What Makes a Bad Parent? Part IV
After practicing for over twenty five years, we have both came to the conclusion that many if not most parents, are not good at parenting! This is not to say that they are not good people, just not good parents. Where did they learn parenting anyway? Most likely from their parents! And their parents learned it from their parents, and it would be a miracle if any of them knew how to parent their child correctly!
Rarely do we have an adult or pediatric patient come in for therapy, that hasn’t been damaged or thoroughly messed up by their parents.
Do the parents screw up their kids intentionally? We would like to believe in most cases not. But if the parent was emotionally, sexually or physically abused when they were a child, and they never received the proper healing therapy, unfortunately they might visit their issues onto their own children.
An abused child will have low self esteem and be devoid of confidence and self assuredness unless mitigated by a really good hypnotherapist, not just a conventional “talk” therapist. That’s one of the reasons that many abused individuals embrace Gen Z.
The memories ofabusive or of harmful events are stored in the cognitive maps of the child’s subconscious mind and remain there until and unless they are dealt with by a hypnotherapist that really knows what they are doing.
Saying “ who do you think you are?“ implies that they aren’t as good, talented, smart or whatever as the child thinks they are. That careless remark takes away confidence, self assuredness and self esteem. They will carry that feeling of inadequacy with them forever unless an excellent hypnotherapist can enable them to move past that negative talk. “Why did you do that?” is as useless as “who do you think you are?” Most often a child doesn’t have a clue why he does something because the prefrontal cortex hasn’t developed yet. The pre frontal cortex is our command and control center.
With girls the prefrontal cortex is pretty well developed by the age of twenty – in boys and men it is closer to thirty two years of age! Some think that with men it’s forty five!!!
I wish that we could visit with potential parents before they have a child. They might not want to hear this, but being a parent may require more time and effort than they thought that it would, and that they are able and or willing to devote to it. What is their priority – career or raising a child. It is really hard to do an excellent job of both simultaneously.
Isn’t it interesting that in order to be a manicurist, a barber or a welder, one has to take a test and get a license? But what kind of license is required to raise a child? None!
Many parents are honestly too busy to parent and raise a child. We’re not being sarcastic when we say that, but it takes time for the “little but important things”. It is not easy what with the everyday hustle and bustle of today’s life problems and careers, and it can be difficult to take the time to answer that young developing mind’s questions. They might be too busy with or be too distracted with their career to be a great parent.
Some might feel that the answer is a Nanny. But if that Nanny is not of the same intellectual and social economic level as the parents are, then there will be potential problems. Some Nannies might be excellent caregivers but may not even have graduated from high school in the United States or may not be emotionally, intellectually and culturally equipped to be a substitute parent! I had two parents come to see me, both of them were medical doctors who had three children. The parents were highly educated with college and medical school degrees.