Parenting Blog

"Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom." -- Victor Frankl

"Where there is great love, there are always miracles." – Willa Cather

This is Step 7 in our series Ten Steps to Unconditional Love. 

Can you love unconditionally when your child drives you crazy? It's not easy. In fact, it's such heavy lifting of the heart that it builds real love muscle.  But nothing changes your child's behavior quite as quickly.

It's easy to love unconditionally when our child is being delightful and we feel good. But how many of us can stay lovingly connected to our child while we set limits on behavior?  How many of us can resist the temptation to lash out at our child when we feel justifiably angry? How many of us can love our child through his upsets? 

All humans get angry.  All parents get angry at their children. And we don't feel very loving at those moments.

Healing our ability to love unconditionally means committing to parenting from love, not anger. Instead of unloading your anger on this small person entrusted to your care and guidance, can you teach yourself to take a deep breath and a few minutes to calm yourself? 

The key is to enlarge that space between your child’s stimulus and your reaction, so that you have the freedom to choose a response that heals.  Then you'll be able to show up as a real teacher for your child, and help her process her upset constructively.  How? 

1. When you're angry, remove yourself from your child.  Forget about teaching your child lessons unless you're in a state of love and can teach lovingly.  A teachable moment is always when both people are receptive and positive.  Anger and punishment are never based in love.

2. What if your child "deserves" your anger?  You're always entitled to your anger, but it's always YOUR anger, not the other person's responsibility.  In any case, that's not a judgment you can make while you're angry.

3. What if your child's behavior requires "discipline"?  Discipline means guidance. Your guidance will be a lot more effective once you're calm.  It's our job as parents to be our child's guide through the realm of emotions, our child's role model in handling emotions constructively.  Healthy anger management always means acknowledging our anger and listening to the message it has for us. It never means acting on our anger from that "fight, flight or freeze" place where we have to "win" and our child has to "lose."

4. But isn’t it healthy to express your anger? No, actually. Research shows that expressing anger just makes us more angry.  Anger is a defense against more vulnerable emotions, like hurt, fear, or shame.  But that doesn’t mean you stuff it – that’s how you make yourself sick.  It’s essential to listen to your anger's messages about your life. It’s important to look under the anger for what's hurting or scaring you, and then to give yourself the chance to feel those emotions.  Once you do, you won’t need to defend against those feelings by staying angry.

5. Teach later, after everyone is calm and connected.  If you make your teachable moments into learnable moments by waiting until your child is receptive, your teaching will stick. And your child will get something even better than the lesson about behavior -- the skills for emotional self-management.  And just as important, the unshakable conviction that he is wholly and unconditionally loved exactly as he is, including all those messy, passionate emotions that make us human.

Notice I didn't say this would be easy.  But every time you manage your anger instead of spilling it onto your child, it gets easier.  Just keep practicing, finding that moment of freedom between the stimulus (your child's behavior) and your own response. Noticing is what gives us a choice next time.

Loving unconditionally is "Win-Win" parenting. That's because not acting on your anger creates more space for love.  And where there is more love, there is always more room for miracles.