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Join me, Jess VanderWier, a registered psychotherapist, mom of three, and founder of Nurtured First, along with my husband Scott, as we dive deep into the stories of our friends, favourite celebrities, and influential figures.
In each episode, we skip the small talk and dive into vulnerable and honest conversations about topics like cycle breaking, trauma, race, mental health, parenting, sex, religion, postpartum, healing, and loss.
We are glad you are here.
PS: The name Robot Unicorn comes from our daughter. When we asked her what we should name the podcast, she confidently came up with this name because she loves robots, and she loves unicorns, so why not? There was something about the playfulness of the name, the confidence in her voice, and the fact that it represents that you can love two things at once that just felt right.
Welcome to Robot Unicorn, hosted by my parents.
Jess and Scar
I hope you enjoyed the episode.
Alright, so I chose the episode topic today.
Mm-hmm.
It's nice.
I didn't have to research it.
I did anyway.
Scott has no notes today.
Yep.
It's a blank.
It's a blank piece of paper.
And I chose this topic because it just keeps coming up.
in the people that I've been talking to in our personal lives.
And I just felt it was time we talked about this on the podcast too
And so what I want to talk about, I mean it's kind of open-ended and I think you already have some thoughts of how you wanna talk about this.
No, no, this is you.
This is all me?
Okay.
I had a conversation with someone recently and they were saying to me, Jess
How do I actually know that I'm breaking a cycle?
And how do I actually know that I'm not becoming my own parent?
And what this person was saying was that it's like she tries so hard to do the style of parenting that we talk about here.
And she tries really hard to be calm and to be conscious.
And still
There's times where she yells or she loses her cool or gets really angry or upset.
And she just feels like, does that mean I'm I'm just repeating the same cycle?
Like is it basically all for naught?
You know, I'm trying so hard, but how do I know it's actually doing anything?
And when I was talking to this person, I've been having multiple conversations like this recently where the parents are just struggling with so much guilt if they don't do it
perfectly and worried that they're gonna become their parents.
And so I wanted to address that because I know a lot of people like everyone
who listens to this podcast, I feel like they're all very good parents and they're all trying their very best to support their kids.
And not one of us does it perfect.
And you and I have talked about that a lot.
But sometimes I think in all the insights or tips that we can give, it can
make it feel like I have to do all of these things now.
And that's not the feeling I want to leave people with when they listen to
our show or they follow me on Instagram or whatever it is, right?
Like I want to leave people with a feeling of hope and like they're doing things different and they're doing things better and they have these tools and insights
So I guess my first question for you is how do you know that you're breaking a cycle?
Like I want to start with you and then I'll we'll talk broader.
That seems like a very broad question to be even asking me.
I don't know.
How do I know?
I think
the fact that our girls will come to me if they have an issue, if they have something going on at school or
They hurt themselves, they'll still come to me.
That's probably the biggest indicator for me that they feel safe with me and they actually come to me when
They have any issues.
And like our oldest daughter, if she's dealing with stuff at school, she will talk about it with me.
She's not just going to you
And I think that's kind of the biggest thing, because I I wouldn't have done the same thing.
Yeah, exactly.
I think that's huge.
Like the fact that you're in the car with our oldest daughter and she'll just tell you about a problem that she's having.
Yep.
And there's no hesitation there.
Those are the things that I think tell you that you're breaking a cycle.
I was gonna say some things that I've even seen in you, like apologizing.
Like if you do make a mistake, you actually go to your child and you say, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that and I'll try and do better next time.
Yeah, I think one of the main things that I grew up with was
Even if this wasn't explicitly said, making mistakes was not okay.
Mm-hmm.
And I still think that is kind of my mindset for myself.
Yeah.
A little less so for others.
Mm-hmm.
But over time, and especially over the past
few years.
I think I've been able to even give myself a little bit of grace if I make a mistake and try and come up with okay how how can I make sure I don't do this again?
But I'm not getting overly upset with myself necessarily
Where in the past, I would have beat myself up for making any even minor mistake.
