When Parents Pass Down Struggles to Their Children | #MyCounselorSays

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Question:

“My daughter feels like I need to forgive myself, as I’m passing that unforgiveness on to her. That’s creating trust difficulties within the relationship.“

Read more to find out what relationship expert Josh Spurlock has to say about how parents pass down struggles to their children.

About the Author

This article is based on scientific evidence and clinical experience, written by a licensed professional and fact-checked by experts.

Josh Spurlock, MA, LPC, CST is a Licensed Professional Counselor and Certified Sex Therapists with over 10,000 hours of clinical experience. Josh specializes in Marriage Counseling and Sex Therapy. You can schedule an appointment with Josh for online counseling.

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Video Transcript

(Transcript is generated by a software and may have discrepancies from the video.)

Cassie

Welcome to My Counselor Online. I’m Cassie and this is My Counselor Says. My Counselor Says is where you submit a question, either for yourself, or for a friend,  and one of our incredible therapists takes their time and answers your personal question. So let’s go find out what My Counselor Says.

Josh Spurlock on Passing Down Struggles to Children

While I don’t know the specifics of your situation, I can say that it is a thing that, as parents, we can pass down the struggles that we experience in life to our kids, and that there’s really no way to avoid that other than for us to take responsibility for the difficulties that we have in our life, the struggles that we have in our life, and be willing to address that.

How Life Skills are Passed Down

When it comes to child raising and parenting, much of what our kids pick up is caught rather than taught. And so, we can tell them how they ought to do things, or how they ought to experience life or how they ought to engage situations. But, if in our own life we’re modeling something very different from that, then our kids are going to pick up on what we model for them more than what it is we say to them.

And so the best advice I can give you is be willing to look in the mirror and own your own stuff and work on those things so that you can model the kind of healthy behavior that you want to pass on to your kids.

Cassie

Thank you so much for submitting that question!  We certainly love to answer your questions. If you have a question for yourself or a friend, you  can submit it using our web page and then look for the answer in an upcoming edition of our weekly e-newsletter.

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