As children, we are like sponges soaking in the explicit and implicit messages that surround us.

Those messages become our inner voices as we grow up to become adults and parents. In other words, our earliest memories become the core of our inner child. Depending on what those earliest experiences are, we may grow into parents who discover the need within ourselves to do some inner child healing.

These experiences shape us – even the experiences we can’t fully remember as adults – and have an impact on how we see the world, and ourselves, as parents.

All the intentional and unintentional ways that our parents, family (nuclear and extended), close adults, teachers, and friends behaved throughout our childhood, significantly impacted our development – for better or worse.

Many adults turn to inner child healing work to help change patterns that we learned in our earliest experiences.

But what is inner child work, really? And how does it help us in our parenting journey?

In this blog, we’ll tell you all that and more. Keep reading to learn:

• What is an inner child?
• How your memories shape your inner child
• Intergenerational trauma, ACEs, and healing the inner child
• ACEs and parenting: What are ACEs?
• ACEs and parenting: How ACEs impact your inner child healing needs
• How to heal your inner child: 6 strategies for inner child healing
• Beyond inner child work: Other ways to grow as a person and a parent

What is an “inner child”?

Sometimes, as adults reflecting on our childhood, we can remember the childhood experiences that shaped us – and other times we can’t.

Just because we can’t remember each specific experience, doesn’t mean those experiences haven’t impacted us or shaped us into the people we are today – in our personal lives, and as parents.

Our “inner child” is that sense of self that we reflect on from our childhood. The one who holds all the good and bad memories during our early years of development.

The inner child is typically understood to hold our hopes and fears based on the experiences we had as children. The experiences we had in early childhood shape how our inner child reacts to parenting situations that occur as our own children grow up, and influence what our parenting triggers are.

Does everyone have an inner child?

Yes – everyone has an inner child, but each person’s experiences are unique, and your experience will shape just what it is your inner child needs. 

Because children are born with immature brains and nervous systems they are highly vulnerable, the experiences they have beginning in utero shape the trajectory of their life. 

In fact, before a child’s language typically around the age of 3, most of the memories a child develops are implicit and somatic memories and are integral in laying a blueprint for how they will see themselves and others as they’re growing up, and even into adulthood. 

Being aware of our own inner child experiences – our traumas and our wonderful experiences – can help us to understand how and why we react to various situations as adults. 

Why do we startle or feel immediately triggered by loud noises? 

Why do we feel so warmhearted and content when we hear certain songs on the radio? 

Our childhood memories linger with us, consciously or unconsciously, and have a direct or indirect impact on the choices we make and the reactions we have in our daily lives. 

For many people, an inner child is a source of fun and joy – the “childlike” side of you that likes to daydream or play. 

In many cases, the inner child can also be a source of hurt if there were painful or confusing situations that resulted in feelings of fear or low self-worth in your childhood. 

Understanding the pains of your inner child can help you to nurture yourself into becoming a healthier, happier adult – something we all aspire to be! 

Healing your inner child can also be a solution to aspects of parenting that you are personally struggling with. 

Let’s talk more about what it means to heal your inner child, and why that’s so important for parenting. 

How your memories shape your inner child

As I’ve mentioned, your inner child comes into existence through experiences and memories. There are a few different types of memories:

• Implicit memories are memories that don’t require conscious recall or thought attached to them. These types of memories can be a skill (e.g. tying your shoes) or sensation (e.g. a smell evokes a feeling).
• Explicit memories, sometimes referred to as declarative memories, involves conscious recollection information. Two types of explicit memory are semantic memory (e.g. knowing facts and general knowledge) and episodic memory (e.g. knowing specific experiences such as a graduation or wedding).
• Somatic memories are sensations and physical responses tied to our body that are associated with past experiences. Somatic memories can be evoked from implicit or explicit memories, and are often thought of as body memories that can hold the echo of past traumas in the body.

Around the age 3 or 4, autobiographical memories begin to form, where children are able to recall events and experiences about their life (this combines semantic and episodic memory).

However, it’s important to know that children are still impacted by situations and experiences that occur prior to the development of these long-term memory systems. Children are impacted by the things that happen to and around them prior to the age of 3 or 4 years old.

Those early memories, if largely positive, may hold the foundation of our joys and dreams as adults.

However, if those early memories were mostly frightening, traumatic, or painful, then you may experience mental health struggles like depression, chronic stress or anxiety, and may find exploring inner child healing as beneficial.

How do our childhood memories shape our inner child, and our parenting?

Think about your own first memories. How old were you in those memories? Many researchers believe that we don’t develop long-term memory until kindergarten and beyond (around the age of 4 to 6), and that memories from before those times may be “implanted” memories (things that people have told you through the years that your imagination has filled in with colour and detail).

As a clinical counsellor who works with children who have endured trauma I have had numerous clients tell me: “My child endured hard things when they were little, but they don’t remember anything so it won’t really affect them.”

I once believed this to be true myself – and yet nothing could be further from the truth.

During the first 1000 days, from conception to approximately age 2, the brain and nervous system of a child undergo such tremendous growth and changes that they are the most vulnerable to the experiences around them.

Though the brain does continue to be elastic and can learn new ways of being as it gets older (well into ripe old age!), the brain is not as malleable as it is during the first few years of life.

Intergenerational trauma, ACEs, and healing the inner child

The experiences that a child has will either turn on or turn off genes.

Said another way, whether a gene is expressed or not depends on whether the conditions are right for it or not.

For example, if a newborn was kept in the dark for extended periods of time the visual cortex of the brain and the retina of the eye would not receive enough stimulation to develop, leading to varying degrees of permanent visual impairment. The genes found in eyesight require environments with proper light exposure.

Another example is the glucocorticoid receptor gene which has been tied to childhood adversity experiences of abuse and neglect. Research has found modifications in this gene, for children who have undergone certain types of ACEs, leading to an increased stress response and stress sensitivity.

We all come from parents who are typically trying the best they can.

All adults have things from their childhood that continue to impact them as an adult, regardless of whether they had a good enough upbringing or a challenging one. In severe cases of traumas that are passed down through the years, this can be known as intergenerational trauma.

Intergenerational trauma usually happens when past generations of adult parents struggle to (or do not even try to) heal childhood traumas that have shaped their coping mechanisms and triggers.

If significant traumas are not addressed as you become a parent, your triggers – your reactions to your child’s behaviours – may cause you to behave in ways you witnessed or experienced as a child yourself. And those behaviours may have the potential to pass the trauma down, generation after generation.

However – when people engage in inner child healing they are reparenting parts of themselves  that were often hurt, lost, frightened, shamed as children. 

Particularly, if they experienced adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) or complex trauma, people think of it as having  an inner child that can be “stuck” or “still hurting” that needs help in healing.

ACEs and parenting: What are ACEs?

If you endured a lot of hard experiences, lack of attuned parenting, or childhood traumas, the impact of these experiences can resurface when you become a parent. 

When you are stressed, your brain relies on frequently traveled circuits in the brain. And if yelling, screaming, hitting, silence were familiar to you in the ways your parents behaved, you are more likely to behave in those ways. There is nothing “wrong” with you, your brain just soaked up the experiences around you and inevitably formed a template as a way to respond to stress. 

That is why, people often exclaim in frustration when they reflect on their parenting, “I can’t believe I’m doing exactly what my mom did. I hated how she parented as a kid.” Or perhaps it is more subtle and you find yourself thinking, “I can feel my mom’s anger inside of me when my child talks back to me.” 

This is normal because you were a sponge when you were a child. 

The wonderful news is that you are more aware, and you are not at the mercy of your parents or other influential adults as a child. You have the capacity to change and become closer to the person and parent you want to be. 

