Bad Parenting - Where Does the Buck Stop?
Posted: Thursday, July 17, 2008
by Amina Hussain
No matter who you are, your parents, due to their own insecurities, have practiced some injustices towards you. Fortunately, bad parenting is too harsh a term to apply to the majority of today's mothers and fathers, unfortunately no matter how many books they may read and how hard they try, all parents pass on some of their neurosis to their children who consequently have their own 'issues' to deal with.
Mothers and fathers reading don't despair, just know that your parents did it to you, and your children in turn will do it to their kids, we're all human beings and so are naturally flawed. Your children will unconsciously forgive you for any mistakes and from being your dependents will become your protectors. Because nearly all parents successfully instil an idea of right/wrong in their children to make them healthy, good, hard working adults with a positive self image.
NEARLY all….. There is regrettably the small percentage of children that do not grow up with positive role models, and are not taught basic ethics and morals by which to live their lives. Domestic abuse is not just physical violence. Imagine taunting your kids for having dreams and aspirations, making them feel selfish for asking for money and toys. Imagine always talking about your child in the third person and always putting them down, making them feel like they are a burden to you, imagine never praising your child's efforts but always pointing out their shortcomings and the mistakes of everything they put their energies into. Undermining them in front of others and wrongly accusing them of being disobedient. Extreme psychological abuse usually (but not always) happens alongside a more wicked practice – sexual abuse.
The effect on these children that will grow up to be the next generation of adults to influence this society is profound; EVERYTHING that they do will bear the influence of the way they have been raised. What they wear/eat/say/believe. There is no escape, it has become a part of their psyche, what they associate with normal, and the inside beliefs and intentions manifest into direct actions on the outside.
When they are of adult age, these children cannot escape their past, they do not know how to grow, they have never been encouraged towards anything, they can only live the way they have been shown. These are the adults that do not buy self-help books because short of not knowing how to change they do not even know that they CAN change, they are rendered so helpless that they repeat their parents mistake time and time and time again. The most ignorant of those that are ignorant is the one that trips over the same stone twice. (Quote from the prophet Mohammed peace and blessing be upon him)
Society writes them of as scum, who have chosen their own paths in life, and must live with the consequences. The more cynical will also venture that these people can change, it only takes their own determination to want to do so.
I say society is mistaken we should not view these individuals as adults that have their own will and an ability to make decisions, adults that when faced with the decision of what kind of life they will lead, consciously and aware of all consequences, chose the path they are on, we should see them for what they are. At 9, 21, 32, or 45 these people are traumatised children. They did not use their childhood to grow as we hope our children will do so, they used it to learn how to survive.
I urge you today to find out about domestic abuse and donate whatever you can, to the charity that touches you most. That is, that the buck does not stop with these parents and their children within the vicious cycle they live, but the buck stops with you.
Todays society is a hodgepodge of parents. Real parents, multiple parents, no parents, strangers, aunts, uncles, grandparents, foster, you name it and you will find children in every varity of relationship in a home. Does one think this is a possible impact? Good job.