Yeah.
So I think that is another big thing.
And then because of that and
Of course, you explaining the power of repair over the years.
I think that's helped me be able to understand that I don't necessarily need to do parenting perfectly.
And if anything, that's just gonna burn you out faster.
And I know I wasn't supposed to really prepare for this, but I did look into some research on it.
Yeah.
There's research that actually shows that parents who strive to be the perfect parent usually burn themselves out.
Yeah.
Versus the parents who give themselves a bit more grace and understanding and go back and repair when they do make a mistake end up having better
outcomes for themselves, like mentally, they have better outcomes for themselves and their kids also have fewer, let's say, challenging behaviors.
Mm-hmm.
So that's been, I think, a big thing for me over the past probably around five years.
just slowly giving myself a little bit more grace and by doing so it allows me to give the same to others.
And I think I really hit my stride in the past like one to two years, honestly on that.
I think so too.
I feel like earlier in our parenting journey
And this is the other thing I want to talk to people about is that parenting is a journey and it's not like you make one mistake and now all of a sudden your relationship with your child's ruined or you've traumatized them for life, right?
There's so many instances over time.
And I think a lot of the people that I've been talking to who have been struggling with a lot of guilt earlier on in their parenting journey, maybe they yelled a lot, and maybe they did more punishments or they parented in a way that now
They look back at it and they're like, oh, that's not really the parent I want to be.
Yeah, they regret doing that.
They regret it.
And and they worry, did I mess my kids up for life?
Because in those first few years, that's how I parented
And I also want to speak to that, saying that there's always room for repair.
There's always room for starting fresh and continuing to repair the relationship that you have with your child and moving forward doing something different.
So just because you started that way doesn't mean all is lost and you should just continue parenting in that way.
You can actually change the relationship with your child over time.
I think one of the things that has worked well for me at least is being very honest about my shortcomings with the girls.
Well, it's like where we talked about
Even our oldest daughter saying, Well, when I'm eighteen and I'm allowed to vote in an election, I'm gonna vote the same as you.
Yeah.
I don't want her to think that I am infallible
the things that I think are the absolute truth.
Like she has the freedom to confirm that what I'm saying
Is actually true.
Mm-hmm.
And not just blindly believe.
Just because I'm her parent I know
Everything.
Because I think that that's unrealistic.
That's unhealthy to make your kids feel like you know everything.
So I feel like on top of repair, I've also been quite honest with the girls that I'm not perfect.
I think you have done the same, right?
and just say like we do our best, we try to make the best decisions for you, we try and do the right things for you and these are the reasons why.
You don't necessarily have to understand it.
You're allowed to question it.
Yeah.
And that's something that is very different from how.
I grew up.
Yeah, it's another sign that you're breaking a cycle, right?
And like as you were saying that, I was just thinking actually about how tough cycle breaking really is.
Because for you to be able to say that, like it's okay for you to disagree with me, it's okay for you to make mistakes.
That's almost like a whole reprogramming of your brain in the way that you grew up thinking, right?
It wasn't okay to make mistakes.
You had to believe everything that you were told and you had to do what you were told to do.
And so the fact
that you can give your kids such a different message and genuinely feel that way, I think that's another sign that there's been so much progress and that you've healed those pieces of yourself.
I think parents miss those signs.
They miss those little signs of like, hey, I'm actually doing something different here.
Yeah.
I think if this episode can help
people with thinking any certain way.
I think the biggest way is just to understand.
I mean we say this probably in every episode, but you don't have to be perfect.
I think it goes back to like what we were talking about the previous two episodes, building that trust of being honest, reliable, being someone that your child can come to and have discussions with.
Even if you don't agree with what your child is saying, let's say as they're getting older, they're gonna have more and more of their own opinions that are not the same as yours.
I think that building that trust with them, that's what we want to do.
But that doesn't mean you have to do everything exactly perfectly.
In fact, that shouldn't be the goal.
You should be able to show your kids that, hey, you know what?
I did this and this was not the right way for me to have handled the situation.