Let’s talk a little bit more about the impact of ACEs on parenting. 

What causes ACEs?

Sometimes people have trouble distinguishing, as they reflect on their childhood, what was normal difficult stress and what may have affected them more negatively and been an adverse experience carrying echoes into the present.

When you feel threatened your body prepares to keep you safe by releasing stress hormones (e.g. cortisol), and increasing your heart rate and blood pressure. Stress hormones can shape your development and your automatic responses to situations or experiences in your adult life.

According to the Developing Child Center at Harvard, there are three types of stress:

• Positive: Stress is important for healthy development. Stress can come from both “good” (e.g. exercising, going on a roller coasting, waiting for good news) or “bad” (e.g. taking a test, starting a new job, helping your hurt child) experiences. What is more important than a good or bad label for stress is your perception of the experience (e.g. for some people riding a roller coaster would fall into the bad category). When babies and children feel stressed and an available supportive adult is with them, it helps buffer the physiological and psychological effects and helps the child return to their baseline. With positive stress the heart rate increases and there are mild increases in stress hormones.

• Tolerable: Here the stress response system is activated in a greater intensity and for longer. For example, the loss of a loved one, a vehicle accident, or a natural disaster are serious and typically experienced as highly stressful. However, if an available and supportive adult is present during this experience (or around the time) to help the child (or adult) make sense of the experience and support them, the brain, nervous system and organs recover.

• Toxic stress: If a child experiences intense, frequent and long periods of stress/adversity – such as the domestic violence in the home, abuse or neglect, household members with serious substance abuse or mental health problems – without the presence of a supportive adult, this can seriously impact the child’s developing brain, nervous system and organs. If a child grows up living with toxic stress, it will impact how they see themselves and the world around them. There are often developmental delays and can be later health problems such as increased risk of chronic diseases, mental health and substance abuse struggles, and physical health problems.

But what are ACEs, exactly?

ACEs are the experiences children have that can have a long-term impact on their health and well-being into parenthood – you can read the full list of experiences that are considered adverse childhood experiences here.

Experiences that fell under the category of toxic stress and occurred before the age of 18 are captured in what researchers call adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs. 

ACEs are not uncommon. According to the CDC, 64% of adults in the USA reported that they experienced at least one type of ACE before the age of 18, and 17% of adults reported that they had experienced four or more types of ACEs. 

According to a longitudinal study published in 2021 on Canadian’s between 45-85 years, 62% experienced at least one ACE. 

ACEs can have lasting effects on the health and wellness of children and adults. Many adults in Canada are parenting with ACEs – you are not alone, and you can start working on your childhood experiences 

ACEs and parenting: How ACEs impact your inner child healing needs

Yes, profoundly. But that doesn’t mean they have to dictate you. As C.S. Lewis, philosopher and author, once said, “You can’t go back and change your beginning but you can start where you are and change your ending.” 

Inner child healing can have a profound impact on your experiences as a parent, and help you to feel happier and more fulfilled as an adult. 

The first crucial step is self-reflection. 

Intentionally curiosity and reflection about why you are reacting in a particular way to your children (or spouse, partner, colleague, or friends) increases the possibility that reasons will come to your mind that inform why your behaviour carries the intensity or emotion it holds. 

Helpful questions to begin reflecting include:

• How did your parents or influential adults deal with sadness and disappointment?
• How did your parents or influential adults deal with anger? (sometimes how people did with sadness and anger is very different)
• Were you allowed to express emotions as a child? 
• How did you express sadness or anger as a child or teenager? 
• When your child acts a certain way, who do they remind you of?

The goal of reflection is to have increased clarity and awareness with your triggers so that you can parent more aligned with the way you want to parent to your child. 

When you know your parenting triggers deeply you can plan for future situations so that when you find yourself in them, you can practice or rehearse alternative ways of being to respond that make you feel good about your parenting. 

How can inner child healing help you as a parent?

