John R. Miles

Now back to my conversation with Dr. Robin Kaslewicz.

For those of the audience who are not watching this video, I love the background behind you because you've got stuffed animals and children's toys surrounded by your book.

And I think to make sure everyone is on the same terminology, can you explain this term that you coined, post-traumatic parenting?

I liked how you started the book because you described the striking contrast between the endless to-do list every parent carries and the invisible to don't list that post-traumatic parents joggle in their heads.

And it reminded me of my own parenting because when I started to parent my son, I realized I was falling into the trap of how my father had parented me.

which is something that I didn't want to do.

And I didn't realize how difficult it was going to be to unlearn his parenting styles and to completely shift.

It was really a struggle to do it.

You know why that is.

Well, the first thing is I have still to this day have never found a parenting book that

gives you the absolute map for how to parent.

And I think I had an internal working model because of the trauma that I had faced that was insecure.

And so my default mode was to go back to what I knew.

And it's hard, as you were just talking about, to do something that's different to change the pattern.

But I knew if I didn't change the pattern,

my son was going to turn out just like me.

And so it was really important for me

To parent on a different level and to not criticize and to not be physically, I don't want to say abusive, but be physical with my son.

Because that's how I grew up.

And I also grew up with a parent who was absentee and who wouldn't let me make any mistakes because any mistake I would make, I would just get screamed at.