From Emotionally Immature Parents to Emotionally Mature Parenting with Dr. Lindsay Gibson
Episode Notes
What does it actually mean to raise an emotionally mature child?
In this powerful conversation, Dr. Alison Cook sits down with renowned psychologist and bestselling author Dr. Lindsay C. Gibson, whose groundbreaking book Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents helped millions name what they didn’t receive growing up.
Now, Dr. Gibson turns toward a new question: How do we become the kind of parents who help our children feel safe, seen, respected, and emotionally strong?
Together, they explore the emotional foundation children truly need—not perfection, but presence. They unpack what emotional maturity looks like, the impact of being raised by an emotionally immature parent, and how we can begin to give our own children the kind of parenting they need.
You’ll explore:
- The signs of an emotionally immature parent
- What a “good enough” parent actually looks like
- How repair builds trust more than perfection does
- The dance of balancing connection and autonomy
- How to create emotional safety for your child
Whether you’re parenting toddlers, teenagers, or adult children—or simply learning how to become more emotionally mature yourself—this conversation offers a hopeful, grounded framework for growth.
Because healthy parenting isn’t about raising perfect kids. It’s about creating the kind of emotional soil where both you and your child can grow.
More Resources:
Order Dr. Lindsay’s new book, How to Raise an Emotionally Mature Child: Your Blueprint to a Lifetime of Happiness and Success for Your Child
You can now preorder Dr. Alison’s newest book, The Secure Soul, and immediately receive the first 3 chapters as well as early access to the companion guide!
Connect further with @dralisoncook on Instagram
Curious what Family Role may have shaped you? Take the Family Role Quiz to learn how you may be showing up in your relationships with others.
Want to hear more like this? Start here:
Episode 175: A Game-Changing Toolkit to Help Kids Conquer Worry and Build Courage with David Thomas and Sissy Goff
Episode 68: How *Not* to Lose Yourself—Remaining You While Raising Them with Alli Worthington
📖 Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here
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TRANSCRIPT
You can't do these things that encourage emotional maturity in your child if you're not also
simultaneously working on this within yourself. How are you going to orient your beingness toward
your child in such a way that you will create the best possible soil for them to grow in?
And that is your mindset. That is your attitude toward your child.
This attitude that says, I know that you're real inside. I'm very interested.
Hey,
everyone, and welcome back to this week's Deep Dive episode of the Best of You podcast. Today's
conversation was such a gift for me personally, and I know it's going to be for you.
We're talking about parenting. We're going into summer, and we're not talking about it as a set of
techniques or skills or tips, but as one of the deepest invitations to our own emotional and
spiritual growth. If you're a parent, you already know this. Our children have a way of bringing up
parts of us that still need tending. Maybe it's a part of you that is desperate to get it right,
to correct any of the wrongs that maybe happened to you. Maybe it's a part of you that feels
completely overwhelmed, like you're losing yourself in the work of parenting. Maybe it's a part of
you that worries constantly. Am I doing enough? Am I doing it right? Am I doing it wrong? Maybe
it's a part of you that remembers what you received or didn't receive from your own parents,
and you're constantly comparing and constantly stuck in the past. And this is where parenting,
as challenging as it can be, is also such a beautiful and sacred work because we're not only
helping our children grow into emotionally and spiritually mature human beings,
we're also being invited to grow into emotional and spiritual maturity ourselves.
You can't really become a healthier parent, as our guest today shares with us,
without becoming a healthier human. And the reality is there's a dance at the heart of parenting,
at the heart of any healthy relationship. It's the dance of connection and autonomy, of coming
close and of letting go, being needed, and then also letting our children move out on their own.
They're making their own choices, having their own interests, becoming their own. person.
And today's guest is just so gifted at naming these experiences,
both of parenting ourselves, but also of being parented. She's someone who has mentored me from
afar. I'd never met her before today, but I've read her books. I've recommended her books so
frequently. I'm sure many of you have already read some of her books because she's just such a mix
of kindness and honesty and deep wisdom. I was just so honored to get to have this conversation
with Lindsay C. Gibson. Dr. Lindsay Gibson is a clinical psychologist with over 30 years of
psychotherapy experience. She is the New York Times bestselling author of Adult Children of
Emotionally Immature Parents. This is a book that has sold over a million copies and has been
translated into 38 languages. Her work has helped so many people name what they didn't receive
growing up, not necessarily through harsh labels or blame, but through the deeply clarifying lens
of emotional immaturity. And now in our brand new book, How to Raise an Emotionally Mature Child,
Lindsay turns toward the question so many of us are asking, how do we become the kind of parents
who help our children feel safe, seen, respected, and emotionally strong?
