A Therapist On Accepting Your Kids — Yes, Even When They're Being Difficult

My 2.5-year-old is in her feral cat era. She will scratch you if you take her last piece of mango, pummel you if you borrow her ball without asking, and tell you she isn't your friend anymore if you don't give her exactly what she wants when she wants it. Man alive, do I love this kid! But at the same time: Wow, are there aspects of her ways of being that are hard for me to accept. 

One way we cope with things we don't like is by judging and rejecting them. Psychotherapist and artist Benjamin Seaman defines judgment as "our mind's attempt to put something we find threatening into a box we can easily recognize so we can avoid it."

When my child does something or says something that touches a hurt, afraid, or unhealed part of me, my reaction is to try to control the situation.

Try going against your action tendency by doing the opposite.

So, for example, if you usually react to something you don't like by ignoring it, instead, pay closer attention to it by asking more questions. Children are very interested in fairness and justice; if they feel we are curious about their experience, they are more likely to open up to us about it.

If you usually respond to something you don't like by criticizing it, instead show that you are compassionate to that part by validating it. "Of course you want to vape when your friends are vaping; you want to feel like you belong" or "I totally get why you don't want to do your homework; I'd rather watch TV tonight than work too."

Many of us believe that in order to accept something or someone, we have to like it. We can accept our children without liking them all the time, as acceptance does not mean wanting or even loving someone. It means seeing that person clearly, for who they are, and not attempting to change who you see.

Many times, the parts of ourselves that we don't like, we don't like in others. The parts that weren't accepted about us, we may not accept in others. This is a savvy coping skill we developed called "projecting."

As humans, we are hard-wired to protect ourselves from pain—physically, mentally, and emotionally. One way we often attempt to do that is by projecting our feelings or deflecting negative emotions that we aren't ready or willing to address (whether insecurity, anger, sadness, frustration, or something else entirely) onto someone else so we effectively exempt ourselves from feeling them and from any blame or embarrassment that we may associate with them.

Sometimes we use our children to achieve goals we never could, as an unconscious way to make our own parents happy. If our caregivers valued niceness in us, we might judge our child's behaviors as "rude" and then teach them a lesson in order to protect them from others judging them this way.

When you have a negative reaction to your child, ask yourself what parts of your experience are about you, and what parts are about them? What might you be afraid of? What might you still be hurt by?

Get curious about your legacy burdens—beliefs, emotions, and experiences that have been passed down to you through the ancestral line—and how they originated. What beliefs were you fed? What ways did your people have to protect themselves? Are these protection strategies just as true for your child as they were for you? What beliefs or strategies might feel more true for you now?

Anais Nin's reminder that "we don't see things as they are, we see things as we are," has been helpful for me in my acceptance journey. When I go deeper into my own life story and honor the parts of myself that I don't accept/weren't accepted, I am a safer and more present parent to my children.