You promised yourself you would never be like them. You would never make your child feel the way you felt. So you do the opposite. You soften every hard edge, struggle to say no, and panic when your child is disappointed in you.

But what if trying so hard not to become your parent is still letting them shape the way you parent?

If you grew up in a toxic family, you may have no reliable benchmark for what healthy parenting actually looks like. This episode explores the parenting pendulum, why fear can push you towards permissiveness, rescuing, hypervigilance or repeating the very patterns you wanted to escape, and how to find the middle ground between control and fear-led parenting.

Resources mentioned:

Research on conditioning and learned behaviourChild development and age-appropriate expectationsResearch on rupture, repair, and relational safety

Go deeper:

The companion episode of Is This A Thing? explores how much of what your child does is actually about you, including why your child’s behaviour can trigger reactions that belong to your own childhood and how to separate the child in front of you from the child you once were. Available on The Hub: liberationacademy.co.uk/the-hub

Aperio Profiles:

Neurodivergent-informed cognitive and personality profiling for individuals, managers, and HR. Not a diagnosis. A functional map of how your brain actually works.

aperioprofiles.co.uk