What I love about this conversation is that it's not about perfect parenting. In fact, we talk
about how perfect parenting does not set our kids up for success. In fact, Lindsay gives us so much
relief around this idea of a good enough parent. She even quantifies it for us, what it actually
means in real life. Spoiler alert, it is the parent who misses things sometimes,
who gets distracted sometimes, who loses attunement sometimes, but learns how to come back,
repair, and reconnect. This conversation is for any kind of parent,
parents of toddlers, teenagers, adult children, step-parents, and honestly, for anyone who is just
learning how to become more emotionally mature in the presence of another human. I am so thrilled
to bring you my conversation with Dr. Lindsay C. Gibson.
Well, I couldn't be more thrilled. As I said just before I hit record,
I feel like you've mentored me for these past years and how many times I recommend your work.
I kind of want to start. They're Lindsay bridging to the new book. I think that the naming of your
first book or your previous book, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents,
was so powerful for so many people because it's less stigmatizing.
Many of us, you know, many folks who I interact with or talk to are clients or, you know,
we... have this sense of something was missing. But almost in our culture,
it can be like, well, it's got to be narcissism or something extreme or it's perfect.
And it's like, well, no, it wasn't that. It's just something was missing. And I think you really
named something so helpful, gave people a way to frame their experience.
I think especially for my generation, Gen X, where some of this was just not in the air that we
breathed. back in the 80s this idea of emotional maturity i i would love to just hear your thoughts
about how that's been for you to see how that has landed so viscerally with so many people and just
what that what that's been like for you yeah well it's it's funny because the The title was
something that we left until fairly late in the process, my editor and I, of writing the book.
And it was recommended by somebody, it might have been a consultant from Barnes & Noble,
I'm not sure where they were from, but they said, no, you've got to describe what's in the book.
You've got to say what it is in the title. And so so we were kind of reluctantly,
OK, we'll we'll you know, we'll we'll make it a descriptive title if you say so. And we laugh about
it, you know, all the time from, you know, do you remember when we had this other title and how
funny that would have been? Anyway, so. Yeah. So, yes, it was it was something that I think.
needed to be articulated needed to be put into words for people like you say people already knew
what this was but they just didn't have a a way of defining it or talking about it that didn't
automatically make them feel like they were throwing their parent under the bus with a psychiatric
diagnosis which is also kind of a You know, it's sort of a euphemism for saying that they're bad.
Yeah. I mean, emotionally, you feel like you're saying something awful about them when you give
them a diagnosis like that. And I was just trying to describe in as kind.
and yet accurate a way as I could what this kind of behavior was all about.
And what it's all about is that the person never got the chance or never had the capacity to be
mature enough to think about other people and to imagine what the experience of other people was
like and have that govern their behavior. So yeah, I was trying to trying to get at this thing that
I knew people knew about and yet did not have the language for it yet.
It's so powerful. Before we segue into how we raise emotionally mature kids,
can you give us just an overview of what are these qualities of an emotionally immature parent?
Because that's essentially with this second book we're trying. to figure out how to be emotionally
mature as a parent. So our children can be emotionally mature. So what is it?
How do you see it at a high level, an emotionally immature parent?
Yeah, no, what you said was very interesting because if you are trying to raise an emotionally
mature child and that's your mindset, you actually are going to be emotionally maturing yourself.
It's like the hidden benefit. You can't do these things that encourage emotional maturity in your
child if you're not also simultaneously working on this within yourself.
You don't have to be doing that consciously. It can happen indirectly as part of the process of
trying to help your child attain maturity. It's kind of a cool twofer thing.
It's an added benefit of trying to approach your child in this way. You will actually be increasing
your own maturity. But to go into the qualities of emotional immaturity,
we recognize this. all day, every day,
whenever we have an unpleasant interaction with somebody.