I'm sorry.
Like repair is very important.
And even if you talk to you repair with them about something they're uh even unaware of, like something you did when they were two years old.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like that's a powerful thing to do as well.
Absolutely.
And repair doesn't just mean apologizing, right?
I think apologizing is one way to repair.
I think parents can get caught up in just feeling guilty and just saying sorry all the time.
But I think repair also comes in rebuilding the trust.
Yeah, right.
Right?
So you have a rupture, you've yelled at them or you've done something that you didn't want to do.
You can say sorry, but you don't have to keep apologizing over and over.
The true apology comes in the behavior change.
So how are you doing things different so that you don't keep yelling at them
or so that you are actually building their trust back.
I think that's the biggest thing like you were saying.
But the relationship that we have with our kids, if our consistent focus is trying to build trust and show up for them
It's not so fragile that one moment when you're not a perfect parent is gonna completely break everything.
Like I was talking to
a friend of mine about how I totally yelled this one time and lost our cool at our toddler at the time, our second child.
I was postpartum.
We had a
baby I think you were away on a trip somewhere.
We had an older child too and she just wouldn't sleep and I just remember I just completely lost my cool more than I had ever lost my cool before
And I ended up just bawling my eyes out and laying on the floor beside her because she wouldn't sleep, right?
And I remember feeling in that moment, like, I'm failing her
Like I just can't seem to keep it together.
I'm just losing my mind.
And now she's five and years later, that one moment didn't completely destroy our relationship.
And what rebuilt our relationship is repeatedly showing back up for her.
Yep.
And I just I want parents to have that because I think they listen to our podcast and we're giving answers and we're giving tools and we're giving stories.
But it is important to remember that that doesn't mean you have to do it all perfectly.
You and I certainly also don't do everything perfectly.
And I remember something one of my friends said to me one time when I was really struggling with perfectionism
She said, would you want your daughter to hold herself to the same standard that you hold yourself to?
Like if she was beating herself up so hard about the same things that you're beating yourself up over, would you be okay with that?
And I was like, no, actually I would never want her to hold herself to the standard I hold myself to.
And she said, Okay, well your daughter's gonna see how hard you hold yourself to these standards, how much you're beating yourself up, how guilty you feel, and she might replicate that.
And wouldn't you rather your daughter see you, give yourself grace, you know, make mistakes and repair, and be able to eventually do that for herself if she ever becomes a mother someday.
Yep.
That helped me.
I don't know if that would help you, but that actually helped me let go of of a lot of my perfectionism.
I feel like because uh we have daughters.
It's a little bit different because I don't know that I have the same pressures that you do as a mom who works and like does all the things, right?
I feel like there's a different pressure on you from every direction
You have to do this right and you have to do that right.
And so, yeah, I don't think it's equivalent the pressure that I feel.
It's more my pressure is making sure I don't repeat the things that I had
in childhood so that my kids have the best chance in life and don't have to go through all of the same steps of I don't know what the right word is recovery or all the same steps of development later in life.
Mm-hmm.
They have
those foundational emotional building blocks already from a young age and they can just go through life feeling safe and secure and knowing they can come to us and yeah they don't have to work extra hard afterwards
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, so I guess our guilt are our things that we work really hard on come from two different places.
For you the guilt
comes from trying to break a cycle, trying to do things different.
Yeah, and guilt is the wrong word, because I wouldn't say I feel guilt.
Yeah, you actually don't feel guilt.
Yeah.
Like I might feel guilt in the moment for doing whatever, being a little extra harsh or something with one of the girls.
But I'm not gonna I don't know, my mind doesn't allow me to five days from now be still concentrating on the fact that I made this mistake and
Like I will pretty much always immediately repair with them and just be like, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done it that way.
Or maybe it's not right away, maybe I'm still annoyed, and then I come back twenty minutes later.
Yeah.
I don't usually let those things linger.
No, you don't.
