Ep 7- are you a good enough parent?

Foreign. Hello, and welcome to episode seven of Unmasked Minds, the podcast. I am Sarah, the psych from Instagram, and I'm so happy to have you here. In today's episode, I'm going to be talking about this whole notion of good enough parenting and why so many of us as parents are just so afraid of making mistakes in our parenting and how maybe we can see that a little bit differently. So, as a psychologist, one thing I see all the time is women coming in to therapy and saying, I want to be able to regulate my emotions. I don't want to get angry at my kids as much. I don't want to yell at my partner. I want to be more present with my children. And when we sort of get to understand why that is, often it comes from a place of recognizing that their needs weren't met as a child or their parents were unable to do these things for them, and they've realized that that's important to them, maybe one of their values, and that they want to parent with that as their value. The problem then becomes when they are dysregulated, when they're tired, or when they're trigger, they're defaulting back into more reactive parenting. And so when these people come to therapy, we start to work out, you know, what's important to you, how would you like to parent? And then we start to build, I guess, tools and strategies and awareness so that they can continue working on becoming or being the type of parent that they want to be, which is fantastic. However, the problem I want to talk about today is I have so many women doing this work, and when they don't get it right 100% of the time, they are so critical of themselves. They come in, they're like, I lost it. I'm not present. I'm unworthy now. And they just beat themselves up or layer this whole amount of guilt and shame and regret on top of how they're already feeling, which is pretty crap. So if this sounds like you, you are really trying to parent differently, to be better, to be guided by your values, but you stuff it up sometimes, then this episode is definitely for you. And I want to raise a couple of things that I feel are really relevant. The first one is we are the generation that are going to therapy about this kind of thing. You know, how many of your parents were in therapy saying, hey, I'm getting cranky at my kids and I don't want to do that. Hey, I'm working too much and prioritizing other things, And I think it's affecting my children's needs. How can I work on that? Right. So we are the first generation that are starting to have access to the awareness, to the tools, to the strategies, to, to things like values. And a lot of us are in such a privile position that we have the space or capacity to make choices that align with what we value. And I say that because I know a lot of parents of our generation didn't have much choice. They were forced to work as much as they worked. They lived under the poverty line, they lived week to week and they really didn't have much flexibility in how they did things, nor did they have the awareness that we now have access to. Now we have access through therapy, but we also have access through social media. So many people absorb so much information on social media and some of it is absolutely fantastic. So many people that come to therapy, have watched stuff online and watched people transform their lives or talk about types of therapy and they watch that and they say, yeah, actually that would really work for me. So in that sense, social media is giving us tools, giving us awareness, and giving us access to alternative ways of parenting that the generations before us just simply didn't have. However, we are also the first generation that is constantly comparing ourselves to everybody else through social media. So we are constantly watching the highlight reels of others and their parenting and their lifestyles. And whilst we know on a cognitive level that we it's not the whole truth, we seem to forget that when we're comparing to others. So a really simple example that I am so guilty of is, you know, having a really tough day with my children and maybe getting cranky at them or maybe, you know, just not looking after myself the way I would like to and then jumping onto Instagram. Instagram and seeing a happy family who look like they aren't losing their at all when I've just yelled at my kids and just feeling terrible about myself. So I think it's really important to note that we are the first generation parenting with these new tools, but also in this online space which has both positive and negative impacts for us. And I think that really, for me anyway, I only follow people that align with my, my values of keeping it real, normalizing the real life side of things and not glorifying the way parenting should be or the way women should be, because more often than not it doesn't inspire other women. It makes them feel less than. And I, I get it. There is a really fine line between that. I think you can inspire women on social media to make better choices and to change their lives in really positive ways without only posting the highlight reels so that they feel less than in the process. But that's a whole nother episode. The thing I really wanted to focus on today is there is a concept called good enough parenting, and there's research behind it. I'm not going to talk specifically about any research. I just want to talk about that concept when someone comes to me and says, sarah, I've been working on all those tools and. And things, but, you know, these school holidays just became too much. I became overstimulated and overwhelmed, and I started losing it at the kids. And one of the sort of concepts in this good enough parenting is around. You know, we are allowed to make mistakes because we are human and our children are human. But there's also this sort of notion that if you're getting it right a lot of the time, if you are making the choices that are aligned to how you want to parent and your behaviors align with that. There's a number that goes around that says 30%. If you are getting it right 