Entrepreneur and mum of two Karen Villard shares how she struggled dealing with her inner child, while trying to raise emotionally resilient kids
Emotional intelligence is a vital aspect of a child’s overall development and wellbeing, and it is particularly important to start teaching children about emotions during their foundational years. Growing up, I faced profound childhood trauma that I continue to grapple with reactive behaviour and challenges in regulating my own emotions. Recognising the lack of emotional guidance in my upbringing, I am determined to break this cycle and provide my own children with the tools they need for emotional resilience.
Keep reading as I delve into my personal journey as a parent with a struggling inner child and the reasons behind my passion for fostering social-emotional learning during a child’s formative years.
Challenges faced by our generation
Lack of role models: Our parents never taught us essential regulation skills, which makes it challenging for us to teach our own children. We often find ourselves reacting instead of responding, as that is what we have learned from our parents. The traditional way is only their way and there is no us.
Fixing previous generations’ mistakes: Our generation is expected to fix the mistakes made by our parents by breaking the cycle of generational hurt, but we were never taught how to navigate these circumstances. We are constantly learning and making mistakes as we try to figure it out on our own. While there are a lot of experts in this field, we still see conflicting views on how to raise our children and all we could do is test what could work best for our family.
Unhealed inner child: Our own inner child still carries the weight of unresolved childhood trauma. The previous generation never learned these parenting approaches, and they often pridefully refuse to apologize for their mistakes. We’re all alone and healing becomes difficult when we are left to fix it ourselves without proper guidance or when we are expected to be an adult in a scenario where it’s most triggering.
Difficulty disassociating from our own experiences: Our minds, hearts and bodies have not fully healed, which makes it challenging to separate our own experiences from those of our children. Our minds, our bodies, and our hearts remember subconsciously. We are easily triggered by simple things and haunted by these memories, impacting our ability to provide a thriving emotional environment for our family.
Generational differences: Older generations often seem indifferent and most likely exhibit a gentler approach to parenting with their grandchildren, and must I say the one that we actually needed. This dynamic can create a divide, with our children seeing their grandparents as fun and loving while us as the more strict and serious generation where everything is a lifelong lesson to be learned.
Lost in the noise: While we strive to raise the next generation of emotionally resilient children, we often feel lost amidst conflicting advice and products in the market. We yearn for a systematic approach that helps us navigate the challenges and ensures we raise well-rounded individuals. We strive for a well-tested formula so we don’t make the same mistakes as the one before.
When I had my own children, I was adamant to break this cycle so I practiced as an early childhood educator and trained with Early Childhood Australia about emotion coaching. I developed Cubo Sticky Feelings as an extension of my practice – an emotion coaching toolkit for parents and their kids preschoolers and up. This empowering resource is designed to support the sandwich generation of parents, equipping them with a systematic process of emotion regulation and coping strategies to teach preschoolers how to self or co-regulate with their parents.
Cubo Sticky Feelings is an emotion coaching toolkit that helps preschoolers and up learn how to self or co-regulate with their parents. Kids go through 3 simple steps of labelling, measuring, and coping with their emotions in the magnetic board. This Social Emotional Learning (SEL) box reveals a large matching game board where kids learn about positive and negative feelings. Parents can also refer to the included guide cards to teach kids how to manage their emotions. Cubo Sticky Feelings is the 2nd addition to our Cubo Sticky range, our SEL range that helps parents and their kids to navigate the ups and downs of preschool-hood.
As we create a better environment for our children, we must reflect on how we would have wanted our inner child to be raised. We need to remind ourselves that nobody taught us these skills in the first place and while mistakes are unavoidable, growth and healing can take place. Instead of setting high standards for ourselves, we should focus on being kind and reflecting on our children’s perspective using our parallel childhood experiences. Together, we can develop emotional resilience side by side – supporting our children’s emotional intelligence while nurturing our own emotional well-being.
Thank you for sharing your story Karen!
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Karen Villard helps conscious parents move away from single-use (plastic toys) through multifunctional toys that grow with the child’s learning needs. Having worked in the early years space and as a mum of two preschoolers, Karen was overwhelmed with the number of toys that had overtaken their living and storage space. Most of these toys can no longer be used as kids have already achieved the skills from this toy, it’s no longer fun or challenging. Inspired by her Filipino native hut called kubo, a house that can be changed to suit family’s needs, she also designed muti-usable or modular toys to make sure that kids can play with their toys much longer. Her vision for Cubo Toys is so that kids can Play for Good.