Even for stuff that maybe I did when the kids were even younger, I just think I have
so much more information and practice and knowledge now on how to do things right that I could have been better when they were younger, but in the same sense I didn't know all of the same things that I know now.
Do you have to have compassion on that previous version of yourself?
Like them, I'm still developing.
Just because I'm an adult doesn't mean I know everything.
And that's what I'm trying to teach the kids too, is just because I'm your dad doesn't mean I know everything.
And even that is beautiful
Right.
And it's beautiful for your kids to be able to see that you're changing.
Like that is the true work of rebuilding that relationship and trust.
Right
It's like the more my dad knew, the more he researched this, the more he understood, he changed the way he acted to best support me
Yeah, and I think it would be different if I knew all of these things and then I was just complacent or lazy and didn't apply any of it.
But I feel like I'm actively applying
applying it and I recognize that yeah I'm not gonna do it perfectly all the time.
There's gonna be days where I've only slept four hours for whatever reason and I know that I will be grumpy.
Versus when you don't get enough sleep, it takes you a number of days before you end up getting grumpy.
Yeah.
And it's just it's something that I'm aware of already.
And I think that's a key piece is trying to understand the things that will trigger me to have those harsh reactions or be extra annoyed or something like that.
Yeah, so let's talk about that too because I do think that's a big piece of breaking a cycle or feeling less guilty is noticing th those triggers that come up for yourself and those things that
Okay, well, I know for you, ex for example, if you don't sleep well, you do become grumpy the next day.
And now you know that about yourself.
So the next day you might do things a little bit differently or not plan as busy of a day or
Just be mindful of walking away when you're starting to feel grumpy, understanding that being tired is a trigger for you.
Yeah.
Right?
For me, some of the things that trigger me, I think, are being too busy.
for too long.
And I am starting to understand for me like at work, if I have meetings back to back all day, I come home and usually I'm grumpier just because my brain is kind of overstimulated from the day that I just had
So maybe I sit in the car for a little bit of extra time on the way home or I don't listen to music or I try and plan my days so I don't have back-to-back meetings all day.
those kind of things, the awareness that we can build in ourselves, I think can really help with the triggers that we face and being the parent that we want to be for our kids.
And I think a lot of people are just coming to understand their own triggers now.
And they're coming to understand that being a calm and regulated parent isn't like a flip a switch that you can just flip on.
It it takes time.
Yeah, 100%.
Hey friends, so at pickup last week, our daughter asked Scott a truly kind of tricky question in front of her younger siblings.
Scott was telling me that when he heard a question like this, he used to panic, but this time he had a plan and he said
To our daughter, thank you for asking.
Let's talk tonight when we've got privacy.
And that's a line that he learned straight from our new body safety and consent course at Nurtry First.
So this new body safety and consent course is taught by me.
So
Jess, if you listen to this podcast, you know me.
I'm a child therapist and a mom of three, and I have taught body safety and consent education for years
This course takes all my years of experience teaching this education and gives you calm, age-appropriate language for body parts, consent, and boundaries.
You'll learn how to teach your kids that no means no, you'll learn how to teach them to read facial cues, you'll talk about safe and unsafe.
safe touch and you'll even teach them about their uh oh feeling.
There's guidance inside this course for the real life stuff like tickling that goes too far and even the difference between a secret and a surprise.
We made this course at Nurture First because research shows that body safety education helps kids speak
up sooner and we want that for our family, for Scott and I, but also for you.
So check the course out at nurturefirst.
com slash body safety and to save 10% use the code
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And just full disclosure here, we are the creators of this course and we're so proud of it.
Now, right before the podcast episode, you were saying that you were looking into some research on this topic.
And you were saying how you didn't actually know what the definition of reparenting is.
Yeah, and I have another thing that I want to ask you about too.
Okay, I'm excited.
So do you want to start with your other question or do you want to start with reparenting?
Let's talk about reparenting because I feel like I did not have a good understanding of what that actually meant before.
So tell me about the definition that you read about reparenting.
I would rather you do that because again I just learned it.
So Oh, okay.
