'll do it unfortunately what tends to happen in situations like this is that the martyr rather than making everyone feel guilty eventually becomes resentful and blames other people or becomes a persecutor and starts flinging insults the persecutor attacks you're a real pig for not doing the washing up your hygiene standards are disgusting if you're at the other end of that comment you will feel like attacking back none of these four kinds of conflict make for a great atmosphere in the family home conflict puts children on alert threatens their sense of security and leaves them less able to be open and curious about the world instead their energy and focus are switched into a sort of emergency mode what then is the ideal way to argue when working through a difference work with one issue at a time and think about what the argument is really about don't save up all your grouches and pull them out onto the other person all at once start with how the issue makes you feel not with an attack or by blaming so back to the washing up i feel fed up when i come home after having washed up in the morning to see more of it what would really make me feel better would be if you washed up your stuff during the day the ideal style isn't about winning it's about understanding an answer might come back oh sorry darling i don't want you to feel bad i had so much work on i can see it's not a great site to come home to and the response to it might be yeah you do have a lot on never mind how about you wash and i'll dry a good rule of thumb when arguing is to do it with i statements not you statements for example i feel hurt when you don't answer me when you're on your phone not you're always ignoring me when you're on your phone few of us like to be defined or pigeonholed especially negatively by someone else if you describe how what you hear or see makes you feel then you are talking about yourself which is far easier for the other person to hear of course no way of voicing a complaint is guaranteed to work that is ensure you get what you want but good relating is not about manipulation it is about having good relationships being open about what you feel and what you want can help you to have good relationships whereas manipulating someone doesn't make for a good connection speaking in i statements not you statements owning your own feelings and finding out and acknowledging the other person's feelings are usually the best ways to deal with the inevitable differences that arise in families it will also help your child feel more secure as it reduces resentments and promotes understanding they will also be more likely to adopt this respectful and emotionally intelligent argument style themselves having had it as their example one reason disagreements arise in the first place is when one person thinks they've been attacked on purpose when they haven't this example happened in a typical family i'll call them the heritage family johnny a 22 year old student is inspecting his dad's old leather jacket he says you're 60 dad you're never going to wear this again can i have it keith a teacher has had a bad day of not understanding his son's generation at work so is feeling old and johnny has hit a nerve keith raises his voice and says what can't you even wait for me to be dead before you start eyeing up my possessions johnny feels that this has come out of nowhere and now he feels attacked blimey i only asked why are you always having a go at me i'm not having a go at you but i don't like being treated as though i'm already dead this isn't a serious dispute i'm pretty certain that keith will end it by throwing johnny his jacket and saying you have it then and johnny's saying i don't want it now you'll need something to wear in your coffin and they'll both laugh themselves into a truce but if they don't understand what went on they'll both still feel a bit hurt and then something similar is liable to happen again so let's see what was really going on by pretending there is a wise mediator there with them he wants me dead says keith no i don't i want his jacket says johnny same thing says keith realizing at the same time it is not the same thing the mediator says it is not the same thing but today for you keith it feels like the same thing and johnny has no reason to know that you keith felt attacked as johnny didn't realize that you felt attacked he felt what you saw as your retaliation came from nowhere so he counter-attacked that's certainly true for me johnny says keith is quiet so the mediator says to him just because you felt attacked doesn't mean you were attacked he called me sixty keith defensively replies mediator yes he was hiding his feelings behind a fact a habit he has picked up from all the fact tennis he's been witness to since he was born moving on it seems you find being 60 hard to come to terms with so you'd quite like to cling to symbols of your youth like that leather jacket there's no reason why you shouldn't and you can say so if it's true a new version of the conversation might sound like this i love your leather jacket can i have it i need some time to think about that i can see you really want it but i'm not ready to let the jacket go it's true i may never wear it again but i need to get used to the idea of being as old as i am and in the meantime clinging on to my youthful clothes is a comfort to me sorry my asking reminded you've been sixty oh don't worry i need reminding i'm feeling a bit old because i don't understand what some of my students are going on about like what i've just got my head around what social media is but what do they mean when they say swipe left at me here let me show you exercise unpack an argument think about the last disagreement you had with a loved one without getting caught up in who was right or who was wrong unpack what happened like i did in the example between johnny and keith then again as i did in that example take a meta perspective to see the situation and work out the feelings of each protagonist then play the role of a wise mediator and think about how to change the dialogue in the disagreement and how it could have gone better here's a quick recap of what to remember when you're talking about a difficult subject or when you're getting annoyed or think that an argument is imminent one acknowledge your feelings and consider the other person's feelings that means not making yourself right and the other person wrong not making yourself clever and the other person stupid nothing wears a relationship or a family down more than if the people within it insist on being the person who is right instead of thinking in terms of right and wrong think in terms of how you each feel two define yourself and not the other so speak in i statements and not use statements three don't react reflect you don't always have to reflect before reacting i'm not advocating that you lose all spontaneity but if you feel annoyed or angry i think it is a good idea to pause and understand why if keith had done that in the previous example he would have realized that the anger he felt towards his son when he asked for the jacket did not belong with his son four embrace your vulnerability rather than fearing it in the example keith would also have realized he was scared of growing old and he was about to mask that fear with anger rather than allowing himself to be vulnerable but it is only by allowing our vulnerability being open about who we are that we can have close relationships five don't assume the intent of the other person without assuming too much or projecting yourself onto the other try to work out what