Standing up for the child I was
Aug. 12th, 2014 01:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ljwritesToday on the train I came across a scene that flooded my body with remembered grief. A mother was in the car with her young daughter of five or six, and the mom seemed very upset about something the daughter had done. She spoke roughly to the little girl to go stand next to a door holding a vertical bar, then proceeded to wipe down one skinny shin where there were some dark smudges on the skin, probably something the girl had gotten on her bare leg. The mother, voice raised and hands ungentle, said the girl was really going to get it from her father and told her how bad she was.
Okay, so the daughter had done something wrong, maybe she'd been careless. I thought the mother seemed disproportionately upset from what I could see, but I didn't know the whole story and being a parent is hard work. I turned my attention to my phone like a good little commuter, but a tendril of my awareness hovered around the two.
But the mother, rather than being appeased after a bit of grumbling, only seemed to feed off her own anger. Her voice rose as she said how sick she was of this, and she slapped the daughter's offending leg, making me jump inside. I mean, it wasn't physically forceful. There are harder play-smacks. As with so much in life context and intent are everything, and that contact delivered in the middle of the harangue was far more threatening than a much stronger blow given in affection and playfulness would have been.
By this point the girl didn't know what to do with herself. Her face crumpled and she let out a tentative ahhh of distress before she made her face go still, and she was limp against the vertical bar she still held, holding an icy treat in her other hand but no longer interested in it. If her feelings were anything like my memories, she would have been feeling like the universe had turned its back on her and there was no place for her to stand. Shame at not just her childish infraction but at her very being would have wrestled with anger at this unjust treatment, putting her at war with herself and tangling her up in a web of contradictions. I felt my throat close up at the echoes of terror, humiliation, and rage.
The mother, almost shouting now, ordered her daughter to go seat herself at the seniors section, where the little girl squeezed in between two older gentlemen. Then the mother went to stand over the child, glaring at her with her lips threatening to peel back from her teeth in a snarl. I thought she hates her daughter at the same moment I remembered thinking as a child, he hates me.
By this I do not mean the mother had no love for her daughter, nor that I received no love or nurture from my parent. I don't doubt that the mother would die for her daughter, as I know my dad would for me. However, in that moment the bedrock of love was flooded over with the sludge of hate for this little thing that was getting in the way and making life miserable. It must be malicious, it must be out to get me. There is no other explanation. It is a threat and I must protect myself, by destroying it if necessary. In those moments misdirected aggression erupts through the fault lines of a psyche, and the parent forgets the decent person she is in the unbearable pressure of the moment.
At this point I was fighting back tears because I knew that expression, I knew that dominance move of standing over this cowering little person, pinning her in place with the fury of a gaze. Say something, I told myself, not for the first time. This is long past unacceptable. I know you don't want to cause a scene, but at the very least let the mother and little girl know this isn't right. I was as trapped as the little girl, though, the power of that look piercing across the years to fix me in place.
Then the mother shouted, "Stop looking at me!"
This, to a child who of course couldn't take her eyes off the object of her terror and hopeful adoration. I remembered that line, too, because in this fragile state of mind the child's gaze seems like some sort of dominance move, or maybe a wordless reproach. Because what other explanation could there be for the child's behavior, other than to torment them? At this moment everyone is out to get you, the child most of all.
This finally broke through the crust of my inaction, and I acted before I could shrink away again.
"What could a child have possibly done so wrong? This is so inappropriate--there are other people here, you know."
The mother turned to stare at me, and I stared back. I braced myself for a verbal assault, even a physical attack because I'd experienced that when I stood up to verbal abuse. I don't know what was going through her mind in that short moment, behind her unreadable eyes and downturned mouth. Astonishment? Anger? Shame? Mostly I thought she looked worn out.
She turned away and I turned back to my phone, my cowardly intestines quivering inside me. There was a painful obstruction in my throat.
Sitting to the little girl'sright left* was an older gentleman, and I heard him talk to the girl, soothing her. He engaged with the mother, empathizing with her frustrations, talking about his own children and grandchildren. I heard control return to the mother's voice, and saw how activity returned to the daughter as the weight of fear lifted from her. Where I could only lash out as the child I had been, the elderly man reacted as a father, effectively parenting both the mother and her daughter out of the storm as though they were his own daughter and granddaughter. I stepped out onto the platform to the sound of their gentle laughter.
