When Brenda* ponders her youngest child, a 10-year-old girl with bright blue eyes, it really hits her. Brenda was 10 when her parents divorced. Within a year, her sister had moved in with their dad, and Brenda would spend her summers alone, fending for herself while her mother worked and her father inhabited bachelordom. "I felt like I had a pretty normal family life until the divorce. Afterwards, I felt very neglected and forgotten. Everyone walked away while I stayed there trying to figure out what had happened." When Brenda held her first newborn, now a lanky 13-year-old boy, she promised herself that she would parent differently than she'd been parented.
Whether straying from a lifestyle or from parenting practices that were simply a product of their time (think smoking, pregnant moms who drank), parents often look to create the childhood for their kids that they never had. It can be tough, since people default to what they know. But for parents who were abandoned or abused as children, it's especially challenging. Adult children of divorce and child abuse are more likely to get divorced or abuse their kids. It's a cycle.
In retrospect, Brenda sees that the abandonment was compounded by her parents' and grandparents' bitterness, and, as a child, Brenda's loyalties were constantly tested. Those relationships, and ones with step parents, are still hard today. So recently, she decided to celebrate the holidays without the extended family. Her husband comes from a similarly dysfunctional childhood, and they have grown to depend on one another. "I think it helps us to be kinder to each other about certain triggers we have," Brenda says.
Brenda tries, in everyday ways, to let her nuclear family of four know that they are her main priority. She and her son enjoy walking the dog; she and her daughter are reading Frank Baum's Oz series. Her husband spends quality one-on-one time with them too. When the impulse arises to make her children's childhood magical, Brenda responds with love, "but also a bit of a microscope to make sure that what I'm doing is for the benefit of our whole family—not some need I have to make their childhood better than mine."
Sitting with the Past
"Many people don't understand that healing from trauma isn't about 'getting over the past,'" says Robin Miller. "The experience is fully alive in the person today." Miller has a therapy practice in Katonah where she helps adults with childhood trauma understand the root of difficult experiences that unconsciously continue to affect their everyday life. She says it can be surprising to people when they see how the defenses they created in childhood end up disrupting their later life as well.
Mary* describes her childhood as horrible. She and her two sisters grew up in 1980s Ellenville, to strict, middle-class parents who valued religion and obedience. Mary tried not to rock the boat. Her bed was made; the dishes were cleaned up. Still, if her father was drinking, he'd hit the women without reason. During one of his alcoholic rages, they might lock him out of the house, holding the door as he busted through the beveled glass. If it was bad, they'd call the police, but, because her father was an officer, his friends would respond and a report wouldn't be filed. There was an air of secrecy to her childhood. "We weren't allowed to tell anyone that this was our life because he'd lose his job."
The effects of child abuse can be lingering. The parent-child relationship is pivotal, and it's tough to reject that belief system. A primary caregiver's moods delegate the entire world for the young. Abused children can grow into adults who have a range of pervasive negative emotions. "It's well known that early trauma has a serious impact on health because the body often remains in a constant state of stress," Miller says.
Because of her tumultuous upbringing, Mary had decided not to have children. She was attracted to her husband in part because she couldn't imagine him hitting anyone, not because she fantasized about him as a dad. But five years into the marriage, they both had a mini meltdown and changed their minds. Now she's a stay-at-home mom. For Mary, it was about leaving Ellenville. Her sisters both live within 10 minutes of their childhood home, but Mary's chosen a current life that looks nothing like her traumatic childhood. That awareness guards her against repeating negative parenting habits.
Miller says it's important that parents see themselves as separate from their children, with their own responses to experience. Interpersonal relationships will be more demanding for those with a difficult childhood. "This is where and how the original wounding occurs," Miller says. There's always trust issues, and people often experience transference, where they perceive the original trauma everywhere in their lives. "Parenting is going to be a major trigger," she says. Parents need to be mindful about defending against their own childhood wounds when parenting their own kids.
It could be seductive to move from creating the childhood you never had to creating a magical, perfect childhood. Mary can get annoyed with friends for whom everything becomes a photo op for a blog post. Mary's focus is organic. In Bruno Bettelheim's words, it's the idea of the "good enough parent." Mary says, "It's how we treat each other."
Acting, Not Reacting
"Kids can drive you nuts. That's a given," says Kathleen Murphy, executive director of the Center for the Prevention of Child Abuse in Poughkeepsie. So everyone needs a personal safety plan. "When you get frustrated, do you have the mechanism to step back? Do you have someone to call for help?"
The Center's mission is to prevent child abuse in Dutchess County and parts of Ulster County. "But our vision is zero child abuse, and that's really about prevention." According to Murphy, prevention equals education. The Center offers parenting programs that are free and open to anyone, as well as programs specifically designed for special needs and teen parents. "Most parents come in with broken or empty toolboxes," Murphy says. "We fill it with the tools they need to become the parents they're meant to be." She says parents need to act rather than react. And to ask for help. "That doesn't mean you're a bad parent; it means you're a great parent."
Murphy is an optimist. "We can end child abuse in three generations," she says. "It just takes getting adults more comfortable in talking about these topics. Then it's easier for kids." Four children die each day from abuse, though the national child abuse prevention organization, Child Help, notes that their death certificates don't list that as the cause. And that's one of the biggest roadblocks to eradicating child abuse—the societal tendency to ignore painful relationships that happen in the privacy of people's homes. According to Child Help, reports of neglect outnumbered physical abuse by more than three times in 2012. Neglect might just be the least-threatening form to call out in a neighbor. People often fear making a situation more dangerous for victims of abuse. It's no one's business. Or is it everyone's?
Sarah Coppola, a stay-at-home mother of three who runs the locally focused parenting hub, Family Friendly Hudson Valley, calls it like she sees it. "When you're raised in an antagonistic environment where negative emotions fly everywhere, it's a huge struggle not to let that become the norm when it's your turn to set the atmosphere of the home."
When Coppola's stepfather entered her childhood home, in Kingston's low-income housing, he brought with him a slew of problems, including lies, addiction, and financial insecurity. Coppola and her four siblings were constantly berated. That's a form of emotional abuse, and researchers find it has similar effects as physical abuse. But it also wasn't uncommon for the cops to be called into Coppola's childhood home for domestic disputes. Although abuse is a universal problem, crossing all cultural and economic lines, the poor carry the brunt of its stereotypes. And not without reason. Poverty presents certain stresses that increase the risks. And it's another cycle, as lack of opportunity like proper food, medical care, and education leads back to poverty. Determined to have a different future, Coppola became close with the family of a high school teacher for whom she babysat, and that proved key. When children are offered an outside perspective that their poor treatment is undeserved, it can make the difference in breaking the cycle. "Her home was where I was able to experience a stable, loving family environment and was encouraged to strive for better than what I was used to," Coppola says of her teacher.
In her own parenting, Coppola is thrilled to be able to provide her kids with the enrichment activities she never had, but more significantly, she makes the space for her kids to be kids, because that's where the magic happens. "Even with the challenges I faced growing up, I still remember plenty of magical times." Like playing hide-and-seek with the neighborhood kids or catching frogs in the pond with her brothers. Recently, after running errands, Coppola's seven-year-old daughter invited her to lie on their lawn. Despite her inclination to move along with her day, she rested on a bed of leaves with her daughter beside her. "I knew I was giving my daughter the gift of a memory."
RESOURCES
Robin Miller, LMHC (914) 449-2505
Center for the Prevention of Child Abuse Preventchildabusedutchess.org
Family Friend Hudson Valley Familyfriendlyhudsonvalley.com
*Names were changed to preserve anonymity.
