Sep 7, 2022
If you are a new parent, have you ever wondered why no matter how much you take care of your baby, give them milk, sway them, sing a lullaby, sometimes it’s just not enough? Do you ever ask yourself if what you’re doing is correct? Do you ever question why parenting portrayed by the media is different from what you are experiencing? Don’t worry you are not alone.
In this week’s episode of Outer Travel, Inner Journey, Alexandra Scherzer, a parenting educator and counselor shares how becoming a mother pushed her to look within herself more, which made her a better parent to her child.
She starts with explaining that in babies and toddlers, behavior and emotions are what we see. It is important to understand what lies under their behavior, what influences it, what part of one’s parenting is going to affect their behavior, and what part of a child’s in-born genes is going to affect certain behaviors. These are the factors that most parents are not aware about because these things are not explicit. She said that parents need to consider what they want for their children to be in 30 years time, and reverse engineer their strategy to support their children reach that goal. It is important for the steps to start early because the first five years of a child’s life is at its most formative. What happens early on will impact what will happen to their family life 40 years from now.
The way a person was raised in early childhood will impact on how they will parent in the future. It is called the Inner Parent - gut response and emotion when something happens as a parent. How you parent your child during their formative years will also be their parenting style when they themselves become one. This is why parents must focus on what they want for their child, in order to work on it on the long haul.
To raise a child that can trust him/herself and his/her intuition, a parent must respect their child from the start and not try to box or conform them to what society dictates. Parenting is a long game and to develop a healthy relationship with your child, you must not try to change them. Build their confidence and uplift them by encouraging them to trust themselves.
Both Alexandra’s share their parenting experiences, which concluded in a realization that in parenthood and to be better parents, one still has to look from within and understand oneself.
Links mention in the podcast
Pocket Quotes
- The way that you are parented in your early childhood, before your memories really begin have a long term impact on them (your child) when you become a parent. Your inner parent is your gut response when something happens, your gut emotion when something happens, as a parent. The way that you're driven to automatically respond is very in line to how you would respond when you were so young. - Alexandra Scherzer
- Knowledge is extremely powerful. Once I understood the main goal that my son's brain was trying to reach in the first 18 months, it made a lot of small decisions get smaller. Our framework is what we do with that one main thing, and everything else is secondary. When you have that type of focus, it's just like with anything. All of the noise starts to settle down. - Alexandra Scherzer
- To establish trust as a primary caregiver, is to understand your child's inborn characteristics and what that means in terms of their behavior, because they are actually expressing emotions through their behavior. Understanding that piece of the pie is actually really valuable because what many parents start to feel as the beginnings of negative emotions within themselves because it's frustrating. If you understand why your child is behaving in a certain way, and then you understand that responding to them in a way that they are expressing it. - Alexandra Scherzer
- Parenting is such a long game, that if you hope to raise a child who can trust him or herself in the long run, who can trust him or her intuition in the long run, the best way to do that is to respect who they are from the very get go. If you truly respect who they are, and not try to conform to everything that society is sometimes pushing and pulling us to do, you truly respect your child for who they are, and not try to change them. - Alexandra Scherzer
- Looking within can be very powerful in our relationship with ourselves and our relationship with everybody. Our children, family, parents, friends, colleagues, everybody. Starting within first applies to anybody in any circumstance. Whether they are a parent of a young child, not a parent at all, or just looking at who they are day-to-day, living through life in their own life's journey, or interacting with the other adults in their life. - Alexandra Scherzer
Guest Bio
Alexandra Scherzer is a parenting educator and consultant at W.I.S.E. Parenting Academy. She focuses on parenting for secure attachment. Her passion for helping parents started when she herself became one and what she was experiencing was far from what she expected. As a mother experiencing new things, she had a lot of questions that traditional sources were not able to answer. She teaches parents like herself how to manage parenthood and raising children especially in their formative years of first 5-6 years, which will impact how the child will grow to be themselves in the long run. Alexandra conducts one-on-one sessions and pod/group sessions and works with parents and expecting parents alike.