Breaking the Parent-Child Cycle

3-minute read — by BTES Staff

Many parents have a desire to raise their children better than what they experienced as children themselves. “I’m not going to make the same mistakes my parents did.”, is a commonly-heard statement.

This expression reflects a desire to break the parent-child cycle; the cycle of behaviors that are modeled and perpetuated from one generation to the next. These behaviors can fall anywhere on the spectrum from the egregious, such as abuse, to the more commonplace, such as impatience or a harsh tone of voice. Whatever the specifics may be, there are behaviors an adult can identify as impactful, hurtful, or scarring to them as a child.

The challenge of enacting the desire to break the parent-child cycle is that children don’t learn as much from what is taught to them as they learn from what is modeled to them. This modeling occurs through every subtlety and nuance of the parent’s unconscious behavior, which comprises about 89% of the total. So essentially, the child’s unconscious is learning from the parent’s unconscious, thereby perpetuating the cycle despite the best of intentions.

Examples of these patterns are witnessed prolifically in the practice of psychology. Consider the tendency for a child of a sober alcoholic to become an alcoholic themselves, even though they never witnessed their parent drinking. Or how the child of a parent who experienced abuse will likely find themselves in abusive relationships, even if the child was never abused. Such is the power of the unconscious.

Working to break the parent-child cycle necessitates more than avoiding certain specific behaviors. Succeeding at this endeavor means the parent must learn the full scope of the unconscious impact of their own childhood experiences, the issues that resulted from that behavior and, with that knowledge, learn the skills to create new, deliberate patterns of behavior. In short, the parent must learn to be more conscious.

These are the same skills that must be learned to create a healthier relationship of any kind. This is the essence of therapy. This is what we teach at BEing There Counseling.