Reparenting yourself: liberating the younger you

What are the mistakes that contemporary parents are making?

Kristina asks that question about parenting first because, apparently, a Harvard study says that today’s kids have a lot of decreased executive functioning than 20 years ago!

Our guest not only answers about what the challenges are but also how to overcome them!

Shelley Robinson, a mom of two, founder of Raising Yourself, certified family wellness coach, author of the Rebirth Journal, and creator behind the Connected Collection, a powerful bundle of transformational parenting tools. She made it her mission to educate and equip parents with the knowledge, tools, and support they deserve to reparent themselves, break cycles, and better understand the relationship between their childhoods and how they parent.

Shelley answers that nobody does anything that could be labeled as wrong, but the thing that could happen is that 20 years ago, parents thought that kids just needed food and shelter to grow. And today, we know they need to feel safe with their emotions besides that. Many adults weren’t taught how to do that and didn’t know how to say that to them.

For her, her kids are such great coaches! 

It’s about acknowledging the parts that we don’t know about teenagehood. 

The work is about breaking generational parents, and it applies to everyone.

Not criticism of our child feels radical. Do you want to criticize yourself for changes, but you sacrifice a relationship with yourself? 

It’s not easy to do that with ourselves, to go from a place of compassion and deserving instead of motivating ourselves by feeling bad.

Shelley refers to other authors of positive parenting, such as Alphie Cohn; many respectful parenting creators are into positive parenting. 

How to stop being overwhelmed when parenting

When overwhelmed, the best thing to do is to repair it because we’re going to mess up!

So, we need to accept that we are overwhelmed, ask ourselves why we got into that stage first, and then repair it. Restoration is really important when you can make a mistake in parenting, like yelling or saying something a little harsh.

Kristina put an example of that situation she had recently: she said something in a somewhat harsh way to her daughter, and then she wondered:

Is apologizing enough? What about self-forgiveness? Can you get there? Does the child perceive it?

Again, Shelley reminds us that it’s all about self-compassion and curiosity. And knowing where that came from: I’m tired because… it doesn’t need to always come from a child wound.

But one day, my son didn’t want to bathe or brush his teeth, and as a mom, huge anger appeared. That made me curious as to where that anger would come from!

And it’s really important to acknowledge that so you can work on healing later. 

Eventually, you will run out of willpower while trying to be loving but showing old wounds.

And all of us struggle with negative self-talk and wounds. It’s not that simple to acknowledge them every time, but our children deserve that generosity, and we do too! And sometimes you think you don’t deserve this compassion, but you do deserve it, and your children deserve a conscious you.

If your child is not like you or has neurodiversity, it is advisable to reach for therapy and not have any expectations that are not about who they really are. 

We don’t have the community for this.

Children can have blind spots that they are dealing with, and parents don’t always know what they are. And that is ok, you don’t have to know everything. That is why having a community where you can comment on issues is important. 

Your work is not in vain: being conscious does help a lot, even with those blind spots. You’re still doing what you need to support you, support them, and find the resources that will give you a better insight on how to support both of you. 

If you fear your children’s safety, you might be afraid of being a helicopter parent. The key to avoiding that is to be an anchor and trust that when they get into the world, they kind of have that anchor they always refer to and come back to, and if they make a mistake, let them know that they can come back to you and you can solve that together.

This trust has to start in the nursing phase. Trust that when they cry, they are not trying to manipulate you. Assuming the best in your child is not just assuming they’re perfect, it is just assuming they can be at their best. 

Kristina approaches a fundamental question: when your child does something you don’t approve of, what do you do?

It allows reflecting on your family and individual values. For example, with the dress choosing, it could be an opportunity to reflect on self-image. It’s hard as parents to have a conversation about it and detach from the outcome of what happens. How do you feel about that outfit? It has to be organic because children detect when you do that because you want them to do what you think is right. 

If, as a young adult, you want to talk with your parents about what you feel they did wrong as a child, start by saying that you are working on your issues and want to have a conversation to get closer to them. It might be a bumpy road, but it’s not about you. 

Shelley appreciates her children’s feedback, even though it hurts sometimes knowing what they did wrong.

It could happen the other way around: with teenagers, parents sometimes want to get closer and feel that the connection is not strong enough. So, as parents, our job is to be the anchor of our children still, even though they spend some more time with their friends, which is natural and understandable. 

Do activities that they like, like playing video games with your teenagers or doing other things.

If the grown child is neurodiverse or the relationship becomes really damaged, a third party can help. 

And the awareness of a diagnosis could change your perspective and your children’s about a lot of things; it could bring awareness to really difficult situations.

So, YOU’RE ALLOWED TO MAKE MISTAKES. The most important thing is to love yourself so that you can love your children.

Episode resources:

• Shelley Robinson | ⁠Instagram⁠

• Shelley Robinson | ⁠Facebook⁠

• Shelley Robinson | ⁠Website