Well, it is interesting that you brought up I didn't actually know the definition of reparenting because many people have different definitions of it.
Yeah.
For me, when I say the word reparenting, what I'm actually thinking of is giving myself or yourself the things that we need now that we didn't get when we were a child.
So
Often we think reparenting that just means like I'm treating my kids different than I was treated.
But it's actually all about treating ourselves different and giving ourselves the gifts that we didn't receive as a child.
So for you, for an example, maybe a gift that you didn't receive because you started working at such an early age was the ability to just play and just do things that were just fun with no like not being productive, no consequence to it.
And so for you, active reparenting could be when you're just playing Nintendo just for fun, right?
Or you're just collecting it just for fun.
Like there's no real reason to collect it.
There's no end goal.
It's just fun.
That that's an example of what reparenting could be like.
There's lots of different ways that we can reparent.
Sometimes is rest.
Right.
Like I never got rest as a kid.
I was so this isn't me, but just in general, like I was so busy, I was so overscheduled.
Yeah.
My parents forced me to do so many things.
And now as an adult, like I struggle to only be productive and I can never slow down.
So a way to reparent yourself and reparenting yourself helps you parent your kids.
would be to say, it's actually okay for me not to do this extra thing, or it's okay for me to say no, or it's okay for me to take a day off and not pull my kids out of school and just spend a day just for myself
So those are the kind of things that are actually what reparenting is.
And it's this whole idea of we need to nurture ourselves first in order to be able to nurture our kids.
Mm-hmm.
And we need to give ourselves the things that we didn't have so that we can give them to our kids.
So it's not just give to your kids, give to your kids, give to your kids.
Like there's two pieces to it.
Yeah.
And if I understand
correctly, the first step in order to doing that is understanding yourself better.
Yeah.
You can't really give things to yourself if you don't even understand what those things you needed were to begin with.
Exactly.
And I think a lot of parents why they're feeling so burnt out is they just immediately just start giving everything to their kids, right?
They listen to the podcast or they take in a lot of parenting information.
And instead of doing any of that internal work on like what they need to feel like the best version of themselves as a parent and what they didn't have when they were a kid.
they just start pouring to their kids and giving them everything and they end up feeling really burnt out and exhausted and guilty and wondering why it's not feeling right to them.
And we forget that parents are whole people and they need a lot of support and love themselves in order to be able to give that to their kids.
And I know that was even a big thing for both of us.
Like I think it's easier for us to just completely pour into our kids and just give them everything they need, or at least for me.
And it's very easy for me to become burnt out.
And it's difficult for me sometimes to pause and be like, wait, what do I need so that I can be the best mom to these kids?
And then not feel guilty about actually giving myself that thing.
It's complex and it can be hard
So uh what are some practical ways to do that then?
Like is it mindfulness and journaling and like all that stuff in order to help you
Quiet your mind and understand what you needed then or There's so many different ways we can do this.
It's a lot of the work that we do in therapy with with clients.
Sometimes it's pulling out old pictures of yourself, of when you were a child, looking at them, trying to remember what it was like to be that age, and trying to imagine, you know, what did I need?
Right.
So you might look at a picture of yourself and remember, okay, I was riding that red bike and oh yeah, I remember that day I got yelled at a ton by my dad.
And
Oh yeah, why did I get yelled at?
Oh, because I was angry and like having all sorts of meltdowns.
Oh, why was I having that?
You know, you start to look back and wonder.
And the question really is
What did I need back then?
And the answers to what we need now are often the same things that we needed back then.
Maybe you needed someone to sit down with you when you ate your meals.
And maybe you needed someone to prioritize feeding you three times a day.
Right?
You struggle with food now and you realize that, well, no one ever prioritized giving me meals.
So maybe the first thing you do on your reparenting journey is like, I'm gonna actually feed myself three times today every day.
Breakfast, lunch, and dinner
And for some people, that's huge to actually just prioritize having a meal three times a day.
And that's what they need, right?
It doesn't always have to be these big things like journaling or meditation.
