Abusive parents, unfortunately, are to be found all over the world. However, while in most parts of Europe and North America there are stringent legal and social provisions for dealing with reported cases of parental abuse, in most Asian and other ‘traditional’ societies, children are often regarded as possessions of their parents, to do with as they please, on the loose premise that “Parents know what is best for their children”. Here, we often forget that parents are human too, and giving them unlimited power over their children, without any fear of repercussions, can sometimes have highly undesirable consequences. And here the reference is not to sexual abuse which, perhaps the most heinous, does have legal consequences, as does physical abuse. The reference is more to mental, verbal, emotional and psychological abuse of unformed minds and psyches by those whose responsibility it is to nurture them.
Krishna (name changed), the only son of a world famous academic stalwart, was given everything his famous father could buy for him—and brutally denigrated and ridiculed every time he got a less than perfect score on any of his exams or assignments. Living in constant dread of his father’s whiplash tongue and sick of repeated public humiliations, he fell in with his father’s plan to pull strings and have him placed at one of the American universities after school and made his escape from his parents’ clutches. Once in the US, he promptly took up part time work at restaurants and laundries and dropped out of college, and his parents’ lives. “I worked my way through college much later,” he confesses, “after I had managed to get over the trauma of having to live upto my brilliant father since early childhood”. At 45 years he is married to his English college sweetheart and lives in Noida, working at a middle level position in a multinational firm, happily far from his parents who are old and alone in South India.
As a child comes into the world, his first consciousness of himself is shaped by those who give him birth and raise him—his parents. Thus, the child’s sense of identity is usually a reflection of how his parents see him and relate to him. Taking physical action such as flogging in case of mistakes or wrongdoing by the child, constantly putting him down and eroding his sense of self-worth, emotionally blackmailing him or other kinds of mind games and controlling behaviour, are all various forms of abuse which go not only unpunished, but also unchallenged in our society. The scars of such covert abuse, however, can run much deeper than those from more obvious or acknowledged forms of abuse. The sad part is that often the perpetrators of such abuse do not even realize that they are damaging their children and laying the foundations of dysfunctional relations with their children who might not be inclined to look after them in their old age because of the childhood hurts they are carrying.
In an essay in the New York Times, psychiatrist Richard Friedman writes that the relationship of adults to their abusive parents “gets little, if any, attention in standard textbooks or in the psychiatric literature.”
However, numerous studies all over the world show that just as an emotionally warm, intellectually stimulating childhood is typically a springboard for a happy, healthy life, an abusive one can cause a litany of problems. One doesn’t just leave such childhoods behind, like outgrowing a fear of the dark. Abuse victims are more likely to suffer from depression, substance abuse, broken relationships, chronic diseases, and even obesity.
Unresolved Issues
An abused childhood, however, does not necessarily inhibit worldly success. In fact, there are a number of famous people all over the world who had abusive parents. These ‘successes’, however, often struggle lifelong with their unresolved emotional issues with their parents and cannot be truly happy or contented in spite of all that they have achieved.
Abraham Lincoln couldn’t stand his brutish father, Thomas, who hated Abraham’s books and sent him out as a kind of indentured servant. As an adult, Lincoln did occasionally bail out his father financially. But he didn’t attend his father’s funeral.
Warren Buffett the world famous American business magnate, often regarded as the most successful investor of the 20th century, remained distantly dutiful to his mother, who had subjected her children to endless, rabid verbal attacks. On the occasions he visited her at the end of her life, he was a “wreck” of anxiety, sitting silently while his female companions made conversation. He was 66 when she died at 92. His tears at her death were not because he was sad or because he missed her, he said in his biography, The Snowball. “It was because of the waste.”
Bruce Springsteen’s frustrated, depressive father took out much of his rage on his son. When he became successful he did give his parents the money to buy their dream house. But Springsteen says of this seeming reconciliation, “Of course, all the deeper things go unsaid, that it all could have been a little different.”
A child’s sense of self and identity is shaped, first and foremost by his interaction with his parents, the beings who give him birth and mould his early life. We all accept that there is an enduring bond between parent and child. One of the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament is to “honor your father and your mother,” while in our Indian scriptures it is said “Bhoomi gariyasi mata, swargaat pita gariyasi”, i.e., a mother is greater than the earth and a father is greater than the sky. With this kind of conditioning inherent in all the cultures of the world, the loyalty of children to even the worst of parents makes perfect biological sense.
However, when abuse from a parent, whether physical, sexual, mental, emotional or psychological, crosses the child’s limit of endurance, this conditioning crumbles to the dust. After that it is truly “as you sow, so shall you reap”. Those parents who raised children less than lovingly are putting their own dependent old age at risk for being well and lovingly cared for themselves.
Anger Management Tips for Verbally Abusive Parents
It has been established by studies all over the world that parents who have no control over their anger if a child thwarts their expectations, or those who are inclined to vent their frustrations on their children by means of verbal or physical abuse need to consult therapists or counselors on an urgent basis, both for their children’s well being and their own relationship with their children.
However, for parents who are aware of their own lack of control and wish to take constructive action to stop verbal abuse, here are some practical tips approved by professional therapists. In fact, whether you are the abuser or the abused, use these eight steps for coping and put an end to the abuse. You can also use these same steps if you are emotionally or physically abusive.
1. Identify the first sign of meltdown.
To begin to cope with your behavior, you have to identify the first sign that indicates you’re beginning to spin out of control. It may be dry mouth, red ears, flushed face, butterflies in your stomach or heart palpitations. What signals the start of your meltdown? It is imperative to identify this sign, because it is part of a chain of behavior to which you’ve become accustomed. Your first sign can lead to the second link in the chain, which is where you can make an important decision.
- Consciously choose to cope.
You can use your first sign of meltdown as a cue to cope, rather than as a cue for meltdown. When you feel the sign you’ve identified in step one coming on, you can make a conscious decision to use it to begin your coping sequence.It finally boils down to ‘mind over matter’. Once you have made up your mind to break this behaviour chain, it is only a matter of time and practice before you achieve your goal. - Make an incompatible response.
You need to get past your impulse moment. In order to do so, you must make it impossible to abuse your child. What should you do? ‘Count to ten’ may sound like a clichéd response, but does make sense by giving you a time out to get yourself under control. Other options could be to leave the room. Go outside. Do whatever it takes that guarantees you will not abuse your child. - Write down and evaluate destructive thoughts.
Have a book that you use specifically for your coping sequence. After you make an incompatible response, write down and evaluate your destructive thoughts. Instead of verbalizing a destructive thought to your child, write it in your book. Then read it over, and realize you almost said this to your child.Most of the time you will be so appalled that you will control yourself better another time. - Tell your accountability person.
You are abusive because you can be — you have no accountability. In order to stop, you have to take responsibility. Choose a friend, a family member or someone else to be your “Accountability Person.” Your spouse, your child’s other parent is usually a wise choice. You will be accountable to this person. Every time you write down a destructive thought or avoid an abusive situation, call this person. Read him or her what you wrote in your coping journal, and talk about how you feel. - Reward yourself for control.
Most likely, you’re as hard on yourself as you are on your children. You feel guilty and say bad things to yourself when you are being abusive. Remember, you need to love yourself when you make the conscious decision to cope and not abuse.When you feel good about yourself, you will also feel good about your children. - Engage in positive interaction.
When you’re through the impulse stage, go back into the room with your child. Give your child a hug, pat him/her on the back, do something positive. - Long-term: get counseling.
You need to see somebody on a regular basis to deal with what’s happening inside you. You can go to a counselor, a pastor or a social worker; somebody who will listen and continue to guide you in the right direction.
At Random 