Can a person who’s never had a brain tumor be a good brain surgeon?
Yes—Totally!!
Having children (and people are going to hate this) yields very little insight into what is going on for them developmentally & psychologically. It’s not that the data isn’t there, it is. But parents cannot help but project their own wounds onto their kids and see the child’s circumstances & behavior colored by their own repression and avoidance.
So yes, parents have access to the information, but most don’t have the introspection skills and emotional IQ required to really interpret the data & understand their kids. IN FACT, the very experience of watching a kid go through something FREQUENTLY triggers the homeostasis preservation drive in the unconscious of the parent.
The key to great skill in working with kids, is to remember & heal your OWN childhood … not to spectator your own kids through the lens of your own baggage and biases, while you simultaneously project onto them and entangle them in your life strategy. That does not yield a clear picture at all.
Edit:
If you’d like addl. support for my answer, you can watch this video beginning at 9:45.
She say’s the power of good psychotherapy lies in your recognition of “another human who is subjectively experiencing the gravity of what you’ve been through”.
Parents who do not remember the emotions and interpretations of their own childhood cannot do this well. Quite the opposite … seeing your child experience things that hurt you so long ago, triggers all sorts of harmful compensating behavior in the parent.
PS — from comments below: I do have children … two of them. But what I will tell you is that I learned MUCH MORE about children’s minds and developmental periods by employing a great many advanced techniques to remember my own childhood. I have 30 times more insight and clarity regarding (all) children than my ex-wife, and she spent VASTLY more time with ours. I got this insight, NOT from being a parent, but from reconstructing and revisiting my own childhood!!
Dewey Gaedcke’s answer to What are the benefits of seeking therapy?
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