And it's that the other person is...
Basically, they're egocentric. Their focus is necessarily on themselves because they have never
psychologically developed to the point where in their inner world,
there is a place for the inner subjective experience of another human being. They're like big four
-year-olds. They've got language. It looks like you should be able to reason with them because
they can talk now.
But emotionally, they just can't imagine that there's anybody else in the world but them that
counts. And so they're very self-preoccupied.
All roads lead to them. And they have very low empathy. They have some empathy.
You know, if they're not stressed, if they're not tired or, you know,
maybe feeling under the weather. Yeah, if they're in peak form. they have the capacity to show some
empathy and that's what confuses people because they they think well there was that time when i was
sick and mom brought me the stuffed animal or you know i remember when dad um you know took me out
for pizza and they have empathy but they're so self-absorbed yeah that they can't tune into that
unless they're so well resourced that they've got plenty of extra energy.
They also don't have the capacity for self-reflection usually. Again,
things are going great. They can sit back and maybe self-reflect, but it doesn't go very far and
it doesn't last very long. They don't ask themselves, you know, gee, maybe it was something I said,
or maybe I could have handled that differently. Or, wow, I'm really sorry, you know,
seeing the look on my child's face that I said that. I need to apologize. That is so upsetting to
them that they just stay away from it. And then the last two things are emotional intimacy is very
hard for them. They like to keep things simple and they like to keep things on the surface. I
described it with one of my clients as... You know, could you think of yourself as 3D and maybe
your mom as 2D? And would that help you to understand how she experiences life and why it's so
unsatisfying to you as a 3D person? And that really helped her.
And then the last thing is that their relationship to reality,
how they see the world, how they think things work,
optional they dismiss deny distort reality in whatever way that will make them feel good about
themselves and make them feel less stressed so that that really you know opens wide the floodgates
for misunderstanding because if you try to talk with them about something or communicate something
about the relationship You know, A, they're terrified of the emotional intimacy of that. They don't
want to get close to that meaningful stuff. And, you know, secondly, they will just say that didn't
happen or I didn't mean that or you're way too sensitive. They'll shut it down by distorting the
reality that you thought, you know, was something that you shared together because you were there.
But that doesn't hold them back from rearranging things to make it feel better to them.
Yeah. And what is then, if we're thinking again, if you're raised by someone who has this kind of
emotional capacity, and I always think to myself, you know, if your parent had the emotional
intelligence of maybe a five, six-year-old up through five or six of your own life,
that might have been fine. But then as you develop, what is the impact? And especially as you
become an adult, how does that affect us? How does that affect our own ability to form emotional
intimacy and empathy and have these skills? Yeah,
well, first of all, it's going to make you feel very lonely. Because if you as a little child
person have a deep need for emotional intimacy,
meaning you want to share your inside world with someone else and you want to hear theirs back and
you want to have that meaningful, deep connection at that profound level. And you can't connect up
with this incredibly important person in your life, the basis of your security,
and you can't find or form a bridge to them. You're going to feel very emotionally lonely.
And of course, for a child, you know, because everything to them feels like they caused it or
they're the root of it. There's that nice egocentrism again of the very young. They're going to
feel like there must be something in the matter with them. Yeah. And so maybe it would be better to
kind of keep all of this stuff secret and don't share it with other people because their experience
with an emotionally immature parent is that the parent actually. you know draws back and you know
puts up a kind of a shield. They don't come toward the child with interest.
And so they learn to keep all this stuff to themselves, which is tragic.
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Lindsay, it's so powerful. You talk about the work of parenting to segue into this new book as the
psychological construction of another human being. You're providing the atmosphere.
And I love what you just said. It's so interesting. It's kind of touching me personally because I
wrote a little bit about the process of moving toward the parts of my own self that felt so lonely
and unseen in this new book, right? They always needed that.
These parts of me always needed that presence. And I had to find for me other ways of getting it
for myself and from God, you know, from that sense of almost that withness that we just need.
And there are ways, you know, I know part of why I love as we were talking before we record this
inner work is, is it sort of like, because what do I do? You can't change what you got as a parent,
right? So how do you find a way to bring that kind of loving presence into those parts of us?
I wonder about, and I'm sure you get this question all the time,
right? So we're aware of that, how important that is. And then we become parents.
