Children In Family Conflicts

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Family psychotherapist Anna Varga (Reluctant rapists // Family and school.-1999. No. 11-12) notes that "it is equally traumatic to be both a victim and a witness of violence." For a child who sees relatives who harm each other, beat or insult each other, this is usually an emotional shock from which it is very difficult to recover and impossible to forget. What about children who are systematically beaten at home? But we need to talk about this in order to prevent such actions

A child who is a participant in constant family conflicts, as a rule, has the following symptoms:

1. General nervousness increases, more often there are emotional outbursts and unreasonable tantrums.

2. Behavior deteriorates because parental authority falls. The child ceases to trust them and listen to their opinion.

3. Acceptance of moral and common cultural values is violated. Children can become negatively influenced by wanting to fight against everything that came before in their life.

4. More often there is a negative attitude towards men and women, depending on who the child is against.

Many abused children often show signs of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Children do not sleep well, dreams become restless, they have fears and anxious thoughts about death. Stuttering or other speech disorders may begin or worsen. Attention becomes distracted, children cannot concentrate on some business, they can forget to do even familiar things, for example, wash in the morning, brush their teeth before going to bed.

All these signs indicate that the child has experienced some kind of shock event that he cannot cope with on his own. The child has ceased to be the same, is behaving unnaturally - this is a clear signal that he needs the help of an adult.

From the psychological point of view, violations of habitual activity are explained by the fact that the transferred shock cannot be explained in the consciousness of the child. The usual way of life has been disrupted, and all attention is paid to trying to understand and realize what happened. Therefore, it cannot switch to other things, people and events occurring in reality. Thought processes are slowed down because cannot cope with new information and realize what happened.

Violence, as you know, breeds retaliatory violence. It, in turn, turns out to be directed at another person, he passes it on to the next victim and so on ad infinitum.

Meeting in their work with children from disadvantaged families, specialists each time noted their confidence that they have the right to beat other children. In a kindergarten group, a 6-year-old boy allows himself to hit another child, and believes that he did the right thing. He does not see anything unusual in this - after all, he was beaten, so why can't he hit anyone he wants. This is exactly what everyone who has been hit at least once in their life thinks: why can I be beaten, but I cannot hit another?

The child has a completely fair question, which many adults cannot answer. The child acts intuitively, that is, relying on his sensory experience. He is offended and the only conclusion that he makes for himself is that he can fight with those he does not like. Thus, the use of force becomes the only way to achieve your goals in relationships with people.

If such a position is confirmed in a certain situation and the child really gets what he wants with the help of force, then it is fixed in consciousness as correct.

It is important to react to such behavior correctly. First of all, stop the child. Then, explain to him that this behavior is unacceptable, and you will not allow anyone else to hurt. If the child is in a state of emotional arousal, then there is no need to say much. Be laconic - speak only on the merits. The main thing is to show with your confident and calm actions, clear and short phrases that you are in control of this situation and everyone needs to calm down. Only after you have made sure that all the parties to the conflict have calmed down can you convey any information to them.

Another serious family problem is the frequent conflicts between parents

A case from practice. A 14-year-old girl called the psychological help phone. She introduced herself as Sveta and complained about her parents.

Sveta said that she had never felt parental love. According to her, they were always busy fighting among themselves. Mother and father constantly quarreled, either because of money and their lack, or because of mutual claims to each other. We constantly fought, then put up, fought again, and so on. The girl's most negative memories are associated with the fact that during the scandals, the mother and father tried to persuade their daughter, each to his side. At the same time, they tried to manipulate her, then promises, then threats. In fact, neither the first nor the second was eventually completed. The mother told her daughter about the negative traits of her father, and he, in turn, slandered his wife. Both demanded that their daughter accept only one side in order to confront the spouse together. As a result, by her age, the only desire of a teenage girl was to leave home, wherever they looked and as soon as possible.

As a rule, the child tries to realize such a desire.

Finding out the relationship with each other in the family, most parents make the same mistakes:

1. They try to use the children as their supporters in the fight against the spouse.
2. They isolate children completely from the real situation in the family, fearing for them.

Both the first and the second are extremes, caused, most often, by the selfishness of the parents themselves. In the first situation, the child will certainly be in the role of a loser, and in the second, children feel that something is happening, but they cannot understand what exactly. These experiences make them fearful, live in fear, intimidated by any noise, developing neurotic habits, often the same as those of their parents. Such problems in childhood turn into persistent anxiety in an adult. Thus, in both cases, we get a potential victim.

