Any parent will tell you that raising a child brings with it a wide spectrum of emotions. Joy, pride, worry, frustration — all are part of the package. Parenting is one of the most rewarding yet challenging roles anyone can take on, and the way parents interact with their children has a profound and lasting effect.

The lessons children learn in their formative years — how to handle emotions, how to communicate needs, how safe or unsafe it feels to be themselves — are carried forward into adulthood. While some researchers debate whether personality is permanently set in early childhood, in therapy we can clearly observe that patterns of behaviour learned in childhood often resurface in adult relationships. These patterns can be positive or negative, but either way, they are deeply influential.

Parenting and Emotional Development

There is no such thing as a perfect parent. Mistakes are inevitable. However, parents who understand the natural stages of child development are often better equipped to support their children’s emotional growth. Knowing that the “terrible twos” or the “sulky teen” are normal developmental stages can help prevent overreaction to behaviour that is, in fact, age appropriate.

Unfortunately, parents sometimes misinterpret normal developmental behaviour as rebellion, disobedience, or even pathology. The response may be punitive discipline, shaming, or unnecessary medication rather than guidance and connection. This can leave children without the tools to regulate their emotions or set healthy boundaries. When this happens, the consequences often stretch far into adulthood, creating difficulties in relationships, self-esteem, and emotional resilience.

The Inner Child and Conflict

One of the clearest ways early experiences show up in adult life is through conflict. Conflict is emotionally charged, and in those moments, we often revert to the strategies we used as children.

• The child who learned to cry loudly to gain attention may grow into the adult who shouts or rages in conflict.
• The child who was silenced or sent away when upset may become the adult who withdraws and avoids confrontation.
• The child who was never allowed to express needs may grow into the adult who placates or people-pleases to maintain connection.

In my clinical work, I have often seen direct links between how couples handle conflict and how they were parented. The “inner child” tends to emerge most strongly in emotionally charged situations. Without awareness, many adults find themselves repeating the same cycles of behaviour that once helped them survive childhood — but now damage their adult relationships.

Revisiting the Past in Therapy

Therapy often provides the opportunity to revisit the experiences that created these patterns. By exploring childhood conditioning, clients can begin to reframe their past and learn healthier ways of relating to others and indeed, themselves.

The emotions tied to these old wounds — guilt, shame, abandonment, or trauma — need to be acknowledged and processed. Only then can new, more effective strategies be learned. This process is rarely easy. Change requires commitment and often means challenging deeply ingrained beliefs. Yet, the rewards are immense: greater self-awareness, emotional regulation, and healthier, more fulfilling relationships.

What Makes a Good Parent?

Parenting styles vary widely, and often, parents simply repeat what they experienced themselves. This is why patterns of dysfunction — codependency, emotional neglect, rigid gender roles, or authoritarian control — tend to run through generations.

In previous generations, parents were rarely equipped with an understanding of child development. Fathers were often distant authority figures, while mothers, overwhelmed with household responsibilities, had little time for emotional connection. It is no surprise that many adults today continue to seek the validation and connection they never received as children.

Today, parents are becoming more aware that raising a healthy child involves far more than providing food and shelter. Below are some core roles and responsibilities of effective parenting:

1. Providing the Basics and Healthy Role Modeling

Good parents meet their child’s fundamental needs for food, shelter, and safety — but they also model healthy behaviour, avoiding destructive habits such as addiction, aggression, or dishonesty. Children learn more from what parents do than from what they say.

2. Offering Protection

Children need to feel safe, not only physically but emotionally. Protection also means shielding them from adult problems they are not ready to handle. Many codependent adults were placed in caretaker roles early, expected to manage a parent’s emotions or responsibilities.

3. Encouraging Physical Connection

Affection and physical touch foster bonding and a sense of security. When physical affection is withheld as punishment, children may grow up associating love with conditional approval, a common theme among codependents.

4. Understanding Developmental Stages

Children’s behaviour must be understood in context. Age-appropriate misbehaviour should not be seen as rebellion. Parents who expect adult-like behaviour from young children risk creating shame and insecurity.

5. Adapting Parenting Over Time

Healthy families shift from dependence to interdependence. Parents who keep children dependent, either through control or enmeshment, prevent them from developing independence. Others may shame or punish attempts at autonomy, leading to guilt and confusion about self-reliance.

6. Setting Boundaries and Rules

Boundaries create safety. For young children, this means clear rules and consistency. For teens, it involves negotiation and responsibility. Inconsistent or absent boundaries often leave children ill-prepared for adult life, struggling with authority and personal limits.

7. Validating Feelings and Teaching Emotional Regulation

Listening to a child’s feelings — without judgment or ridicule — helps them develop healthy emotional expression. Codependents often grew up in families where feelings were dismissed, punished, or only acceptable if they mirrored the parent’s emotions.

8. Supporting Independence

The ultimate goal of parenting is to raise a child capable of making responsible, independent decisions. Bad parenting, by contrast, fosters dependence, fear, or rebellion. Many adults remain emotionally tied to their parents, unable to separate their identity, while others swing into avoidant counter-dependence, pushing people away while still feeling emotionally entangled.

Breaking the Cycle

While none of us are responsible for how we were conditioned as children, we are entirely responsible for addressing and changing that conditioning as adults. Recognising how childhood experiences continue to shape adult behaviour is the first step. With awareness, therapy, and a willingness to change, it is possible to break generational cycles of dysfunction and build healthier, more authentic relationships.

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If you recognise these patterns in your own life and relationships, therapy can provide the space to explore and change them. Book your free initial consultation HERE