Excerpt:
Parental presence comes from the experience of a father, or mother, making sense of his or her life so that issues from their own childhood experiences do not impair, in any prolonged or profound way, their ability to connect openly with a child. Making sense of your life as a parent means reflecting on the past so that you understand how your own childhood experiences shaped who you have become. What this means is that you’ve done some at times painful reflections to see clearly how whatever you had in your own past that was negative, or whatever you missed out on in your own family life, has impacted your own development from childhood into adolescence and into adulthood.
What we experience in our own childhood embeds itself in direct ways in various forms of memory. We can have implicit memories that take the form of bodily sensations, perceptual images, emotions, and behavioral patterns as well as mental models or schema that are generalizations of repeated experiences. We can also have explicit memory in the form of facts and autobiographical reflections. For example, if my father was mean to me when I asserted my independence, as a two year old or a seventeen year old, I may have a sense of fear (implicit emotional memory) when I seek autonomy, may shut myself down (behavioral implicit memory) and may even have a sense that any move toward independence is fraught with danger (a mental model).
Making sense makes sense to do.
Full article: https://www.garrisoninstitute....og/parentalpresence/
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