How To Show Up As A Parent During Personal Hardship 

Parenting under the best conditions is demanding. It requires attunement, self-regulation, and a large capacity to tolerate uncertainty. Parenting in a country without structural support for families makes it even harder—surveys indicate that 41% of American parents say that parenting is "tiring" all or most of the time, and 29% of parents say it's "stressful" all or most of the time. 

One question that doesn't receive enough attention is: How do we parent well when we are going through personal hardship? How do we ensure our kids are OK when we do not feel OK? For example, when our marital relationships are disintegrating, when we've lost our jobs, or when the weight of the world feels too heavy to carry.

This winter, I was feeling a ton of grief. I would lie in bed in the morning, willing myself to be more cheerful than I felt, not wanting to negatively impact my children. I became very interested in finding the line between tending to my experience without neglecting theirs—allowing their needs to remain big, even if I didn't feel like I had the capacity to meet all of them.

The reality is, if you are struggling, they will notice. They might not consciously have the words to put to their experience (depending on their ages and how relationally aware they are), but on some level, they will know.

And they will know simply because you and your kids are connected.

I meet parents who want their children to believe that they are happy all the time. If this were true, this would make you more robot than human.

Allowing our children to witness the broad spectrum of human emotion is a gift because it gives them permission to accept their own emotions. Letting them see you cry is good, letting them see you express contained anger is good, and letting them see you ask for help is also good.

There is a difference between letting our kids bear witness to our emotions and making them responsible for caring for us in our distress.

When I am in a negative space, I will tell my children that it's my job to take care of myself and it's their job to be kids.

I want to still hear what they need, or I want them to still flip out when they have to, and there's no part of their experience that they need to contain because I am having big emotions.

When you struggle, your inclination may be to hide it from your children.

As a therapist, I've seen so many instances where parents think their kids have no idea what's going on with them, but the kids notice everything. Children have fewer defenses than adults do; often they are more in touch with their senses—they can feel the truth.

Part of what harms our kids when we are going through hard times is the energy they spend feeling like something is wrong without knowing something is wrong. This can lead them to become anxious and hypervigilant, trying to sense how you're doing versus paying attention to how they are doing internally. If no one affirms that what they sense is actually happening, this can lead to self-gaslighting.

Make sure you check in with them, listen to their worries or fears about seeing you upset, and validate them as real.

It can be easy to try to discourage them from being worried, but connecting with the feeling and letting it know you understand why it's there are actually what soothe it.

Parents often have the misconception that they need to meet all of their children's emotional needs.

But in order for a child to develop secure attachment, their needs must be met about a third of the time. All of their needs should be witnessed and validated by you, but some of them can be met outside of you.

Struggling is a part of the human experience. Experiencing pain is essential in order to be able to experience joy. The goal should not be to shield our children from our truth but to help them understand it, feel cared for despite what we are going through, and to have space to express their own feelings about what's happening for us.