The Perfection in Being Imperfect Parents with Mee Hee Douglas

Author Pam Leo inspired parents from around the world with her incitation: “Let's raise children who won't have to recover from their childhoods.”

With one in 5 Australian adults experiencing depression at some point in their lives, and suicide now being the highest cause of death in young people, healing from our personal trauma and averting it from occurring in the generations behind us is arguably the most important challenge for our times. In this episode of Pregnancy Birth and Beyond we will be exploring if healing and averting trauma is really possible and if so, how we go about it.

Our guest Mee Hee Douglas has dedicated much of her adult life to understanding the influence her early experiences has had on her, leading to specialising in psychoanalytic psychotherapy for children, couples and families.

Mee Hee shares with us how our early experiences impact our adult lives as parents, and that is possible to heal. She also explains the primary task of parents to help our children 'digest' their traumatic experiences and integrate them into their experiences. Through Mee Hee we actually learn how being the "good enough mother" is actually exactly how we should be with our children, as they need some experiences of manageable frustration with the world, combined with knowing we are there to support.

Mee Hee Douglas is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist based in Bangalow, NSW. You can find her at www.meeheedouglas.com.

References:
Tavistok Clinic series: "Your child at xxx (1, 2, etc)"
Finding Your Way with Your Baby: The emotional life of parents and babies by Dilys Daws
Dr Donald Winnecot - "the good enough mother"
other info: www.letsgrowkids.org, Dr Allan Schore


First aired live at 99.9 BayFM Byron Bay, Australia 28 January 2019
Copyright PBB Media and Sally Cusack 2019
Presented and produced by Sally Cusack