The Child in the Room Isn’t Always Your Child
Parenting Beyond the Way You Were Raised
Parenting therapy for parents of children ages 0–18, in Vista and online across California.
You love your kids. You’ve read the books, listened to the podcasts, and promised yourself you’d do it differently. Then your child does that thing, your chest tightens, and out comes a tone, a sentence, or a look that belongs to your mom or your dad.
Afterward comes the guilt, and a quiet question: Why do I keep doing this?
In those moments, you’re often not only responding to the child in front of you. Part of you is responding to the child you once were: the one who wasn’t heard, who had to be perfect, who learned to go quiet or get loud to stay safe. Your kid’s meltdown, backtalk, or defiance can touch that old place fast, before you’ve had a chance to think.
I’m Christina Leahy, a licensed marriage and family therapist. I help parents understand where their triggers come from, so they can respond to the child in front of them instead of reacting from their own past.
What’s actually happening
Why do my kids trigger me? Being “triggered” means your nervous system is reacting to something in the present as if it were a threat from the past. A child’s behavior can echo an old experience, such as feeling powerless, unheard, controlled, or not good enough. Your body responds first, and the angry or shut-down parent shows up before your thinking brain does.
Why do I act like my own parents? Our earliest relationships taught us, mostly without words, what conflict, emotion, and love look like. Under stress, those patterns are the ones your system reaches for, even if you consciously reject them. This is often called intergenerational (or transgenerational) transmission: patterns pass down, not because you chose them, but because they were never examined.
The good news: patterns that are noticed can be changed. Wanting to parent differently, and feeling unsettled when you don’t, is often where change starts.
A self-reflection checklist
Check what feels true for you. There’s no scoring and no diagnosis here, just a way to notice patterns.
☐ I react more intensely to my child’s behavior than the situation seems to deserve.
☐ After I lose my cool, I feel intense guilt or shame.
☐ I’ve heard myself say something my parent used to say, and I hated it.
☐ Certain behaviors (whining, defiance, mess, “no,” silence) set me off every time.
☐ I feel my body change when I’m triggered: racing heart, tight chest, heat, a need to escape or control.
☐ My child’s big feelings feel like too much, or like a personal attack.
☐ I’m afraid that if I don’t stay in control, I’ll turn into my parents.
☐ I go numb, shut down, or leave the room when things get intense.
☐ My partner and I get stuck in conflict over how to handle our kids.
☐ I’m parenting very differently from how I was raised, and it feels lonely or hard to know what “normal” looks like.
If you checked several, this work may help. Therapy can be a place to understand these patterns without judgment, and to build new ways of responding.