Dear Dr. Debbie,
I believe I had some trauma as a child – it’s not a clear recollection of anything specific, just a lingering unsettled memory of not feeling safe. It’s not something I feel comfortable talking to my siblings about. My wife and I have a happy growing family for which I am grateful – for myself and for them. My question is, will the shadow from my past ever leave me? And more importantly, will this affect my children?
Daddy With a Past
Dear DWP,
In 1974, Selma Fraiberg, Edna Adelson, and Vivian Shapiro introduced the metaphor, “Ghosts in the Nursery” in a professional lecture describing how a parent’s unresolved (and even unremembered) childhood experiences can negatively influence their parenting. What happened a generation ago can unconsciously impact the present parent-child relationship. “The ghosts represent the repetition of the past in the present.”
Projection
If a child’s emotional wounds are left to fester into adulthood, with the details consciously buried but the emotions always subconsciously remembered, the past may come to the surface when a child makes demands, communicates fear, shows anger, or expresses sadness.
Emotional wounds from childhood could come from constant criticism, not receiving affection, repeated abandonment, frequently shifting living arrangements, unreliable caregivers, a combative sibling, or social isolation. More severe damage was uncovered in the Kaiser-Permanente study, begun in 1995, which identified 10 Adverse Childhood Experiences. If several of these conditions are present – for example, the death or desertion of a parent, physical or sexual abuse, witnessing violence – an individual has an increased risk for health and mental health disorders in adulthood.
Flawed parenting of the past can interfere with good parenting in the present. Now the former child is the parent, but the present-day child’s emotions can trigger a child-like response from the parent. The parent is made fearful of the child’s fear. The parent gets angry at the child’s anger. The parent is overwhelmed by sadness to see sadness in the child.
What the baby needs is a grown-up.
Protection
You’ve taken the first step by asking about the power of suppressed memories. Your next step should be to work with a mental health professional to dig around a little, even if just to clarify how your feelings feel.
Make comparisons between your family of origin and the family you and your wife have established. There are important elements to family life that, as an adult, you understand give your children a sense of safety including the knowledge that they are being well taken care of by parents who love and enjoy them.
What was missing for you in your childhood? What do you wish wasn’t part of your childhood?
Stability, Reliability, Positivity
You can provide a better childhood for your children than the one you had. The characteristics of good parenting may be recognizable by examples in other families (even fictitious families from books, shows, and movies!): harmony between parents, guidance that is reasonable and consistent, support for children’s interests and growing skills including how to get along with others, and as they’re ready, an expectation that children can contribute to family functioning and eventual independence.
One way to proceed despite the burden of childhood trauma is to consciously re-parent yourself. Use “self-talk” to give yourself encouragement when you struggle, direction when you feel lost, accolades when you achieve, and forgiveness when you make a mistake. Rewrite any negative echoes of the past with positive messages that can better serve you in the present.
The wisdom from “Ghosts in the Nursery” is to express those childhood memories and emotions in a safe place (ideally a therapeutic relationship) to free your mind for your parenting role. In their work with mothers and their babies, they observed, “When the mother’s own cries are heard, she will hear her child’s cries.
Dr. Debbie
Write your question to Dr. Debbie! Please include age(s) of your child(ren) and other details about the situation or concern.
Deborah Wood, Ph.D. is a child development specialist and founding director of Chesapeake Children’s Museum, located at 25 Silopanna Road in Annapolis.
Summer hours for CCM are from 10 am to 5 pm daily. Online reservations are available or call: 410-990-1993. Walk-ins are welcome. Each Thursday there is a guided nature walk at 10:30 am. Art and Story Time with Mrs. Spears and Puppy the Puppet is on Monday mornings at 10:30 am. Professional childcare providers can get 6 hours of continuing education on Saturday, July 12 for The Music in Me for $25 thanks to a grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services.
