Do You Still Love Me?

Whether we’re in the midst of a family struggle, or we’re just having a tough day, kids tend to watch our body language, and blame themselves.

Image of close up child with folded arms staring into the distance. Parents in background arguing. Text states Children believe it's their fault. It's our job to teach them it's not.

Recently, a parent requested support because their 5-year-old believes that when the parent appears sad or upset that it means they don’t love them. 😔

Although this child is younger, this post also applies to parents of older children. We have to keep in mind that we establish most of our core beliefs by the age of 7. So it’s important to address these beliefs early and to recognize that, if unchecked, they are still at work well into adulthood.

Children follow our body language to figure out what things mean. These meanings they come up with become beliefs.

Let me show you how beliefs get established. Let’s say that a two-year-old toddler notices that every time Mommy says, “I love you,” she smiles. Then, they notice that every time Dad or sister or Grandma or auntie says, “I love you,” they smile, too. This toddler may conclude that a smile means, “I love you.” So when they see someone look at them with an angry or sad face, especially if it’s one of those same people that smiled and said, “I love you,” it is very likely that they will conclude that a sad or angry face means, “I don’t love you.” 😬

All of this is going on in the child’s mind so we don’t know about it until they bring it to us. So what do you do with when you realize that your child has developed this belief?

I’ve learned is that reversing roles is often a great teaching tool in relationships. Sometimes it’s hard to process new information once we’ve developed a belief so it helps to look at things from a different perspective, even when the child is very young.

Below is my response to the parent’s request for support on handling this situation…

“… if you have a moment with her when you’ve calmed her down after she’s been upset and things are back to normal, you can revisit this. So say she’s back happy playing, reading, watching her video and you say, “Do you love, Mommy (me)?” And she’ll probably say, “Yes.” And then you can say, “When you’re watching a movie do you love me?” “When you’re laughing do you still love me?” “What about when you were sad, did you still love me?” And she’ll probably say “Yes” to all of them, and you can say, “Well, when I’m happy, I love you. When I’m sad, I still love you. When I’m eating my vegetables, I love you. And even when I make you eat vegetables, I still love you. I always love you and I never stop loving you, even if I have a sad face, or angry face.” And it might be a conversation that gets revisited, or even turned into a game of “Do you think I love you, now?” And if she says no, it turns into giggles and belly tickles saying, “Of course, I still love you.” My daughter is now 12 and I still revisit this conversation. When I’m sad, tired, having a bad day, I still say to her, “Don’t worry about how my face looks. I’m not mad at you. I’m just tired/having a rough day. I love you.” Kids make it about them. So it’s important that we reinforce that it’s not.”

So often the struggles in our relationships with our children occur due to miscommunication through our body language. And other times it has a lot to do with the meanings they place on our behavior. Often their conclusions are so far off from what’s really going on.

So if you’ve been in a bad mood lately, or are not feeling well, or are just having a bad day, consider telling your child that. You don’t have to give them the details but just let them know that it’s not about them, AND tell them that you love them.

You may be surprised how often their response is, “Oh, I thought it was my fault.”

Marlene Dillon Empowerment Specialist

Want more tips on how to avoid miscommunication with your child?

Check out my course, Healing Our Families: Healing the Parent-Child Relationship on Udemy.

Learn more about my course in my recent blog post, “A Parenting Communication Course.”

Speak Your Truth

I am an outlier. If you want me to immediately pivot from a choice, tell me, “Everybody else is doing it.” 😆 I do what aligns with my beliefs, interests, and priorities, regardless of what everybody else thinks about it. However, being an outlier makes it really hard to be a people pleaser. For most of my life I tried to be both.

Image of a gray brick wall. White text outlined in light blue states Stand before the people you fear and speak your mind — even if your voice shakes. Maggie Kuhn Marlene Dillon Empowerment Specialist, mdillondesigns.com

One of the greatest challenges I’ve faced as a parent has been to stand my ground with my parenting decisions. Ultimately, I’m going to act in the best interest of my child, regardless of who agrees with it. The hard part is vocalizing that.

I. Do. Not. Like. Conflict. I want everybody to be happy with me, and smile at me, and tell me nothing but good things about myself. When I make my inevitable outlier choices, I end up having those annoying, awkward conversations, where people feel it’s their job to tell me their opinions and how I’m making the wrong decision because I’m not doing what they would do in my situation.

When I became a parent—and I mean during my pregnancy—I decided that I had to do what was in my child’s best interest. I had to follow my gut, even if that meant I had to stand up to my own momma (and if you know her, you know…..😩). I went most of my life doing things I didn’t want to do, just to keep the peace, but as a parent, I realized that my child’s physical, mental, emotional, and even social wellbeing matters more to me than avoiding those awkward moments.

It has taken time to get to a point where I initiate those awkward convos, as needed, rather than wait ’til they come to me. This week, I’ve already had a few and I’m gearing up for a few more. It’s a sign of my growth that I am standing in my power and saying, “I don’t care what you think; this is what I’m about to do.”

Just because something worked for someone else does not mean that is best for my child. As I grow as a parent, I realize more how important it is to exercise boundaries. We often have people around us who are very opinionated about our parenting choices. We can hear others, but ultimately we need to stand in what’s true for us and best for our children. We get the privilege of being their advocates. Sometimes that means we need to speak up and say what we are/are not going to do, when it comes to our children.