And so we're trying to figure out how to not create that gap. that loneliness gap,
that gap of being unseen with our own, you know, and you speak about this so well in the new book.
And so I kind of want to pivot there to, you know, for the listener who's kind of hooked on what we
just talked about, please check out, if you haven't already, about your own parents, the, you know,
what sort of the residual effects of having an emotionally... immature parent, but now pivoting to,
gosh, now I know this. I've seen in my own self how valuable and important that withness is.
It can be kind of terrifying. How do we begin to think about our own children without sort of
collapsing into fear and pressure, but also recognizing how important that role of...
kind of creating that emotional atmosphere for this little being, this little soul that's getting
formed. Yes. Well, you know, what just occurred to me when you said that was,
if you have been doing any kind of self work at all, and I would imagine that probably a lot of
your audience has already been engaged in that. You are already doing that with yourself.
In other words, you are, instead of allowing yourself to remain unseen to yourself and just sort
of, you know, heaping blame on yourself, like there must be something wrong with me or maybe I'm
the crazy one or I want too much or something like that. If you're engaged in any kind of self
-discovery, you are already putting yourself in the mindset of that withness and that presence.
with yourself, okay, with whatever that spark is within us that we recognize as me,
myself, who I am. If we are already engaged in that process of being in communication with that,
we are set up perfectly for doing that with our child.
It's really only when, you know, for people who are very emotionally immature,
They just don't turn inward. Inward is a scary place. They construct a kind of a facade in order to
shore up their self-esteem and to keep themselves emotionally and socially stable. So they live
kind of from the outside in. But if you have any interest in what's going on inside you,
and you've been working on it at all, or reading interesting books on that subject,
then you already know implicitly the right attitude to have toward your child in order for your
child to grow up with the best chance for emotional maturity. And let me tell you how this works.
So when I wrote this book, I thought... are a million books out there, really good books,
that will tell you what to do when your child has a tantrum, that will tell you how to do illogical
consequences or how not to do consequences, how just to be collaborative with your child. I have
such respect for that. I have a whole section in the back of the book about resources for those
very books.
I didn't want to write a book that would just be about addressing specific behaviors.
I really wanted to write a book that would be a sort of a, to use your language,
Allison, a soul orientation. Okay. How are you going to orient your beingness toward your child in
such a way that you will create the best possible uh soil or her ground for them to grow in and
that is your mindset that is your your attitude toward your child and this goes back to that part
about also doing self-discovery and work on the self because if you approach your child as someone
who is real inside The inside world is as real as the outside world.
If you approach your child with that attitude and you approach yourself with that attitude, now you
are positioned for really deep, true emotional intimacy because that's where it resides.
It's not in your communication skills. It's not in how you phrase your questions or how many times
you ask. It's this... It's this orientation,
this attitude that says, I know that you're real inside. I'm very interested in what's going on
inside there. And I am going to attend to you in such a way that you and I both learn together who
you are as an individual, how you feel, and I'm going to help you find the words.
to be able to express that so we can communicate about it. And I'm going to take your emotional
needs completely seriously. I don't care if you're 2 or 12 or 17.
I'm going to treat your inner world like something that is as essential and important as anything
in the outside world that our culture values. You are precious to me for who you really are.
And I'm going to get to know you at that level. And we're going to delight in each other.
That's powerful. If you get that going, you are going to do just fine.
That's so encouraging. It's such a paradox in many ways that listening to you,
the more we cultivate that soil in our own soul, that's what spills.
out. You know, that's what spills out. That's what's our kids. And I'm aware of that.
The more I'm with myself, I kind of figure out what I actually need from me, from, you know, from
even I think spiritually for me, like kind of learning that's what it means, God with us, you know,
rarely to be fixed, rarely to be lectured, sometimes a boundary, sure.
Always with understanding. That's how I then approach my own kids.
Yes, it absolutely is then. Oh, I get it now. Oh, that's what you want in this moment.
Exactly. Yeah. And it's and it's basically this recognition that comes across.
We can you can tell you can tell how someone attends to you,
whether they think that you're really inside there. That there's really something inside you that
they're connecting with. That comes across, you know, in a crowded room.
You meet the eyes of someone who can do that, who can recognize the realness inside you.
