![]() So, if your father called you stupid, you believed it. ![]() Young children believe what their parents tell them. In addition to ignoring a childs emotional needs, parents can also damage a childs self-esteem with derogatory names and harsh criticism. So, children learn to tune into other peoples feelings and suppress their own. For example, a young child might learn to hide under the bed whenever mom and dad start arguing or a child might learn that consoling mom after that argument earns her moms affection. Some children become highly attuned to how their parents are behaving so they can try to avoid their wrath. Instead, their focus is on noticing and managing other peoples feelings their safety often depends on it. This, of course, damages a childs self-esteem and causes them to feel unimportant and unworthy of love and attention.Īnd children in dysfunctional families dont learn how to notice, value, and attend to their own feelings. Children experience this as my feelings dont matter, so I dont matter. ![]() The result is Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN). Parents who are dealing with their own problems or are taking care of (often enabling) an addicted or dysfunctional partner, dont have the time, energy, or emotional intelligence to pay attention to, value, and support their childrens feelings. Quite simply, dysfunctional families dont know how to deal with feelings in healthy ways. As a result, children feel highly stressed, anxious, and unlovable. In dysfunctional families, adults tend to be so preoccupied with their own problems and pain that they dont give their children what they need and crave consistency, safety, unconditional love. For example, children in dysfunctional families often describe feeling anxious about coming home from school because they dont know what they will find. They feel like they have to walk on eggshells in their own home for fear of upsetting their parents or unleashing their parent’s rage and abuse. In addition, children often experience their parents behavior as erratic or unpredictable. Sometimes there are overly harsh or arbitrary rules and other times there is little supervision and no rules or guidelines for the children. But in dysfunctional families, childrens needs are often neglected or disregarded and there arent clear rules or realistic expectations. Instead, one of the children has to take on these adult responsibilities at an early age.Ĭhildren also need structure and routine to feel safe they need to know what to expect. Often, this doesnt happen in dysfunctional families because parents dont fulfill their basic responsibilities to provide for, protect, and nurture their children. Dysfunctional families tend to be unpredictable, chaotic, and sometimes frightening for children.Ĭhildren feel safe when they can count on their caregivers to consistently meet their physical needs (food, shelter, protecting them from physical abuse or harm) and emotional needs (noticing their feelings, comforting them when theyre distressed).
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