In one of my parenting classes years ago, a father in the front row seemed perplexed, even disturbed. I inquired, and his response was surprising—an insight every parent should understand! If parents developed this one trait, all else would fall into place: happier children, less stressed parents, and thriving families.
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
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The Secret to Being Loving Parents—hint: it's not a parenting style!
There is a lot of talk these days about parenting styles and which one is the best. It is as if parents thought that if they could just determine the best one, they could figure out this complex job of parenting. However, loving parenting doesn’t depend on a parenting style.
Creating secure attachment for your children, building a healthy parent-child relationship, and creating a loving home isn’t about finding the right parenting style.
How you parent is YOUR style, unique to YOU, and being the best you can be.
After years of parent coaching, teaching parenting classes, and doing scores of behavioral consults, this one father’s comment went to the heart of all effective parenting!
Back to the story: This father is sitting in the front row of my class, a group of about forty-five parents. He’s resting his chin on both hands, his elbows leaning against his knees with a solemn look draped over his face.
After inquiring, he slowly lifts his head and says, “This parenting approach takes a lot of maturity.”
This father nailed it.
Everyone in the room realized the truth of his statement.
Parenting can feel like an enormous responsibility. You, as a parent, impact your children's lives and the quality of their lives as adults. Your responses day in and day out help shape their self-esteem, emotional intelligence, mental health, and their budding identity.
Even preventing parenting burnout is largely dependent on emotional maturity.
You can parent any number of ways successfully, but without maturity, you're bound to make bigger parenting mistakes.
Successful parenting and kids who grow up with healthy self-esteem, to be confident, loving, responsible and contributing adults are often determined by the courage of parents to grow into mature adults with emotional intelligence (EQ). The quality of these two ingredients (maturity and EQ) are major factors in determining the results.
Without them, consistency and authenticity—regardless of good intentions—are lacking.
Without these two qualities, most parents default to how they were raised when they are stressed, especially if their children act out. When these two qualities are lacking, often parents are triggered by their own unresolved pain and trauma.
To be a loving parent requires us to be our best and that best involves coming to terms with our past and integrating experiences to be our most loving self.
Related reading: "37 Inspiring Ways for Raising a Emotionally Intelligent Child."
How to Develop Maturity and Emotional Intelligence in Yourself and Your Parenting
Raised by alcoholic parents, my parenting toolbox was regretfully empty as a young parent. It’s one of the reasons I dove so passionately into learning parenting skills and emotional intelligence—for my children's well-being!
I built my emotional quotient (EQ) from scratch and matured along the way. You can learn how to be an emotionally intelligent parent with focus, patience, and a commitment to be your best.
I'll let you in on another surprising truth: Love isn’t enough.
Not because love doesn’t matter; it’s at the center of all relationships. Love isn’t enough because of the way our brains are programmed through experience. Childhood neglect or trauma profoundly affects how we parent.
Every time we are triggered, we are catapulted into survival, and it becomes near impossible to respond lovingly when our brain is telling us we are unsafe.
Why?
Because the survival brain hijacks the frontal cortex (the higher, cognitive brain), where love, compassion, empathy, self-control, problem-solving, and enlightened actions are forged—just like reptiles, we go cold with a thick skin.
One of my triggers was anger when my kids were young. The parenting gods made sure that I healed my suppressed anger with a daughter who expressed her feelings fluidly. Whenever she got angry, I wanted to run. All the anger I had stuffed my entire life came rushing up and overwhelmed me.
Yet, our children are often our best teachers (and motivators to heal). She taught me how essential anger is to our authentic power and well-being. It’s a messenger, our safety valve urging us to take care of ourselves. I had to lean into my intense discomfort to learn to befriend anger within myself and develop emotional regulation.
My love for my husband and children was the number one reason I committed to healing myself, to become the best version of myself, which eventually led me to my coaching work.
If I can build and fill my parenting toolbox from scratch, so can you!
Recommended reading: "What Resiliency Is and Why Parents Need It."
3 Powerful EQ Ways to Become More Loving Parents
Loving parenting is an inside job.
We love freely to the measure we love ourselves.
Working on your own mastery and healing the unresolved experiences that are hidden mines erupting when least expected, is the best investment in your parenting you'll ever make.
Here’s my advice—learned the hard way.
Focus on self-care.
No matter your past, no matter how many skills you have or don’t have, regardless of your level of “maturity,” a lack of self-care directly impacts how you show up as a parent. It’s one of the reasons Gentle Parenting often falls short.
Self-care is how we show ourselves we love ourselves.
