Parenting: Five extra people in the room 👨‍👩‍👦‍👦

Every once in a while soon-to-be parents will ask me about unexpected challenges of being a new parent. Here’s one thing I tell them: There’s not just one new person in the relationship, there are at least five!

1. The baby

 2. Dad as a Baby: Dad's resonant unresolved psychic material from when he was a baby: From emotional responses to fundamental ways of relating to the world — For a newborn, this means the parent sometimes slips into a reflection of when they themselves were newborns—feeling a timelessness or eternity, or putting the remote control in the fridge.

3. Same for Mom — all the stuff from when she was a baby is coming back up to be referenced, known, and more fully integrated

4. Dad’s dad: Introjection of his father’s/parent’s parenting habits intensify — suddenly acting like his dad did, not only to the child, but to his partner!

5. Same for Mom — attitudes from her parents unconsciously influence her behavior and beliefs, especially when stressed.

I’m not a huge fan of “multiple selves” type of meaning making (preferring more fluid and interconnected “I” conceptualizations), but it can be a helpful frame (held lightly) for compassion. When we’re surprised by someone (including ourselves) repeatedly behaving in previously unthinkable ways, it kinda feels like a whole ‘nother person. To add to the whiplash, when mom or dad didn’t like aspects from their own upbringing, we often unconsciously enact the introjections while consciously trying to do the opposite. This can be crazy-making!

It’s a wonderful opportunity for getting more intimate with the totality of the universe, and the self we seem to experience it through. But man, it can be intense!

I also don’t expect it to go away—I expect we’ll continue to re-experience and re-reference our developmental histories as our children move through their own stages of growth. I expect this to be very wholesome in the truest sense: Frustrating, healing, horrifying, helpful, good, bad, made of meaning, creative, and ever more welcome.

With love, Jordan