What lingers from the parent's individual past, unresolved or incomplete, often becomes part of her or his irrational parenting.
Interpretation
Unresolved issues from a parent's past can negatively impact their parenting style.
Virginia Satir suggests that the personal histories and unresolved conflicts of parents can significantly influence their behaviors and decisions in raising children. This means that what parents have experienced, whether positive or negative, can manifest in their parenting approach, potentially leading to irrational or unintended consequences that affect their children's development and emotional well-being.
In practice
During a parenting workshop, a speaker may reference this quote to highlight the importance of self-awareness in parenting.
Over the years I have developed a picture of what a human being living humanely is like. She is a person who understand, values and develops her body, finding it beautiful and useful; a person who is real and is willing to take risks, to be creative, to manifest competence, to change when the situation calls for it, and to find ways to accommodate to what is new and different, keeping that part of the old that is still useful and discarding what is not.
The message sent is not always the message received.
The recommended daily requirement for hugs is: four per day for survival, eight per day for maintenance, and twelve per day for growth.
Your responses to the events of life are more important than the events themselves.
Put together all the existing families and you have society. It is as simple as that. Whatever kind of training took place in the individual family will be reflected in the kind of society that these families create.
I feel that adolescence has served its purpose when a person arrives at adulthood with a strong sense of self-esteem, the ability to relate intimately, to communicate congruently, to take responsibility, and to take risks. The end of adolescence is the beginning of adulthood. What hasn't been finished then will have to be finished later.
And that was the greatest heartbreak of all- no matter how spectacular we want our children to be, no matter how perfect we pretend they are, they are bound to disappoint. As it turns out, kids are more like us than we think: damaged, through and through.
Every time I was playing basketball, I felt sick to my stomach. I didn't realize that feeling was having to leave my family - having to leave my sister, who can't even communicate with me when I'm gone.
My father was always in good spirits, he loved football. It makes me a bit sad because if he could enjoy seeing me now, what I have achieved, that would be a highlight in his life. But I'm sure that he watches over me from above.
As a parent, it's my responsibility to equip my child to do this - to grieve when grief is necessary and to realize that life is still profoundly beautiful and worth living despite the fact that we inevitably lose one another and that life ends, and we don't know what happens after death.
Our greatest hope is to bring up children inspired by their opportunities for being helpful and loving.
A father may turn his back on his child, brothers and sisters may become inveterate enemies, husbands may desert their wives, wives their husbands. But a mother's love endures through all.
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