Welcome back to the place we find ourselves podcast. I'm Adam Young and this is part two of a discussion about what to do when you realize that you have harmed your children.

Before I began just a reminder that if you want to receive episodes as soon as they are released you need to download the place we find ourselves app from the app store.

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So this is my attempt to raise money while sparing you from ads.

Okay, let's start by summarizing part one. Many people have had the following experience. You begin looking at your story. You begin looking at some of the ways that your parents harmed you.

And suddenly you realize, oh my goodness, I'm doing some of these same things to my own children.

The bottom line with parenting is that the past isn't dead. It's not even past. In other words, your story, your past experiences in life are profoundly influencing how you interact with, how you parent your children.

And your parenting failures are bound up in your story.

So question, what are you supposed to do as you come to realize some of the ways that you have harmed your own kids?

The research is unequivocal here. The single most important thing you can do to improve your parenting is address your own story in your family of origin.

I know that sounds absurd, but instead of reading parenting books, instead of reading books on interpersonal neurobiology or trauma or attachment or anything else, the single most important thing you can do to love your children better

is engage your own story. Engaging your story will free you to become the parent that you want to be. So that's the number one thing to do.

The second most important thing to do is to make sure your child feels felt.

If that is a new concept to you, I explain it in detail in the previous episode. What your child needs more than anything else is emotional connection with you.

And the third thing you can do when you realize that you are harming your children is repair.

Repair is the focus of today's episode. A healthy trusting attachment, in other words, emotional health in a child is not built on the absence of failure.

It is built on the willingness of the parent to own and rectify failures when they do occur.

No parent gets it right 100% of the time. We get tired, distracted, frustrated. Parents get stressed out trying to do a million things at once. There are times when even the best parents are not attuned, not responsive, not engaged with their children.

The parent child connection ruptures frequently.

This is not a problem. This is not a big deal. Why? Because the mark of a good enough caregiver is that these ruptures are repaired through a process of reattunement and reengagement with your child.

Think about it. What mattered to you when you were a kid, whether you were five years old or 25 years old, what mattered to you with regard to your parents is not that your parents got it right each time.

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