From pregnancy to puberty, your child goes through all kinds of developmental phases, all of which can affect you in different ways. You become unsure whether you are doing it right, feel overwhelmed by your child’s needs. Or you find certain things difficult to tolerate and get irritated quickly – or angry, after which you may lash out verbally (or physically).

You exhaust yourself trying to be the perfect parent, and if that doesn’t work, it feels like you’re failing. You are overprotective and find it difficult to give your child space. You are afraid that others will eventually find out that you are a bad parent. Your child always seems to be pushing a button that throws you off balance.

Although it is very unpleasant for you to experience, children suffer the most. Especially in the first three years of life, it is very important for the further development of a child that his parents are as emotionally available as possible.

Of course, as a parent you want the best for your child, and it is very sad and painful if it seems like you don’t understand each other, your mutual contact doesn’t come naturally. Whether it concerns your newborn baby, your toddler, preschooler, young child, teenager or adolescent.

The good news is that it really can be different. It is also possible for you to restore and deepen the loving relationship with your child.

Fear, insecurity, guilt, shame, stress, anger, or emotional indifference: these are all survival mechanisms that you yourself had to develop in your first years of life. They protected you then against painful experiences that you could not process.

But now that you are an adult, those emotions still become active in situations that somehow resemble what you experienced in the past. So it is not surprising that this happens precisely when you are confronted with the vulnerability and dependence of your own child. The brain just has to learn that this survival is no longer necessary now.

The innocent prisoner

About how we can give our children a good start