Is your love for your child truly unconditional? Speaker: Dr. Gabor Maté Source: Dr. Gabor Maté On How Trauma Fuels Disease | Rich Roll Podcast This area can be so much tougher to navigate than it seems. A big reason for this is societal norms and past generational upbringings. That notion of, if your children are exhibiting "bad behavior," you need to punish the child for said behavior so that they stop doing it. The problem with this, that a lot of professionals now express, is that the child needs to have experiences of frustration, anger, sadness, and every other emotion in order to learn how to regulate those emotions. And when we punish a child, particularly by taking away connection with us, we may get the behavior to improve or "correct." But the result comes from the desperation and actual reliance for survival that comes with the parent-child connection. The child can literally suppress real, legitimate feelings simply to avoid losing contact and connection with the parent. Over time, this can erode the relationship. And even if the child continues to present well in front of the parent to avoid trouble, they haven't learned skills to manage those emotions that will definitely come up again when they are out in society. So how will they react outside of the presence of parental punishment? Or once they no longer need the parent for survival and start to stray from the desired attachment relationship? We need to be a little bit long-term greedy as parents. What makes my child a better person twenty years from now? It's not always as simple as, what makes my child "behave better" tomorrow? Share this post with another parent who needs to hear it! #parenting #parenting101 #connectedparenting #parentingjourney #unconditionallove