And you instantly feel like you want to gravitate toward that because you know it's going to be
kind. You know it's going to take you seriously. You know that you have the feeling that you could
tell this person anything and they would just be curious. you know, about you. They wouldn't judge
you or reject you. It's a very particular kind of energy. But what I think is so cool,
because it's amazing it works this way, it's so cool that when we show curiosity toward ourselves
and our own development, how we got to be the way we are, that's going to translate. to our
relationships, and also to our parenting with our child. It's to your point at the beginning, it
really is, the more we try to be better parents, we are going to become better people.
And it's very beautiful. You talk about this concept that I love from Winnicott.
I think it's from Winnicott, the good enough parent. I kind of want to bring that in because we
also... I think part of that balance and that paradox is we make mistakes.
We have bad days. We miss things, you know. So tell me how you encourage parents through that in
this book because you really are. It's not a quick fix how-to. It's more of a who you are.
So what's this idea of a good enough parent and how do we think about it in our own process?
Yeah.
Well, in a way, it's sort of the counterbalance to the implicit message in some books,
which is, let me tell you how to be a more perfect parent, or let me help you perfect yourself.
Or step down from that is, let me show you how to do the skills.
Let me show you the steps for how you do this. But this is really about,
and I think Winnicott was getting at this too, it's an orientation. It's a way of seeing the world
or this other person where you are sensitive enough,
you're attuned enough, you're interested enough in the experience of that little baby,
that toddler, that middle schooler. where you will turn toward them with interest and curiosity and
maybe concern when you sense that there is something going on inside them that is not being
expressed, that maybe needs to be expressed or is in the process of trying to form into something
that can be communicated. So the good enough parent is the person who knows their child has an
inner world and they're sensitive and responsive to that at an emotional level.
It's that, I think you called it the withness, you know,
being with the person. And that kind of attentiveness it turns out,
does not have to be done 100% of the time every day. There you go.
This is the big relief.
Load off your mind. And the infancy researcher, Ed Tronick,
actually set out and did the experiment to find out, okay,
let's operationalize this. How much time do you have to be perfectly attuned to your child in order
to be a good enough parent? I need some parameters here. Don't just tell me to be good enough.
And he found that approximately a third of the time, maybe I think his actual number was 30%.
If you are attuned to and attending to your child at a emotional level of being present with them
and sensitive to them yeah if you're doing that about a third of the time now this we're talking
interspersed yeah right you're not with your child presumably all day long so the third of the time
you're with them yeah yes because he you know he recorded wow you know when at whenever the parent
tuned in to the child and made that resonant right brain to right brain kind of connection with the
child. And he found that that's really all it took for the child to apparently feel safe,
soothed, and kind of ready to meet the day again.
It was not necessary to try to be perfectly attuned and always there.
That gets us into helicopter parent territory. But that we can have peaceful coexistence with our
child, except when they begin to show us that they need more engagement,
which they will reliably do by fussing or crying or trying to get attention. They'll always tell us
what we need to do. That's so good. I noticed as your kids get older,
too. when you've learned when you know when you've been present or not present as they get older
because they know you can name it you know I will say to my daughter I am so distracted I'm just
not here you know or I'll circle back and say I'm present now I'm sorry I wasn't earlier right
which is that yeah you build that trust they don't expect perfection because that's not real life
but you build that trust over time as you kind of Learn. It's not to beat yourself up.
Oh, man, I'm not present right now. It's I noticed that I'm not. Oh, wow. What a win.
You know that I know the difference. It's self-reflection. Yeah. Awareness.
Yeah. Yes. So when we can go back in and reconnect like that deliberately and also.
to confirm your child's experience to validate their experience by saying i wasn't present earlier
or i was distracted or i couldn't listen that you know at that point um it it confirms to them oh
i'm not crazy uh this really did happen right and that goes into their model of life in interacting
with other people i mean they They then understand and they're not,
you know, thrown by someone who is distracted at times.
They now know that's a thing that happens between people. They don't need perfect attention all the
time because they've learned that from you. And they also have more trust in the world because,
like, who would you trust more? The friend who...
never ever ever uh had any and created any problems between you or the friend who when there was a
problem they noticed they circled back like you said they say hey you know i really missed the boat
on that one i don't think i'd listen to you very well could we talk about that again at some point
because i was really distracted you have Better trust for that person because you know they're
watching, they're monitoring themselves in the relationship. And I can count on them to feel
something, feel off about the interaction too. They're going to feel it too.
