How to train your child to be deceitful.

Precluding predictable problems
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Gabby
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How to train your child to be deceitful.

Post by Gabby » Thu Sep 07, 2006 4:19 am

How to train your child to deceive you, to withhold things/thoughts from you.
  • Child: I just dinged the car fender with my bike.

    Parent: YOU WHAT? CHRIST, I'VE TOLD YOU A THOUSAND TIMES TO NOT DRIVE NEAR THE CAR! WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING? GO TO YOUR ROOM! NO TV FOR A MONTH!

In one fell swoop the parent judged them, made them wrong, punished them for telling the truth, invalidated them and talked down (condescendingly) to them—and, if the parent doesn't follow-up by verbally acknowledging their verbal abuse to their child they will have trained their child to hide certain thoughts from their parent. Most importantly, the child (having been programmed to verbally abuse another without cleaning it up), will find him/herself automatically communicating abusively to their spouse and child later in life.

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

The vast majority of teens will acknowledge to someone outside the family that they hide certain significant thoughts from their parents. They will, with coaching, acknowledge that they monitor what they say for fear of being lectured to; in truth, they have lost their spontaneity.

Most parents simply haven't learned how to "get" and "be-with" another's communication so when their child voluntarily 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 certain truths to be told.

A child has no choice whatsoever other than to mirror the deceitfulness of his/her parents. Parents who hide things from each other, and their child, train their children to hide things from them and others. There are no exceptions to this phenomenon. Children usually hide the fact that they are masturbating. Often it's because of fear (and embarrassment), of talking about sex with either parent. Children judge themselves to be shamefully bad because of their sexual desires, because they can't control their urges as they imagine their parents did when they were young—all the while his/her parents hide their teen escapades—all their deceits—from their teen children. It makes it extremely difficult for a teen to eventually discover that they are just like their parents, neither better nor worse, simply typical.

For example: If a wife 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. Withholds accumulate. They begin to have an effect on the energy of the household. Using communication skills coaching jargon it's referred to as no space for communication to take place—just lots of talking. There are simply too many non-verbalized thoughts in the space. Children, because they love and admire their parents, do whatever it takes to emulate the way their parents communicate. They even emulate their parent's addiction to communicating condescendingly and abusively to each other, to not acknowledging verbal abuse, and to withholding thoughts of choice. Soon the child will be hiding 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 after which they made an unconscious decision, next time, to risk the possibility of not being found out.

Lastly, case studies are rife with stories about the "bad" abusive parent who was empowered by their "nicer" partner. The parent who ends up looking good, while the other looks to be the villain, seldom acknowledges to their child that they (the "nice" parent), using their sophisticated highly developed leadership-communication skills, turned their child against the other parent.

A truly "good" compassionate parent removes their child from any unhealthy environment (no excuses, no reasons); a parent addicted to abusing to being abused, will continue to submit their child to abuse (always for reasons) denying that they (the "good" parent) are the cause of the friction. There is no such thing as one parent being more abusive than the other; both communicate in such a way as to co-create the abuse and then blame the other.

To create space for your child to be spontaneously open and honest with you do The Clearing Process after which you can do The Clearing Process for a Parent and Young Person with them. Both processes are free.

Last edited 8/26/23

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