If you are a recovering (or practicing) people pleaser, know that the more you exercise your boundaries, and take the risks to stand in your truth, the more you develop inner strength. It’s important for me to catch myself when I’m tempted to back down from following my internal guidance, and ask, “What is my intention?” It helps me remember where my focus belongs. It helps me not take the easy path, just to avoid the conflict. It helps me stay aligned with my truth.

We need to follow our instincts, hold our boundaries, and speak our truths, even if our voice shakes.

Marlene Dillon Empowerment Specialist#Proud2BNaturalMe❤️💜💙💚

Want a better relationship with your child? Enroll, today!

Image of diverse parents and children. Online course cover photo. Text states Healing Our Families Healing the Parent-Child Relationship by Marlene Dillon MACM. Tap to find out more about communication course for parents on Udemy.com
https://www.udemy.com/course/healing-the-parent-child-relationship/?referralCode=318C78C54CC8079B0819

Unconditional Self-Love

Do you ever beat yourself up for what you haven’t done, yet? Do you ever feel bad for the gifts, callings, visions, and ideas that are in you nagging to be birthed?

Image of an orange, black, and white monarch butterfly on a yellow flower. Text states I love myself unconditionally—all I was, al I am, and ALL I am becoming. Marlene Dillon Empowerment Specialist mdillondesigns.com

Today, I needed a reset. I stepped away from my computer with my journal and new gel pens and after a few brief words I found myself waking up. 😆 I’ve learned and experienced enough to know now that sometimes that is a way for us to clear energy and reset, and I love a good restorative nap. (It was less than 15 minutes.)

When I woke up, I felt new but not quite clear on my next steps for the day, so I decided to follow an urge to sit at my computer and just write freely, whatever came to mind. The following is what came to me. Not something I typically share, but I felt that it may resonate with a few and help you to let go of some things so you can move on with your life. Love and blessings. Marlene Dillon Empowerment Specialist

These words came to me intuitively….

“Time to FORGIVE YOURSELF. You did nothing wrong. You are on track. It’s ALL okay.

You’re under the false impression that you are pivoting because you were going the wrong way. No. You are pivoting because it is now time to change course.

It has nothing to do with you being wrong, doing it wrong, being in the wrong. You did what you were supposed to do THEN with the knowledge, focus, goals, priorities, etc. you had THEN. And NOW you have different knowledge, a different focus, different goals, and different priorities.

Stop making yourself wrong for choosing a new path. Stop making yourself wrong for revisiting and old path when you now have what it takes to walk it. Maybe you weren’t ready.. prepared to handle it then.

Maybe it’s time to look at yourself differently. Maybe it’s time to accept that you’re allowed to ebb and flow like everything else in this universe. That you’re not wrong for breaks and pauses or even perceived regressions.

Maybe YOU get to be human, too. Maybe you get to allow yourself the grace you offer to others. Maybe it’s time you forgive yourself for doing nothing wrong and allow yourself to see YOU as one who gets to change paths, too.

No one looks at a butterfly and says, “Stupid. Why were you a caterpillar all that time when you had the potential to be a butterfly? Duh. What a waste of time.”

The length of time that you are as you are is irrelevant. It’s time to embrace this present moment and say, “Okay so what do I want to do, now.”

Marlene Dillon Empowerment Specialist#Proud2BNaturalMe

Letting Go of the Past

Image of a winding road from driver's perspective. Trees line the sides of the road. Text states: The past is over. What are you going to do with the present? Marlene Dillon Empowerment Specialist mdillondesigns.com

This is not a “suck it up and get over it” post. I hate those. They are emotionally damaging in my opinion. This is an “it happened and now we are here, so how can we heal or use it?” post.

Things happen in life that we wouldn’t have chosen, or that we chose when we had less information. We get to decide what happens next. We can put the car in park, for a while or indefinitely. We can keep driving and see how far we get by staring in the rearview mirror. Or we can, like the GPS, reroute and decide where we go from “here.”

Sometimes we experience setbacks, losses, and temporarily paralyzing events. We get to have a human response. At some point, however, we get to say, “That happened, and it didn’t take me out, so how do I heal, overcome, or use it?” “What can I do now?” “Do I put this in my trunk as baggage, or in my tank as fuel?”

I choose to believe that if it didn’t take me out, I can get beyond it. I have some hurts that still grip me now, but I’m healing so I can let them go. I have others that I can’t simply drop because they are outside of my control, but I get to choose my mindset regarding them. I am currently learning things about myself that I wish I knew as a child. Nothing I can do about that, but decide what I do with that information, now.

Sometimes we get the opportunity to heal by teaching our children what we learn in adulthood, so they don’t have to suffer and struggle for decades with the same issues. Sometimes we get a second chance to live a dream we let go of in the past. Sometimes the best we can do is choose to seek help to endure our present or release what happened to us long ago.

Let’s choose to do what we must to heal, or release, what we can from our past so that we can live a more full present. Whether that’s making an appointment with a therapist, getting that checkup, taking a class online, getting your GED, taking dance lessons, pouring your heart out graveside, writing a healing letter of forgiveness and burning it (safely), apologizing to your child, friend, parent, or spouse…. (if that’s what’s best for all involved).

We’ve all got stuff we’ve been dragging around, things that have been holding us back for too long. We get to choose. We can continue to stare at the wound, or heal it. Let’s let some stuff go. Let’s give ourselves a better today, and tomorrow. Let’s let go of yesterday. We have a choice. Stare at the wound, or attempt to heal it.

The past is over. What are you going to do with the present?

Marlene Dillon Empowerment Specialist #Proud2BNaturalMe❤️💜💙💚