It is easier to talk about emotional abuse when parents are screamers or yellers, but what is too often left unsaid is that emotional abuse can also be silent. Wounds inflicted in childhood are some of the most difficult to heal. They can follow you relentlessly, lurking in the shadows and affecting your entire adult life.
Emotional abuse often revolves around using words or actions that make you kid feel worthless and invisible. Parents who use emotional abuse often believe they are keeping their kids “under control”. What they actually do is create invisible scars that time doesn’t always heal.
Here are a few types of emotional abuse and tips on how you can avoid them
1) Yelling
The debate about how “everyone yells at their kids” and how that’s “not a big deal” is overwhelming. The truth is, yelling at your child has an impact on his emotional state, but, like all things, it is not always a black and white issue.
The thing to understand about abuse is that it’s not about the one-off situation when you yell at your kid because you’re tired, frustrated or worked up. Emotional abuse is something that goes on and on, quietly and steadily eroding your child’s self-esteem over the long-term. The available research on parents who constantly yell has come to a few alarming conclusions:
- One study found that yelling and strict punishment increased rather than decreased bad behavior.
- A second study found that kids who were frequently yelled at displayed more antisocial behavior.
- A third study came to the conclusion that being yelled at led to teens with lower levels of self-esteem and higher levels of aggressiveness and depression.
If you have doubts about the impact of yelling, imagine someone yelling at you, over and over again. How would you feel? How would you react over the long-term?
What you can do instead
Being conscious of what yelling can do to your kid is an important first step. Make an effort to yell less. Don’t face your kid in the midst of anger. Calm-down first.
2) Silent treatment
Silent treatment is one of the worst forms of emotional abuse because it appears so harmless. Silence speaks volumes and repeatedly ignoring your kid to “teach her a lesson” does more harm than you could ever imagine. It can be a traumatic experience with consequences in adult life.
What you can do instead
Silent treatment is never, ever, a good solution to your kid’s behavior. Talk about what’s wrong. Do not just assume that your kid knows what is expected of her: tell her.
3) Comparing kids
Your kid gets much of his self-worth from the messages you send him. Comparing him to other kids, silently or out loud, teaches him that he is not enough. It teaches him that you think him lacking, and that you think he will never measure up, try what he may.
What you can do instead
Focus on what’s positive about your kid and voice it. Let your kid overhear you speak positive things about him.
4) Treating your kid like your personal belonging
Khalil Gibran once said “Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.”
What Gibran meant is that you do not own your children. Treating your kid as “something that belongs to you” and someone on whom you have “complete control over” harms her emotionally. It is not up to you to “forge” your kid’s personality. She is not broken just because she is unlike you. Your kid does not need fixing. Trying to change her fundamental nature so that it can be more in line with what you believe she should be is a form of emotional abuse.
What you can do instead
Encourage your kid to participate in decision-making. Encourage her to voice her opinion. Let her know that she is enough – she does not have to be anyone else. Let her know you think she’s awesome.
5) Constantly showing “who’s the boss”
Making your kid “have to beg” for even the most trivial things can be considered a form of abuse. Forcing him to be “under your power” has an impact on his sense of security and lowers his self-esteem and his ability to make decisions, even in adulthood.
What you can do instead
Be firm but receptive to your kid’s needs and emotions. Be clear about your non-negotiables but be willing to be flexible about what matters to your kid.
Setting up open communication channels with your kid is one of the most effective ways of avoiding the trap of emotional abuse. Both your voices need to count if you want to create a positive parent-child relationship that will make it easier to survive the years.
References
http://www.lse.ac.uk/website-archive/newsAndMedia/news/archives/2014/04/ShoutingParents.aspx
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/197732/DFE-RR185a.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2888480/pdf/nihms-198378.pdf
Leave a Reply