* An interesting slip--the gentleman was actually sitting to the girl's left, and to my right side when I turned from where I stood to glance at them.
I don't think for a moment that this is a happy ending. The same pressures and resentments are going to build up again, and the mother will again blow up and end up terrorizing her child. At the very least, though, I hope the girl remembers the time when two strangers stood up for her, one fumbling around, the other all grace and affection. I hope the memory shows that her mother's behavior is wrong and is not the child's fault. (Because dollars to doughnuts the mother drills it into her daughter that the child is to blame for her parent's actions.) I hope the mother also realizes that the way she treats her daughter when angry is not acceptable and gets help. Most likely she'll just rationalize everything away, though.
I went into a great deal of detail because it's sometimes hard to convey the nuance of these situations. If it were physical or sexual abuse any onlookers would have been horrified and called the police. When it comes to emotional and verbal abuse, though, it's not easy to get across and all too easy to explain away.
For instance, when I made a much shorter Facebook posting about this incident, a friend thought the problem was that the mother scolded her daughter in front of other people. I replied I don't give a fig about scolding--parents not only can but should discipline their children, including in public. What disturbed me was that the mother's behavior was the opposite of scolding: By the time I (and our entire side of the car) had become aware of the situation there was no mention of any act that the daughter could correct. Rather it was about the inherent wrongness of the daughter herself, how she was making her poor mother suffer with unspecified wrongs, and how sick the mother was of her.
This lack of specificity is a big part of how emotional abuse works, by shifting the emphasis from the specific and corrigible to the vague and unactionable. With a scolding there's an action plan, what and what not to do. The recipient of discipline is given the tools to control their destiny based on understandable principles.
The point of abuse, on the other hand, is to make a person helpless. It's no longer an action that is wrong, but the person's very being. The person has no way to make things better: Unbalanced and disoriented, all they can do is acknowledge their utter worthlessness and do whatever the abuser says.Abuse empowers the abuser at the expense of the abused, which is not discipline but a control tactic, not a nurturing into independence but forced regression to dependence.
Looking back I'm surprised by the force of my own memories. Here I thought I'd gotten over everything, just about--and then BOOM it all comes back and I'm a puddle of emotion on the train floor. It demonstrates the power of these experiences. What I really wanted to say to the mother was not some stilted line about appropriate behavior in public places, but a plea not to do this to her daughter because she's never really going to forget this, not in thirty years. I know I didn't.
Okay, so the daughter had done something wrong, maybe she'd been careless. I thought the mother seemed disproportionately upset from what I could see, but I didn't know the whole story and being a parent is hard work. I turned my attention to my phone like a good little commuter, but a tendril of my awareness hovered around the two.
But the mother, rather than being appeased after a bit of grumbling, only seemed to feed off her own anger. Her voice rose as she said how sick she was of this, and she slapped the daughter's offending leg, making me jump inside. I mean, it wasn't physically forceful. There are harder play-smacks. As with so much in life context and intent are everything, and that contact delivered in the middle of the harangue was far more threatening than a much stronger blow given in affection and playfulness would have been.
By this point the girl didn't know what to do with herself. Her face crumpled and she let out a tentative ahhh of distress before she made her face go still, and she was limp against the vertical bar she still held, holding an icy treat in her other hand but no longer interested in it. If her feelings were anything like my memories, she would have been feeling like the universe had turned its back on her and there was no place for her to stand. Shame at not just her childish infraction but at her very being would have wrestled with anger at this unjust treatment, putting her at war with herself and tangling her up in a web of contradictions. I felt my throat close up at the echoes of terror, humiliation, and rage.
The mother, almost shouting now, ordered her daughter to go seat herself at the seniors section, where the little girl squeezed in between two older gentlemen. Then the mother went to stand over the child, glaring at her with her lips threatening to peel back from her teeth in a snarl. I thought she hates her daughter at the same moment I remembered thinking as a child, he hates me.
