Is It Your Child or Your Parenting That’s Causing Issues?
Written by Tina Feigal, M.S., Ed., Parent Coach
Former school psychologist Tina Feigal specializes in helping caregivers heal trauma associated with adoption, foster care, and children's losses of any kind. She's the author of Present Moment Parenting: The Guide to a Peaceful Life with Your Intense Child and has trained and mentored 850 coaches worldwide.
After a childhood fraught with her parents’ mental and physical illness, abandonment, and profound loss, Tina Feigal is grateful to use her experiences as powerful "fuel". What she went through as a kid has evolved into the drive to create tried-and-true tools for helping others to heal and enhance their parent-child relationships, both as a coach and a trainer of coaches.
Maybe you’re wondering if the behaviors you’re seeing are from the personality of your child or from the way you parent. Here are some questions to ponder to unwrap the answers. Grab some paper and a pen, because physical writing goes into our brains more deeply, facilitating more authentic reflection.
How would you describe your core beliefs about parenting in four words?
Being aware the driving force behind your parenting can be very enlightening. If sticking to them is not getting the results you want, consider that a change may be helpful to you and your family. If you’re happy with your beliefs and you see kids who are functioning well in life, give yourself a pat on the back! What parent doesn’t need that now and then?
What 4 common challenges do you see most often in your parenting partnership and/or in other parents?
In our modern world, it’s so easy to compare our parenting and find fault with others or ourselves. That’s not what this is for. It’s to take a look at your most frequently observed concerns in parenting. Ages
In what ways can parents tell when pressure or a difference in approach is starting to damage their relationships with their kids?
This will be a helpful reflecting exercise for you as a single or partnered parent.
How do you adapt your parenting approach to your individual children?
Considering their life experiences, their ages, genders, personality traits, and birth order, (keep in mind that a gap in their ages changes this effect – if you have a child who is many years younger than the next-oldest sibling, they go back to being the oldest) how to you customize your interactions with each of your children?
In what ways has overcoming one or more of your big life challenges influenced your approach to being a connected parent?
It’s great to reflect on how hard things that you’ve experienced have provided you with amazing resilience and self-composure in the face of disrespect, defiance, opposition, and other obstacles to bring effective communication with your young people. Maybe this is the first time you’ve been invited to take a look at the hidden “gifts” of your own youth to see how they influence your parenting.
What shifts are you seeing in how young people view parents today?
There’s almost a guarantee that it’s different from the way you were raised, from my 26 years of experience in coaching parents and training coaches. What a unique opportunity to reflect on this aspect of your relationship with your child/ren and to share it with your parenting partner with judgment-free insights. Maybe you even want to make a plan to adjust your approach in ways that will work better for you all!
What lasting impact do you hope your parenting will have on the future adults to whom you’ve given life or raised?
This is a very crucial question. Would you like to see your own parents’ legacy forwarded into future generations, or something entirely different? You have enormous power to influence the lives of children to come by raising emotionally intelligent offspring.
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Read more from Tina Feigal, M.S., Ed.
Tina Feigal, M.S., Ed., Parent Coach
Tina Feigal, M.S., Ed. works with parents of children of all ages, specializing in, but not exclusive to, child losses and trauma (foster care, adoption, reunification). Tina sees parents' power to heal their children's hearts in a way that they often miss. She offers tried-and-true ways of connecting with children of all ages to create emotional safety, the key to better relationships and behaviors. She uses a non-judgmental approach, understanding that every parent carries "how I was raised" as their model, often with unsatisfactory results. She helps parents get what they truly want from their parenting experience – peace of mind!
