My third kid came out a lot like me. He had high energy, was generally very happy, and did NOT like being told no. From very early he was pushing limits and testing boundaries. While he wore me out, I was ready for the challenge. But I noticed that when others reacted poorly to him, I felt defensive.
"He's just trying to figure out where the limits are!"
"Yeah, you gotta watch him; he's going to take advantage of every opportunity."
"He's just feeling anxious, that's why he's so locked down right now."
I was reading him. Or, you might say, I was projecting onto him. It's a common thing for parents to project their own experiences and feelings onto their kids and it can be helpful when they are accurately perceiving the kid's experience, but it can be harmful if they are actually reacting to a trauma trigger they are picking up on in their kid's life.
Potential Kid Triggers
Getting bullied at school.
Struggling to get along with a teacher or friend.
Feeling overwhelmed with an assignment.
Getting their feelings hurt by the other parent.
All of us had at least a few difficult experiences in our lives that have stuck with us. We remember when someone was unkind, when we were unssafe, when we felt way too much responsibility for things we couldn't actually control. Doing your emotional work, healing your trauma, or to put it in spiritual terms, practicing discipleship and experiencing sanctification, includes sifting through those experiences and recognizing how they affect us. Trauma reactions can become conscious and manageable, rather than remaining sub-conscious and overwhelming.
When people haven't done their emotional work, they end up reacting as if those experiences are happening over and over again, even when they're not. This is why kids are triggering. We see something happen to them and our brain jumps straight to the bad experience that happened to us. In the blink of an eye, the heart we have for our children becomes our own wounded heart and we react out of a desire to protect (both them and us).
There's nothing wrong with wanting to protect your kids or yourself, but a reactive, dramatic, out-of-porportion move to protect can often end up doing more harm than good. We can hurt others, get dismissed as crazy, let our kids get away with murder, or perhaps just as bad--remain underdeveloped. To actually protect, we need our whole brain and more information than just the data that made us feel like it was happening again.
You can't take your kids (or anyone else by the way) any further than you've gone yourself. If you want to be a healthy giver, you have to take care of yourself first. If you're ready to do your emotional work, your trauma healing, your spiritual discipleship, it is time to start facing the realities of your life with truth and grace. Be honest with yourself about the things that have happened to you, be curious about the messages you've absorbed.
If you find yourself getting stuck or reacting to life's struggles with a character you don't want to display, it's time to find a competent counselor and a humble pastor to walk with you through the injuries, lies, and healing that are freely offered by our good God. (P.S Make sure whoever you find has done their own healing work first. Not sure? Ask them to tell you their own story, listening for themes of humility and competency.)
My litle brother and me
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