By this I do not mean the mother had no love for her daughter, nor that I received no love or nurture from my parent. I don't doubt that the mother would die for her daughter, as I know my dad would for me. However, in that moment the bedrock of love was flooded over with the sludge of hate for this little thing that was getting in the way and making life miserable. It must be malicious, it must be out to get me. There is no other explanation. It is a threat and I must protect myself, by destroying it if necessary. In those moments misdirected aggression erupts through the fault lines of a psyche, and the parent forgets the decent person she is in the unbearable pressure of the moment.
At this point I was fighting back tears because I knew that expression, I knew that dominance move of standing over this cowering little person, pinning her in place with the fury of a gaze. Say something, I told myself, not for the first time. This is long past unacceptable. I know you don't want to cause a scene, but at the very least let the mother and little girl know this isn't right. I was as trapped as the little girl, though, the power of that look piercing across the years to fix me in place.
Then the mother shouted, "Stop looking at me!"
This, to a child who of course couldn't take her eyes off the object of her terror and hopeful adoration. I remembered that line, too, because in this fragile state of mind the child's gaze seems like some sort of dominance move, or maybe a wordless reproach. Because what other explanation could there be for the child's behavior, other than to torment them? At this moment everyone is out to get you, the child most of all.
This finally broke through the crust of my inaction, and I acted before I could shrink away again.
"What could a child have possibly done so wrong? This is so inappropriate--there are other people here, you know."
The mother turned to stare at me, and I stared back. I braced myself for a verbal assault, even a physical attack because I'd experienced that when I stood up to verbal abuse. I don't know what was going through her mind in that short moment, behind her unreadable eyes and downturned mouth. Astonishment? Anger? Shame? Mostly I thought she looked worn out.
She turned away and I turned back to my phone, my cowardly intestines quivering inside me. There was a painful obstruction in my throat.
Sitting to the little girl's
* An interesting slip--the gentleman was actually sitting to the girl's left, and to my right side when I turned from where I stood to glance at them.
I don't think for a moment that this is a happy ending. The same pressures and resentments are going to build up again, and the mother will again blow up and end up terrorizing her child. At the very least, though, I hope the girl remembers the time when two strangers stood up for her, one fumbling around, the other all grace and affection. I hope the memory shows that her mother's behavior is wrong and is not the child's fault. (Because dollars to doughnuts the mother drills it into her daughter that the child is to blame for her parent's actions.) I hope the mother also realizes that the way she treats her daughter when angry is not acceptable and gets help. Most likely she'll just rationalize everything away, though.
I went into a great deal of detail because it's sometimes hard to convey the nuance of these situations. If it were physical or sexual abuse any onlookers would have been horrified and called the police. When it comes to emotional and verbal abuse, though, it's not easy to get across and all too easy to explain away.
For instance, when I made a much shorter Facebook posting about this incident, a friend thought the problem was that the mother scolded her daughter in front of other people. I replied I don't give a fig about scolding--parents not only can but should discipline their children, including in public. What disturbed me was that the mother's behavior was the opposite of scolding: By the time I (and our entire side of the car) had become aware of the situation there was no mention of any act that the daughter could correct. Rather it was about the inherent wrongness of the daughter herself, how she was making her poor mother suffer with unspecified wrongs, and how sick the mother was of her.
This lack of specificity is a big part of how emotional abuse works, by shifting the emphasis from the specific and corrigible to the vague and unactionable. With a scolding there's an action plan, what and what not to do. The recipient of discipline is given the tools to control their destiny based on understandable principles.
The point of abuse, on the other hand, is to make a person helpless. It's no longer an action that is wrong, but the person's very being. The person has no way to make things better: Unbalanced and disoriented, all they can do is acknowledge their utter worthlessness and do whatever the abuser says.Abuse empowers the abuser at the expense of the abused, which is not discipline but a control tactic, not a nurturing into independence but forced regression to dependence.
Looking back I'm surprised by the force of my own memories. Here I thought I'd gotten over everything, just about--and then BOOM it all comes back and I'm a puddle of emotion on the train floor. It demonstrates the power of these experiences. What I really wanted to say to the mother was not some stilted line about appropriate behavior in public places, but a plea not to do this to her daughter because she's never really going to forget this, not in thirty years. I know I didn't.