Sometimes it's really, really simple
For some people it's even hygiene, right?
Their parents never bathed them or they didn't bathe them enough and they always smelt and then they were embarrassed about that.
So one of the reparenting things they do is they say
I'm gonna go out, I'm gonna get a shower scrub that I really like, that smells really good, and I'm gonna prioritize bathing myself regularly and actually taking care of myself.
And uh a lot of moms that I work with, they struggle with that and they deprioritize their own hygiene to the point where they haven't showered in five days and they
feel guilty to ask their partner if they can go take a shower.
I know that we've even talked about this before too, right?
Like you don't have to ask me just take a shower.
Like just tell me.
Scott, I'm gonna go take a shower.
you know, hang out with the kids.
So sometimes it's so simple, but those things like m meeting our basic needs and for a lot of people the basic needs that weren't met in childhood is important and that is taking care of your kids
People think, well, I'm taking care of myself, then I'm not with my kids.
Taking care of you is taking care of your kids.
I think we need to reframe the way we see that.
It's almost by extension you are if you learn that for yourself, you can also give those same things to your kids.
Exactly.
That's why, you know, if I do go to, let's say, a yoga class or I go take a shower when the kids would rather
I play with them.
Or I say, you know what, I'm not gonna play right now 'cause I I want to do my journaling this morning.
That's not me being a bad mom because I'm prioritizing my needs.
That's me taking care of myself enough so that when I go be with my kids, I can do it
Yeah, and I think in a lot of ways it could be bad if that's all you were doing and you were never spending time with the kids, but that's not the case.
You are spending as much time as possible with the kids and then you're also giving yourself the time to think clearly and be able to be present with them.
by doing those things that you need.
Yeah, exactly.
And I think that makes sense.
I think I know guilt is not something that you struggle with, but I know so many parents do.
Especially parents who maybe didn't engage in this parenting style for a while and now they're like, Oh, I feel like I have to repair with my kids so much so that I don't feel like I can ever do anything for myself.
Like I feel so you mean like
Almost make up for it.
Yeah, like I almost feel like I have to make up for the years that I treated them this different way, and now I don't feel like I deserve to give anything to myself anymore.
And I so I do think we need to remember that parenting is the relationship between you and your child and part of that is taking care of you so that you can take care of your child
And I found like this was such a struggle for me, especially as a working mom.
The amount of guilt that I felt in the last couple of years, now it's so much better.
Overworking, you've seen it, and being a mom, like this
push and pull like constantly feel of like I can't do enough at work now.
I can't do enough at home and so I will just never have any time for myself because
I don't deserve it because my kids deserve every ounce of me when I'm with them.
But that burns you out.
And then you can't show up as like for me, I couldn't show up as the mom I wanted to because I was just exhausted all the time.
the time.
So starting to do little things for myself, not huge, not like crazy, but it helped so much so that when I was with them or when I was at work
I could actually be the person I wanted to be, not just a shell of myself.
Even though I've tried to explain to you, you're working during school hours.
So you wouldn't have seen them anyways, but that's a whole separate thing.
That's a whole separate thing.
Yeah, no, and that's so true.
But that guilt for a long time ate away at me.
So I can really resonate with parents who say, I feel guilty.
And I want them to know that, yeah, we talk about a lot of stuff here, but we feel those feelings too.
Like they come up for us as well.
And no one is a perfect parent.
Right?
And you can know all the tools and still not be perfect.
Like the girls literally the other day I was on the way to school on Fridays, they're supposed to wear a school shirt.
I forgot the school shirts again.
And
I also forgot to tell my one of our kids that she had piano lesson that day.
So two of them in the back just start yelling at me, Mom, you always forget.
You're such a bad mom.
our one daughter sing recently is you're the baddest mommy.
You always forget our shirts.
Why wouldn't you have told me I had piano lessons today?
I can't believe that you would forget my books again.
And I
lost my cool.
Like I was on the way to work.
I had to drive them to school.
