MOMENT | If Becoming a Mother Has Changed How You See Your Own Childhood, Listen to This

0:07Hi everyone, it's your host Zoe here. Welcome, welcome. It's Monday, which means it's Motherkind moment day, your little shot of wisdom and inspiration on a Monday. Today's moment is with Harriet Shearsmith. She's an expert in dysfunctional family dynamics. And this clip is going to remind you, you can break cycles. You can do it differently. And that actually having a new awarenesses and insight about your family dynamics is a totally normal part heart of raising your own family. I hope you love this little shot of inspiration this morning. Here it is. And make sure to subscribe so you never miss a Monday moment ever again.

0:49And I will see you on Thursday for another incredible full episode of Motherkind. And remember, I am right here cheering you on.

1:07it's how you were parented that kind of lays the foundation sets your blueprint for what your parenting experience will be like and when you've not necessarily had the most healthy experience with your own parents that's going to have a big impact but often we don't recognize that we've not had a healthy experience with our parents. We don't even consider it when we get to adulthood. There are so many societal messages, I think, as well as messages that are within your family unit of, you know, be grateful to your parents after all I've done for you and all these kind of things. And especially when you have what we would call an enmeshed relationship, like I had with my mum, which essentially for anyone who doesn't know is where you have that kind of ultra close relationship where there perhaps isn't an end to you in a beginning to them.

1:58You've maybe grown up experiencing a lot of adult things before adulthood, experiencing perhaps being their best friend, standing spouse, standing therapist, what we would call parentification. And you don't really recognise how unhealthy that can be until you become a parent. And then you start to look at this small bundle that you've been given and you go, oh, I would never want to treat you the way I was treated or I wouldn't want you to feel like that. And then you start to reflect, well, was my childhood great? Maybe I'm just making it up. And one of the things I ask people to do when I work with them as clients is to start to think about your childhood and ask yourself, would you want that to be your child's childhood?

2:46And then you generally have your answer. You generally come back. If you haven't had a healthy experience with absolutely not or oh well maybe it was that bad then and I think when I had my own children there were so many ways in which I started to look at my relationship with my mum and think this really isn't healthy in the now and it wasn't healthy in the then I wouldn't want them to have the experiences that I had but looking at the relationship that I had in the now when I first became a mum, there were so many ways in which I think I felt this level of shame and codependency with my mum of kind of needing her there.

3:27I think one of the things you're taught when you first become a parent or when you first find out you're pregnant even is this idea of how your mum's going to be there to support you through it. And you're going to have this wonderful experience with your mum. And I certainly felt like I had that in my first pregnancy. But then when I reflect back on it, there were a lot of ways in which she made it quite difficult for me and my partner to enjoy that experience together because it became more about me and her and more about what she would want. You know, she was present at the birth. I certainly wouldn't have felt like I could say no to that.

4:03So when you lean into your parenting experience more and you start to notice the red flags and then you start to call them out, that's quite often when you find you have the most difficult experiences because there's that push back and the more I reached for my autonomy and the more I settled into my role as a mum and the kind of mum that I wanted to be in particular the more the fractures in the relationship grew and grew and grew to the point where it really just became really toxic

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4:50So much of what you said, I think is fascinating and will resonate with a lot of people. What were some of those specific signs? So you said one was, I didn't feel I could say no to certain things without there being a reaction. Or what else were some of those signs for someone who's like, huh, interesting, my mum feels like my best friend and it feels maybe a bit off. what other are the specific signs that people could notice? I think when you are struggling to have any kind of identity outside of what your parent wants you to be that's a pretty big sign that things are not right. If you are constantly trying to live up to expectations constantly feeling like you're at odds with who you want to be and how you want to parent to try and please your parent I think that's a pretty big red flag for people And that can be things like wanting to do things a certain way and your parent constantly poo-pooing it, your parent constantly slapping it down, telling you that that's wrong.

5:49And then you have things like crossing your boundaries. So if you are someone who says, hey, I don't want my child to have sweets, that's entirely your choice. And that's something that every parent should be able to make a choice in. every parent should be able to set these kind of boundaries and you then find out that your parent is constantly undermining that it might seem quite harmless but eventually you start to notice that they're doing it with other things and when you reset the boundary or you re-establish the boundary and you say hey I said they weren't allowed that I'm the parent remember that's not okay and it becomes you know you're so sensitive lots of what we'd call gaslighting language you're so sensitive you're overly dramatic you make such a big deal out of everything it's so unnecessary oh I'm a grandma or grandma I'm allowed to do it all of those things that just really make you doubt yourself as a parent they're pretty big red flags as well yeah you hear that quite a lot don't you like oh I meant I meant to spoil them yeah I meant to break the rules yeah and so what I find so fascinated about this is that so many people rely on grandparents for child care and for help and actually would be really stuck without it and this is something that I think about quite a lot you know with my community I get asked this a lot which is I kind of really need their support and I really don't want them to have YouTube and suites or whatever else is going on how is it about figuring out how important is that to you or is it actually this is a pattern where I'm not being disrespected at all and I'm going to have to do something about this.

7:31How would you help someone unpick that? I think it's exactly that. I think it's looking for the patterns. You know, it's looking for the things that come at the detriment of you. If you are a bit miffed because your parent is undermining your boundary a bit, but it feels relatively harmless to you and it doesn't feel like a big deal, then that's something you can have a conversation about. If that's something that is bothering you and you feel you can't have a conversation about it, that's when we need to start looking at what's going on in that relationship. And I think what I would say to somebody who was navigating that experience is it's about finding a balance between what is comfortable, what is acceptable, what is healthy around your children.

8:18One of the things that my mum in particular used to do that we would constantly ask her not to would be make very racist or homophobic remarks in front of the kids. She would let them watch TV whilst she was watching, say, some kind of thriller or crime programme, but they'd be maybe three or four. And it would be, well, if they want to be in my space, then they have to deal with the things that I want to do. And there was kind of that centering of self as opposed to, oh, I'm the adult here. I need to look after them. And for us, those were big no-nos. Those were big things that would cause a problem.

8:55And if it gets to that point where you are weighing up, is this a really big issue for me? Is this something I either can't have a conversation about or when I do, it's not being heard? Then at that point, you have to consider what are my alternative options? And that's really difficult for a lot of people. it doesn't feel like there are alternative options, but there has to be sometimes.