All good parents want the same thing: Health and wellness for their children. As we propel ourselves into the future, parents take action and give more and more thought to better provide healthful foods and activities for their children. Studies that prove the detrimental effects on children of such disciplinary practices as spanking and yelling resonate with today’s new parents on unprecedented levels, encouraging parents to be gentler and kinder when shaping the personalities and characteristics of their children.
This article aims to let parents know what they may be doing wrong and why their kids may act out more than others.
The purpose of this entry is to shed light on the ways in which parents are unwittingly damaging to their children, how they can better support their children moving forward, and what happens to children who grow up without proper support from their families. To accomplish this goal, I will tell my own life’s story as a means of letting others out there know that they are not alone. Abuse takes many forms and we do not have to lie down and take it.
My life started like any other girl’s life in the early 1990s. I was born in a secular hospital to a mother who had been abused most of her life since childhood, did not know how to tell someone “no,” and wanted nothing more than to work as a secretary while raising her children in a farmhouse with horses in the fields. My father was a tweaker.
I fit in perfectly to the heteronormative expectations of our society, always a people pleaser. Early on, I lived with my mom, but it wasn’t long before I lived with my dad, who, unbeknownst to me, did not make me his first priority and that’s why he would yell and spank me if I didn’t tell him what he wanted to hear, even if what I said was the truth. It didn’t take long for him to get rid of me so he could focus entirely on himself and his addiction, though. Before the age of 5, I was living with his mother and her husband, none the wiser to his habits or any of the reasons behind my not living with my own mother.
Those were the easy days. Kindergarten and first grade were the best years of my life. I had friends, teachers loved me, I was social, I fit in exactly the way I wanted to—exactly the way I was supposed to. I was a good kid. I was happy and I didn’t think very deeply about my mom or dad because they were just never around. It didn’t matter whether they were there or not because I lived in a nuclear household with the only exception being that the “parents” were actually my grandparents. Before first grade ended, though, my mother filed to take custody of me and my grandparents asked me if I wanted to go live with her.
At the time, I could not fathom why I hadn’t been living with my mother all along, so I eagerly accepted the idea of moving to her house and being with her. I knew that my dad was not always nice to me. He liked to tease me, make fun of me, tickle me too much, yell at me, and spank me. Surely, my mother would be much better, I thought. I was wrong in the way only those who have made a decision that ultimately lead to various health problems would understand.
My mother was neglectful. She would pay no attention to me, leaving me entirely to my own devices, unless it was a meal time or she thought I’d done something wrong, at which time she would yell at me either way. Yelling for food is one thing—most parents do it and it is not a detrimental practice—but when she would yell about the disobedience she perceived, it was a different story. My grandparents would drop me off at my mother’s house and I would scream bloody murder and cry as if my cat had died, clinging for dear life to the elders who provided me safety, security, good hygiene, prescription spectacles that were aesthetically pleasing, and clothes that fit.
My paternal grandmother took notes. Every time I came back for a visit, she would check me over and note anything that construed child abuse. The welts on my butt from wooden spoon paddlings were the most obvious sign. What she couldn’t see or record was the true damage done to my psyche, but that is not to discredit her by saying she failed to record any important information. On the contrary, her notes were thorough enough to use in court, as that was their intention, and outlined everything from the lice on my head to the dirt in my toenails.
There was one thing that didn’t make it to my grandma’s notes, one thing that was significant enough to change the way I saw myself for years to come: My mother told me I wasn’t pretty. Explained to me later, as an adult, my mother said that her reasoning behind such a statement was that she was told the same thing as a child. I don’t see how that justifies such abusive language—there is no way to justify abuse—but I don’t hold it against her because now I understand her mental illness, not just how it affects me. The other significant abusive event was when my mother’s boyfriend molested me, continuing to touch my private parts after I told him “No,” and “Stop,” multiple times.
When he came into my room, lay down on my bed, and began feeling me up, it was the climax to the abuse I’d endured from him over the course of my stay with my mother. Previous abuse, I had tolerated, but this time, I told him to stop. Instead, he licked my earlobe and I could not protest due to the laughter generated from the tickling sensation of his tongue. Previous abuses fled my mind. All that mattered was that he had woken me up and all I wanted to do was sleep, but he would not leave. I was appalled—he had always stopped when I told him to, before. He tugged my pajama pants down and I said, “No,” and he told me to let go. I struggled, my tiny, 9-year-old fingers holding onto the hem of my pants for dear life as this middle-aged man forced the fabric from my grip, baring my legs and letting the cool air of the room violate my sensitive, prepubescent skin.
“Don’t tell anyone,” an earnest, hushed, panicky request, sounded like a joke when the unwelcome stench of his spunk filled the room and the gooey, sticky substance rendered my blankets unusable. How was I to keep this thing a secret when I had told him I didn’t want him to do it in the first place? I was a good girl and I had been told that it was the right thing to tell on someone who was not respecting your autonomous desires. So, I did. I told my best friend, then my older brother, then my mother. The reactions of the first two were bolstering; the third reaction left me confused and damaged.
My best friend listened with sympathy and offered me her support. My older brother began scouring the property for blunt force objects including crowbars and baseball bats, with which he intended to beat my offender over the head until death. My mother looked at me and said, “Keep it in the house. Don’t tell anyone else.”
I was hurt and confused, but I listened to her. I didn’t tell anyone else, so when the cops arrived at the house, I couldn’t figure out why. It turned out my brother had told a neighbor girl whose mother had alerted the authorities. My mother’s boyfriend, the father of my second-youngest brother, was hauled away and I was taken to the hospital for examination given the nature of the crime.
The hospital gave me an adult-sized, preheated, white blanket that I wrapped around myself, taking comfort and solace in its heat and security. I would keep this blanket for nearly a decade before deciding it served as nothing more than a reminder of my trauma. They looked me over, checked my insides for seed, and then let me go, never once losing their faces of friendliness, concern, and compassion.
With her boyfriend gone, my mother was faced with homelessness, a fact to which I was clueless in part due to a complete lack of understanding that people could actually fail to find housing. Thinking of what was best for her children in the best way she could think of—all the while telling me it was my fault he was gone, my fault she was facing eviction again, and my fault my baby brother would never see his daddy again—encouraged her to allow me to move back to my grandparents’ house, the very house from which she had taken me.
I thought I could be happy again. I thought moving back under my grandparents’ roof would somehow fix everything and make it right. The reality turned out to be very different, taking instead the form of further abuse from my mother. Phone calls from my mother greatly upset me as she would yell and scream at me over the phone, telling me that her circumstances were my fault, leading to the purchase of a speaker phone that would allow my grandmother to listen to the entire conversation and help me cut it off when the time was right. I never thought that I needed actual guidance, encouragement, or attentiveness to my development as a 9-year-old child.
It was not until after I separated from the military that I realized the depth of my childhood ignorance. The advice my grandparents gave me was sound and given with the best intentions, but I thought the advice lacked encouragement. I thought it lacked the kind of rhetoric that makes a child think, “I can do this!” and instead included the kind of rhetoric that makes a child think, “I’d better not try it.” Case in point: When I told my grandma that I wanted to go to art school because my dream was to be an artist, her words were, “What are you going to do with it? Are you going to be a starving artist?” This was a significant exchange, one of many smaller exchanges, that caused lasting damage despite the fact that it was not the entirety of the conversation or even the whole of her advice.
My grandparents found a counselor for me immediately after the sexual abuse incident. The counselor told them I’m strong and they trusted me when I told them I no longer needed therapy. I had no way of realizing the depths of my mental illness or how it would manifest later in my life. Pieces of conversations are missing from my memory, leaving me with the damaging pieces and not the helpful bits. Phrases like, “That’s not helpful,” stick in my mind, while encouragements like, “You could look into doing a double major,” fall short of my mental registration. The therapist I saw as a teenager was unable to target all of this, but she was able to pinpoint my mother as the root cause of my insatiable rage, thus provoking me to write a large series of violent poems directed at my mother.
I was lucky. I had access to care, no matter what. I had family members who honestly and truthfully looked out for the best for me. They were not perfect. No one is. Every parent is going to say something damaging to their child. The important thing is to heal the wounds as much as possible. When I finally swallowed my anxiety and called my mother from Germany, I was pleasantly surprised by her response and my ability to have a full conversation with her that ultimately led to the healing of our relationship. When I mentioned to my grandmother her response to my desire to be an artist, she came back a little later and reminded me of the rest of the conversation, giving me a better understanding and helping reassure me that my childhood was not actually as terrible as I had come to believe as a disabled veteran.
If the most important thing is communication, though, my dad falls short and always has. Where my mother grew and became healthier, my dad has stagnated in that I feel more comfortable of talking to my mother about any issue I have than I am comfortable talking to my dad. I have gone through the forgiveness process with my dad as much as my mom, for they were both equally nonexistent for much of my childhood, though in different ways. When I called my mom from Germany, it was with the goal of forgiving her for the neglect and abuse of my childhood. It went well. Forgiving my dad felt much more forced because he came clean from drugs and practically demanded forgiveness.
Forgiveness cannot be forced or demanded. Demanding or forcing forgiveness is a good way to eliminate all possibilities of future forgiveness. When my dad came clean and said, “Yeah, I’ve been doing methamphetamines. I would get clean for a short while and get my shit together, then I’d go get loaded and lose it all.” It explained the pattern of behavior I so abhorred in him as a child and with his insistence and my grandmother’s willingness to listen and forgive him, I found myself sucked into his web of deceit. Deception in the form of words that assured me that he would turn around and be a good father. A supportive dad who would actually care about me and encourage me towards my goals. I thought the elimination of drugs from his life would turn him around. I was wrong—not in that he ever relapsed, because he is still clean, but in that his attitude never changed. His way of approaching me never changed.
It is important that one day, I forgive my father. It is important to forgive those who hurt us, not to excuse their behavior or even to say it was, is, or ever will be okay, but to relieve ourselves of the negative emotions that we harbor without forgiveness. Parents are imperfect. Now that I am a parent, I have a much deeper understanding of what my mother went through. I also have a much better understanding of the ways in which my father has interacted with me throughout my life. I interact with my daughter in many similar ways to how my dad interacted with me when I was young. I also interact wither her in ways my mother interacted with me. But more than that, I have the best example of a parent I could ever have asked for: My husband.
Without my husband, it is likely I would not be writing this blog post. It is likely that I would not recognize the abusive nature of my father’s rhetoric. So, I will close with advice for parents. Perhaps it will seem cliché. Perhaps it will seem overdone or unsolicited—parents get so much advice already, who am I, as a newbie mom, to interject?
I’ll tell you who I am. I am a woman. I am a disabled veteran who suffers from major depressive disorder, persistent postpartum depression, generalized anxiety triggered by certain social interactions, and PTSD from not only my time in the military, but also from the course of my life.
So, to parents, I have this to say: Listen to your children. When they tell you their dreams and aspirations, think before you speak. Make sure your FIRST words are words of encouragement, not of advice or caution. It is good to caution our children of the dangers in life, but it is more important to ensure that our children feel strong, confident, and capable of facing the challenges ahead.
Be mindful of your reactions towards your children. When your son or daughter spills an entire gallon of milk onto the kitchen floor, take a deep breath before you speak. Walk away if the adrenaline is making your hands shake. Take your child to the side, away from the mess, to explain to them why their actions were wrong. Demonstrate what they must do to make it right and lead them to do it themselves—with the gallon of milk example, clean it up with them, but make sure they do most of the work and remain positive while doing it. There is nothing in the world harder than keeping your cool when your child is testing your last nerve. But that is the absolute most important thing any parent can do for their kids. Keep your cool, remain positive, and encourage more than you advise.
Abuse is a cycle. Once started, it is hard to stop. Children who grow up in abusive households often become abusive parents when they have children of their own.
Children need to know what is okay to do. They need to know how to control their actions, express their emotions, and act appropriately when they feel intense emotions. That is what I work on now with my daughter. We are in the process of potty training, which many parents will know is a truly grueling task for some. Today, she has pooped in her pull-up THREE times!!! The first time she did it, I lectured her on pooping in the toilet. The second time, I slowed down and did the following:
