Parents owning it

When we find cause for concern about a specific generation of humans, we must look to the generation before them for answers if we hope to address more than the symptoms of what is wrong.

None of us raised ourselves. Similarly, the troubled youth and many adults that we see struggling to make a good life did not raise themselves.

Understanding what was lacking in their upbringing is not shifting blame or justifying their behaviour.

Instead, it’s needed if we hope to break the cycle of generational trauma, or dysfunction that often seems to run in the gene pool of a given family unit.

It’s not the genes that are defective, but the common character traits and cultural inclinations that respond to the pressures of life in the same way that creates similar outcomes in each member’s life.

We cannot give what we don’t have, at least not until we’ve become aware of what we don’t have, so that we may finally acquire it through deliberate and conscious effort.

Until we reach such a level of self-awareness and understanding, we’ll keep chasing ghosts, or blaming the youth for being ungrateful or rebellious, or deliberately deviant.

If we didn’t acquire a healthy self-esteem during our childhood, we’ll likely spend most of our life struggling to feel significant, and behaving badly in the process.

Arts how it becomes that much more difficult for us to raise children with a healthy self-esteem. And the same applies to our parents when they raised us, and so on.

Parents who are struggling with the behaviour of their children need to reflect on their own feelings of self-worth without attaching shame to it.

It’s only in connecting with our own humanness that we’ll ever be able to connect with the humanness of others, especially our children.

It always starts with you.

#hope #expectation #sincerity #selfworth #selfawareness #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #lifecoaching #zaidismail #parenting #singleparenting #drugabuse #addiction