How to proceed so that the child makes the correct conclusion and does not become a manipulator himself, solving his problems at the expense of the child?

The experienced English philosopher and educator Herbert Spencer noted in his parenting works that “ all those bad inclinations that parents try to destroy in their children nest in themselves"(" Education mental, moral and physical ", 1861).

Domestic psychologists, doctors and educators (A. E. Lichko, 1979; E. G. Eidemiller, 1980) have long identified several types of parental attitude towards their children. This is an established system of parental relationship to a child, which includes emotions, feelings, stereotypes and expectations that parents transfer to children.

Authoritarian parents

When an authoritarian father (or mother) enters a kindergarten group or school class, he is always visible and audible: a loud voice, sharp movements, a stern look. Behind all these external, seemingly clear and strict signs of a knowledgeable person, there is a lack of confidence in the child, fear for oneself and an attempt to compensate for ignorance in upbringing with methods of rapid, but in fact ineffective and short-lived. They only operate with threats, hoping that this will make the child more obedient. But time passes, the child grows and what previously helped to achieve his obedience is no longer effective.

The drawings of children, for such parents, abound in black gloomy color, thematically tied to the disproportionate images of the parents' big hands and the small figure of the child himself. And sometimes they contain elements that are rarely found in children's drawings.

A case from practice. Boy Ibrahim Z. attends a kindergarten, he comes from a large family, but a large family, unfortunately, does not always mean a close-knit family. Parents are divorced, but forced to live together in the same apartment, children are witnesses of frequent quarrels. Ibrahim has three brothers and two sisters. Black terminators, sports equipment, animals appear in the boy's drawings, which are connected by the artist with equipment and weapons.

According to A. L. Wenger (Psychological Drawing Tests: An Illustrated Guide, 2003), such drawings of children reflect the aggression that they were plunged into and which they are also ready to throw out on others. That is, the protective mechanism - aggression, is transmitted to children from parents who use it as a means of education. Consequently, in the children's team we get a dysfunctional child who will almost always stand out, either by frequent conflicts with others, or by avoiding contacts and fears.

Violence is more common in authoritarian families than in others. Parents who apply it to their children destroy their expectations of acceptance, trust, love, care, which leads to disruption of the entire process of healthy development of the child. Such children themselves become aggressors, transferring the experience gained from the parents' family into their relationships.

Personal position of a parent: "You will do what I tell you, because I am the authority for you." At home, the child, often in an orderly tone, is given instructions, without explaining why he should follow them. Parents demand to start doing something immediately, but they forget that a child is not a trained dog, who, having abandoned everything, is obliged to follow the order received.

What can be done in this situation? Give your child the opportunity to complete earlier activities. Your baby is individual and has its own internal biological rhythm. Of course, the regime and observance of order should be, but constant coercion leads to a malfunction of the internal clock, metabolic disorders and disorders of mental processes. The child is not a trained dog and cannot do everything the way you want. Requirements must be appropriate for the age of the child. All changes taking place in a child's life must take into account his individual characteristics.

Overly protective parents

Such parents often use petty nit-picking, constantly monitor all movements of the child, analyze and criticize his actions in order to make him more controllable. Caring smoothly turns into oppressive care, which suppresses any initiative and activity of the child.

As a result, children grow out of initiative, weak-tempered, indecisive, unable to stand up for themselves, relying in everything on the opinion of their elders, unable to build full-fledged social relations with their peers. If suddenly, at some point, a parent is ready to give freedom to his child, then alone with himself he cannot calm down and terrible pictures of what is happening with their child pop up before his eyes.

Moreover, when a child sees that a father or mother is arguing with everyone because of them, he concludes that the world is a bunch of negative-minded people with whom it is constantly necessary to sort things out by quarrels and swearing.

A case from practice. A 52-year-old woman called the psychological help phone. She was sent to a psychologist by a school teacher with a question about how her child (a boy of 12 years old) to improve relationships with peers. During the conversation, it turned out that her only child, late (after 40 years), long-awaited, is being raised by her mother alone. Father is gone. The mother constantly takes care of her son, dresses him only in those clothes in which it is warm so that he does not get sick. She feeds only homemade, wholesome food, believing that health must be protected from childhood. At the same time, the mother does not allow her to watch TV, play on the computer, in principle, she does not buy products made in China, considering them to be of poor quality, infectious or dangerous.

