Am I Raising My Child or Repeating My Childhood?

You go quiet when they cry.

Not calm. Absent. You hand them a tissue, you tidy the room, you say the right words, but something in you has stepped back and gone flat. Their tears make you shut down rather than open up. Maybe because someone went quiet when you cried, too.

You need them to be okay so that you feel okay.

Their mood becomes your mood. If they are unhappy, you cannot settle until they are, so you rush to fix it, distract them, cheer them up, anything to make the bad feeling pass. It feels like love, and part of it is. But part of it might be something you learned young: that when a big person around you was upset, you were not safe until they were calm again. So you became an expert at reading other people's feelings before your own. With your child, that radar never switches off. Their okay is the only way you get to feel okay.

You get anxious when they make a mess.

More than the mess deserves. Something rises in you that isn't really about the mess. Chaos used to mean something was wrong.

You rush their emotions.

"Okay, okay, you're fine." Before they are finished, before they have been heard. You learned to get through feelings fast, so they make you uncomfortable when they go slow.

You need them to perform well.

Their grades, their behaviour at the table, how they come across to other adults. When they do well, something in you relaxes that maybe shouldn't have been tense.

You use silence as a message.

You go cold and stop talking to them. Not on purpose. It just happens. You answer in short words, you look away, you let the quiet sit there so they can feel it. And they do, the same way you once felt someone go quiet and knew something was wrong.

You guilt-trip without realising it.

"After everything I do." "I just wanted us to have a nice day." The sentence lands on them and you're not sure how it got out.

You make their behaviour about your worth as a mother.

When they are difficult in public, when they struggle at school, it becomes evidence about you. Something you have to defend against or fix quickly.

You repeat phrases you swore you never would.

"Because I said so." "You are fine, stop crying." "After everything I do for you." You hear your mother's voice come out of your mouth. Or your father's. The exact phrase. The exact tone. Even the same sigh, the same way of turning your back. That's the moment.

You are uncomfortable with their big feelings.

Anger, despair, the kind of crying that goes on too long. Something in you wants to stop it rather than be with it. Feelings like that may not have been safe where you came from.