Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

by Becky Kennedy

Kids learn these “lessons” based on interactions with parents—not by words, of course, but rather by experiences. They take in what gets a parent’s smiles and questions and hugs and presence (i.e., “You’re allowed to feel that way. Tell me more about that, I’m right here, I’m listening”) and what gets a parent’s punishments and rejection and criticism and distancing (i.e., “Go to your room this instant! I will not be around you when you are like this!”). As psychologist Richard Schwartz, the creator of IFS, writes, “Children have a developmental tendency to translate experience into identity: I am not loved becomes I am unlovable, and a bad thing happened to me becomes I am bad.” In other words, kids take experiences with their caregivers and infer larger messages about who they are. The emotions parents connect to—meaning the ones we are interested in and will stay present for—tell children that the parts of them feeling these feelings are manageable, lovable, and worthy; the emotions we shut down, punish, reject, or try to make into something “more pleasant,” well, children learn that the parts of them feeling these feelings are destructive, bad, unlovable, or “too much.”