Breaking Generational Cycles with Compassion this Mother's day: How Catholic Moms can improve their positive parenting skills from a simple perspective shift around how they think about their own parents

Some of us have amazing relationships with our moms and mother-in-laws and some of us have some deep hurt and pain.  We're talking about how a perspective shift in terms of how we view the generation that raised us can help us to keep a growth mindset in breaking generational cycles for our own kids.

Transcript:

Mother’s day can hard if we have complicated relationships.

Hey, folks, I just wanted to hop on this week for a little perspective about Mother's Day. I know a lot of us have complicated relationships with our own mothers and our mother in laws. And some of us have great relationships. But I do know so many also have deep wounds and hurts. I especially see this in the context of when we're talking about our own parenting, especially if you're the first generation to try something like gentle parenting that the last generation didn't do as much. We find it hard, because we didn't see it modeled. And we have healing work to do on ourselves too. And sometimes we see ourselves falling into the same patterns as our parents and trying to break cycles, we wish we didn't have to break, we wish we had been raised differently, or that they'd been better so that we could be better. My friends, this is all very normal. But I want to offer you a different perspective in honor of Mother's Day.

We are works in progress

Because as much as you are criticizing your mom or your mother in law, you're probably also criticizing yourself, or maybe your husband. And this parenting thing is super hard. It brings out all of our character flaws, and all our unhealed wounds come to the surface. We wish they had taught us differently. We wish they hadn't yelled at us or spanked us or whatever it is they did. We wish they'd held space for our big feelings. And in that same light, we wish we hadn't yelled at our own kids, or whatever it is we did. We wish we knew how to hold space for their big feelings. We blame our parents for not teaching us differently. Guys, I really understand this. But I want to offer you a gentler perspective both for you and for your parents. Now, I know there are some truly terrible parents out there. But there are also a lot of parents who were just doing the best they knew how to do. For most of us, were just human, and our parents are just human, and their parents were just human. And when it comes to breaking cycles, very few of us are going to become perfect parents in our kids childhood. It might take us until we have great grandchildren to learn to parent the way we wish we could from the beginning, I want you to be patient with yourself. And I want you to be patient with your own parents to learning to be good parents is a long process. And for many of us, we're not going to become saints before leaving this life. You and your parents might both be on that track still. And there are so many cycles, our parents broke for us. Maybe not all of them. But there were a lot. And they didn't have the internet, or half the resources, we have to learn to do better.

Our Parents Broke Generational Cycles for Us

When you look at how our parents generation was raised and how their parents were raised, things have really come far. I know my parents broke a ton of very harsh cycles and raised me very differently from how they were raised. And I'm so grateful to them for that. And I also know there's still some cycles left for me and my kids to break. Our generation isn't the end of the line. And even though we're learning as fast as we can, our kids are probably going to have some work to do to some hurts to heal that we inflicted. And that's okay. We do what we can and we offer our efforts to God, we pray and we try to learn to be virtuous and trust that he is at work that he is going to extend the grace we need bit by bit. And so if you have a tough relationship with your mom or your mother in law, I want you to do your best to think of her with charity to look for the cycles she broke and for her unhealed wounds. Because so much of the hurts that we cause to others come out of a place of our own woundedness and fear and learning to extend this compassion to our own mothers can help us heal from our wounds to doing this can help us to be more compassionate with ourselves. It can help us to be better parents and have a growth mindset for ourselves and later for our own children. And it can help us to communicate our humaneness to our children when we make mistakes, to tell them we're sorry, and still learning how to handle some things and that will keep trying but also encouraging them that it's okay to not be perfect. And to be a work in progress. See modeling a growth mindset for our kids in this way will help them to continue to break the same cycles. God bless you mama and Happy Mother's Day