Ever wonder how our childhood experiences affect how we raise our own kids? I'm Esther Mbabazi, and in this episode of Motherhood & The Brain, we talk about how our instincts as moms are influenced by our past.
We'll explore why we feel the need to protect our children so much and how sometimes that clashes with the kind of moms we want to be.
We'll dig into how our own upbringing shapes the way we interact with our kids without us even realizing it. Join me as we face the habits we've inherited and learn how to have a better relationship with our daughters, without passing on our own fears.
Moving from thoughts to real-life situations, I'll share a story about when my son had really bad acne. It made me think about how much I should help him versus letting him handle things on his own.
It's a story many parents can understand—it's about dealing with adolescence, wanting to fix our kids' problems, and knowing when to give them space to grow.
This episode isn't just about surface-level issues; it's about the big emotional changes kids go through and how we, as parents, can support them while also giving them room to become who they truly are.
So, tune in and find out how to help your child grow while keeping a strong bond in your family.
Ever wonder how our childhood experiences affect how we raise our own kids? I'm Esther Mbabazi, and in this episode of Motherhood & The Brain, we talk about how our instincts as moms are influenced by our past.
We'll explore why we feel the need to protect our children so much and how sometimes that clashes with the kind of moms we want to be.
We'll dig into how our own upbringing shapes the way we interact with our kids without us even realizing it. Join me as we face the habits we've inherited and learn how to have a better relationship with our daughters, without passing on our own fears.
Moving from thoughts to real-life situations, I'll share a story about when my son had really bad acne. It made me think about how much I should help him versus letting him handle things on his own.
It's a story many parents can understand—it's about dealing with adolescence, wanting to fix our kids' problems, and knowing when to give them space to grow.
This episode isn't just about surface-level issues; it's about the big emotional changes kids go through and how we, as parents, can support them while also giving them room to become who they truly are.
So, tune in and find out how to help your child grow while keeping a strong bond in your family.
3 Steps to Reduce Yelling So That Your Preteen Feels Safe to Come To You, Not Fearful.
https://masteryourownwellbeing.com/3steps
Speaker 1:
Welcome to Motherhood from the Brain, a podcast guiding moms of preteen girls on how to navigate emotional challenges that are not addressed in school. We share real stories, expert advice and brain-based methods for handling tough moments. Discover insights to create a deeper connection with your preteen and improve your motherhood journey. Let's tackle the uncharted territory of parenting together, hosted by professional, certified coach, esther Babazi.
Speaker 2:
Welcome back to the Motherhood and the Brain podcast. I'm your host, esther Mbabazi. This is episode number 16. Before we begin, I just want to state a small disclaimer. I am not a psychologist, I am not a psychiatrist, neither am I a licensed mental health worker. On this podcast, I just share what has worked for me in my life, what is working for me, how I am improving my emotional, physical and mental well-being, and how I am improving my motherhood journey. On today's episode, I'm going to talk about something that really took me by surprise, something that we have all probably done, we will be doing, and sometimes I even do it, but I have the tools to gain the awareness, so I bring myself around and see what really is going on, and that's something I don't know, and that's something I don't know. I don't even have a podcast title yet as of as I record this, but this is something that has to do with them.
Speaker 2:
How our innate maternal instincts are protective instincts. Our instinct to protect our young can sometimes get in the way of us actually being the mother that we want to be. I know that sounds like moving around in circles, but it is actually true. As mothers, we have this innate maternal instinct to protect our young. It is hardwired in our brain through millennia of evolution. Our protective brain kicks into high gear when it perceives threats to our children's well-being, driving us to take action to shield our children from harm. Our early experiences our early experiences, especially during childhood, leave a big mark on our protective brain. If we had lots of support and love, our protective brain got a very good foundation. But if our upbringing, our childhood, was very rough, our protective brain actually got some kind of mess from it. Our experiences, our rough experiences, somehow dictate how our protective brain handles things like anxiety. It's very fascinating how those early years of our lives stick with us, how big of an impact they have on our well-being later on in life. And in my humble opinion, nobody asked for it.
Speaker 2:
In my unsolicited opinion, I think this is one of the things we, quote-unquote should be taught in school how our earlier experiences shape our life later on, shape our well-being, our life later on, and how we can reverse that. But nobody teaches us that. I just found these things on my own. I went out and sought help because I felt something was off, something was missing, and that is how I got to learn these things. That's why I do this podcast, because I know many people out there are like me. Things don't make sense to them.
Speaker 2:
In my opinion, they should be teaching us that the way you were brought up somehow impacts the way you live your adult life, but it is reversible. We don't know that it is reversible and we don't know that the way we were brought up impacts our life. We don't know that it is reversible and we don't know that the way we were brought up impacts our life. We don't know, many of us don't know that, so we just go on living the way we live. So sometimes we find ourselves doing certain things because our protective brain is playing out from an older recording that we went through. Our protective brain is playing out from the experiences that we had way, way back in our childhood. Our protective brain plays out from those memories, plays out from that I like to say recording, plays out from that recording.
Speaker 2:
Because the protective brain does not have a concept of time. It does not understand the concept of time. It does not know that when you are younger, you are totally dependent on your caregivers, on your parents, and now that you are an adult, you are no longer dependent on them. Now you can make your own decisions. You have your life. You are in charge of your life. You can turn your life around. The protective brain does not know that. That is why we keep playing this record of when we were younger and keep doing things the way we did them and keep running away from things that scared us when we were younger. Because our protective brain does not know the concept. It doesn't understand the concept of time. Time is man-made, so the brain does not understand that.
Speaker 2:
So if we are not paying attention to how we feel, we might end up putting our worries onto our kids. We might end up using our kids to solve our own worries by telling our kids what to do so we feel better. This is what happens If you went through something way back in your life and just if you're like me, you never learned how to process what we call processing. You never learned how to process anything because you didn't know this and your parents didn't know this. It's nobody's fault. We are not here to blame. It's nobody's fault. You didn't know, your parents didn't know this. It's nobody's fault. We are not here to blame. It's nobody's fault. You didn't know, your parents didn't know and you don't know, so you never processed whatever you went through as a child. So what happens when we have children is we play out. Our protective brain plays out those older recordings, but somehow we are using our children now to solve our worries for us.
Speaker 2:
We are trying to control our children, move them like chess pieces in a game so that we feel better, and of course, this is all going on unconsciously because our primitive brain is taking control. We don't know this is happening. We don't have the awareness. Nobody taught us this. This is not something that we learn in school. At least, I never learned it in school. I never heard of a class that was teaching taught us this. This is not something that we learn in school. At least, I never learned it in school. I never heard of a class that was teaching stuff like this Never. And I attended school many, many, many, many years of school I never heard of this.
Speaker 2:
So we end up moving our kids around trying to ask them to do things, so we feel better about ourselves. To ask them to do things, so we feel better about ourselves, and we are not here to blame. I have done this because I lacked the awareness, even now that I have the tools to help me. Sometimes I find myself doing it and I have to take a step back. Sorry about the explanation, I just needed to break it down.
Speaker 2:
So on the surface it may seem like we are protecting our children or our preteens, but when we try to quote, unquote help our children, what actually is happening is we feel uncomfortable, we feel discomfort, we feel uneasy, we feel triggered. You think you have heard the word triggered all over now. We feel triggered, but our triggers, our discomfort, our uneasiness, is coming from something that happened to us a long time ago, but we are not really sure. We don't really know this because we do not have the awareness. Like I said, this recording is playing from your protective brain. It is underneath. It's like an iceberg. It is underneath, it is not above water. This recording is playing from underneath because it never got resolved, so it's still controlling your life, but you just don't know it. So what you do is you use your child unconsciously to help you solve for that discomfort and easiness trigger in an attempt for you to feel good.
Speaker 2:
The reason why I gave this, why I'm doing this podcast, is I went through this when our son turned 14, he developed severe acne, whole yellow face acne. I spent a good amount of time in my head trying to figure out how to help him with what I assumed was a problem. Now I understand that acne in teens has to do with biological changes that are going on in their bodies, but all the time I wanted to fix it. So I suggested to him that I make a doctor's appointment to go and see whether she would prescribe something to relieve the acne. His immediate response was no, and I was stunned, to say the least. He told me he hoped it would go away on its own after a while. He hoped it would go away on its own after a while and he told me he understood it was a teen's problem, like something people face in puberty, in adolescence.
