89 - Parenting with Heart: The Power of Remembering
The "Living with Heart" Podcast is brought to you by Chip Dodd Resources (www.chipdodd.com) and The Voice of the Heart Center (vothcenter.com). You can connect with Dr. Chip Dodd at chip@chipdodd.com. Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at bryan@vothcenter.com.
What is the meaning of remember?
We tend to think that remember only means to recall facts, a place, an occurrence, or a time period. It is that and much more.
Remember also means to take into account the emotional impact of what we recall. It is the need to integrate all the experiences of living.
“Re-member” can mean to keep your thinking, feeling, and behaving congruent with your environment and the people who live in it.
For a parent, the definition of remember that also includes “re-member” is a need for the parent to recall and integrate what it was like to be a child, regardless of what age.
The parent who does not “re-member” will forget the difficulties, and even the joys of growing up. They will not parent the way a child needs to be parented, or the way the parent actually wishes to do.
Many parents run from “re-membering” because it requires that we feel and integrate “the good, the bad, and the ugly” of our own lives.
To remember requires that we face, feel, and deal with the pain of failure and the sweet memories of success. If we don’t have the courage or willingness to remember, our children have to miss richer connections that they were made to have.
Parents who are not willing to grow, have difficulty tolerating their own feelings, and their own inherent neediness; the effect is that they will have lower tolerance for the feelings and needs of the child.
Three helpful attitudes to develop to help parents “re-member”
Acknowledging distance
Doing the work of daily remembrance
Facing the impossible
What is distance?
Distance is to remember that the parent lives in another “time-zone,” called the future in relation to a child.
A child struggles in a place that the parent has gone beyond. Either the parent can recall the heart ache or the heart delight, and can relate to the child, or the parent’s need to ignore or suppress their experience will block emotional and spiritual connection to the child.
Children need their parents to integrate their own life experiences so that the child can be seen as someone who can be “joined” with separately and relationally as they have their own experiences.
To live in the “distance” with a child can help the parent not be overwhelmed by the child’s emotional and relational needs. To benefit from “distance,” the parent must do the work of “putting their own oxygen mask on first.” This means that the parent is good at emotional, spiritual, and relational self-care with other grownups and God.
This distance allows the mistake-ridden human being, who is every parent and person, to increase the probability of a healthy response to the child’s life experiences, regardless of the child’s age.
Distance is required for every parent regardless of the age of the child because the parent will never live in the same “time zone” as their children. The parent is always the first learner, but do they have the courage to keep learning how to live well?
Daily remembrance
Daily remembrance is daily recalling that personal responsibility for myself requires that I daily attend to getting my “cup filled.” I am responsible for my feelings, needs, desire, longings and hope. It is my job to take care of me so that I have the capacity to tolerate and have compassion for the needs of children.
I cannot give what I do not have; I need to care for me, so that I have help to offer others. This means knowing my own limits and knowing who to go to and where to go for replenishment.
Episodes #6 and #7 “Need for Security” and episode #58, “An RE-God,” which is about our need for replenishment, can be helpful as to how we do the work of self-care to care for others.
Also, by daily remembering my own limits and needs, a parent naturally relates with compassion to the struggle of children.
Doing a timeline, an assessment of one’s emotional life as they grew up, can help a parent see what they missed related to their own childhood. It allows a parent see what they need to re-learn to do the work of self-care. A timeline allows the parent to assess where their own painful experiences were, what happened, and what healing work needs to occur. A timeline gives a parent perspective.
The Impossible
Ecclesiastes 3:11 (NIV) says, “He has set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” In this scripture, we see that parents have within them a picture of a perfect life for their children (and ourselves) that cannot be achieved on earth. We long for a place that is painless and perfect, and yet we live in a place that is painful and imperfect.
We do not reject the pursuit of creating a “perfect” place, but we face, feel, and deal with the fact that our hearts are in conflict with reality of how things are on earth. Our work is to help our children process failure and pain without foreclosing on longings and hope.
Every parent longs to be a “better” parent than they can be. Facing the impossibility of being “perfect” in spite of how much you love your child opens the territory of forgiveness, mercy, neediness, and acceptance in a parent. These qualities can be emulated by the child who has witnessed them.
These qualities help the child live fully in a “broken world,” without foreclosing on longing for things to be better and continuing to take action with hoping to make things better.
Creating a perfect world for children is impossible; they must go through the pain of life as we all have to do. Facing the impossibility of “perfect” can help us deal with the pain of life in a way that is productive.
Feelings
To live fully and love deeply we must learn the benefits of
Acknowledging Distance
Doing the Work of Daily Remembrance
Facing the Impossible
To practice these three attitudes requires that parents find, face, feel, and deal with the reality that we are feeling creatures, created to live fully through relationship with ourselves, others, and God.
No matter how many lists we memorize, how much we figure out, or how much control we have, we will still need to deal with feelings and needs.
The parent who grows through facing how we are created and is good at being responsible for their feelings, has a high probability of being a “good enough parent.”
A good enough parent is all that a child ultimately is looking for, because they need a reflection of acceptance that we will never reach perfection or escape the need to feel.
The Voice of the Heart, Needs of the Heart, and Keeping Heart by Dr Chip Dodd are excellent resources for continuing to face, feel, and deal with how we are created to find full life in relationship with one’s self, others, and God.
Dr. Chip Dodd
Voice of the Heart Center