I was late, you know, and I was like, girls, you don't understand all the pressures that I have on me, you know
I have your school shirts, sure, and your piano and driving you to school and your bus isn't here today and you have this birthday party and I have to get a present for this person and then I have to go to work.
Can I have five meetings back to back today?
And now I'm late for them.
And I just kind of lost it on them telling them all these things that I have going on.
And as I did it, I almost started like laughing at myself at the end.
I'm like, this isn't their problem.
This is my problem that I have all these things.
And that's not on them.
So then I I paused, I took some deep breaths and they were all looking at me with big eyes and I said, I'm so sorry guys.
You know, I lost my cool on you.
These are not
your issues.
These are my things.
And you are not responsible for adult things.
And then one of our kids was like, that's a lot of stuff, Mom.
Yeah.
And then we just started laughing a little bit and and the other one was like, I'm sorry for yelling at you about the shirts.
I'm like, you know what?
No, it's okay.
Let's make a plan.
I'm gonna set an alarm on my phone so that we can try and remember the shirts
But they seemed to understand a little bit more after that, like what's all on the plate.
But I also made sure to apologize and say, look, you know, I shouldn't have lost my cool about this.
That wasn't fair.
Like there was a much better way I could have had this conversation with you.
Yeah.
And
by the time they got to school we were all good, we had a hug and we moved on.
Right?
It's like that's real parenting.
Moments like that come up.
You're not always going to be calm and composed, but that doesn't mean you're ruining your relationship with your child
So I learned about something called earned secure attachment.
And I thought it was quite interesting because I'd never heard that term before.
Never heard you use that term, but I feel like it I mean it.
is interesting for me as someone who maybe didn't grow up in the the best home environment and had a bunch of
whatever attachment wounds and all that.
But I think in general, it's kind of an interesting concept, the earn secure attachment, how it's possible in maybe you can explain this better than I can, but what I understood was it's
The ability for an adult to essentially reparent and build secure attachments with others and their kids and just be able to build the secure attachments even though they did not learn how to do that when they were a child.
And how the outcomes for parents or for adults, not necessarily just parents, just adults in general, who had those issues
in childhood, even abuse of homes and everything, the outcomes seem to be very positive.
Like they can have regular relationships.
Again, they're not perfect, but the outcomes seem to be no different from people who had great childhoods in the end.
And I just found that was interesting.
So I wanted to know what you know about this.
I haven't actually heard the term earned secure attachment, but I know about secure attachment.
I know a lot about how attachment is formed, right?
And so attachment, yeah, a lot of people like you who have had a lot of attachment wounds, it's not easy for you to form new attachments with people, right?
Because your defenses are so highly up that you're like, I'm assuming people are going to hurt me
It's kind of the the way that you uh go about the world.
And so people who don't have secure attachment, they might have anxious attachment, you know, there's lots of different attachment types.
they might be the ones to kind of flee from relationships or self-sabotage relationships or just have a very difficult time communicating their feelings, people pleasers.
These are all signs of insecure attachments.
Well what happens is if a person, let's say you
has someone who can consistently shows up for them, consistently shows that they're trustworthy, consistently pours back into them.
And in the same way
you are able to become vulnerable and allow yourself to depend.
Over time, secure attachments can be formed.
And we can actually change the way that your brain views relationships to be like they're not all bad.
Actually, there are people that are looking out for the good in me.
And you can also do that with your own children, right?
So that can actually be very healing when you have a child and your child
fully depends on you.
You are it for your child, right?
In those early years.
And if you can start to form those secure relationships with your children, that can be incredibly healing for you as a parent.
I don't think we talk enough about that, right?
And it's not always healing.
Sometimes our own wounds get so much in the way that it's very difficult for us to do that
But if we can allow them to depend on us and consistently show up for them and build that trusted relationship, sometimes our relationships with our own children
are the most healing ones.
They show us that we're worthy of being loved.
Like you can see that in the way a little toddler just innocently loves you and runs up to you and
grabs your neck and hugs you and says I love you daddy right like it shows you that you're worthy of that and I think that can come out in your other relationships too.
