Carrie Lauth: Well, you know what is so interesting about that is that as adults we have a lot of difficulty setting the healthy boundaries in our adult relationships and that is probably because we did not have many models of that growing up as children. Would you say that is a fair statement?

Robin Grille: That is absolutely the case for I guess most people. Sadly, the way our parents and our teachers in particular set boundaries with us was through corporal punishments and/or shaming, so we do not have very good role model to how to set boundaries in a healthy way, but also we have reactivity, how reactive we are…

Carrie Lauth: Yeah.

Robin Grille: Or over reactive we are to our children’s emotionality. That is the result of how we were treated as children and nervous systems are a little bit more wired. We lack the neurological capacities for patience and space, so that we can respond to our children in a creative, in a compassionate and gentle way. We are all in a way surviving our childhoods from the last generation and trying to do better. 

Essentially, if we understand that being assertive with our children has nothing to do with being aggressive with our children…

So, we can be very strong without being punishing. So long as we are expressing our needs and our feelings to our children with honesty and with emotional transparency, if we let them know look what you just said I feel very hurt by what you have done or I feel angry by what you have done. It is that level of honesty that ultimately has the most, the greatest chance of really making a connection with our child and then they will start behaving in a way that is respectful, not because they are afraid of us and they want to get our approval, but because they genuinely feel empathy and respect for who we are at first.

Carrie Lauth: Well, back to that point which is profound about how we over react to our children’s conduct because we are basically reacting to the way we were treated as children, those feelings coming up in us, what hope do we have to overcome that tendency? Is it education and realizing that that is what it is truly about?

Robin Grille: Yeah. I think there is quite a bit of hope and that hope is really proportional to how committed we are to our own healing process. There are all kinds of ways that we can learn and not just learn what to do, but learn how to feel more tolerant and more patient of our children.

Any loving relationships that we have in adulthood have the potential to be very healing. Counseling, therapy, personal growth groups, even sometimes things that we read, that can be deeply inspiring. All of those things can combine. If we are open to learning and growing, all of those things can combine very strongly.

Also, what is coming to light is that our children, our loving contact with our children particularly from the earliest moments through holding, cuddling our children, through sharing loving moments, breastfeeding, even for dads as well when we play with our children, all those experiences are actually not only nurturing to our children, they are very healing for us as parents and they amplify our capacity to be loving and emphatic. It is quite incredible. We always think of as parents how we raise our children as if that is something that we as adults do to them. It is very mutual.

At the same time as we are raising our children, our children are actually showing us and teaching us how to be better people.

Carrie Lauth: Yeah. Yeah, that is true. I saw a quote the other day, it said parenting is not about the child, it is about the parent. Very true.

Robin Grille: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Robin Grille