Quote:
Originally Posted by Favorite Jeans
Ok… here, as I see it, is the massive difference between working with kids and having them.
When I work with kids I have empathy for the kids. Sometimes I have empathy for the whole family. But mainly for the kids. It’s super easy to judge parents when your job is to care for and identify with kids.
As a parent, you experience humility and desperation in a way that most non-parents, especially ones who think they know a lot about behaviour and emotion, have no clue about. Without that empathy, that look of specific recognition, from a person who—despite being a mental health professional and having read every book on the parenting shelf—has been reduced to tears by sleeplessness and tantrums and shocked by the unfortunate things they themselves have said or done to the small, vulnerable people in their care, I don’t think I’d be able to let my guard down fully.
(NB if the therapist has super easy kids and/or their co-parent does 85% of the parenting, they might not have that hard-won in-the-trenches experience. Once the principal of my child’s school gave me “advice” for getting her to school on time—set an alarm on your phone!—when the issue was that she hated school and was locking herself in the closet and screaming every morning for an hour, and I realized his parenting experience was non-contributory.)
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Ya I'm a school teacher and am a very empathic person and prior to not having kids thought I had an idea of what it was like. Then I went and had kids and realized I had NO clue. Almost felt like I needed to go back to all my parent friends and apologies for the friend I'd been before I had kids. lol. The sleepless nights and many other things combined and what is often said and done as a result for example are something no one can really appreciate until experienced. I did most of the night wake ups for the 1st year as my partner was working and I'd argue he still didn't quite 'get it' lol.
Even now I know for sure that some my friends who have have a whole other layer of experience that I don't quite fully understand or appreciate even though I try too....
I wonder if we would lead me to censoring talking about my kids. As I mentioned I do that already with some of my single friends as I know one or two of them just don't get it and the responses back can be unhelpful so I just say nothing or
I often feel they don't really want to hear about my kids anyway although they don't say that so some of that could be projection.
I do appreciate that she could still help me in lots of ways and normally would make no difference. I guess it's just a big gap in our understanding but it's not just a one off gap like I had a certain type of childhood and she didn't it's more a consistent gap in how we live our lives and as LT said my children may be more of a stressor at certain times that I need that level of understanding?