When you Realize You Aren’t a Good Inner Loving Parent

By: Dr. Denise Renye

Inner child work (or play, really) is crucial for living the life you want to live. It helps you improve your relationship with yourself, invites more creativity in your life, elicits more sexual freedom, and supports trauma healing. (If you’re new to inner child work, start with this post.) And yet, even knowing all the benefits of inner child work and desiring to be a good inner loving parent to the little ones inside, you might realize you’re not actually a good parent. In fact, you might realize you are kind of a crappy inner loving parent. But remember, no one gets a manual on how to be a parent (let alone a good parent), whether you are parenting a human child or your little one inside.

What is a crappy inner loving parent? The classification is very subjective so I can only speak in broad strokes but there are some common ways people parent themselves badly. On one end, people are neglectful and completely ignore their inner children and their inner children’s needs. They pretend they don’t exist or think they don’t really need parenting.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are inner parents who imagine physically beating their inner children. That could be because the kids have needs that the adult doesn’t want to tend to or because they perceive their inner children as being unruly or misbehaving. Everyone needs boundaries. Boundaries are a healthy way to help your inner child feel safe so they can flourish. You can tell your inner children “No” firmly without spanking them.

Corporeal punishment is abuse and only reinforces shame and fear and that’s true even if the abuse is inside of you to inner children. You may be wondering how corporeal punishment shows up in relation to the inner child. It may be a harsh inner critic or even addiction. That’s because oftentimes an addiction is an effort to numb painful feelings. Frequently, those painful feelings stem from the inner children who don’t feel seen, heard, understood, or cared for in some other way. Addiction is a way to “sedate” those inner children in a swift, Band-Aid sort of way. Stay tuned for an extensive blogpost on this topic. 

Why does this happen? Why are people not great parents to their inner children? Because we all replicate what we learned and what was modeled for us. As Canadian mythopoetic author, poet, and analytical psychologist Marion Woodman says, “Children who are not loved in their very beingness do not know how to love themselves. As adults, they have to learn to nourish, to mother their own lost child.”

In other words, if your parents or caregivers were neglectful or abusive growing up, it’s likely you’ll perpetuate that behavior yourself. If you didn’t learn another way of being, you won’t act differently. It’s important to note that if you’ve become aware you aren’t a great parent to your inner children, be gentle with yourself. This is not another thing to beat yourself up about. Reparenting is something new and it takes time to learn.

Sometimes as you’re reparenting yourself, it’s helpful to think of a parent you do know – real or fictional – whose behavior you can model. Maybe you want to be like the parents on the TV show Bluey who make mistakes but apologize for them. Or you want to be like Burt Hummel from Glee who supported his son Kurt and said he would fight to the death for Kurt’s right to love whoever he wanted. Maybe the parent you want to emulate is one of your loving friends or your therapist! Whoever it is, start to ask yourself, “What would ____ do in this situation?” and then do it.

As you continue the journey of being an inner loving parent, realize that you will make mistakes and that’s OK. The important thing is to apologize to your inner kids and then do things differently. Show them/yourself that you want to do better and then do it. Remember, it’s never too late to be the parent you always wanted.

Journal prompts

·      How would I rate myself as an inner loving parent?

·      How would my inner children rate me?

·      Is there anything I can do differently or better? If so, what?

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