And if they come back to me, I'm going to trust them more than if we had never had a breach.
That's a good point. It actually feels, in any kind of relationship, that's such a beautiful
feeling when you realize we both got that we disconnected. Yes. And we can repair it. That's
powerful. Yeah, and that idea about that actually strengthening trust and hope,
that's from Ed Tronick and Claudia Gold in their book, The Power of Discord, which just turns
upside down this idea that we have to be perfect all the time. Yeah, perfection is not the goal,
actually. That's so good. So what, Lindsay, so we're kind of doing this work ourselves.
What does emotional maturity look like in a child? Yeah.
Right? Because when you were describing the emotionally immature parent as a four or five-year
-old or whatever age, I thought to myself, I was thinking, right, a four-year-old or a five-year
-old can show these moments of empathy. And it's really cool. And you're so excited about it. But
it's not stable. So what are some, you know,
signs of real inner development, real inner emotional maturity that we can look for in our kids?
Yes, and the way you just said that was beautiful because it really is signs of a becoming.
You know, it's not something that has already happened,
of course, because there are only, you know, three or six or, you know. whatever we're not going to
see emotional maturity in the way we mean it for an adult but what we what we really mean is that
according to what they need to be doing at different stages of life this is why i i went from birth
to young adulthood in the book because i wanted people to know what these developmental challenges
are for each age And they're all different. We're working on different things.
So if we're meeting the developmental challenge of our age, like for the two-year-old,
it's autonomy versus shame and self-doubt. If they're learning how to be autonomous and they're
learning to do that in a way that shows confidence and yet connection with other people,
then they are showing their maturation that's appropriate at that age.
Same thing with a teenager who is looking for their identity. The ways that they try to find their
identity may be through artists or music idols or maybe the upperclassmen of the sports character.
They're looking for their identity. So we would say, Right on track. That child is maturing into
it. Also with teenagers, of course, if they're giving us a hard time, if they're not telling us
everything, if they're needing time alone, we might say, right on track.
They're developing their autonomous and their independent identity.
What is going to be the sign of maturation is going to depend on their developmental challenge of
the moment. But in general, if you're looking for, is my child emotionally maturing okay?
You're basically wanting to look at, is my child in a state of emotional connection with me and the
other important people in their life? Interesting. yeah because are they are they turning to me and
i i say me but it could be no are they turning to dad are they turning to their grandparent when
they have something that they are excited about do they come and show um do they ask look at me do
they engage like that or are they do they make eye contact are they showing that desire to be close
with another person that's that's a hallmark and then you know once in a while are they showing
some signs of empathy you know you know in a two-year-old it's going to be pretty brief but are
they are they able to you know momentarily even sort of think about the other person or the
situation in a way that shows some kind of beginning wisdom.
We want to see that. And then are they trying to communicate what it is that they want and who it
is that they are, which includes saying no. Yeah. a sign of emotional maturation in a two-year
-old may very well be a tantrum. That doesn't look very mature, but if it's them beginning to
exercise their independence and their ability to be their own person,
that's a step on. road to emotional maturity it's so good it's again so paradoxical in a way and i
think as as parents right it's that that nuance of right i don't love the tantrums but the tantrums
are actually my child um showing us a cue and again it always i always take it back to the the
inner work similarly if i do something i don't love it is a part of me giving me a signal that I
need to pay attention to you know same same with with our kiddos you know there's something there
that that we want to we don't want to squash that because this is part of their becoming not that
we're saying have tantrums every day but that we're saying okay I oh to use your words I'm learning
something about your inner world here yes I'm learning something about you Yes.
I've got to help shepherd you through that so that you can function in society, but you're telling
me something about you. That's important. It is important, and it's also you telling the child,
I understand that you're overwhelmed. Yeah. I know what this is like. I've been there.
Maybe I was there yesterday. I know what this feels like. I'm here for you.
