The Biggest Reason You Get Triggered By Your Kids

[Video Transcript]

Have you ever wondered why your kids trigger you the way that they do? I know that I do. I know that there are definitely some times when my kids do something, and it especially pisses me off. Like there are things that my kids do that upset me, right? One of my kids rode their bikes into my neighbor’s car, cost me $800 to have their car fixed. That was upsetting. But you know, that just comes and goes; stuff like that happens.

But there are times where my kids do stuff that especially irritate me, and I think that I know why. It’s not something that I really like to admit, but the reason that my kids piss me off more at sometimes than they do at other times is when I see them doing stuff that I don’t like about myself reflected back to me from my kids.

Man, one of my kids this morning, I was stressed out about something this morning. They, you know, trying to get out of the house; we had problems with our oven. And I was just not in a good mood. One of my kids was doing something that was making me upset. But as they walked away, they made this little comment that just, like, snapped and pissed me off. And I just lost it. I was like, “All right, no more iPad for you today,” and blah, blah, blah, you know, all this stuff. And I was so upset.

I was talking about it later on in the day with my wife, and she said, “You know why that really bothered you when they did that? It bothered you because we do the same thing to our kids when they’re walking away and they’re upset. We have this one little Zinger liner, you know, like that’ll teach them. That’s a strong parenting moment.” And you know what the frustrating thing is? My wife was right. She’s right about a lot of things, but she was right about this one.

There’s a book called “The Dark Side of the Light Chasers,” and if I were to summarize that book, it’s basically that the things that trigger us when we see other people do it, it’s probably because we do it. And that’s a really tough one to admit because sometimes our kids really do stuff that make us upset and we’re disappointed, we’re like bummed out for them, we’re triggered by them, or we’re frustrated by them, or they set us off in some ways.

But I would like to challenge you in a moment of self-examination the next time that you find your kid doing something that really bugs you, like either not cleaning the room totally accurately or following through with a job or doing the minimum required around the house in order to get their allowance or not telling you the total truth. Anytime that you see your kids doing something that you’re like immediately go from zero to 100, ask yourself why do I not like what do I not like about myself that I’m seeing reflected back to me in my own children?

And if you can learn to take those seconds when you’re triggered by something that you see in your own life to turn that around and allow that moment to teach you something about yourself, you will be on the way to some serious self-discovery, some serious personal growth, and some healing. Because what will start to happen is when you feel yourself be triggered by your kids and you can stop yourself and be like, “Why is this getting me?” You can start getting to the root of some of your own issues as an adult parent.

Because as an adult parent, in a perfect world, we shouldn’t be triggered by our own kids. But a lot of times, those triggers come from places where we have not yet healed our own self and where we are still struggling in some way to grasp some aspect of our life that we don’t like about ourselves.

It’s a tough love moment, but I think that it’s true. I know that it’s true for me. And I hope that as we go through this journey of parenthood and fatherhood, that these interactions that we have with our kids, that we allow them to teach us and that we allow them to help us grow as people and as parents.

So dads out there, pay attention to your triggers because they are teaching you something. Allow them to teach you.