How Your Parent's Relationship Impacts You
Did your parent's relationship(s) impact you growing up?
For better or worse, we are impacted by the relationship our parents have with each other and other people in their lives.
As a child, you watched how your parents or caregivers interacted with each other. You watched who they chose to maintain relationships with. You absorbed how they handled conflict and how they shared their needs. You watched them navigate everything from small decisions to life altering changes.
Watching your parents interact became your blueprint for
how to handle conflict
how to ask for help
how to get your needs met
how to comfort someone
We know that kids who grow up around a lot of parental conflict (remember, conflict isn’t just physical violence. It’s also yelling, screaming, the silent treatment, name calling, never talking about anything, and more).
experience higher levels of guilt and shame
usually end up needing to take on the responsibilities (emotionally and/or physically) for one or both parents and this can lead to parentification
show signs of disrupted early brain development, sleep disturbances, anxiety, depression, conduct disorder, and other serious problems
are more likely to continue these types of patterns in their own relationships
may also deal with parents who are withdrawn or show low levels of warmth and affection for each other, putting their social, emotional, and behavioral health at risk
So, what do we do about it?
Parents are going to have conflict and disagreement. They are going to have days where they don't feel as in tune with one another. Being a parent is incredibly hard and stressful. The goal isn’t to stop arguing or to make your kids think things are happy all the time when they’re really not. What matters here is how you have the conflict and how you repair.
Here are a few suggestions you can try to implement in your own relationship to ensure that your kids or future kids don't bear the same brunt that you did.
Try not to argue in front of the kids. Try to have these discussion after the kids have gone to bed and in another room, outside, in your car, etc.. But, just because you're not fighting directly in front of the kids doesn't mean they aren't listening. Screaming, throwing things, and arguing loudly from another room where the children can still hear you will still have the same impact. If you say “well we never did it in front of you,” but they heard everything and it was chaotic and/or abusive, it’s still gonna have an impact.
Model healthy communication. If you would tell your child not to yell, name call, or use physical force...you need to be following those rules too. If you yell or name call, take ownership and apologize for it.
Again, when you mess up, own up to it. You are going to mess up. You're going to yell or say something you didn't mean. If your child witnessed it, don't pretend that it didn't happen. Talk about it! Discuss how it made them feel and why it wasn't right. Talk about what you could have done instead.
Parents need to be a united front. Nothing is more confusing for a child when parents don't back each other up or talk negatively about one another to their child. A kid needs to see their parents as a united team that they can rely on. Avoid talking negatively about your partner or undermining them.
When you scream, yell, or lose control, it's scary for the kid. Remember that. Parents are supposed to be a child's source of comfort and security. When you are out of control, the child feels unsafe. If this happens, reassure them and talk about why someone might lose control of their emotions and how to work on that.
It's good for your kids to see you disagree and work things out. It's not good for them to see you engage in unhealthy communication patterns. You don't need to act like everything is happy all the time around your kids. You should model healthy communication where you disagree and discuss both sides.
If your parents had high conflict interactions or argued around you often, it probably took a toll on you.
Maybe your parent completely denies this and says it was just "marital issues" or that they never did anything to you or they never argued right in front of you but you could hear the yelling and throwing of plates through the walls.
The research clearly shows that your experience was real. It may help you to:
validate your experience - “what I went through was real. Other people would be impacted by this too.”
read more about the impact of parental conflict on children. I have a list of books, here.
Work through this Healing Family Patterns Workbook.
Use the Parentified Child Workbook
to help you understand why you lost your childhood.talk to others who have been through parental conflict. This can be especially helpful if you were always told to hide abuse.
vow to be different in your own relationships and with your own children. You have the power to break the cycle.
go to therapy to explore how your parents relationships impacted you and to learn how to change it.
The good news is, you can always rewrite your story and understand it from a new angle. You can always become aware and change.