You're having a moment where you're telling me how bad it is for you inside right now and I'm right
here and I'm going to be here and we're going to sit this out or we're going to go through this and
I will be there on the other side. That's kind of the message that you're communicating to them
through your attitude of interest. you know essentially forbearance you're you're living through it
with them and you're able to give them that feeling that i'm being understood i'm not being judged
my parent is not in a panic because i'm having a tantrum and that's a really bad sign my parent has
a wide enough perspective that they're putting this in context about me and it's okay yeah there's
safety at this point this is okay and that feels selfish that creates self-acceptance yeah okay so
that when they feel overwhelmed as an adult you know 20 30 years down the road they're not going to
launch into deep shame over the fact that they lost it or that they you know they became
incapacitated by some feeling of failure or whatever it is they kind of remember that This is part
of the process of life. And we get through these things. But the parent is who shows them that in
the first place. Yeah. This is so good. One last kind of deeper topic I want to touch on.
You touch on in the book this idea of kind of letting our kids have their own unique individual
selves. Kind of this, we talk on the podcast sometimes, enmeshment. Versus differentiation.
And when you were describing these hallmarks, I was thinking, as a parent, it feels wonderful when
your child, especially as they get older, come to you with things.
I'm very aware there's a difference between feeling excited about that because I'm the center of
their universe, right? In that sort of coercive way. And you kind of, I can tell you were kind of
like, it's not about that. It's more. what you the the healthy thing is oh my gosh I I have become
safe for them and they are now able to use deploy that skill of asking for help asking for support
right it's it's always that dance right because we are human and we want that closeness and also
we're always holding that with that dance of autonomy of mostly what's really you know of course
the human part of me is like you know and even sometimes with my husband I'll be like oh she came
to me that feels so good and And then I also am aware with the other side of me, this is mostly
good for her because she's now got this skill that she can deploy when she's hurting to ask for
help, right? It's such a dance. And you talk about it in the book of the importance of honoring
their autonomy and just that human pull. I think we want our kids to...
We want our advice, you know, or want our opinions. We want our kids, and you talk about this,
sometimes we're delighted if it turns out that they actually like some of the things we do.
That's okay. It's not that that's not, but we always have to be kind of monitoring that mostly this
needs to be about their autonomy. Can you tease that out for us a little bit?
I think you do a really great job of that in the book. Yeah, well, all you have to do is think
about your adult relationships or think about yourself in an adult relationship.
If somebody respects your autonomy and they respect that you know more about your inner experience
than they do, and they are cognizant that you are...
an adult who is going to make her own decisions, you know, with input, but you are your own person,
if they have that attitude toward you, won't that make you feel like going toward them the next
time you have an issue or a problem or you need some help, right? Totally.
I mean, children and adults are so similar at an emotional level.
not intellectually, not experientially, not in terms of wisdom, but they are so identical in the
way that things affect them. So if we are to go toward our children with a kind of...
um let me tell you what i think about that or let me uh let me make that all better for you i'm i'm
the center of your feel good feelings come to mommy come to daddy and there's that kind of push for
enmeshment the the child automatically backs up from that fascinating yeah to to protect their hard
-won autonomy, their sense of self that has begun to develop as an individual,
that differentiation from the parent or from the family,
you know, sort of the family, one person called it the family ego mass, the conglomeration of
people, not individuals interacting. Yeah, so when you are doing that,
dance of I'm respecting you as an individual person.
I love it when you come to me. When you need me,
I love to be needed. I mean, that's one of the great benefits of parenthood as far as I'm concerned
is when your child needs you, they really need you. And there's no flattery or fakery about it.
You are essential. As they say in Pinocchio, you are crucial to them being able to get re
-regulated and feel better. into a sense of balance.
So that feels wonderful and we enjoy it when it occurs. And then we feel the pang and the little
bit of hurt and the distance when they move out from us and go about there. business like they
never, you know, gave us a second thought. That is, you know, that is the gift that we give them.
Yes, it's lovely to be needed, but I as a parent don't mind having the pangs when you have to go
out and do things on your own or, you know, make up your own mind. I, as a parent,
am learning to live with that. That then takes us back to our own self-discovery,
doesn't it? Because where do those pangs come from? It comes from our childhood and whatever
experiences we had about being left behind or feeling suddenly not as important as we were a moment
before. It's so good. It's such a back and forth, such a dance of...