Speaker 2:
My protective brain drove my desire to fix what I perceived as a problem. My son had acne, and my protective brain, my maternal instinct to protect him from quote unquote harm, drove me to want to fix it, and this maternal instinct often blurs the lines between caring for our children and allowing for their independence. I was already a coach, but I didn't see what my brain was doing, and his response when he said no, it led me to do some self-coaching. It led me to dig deeper and see what this was going on, because when he said no, I respected his no but I went on. I was a little scared like, oh my God, he's going to be bullied, he's going to be ostracized, like he's going to face negative consequences. You know how school can be. You know how brutal children can be in school. My brain was telling me all this. So all these fears that I had fueled my urge to make him an appointment with the doctor. My urge to make him an appointment with the doctor. And when I was doing some self-coaching I discovered that my assumption that he's going to be bullied and all those things came from my own fears and my past experiences. I put my worries onto my son so I imagined he would feel the same way I did all those years ago. Let me repeat, because I went through something similar when I, all those years ago, when I was in school, my brain brought this recording up of me going through that experience of children being brutal with me, or to me, or with me. So I thought my child would feel the same way I did. So my protective brain drove my urge to find, to get an appointment with the doctor to get him help to relieve his acne so that he does not go the same thing that he did. But his understanding of the situation differed from mine and he expressed a desire to let the acne resolve on its own, which is a common and natural occurrence during puberty. This made me rethink why I was doing what I was doing. I was trying to control my son because I was worried, not because he really needed the appointment or the acne relief.
Speaker 2:
And we do this in other areas as well. We force our kids into extracurricular activities they don't want to be a part of, because deep down, our maternal instincts, our protective brain, is scared of what others will think of us, what others will think of our pretences. Others may think we are not fit moms, we are failing our pretences. Then we coerce our children to join those extracurricular activities so we feel good, so other people perceive us in a certain way. But deep down, our kids, our pretences, do not want to attend or to join those extracurricular activities.
Speaker 2:
And I'm not saying extracurricular activities are not good, no. I'm not saying it is bad to get acne relief. No. What I'm saying is it becomes a problem when we get attached to the result, when we get attached to our kids enrolling in extracurricular activities, when we get attached to our kids refusing to go to the doctor to get relief for their acne, it is because we are making it mean something about us if they decline. If they decline, it is allowed to ask. It is okay to ask, it is okay to encourage children to enroll in extracurricular activities.
Speaker 2:
There is a ton of research that says extracurricular activities are good for kids. There is a ton of research that says maybe children should get help with their acne, especially if it is affecting them. But it becomes a problem when we make it mean something about us when they decline what we ask them to do. This is when we take a step back to see what is really going on here for me, for you as a mom, because our children are not projects to be fixed so we feel better. Our children are not here to be tweaked to our preferences. They are their own human beings with their own little brains, their thought processes, emotions, preferences and agency. They have the right. They have the inborn, innate right to make their own choices, the same way you and I do. And another thing that is really good and not good to know is our children are going to have different opinions than us. They are going to do things that we don't agree with, and that is okay. That is just how life works, and our protective brain is doing its job of helping us keep our kids in harm's way. Yes, that is a very good thing, but our protective brain needs guidance. One of my teachers describes the protective brain as a toddler who is running around with a chef's knife in the street. They are dangerous. They need supervision. Our protective brain has its job, yes, but it needs supervision. We need to remove the knife from the protective brain. We need to rein it in when it is leading us astray, but unless we have the awareness, we may not be able to do it.