Parenting can be triggering for all types of reasons; from biological needs such as lack of sleep, to emotional ones, such as not enough people to support you, to deeply personal ones that tie back to your childhood and upbringing.

What is fascinating about the adult brain is that the same attachment circuits that were activated when you were a child, become activated again when you parent your child. 

Particularly, during the first 18 months of life, the right hemisphere of the brain is dominant and rapidly developing, storing patterns of attachment that shape your early attachment patterns and later, your parenting behaviors with your children. 

What this means is that sometimes you don’t know you have certain triggers, until you have children and the triggers which were once dormant, become activated again as those same brain circuitries “wake-up”.

Also Read: Discover where motherhood nature comes from – and how you can start to nurture your motherhood nature to build connections with your children. 

How to heal your inner child: 6 strategies for inner child healing

Many people begin the process of inner child healing from home, through self-reflection and/or meditation, mindful journaling, exploring the literature on ACEs and childhood experiences, accessing free resources through reparenting groups on social media, and more.

However, inner child healing can be very complicated, emotional, and triggering – so doing the work together with a mental health professional to guide you through the process can be very beneficial.

A professional with training in inner-child work can help regulate you if you become overwhelmed, and guide your attention to important themes to explore to support your healing.

Inner child work can be draining, and leave you feeling conflicted, hurt or frustrated. A mental health professional can help you during really difficult reflections to settle so that you don’t carry your inner child work with you into your parenting.

If you are curious about strategies you can practice, here are 6 strategies you can start to incorporate.

1. Imagine yourself as a child

When you practice inner-child healing you are reflecting on yourself as a younger child; sometimes this is around a particular event that occurred or a difficult time-period in childhood. 

Helpful questions to guide your reflection can include: 

What did your younger self need?

How was your younger self hurt (or confused, scared etc.)?

How could your younger self have been protected or supported? 

Can you see now as an adult, that your younger self didn’t know what you understand in the present as an adult, and needed help (or support)? 

If you become overwhelmed with emotion while visualizing your younger self it is helpful to open your eyes, and tether yourself to the present moment by focusing on your senses. Focus on what you see, smell, touch, hear or taste. 

Ground yourself in the here and now and remind yourself that you have survived 100% of your hard days. 

2. Be curious about your inner child’s experience

Genuine curiosity gets people far in life as they adopt a posture of learning and growing. Becoming very curious about your younger self’s experiences can provide a lot of clarity about your experience in a situation in the past, and how it impacts you in the present.

Questions to guide your reflection can include:

What was your younger self thinking at the time?

What was your younger self hoping for?

Did anything surprise your younger self in this situation / period of time? 

Why do you think your younger self had a particular reaction?

What would have made it easier for your younger self?

How do you think that experience impacted you later in your life?

What are you carrying now as an adult, from that experience in the past?

Curiosity about our past experiences in and of themselves, and also in relation to our present experience, helps us make sense about why we may have the reactions, triggers, worries, fears or ways of seeing the world in the present. 

3. Practice self-compassion

You cannot “logic” your way out of an emotion. The most effective way to move through an emotion is to accept that it exists, and to let it move through you. Emotions never stay, like a wave on the sea they come and go, even the big waves. 

Practice self compassion with your younger and current self, as emotions, thoughts, and sensations arise . Researcher and expert, Dr. Kirsten Neff describes self-compassion as being kind and understanding to yourself, similar to how you might treat a friend, when you face your shortcomings, disappointments, mistakes or failures.

As you visualize your younger self, try out these phrases to see if they fit your experience:

• The pain I felt didn’t make me unlovable.
• I was not inadequate then, and I am not inadequate now. 
• I was doing the best I could with the information I had.
• I didn’t know who to turn to and it makes sense I felt lost. 

Remember, Your worth as a human being is not based on what you have done or done in your life, but who you are as a person. Test your level of self-compassion here.

