Parent Yourself First: Raise Confident, Compassionate Kids by Becoming the Parent You Wish You'd Had - Hardcover

Kappadakunnel, Bryana

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593716515 ISBN 13: 9780593716519

Verlag: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

A fresh, non-nonsense parenting guide that shows you how to become a great parent (even if you didn’t have one yourself).

Many of us didn’t have a perfect childhood. But it’s never too late (or too early!) to transform into the parent you were always meant to be—grounded, present, intentional, compassionate, and confident. In Parent Yourself First, licensed marriage and family therapist Bryana Kappadakunnel argues that the secret to successful parenting is to UN-learn the wounded patterns you grew up with and create new ways to connect with your child. Parenting from a place of connection may feel unlike anything you experienced as a child or what you thought parenting was meant to be. But the results can be remarkable—and transformative.

As the founder of the popular Conscious Mommy community on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, Kappadakunnel explains that your upbringing is probably impacting your parenting style in ways you don’t even fully recognize, from how you manage your own emotions to how you connect with your kids in their vulnerable moments. In Parent Yourself First, she shares powerful stories from the families she’s counseled and practical tools for managing common parenting woes like tantrums and defiance. Her promise: You can break free of past patterns that no longer serve you and liberate your soul from old traumas and wounds.

Everyone has baggage. But it’s your responsibility to make sure your baggage doesn’t become your child’s problem. Healing yourself allows you to truly connect with your child; understand their needs; and guide them to live the happy, authentic life that they deserve.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Bryana Kappadakunnel is a licensed marriage and family therapist, an infant/early childhood mental health specialist, and a perinatal mental health specialist. She has an MA in Clinical Psychology from Pepperdine University and is the CEO and founder of Conscious Mommy and Child Parent Connection.

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Chapter 1

Say Hello to
Your Inner Child

How Your Past Shapes Your Present

Jessica believed her five-year-old daughter, Dani, was an "angry, rude kid" who couldn't make friends and never listened. Dani did what she wanted, when she wanted, and didn't seem to care about the consequences.

"I honestly question if I even like being around her," said Jessica. "Is that a terrible thing to say?"

Jessica wanted to feel close to Dani. She loved her. She just struggled to like her sometimes. It wasn't how Jessica wanted to be as a parent, but she wasn't sure how to break out of this cycle.

Shortly into our work together, Jessica revealed that, as a child, she had always struggled to feel close to her own parents. "I felt like an inconvenience to them. I even wondered sometimes why they had me," she admitted. Jessica summed up her childhood with one word: lonely. She'd thought that having a child would heal that loneliness, but now she had a child of her own and felt more alone than ever.

It was no surprise that Jessica struggled to support Dani. She was still carrying some heavy emotional baggage from her own childhood, specifically the abandonment she experienced from her parents. And it was distorting how she saw her own daughter. The more Dani embodied the anger Jessica had for years learned to repress and deny, the more Jessica found herself rejecting Dani altogether. Jessica was locked in a cycle of loneliness and shame she desperately wished she could break. But she just didn't know how.

"It's so painful to think about," Jessica admitted to me. "Not feeling wanted-that's how I felt my entire childhood. It's something I never wanted my child to feel. But I'm doing it all over again to Dani. And I'm afraid I've already done the damage." Jessica was drowning in her own fears of inadequacy, which had been sown and grown long before Dani even existed.

For things to really change with Dani, Jessica had to be willing to explore the trapped child within who felt too scared to make a fuss. She had to parent herself first, before she could be a better parent to Dani.

Listening to Your Inner Child

How you show up as a parent is influenced by your childhood experiences-both the painful and the positive. This sounds simple, but too many of us gloss over the effect our own childhood has on our parenting style today. I get it. It can be extremely challenging to look back and recall what you went through as a child, and you might find this process really difficult at times. Be gentle with yourself. You're here to break the cycles of shame and parent your children with intention and connection. This is a noble effort. No matter how tough this road may be, I want you to remember that you're built for this.