Speaker 2:
It is okay to take your child to the doctor to get medication for acne. It becomes a problem when they say no and you try to force them. I did not force my child to go, but it took me by surprise when he said no, I had to literally sit down and was like what? I had to sit down and because if my mother had asked me all those years ago if I needed some help, I would have said yes, but when he said no, it got me to dig deep and like face my own fears. Like what is this? What am I making it mean? What's going on here? What am I not seeing? Because the problem is as parents, as mothers, we we think many times we think we know better, we know what's best for our children. But this is a clear example of me not knowing. I thought I knew what's best for him and I clearly did not. Acne in 10 years, it's a natural currency. Acne is. I remember I did an episode way back about how we solve problems.
Speaker 2:
Acne is what we call a neutral circumstance. In my life it is a neutral thing. It is not positive, it is not negative, it is just there. It is my thought about acne. It is what I think about acne that will lead me to feel a certain way. In this case, it led me to feel fearful for my child being bullied at school. It is what I was thinking. I thought that this acne needs to be fixed. I thought that what I went through I didn't want my child to go through what I went through. When I saw his acne, I immediately had negative thoughts about acne. So I wanted to fix it for him so he doesn't have to suffer this quote unquote suffer, so he doesn't have to be bullied and out. What do they call it? You know, kids have these groups where they include themselves a few days and then they exclude themselves Like. I didn't want him to go through that.
Speaker 2:
So my thinking about acne led me to feel fearful and from fear I wanted to make an appointment to the doctor to get him relief for the acne, relief for the acne, and he did not need this. But I was relieving my own triggers, my own earlier recording. My protective brain was relieving my own recording from all those years ago and I was acting now through my son. I wanted to fix my son. So I feel good this is what I talked about in the beginning that if we do not have this awareness, we are going to be using our children as chess pieces in a game, moving them around. So we feel good and this is only sustainable short term, because we will always be trying to move our kids around, try to get them to do things. So we feel better. So we feel a certain way and, to be honest, no one wants to be controlled like that. Our children, they are not puppets, we can learn to take care of our own well-being. I had to do some self-coaching and found out where this was coming from. It was coming from my older recording of when I was in junior high, all those years ago. It was not coming from my son wanting to fix it. No, it was coming from my own internal problem, my own struggles, all those years ago that I wanted my son to fix it. And when he said no, it gave me a chance to dig deep and find out what is really going on here. What am I not seeing? What is really going on here? What am I not saying?
Speaker 2:
When we let our kids be who they are, when we agree to disagree with our kids, we create deeper, respectful, meaningful relationships and, to be honest, I think we respect people who challenge us to think differently. We do not respect people who say yes to everything we say. We want people to challenge us, who get us to say things in a different way, in a different perspective, who get us, who lead us to dig deeper. We are not really taught how to deal with our own issues as mothers, but it's like we are expected to have all the answers and be perfectly pushed together. Nobody talks about what we go through.
Speaker 2:
Like, on the outside, we are expected to be perfectly rounded and well-functioning and have all these kids who are great, who are doing all these things, but deep down we are boiling. When we are feeling down or struggling, sometimes we end up putting all our internal worries on our kids, without even realizing it, because we haven't been taught these skills. We did not learn this in school. Like you know how we learn about geography, about history I don't know napoleon bonaparte, all those people alexander the great I don't know crimean war. We learn all those things, but the skills of life, no, we are expected to learn them on the street, on the internet street, like now I'm over the internet, I'm talking to you, so we do not have these skills and we end up doing figuring it out. It's like we are trying to fill our own voids by focusing on our kids, even when they might not need it.
Speaker 2:
This is a clear example of what I was doing. Something in me was missing, so I decided to help my child who did not even want that help. Three years ago, I came to realize that our own well-being as people mothers is separate from our children's well-being. People mothers separate from our children's well-being. And in order for us to be the best mothers, to be the better versions of ourselves, we need to take care of ourselves first, for both our sex for our own sex and for our children's sex, and I know it is a tough balance, but recognizing it is the first step. Thank you so much for listening today. Have a beautiful week, everyone. Talk to you again next week. Bye everyone.
Speaker 1:
Thank you for tuning in to today's episode. Your time means the world to us. If you found this episode valuable, we would be immensely grateful if you could spare a moment to visit Apple Podcasts and share your thoughts through a review. Your feedback plays a vital role in helping fellow moms discover our podcast and enrich their own motherhood experiences. Take care and bye for now.
