How Not to Repeat Your Parents' Mistakes (with Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach)
Best-selling author Glennon Doyle and soccer legend Abby Wambach discuss how to parent children without repeating past mistakes and how to "reparent" oneself to heal childhood wounds. They share wisdom from their book, "We Can Do Hard Things," on fostering intrinsic motivation, self-compassion, and raising independent kids.
Deep Dive Analysis
12 Topic Outline
Coping with Family Crises and the Origin of 'We Can Do Hard Things'
Unpacking Childhood Scripts and Family Roles
Abby's Journey: Worthiness, Achievement, and Identity
The Pitfalls of Transactional Love in Parenting
Shifting from 'Proud Of' to 'Happy For' Children
Navigating Parental Identity Shifts as Children Grow
Parenting Metaphors: Molding Clay vs. Cultivating Seeds
The Danger of Perfect Parenting and Embracing Humanness
Identifying and Naming Unhelpful Parental Patterns
Encouraging Children to Disappoint Others, Not Themselves
Reparenting Ourselves Through Apology and Self-Reflection
The Healing Power of Self-Compassion and Modeling It
6 Key Concepts
Outdated Scripts
These are narratives about how one 'should' live, often instilled by parents during childhood. They may no longer align with an adult's current goals or identity, potentially hindering personal growth and preventing them from becoming their authentic self.
Transactional Love
This concept describes a learned pattern where love or acceptance is perceived as conditional upon performance or achievement. It can lead children to pursue extrinsic rewards, like getting paid for goals or receiving cake pops for good behavior, rather than developing intrinsic motivation or a sense of inherent worthiness.
Proud Of vs. Happy For
Saying 'I'm proud of you' centers the parent's opinion and implicitly suggests less pride if the child doesn't perform well. In contrast, saying 'I'm happy for you' centers the child's experience and gives them autonomy, fostering intrinsic reward and development of their real self.
Parenting as Creating Fertile Soil
This metaphor suggests that children are like seeds, born with everything they need to become themselves, rather than lumps of clay to be molded. The parent's role is to create a supportive environment (fertile soil) that allows them to grow into whatever they were meant to be, without excessive 'pruning' or imposing the parent's worldview.
Reparenting Ourselves
This is the process of addressing and healing unresolved childhood experiences or unmet needs by consciously providing oneself with the care, understanding, and compassion that might have been lacking from one's own caregivers. It is a unique opportunity for personal healing that often arises through the act of parenting one's own children.
Modeling Self-Compassion
This involves demonstrating kindness, understanding, and acceptance towards oneself, especially during struggles or mistakes, and doing so openly. By modeling a self-compassionate inner voice, parents provide a crucial example for their children to develop their own capacity for self-kindness when they inevitably 'screw up'.
6 Questions Answered
When unmoored, parents can externalize hope and wisdom by collecting and sharing 'treasure chests' of anchoring and grounding moments or advice from their own experiences and those of others.
Childhood often instills 'outdated scripts' and specific family roles (e.g., hero, patient), leading individuals to amplify certain personality parts and mute others to gain acceptance, which can result in feeling like 'half a person' as an adult.
Parents can identify their repetitive, unhelpful behaviors and, even if they can't stop them, point them out to their children, explaining the origin of these coping mechanisms and encouraging children to see them as the parent's worldview, not their own.
Parents should aim to create a fertile environment that allows children to grow into who they are meant to be, rather than molding them. They can also encourage children to 'disappoint everyone' else to avoid disappointing themselves, thereby reappointing themselves as the decision-maker of their own lives.
Parenting offers a unique opportunity to 'reparent ourselves' by mindfully noticing what was missed in one's own childhood and providing that healing to oneself, such as through apologizing to a child for past missteps, which can be a deeply healing experience.
Modeling self-compassion, including openly acknowledging mistakes and treating oneself with kindness, is crucial because it teaches children to develop their own self-compassionate inner voice, which is essential for navigating life's inevitable screw-ups.
15 Actionable Insights
1. Model Self-Compassion Aloud
Model self-compassion out loud when you make mistakes, speaking to yourself with kindness and understanding rather than self-criticism, to teach your children to develop their own self-compassionate inner voice.
2. Apologize to Your Children
Apologize to your children when you make a mistake, explaining what happened and why you’re sorry, to model vulnerability, foster trust, and create a healing experience for both parent and child.
3. Reparent Through Self-Reflection
Engage in deep self-reflection about your own childhood environment and how you were parented, using your current parenting experiences as an opportunity to heal past wounds and ‘reparent’ yourself.
