When it feels hard to love your child
Some kids seem harder to love than others.
Some of us were harder for our parents to love.
And guess what?
Being harder to love does not make you less loveable.
Just as being “easier” to love, does not make you more loveable.
And you know what else?
No matter if a person is “easy” or “hard” to love as a child–if their caregivers do not have the tools and support to show them unconditional love–they will probably feel unloveable either way!
I was an “easy” child. And I still struggle to show up as my full authentic self.
I still fear at times that if others knew how very NOT easy I am inside, I would be too much. Hard to love.
Feeling hard to love has nothing to do with our inherent qualities, and everything to do with the messages we received early on from our caregivers and village.
What does “hard to love” mean?
As you probably intuit as you read this, no child is actually hard to love.
But we all realize eventually, that loving our kids as we would like to, is not as “natural” or easy as we imagined before becoming parents.
Here are some things that amazingly good parents have shared with me about their challenges with loving a particular child.
She’s just so much harder than her sisters, and I resent that she drains so much of my energy and pulls my attention away from them.
He is just so sensitive, everything upsets him. I feel like I am walking on eggshells.
I feel guilty because I love him, but I just don’t feel as loving towards him as I do towards the baby. I can’t stand the way he acts.
I’m so exhausted from having to be there for her in every single social situation.
She reminds me so much of my brother, and he ended up lost in addiction.
He reminds me of me at that age, just so insecure and needy.
And there is no easy, universal explanation as to why some kids feel harder to love than others. But I want to share three common factors that tend to show up in these situations.
Sensitivity.
The first factor is sensitivity. Some people (about 20% of the population) are more sensitive than others. With attuned enough parenting, highly sensitive children will likely do extremely well.
But here’s the kicker–parenting these children well, means allowing them to actually be as they are. Which can be challenging for us to support.
Here’s an example. My sensitive child took a very (very!) long time to warm up to social situations. For years, she never wanted to say hello and goodbye to anybody, and almost always preferred to play alone than with other children.
I could have tried to train her to be more sociable. I could have taught her to use her sensitivity to pick up on social cues and what she is “supposed” to do, instead of using it to tune in to her truth. This would have made her “easier to love” all around. This is what happened to me as a child.
But instead I waited until (and if) she felt ready to engage more openly in social situations. This resulted in A LOT of uncomfortable situations for me as her parent.
It also gave me many opportunities to practice:
Radical acceptance of who she is,
A growing acceptance of myself (because I am like her, I just wasn’t allowed to be myself),
Setting boundaries with others in a way that advocates for her truth and still allows for connection.
HEALING PARENTS COURSE WAITLIST
They often remind us of our own stories.
It doesn’t take long for most parents of “hard to love” kids to realize that they remind them of themselves–or someone important from their childhood.
For example, a parent who was anxious as a child, may have developed several ways to protect themselves from showing their anxiety. From a young age, this person may have learned to suppress their anxious feelings, and act confident and calm in public.
And as an adult, she might hope that loving their child the “right” way, will prevent that child from experiencing the pain that she experienced in her own childhood.
But then, her kid is still anxious. Still easily overwhelmed. Still “needy.”
And all of the judgements and criticisms that the parent had developed towards her own anxiety, are now projected onto her child.
She can’t stand her child’s neediness, anxiousness, and big emotional expressions.
And so, she feels like she struggles to love her child.
We feel guilty
And then there’s the guilt. Every parent’s loyal companion.
How can it be so hard for me to feel loving towards my child?
Something must be wrong with me.
Something must be wrong with my child.
Where did I go wrong?
My other children don’t get the attention they deserve because I have to focus all of my energy on this child.
As I wrote recently in my blog post about guilt–when our relationships hurt, guilt comes in to help us make sense of that hurt. You can read more here to learn about how to care for yourself when you experience guilt.
What to do?
Good Parenting Tools
In general, you don’t need special, different strategies for “harder to love” kids. The right parenting tools will benefit all of your kids, especially the ones you struggle with the most.
Good tools help us to cultivate qualities that will be beneficial for any child, and deeply beneficial for sensitive or “spirited” children.
These qualities include:
Our capacity to attune, respect, wait and contain.
Allowing for play.
Honoring their timing.
Learning to listen to them well.
For example, holding space for a tantrum in a way that is safe, respectful and loving, will help any child. A “harder” child’s tantrums may last 45 minutes instead of 10. Or they may occur more frequently throughout the day. But the same general principles of respectful emotional containment apply, nevertheless.
Respectful parenting doesn’t necessarily mean that sensitive kids become “easier” to parent.
But it does mean that we get to practice one of the highest forms of love–total acceptance and support for who they are and what they want.
While radically respectful parenting will serve all of your children well, it is important to mention here that if you think that your child might need an assessment, I do recommend that you seek one out with a clinician. There are additional activities and accommodations that will be very beneficial for them.
Support
While the parenting tools don’t differ for highly sensitive children–it is likely that you as their parent, need a significantly higher level of support.
You are respectfully parenting a child who you struggle to feel loving towards at times. This is mentally, emotionally and often physically taxing to say the least.
You deserve care.
The combination of your child’s temperament and your own story can make the situation overwhelming, and leave you feeling alone.
When we are alone with our overwhelm, we lose access to our creativity. We feel disconnected from our inner knowing. We don’t know what to do.
What we need in the difficult moments, is support.
This is the single most important thing a parent can do for their efforts to break cycles. Get real support.
And no, I am not talking about “dig to the bottom of your triggers so you can be better at loving your kid” type of support.
I am talking about receiving gentle, strong and loving care, primarily through listening. Togetherness.
This can be done through Listening Partnership, with a professional, or in a supportive community.
It always comes back to connection
At the end of the day,
connection is one of our deepest human needs.
When this need is met, we feel present. We feel like we belong. We are aware of our potential.
But when an important need is not met, we experience painful and difficult emotions.
This is why, when we struggle to connect with those we love the most, it really hurts.
And beautifully, it is through connection with others who can support us, that we can regain our capacity for felt togetherness with our most precious loved ones.
If you are having a hard time in your relationship with one of your children, you are not alone. And with good support, you can grow closer to them through even the most challenging moments. I see it all the time.
Keep going, keep trying. I’m right here with you.