Self-love can be challenging as a parent when you’ve been neglected or hurt as a child. So, when you care for yourself, you are reparenting yourself and rewiring the mistakes your parents made. Self-care sends a clear and vital message: you matter. Your needs are equally important as others’ needs.
As the chronic people-pleaser I once was, I didn’t believe either statement at first. Initially, I was a “super mom” with extravagant birthday parties (staying up all night to create Hawaiian leis or hang black plastic for a Star Wars theme). This example was one of many; the self-sacrifice was unsustainable.
Acknowledging that a part of my motivation was me trying to give them the childhood I never had allowed me to realize that I deserved love, attention, and self-care, too.
It’s imperative for your parenting that you care for yourself.
If you find it difficult, here’s a secret I learned: tell yourself you'll be a more loving and patient parent IF you take care of yourself—then, go to the gym, schedule a massage or a get-together with friends. Everyone wins!
Learn to apologize.
Some parents don’t think that we, as parents, should apologize to our children. I’ve heard many reasons not to apologize, but the most common reason is that apologizing lowers our authority and mantle as a parent. I disagree.
Parents are human and make mistakes. By apologizing when we react and lash out at our child in a hurtful way, or don’t keep our word, or over-discipline, we send a message loud and clear: It’s okay to make mistakes as long as we make things right.
We're modeling how to lovingly restore connection in a relationship. When we have wronged anyone, they deserve an apology. It’s been my experience that apologies reconnect us to each other and build enormous trust.
At first, this was tricky for me, humbling. I resisted it and didn’t know how to apologize. However, every time I fumbled through, I improved. My apologies became more sincere and authentic until apologizing was as easy as flipping a breakfast pancake.
Of course, changed behavior IS the best apology.
To ratify this belief, alongside my apologies to my children, I did two things:
- I did "make-ups" proportionate to my error.
For instance, if I was late picking them up from school (or worse yet, caused them to be late), I would do their chores for the same amount of time they waited for a ride or were late.
If I raised my voice or hurt their feelings, we spend some quality time together 1x1 to reconnect or make them their favorite meal. Sometimes, I’d ask them how I could make my mistake right with them. - I made a verbal commitment to be different.
Whenever I had a parenting faux pas, I’d let them call me out when I blew it… respectfully. This agreement made it more uncomfortable for me to default to behaviors of my former self. Highlighting and admitting my mistakes compassionately helped me slow down and think before acting on knee-jerk reactions.
My pledge around apologies—both to myself and my children—was a profound experience, one that I believe created a powerful respect between us. Pretty soon, our whole family was sincerely apologizing and volunteering to do make-ups. It was a humbling and transformative experience!
Recommended reading: "Empathy and the Empathetic Apology: the New, Improved I'm Sorry."
Get maturity!
Becoming an adult when we’re stuck back in a painful childhood isn’t easy. It takes Herculean (or Amazonian) strength and intentional practice to walk through traumatic memories and transform them.
But they’re just that, memories. Don’t let them define you or allow avoidance of pain to keep you a prisoner. Trust me, it’s worth the effort and courage.
It's not my intention to underplay in any way the pain of trauma. However, nothing will be as scary or painful as an adult as when you were a dependent child without choices.
Heal yourself!
A well-written and helpful parenting book is Parenting from the Inside Out by Daniel Siegel. Even as you integrate some of your past baggage, it will give you tools to navigate difficult, emotional times.
Related reading: "Positive Parenting Solutions."
Closing Thoughts
Maturity. It's demanding. Parent is hard , yet, with enormous joy and fulfillment, too. It is also the refining fire to grow us into better, more loving humans.
Therefore, compassion is crucial. Self-acceptance with compassion is a necessity—and a relief.
Parenting requires personal growth. If you resist it, parenting is even more rocky. When you don’t do the work to heal, when your children become teenagers and rebel, you may find out just how fragile you are. You might wish you'd looked inside and invested in integrating your past.
When children become adults, you discover again how well or how poorly you’ve parented.
One of my biggest sadnesses right now is working with parents of adult children who are being disrespected, or worse yet, estranged and cut out of the lives of their children and grandchildren.
The good news is that when you do the work to heal and love unconditionally, even when it hurts, an extraordinary thing happens. You will wake up one day and love who you have become. You’ll love, admire, and adore the people your children have become.
And the world is a better place because I—you—were willing to lean into the painful discomfort to heal and be our best.
If you’d like support, I’m here for you! Transforming lives IS my business, Heartmanity’s mission.
For a parenting coach to support you in visionary parenting, we're here to help! Contact us at support@heartmanity.com.
