By Stacy Hixon, MA, LPC-S, CCTP, FRTP

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I think most of us can look back at the way our parents navigated both parenting and life and recognize that we’ve learned something from them. Some of those lessons are ones we’re grateful for. Others taught us what we don’t want to repeat. Either way, every experience holds value if we’re willing to learn from it.

Parenting has also taught me lessons that continued long after my child was grown. Looking back, I’m grateful for both perspectives because each has shaped the person, parent, and therapist I am today.

From My Parents

• Suppressing emotions often leads to anger, anxiety, depression, relationship difficulties, feeling unseen or unloved, and countless other struggles.
• Sometimes children are more emotionally mature than their parents.
• Unhealed generational wounds are often passed down until someone chooses to break the cycle.
• Just because someone is family doesn’t mean they are emotionally or physically safe.
• Living from fear and conformity is not the only way to live.
• Being part of someone’s life is a privilege, not a birthright.
• Beliefs should cultivate compassion, wisdom, and integrity rather than fear or shame.
• Parents are meant to protect their children from abusive adults.
• Parents are meant to comfort their children, not dismiss their emotions.
• Children are supposed to cry. Tears are not a sign of weakness.
• Untreated trauma and undiagnosed or undertreated mental health conditions can affect families for generations.
• Siblings don’t always become lifelong friends. Sometimes they become our greatest source of pain.
• Silence doesn’t heal wounds. Avoiding difficult conversations doesn’t make the pain disappear.
• Parents are human beings too. They have their own trauma, limitations, and healing to do.

From Being a Parent

• Sometimes children are more emotionally mature than their parents.
• We learn the most when we’re willing to truly listen to our children.
• Teaching children to think critically prepares them far better for life than teaching them what to think.
• Our children deserve autonomy, their own opinions, and the freedom to make choices that differ from ours.
• Our children may develop values that are different from our own, and that is part of becoming their own person.
• We are not entitled to know everything about our adult children.
• Acknowledging the ways I fell short as a parent does not make me a bad parent. It makes me accountable and willing to grow.
• Taking mental health seriously is one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves and our children.
• Healing our own trauma helps us become healthier parents.
• Children learn far more from what we model than from what we preach.
• Admitting my mistakes to my child has been one of the most freeing and healing experiences of my life.

These lessons are not universal truths. They are simply the wisdom I’ve gained through my own experiences. Some came through joy, many through pain, but all have shaped the way I understand relationships, healing, and what it means to love others well.

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