4. Identify significant life events

Make a timeline of your life writing out key events that were important or significant. The timeline doesn’t have to be just bad experiences but can include good ones too. 

As you reflect on your inner-child, or younger self, notice if particular events stand out to them and be curious about their experience: what did they believe about themselves? What did they feel before and after the experience? How did the adults around them act? What did your younger child need? 

Different therapies, such as lifespan integration and EMDR have been found to be helpful for people to work through trauma and heal attachment wounds. 

5. Listen to your inner child

Journalling can be a very effective tool to help bring clarity to what your inner child might have felt, believed, thought or hoped for and how it ties to the present moment. 

When you journal sincerely, at the simplest level, you are taking what is inside you (thoughts & feelings) and putting it outside, onto paper and that frees up space inside you. When your experience is in front of you on a piece of paper, it can be easier to look at things more clearly, to organize the experience and make coherent sense of it. 

To begin learning how to write expressively and to let go of trauma, Greater Good from Berkeley offers guidance to help you to  learn how to journal your struggles. 

6. Have a safe place (real or imagined) to soothe your inner child

Reflecting on difficult experiences or traumas can understandably bring up stress that leads you beyond our window of tolerance. It is important to have tools to cope with such stress and help regulate yourself. 

One tool that can be very useful when visualizing your inner child, or younger-self, is to create a safe place you take your inner-child when reflection or processing becomes overwhelming. This safe place can be real (e.g. an actual place in your life that feels peaceful and safe) or imagined. You can practice guided visualizations to take your inner child, or younger self, to a safe place, or you can visualize a safe place yourself. 

Once you are at your safe place focus on your senses:

What do you see?

Who is with you?

What can you feel?

Do you taste anything? What does it taste like?

What are you hearing?

These focusing questions are intended to calm your brain and nervous system down to remind them that you are currently safe and not re-experiencing a trauma or very difficult experience. 

Beyond inner child work: Other ways to grow as a person and a parent

There are many protective factors you can engage in to promote self-development, growth and foster resilience. 

Self-education and actively learning more about your experiences, building supportive and healthy relationships to provide emotional support and model healthy behaviours, and living in communities with low crime-rates and a community minded mentality all provide protective factors to increase safety, personal resilience, self-regulation, positive relationships and a sense of belonging. 

If you want to build your network online, helpful accounts to follow include Dr. Becky from Good Inside, Peaceful Parenting with Sarah Rosensweet, Attachment Nerd with Eli Harwood and Dr. Shefali from Conscious Parent, and more.

Help others 

One of the reasons Care For Women was started was because it was the most upstream way to resource and support a family. As a clinical counsellor who works primarily with children who have already been impacted by their trauma, I thought if we could support families when they need it most – which is when a baby is born and it is highly demanding and stressful –  that would be helpful.  

Parenting is hard and it was never meant to be done alone. If you know a mother who is expecting a baby and is unsupported, encourage her to apply for care. Or if you believe that resourcing and equipping families when they need it most, lays the foundation of a strong society, consider donating. 

ACEs can impact your parenting but they don’t have to define your future. There is plenty of hope, because our brain and nervous system are highly adaptable and capable of learning new ways of being in the world.

With this neuroplasticity in mind, this means with the right support (such as finding supportive friends and not trying to be a superhero) and interventions, it is very possible to develop new ways of engaging with and experiencing the world. 

Resources for personal support

• The Ministry of Children and Family provides support for families to ensure children and youth are in safe and nurturing home environments in British Columbia. 
• Children and Youth Mental Health teams (in British Columbia) provide mental health assessment and treatment options (such as individual or group counselling, workshops or training for parents) for children, youth and families at no cost. 
• Parent Support BC is a registered charity whose mission is to provide parents with resources, community connections, research, education and advocacy.  
• The Canadian Mental Health Association provides resources and support services for mental health challenges.  
• Kids Help Phone is Canada’s 24/7 is an e-mental platform offering free, multilingual and confidential support to help young people.