Sarah McLachlan Says Therapy Helped Rebuild Bond With Oldest Daughter

Sarah McLachlan, 58, says she had to rethink how she was parenting her daughter to rebuild their bond.

“I would have been softer on her in a different way. I was a hard ass,” McLachlan told Amy Poehler on Tuesday’s episode of “Good Hang with Amy Poehler.”

McLachlan shares two daughters with ex-husband Ashwin Sood: India Ann, born in 2002, and Taja Summer, born in 2007.

“It’s funny because I thought so clearly in my own mind that I was being the antithesis of my mother. And I looked at the way she parented, and I thought, ‘I’m going to do everything completely different,'” McLachlan said. “Then her words come spewing out of your mouth in a moment of anger and frustration, and you’re like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe I did that.'”

She said her older daughter would sometimes shut down or lash out when things got hard, and at the time, McLachlan didn’t fully understand what was behind it.

“I looked at that and went, ‘How do I help you with this? How do we move past this, because the world out there is scary and big, and you have to have some grit, and you have to do hard things so that you know you can,'” McLachlan said, describing the tough approach she took with her daughter.

It was only after they went to family counseling that she realized her daughter was experiencing a lot of anxiety.

“The way I was communicating to her was just making her feel shitty about herself instead of building her up, which was completely the opposite of what I thought I was doing,” McLachlan said.

“I had to eat a lot of humble pie and take stock and go, ‘OK, look, I want a relationship with my kid. So, I need to learn how to communicate differently with her,'” she said.

Through the process, she said her daughter also learned how to take responsibility for her own reactions.

“It was a long process, but it was beautiful and powerful. And we have such an open, loving relationship now because of that,” McLachlan said.

This isn’t the first time McLachlan has spoken about her relationship with her firstborn. In August, she told Variety that the chapter of their relationship inspired the second single, “Gravity,” on her latest album, released last year.

“It feels really sweet to be able to sing this song and know that we’re in such a better place, having come through this really challenging time together,” she said.

In September, McLachlan told People that therapy gave her a “safe environment” to connect with her daughter.

“What I realized is the way I was communicating my love to her, she was not hearing it, not feeling it,” McLachlan said. “I was not reaching her. And for me as a parent, that’s devastating because you just want to take your kid in your arms and hold them and keep them in.”

India Sood did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.