they are feeling to and admit it if you got it wrong [Music] understanding your own feelings and those of the person you are negotiating with is not only the cornerstone of negotiations it is the foundation of functional relationships and of empathic parenting it is never too late to start this way of interacting when parents are able to do all this i've found that improvements in patterns of relating to one another usually come pretty swiftly fostering goodwill in a couple or in a family having the ability to consider each other's feelings requires a store of goodwill if you feel you're running low you need to bolster it up so what fosters good will there seem to be two main ways to do it one responding to bids for connection or attention and two finding solace in each other rather than seeing the other or others in the family as adversaries in other words both cooperation and collaboration but not competition when psychologist john gottman and his colleague robert levinson set up what they called the love lab at the university of washington in 1986. one of their experiments was to ask couples to talk about their relationship to discuss a disagreement they had had with each other to talk about how they met and a positive memory they shared while the couples had these conversations they were wired up so that their stress levels could be measured all couples appeared to be calm on the outside however the results of the stress test showed something completely different only some of the couples had in fact been calm others had high heart rates sweated a lot and generally showed all the signs of being in fight or flight mode but the real revelation came six years later at the follow-up session all the high-stress couples had either split up or were still together but in a dysfunctional relationship gottman called these couples the disasters the ones who had shown no stress during their initial interview he called the masters it appeared from the data that the disasters each experience the other as a sort of threat more like an adversary than a friend gottman studied thousands of couples over a long period of time and found that the higher the couple stress indicators the closer they were to being disasters and the more likely they were to split up or have a dysfunctional partnership so what do these findings mean the more you feel stressed and threatened in the company of your partner the more likely you are to act in a hostile or cold manner towards them the more your relationship is based on getting one up on them on winning or losing on being right the more likely you are to feel hostility rather than good will towards your partner it can be a relationship vicious circle one upmanship is all too common in our culture as a way of being together even advertising seems to rely for its success on making the target market feel superior to others this is second only to making the target consumer feel sexually desirable i'm thinking of the dumb dad advertisements for cleaning products or commercials where the prize for buying a product seems to be that you get to be smug as if you have somehow been proven to be superior to your partner conversely when a couple feels calm and soothed by being together this makes each partner more likely to be warm and affectionate with the other gottman set up another experiment where he observed 130 couples socializing together in a holiday home for a day what he discovered was that when couples are together they make what he refers to as bids for connection for example if one partner is reading and says listen to this and the other one puts down their own book ready to listen their bid for connection has been satisfied they are looking for a response a sign of support or interest responding to someone's bid meets their emotional needs gottman found that couples who are no longer together after six years the time of the follow-up session had on average only a three in 10 response rate to such bids these small day-to-day interactions generate goodwill and reciprocal treatment and without them our relationships cannot be sustained so this is the key to a successful partnership be responsive and interested and what is true for couples is true for all relationships and especially for those with our children as well as responding to requests for attention there are other things you can choose to do that will foster good will all the opposite you can look for things to appreciate in your partner family members and indeed in your children or instead you can scan them for faults and mistakes you can choose to express your appreciation or your criticism i know which i prefer to hear you can choose to be kind and the good news is kindness is catching if you are unilaterally kind research has shown that it is likely that your partner will catch it and pass it on tipping the scales if they are unbalanced from being critical to finding things to appreciate is not only crucial in your partnership or in your relationship with your family but in life as a whole i come from a family where the culture was tipped slightly more towards criticism than appreciation and i have had to work hard to change that when i slip back into old habits it can feel like i'm bathing myself in a toxic soup of criticism being kind is not about being a victim or being unassertive being kind does not mean that you don't share your feelings when you are angry what it does mean is explaining how you feel and why but without blaming or insulting the other person it is also important to know that just because you did not intend that your actions should cause a family member to be upset or irritated it does not mean that those actions did not upset them when someone feels bad in response to something we may have said or done even unintentionally it is important to listen and to validate how they feel rather than become defensive we need to remember that we all experience the same things differently no one is wrong because their experience is different from what ours would be such differences need to be respected rather than causing you to get into arguments as to who is having the right experience there's lots of advice out there some of it will tell you not to sweat the small stuff in families and relationships others counsel the exact opposite and advise dealing with minor irritations before they become big the main thing i believe we should aim for is understanding how the other person feels even if we feel differently and feeling for them where they're at and hopefully being felt for in our turn everyone benefits from being listened to understood and empathized with make this a priority in your family it will make your family a good place for a baby to land and a good environment for a child to develop in here's an exercise notice attention bids become more aware when members of your family make a bid for your attention or connection and if possible turn towards that bid rather than turning away this is whether the bid comes from your partner your mother or your children relationships are precious and turning towards bids is a major part of relationship maintenance although we are individuals we are also very much part of a system and a product of our environment as we have seen in this part of the book there are several things we can do to help that system and environment be a healthy place for our children to grow thank you for listening to continue the book head to the link in the description below and click here to subscribe to the penguin youtube channel for more audiobook samples and videos with your favorite authors