Teach your children well

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young's "Teach Your Children Well" was the first song that came to my mind as I thought about this topic. But in looking at the lyrics more closely, there wasn't anything that seemed to say what I wanted.

I think Pat Benatar's "Hell is for Children" does a better job.

Love and pain become one and the same
In the eyes of a wounded child
Because Hell
Hell Is for Children
And you know that their little lives can become such a mess

This was a song I loved, partly because the video was so incredibly awesome. I love Pat's moves and the whole look and feel of the video, and of course, she's got an amazing voice. But the subject was also something that really spoke to me.

Children learn a lot from their parents, but it's not always good. Of course, the scenarios put forth in "Hell is for Children" is on the extreme end, but there are all kinds of hell that children can be put in that don't have quite the same scars.

I've been doing a lot of lurking on a couple sites that focus on relationships with family of any sort - by blood, by marriage, in-laws, step-families, whatever. In many cases, the parental figures have caused a lot of damage in their children's lives, and sometimes, the children can fix the damage, and in others, they're trapped in it forever. In so many of the cases, it's not about physical abuse - it's about emotional abuse and hurting with words, and there are times where even when confronted, the parents don't see that they've done anything wrong. Now, that's not to say that if parents aren't perfect, they're going to screw up their kids' lives. Of course all parents are going to make mistakes. It's the nature of being a parent. But there are systematic behaviours that parents can exhibit which can hinder or even cripple their children's ability to develop into being healthy adults.

One of the books recommended by multiple sources is called "Toxic Parents". I picked up the book recently and just started reading it today. For me, it's not a matter of the subject being parents per se. It's about understanding how one's development can be affected by what they see, hear and learn, and how one can change their reactions to people who can, even occasionally, exhibit toxic behaviours.

I've always been a fan and student of psychology and sociology, so on an intellectual level, I am interested in these topics. But I can also relate to them on a personal level. I've seen parents who have put their children squarely in the middle of their divorce battle, and I cringe for how the children will turn out. I knew someone whose husband had an ex-wife with whom he shared custody of their daughter. The daughter had developmental disabilities, but her problems were compounded by her mother using her as a pawn long after the divorce was over, and by her father being mostly unavailable emotionally. The mother didn't seem to be interested in actually having half-custody - but if she had physical possession (and yes, she sure seemed to treat her daughter like a possession) of the daughter, that prevented the father from having her, and depriving him was what was most important. The father fought to have the daughter with him, but when the daughter was actually in his house, he practically forced all responsibility for her onto his new wife, the child's step-mother, yet the step-mother was not allowed to ever discipline the child, no matter what. I don't know what ever happened to that child. I hope she made it through ok.

I've seen other less severe situations where I'm not sure if there was any affect on the child, but it still concerned me. I knew a mother who was going through a really bad time, and I was witness to her saying things to her young daughter that I thought she really should not be saying, but I had no ability to intervene. The child might have been too young to really understand what was being said to her, but her response did indicate that she was confused by what her mother said. There's a part of me that understands the mother was in a bad place, but I guess for me, there's never an excuse for laying those problems at the foot of your small child.

Some people seem to have a serious disconnect in how they view children. On the one hand, they'll tell you how quickly their child is learning this or that because he/she sees the parent doing it. And then, in the next breath, they completely don't understand that the child is also listening and learning when the parents are doing bad things too. I think children understand a lot more than some people give them credit for.

I would not put my parents in the toxic category. Yes, they made their share of mistakes, and there are some things I really disagreed with, but overall, it's not a big deal. But that doesn't mean I'm not still dealing with some issues.

One major affect of my parents' behaviour is something that I very recently realized still permeates how I react in certain situations. One of the things I hate the most is being blamed for something I didn't do. If I'm at fault, then I can't really object to the consequences, even if I think the consequences are severe. But to be accused of doing something I didn't do - that's something that infuriates me to a level above what one might consider normal. And last year, for whatever reason, it finally occurred to me why that is. When I was a child, my parents would often give me instructions about chores to do while they were gone. Usually, though, they were chores that either had to be done by my older brother entirely, or we had to do them together. They were rarely things I could do on my own. It was up to me to relay my parents' instruction to my brother. Being the teenage boy that he was, he often didn't want to do things. No matter how much I would cajole him, sometimes it didn't work, and it just resulted in him getting mad at me for bothering him. But when that evening or the next day would roll around, my parents would get mad at me because the chores weren't done. To this day, I have no memory of them being mad at my brother, just me. And I was helpless. I got yelled at by my parents for chores not getting done, and I got yelled at by my brother when I tried to get him to help me do the chores. I was neither the one who instructed that certain things needed to be done nor was I the one who was responsible for completing them, but I was blamed for both. In my adult life, I have noticed that when I am accused of something that I didn't do and/or have no control over, I react almost viscerally. The amount of hurt and anger that I feel almost makes me unable to react, and there have been occasions when I've been completely speechless and on the verge of tears as someone has hurled accusations against me. I'm so shaken up by it that I can't even begin to try to defend myself. In thinking about those moments, it felt similar to how I felt as my parents and my brother got mad at me. No matter what happened, I couldn't get them to understand that it wasn't my fault.

One other major point is a story that my mother used to tell about me, in front of her friends when they'd come to visit, or sometimes to visiting relatives. She'd tell the story, and they'd all laugh. And never once did any of them consider how amazingly hurtful that story was to me. It wasn't like they thought I couldn't hear because I was in the next room. Usually, I was right there. And while I don't remember how old I was when I first heard the story, I do know that on multiple occasions when I remember hearing the story told, I was definitely old enough to understand what the story was about. The story was supposedly meant to be funny, but every single time I heard it, it made me feel awful. But I could never tell them that. The reaction probably would have been that I was being too sensitive, and that it wasn't a big deal. But over the years, I have often thought of my mother's story, and it still hurts.

So, back to "Hell is for Children", I think of the things that parents do and say to children, without even thinking about what effect their words and actions are having on them. The same can be said for anyone else in a parental or authority role, and whereas in some situations (like your boss for instance), you might not be able to say anything, there are other situations where you have to recognize what affect those words might be having on you or what affect your words are having on others.