Parenting Hangovers

and how to avoid them, one messy moment at a time

“One generation full of deeply loving parents would change the brain of the next generation, & with it the world.”

– Charles Raison MD

What parent wouldn’t say they love their child and doesn’t want to raise a child with a healthy brain? In my two decades of caring for children, I have never met a parent who would disagree with this statement. So what gets in the way of us expressing our love in a way that supports overall nervous system health? And what happens to our best intentions when the very experiences we try so hard to prevent in our children actually happen?

Last year, the surgeon general shared a parent stress advisory, highlighting how almost half of parents are feeling so stressed most days that it is overwhelming. Overwhelming stress derails the part of our brain that is good at problem solving and often leaves us driven by other regions of our brain, primarily the amygdala which is the part of the brain that is responsible for large displays of unpleasant emotions.

So if we are trying to not pass on inter-generational trauma and we want our children’s brains to be wired well and develop in a healthy way, we have to be aware of our own stress levels and develop strategies to mitigate the impact of our stress on our parenting. The amazing thing about this is that it also ends up with us modeling a different response to stressors than what we learned as children so we truly are healing what has been unintentionally passed along, generation to generation.

I affectionately call it SUNBEAM:

• See: see that whatever your child has done, is doing, wants to do is getting to you
• Unhook: allow a little space to arise, don’t take the bait and try not to react in your habitual way
• Nurture: take care of yourself with the following techniques:
  • Breathing: take 5 big deep breaths, do 4:7:8 breathing or stacked breathing
  • Emotional Awareness: know that this emotion is temporary, it will not last and your job is to take care of yourself while it is there (don’t blame it on the kids!)
  • Meditation and Mindfulness: try doing walking meditation, mindfulness body scan or using your senses to ground yourself by finding everything that is green you can see or all the things you can hear

Next time you feel like you are about to lose your cool, try this and see if helps you avoid those parenting hangovers, when you end up doing exactly what you promised yourself you would never recreate from your own childhood.