According to Jen……

In my early years as a therapist I honestly thought I got it. I thought my brain was full of wisdom, knowledge, books, articles, conferences, mentors and working with hundreds and hundreds of people,  I thought that I knew it all. I was quietly over confident and I stopped reflecting and I thought I was doing an amazing job as a therapist, as a mum and as a wife. Oh no no no, how wrong I was!!!!!!!

One random day some years ago, whilst doing my routine of chores I stumbled across the family IPAD in my daughter’s room. At the time IPAD’s were a luxury and I felt the kids were too young to have an IPAD of their own so we used to share a family one and have a roster of who used it and what days etc. It was odd that the IPAD was still in her room as our other family rules included when the IPAD was not in use it had to be left in the kitchen on charge. So, I sat on her bed and went through the pictures and video’s she had taken on the IPAD and then I stumbled across a folder of video’s in which both our children had secretly filmed of myself yelling at them and filmed moments where both my husband and I were arguing. It was a HOLY SHIT moment!!!!!

Listening too and watching all those homemade movies made me cry. It was awful to hear and see myself in moments where I was losing my shit and yet at the same time, my recollection would have been that I was actually arguing constructively or parenting the children in a firm yet kind way.

There were video’s where my daughter filmed herself talking to the IPAD and was praying and hoping the arguments would stop. There were other video’s where both our children were talking to the IPAD asking why I was so angry or always unhappy and why I was always yelling. Their words such as “she is always yelling” and “why do my mum and dad fight all the time?” and “I hate listening to this all the time” were difficult to hear. Their little faces and the hurt in their voices cut me to the core, but more than that I hated hearing myself in the background of the IPAD and I hated listening to what I was saying. I was mean, I was yelling and I said some unkind things to the kids. I wasn’t swearing or throwing things or slamming doors and I wasn’t even calling them names. But it was my tone, my voice and my words were nasty. I even looked mean in some of the footage!!! There wasn’t a lot of footage of me or their father in action, but you could certainly hear it and I quickly remembered the arguments and the how’s and the why’s of what was happening on that day. From an adult perspective (well at least mine anyway), I again thought we argued constructively and I remember that our arguments did not go on for a long time. Funny thing was, up until that very moment I actually thought I knew it all, I thought I knew how to communicate, how to constructively work through things and in my mind, we were arguing quickly and effectively as parents and as a couple. I thought I had this whole parenting thing down pat and in my own head I had justified and rationalised my behaviour at the time and walked away from those instances- at the time- thinking and feeling that I had become angry for a reason and that I was ‘helping’ to parent our children in a way that taught them resilience or just to be good people.

I thought about deleting the videos and saying nothing, but the pause button on my daughter’s face pleading for someone to hear her was something I needed to change. So, I went to work on the next Monday and I enrolled in a parenting course. Now, I had completed many parenting course in my time. My role description and type of work required that I kept abreast of parenting strategies, behaviour management techniques and courses around children in general. I went to work looking through a new lens as I wanted to enrol in a course that taught me some parenting skills. I needed more skills in REFLECTION (key word here) and I needed to get off my high horse for a minute and accept the fact that I needed to be challenged, I needed to be more mindful of me and I needed to show my children that things could change.

And thus, came the world of Circle of Security (COS). This course changed my life and changed the way I parented forever. I used the skills in this class to learn ways to understand myself, my triggers and my children’s needs. This course forced me to look at myself and be vulnerable enough to change some things that I had been doing and help my children to know that I could always be the person to hold their feelings and be a person that was more in control of their emotions. After this course, I became a certified trainer and I started shouting it’s teaching from the roof tops!!!!! The content and video recording of real people in this course made it feel like I could accept that I was not alone in my struggles and that it was never too late to start making changes. I used the tools I was taught in the course, and incorporated them within my own home, with all my relationships and with almost every parent-child therapeutic interaction I had as a therapist.

As a parent, we don’t get a manual on parenting and we aren’t performance managed by a boss. We never know what we are doing is okay or if anything is needing improvement because we don’t have anyone telling us. I unintentionally found my daughter’s video’s and her message was loud and clear – shit needed to change and I needed to be the one to change it. I still have the video’s and my children found them only a few months ago. They laugh at them now and talk openly about what they said on the recording. My daughter said it well, “You used to yell a lot mum, but you are way more chilled out now”. Not only did I work on becoming a better version of me, I stopped and made sure I reflected to think about, ‘what would this situation look like through the eyes of my child?’ I spend more time talking things through with the children and ensure that their minds are left hanging with interpretations. I am a therapist, a mum, a wife, a friend and I am still learning everyday.

The lesson for me is that I took the leap to make a change. I stopped blaming everyone else and took a good hard look at myself and what I was bringing to the table. My intentions were always in a good place however, my children’s interpretations of my interactions could not have been further from my desired outcome. I don’t always get it right, but I keep those images of my children in my head and that is all the motivation I need to keep trying harder.

So, whenever I talk to parents in my sessions, I always say “what would you look like if you had a video camera in your home and we pressed play?”

Affirmation: “We were born to be real not perfect”