Are you raising your child to be a bully’s victim?

Precluding predictable problems
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Gabby
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Are you raising your child to be a bully’s victim?

Post by Gabby » Sat Oct 09, 2010 12:17 am

One test is to ask your child, “What would you change about me?” However, this is tricky because unless your intention is to get to the truth you’ll unconsciously intimidate your child into responding politely with nothing significant. For example: Relationship Communication Workshop participants pair off and ask each other that question ten times in a row, with the intention of eliciting a different answer each time.

Another test is to ask your spouse, “Regarding our child, what would you change about me?” Again, you must intend to be a safe space for the truth to be told.

Actually, it’s not necessary to do any tests. You already know the answer. Your child is either out-going and spontaneous or he/she is shut-down (timid, shy, fearful, clumsy, accident-prone, socially awkward, not gregarious, perhaps speaks only when spoken to). In other words, you, (not you and your spouse), using your leadership-communication skills, have either inspired your child to be open, confident, and spontaneous or relatively shut down. If you are addicted to withholding then you have trained your child to withhold certain thoughts and to put up with unpleasantness.

Children who have been shut down are ripe for bullying. They are so used to being intimidated and abused (physically, verbally, or psychically) that they carry themselves in a way that broadcasts, “Pick on me. My parents bully me all the time so I’m used to it and probably deserve it. I have no self-respect.” It further communicates, non-verbally of course, "If you hit me hard enough it might cause authorities to intervene and restore communication in my family, nothing I've done with them has worked so far." Misbehaving/failing in school and life is one way of drawing attention to the fact that ones parents have lapsed in doing their imitation of communication.

If you sense that your child is somewhat shut-down not to worry, it’s possible to recall the very first time he/she shut down and clean up (acknowledge) the incomplete, (in communication-coaching lingo any communication that did not end mutually satisfyingly is referred to as an incomplete). You're looking for the first time this happened, assuming your child was once a typical spontaneous, question-asking-machine; there was an incident, after which things were never the same*. You yelled, communicated condescendingly, invalidated him/her, or you made him/her wrong (in short, you were abusive). One way to complete your relationship with your child is for you to first do The Clearing Process. Then invite your spouse to do it. Then you both can do The Clearing Process for Couples. Even if you spouse declines, once you've done the five clearings you can then do The Clearing Process for Parent and Young Person/Teen,

Ironically, unconscious, accidental verbal abuse is not what causes the change from spontaneous to “quiet” and submissive to persist; it’s that you didn’t acknowledge to him/her afterwards (or to-date) that you knew you were abusive. That incident will continue to have undesirable effects on your child until you clean it up with him/her, or, he/she gets support later in life in recalling the incident and then acknowledging to themselves that that was the turning point. By consistently acknowledging your abuses you will train you child to immediately recognize abuse—therefore he/she won't unconsciously marry someone addicted to abusing and being abused.

BTW: Within a single 3-hour sit-down session with a communication skills coach you can create a new communication model (a way of interacting/behaving) that will inspire accurate and respectful spontaneity.

Note: Single child-rearing parents are typically ignorant about the necessity of daily male and female influences that are in fact requirements when rearing a child to be whole and complete. Examples: The child of gay parents who home-school is missing an equal number of interactions with the opposite sex. With single-mothers certain communications (especially those usually delivered non-verbally via male vibrations) produce different results when it comes to confidence in relating with mature males.

* Things to look for: The very first time you were upset and yelled, "That was stupid." "What the hell are you doing?" "Don't be a smart ass." "Be quiet!!!" "Shut up." "Stop asking stupid questions." or, if you have "punished" your child by sending him/her to bed, or, if you haven't acknowledged an abuse earlier in the day. I.e. "I get that I was abusive to you earlier today". Remember, it's not the abuse but the absence of the follow-up acknowledgment of the abuse shortly thereafter, thereby completing the incident through to mutual satisfaction. It's important to keep in mind an acknowledgment is not an apology, it's a simple statement acknowledging what's so.

Last edited 3/20/20

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