A Parenting Blog Post Applicable to ALL Types of Relationships
Let Parenting Teach & Heal You
“The child will teach you everything you need to know.”
—Jon Kabat-Zinn, Everyday Blessings
“Mother Hunger … names the invisible wound that emerges from missing comfort, or safety, or guidance from your mother.”
—Kelly McDaniel, Mother Hunger
What Does It Mean That “Parenting is a Mirror”?
When we say parenting is a mirror, we mean that your child’s behaviors and emotional expressions often reflect back the unprocessed parts of your own inner world. They don’t cause these parts—but they reveal them.
For example:
When your child is sad, do you rush to fix it because sadness feels unbearable?
When they’re angry, do you feel helpless or rejected?
When they want space, does it trigger a fear of abandonment?
These reactions aren’t just about the present—they’re often echoes of your own childhood experiences. Your nervous system may be reactivating old patterns in response to your child’s very real and developmentally appropriate emotions.
This is why, as Kelly McDaniel explains in Mother Hunger, unhealed wounds around comfort, protection, and guidancecan quietly shape how we respond to our children. When we were not soothed, protected, or emotionally guided as children, our own child’s need for those things can feel overwhelming or even threatening—because we never received or practiced them ourselves.
How Our Children Teach Us Through Their Emotions
Children are emotionally raw and expressive. They haven’t yet learned to mask, filter, or suppress—and that’s exactly what makes them such powerful teachers. (Hint… all relationships have the potential to be teachers.)
Each time your child:
Melts down
Rejects your help
Acts out in fear or frustration
…you are invited to notice your own internal reaction.
You might ask:
What does this bring up in me?
What memory or belief is activated?
Is this about my child—or about my own unmet need for being seen, soothed, or understood?
This is what Jon Kabat-Zinn refers to when he says your child will “teach you everything you need to know.”
Not because they are trying to teach you, but because your reactivity is a spotlight on where healing wants to happen.
Step-by-Step Practice
Step 1: At the end of the day, ask yourself:
“What did my child reflect back to me today?”
Examples:
“When my child was sad, I felt irritated—because sadness was never allowed in my home.”
“When they got angry, I froze. That’s how I survived my own parent’s rage.”
Step 2: Gently journal on which “core needs” were unmet in your own childhood.
Did you receive comfort when you were distressed?
Did someone protect you when you felt unsafe?
Did anyone offer guidance through your emotions?
(These are the three core components of “Mother Hunger,” as described by Kelly McDaniel.)
Why It Matters
When we explore our reactions with compassion—not shame—we build the capacity to respond instead of react.
This process leads to:
More grounded parenting
Greater emotional flexibility
A deeper relationship with your own inner child
And, most importantly, the ability to meet your child’s needs without confusing them with your own unmet ones.
This is where healing happens. In that micro-moment between your child’s emotion and your response, you have a choice. That choice—day after day—builds resilience, secure attachment, and inner peace.
Autonomic Listening: A Path to Healing & Co-Regulation
“Autonomic listening is inextricably linked with the need for self-compassion.”
—Deb Dana, Anchored: How to Befriend Your Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory
As parents, our nervous system is the invisible scaffolding holding our reactions, our boundaries, and our ability to love without overwhelm. Yet so many of us are operating from dysregulated survival states—without even realizing it.
Autonomic listening is the practice of tuning in to your own nervous system signals—without judgment—so you can understand what your body is saying, rather than automatically reacting or overriding.
According to Deb Dana, when we become fluent in our own physiological cues—tightness in the chest, sudden fatigue, fidgeting, freezing—we begin to understand that our body isn’t betraying us... it’s trying to protect us. Often, from old wounds.
Why Autonomic Listening Heals the Past
When we were children, our body learned how to respond to stress—whether we felt safe enough to speak, whether we had to fawn to stay connected, whether it was better to shut down completely. Those patterns don’t disappear in adulthood. They live in our autonomic nervous system.
In parenting, these patterns re-emerge.
Your child cries: you feel like shutting down.
They defy you: you overcorrect or yell before thinking.
They need affection: you pull away or freeze.
Autonomic listening helps you pause and ask:
“What state am I in right now? Am I in fight, flight, freeze—or connection?”
This moment of awareness interrupts the unconscious cycle. It creates space to respond with clarity, rather than react from a wounded place.
Why Autonomic Listening Supports Co-Regulation
You cannot help a child regulate from a state of disconnection or distress. Children learn safety through us—by how we breathe, speak, touch, and hold space.
By practicing autonomic listening, you strengthen your ability to:
Recognize when you’re leaving regulation
Gently return yourself to safety
Extend that calm, connected state to your child
Your nervous system becomes the lighthouse your child orients toward. You model what safety feels like.
“Self-regulation allows children to adjust to life’s challenges by using their own internal resources.”
—Mona Delahooke, Brain-Body Parenting
But first, we must model regulation from the inside out.
Try This: Micro-Practice for Autonomic Listening
1. Pause and notice.
Right now, scan your body. Are you tense, slumped, alert, holding your breath?
2. Name your state.
Use Deb Dana’s “polyvagal ladder” language:
Ventral (safe and social)
Sympathetic (mobilized: fight/flight)
Dorsal (shut down, frozen)
3. Offer compassion.
Say: “It makes sense that I feel this way. I am safe now.”
4. Choose a regulating action.
Breathe slowly into your belly
Place your hand on your heart or neck
Look outside and name three colors
5. Connect
Once you're regulated, attune to your child with your full presence.
Why It Matters
Every time you notice your nervous system instead of numbing it, reacting from it, or shaming it—you begin to rewire your relationship to safety. And every time you return yourself to regulation, you create a safer world for your child.
This is how we break cycles.
This is how we heal.
Not through control—but through compassion.
Individuals who have suffered trauma may feel "young" or vulnerable when beginning the process of acknowledging emotions and beginning to practice nervous system regulation. All practices offered are the basics, through meditation coaching, individual therapy, group therapy, or family therapy you may get into a routine of regulation and a pathway to deep healing from past wounds. It is an investment in yourself and all of your close relationships.