Question: I grew up with a very critical father and I promised myself that I would never do that to my children. But here I am acting the same way. My children are doing well in school and I love them very much, so I am wondering if they are affected by my behavior. I know that it has affected me even though on the outside I look like a very successful teacher and parent. As a teacher, I also notice kids who seem unhappy but I don’t know if there is anything I can do. As a mother and teacher, I am really confused about what being a good parent means.
Do you remember that day as a little kid when you were punished for something or another and you scowled at your parent and said, “When I am going to be a mommy I am going to potch my kid even harder!” which was your way of saying, “I am so angry at you that if I would be bigger than you, I would punish you for how you are treating me!”
But for those of you who are not laughing at this familiar vignette because you are still angry at how you were mistreated as a child, chances are that when you grew older, the refrain that went through your head was more along the lines of, “When I am a parent I will never yell at my children. I will always be calm and listen to them, and advocate for them at school, and help them with their problems.”
Because nobody gets married and seriously thinks to themselves, “Great, I can't wait to have kids to make their lives miserable!”
And yet, ten years down the road, some parents look at themselves in the mirror one night after the children are sleeping, after everyone has been fighting, and she has lost it by screaming and slapping, using angry, critical words, and wonders, “When did I become my father? When did I turn into my mother?” And it hurts.
Even if a parent serves delicious suppers, allows him to attend school, leaves no marks on the child's skin, and provides a clean, sparkling home, there may be parental behaviors that may leave indelible damage and scarring on a child.
Emotional abuse is much more difficult to assess, diagnosis, and ultimately to treat in children.
I remember being frustrated that my son's yeshiva allowed the rebbeim to smack the students. But my son rolled his eyes and said, “Ma, it's much worse in English. My rebbe gives a smack and it's over. But that teacher yells and yells and yells and gives me such a headache!”
Yes, as a therapist I would be mandated to report instances where a child looks malnourished or unclean; when a child has bruises on his face or feet, when the child consistently is absent from school. But when I was a teacher in the classroom, I could not identify with certainty the bruises on a soul of a child who was subjected to a barrage of criticism, fearful screaming, overburdened with chores and responsibility, bullying by a sibling, fighting between parents, or indiscriminate hitting.
And sometimes, emotional abuse is so subtle, it's not even as clear as the examples I just wrote.
A father learns with his son, and whenever the child makes a mistake, the father begins to breathe heavily. No words are spoken but the air is thick with disappointment, a cloud suffocating the child who fears this disappointment more than a smack. It's the way his father walks with thudding footsteps to put back the gemorrah, it's how he doesn't talk to the child in that short walk from dining room to kitchen, it's how the son can barely eat from his feelings of failure that may or may not be warranted. Weeks, months, years of this pattern can leave gouge marks on a child's psyche that follow him into adulthood, molding the person who will often succumb to similar parenting behaviors if he never learns about other ways to ensure his own son knows the gemorrah.
A mother asks her daughter to help her in the kitchen, and if the daughter spills the flour, or forgets the salt, or dirties her skirt, the loud sighing signals to the daughter her ineptitude. Her mother's conversation to her sister, in which she uses a biting sense of humor, or even a superficially sounding sweetness and says, “Goldie is such a klutz in the kitchen. Luckily she is pretty because otherwise no one would marry her for her cooking,” leaves their own marks that no amount of washing can ever erase, even years later as this same klutz bakes the most exquisite cakes that supports her family in style.
It's rare in my practice to meet a mother who doesn't passionately love her children, a father who will not leap into a burning inferno to rescue them, but sometimes the burning inferno is lit by the very same parent who either is oblivious, or lacks the tools to contain it, to extinguish it.
It's the weirdest paradox but sometimes when a parent desperately brings a child into therapy, it's the emotionally abusive behaviors of that very parent that has precipitated the necessity of therapy.
There are children in families where supper is macaroni more often than not. Where laundry is rarely folded, or laundry rarely done at all and children wear shirts with ketchup stains three days in a row. Where beds are not made and homework is non-existent, where lice and mice live freely. In those homes, children may suffer, and technically a report is not mandated because they are still getting fed, they have clothing even if dirty, and not doing homework with or for your children is still not a crime (sorry, Teach!).
But the damage of emotional abuse can be even greater, because as they grow older children in the dirty home can create their own cleanliness, do their own laundry, cook their own food—as I have seen many children do. But the voice of the critical parent, the model of the fighting between parents, embed themselves into the child—and potential adult—can live on in the adult-child’s brain long after the parent has died.
So what to do?
To parents I say it is never too late. A child wants most a relationship with his parent. And old patterns can be broken and new ones created with therapy, with mentoring, with a sincere desire. To teachers I say notice the child whose poor academic achievements don't match her evident abilities, notice the bully, the needy one, the picked-on child, the child who is withdrawn, unhappy, or pathologically cheerful or over-willing to help. Get the child help. And if you can't, be the child's support even in that one year. Model for her a good relationship.
And to the child herself who has grown up and remains that angry child, I say, it is also not too late. You can parent your children differently, but first parent yourself. When you won't need to smack yourself, you won't need to smack your child.
NOTE: THIS WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN JEWISH ECHO'S COLUMN "ASK THE THERAPIST"
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