Modelling Authentic Acceptance: A Lifelong Journey
- Dr Jan Macfarlane
- Apr 6
- 4 min read
Welcome, April 2025!
The days are getting lighter and the daffodils are blooming. There is promise and freshness all around. I hope you are experiencing the uplifting experiences that early Spring can bring.
Social Media
In light of the spectacular drama Adolescence that aired on Netflix late last month, I felt that a focus on authentic acceptance would be useful for this blog. For those who have not seen it yet (and if not, I recommend you watch it), the story revolves around a 13-year-old boy who killed a girl at his school and the effects of this on him and his family. Later reviews on this programme are often centred around the use, misuse and abuse surrounding the use of social media on phones in school-age children.
Acceptance
Here we focus on the early years where social media may not yet be that much of a direct problem and innocence is so far fairly well protected, yet it is childhood experiences that go towards shaping our need for validation from an early age. When children are not shown love, or shamed, or judged and do not feel safe they begin to demonstrate different versions of themselves to others to be accepted by those they feel are important to them.
Vocabulary and behaviours are shaped to appeal accordingly and may not be the true version of the child. Being able to feel safe when feeling anger or sadness is paramount to allowing those we trust to see the real us. It helps us to belong and not just ‘fit in’ to gain false acceptance from others. Howard (2025) calls it’ Oxygen for the soul”.
Life Skills
This essential life skill in being able to use the right words or actions to identify a range of feelings helps in learning to accept oneself is best modelled by the parent/care giver themselves. As we know this can often be easier said than done. So, if we find it difficult, we can imagine how children may struggle. It is a skill that can always be improved via lifelong learning and working on our own emotional intelligence.
Leader
Yet, surely most of us are loving, kind parents/carers who go out of our way to cater for our child’s needs and do anything we can to help them. Yet, in real life, we can often falter as we navigate difficult circumstances. We might even not run the risk of saying ‘no’ as we often find it difficult and do not want to upset them or create tension. Unfortunately, this type of passivity can do more harm than good as it blurs boundaries about who is the ‘leader’ in the relationship. Respectful boundaries are needed to provide alignment and collaboration with each other. It's important to explore why our children behave the way they do and why certain things are so important, even if we at first cannot see this.
Time Together
We can appreciate that engaging in too many ‘extra ‘activities away from the home to keep busy reduces the opportunity to spend authentic time with each other( Nurturedfirst, 2025). Therefore, planning and doing activities together are fundamental to helping us communicate and connect on a more intimate level. This increases the chances of our children feeling seen, heard and safe with us. It helps to develop deep healthy emotional connection and has a lasting impact on their emotional regulation development through learning effective coping strategies. Interacting and talking with each other about how the day went is quality time. Adults ignoring the child or carrying out intermittent phone scrolling to feed the dopamine hit it gives, is not, even if done with good intention. The modelling of behaviour is paramount to parenting and caring success.
Personal Thoughts
I was fortunate to have a close family. My own precious childhood memories contain many times when we played and did activities together with our parents, including the laughs and rows that went with them. However, we did only have one TV screen to contend with and yes - we enjoyed it.
When my children were little, our family too were close and I have many photographs capturing days out and holidays which make me smile. They were brought up on Disney videos and yes – they loved them (although I can see some of them through different eyes now). No matter the activity, it was the time together and this history of family well-being that has helped make me who I am.
Today, I can see that I was part of the early IT revolution and yet already am feeling left behind due to continual advances in technology. I also own up to having a limited knowledge of the most up to date emojis and sayings. An aubergine - who knew!
So I know it will be a very different landscape for my grandson and his mum and dad. They are IT savvy, as he must learn to be, and yet we can only begin to guess how this will play out in the next decade with the advent of AI and other forms of communication. I trust that their grounding in family connection, trust and development of emotional intelligence will continue to be part of their armour as they too may get out of date sooner than they think. Our behaviour is mirrored in those we are responsible for, let us remember to check our own habits to give them the best chance of a healthy future.
I am always learning! I know you are too.
Hope you found the read interesting and that it helps you reflect on how you are developing authenticity in practice and in your own life.
Dr Jan Macfarlane
References
Howard, Alex. (2025)
Nurturedfirst (2025)
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