Manipulative parents

Why the experiences of childhood are critical in the people’s lives? Because the differences between a happy and confident person and an insecure person are often found in their childhood. From the uterus, babies perceive the mother's emotions, which give them a unique and imperceptible bond with her.

Over the years, those babies, turned into children, teenagers or men may walk the path of healthy affective and emotional maturity through the tools that their parents have given them for their development, or, in many cases, this relationship may become toxic and abusive, which happens when -for different reasons - the manipulative, demanding actions and mistreatment of parents towards their children end up causing insecure adults, living with guilt, with low self-esteem and emotionally unstable. (See book “Toxic Parents” of  Susan Foward) In this context, the roles are reversed resulting in an unhealthy coexistence and these parental figures that, in an ideal world, we would consider positive, become negative and toxic for their children.

Therefore, it is our concern, as mothers, love givers, educators in values and basic knowledge for the development of our children, being responsible for educating emotionally healthy and self-confident adults who will be able to face their responsibilities and be prepared for affective commitments with healthy emotions.

That is why today we will discuss about the manipulation that parents exert towards their children, either by the experiences of their own childhood or because they have been educated in an environment where they felt the world as an unsafe place and when growing up and become parents act unconsciously, proceeding with their children in the same way that their parents did with them, repeating certain patterns as being subject to criticism, mistreatment or neglect, becoming controlling persons and emotionally abusive to them.

These parents, while they instinctively give love to their children, also have unmet needs at an emotional level and make an attempt to fill in adulthood, through emotional use and abuse to their children, those needs that were not filled during childhood and adolescence.

All children, teenagers or adults feel the need to feel loved, safe, valued, respected and approved by their parents, but there are nuances between the feelings or rather the needs of ones or others. Children need to be approved by their parents, to feel an environment and support that provide them security and support during their growth. In turn, teenagers need space to find the individuality and independence that they are looking for. And in that context, the adult needs to become the giver of care, protection, safety and respect needed by the children and accept the spaces that teenagers require.

But it often happens that as children we did not have or have not had all the love, protection, appraisal and acceptance that we needed, therefore we begin to fill that gap exercising control over our children. And that is when we begin the acts of abuse, doing emotional blackmail to our children so that they compensate our needs with "acts of love", or when we remind them all the sacrifices and the things we have done for them (I stopped doing... for you, I could not make ..., look all the things that I do for you, I cannot live without you, etc), portraying ourselves as victims or causing them concern and feelings of guilt toward their parents, putting on their shoulders a responsibility that they cannot or should not bear.

Situations, equally harmful, occur when, as parents, we tend to cover our children with words, either flattery or affection, overexposing them to a situation of strain and affective "cloying", losing the value of the true meaning of the word, when not said at the right time and in the right way. Or when the parents seek to cover with treats, gifts and material things to their children in an effort to hide or substitute absences or deficiencies of another nature and that do not allow them to develop properly.

 

What is grave in this situation is that we ask our children what they cannot give us, since they are still in their formative stage and their own emotional needs have not been fully met, causing a reversal of roles, with serious emotional consequences for them. With this situation they will feel dissatisfied for not being able to achieve the impossible goals of satisfaction, that as parents, we have imposed on them, making them feel insecure, instilling the fear of failure, rejection and leaving them a feeling of emptiness and dissatisfaction in their life, destroying their self-esteem, although we think we are doing the right thing as we use the standard by which we were raised.
 

As such, when the parents have only one child, all their control focuses on him/her, whereas if they have many, they will choose one of them - the one they identify the most with - marking their preference on that a child to the detriment of the others. These parents need to create alliances to maintain their control, in order to have any of their children on their side, or to cover their own shortcomings or not relive situations they experienced at a given time. Of course, there are also parents who, under these circumstances, have proceeded in the opposite way, trying not to repeat their childhood experiences with their children, acting as a positive role model for their children's lives, breaking the cycle of abuse they were subject to.
 

Many times, when children are adults, the parents put themselves in a position of victim to generate feelings of guilt in them; considering them as children, we refuse to accept that they are adults who have control over their lives and, therefore, over the choices they make. This is much more noticeable when our children decide to start a family; the situation becomes more complicated because usually the partner of their choice is not to our liking, then we meddle in how to do the housecleaning, how they should prepare food, raise their children, because we consider that we must take control of a situation that we feel they cannot take over or we just look for uncomfortable situations, and by being selfish, we boycott the happiness of our children making them totally dependent on us.
 

Therefore, the children of emotionally abusive and manipulative parents, usually experience difficulties in their relationships with others in adulthood, particularly with their partners, because they always tend to reach the required standards expected by their parents and that were never reached, or they permanently seek their approval.
 

That is why, as caring and loving parents, we must think about our daily attitudes, our everyday actions and analyze what kind of parents we are, what we expect from our children and how we propose they make their traveling through life.  And if recognize ourselves in these situations, even if we do not always get to face our parent, delaying to address the situation, we must think that a first form of protection is to keep distance from it to try to break the tie and cut this vicious circle. That way, we will avoid repeating the same erroneous patterns of behavior on our children that our parents did to us and, if we have repeated them, because we are not perfect and nobody teaches us to be parents, may the love for our children allow us to reverse the situation by acknowledging that our children are the most precious gift that nature can offer and it is our responsibility to make them to be the best persons they can be, recognizing their strengths and weaknesses, as unique and individual human beings… as Khalil Gibran said:

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, 
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, 
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, 
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, 
and He bends you with His might 
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, 
so He loves also the bow that is stable.