{"id":21913,"date":"2025-11-24T12:00:33","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T12:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/psychologistvietnam.com\/?p=21913"},"modified":"2025-12-03T08:47:31","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T08:47:31","slug":"when-a-mother-cannot-accept-herself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/psychologistvietnam.com\/en\/when-a-mother-cannot-accept-herself\/","title":{"rendered":"When a Mother Cannot Accept Herself And Her Child Suffers"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Unexpected Beginning A Box of Pastries and a Mother\u2019s Tears<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Thu Ha arrived for her counseling session carrying a small box of pastries.
As per professional guidelines, I gently declined.<\/p>\n

She quickly explained:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t me, doctor. My older boy insisted. He said you might get hungry.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

A sixth-grade boy sensitive, thoughtful, and considerate toward a person he had never met.
It was a moment that made me smile.<\/p>\n

But immediately after, his mother said something shocking:<\/p>\n

\u201cSensitive? He\u2019s useless, really!\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Then she began to cry.<\/p>\n

This was the moment the truth behind her struggles began to unfold.<\/p>\n

When a Child\u2019s Academic Decline Feels Like a Crisis<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Thu Ha holds a master\u2019s degree and works at a major hospital in Ho Chi Minh City.
Her husband is an IT engineer. To outsiders, they seem like a stable, educated, high-functioning family.<\/p>\n

Her first son, Minh, excelled academically throughout primary school.
But toward the end of grade 5, his performance declined.
By grade 6, his grades were only average.<\/p>\n

For Thu Ha, this was devastating:<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s introverted and now not even good at school. How will he survive?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, her second son lively, loud, often scolded by teachers, didn\u2019t worry her at all:<\/p>\n

\u201cThat boy is street-smart. He\u2019ll be fine anywhere.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Why such drastic difference in how she viewed her children?<\/p>\n

The answer lay in her childhood.<\/p>\n

The Hidden Root, A Mother\u2019s Unresolved Childhood Pain<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Thu Ha was raised by a single mother after her parents separated.
Her mother was strict, harsh, emotionally cold, a woman hardened by life.<\/p>\n

Growing up, Thu Ha constantly heard:<\/p>\n

\u201cA quiet, introverted girl like you will be stepped on. No one will love you.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Whenever she cried, her mother warned:<\/p>\n

\u201cCry again and I\u2019ll send you back to your father.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

This fear of abandonment stayed with her well into adulthood.<\/p>\n

On the outside, she became successful.
On the inside, she carried a lifelong belief:<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not good enough. I\u2019m unlovable. I could be left behind.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

So when she looked at Minh quiet, introverted, sensitive she saw herself as a child<\/em>.<\/p>\n

And that terrified her.<\/p>\n

She wasn\u2019t rejecting her son.
She was rejecting the wounded parts of herself<\/em> that she saw in him.<\/p>\n

You Cannot Truly Accept Your Child Until You Accept Yourself<\/strong><\/h2>\n

I asked her gently:<\/p>\n

\u201cHas being introverted ever stopped you from building a career, a family, a stable life?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

She paused, then whispered:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026No.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThen why do you believe it will destroy Minh\u2019s future?\u201d<\/p>\n

After a long silence, she replied:<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause that\u2019s what my mother always told me\u2026\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

In that moment, she realized:
Her voice of fear was not hers, it was her mother\u2019s.<\/p>\n

She had unknowingly passed that fear onto her child.<\/p>\n

A Parent\u2019s Emotional Climate Is the \u2018Brine\u2019 Their Children Grow In<\/strong><\/h2>\n

I offered her a metaphor:<\/p>\n

The Brine Metaphor<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Put radish in a jar of brine, it becomes pickles.
Put ginseng in the same jar, it also becomes radish.<\/p>\n

The brine<\/em> is the emotional climate parents create at home.<\/p>\n

If a child grows up in an environment of pressure, comparison, criticism, or fear,
they absorb it, even if parents love them deeply.<\/p>\n

Tears streamed down Thu Ha\u2019s face.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re right. I\u2019ve been letting my fear soak into my child.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

A Simple Exercise That Changed Everything<\/strong><\/h2>\n

I gave her a small daily task:<\/p>\n

The \u201cThree Strengths\u201d Exercise<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Every day, write down three genuine strengths<\/strong> you see in Minh with no judgment, no comparison, no fear.<\/p>\n

Two weeks later, she returned smiling:<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s thoughtful, mature, so understanding\u2026 I never noticed before.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

She even laughed:<\/p>\n

\u201cIf he were loud but shallow like Bin, I would be more worried.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

For the first time, she saw Minh as himself<\/em>, not as a reflection of her childhood fears.<\/p>\n

Final Reflection, Parenting Is Also a Journey of Healing<\/strong><\/h2>\n

A child does not need perfect parents.
They need parents who are learning to accept themselves.<\/p>\n

A mother who knows her own wounds can break the generational patterns.
A mother who heals herself can finally see her child with clarity and gentleness.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, what a child needs most is not perfection but a parent who can recognize their own value so they can see the beauty in their child without fear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Unexpected Beginning A Box of Pastries and a Mother\u2019s Tears Thu Ha arrived for her counseling session carrying a small box of pastries.As per professional guidelines, I gently declined. She quickly explained: \u201cIt wasn\u2019t me, doctor. My older boy insisted. He said you might get hungry.\u201d A sixth-grade boy sensitive, thoughtful, and considerate toward […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":21914,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_siteseo_robots_primary_cat":"187","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychologistvietnam.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychologistvietnam.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychologistvietnam.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychologistvietnam.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychologistvietnam.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/psychologistvietnam.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21913\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychologistvietnam.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychologistvietnam.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychologistvietnam.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychologistvietnam.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}