Yeah
Parenting can be hard, but it can also be really healing.
I agree.
I think the research is relatively recent that I was reading.
So this earn secure attachment.
concept was quite interesting to me.
What it did talk about was how much work it actually is to be that person who reparents after having a very challenging childhood.
'Cause I mean reparenting from what I understand, anyone can do it.
Parents are never perfect.
Our children will likely have to do it a bit as well.
It's just a part of the process of living and having your own kids.
But then if you had a a difficult childhood
than this concept of earn secure attachment.
Yes, it depends on having maybe someone that is trustworthy and honest and reliable and everything.
But it's a lot of work for the person actually trying to do better.
break the cycle.
It's huge.
And the research was just showing that if parents put in that work or people put in that work, it is possible to not have the anxious attachment.
It's possible to have this earned secure attachment.
later in life as an adult.
So you can still build that.
It's just it's a challenge to do.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And I think like I know everything you're saying.
It's just that term I haven't heard of.
before.
Yeah, maybe it was that just a specific article that was like research paper that I was reading.
The science of attachment, what you're discussing, that is not new.
Like that is something we've known for a very long time that you can change your attachment style.
But it is so much harder for those that didn't have it in the early years.
And that is the most people that I hear who feel really guilty.
And back to the very first thing that I said.
They yell at their kids and they hear their own mother's voice come out of their mouth and then they say, Ah, am I her?
have I actually changed anything, right?
And so it is important to note that if you are that cycle breaker, you're that person who really has to do that deep reparenting work.
And you're wondering, why is parenting so much easier for my friends and my like the other people in my life?
It is harder for you, right?
Like you are actually working against like your primitive attachment style that you learned in these very early years
And that doesn't mean that it's impossible to change it, but it is okay to give yourself some extra grace and say it's hard because it is hard for me
I think that's important to know.
Something that I said, so I told you I was talking to this friend and she was saying, I'm struggling because I'm really trying hard.
And I'm doing so many things different.
But I still notice sometimes my mother's voice come out of my mouth and all of a sudden I'm yelling.
And I don't like how that feels.
After I yell, I repair, but it's hard
And, you know, we had a long conversation about it.
And then I said to her, Well, what would it have meant for you if your mom felt the same way that you're feeling right now?
And she was like, Well, it would have meant everything.
Like my mom never felt guilty for yelling.
She never apologized to me.
She never wondered how she could be better.
Like she just yelled.
Mm-hmm.
And I said, that
Is what tells me that you're breaking cycles.
The fact that we're having this conversation right now.
Like your mom didn't go and have that conversation with her friends.
She didn't say to her friends, I feel terrible because I yelled this one time last week
you know, and I heard my own mother's voice come out of my mouth.
She didn't have the ability to acknowledge that.
I said, that's what tells you that you're breaking cycles.
That feeling of
I want to do things different.
Yeah, and like actively trying to And actively seeking out a conversation like this with someone trusted.
Trusty.
How can I make that not happen again or happen less often?
And so I really encourage parents to lean into that
Like the fact that you want to do something different, the fact that you're listening to a parenting podcast, right?
Like what would it have meant for you if your parents sat down and listened to this episode?
Probably so much.
So I I think we are so hard on ourselves, but we do need to give ourselves a lot of grace and know that the little things that we're doing
make a huge difference and you don't have to do it perfect.
And imagine how much it means to your child that literally on your spare time you're like, I want to listen to Justin Scott talk about parenting.
Like
That's crazy.
That's huge.
And so I really wish people would be compassionate on themselves and recognize how good of a job they're doing.
Nice.
I like that.
I think that's a good way to end.
I think so too.
I hope this episode felt like a big warm cozy hug and imagine that I'm giving you a hug.
Maybe not Scott.
I don't know.
I would love a hug.
I'll give you a hug.
I don't know if the audience wants you to hug them.
Oh, I see.
Yeah, that's fair.
And yeah, let us know if you found this helpful.
And we'll talk to you next week.
See ya.
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