I always think about it like the dances in the old...
old like Pride and Prejudice, you know, where the dance wasn't clinging to each other in a slow
dance. They're moving in and out, right? I never thought about that before.
That's really true. And sometimes even in those dances, they're with other people.
And, you know, again, that's a romantic picture, which I think is a good one for romance too.
It's dance, you know. It's a great visual. It really is. And yet,
like you say, our romantic ideal is two people clinging together like kittens on a raft.
Exactly. And that's our ideal of romantic love. Yeah.
And it lacks that rhythm. Yes. that felt rhythm of the back and forth and the separating and the
coming back together. That's something that, I mean, gosh,
the whole world operates on that kind of rhythm. Yeah, yeah. I really appreciate that.
What, just kind of as we're winding down, for the parent who's listening, we're going into summer.
It's a great time for this. What are a couple of, you know, just... So practical shifts that,
you know, the book is both deep and practical. I love that about what you do. What are just some
practical shifts kind of, because again, some of what we're talking about, even thinking about that
dance, there's got to be some inner stability, you know, especially heading into the chaos of
summer. What are some practical things we can do that to just implement a little more of this kind
of into our day to day? Yeah, well, because we usually have more time with our children in the
summer and things feel a little less hectic, at least because you've had the school schedule taken
out. There is much more of an opportunity for you to do that stepping back and sort of just
noticing. And having that feeling that your child is a separate individual with their own inner
world that is unique and special to them. And that they have these needs that are going to be
coming up. And your job as a parent is to give a little bit of reflection or thought to what is it
that they need most from me at this moment. And that can be,
you know, do they need to be protected? Do they need nurturing? Do they need some guidance?
Or do I need to just put a limit down here? I mean, to be aware of those four parental functions as
creating the container for the growth of this little special,
unique individual that you have created.
And you are now nurturing into becoming a fully complex person who can think beyond black and white
and who doesn't oversimplify life, but is able to greet difficult situations with some thought and
some forethought, who doesn't indulge their impulses so as to make things worse instead of better
with their next move. But I think the most important and probably the easiest thing to do for the
summer is to, from time to time, step back and just sort of behold the fact that your child is real
inside.
And if you do that, you're going to find yourself taking them seriously, even if it seems like a
silly little fear or, you know, why are they so excited about that or, you know.
But when you really experience them as real inside,
you move into the position of being able to be a parent who actualizes who it is that they're
becoming. And that's one of the greatest rides of all in parenting, even if they're not turning to
you specifically or needing you. You're not getting that.
that kind of that sugar high hit from that attention from your child.
But you will feel yourself part of this larger mission,
this more meaningful endeavor that you're engaged with in being kind of the neuro architect of your
child's emotional development. And that all starts with that view of,
I see you. You're really there inside. I got you.
I love that. That is beautiful. That behold, you are real inside.
And that's really profound. That's a profound statement of the value of that human soul.
And just as you said that, again, it's that profound understanding of each of our souls is that
worthy of that beholding and the beauty. Yes, and if you take the time,
if you step out of your goal-driven left brain for half a second,
it's there. It's ready. It's ready to go. It's ready to engage.
And we can be pulled into it by any kind of emotional distress or maybe an urgent situation.
We can return to that presence and that awareness of the other person. hey,
this summer, let's try to do that on purpose and see how it begins to change how we approach our
child and then how we feel about the child within ourselves, how we're regarding ourselves as well.
That's so good. That's so good. Well, the book is out. When is it out,
Lindsay? It came out on Tuesday. Oh, it's out this week. How to Raise an Emotionally.
mature child. It's so good. You're just such a gift.
I feel like you've somehow taken your own wisdom and not only parented,
and I use that word in quotes, but just a generation of us, you know,
just out of your own. the beauty of your own spirit and really,
really grateful just for your time and for your wisdom. I know a lot goes into it and internally,
right? I'm sure a lot has gone into your own inner workings to be able to spill forth what you
have. And I'm just so grateful. Oh, well, thank you so much for having me. I'm just so delighted to
have the opportunity to talk to you and your people because This is at the heart of everything that
matters most to us. So thanks for giving me the opportunity to be with you. Thank you for joining
me for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would mean so much if you take a moment to
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