I mostly steer clear of writing about my daughter or our relationship. Because…boundaries. Just because I’ve chosen to put a lot of my vulnerability out there publicly doesn’t mean she has to be part of that. I worry about an entire generation of Mommy bloggers whose kids might grow up some day and think “WTF? Do I really want my toilet training details published all over the interwebs?” I don’t believe our children should be fodder for internet clicks until they’re old enough to actually consent.
With that said, and with the consent of my 19 year old daughter, I wanted to make a plug to all parents to do what we all wish our parents would have done with us- own the harm we cause our kids as parents. Don’t deny it. Don’t gaslight them. Don’t pretend it didn’t happen. Don’t blame the kids. Just accept that all parents screw up- and get involved in helping them heal, before the relational trauma they may have experienced from their parents causes more relational trauma down the road.
And if the relational trauma caused by the mistakes we’ve made as parents has already impacted their marriages or their own kids, own that too. It’s never too early and it’s never too late to hold ourselves accountable and participate in healing and repair with our kids.
The Still Face Experiment
None of us are perfect parents. Because the attachment systems of kids are so sensitive to even a harsh look or the absence of a loving gaze, no matter what we do, we’re going to do some damage. Just look what happens to this infant in Ed Tronick’s “still face” experiment.
Obviously, even the best parents are guilty of a still face, or even a harsh face or a mean face, from time to time. You can still be a “good enough” parent to overcome those small relational traumas and raise a securely attached child. But many other factors can cause us to raise kids will insecure attachment that can follow them their whole lives, if we don’t nip it in the bud and help them heal.
When You Can’t Be There For Your Child The Way Their Attachment Systems Need You
I was one of those mothers who felt helpless to meet my daughter’s attachment needs in the first year of her life. I was a busy OB/GYN working 36 hour call shifts every 3 days and taking 72 shifts one weekend per month when my daughter was born by C-section. As OB/GYN’s, we insisted our patients take 12 weeks off to bond with their babies and heal their wounds after a C-section. But as the doctor, I was only granted four weeks of postpartum leave before I was expected to pump my breast milk and abandon my newborn.
Add to that the stress of my family at the time of her birth. My father, who was dying of cancer, arrived in San Diego to meet his grandchild and say goodbye to me. He and my mother rented a beach house where he intended to die with Hospice care. The day of my daughter’s birth, my father said he was ready to go. But my mother reprimanded him harshly, insisting he was not allowed to sully his grandchild’s birthday with his own death. He agreed to wait two more weeks and died right on schedule.
During that time, my healthy young brother wound up in full-blown liver failure as a side effect of an antibiotic he was taking for a sinus infection. My 16 year old dog died. And soon afterwards, my daughter’s father cut two fingers off his hand with a table saw and needed multiple surgeries to save his hand.
I knew something was wrong with my daughter right from the beginning. She never cried. She slept through the night almost immediately. I had to guess when she was hungry or needed her diaper changed or felt scared or lonely. She was only a few weeks old but she had already sensed that me and my family couldn’t handle her having needs, so she’d buried them right when she should have been allowed to be ultra-needy.
One of the few times I heard her cry was when the poor little thing had to endure a cross country plane flight to attend my father’s funeral when she was only three weeks old. I tried doing what the pediatrician recommended I do- nursing her during take-off and landing- but she grabbed her little ears and howled the whole plane ride there and back.
I had to break both of our hearts, weaning her from breastfeeding when she was less than a month old so her father could bottle feed her my pumped breast milk while I was at the hospital. I had wanted to quit my job right after she was born, but because of her father’s injury, I had to stay in the same job for another year until all his surgeries were complete because this was now a “pre-existing condition” and I couldn’t switch insurances.
I felt helpless. If I did what was right for her, I would harm her father. If I did what was right for me and her, we’d be broke and her father might not get the medical care he needed. He wasn’t willing to get a job so I could stay home. I was the sole breadwinner during our whole marriage. The whole conundrum, along with the moral injury I felt in my job as a doctor who was colluding with a corrupt health care system that gave lip service to patient wellbeing while ultimately being at the mercy of the financial bottom line, left me suicidal.
