Did you have a tough childhood? Does it affect your parenting?

Today I had a fascinating interview with Maxine Harley as part of The Confident Mother.

Maxine is a psychotherapist with more than 20 years experience. Maxine had a tough childhood and found that this later impacted on the way that she mothered her own child. The moment that she realised that she needed to do something about it, was when she lashed out at her daughter who looked at her with fear on her face. It was scary moment. In that moment, Maxine knew then she needed to heal herself of her childhood in order to become a better parent.

Now Maxine works with many mums, both antenatally and postnatally. Maxine describes the different types of parenting. Most of us, most of the time, fit into the “good enough parenting” while aspiring to “optimum parenting”. While Maxine is very knowledgeable about neuroscience, and we discussed again the importance of the first two-three years of a child’s life when the brain is developing, what was reassuring for many of us, is that the first three years of your child’s life is not your only chance. We can “repair the tear”.

If your own childhood has ‘damaged’ you in some way, again, you can repair that damage. The three big mistakes that Maxine mentions that we might make:

• not healing our own emotional wounds
• not taking care of our own needs (and we’re talking about emotional needs here, not physical)
• not controlling ourselves (thought processes, emotions etc)

The first step to repairing any damage and clearing away your own childhood is self-awareness. Maxine can explain this all so much better than I can. When you sign up to The Confident Mother, you’ll get free access for 48 hours to all the recorded interviews plus you have the opportunity to purchase the complete library so that you can listen to all the interviews when and wherever you want.

I know that for me, yes my childhood did affect me – I suffered severe postnatal depression for a long time (and I have shared that before in previous blogs). Before I had children, I presented a confident and successful exterior, but inside I was hurting. In a funny way, getting pregnant and suffering from PND helped to ‘cure’ me. Maxine has lots of fabulous resources on her website. Do go and check them out.

Don’t miss out on future interviews, sign up today to the free online conference The Confident Mother. My goal is for all mums to discover that good enough really IS good enough.