4. View Children as Seeds
View children as seeds with inherent potential, rather than clay to be molded; your role as a parent is to provide fertile soil (a supportive environment) for their natural growth, not to prune or shape them into your image.
5. Foster Child Self-Reliance
Shift your parenting focus from creating dependence (‘Mom’s got me’) to fostering self-reliance (‘You’ve got you’), aiming for children to feel capable and okay on their own, even in your absence.
6. Shift Praise to “Happy”
When praising children, shift from saying ‘I’m proud of you’ to ‘I’m happy for you’ to center the child’s experience and foster intrinsic motivation, rather than making their worth dependent on your approval.
7. Address Your Negative Behaviors
Become aware of your own repetitive negative behaviors and, even if you can’t stop them immediately, point out these ‘gaps’ to your children, explaining they are your unhelpful coping mechanisms, so your children don’t adopt your ‘dirty lens.’
8. Encourage Disappointing Others
Teach children to embrace ‘disappointing’ others (including parents and authority figures) as a necessary step to ‘reappointing’ themselves as the decision-makers of their own lives and creating the life they truly want.
9. Model Self-Care & Growth
Model self-care and personal growth (like attending therapy) for your children, as your actions demonstrate the importance of working on oneself and navigating life’s challenges with self-compassion.
10. Prioritize Self-Care for Kids
Reframe self-care and personal growth as an investment in your children’s future well-being, giving yourself permission to prioritize these efforts, knowing they will model self-compassion for future generations.
11. Externalize Wisdom in Crisis
During difficult times, externalize wisdom by writing down or collecting ‘short bursts of wisdom’ and ‘moments that were anchoring and grounding’ from yourself or others, creating a ’treasure chest’ to revisit when personal wisdom feels lost.
12. Analyze Outdated Life Scripts
Analyze and challenge outdated scripts about how you ‘should’ be living—narratives often written by parents in childhood—as these can prevent you from becoming the person you truly want to be.
13. Identify Muted Personality Parts
Identify parts of your personality that were amplified (to please others) and muted (to avoid discomfort) during childhood, then consciously work to explore and amplify the muted parts to become a more complete person.
14. Seek Therapy for Self-Love
If you struggle with self-compassion and self-love, consider seeking therapy, as therapists can provide helpful guidance and practices to cultivate these essential qualities.
15. Abandon Perfect Parenting
Abandon the pursuit of perfect parenting and instead model humanness and vulnerability, as striving for perfection is harmful and showing your authentic self is beneficial for your child.
9 Key Quotes
You learn what makes people happy and then you amplify those parts of your personality. And you find out what makes your parents or family uncomfortable and you mute those parts of your personality. And then you turn 40 and you wonder why you're half a person.
Glennon Doyle
When I say that I'm proud of you, I am now centering my opinion of you more than you, your life and your experience. So what we say is, I'm so happy for you, because that is how I feel. I feel so happy for you. And it gives them the autonomy of the experience.
Abby Wambach
Our job is just to create a fertile soil that allows them to grow into whatever they were meant to be without pruning too much.
Glennon Doyle
We need to just walk around every day with the express goal of disappointing everyone. That should be not something we avoid, something we strive for, because even that word disappoint, think about it. It's like disappointing someone else as the decision maker of your life and reappointing yourself.
Glennon Doyle
I know people who are doing like the biggest, huge lives, and they're all still just living not to disappoint their parents. Their parents aren't even alive anymore.
Glennon Doyle
Parenting is this beautiful, unique opportunity to reparent ourselves.
Abby Wambach
The only way that they're going to have a self-compassionate inner voice is if they've seen that. That's what got me.
Glennon Doyle
I cannot believe that I wrote a book that's 496 pages.
Abby Wambach
My dad used to say, you can rest when you're dead.
Glennon Doyle
2 Protocols
Identifying and Addressing Unhelpful Parental Patterns
Glennon Doyle- Become aware of your repetitive behaviors and how those affect your children.
- Identify the 'gap' between what you want to teach your kids and what your body keeps doing.
- Point out the gap to your children, explaining that the unhelpful behavior is your learned strategy (e.g., 'I learned that as a coping mechanism because I am scared of people').
- Instruct your children to not look at the person you're talking about, but only at you, understanding it's your worldview, not theirs, allowing them to see the world with their own lens.
Reparenting Through Apology to Your Child
Abby Wambach- Recognize when you've responded to your child in a way that mirrors how you were unhelpfully parented (e.g., dismissing their pain).
- Apologize to your child, explaining what happened and that you didn't handle it right.
- Reassure your child that you want them to always feel confident and comfortable coming to you with anything.
- Experience the healing that comes from this act of apologizing, which can address your own past unmet needs.