Why Your Child Behaves Differently With Each Parent, And What To Do About It

Have you ever noticed that your child acts like a completely different person when they're with you compared to when they’re with their other parent?

I’ve been an active participant in online parenting groups for a while now, and what I most commonly see are questions like: “Help! my baby cries uncontrollably when my partner holds her,” or “Why does my child speak awfully to me but act like an angel with my partner?”

When I offer the reflection that their child is likely mirroring something within them, it usually goes one of two ways:

1. The parent begins to piece together, through their own upbringing, why this might be happening.

2. Or, the dynamic has reached a point where the child is in a codependent or addictive pattern with the parent, making it harder to recognise the underlying wounds or face the opportunity for emotional transformation.

Maybe they’re clingy, whiny, or quick to anger with you, but calm and self-contained with the other. Or the reverse. It can leave you confused, frustrated, and questioning yourself.

Let’s pause right there:
This isn’t a sign that you’re doing something wrong, it is all in perfect alignment, there to show you your underlying unhealed emotional wounds that have not been fulfilled or completed, from the past.

It’s an invitation to look deeper.

We can not change what we do not see.

Children Are Mirrors — Not Manipulators

Children aren't trying to manipulate or perform. They are emotionally attuned beings who instinctively adapt their behaviour depending on the energy, nervous system, and emotional availability of the adults around them.

They show us, with remarkable accuracy, where emotional safety lives, where our challenges are, and where old emotional echoes still linger.

This isn’t about blame. It’s about connection.

It’s about having the courage to feel what it is showing us, likely from our own childhoods, the needs that weren’t met and the grief still contained there.

So, What Might Be Going On?

Your child may:

• Feel safe enough with one parent to release stored-up emotions and deny or get angry at the other parent.

• Be mirroring the emotional patterns or wounds from your own same gendered or opposite gendered parent, showing you the depths of the unhealed emotional wounds towards them specifically.

• Be playing out the exact roles that happened between your own parents dynamics.

This is relational behaviours.
And it can be the key to understanding your child more deeply…
and yourself too.

So, What Can You Do?

Here’s where it gets empowering.

You don’t need to fix your child.
You don’t need to fix yourself.
You just need to get curious.

🌱 How to Begin Understanding What Your Child’s Behaviour Is Reflecting:

• Pause and reflect.
  Take a breath before reacting, practice feeling in your body what is arising, let it be ok. Ask yourself, what might my child’s behaviour be showing me about my inner world?

• Keep a journal.
  Write down what feelings come up for you in challenging moments. “What is my child showing me here?” - Journaling helps you see patterns and process thoughts that might otherwise stay stuck. - Feel about this by connecting to your heart.

• Reflect on your own upbringing.
  Are there emotional patterns, unmet needs, or roles you had to play as a child that are still influencing how you respond now?

• See their behaviour as insight.
  Your child’s reactions are clues to your own emotional landscape, especially things you may have experienced at a similar age but never had the space to express.

• Support open communication between co-parents (where safe and possible).
  Share observations, not blame. Children feel safer when there’s emotional consistency between caregivers, and will reflect this secure attachment back.

• Be present.
  Let go of the urge to control. Instead, lean into connection. Connection brings the safety both of you are craving.

• Notice your body.
  Is your jaw tight, your chest constricted, your breath shallow? These are signals, not threats. Your body is speaking. Listen gently and lean into feeling it to free it.

• Whisper to your inner child:
  “I am seeing this. I have the courage and capacity now to feel it, so I can move forward into more energy, love, and connection.”

Remember this is a muscle you are strengthening, therefor it isn’t about perfection. It’s about presence, patience and perspective.

Want Some Support With This?

I work with parents and adults who are ready to explore what their child’s behaviour might be reflecting within them. My sessions blend kinesiology and coaching to uncover emotional blocks, old stories, and patterns rooted in your own upbringing, and move through them by enhancing the connection to your feelings, and feel them with compassion and truth. Setting you FREE.

This work isn’t surface-level. It’s deep, transformative and beautifully freeing.

✨ Session Details:

• 📍 In-person Central Coast: Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays

• 💻 Online by appointment

Want to know more? Let’s start with a call here: