Do you worry about your child’s emotional health? Worry no longer.
Here are eight suggestions that will nearly guarantee your child will suffer from poor mental health, strained family relationships, poor peer relationships, low self-esteem and chronic emotional problems throughout his or her life.
1. Shut down all emotional expression
If your child expresses anger, sadness, or fear be sure to make fun of them, tell them not to feel, and dismiss their emotions. Withhold love whenever they express any emotion — especially vulnerable feelings.Another very effective way to shut down their emotional expression is to to trump their emotions by making sure you become more upset than they are. They will put their feelings on hold and change their focus to comforting you.
2. Set inconsistent rules
Never talk openly about your expectations for your child’s behavior. Keep your child guessing about what you expect from him or her — and make sure you change the rules constantly. Be sporadic and unpredictable when enforcing consequences and punishment.When your child doesn’t comply with your every whim, say — with a heavy disappointed scowl — “You should know by now what I expect of you. Don’t ever let me down again.”
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Julie,
You must have met my deceased father before you wrote this article. He used every trick you talk about and more. I cannot express adequately the damage he inflicted upon my family while growing up. You describe in part the world I grew up in, but fortunately it is not the world I live in now.
My wife and I am are firm believers in the work of clinical social work. It helped me on my own path of recovery and probably helped inspire my wife to become a clinical social worker. Many years ago, one LCSW helped save our marriage and later other helped me deal with the trauma of nearly twenty years of many kinds of abuse from my father. I am also a firm believer in the power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ and His ultimate healing power. The work of LCSWs like you helped pave the way for the Savior to take away my emotional pain, which has never returned.
Thank you for your work, including your wonderful music! Since my wife has become a CSW (still working on her “L,” we see your social work training throughout your gospel music. Your inspired music has been a part of our family for many years. I believe your work has become, “A Window to His Love.”
Thank you,
Stan Winchester
Stan, how very kind of you to share your story. I am so sorry to hear of the suffering you’ve been through, and so thrilled to know of the healing that has followed. How wonderful! Best to you and your family in you continued healing.
Very well said. How many parents are like this? I shudder to think.
Hi Sheila, Being a mother of 4 children I think every parents struggles with at least one of these! After being a therapist for nearly decades I’ve seen how these seemingly subtle patterns can do a lot of damage over time. Unfortunately, this was an easy blog post to write.
Great article. It should be part of the curriculum in the parenting course we should be giving to prospective parents!
Thanks Catherine for your comment, and for appreciating my sarcasm
I think that is an excellent article which really gets its very serious message across by the use of sarcasm.
Why is it that parents do not see anything wrong in pushing their children to live their unfulfilled dreams especially in sports ?
Why is it that parents only want their children to win at the games and sports they participate in ?
Why is it that most parents do not understand that children can play competitive sports and games for the enjoyment of same regardless of the result ?
Great questions Mike. Parents are just big wounded kids (unless they’ve done some serious emotional work of their own) so it’s easy for them to be blinded by their own pain in order to get their childhood needs met. My hope is that this article will spark parents to take a step back and honestly evaluate what they’re inadvertently emotionally dumping on their children. Thanks again for commenting.
Thanks the reply, Julie. I think your article works well in achieving your hope. I agree a key is to do some serious emotional work with professionals like yourself. After all, you would not take your car to your mother to fix ! Mike
On #4… What do you recommend a person do when the other parent is an abusive drug addict? We have worked very hard not to say anything negative around my niece about her father. He says bad things about my sister all the time, and uses the child as a go between and messenger. He tries to get her on his side on any disagreement. She’s at an age now where she is beginning to not go along with it. Recently, he was angry with my sister and started screaming at the child on the phone over the issue. When she hung up she was upset and confused. She kept asking why he did that, I just told her I don’t know, but that it is not ok for him or anyone else to talk to her like that. Of course, I DO know why he did it. Because he’s a drug addict and a sociopath that uses human beings like game pieces. But I’d never say that to her. Still, I have an ethical problem with lying, especially to children. When I say I don’t know, I’m lying. The child’s father breaks several of the above rules and then some. My sister is a good mom but she is also Human. So what happens? She has to see her father, but her father is a strong negative force.
MissTee, what excellent questions you raise. I think there is a definite place for honesty in relationships. If you do know why her dad yelled at her, it’s ok to tell her that he is not well and has a drug problem. What I’m getting at in this article is that chronic bad mouthing of the other parent and staying stuck in the negative emotions of past relationship is hurtful to kids. My concern is for your niece’s safety. Is her father fit to care for her when she is with him??? Best to you in this very difficult situation.
Julie, as I was reading this I got cold chills this is the way my parents treated me as I was growing up,and I have spent most of my adult life wondering what I did so wrong. It was not until recentley that I figured out it had nothing to do with me,but sometimes I cannot help and wonder could I have done anything differently?
Courtney, as young children we have very little say in our lives and are at the mercy of our well-meaning, but wounded parents. I really believe that it’s a survival skill of most children, when they sense something isn’t right, to assume something is wrong with THEM. We need our parents in order to survive to adulthood, so it’s actually safer to think that WE are “bad” rather than that our parents are “bad” (wounded).
Julie,
I have a question about #1. I’m not one of those “macho” fathers whose son can never cry or anything like that. I treat his emotions as valid, and try my best to support him emotionally. But there are times when certain emotions just seem inappropriate or overly dramatic. He’s nearly five years old. A few days ago he was at a birthday part and when it came time for the birthday boy to open his presents, my son asked me if he could help. When I explained that the boy probably wanted to open his own presents, my son got upset. Not a tantrum, but just a sort of sniffling, lip-quivering, eyes welled up kind of upset. And when the behavior continued, it became a disruption to others and needed to stop.
Perhaps a better example is when we were in the store a while back and a balloon popped right next to him. It scared him (heck, it scared ME!), and he started to cry. I did my best to comfort and console him in the moment, but five minutes later on the other side of the store when he was still crying about it, I felt like that was enough.
I guess what I’m asking is, how do you find the line between “shutting down all emotional expression” and just helping him to gain a modicum of control over his emotions?
Hello George, in my opinion he may need more attention when showing positive behavior. He got your attention and much of it with the tantrum. My daughter used to have long tantrums also. It took a lot of hard work and understanding on both parts. Now she is nine and loves to write me letters, notes and talk about her complex emotions. Good luck!
Wow, thanks for an entertaining reminder of what not to do. I have definately screwed up my kids ( all 4 of them) at least in each category to some degree on another….at least thats what I tell them. I often sarcastically make fun of myself when I mess up, or take them aside individually and apologize for all of these types of foibles, which occur frequently. Once when I was particularly depressed about the monumental task of raising emotionally healthy kids I did a relationship chart of each dynamic that has to work in a happy home of six, mom to dad, mom to #1, mom to #2, mom to #3, mom to #4, dad to #1 etc, #1 to #2, # 3 to # 4…. well the dynamics were overwhelming. I took each of the kids aside and showed them how hard we were all working and we just keep at it everyday. To top it off, our marriage and finances are strained. So a sincere thanks for the reminders. We keep at it! Hopefully we have done things a little better than our parents, that our kids can pick a spouse a little more compatible than we are at times and that they are a little less financially strained than we have become….keep up the good work and lets all continue to make the world a little better each day, starting with those we love the most, the people we live with!!!
Lake4, Thanks for your comment. I totally agree…all we can hope to do as parents is to just to provide a slightly more functional environment for our children than we experienced. I’m glad you “got” my sense of humor in all of this. Mostly, as a mom of 4, I was reminding myself of these things
This made me LAUGH! Great insight but definitely hilarious. You’re a great writer.
My mother did many of these things to me throughout my childhood and adulthood…. especially number 3 and 4. ….it left me so emotionally torn and sick…. and svarred….along with no academic or financial support whatsoever…..she destroyed the whole family because of it. She divorced three men and slandered all of them constantly and still does to this day This was my role model….she shouldn’t have had children
Excellent reminders for all of us who parent! I have found that #6, #7, and #8 are the most difficult for me to avoid–but some of the most important!
One surefire way to prevent your child from having future problems is to not drink alcohol while pregnant or even thinking of becoming pregnant. It does not take much alcohol to harm the unborn child. Society needs to understand that this could be a preventable disability. A child with FASD (Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder) really needs to have parents who think of the box because traditional parenting most of the time does not apply. The surefire list only compounds the problems of prenatal alcohol exposure.
Julie,
I too feel like you were talking about my father; he did everything on the list and more. My mother too, to a lesser extent, though she simply mistook our (my siblings’ and my) fear for respect, and her own internal conflict just ended up sending more mixed messages than anything else. I’m still not entirely sure how I made it to being a functional adult at all.
Even so, once I moved out I noticed some strange behaviours, some irrational responses that were clearly the result of the trauma, and I spent a few years working through them. I seem to be okay now.
I think that no matter how hard you try as a parent, the adults you eventually let loose upon the world will have some small set of screw-ups as a result, and that we all have a responsibility to see where our parents went wrong and try to repair the damage as best we can before we have children of our own, and then paying attention to each child and doing what’s best for them instead of trying just to avoid perpetuating the wrongs done to us.
My parents and I don’t really have a relationship anymore. We’re civil, but there’s just nothing left between us on which to base a relationship.
I do hope that more parents learn to see past their own damage and value their children more as future adults. Thank you for writing this.
I love this comment. It’s my childhood and current adulthood, word for word. I still get set off now and then, however.
lmao who is anyone to judge how a person or couple raise their children? i had all of these things happen to me and more and i grew to become a soldier to protect those who are bullied by others that think they are bigger and stronger if any one wants to argue with me my skype is chinhammer “theres only one” and my email is chinhammer@hotmail.com