As a clinician, I have spoken with countless parents who have indicated an inability to unconditionally love and accept themselves, but declare an unconditional love and acceptance of their children.  My argument is this:  if parents are incapable of unconditionally approving, loving, and accepting themselves, then the children will most likely adhere to parent’s negative view of themselves, rather than adhering to the positive strokes that have been granted.  Yet, if  children receive positives strokes from negative parents, this will help insulate the children from the profound effect of the parents’ negative viewpoints of themselves, but will not completely shelter them from this negative bondage that the parents carry within their own being.

If parents see themselves in a negative light, the children learn that it is okay to defame their own being, while positively stroking the life of another. “For what I say unto you, is not what I accept for myself.”  Furthermore, if I have little love for myself, then how am I assured that I am unconditionally loving, accepting, and approving of another? For if we place conditions upon our own life, then we can be assured that we have placed conditions upon the lives of others.

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Why is it that we can be having a perfectly good day as a parent juggling life: kids, their homework and school commitments, play dates and activity schedules, up keep of the house, the dog, work demands, etc, and then we can come in the door from any of the 95 places we often squeeze into our day before 10am, and sometimes we are even miraculously unstressed, unfettered, in fact in a good mood. We are pretty much, super hero parents on theses days! And then we return home. The change that sweeps over us is like a large meteor falling from the sky of significant weight crashing in at astonishing speeds; our children have turned us completely mad! Mad like crazy people mad, as well as mad like angry raging mad! Seems rather unfair. What just happened?

Well, our brains are equipped with these fancy things called mirror neurons. Usually they are quite a helpful group. Explained, they are  “monkey see, monkey do” neurons. Mirror neurons function to prepare to mimic someone else’s intentional action. For example if you stick your tongue out a few times at a newborn (don’t let the mother see you do this, she may think you are mean and odd) that newborn will do the same thing back to you. Fabulous party trick. Or, when you see someone yawn you often have to suppress yourself from yawning. So these neurons are really helpful when it comes to motor learning.

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