Gabby's Tip: Here's how to train your child to deceive you, to withhold things/thoughts from you

Here's how to train your child to deceive you, to withhold perpetrations/thoughts from you

Scenario:

Child: "Dad, I just dinged your car fender with my bike."

Parent: "You what? Christ I've told you a thousand times not to drive near the car. What the hell happened? No TV tonight. Go to your room."

In one fell swoop the parent judged (made them wrong), punished them for telling the truth, and invalidated them; they talked-down (condescendingly) to their child. If the parent doesn't later (when they've cooled down) verbally acknowledge their verbal abuse to their child they will have trained them to hide certain thoughts from their parent. Coincidentally, the child will find him/her self automatically communicating abusively to their spouse and child later in life. This incident will be stored as an incomplete for both the parent and the child affecting all outcomes for both for life.

What most parents don't know is that they compound the effects of their verbal abuse by not acknowledging it verbally to their child. Abuse must be acknowledged verbally each and every time (especially the condescending put downs and covert insults—often masked as humor). Verbal abuse that is allowed/supported in the name of love and harmony is the major cause of physical abuse/divorces—it generates disrespect which eventually becomes contempt.

It's extremely important to know that acknowledging is not apologizing. If you apologize you will, with absolute certainty, verbally abuse your child again. Acknowledging on the other hand supports consciousness, and, different results. All abusers who have hit his/her spouse will apologize and then repeat the abuse (ask Gabby for an explanation).

In the above dinged-car example, it's perfectly normal and appropriate for the parent to have reacted with anger. However, genuine anger (anger solely about the ding and not about an accumulation of dozens of other upsets) lasts but a few moments after which it is acknowledged and (cleaned up).

The vast majority of teens will acknowledge to someone outside the family that they hide (withhold) certain thoughts of choice from their parents. They will however, with coaching, acknowledge that they monitor what they say to their parents for fear of being lectured to; their parents have "disciplined" the spontaneity out of them, their child has lost much or all of his/her spontaneity. With spontaneity goes creativity.

Most parents simply haven't learned how to "get" and "bewith" another's communication so when their child acknowledges their very first perpetration, a wrong doing, accident, or deceit, the parent dumps a lecture, a judgmental make-wrong, and sometimes a punishment, on top of the communication. What this single extremely important interaction does is it shuts down the space for spontaneity. The parent has demonstrated that they are no longer a safe space for the truth to be told.

In truth, a child has no choice whatsoever but to mirror the deceitfulness of his/her parents. Parents who hide things from each other, and their child, train their child to hide things from them and others. There are no exceptions to this phenomenon.

For example: If a wife verbally hides from her husband that she thinks he's lousy at oral sex then it automatically causes (yes causes) the husband to hide his thought of choice from her. I say "verbally" because she does in fact communicate her dissatisfaction non-verbally, it's just that the husband is so unconscious that he cannot pick up on the withhold, the incomplete; he's withholding so many thoughts from his wife that the withholds cloud his ability to experience, to be.

Withholds accumulate. They begin to have an effect on the household. In communication coaching jargon it's referred to as no space for communication to take place—just lots of talking. There's simply too many non-verbalized thoughts in the space. Children, because they love and admire their parents absolutely, do whatever it takes to emulate the way their parents communicate. They even emulate their parents addiction to communicating condescendingly and abusively to each other, to not acknowledging verbal abuse, and, to withholding thoughts of choice. Eventually the child will hide the thought that they are thinking about having sex for the first time. They know from experience that their parents are shut down and too embarrassed to talk about such things, so, partly out of love and respect they protect their parents from having to talk about embarrassing things. That, and they already know that if they brought up the subject they'd get a lecture. They've been taught that it's OK to hide certain things from loved ones. Their mind remembers the bike incident from which they made an unconscious decision, it's better to risk the possibility of not being found out—any outcome other than the pain of verbal abuse.