Growing Together: Child and Parent Work

Parenting brings up all kinds of things: thoughts, feelings, past trauma, etc. Parenting kids from hard places can bring up even more. This is why many therapists encourage family therapy for adoptive and foster families, and sometimes even individual therapy for the caregivers and parents themselves. Why? Because the work is hard. Because the progress parents and caregivers make can affect progress kids make. Do adoptive and foster parents need to be perfect, though? By all means, no!

Therapists sometimes talk about how “far” they can take clients. As some would say, a therapist can only take clients as far as they have gone themselves, or as deep as they have gone themselves. Some quote John Bradshaw, who said, “you can only take your clients down the paths you’re willing to go” (Gorman, 2020). But what about caregivers and parents? Can children only go as far as caregivers have gone? Yes, and no.

Children are co-regulating creatures. This means that they need healthy adults to model positive behaviors (Rosenbaum & Murray, 2017). Their mirror neurons need other neurons to help internalize what it means to be human and to function in healthy ways (Gobbel, 2018). In this sense, children can only go as far as what they see, because what they see is what they know. If they only see yelling as the means by which adults resolve conflicts, their nervous system will say that is the way to speak to others. If they are never shown love and care, they may internalize that they are unloved and uncared for. But God. If they only see unhealthy ways to cope, they too, may cope in unhealthy ways. But God. God is a big enough God to work despite and around this.

Children benefit not only from parent models, but also from community models. In an ideal situation, a child has not only parents, but other healthy adults to see and imitate. Children can find healthy models in teachers, Sunday School teachers, neighbors, church members, formal and informal mentors, and more. These healthy adults can help kids go further than they might if they only had a parent who was/is struggling. Children can also find a perfect caregiver and parent in God.

Does this absolve parents of needing to do their own work, though? No. It just encourages caregivers and parents to surround themselves with healthy people while doing their own work. It encourages caregivers and parents to have faith that God can continue to work in their children while they continue working on themselves. The Bible says that God “is able to do immeasurably more than all [believers] ask or imagine” (New International Version, 2011, Eph 3:20). This includes work in kids and in their parents. None but God are perfect, meaning all people need to work on themselves for their lifetimes.

Caregiver and parent work does affect child work, and vice versa. There may certainly be times when a parent needs to address some personal things before committing the child to work for which the child has no model or frame of reference. For the parents doing the work, though, the encouragement is to keep at it and keep going. The goal is not to be a perfect parent, but to be a present parent, a parent who shows a child what it is like to commit to ongoing personal and relational growth. That is a beautiful example to set for a child, especially for a child from a hard place.