I'll talk a lot in these pages about your "inner child." What do I mean by that? Your inner child is a psychological representation of your deepest fears and anxieties, as well as your unmet childhood needs. This inner child has been listening and learning since before you were even conscious of your surroundings, and it has picked up a lot of information (some that might not even be directly known to you) about who you are and what you require. Experiences in our past inform our inner child, even as we age. Some of us have a loud, needy, demanding inner child who takes the wheel at any opportunity. Others have learned to silence our inner child altogether, only for it to rage with potentially self-destructive consequences. Our inner child is particularly loud during times of conflict and strife! But by listening to our inner child, we'll unlock truths about our own past-as well as insights about how we relate to the children in our life today.

As we work through this book, we'll learn more about how to hear and heal that inner child within us to be a better parent to the kid in front of us. It can be challenging work. Remember: be gentle with that childlike voice inside you. Just like you would never consciously reject your own child, your inner child longs (and deserves) to feel accepted for who they are.

To feel safe, your inner child requires gentleness, kindness, and compassion. We all deserve that, no matter what our age, don't we? Yet many of us have internalized a harsh, critical voice when we speak to and about ourselves, which only further demeans our inner child. Have you ever wondered why you get hung up on feeling like a failure? Chronically guilty? Perpetually unlovable? Never enough? Misunderstood? These fears are all attached to your inner child and the "wounds" you inflict upon yourself when you don't treat them with compassion. When left unexamined and unhealed, these wounds become your core inner child narrative, the unconscious story that colors how you perceive yourself and everyone around you.

Children are not born defeated and disheartened. In its pure form, the inner child is curious, observant, self-accepting, totally present, trusting, open to taking risks, unafraid of failure, persistent, and joyful. But it has been said that children are the canvas upon which parents paint their unrealized hopes and dreams, and as a result many children suffer under the weight of their parents' expectations. They lose the free spirit of the inner child and replace it with survival skills such as competition, comparison, perfectionism, people pleasing, judgment, imposter syndrome, and more.

The inner child is not a rational thinker but an emotional one. When your inner child is triggered, it's often an indication of a need that is not being adequately attended to. So, if you're feeling empty and aren't sure that your needs will be promptly met, maybe you'll get angry, anxious, or nervous. You may run away, hide, or retreat. Perhaps you'll be rendered speechless, panicked, frozen, or stuck. Maybe you'll pretend like everything is perfectly fine, but behind the facade of your smile, you're slowly withering away inside. When these patterns emerge, know that it is your inner child speaking and your wounds are asking for healing.

By the time we grow up, a lot of these patterns forged in childhood have become automatic. But by taking the time to consider the thoughts, feelings, and needs of your inner child, you'll facilitate a deeper connection with the child in front of you. By intentionally making space for your inner child, you begin to mature as an adult-and as a parent.

Practically no one gets out of childhood without inner child wounding. My client Russ had never been to therapy, and he was quick to inform me that his wife "dragged" him into my office to get help with parenting their four kids. They would misbehave, he would explode, she would cry. Wash, rinse, repeat. The cycle was exhausting and unproductive. But no one could figure out how to break out of it. When I asked Russ what I could do for him, he lowered his gaze.

"I'm not used to asking for help. So, I really don't know where to begin." Russ was a fireman and a paramedic, so his ambivalence toward receiving help made sense. As a wounded healer myself, I knew that many people with difficult pasts were drawn to the helping professions. I wondered if Russ could relate.

Russ shared that his mother had been easily overwhelmed by parenting him and his sister, and as a result she hadn't been consistently emotionally available. She had yelled a lot and often reminded him of the ways he wasn't living up to her expectations. His father had threatened him with punishments and consequences if he didn't obey, and he'd often spanked him when Russ defied him. Russ felt voiceless beneath their authoritarian control. And these patterns continued into adulthood. His parents lived nearby, and even though Russ was a husband and father himself, he still felt pressure to comply with his parents' increasingly urgent demands on his time and attention, as if he were still a...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: G.P. Putnam's Sons
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2025
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593716515
• ISBN 13: 9780593716519
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 368
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: G.P. Putnam's Sons; https://www.penguin.com/putnam/; ; 1745 BROADWAY Attn: Madison Forsander; NEW YORK; NY; 10019; USA
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@phaidon.com; gpsr@phaidon.com; ; Zähringerstraße 24; Berlin; 10707; Deutschland