What Parents Say to Kids

What Parents Say to Kids

Despite working with divorcing families for quite some time now, I’m still amazed at some of the stories I hear.

Dad and the kids just returned from a week and half visit to grandma and grandpa. A great time was had by all. While the three of them were unpacking, Sis decided to call mom to see when she would pick them up. Mom’s response was that she’d had a hard week, the boss was all over her, and that she’d decided to go visit her boyfriend in Denver rather than pick them up as planned. She hoped dad would be fine watching them another day or two.

A divorced dad came in to meet with me prior to my starting therapy with his 6 year-old son. The boy was hitting other kids, acting out in other ways and dad was rightly conce
ed. In the course of our conversation dad explained to me how he had divorced mom because of his conce
s with her illicit drug use, involvement with other men, and his growing conce
for the safety of their son while mom was ‘high.’ I asked how he had explained his mother’s absence to his son, since the boy had visited his mother only infrequently the past 9 months. Dad told me he told his son that mom did bad things. I asked if he had any idea what his son might create in his mind as bad things? Dad seemed surprised at my question and had no idea what I meant. To him, she did bad things, like using and selling crystal meth and cheating on him with other men. But who knows what a 6 year-old boy might imagine? Perhaps mom drives around after dark looking for dogs and cats to run over with her car. Maybe she robs banks and kills people. Who knows?

I overheard a father one night at a party telling friends what a slut his ex-wife was, in certain earshot of his young daughter. Later that same evening, dad told other friends how much his daughter was like her mother. Hello! Mom’s a slut. You’re like your mother. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist……….

Parents are certainly not the only ones who speak without thinking. A girl and her brother told me how they had overheard a friend of their mother’s bad-mouth their dad at a Christmas party, and how much it hurt them to hear him say these things about their dad. What seemed to add to their pain was that no one else stood up for their father, including their mother.

The old adage ‘sticks and stone may break my bones, but names (words) will never hurt me’ is wrong. I heard a definition of criticism recently that fits: ‘to tear flesh.’

Parents who wouldn’t consider hitting their child seem to be oblivious to the damage they cause, or fail to prevent, when they or someone they know says something critical of the other parent. In the case of the mother above, what does she think her children heard when she told them she’d rather be with her boyfriend?

Our kids are listening, mom and dad. What do you want them to hear?

Randy Mergler, M.S., LMFT
www.limitlessliving.org
dadrjm@juno.com