The Emotional Mirror: What Our Children Learn From Us

Ideally we want our children to understand their feelings, process them and move forward in life in line with their values. We want them to notice their feelings and be brave enough to move towards them instead of avoiding or numbing them.

To know which ones to listen to and which to let pass through like the weather.  So that they can use them as a compass without being swept away.

But the question that it all comes back to, as a parent, is: Can I do this first for myself?

Many wonderful interventions and supports are available to develop children's emotional health. What they all have in common are elements of a parent attuning to and showing up for their child. Not all the time, just sometimes is "good enough".

Attuning and showing up as a parent is less about the procedure or what we say and more about how comfortable we are with our own feelings so we can be a safe container for theirs.  

Like many things involving children, they have a beautiful ability to see past our words and resonate with their parent on a deep level. They learn mostly from what they see and feel not what they are told. 

When it comes to emotional health, we unconsciously pass this on as parents through everything we do. 

When we notice something about our child's emotions or behaviours, as a first step, it can be helpful to get curious about our own emotional processing in that same area. 

We can start to think non-judgmentally about which emotions we get stuck on, how we respond to ourselves when we make a mistake, which feelings make us feel guilty, how we use self-compassion and which feelings we can sit with versus which we try to avoid or numb.

When emotions occur without judgement, they pass through, allowing us to better make space to do the same for our children.

It has never been about perfection just about a willingness to reflect on ourselves kindly, own it when we could have done better and keep showing up in the best way we can. 

-Emma Allen