LAUNCH: Parenting Tips for Raising Adult Children & Building Better Relationships · Shari Jonas - Parenting Consultant, Educator and Author

#43: How Healing Childhood Trauma from a Narcissistic Parent Can Deepen Your Connection With Your Child

·1 hr 5 min·4 clips

Maria describes a narcissistic mother, gaslighting, and a childhood where she never knew what behavior was expected.

1. LAUNCH: Parenting Tips for Raising Adult Children & Building Better Relationships centers on how healing childhood trauma can deepen connection with a child. 2. Shari Jonas hosts Maria Rieger, an author, speaker, and certified inner child reparenting coach, and Maria’s work matters because she helps parents repair old wounds. 3. The episode asks what reparenting is for and why adult healing can change how a parent shows up with children. 4. Maria defines reparenting as a series of protocols that help adults meet developmental needs that were not met in childhood. 5. She names attunement, nurturing, safe autonomy exploration, curiosity encouragement, emotional validation, and identity validation as key needs. 6. Maria says those unmet needs often show up later as problematic adult behavior. 7. She adds that neuroplasticity makes change possible and says adults can rewire the brain through the process. 8. Maria describes growing up after her father died in a motor vehicle accident and living with a narcissistic mother. 9. She says her mother used gaslighting, emotional manipulation, and shifting control, so the rules always changed. 10. Maria explains that the result was self-doubt, confusion, and a weakened sense of autonomy that affected later relationships. 11. She says becoming a parent forced her to study childhood development because she realized she did not have a good parenting model. 12. Maria says a key insight was recognizing that some behavior from her child was developmentally normal rather than a personal attack. 13. She explains dual awareness as connecting with the younger self while also knowing, as an adult, that the present is safe. 14. Maria says parents often notice the need for reparenting when children are seven or eight and start pushing for autonomy. 15. She gives an example of yelling at her four- or five-year-old son during a tantrum and then deciding to work on her own regulation. 16. Maria says co-regulation matters because children borrow regulation from parents before they can manage it themselves. 17. The tone is conversational and instructional, with Maria answering follow-up questions and grounding ideas in personal examples. 18. The format is an interview that moves from definition to childhood story to concrete parenting strategies. 19. Parents of adult children healing from trauma will get the most from this episode. 20. Listeners wanting entertainment without reflection may want to skip it.

As heard by us

A blunt look at how unresolved family trauma can shape trust across generations.

The episode tracks how unresolved childhood trauma can echo into an adult child's life. It stays practical: making a child feel seen, building trust, and creating enough ease for hard conversations to land.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

If you want to rebuild trust with your adult child, start here.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from LAUNCH: Parenting Tips for Raising Adult Children & Building Better Relationships