Reparenting Yourself While Parenting Your Kids
Parents who are making deliberate choices to raise their children differently than they were raised often encounter an unexpected difficulty. Each time they provide what their children need, they're confronted with what they themselves didn't receive. Comforting a crying child brings up memories of not being comforted. Apologizing after yelling triggers awareness that apologies never came from their own parents. The act of parenting well can surface grief.
This is where reparenting becomes relevant. Not as an abstract therapeutic concept, but as a practical response to what happens when someone gives their children what they never got.
What Reparenting Means
The past remains fixed, but how someone treats themselves in the present can change. This happens in two ways. First, noticing when internal self-talk mirrors the criticism or harshness the parent experienced as a child. Second, practicing the same patience and understanding toward oneself that one is trying to extend to one's children. When a child spills juice and the parent helps clean it without shaming, that's a choice. But later, when the parent spills coffee, a different question arises. Does the parent call themselves stupid or become angry at themselves, or do they clean it up and move forward, the way they helped their child move forward? That's reparenting, extending to oneself the same treatment being given to one's children.
Why This Matters for Parenting
Parenting surfaces everything a parent didn't receive. Reading to a child at bedtime can trigger memories of no one reading to them. Helping with homework can bring up memories of being called stupid. Allowing a teenager to make mistakes can surface memories of punishment for every error. Without awareness of what this brings up, resentment can develop. Parents may resent their children for having easier lives, overcompensate and provide too much, or feel inadequate when they're functioning well. When parents practice treating themselves better, treating their children better becomes less complicated; when they stop being harsh with themselves, being harsh with their children decreases; when they allow themselves to have feelings, allowing their children to have feelings becomes more natural.
A Kitchen Moment
A mother's children were arguing loudly while she was preparing dinner. Her initial impulse was to yell at them to be quiet. Noise had signaled danger in her childhood home, and when the children were loud, her father would become angry. Instead of yelling, she paused and recognized what was occurring in her body: tension, panic, the old association between noise and punishment. She took a breath and said, "I need both of you to take this outside or speak more quietly. It's too much right now."
Instead of criticizing herself for being "too sensitive" or "unable to handle normal child noise," she acknowledged that it makes sense that noise activates her, that she learned noise meant someone would get hurt, that having limits around noise is reasonable. That's reparenting. She accepts her limitations without judgment, sets aside comparisons to other parents who can tolerate chaos, and acknowledges that her history affects her and that this is acceptable.
The Difficulty
Providing children with what the parent never received can be painful. Watching a child's teacher praise them at a school event can trigger memories of parents never attending; allowing a child to quit an activity they dislike can bring up memories of being forced to continue things they hated. Each difference highlights what was lost, and this is where grief enters. Parents may feel angry, sad, or bitter, thinking "Where was this for me?" These feelings are legitimate. Reparenting means allowing that grief rather than suppressing it, acknowledging "I deserved better" instead of "it wasn't that bad," recognizing that what happened mattered, even though it can't be changed.
Practical Approaches
Speaking to oneself the way one speaks to one's children is a starting point. When a child makes a mistake, most parents say something like "mistakes happen, let's figure out how to address it"—when the parent makes a mistake, using similar language helps: "I messed up. That's frustrating. What can I do differently next time?" Noticing when phrases from one's own parents surface is equally important. "What's wrong with you?" "You should know better." "I can't believe you did that." These may feel automatic, but replacing them with something different takes deliberate effort, saying instead, "I made an error. That's frustrating. How can I handle this better?" Allowing oneself to have things that were forbidden as a child matters as well. If saying no wasn't permitted, practice saying no now; if finishing all food was mandatory, stop when full; if hiding sadness was required, allow oneself to cry. Small actions accumulate.
Limitations of Reparenting
Reparenting addresses present treatment, but it can't change the past. Someone can treat themselves well for the rest of their life and it still won't provide the parents they needed when they were seven. But it accomplishes something else. It interrupts the pattern. When someone stops treating themselves the way they were treated, they stop passing it forward. Children see parents make mistakes and recover, see parents have feelings and manage them, see imperfection without collapse, something that differs from what the parent saw growing up.
Managing Both
Reparenting oneself while parenting children is demanding. Some days it feels like too much, attempting to heal from the past while ensuring children don't need to heal from their childhood is a substantial burden. But there's a feedback loop. The better someone becomes at treating themselves with care, the easier parenting with care becomes, and the more someone parents their children with patience, the more they begin to believe they deserved patience too. These processes reinforce each other. Parents are raising children while also, gradually, giving themselves some of what they missed. It creates real change, even though it can't undo what happened back then.
Getting Support
Sometimes parenting can trigger unresolved issues that become overwhelming. Seeking professional help is an important step toward becoming the person you and your child deserve. I offer a group intensive program to help parents work through these patterns in a focused, supportive setting: https://www.lemastercounselingservices.org/the-parenting-intensive. I also provide individual therapy in New Orleans, and telehealth therapy throughout the states of Louisiana and South Carolina.