Growing Up Again: Parenting Ourselves, Parenting Our Children

Our problem is not that as children our needs were unmet, but that as adults they are still unmourned! The hurt, bereft, betrayed Child is still inside of us, wanting to cry for what he missed and wanting thereby to let go of the pain and the stressful present neediness he feels in relationships. In fact, neediness itself tells us nothing about how

If we missed out on attention when we were children, we might have learned to attend to ourselves, to become more and more creative, to look for attention from adults other than our parents. In this way, a deficiency became something beneficial, the pothole that became the portal. Likewise, our ability to reach out as adults may be directly proport

Children love it when parents take them seriously and recognize them as real people with their own tastes. Like all human beings, children crave respect. They like to know why they are doing things, and they balk at demands for unquestioning obedience.

Love from another adult does more than just satisfy us in the present. It ripples back in time for us, repairing, restoring, and renovating an inadequate past. Sincere love also sets off a forward-moving ripple and a resultant shift inside us. We get to the point where we can think: “Now I don’t have to need quite so much. Now I don’t have to blame