The role of a parent
Parents, grandparent, guardians and teachers are those carers who are responsible for helping the child to mature into adulthood in a healthy manner, to enter the social world and to eventually carve out an existence as an individual no longer dependent on the help of others for survival.
Mother Nature, consequently, has designed the world so that the child will be totally dependent on his/her childhood carers, will believe that his/her carers are infallible and will studiously ignore any failings his/her guardians may exhibit in the interests of his/her own survival. Our parents and/or parental substitutes, hence, should be nurturing, helpful, understanding, encouraging and supportive at all times – although this may rarely be the case.
The parental role in practice
Often a parent will act inappropriately and to the detriment of the child – albeit unwittingly. Have you, for instance, observed a parent making impossible demands on a child who is merely living in his/her own world, reprimanding him/her for merely being a child or imposing his/her own outmoded or inappropriate beliefs on the infant?
Don’t dawdle and hurry up!
Do as I say at once!
Stop daydreaming!
Don’t make a noise!
Stop whimpering because you’re just being silly!
Pick up your toys and tidy your room!
I’m warning you not to do that again or else!
Don’t bite your nails!
In these instances the parent is asking the impossible of the infant who is simply living in a child’s world. The parent has, at best, not got the imagination to understand the child and, at worst, is treating the child with a lack of consideration or even cruelty. The child, in many instances, will not even understand the words being said and he/she will then waste much mind-space in trying to comply with his/her parents incomprehensible wishes and impossible demands. The consequences for a carer’s lack of consideration, thoughtlessness and inappropriate dictates, therefore, will be destructive for the child in adulthood.
The result of inappropriate nurturing
If a parent does not bring up his/her children with an adequate degree of care and consideration, then the result for the adult can be difficult and/or devastating. No parent has ever got it totally right, of course, but a lack of thought and a dearth of imagination is often the culprit when it comes to parents who should be gagged in order to prevent psychological malaise in their children.
If, at an impressionable age, the child receives negative and disturbing messages this brainwashing will exercise a detrimental hold over him/her for perhaps the rest of his/her life.
Can you imagine that a child may start to believe psychologically distressing thoughts?
My parents don’t love me!
I am unlovable!
No one understands me!
I am not good enough!
I cannot cope with life!
I am bad and wicked!
I should be punished!
If the child gains the impression that his/her parents are uncaring then the result will be a lack of self-confidence, a low self-esteem, a poor self-image and a feeling of being unloved or unlovable. And, of course, the final outcome will be the likelihood of forming a string of unhappy relationships in adulthood and perhaps even treating his/her own children in a similarly heartless manner.
If the child is reprimanded too frequently and maybe asked to achieve the impossible then he/she will consider that he/she is inadequate or a total failure in life. The adult may then suffer from a need to self-punish by taking drugs or adopting unhealthy habits or he/she may simply stop trying to achieve anything.
For the child who is warned of danger or threatened because he/she is labelled as badly behaved in the eyes of his carers, then these emotive consequences will result in manifestations such as anxiety, phobias, rage episodes and depression and perhaps the merciless ill-treatment of others.
Help from a JMHT practitioner
If you wish to remedy your psychological malaise as a leftover from your childhood, then please visit the “Find a Practitioner” page on the JMHT website (www.jmhypnotraining.co.uk). All JMHT practitioners have undertaken their own personal therapeutic investigation and, therefore, are ideally placed to assist the client with root-cause analysis and resolution as a result of the insight gained.
Jacquelyne Morison
Jacquelyne Morison Hypnotherapy Training