30% of the time, then that is enough for your children to form secure attachments and to be guided by your values in a positive way. And I think that when I heard that myself, as a parent, not a psychologist, I was like, well, thank God for that, because I'm getting it right 30% of the time. Absolutely. To be honest, I'm probably getting it right about 60% of the time. And so when I heard that, it was a real moment where I could go, yeah, you know what? Why so much pressure? Why are we just putting all of this pressure on ourselves to get it right all of the time? And the other thing that I always talk about with clients and think about with myself is when I don't get it right, you know, in those moments where I might say, snap at the kids or get triggered and behave in a way that I. I don't love about myself, it invites an opportunity for repair. Yeah, it invites an opportunity for me to role model to my children what repair looks like. And that, I believe, is just as important as getting it right most of the time. Because if we were to be perfect parents, I say perfect with inverted commas because I don't believe there is a perfect parent for anyone, let alone each individual unique child. But let's say you say, I want to get it right all the time. I want to always be regulated. I want to be in tune with my children all of the time. If you do that, then your Children are never going to learn that it's actually okay to be human. It's actually okay to lose it sometimes, to get dysregulated sometimes to need some space and to just experience all of the human emotions right. So when we do get it wrong or lose it occasionally, we're really normalizing for our children that that's a thing we are also able to repair with our children and show them what healthy repair looks like. So, you know, you can do the thing and you can get cranky, for example, and then you can come back and apologize and repair and show them role model to them how to do it. Because I have got clients whose parents put so much focus and energy into looking like they're getting. Sorry, not just looking like they're getting it right, but getting certain things right that the children don't have skills in all of these other areas like repair, like understanding that there is discomfort in certain emotions and that that's okay and there's things that we can do to move through that. But also it's. It's okay to sit in these stages or these emotions or these feelings. So I guess one of the messages of this episode is to really connect with parents who are feeling this pressure that they have to do everything perfectly all the time and who are watching all of these people on social media doing it right all the time, or appearing to do it right all of the time and feeling so much less than. And I really just want to normalize. First of all, most people aren't getting it right all the time. We are are parents for the first time ever. And a lot of us are breaking significant cycles and working through our trauma. And the more we can just normalize it and allow it without this criticism and judgment and higher expectations on ourselves, the healthier it is for us, but also for these children that we are parenting. I think there's a really gentle way to be able to notice that and to still work on, you know, constantly improving yourself and being guided by your values without the shame and the judgment and the criticism. One thing I said to someone recently, and I truly believe it, you know, most of the people that I am inspired by in this world, most of the people that I look at and think you are an incredible person and you are changing this world and you have really important things to say and you make a huge difference in people's lives. Most of them have experienced trauma. A lot of them didn't have all of their needs met when they were children. And I love that thought because for me Raising a good human isn't necessarily about the parent being perfect all the time because sometimes children need to go through challenges to build resilience, to build autonomy, to build the skills to actually cope with life outside of the parental home. You know, so it's sometimes nice to sort of think about, well, you know, what if my child's needs aren't met all the time, maybe I'm actually meeting other needs of theirs when I'm being so hard on myself for, you know, maybe getting cranky at them, maybe that's a good thing because there's opportunities for them to learn different things in those moments. So this is going to be quite a short episode. And I guess, you know, my message to all of you parents out there that are trying, and I'm not by any means saying don't try as much, you know, continue trying, but maybe allow yourself to be a bit more human instead of this constant pressure to be perfect. Because our children don't need perfect parents. And what you think is perfect actually will have trade offs and challenges anyway if you get it right all of the time, as does all choices we make as parents. Children don't need perfect parents, they need human ones. And human parents work on the things that are important to them, but they also show awareness. And they also are willing to recognize rupture and repair it with their children, no matter how messy it is with their children with their partner. One thing I feel really good about doing is when I argue with my husband, which sometimes happens in front of the children, is repairing that in front of the children. Because if I've had the argument in front of the children, they need to be a part of the repair as well. And it's a really humbling experience when you have to step into that, acknowledging that part of you that got angry and what you did and do that in a way that role modeling repair for your children. I am going to do a whole another episode on how to repair ruptures, but this one is really just about taking that pressure off, knowing that getting it right most of the time or enough of the time is enough, and you are a good enough parent and just continue being human. Thank you and talk to you soon.