I’m certain my daughter picked up on that, little emotional sponge that she is. She took on that role I had taken on with my mother. I remember vividly realizing, as a small infant, that it was my job to make my mother happy. My own daughter took on that same burden, without realizing what she was doing or how that trauma bonded contract would orient her young life.
We had signs of it earlier, when she resisted cuddling with her father and me. But by the time she was seven months old, I knew she was developing avoidant attachment. When I’d draw her close to me to breast feed her after a long day at work, she’d arch her back and refuse to latch on. I’d take the rejection personally and cry with longing for more closeness with my baby. I felt ripped off. Many of the mothers I cared for in my practice got protected during the early months of being a new mother. Their families and their jobs gave them permission to do nothing but adapt to being a mother. But not me. I had to help my father die, bury my dog and my dad, support my brother and my husband through their hospitalizations, and work full time as a busy OB/GYN. My daughter and I just did not get the bonding time we needed and deserved.
Internal Family Systems For Childhood Trauma
Fast forward to 2020. After attending a Waldorf school from preschool to eighth grade, she was excited to graduate to public school for ninth grade. Then during the week that should have been her eighth grade graduation, the too-culty-for-comfort Waldorf principal who had been her other mother pulled a fast one on the school, fired the co-founder of the school and kicked his family off the farm in the middle of lockdown, and then hightailed it out of the country with her tail between her legs after getting run off by angry parents.
After that shocking loss and trauma, my daughter spent the entire year home on Zoom, without one single day of in person school. As an only child, that year was devastating for her and for many other kids. I had introduced my daughter to Internal Family Systems when she was eight years old, so she already knew parts language. But try as I might, I couldn’t find her a therapist during the early years of the pandemic.
When I leveraged my vast network of IFS practitioners, they’d ask me if she was suicidally depressed? Dying of an eating disorder? Addicted to drugs or alcohol? Psychotic? A pregnant teen? Sexually abused?
No. None of that. She was just struggling with some understandable mental health issues kicking up her past Mommy wounds during a time of great global instability.
The therapists were maxed out and trying to triage the most urgent needs of teenagers. My daughter didn’t make the cut for two more years, when we finally found an IFS therapist with openings who said yes to helping her. I felt so relieved, and my daughter liked her therapist right away.
The Best Gift You Can Give Your Kids
As a mother with enough resources to be able to pay out of pocket for therapy that wasn’t covered by insurance, I told my daughter she could have all the private time with her therapist that she needed. But I also told her I’d welcome being invited in to witness her work with some of her parts and to try to make repair with her hurt parts if they’d let me. I would have loved it if my mother would have been willing to attend some of my therapy sessions, and to own the impact her controlling, perfectionistic, fundamentalist Christian, narcissistic behavior had on me. But my mother was not going to touch accountability or face the trauma she caused her kids before her death at 72.
But I realized I could do it differently. I could show up for my child without denial, without defensiveness, with humility and the willingness to hold myself accountable for whatever I’d done to cause her pain.
It felt like an enormous honor when she finally invited me into therapy with her IFS therapist. Everything shifted between us after just a few sessions. It was incredibly trust building to bear witness to my daughter’s parts and to let her witness mine.
So I just want to put in a plug to you parents out there. It’s never too late to get into therapy with your kids, to acknowledge your impact on them, whether you intended to hurt them or not. The rewards are worth any pain you might feel from listening to how we’ve hurt the children we love.
Mothering As Medicine
As a parent, you can interfere with your child’s healing, getting defensive or denying how your parenting style might have harmed your kids or how your parenting might have led to attachment wounding. Or you can be humble about your own imperfections and be part of the medicine your kids need for deeper healing.
If you’re interested in going deeper into how you can help support your child in healing from childhood wounds, while hanging onto your own self esteem and working with your own parts that might feel upset about having caused harm, you’re warmly invited to join me and Rachel Gilgoff, MD, a trauma expert and pediatrician who works for ACESAware in California. We’ll be talking about the mental health and physical health issues childhood trauma can cause, not just in kids but in adults with a history of childhood trauma.
Whether you’re thinking of getting pregnant, have young kids at home, or wish to get closer with your adult children, all mom-identifying people are welcome to join us.
Learn more and register for Mothering As Medicine here.