In order to be able to see off and pick up her son every day from school, she quit her previous job and got a job as a cleaner in the office. The problem is that other children constantly offend the boy, do not want to be friends with him. Asks: how to help him build friendship with children?

Personal position of the parent. Such a parent is not ready to let the child go into life. He constantly worries about his health, worries about his well-being, but he is little worried about the development of the child's personality. In their eyes, a child is an incapable of anything, a weak, feeble creature in need of constant care and protection from external danger.

What can be done in this situation? First, parents should work on their increased anxiety. It is she who makes them themselves feel fear and transfer it to the child. Impression and anxiety undoubtedly help to survive in our difficult times, but there should be an adequate measure in everything. This means it's time to objectively assess what can be dangerous and what only seems dangerous.

Secondly, parents need to work on their egoism. They fear not for the child, but for themselves, because they are not interested in his opinion, his feelings and interests, and what the child is actually afraid of. Match his fears with yours. Only then will you understand where your subjective anxiety ends and reality begins.

Emotional, irritable parents

Such parents are always unhappy with their child, make constant complaints and blame all the mistakes. If he didn’t do his lesson, he was a fool; he was mistaken - a cretin; he couldn’t stand up for himself - a slob. At the same time, there is no emotional closeness in the relationship between the adult and the child. Tactile contacts are carried out at the level of slaps, cuffs, slaps in the face.

In this case, the parent becomes the initiator of some action. He himself pushes the child to commit an act and does not initially believe in possible success. Children are very well infected with the emotional mood of an adult and therefore do not know how to believe in themselves - naturally, as a result, they do everything wrong. As in the previous case, as a result, low self-esteem, downturn, lack of ability to defend one's position develops, and fear of self-expression appears.

As a rule, such children become passive aggressors, keeping their discontent deep within themselves. That is, they show it not explicitly, but somewhat differently. For example, with caustic remarks about another person, they express irony, provoke sarcasm, turn facts upside down, making other people guilty for their mistakes.

Personal position of the parent: “What kind of punishment are you ?! Well, you really don’t know how to do anything”- these words were said by the little girl Sasha, five years old, to her toys. Exactly repeating the words of his mother.

What can be done in this situation? A child is not born with skills and knowledge about life. And this very knowledge will not appear until he himself, with his own hands, tries to do something, until the child makes mistakes that he will then correct and find a way to solve problems in his own way, especially.

You, of course, are not obliged to adore your child, to see in him only the pros and cons. But at least do not hinder him from developing in a natural way, do not suppress the personality in him, with your claims and statements in his insolvency. If you do not know how to do it yourself, then entrust it to professionals. And for a child, be not a strict teacher or doctor, but just a parent. All people have flaws - this is normal, so change your attitude towards the child as a person with your own, unlike anyone else, features, which in the future may become his merits.

Liberal parents

Liberal means admitting. Such parents allow a lot in a child's life. They admit his mistakes, the influence of external factors and accidents on his life. They know how to admit that they are wrong, they can apologize for the mistakes they have made, but they do not always do it. But they respect the child's desire to independently make decisions in their destiny, to make their own choice. And, as a rule, they withdraw themselves from his life, by about adolescence. Out of habit, they may advise a teenage girl going to a disco in winter to dress warmly, but after she says something like: "Dry up, stump, I know myself." They prefer not to get into conflict and retire on their own business.

Personal position of a parent: “Nothing can be foreseen in this life. If a child wants to grow up and work as a janitor, then no one will be able to convince him of this”- this is how one mother described her view of upbringing to the counselor of the emergency psychological help phone.

It is believed that an adult has his own outlook on life, and a child has his own. They prefer to be engaged in their business until they are asked or until they are asked for something.

What can be done in this situation? It is usually useless to correct such a position. In principle, there is a rational kernel in it: the child learns to be independent, to be responsible for his actions and to achieve everything in life on his own, relying only on himself. True, he never learns to find effective ways of interacting with other people, because he did not see an example in the person of people significant to him (parents).

Authoritative parents

“What would the father have done in this situation?”, “And how would the mother have done? What would she say now?”- this is the question their children ask themselves when they find themselves in a difficult situation. This does not mean that this is how they will do it, but they will always take into account such an opinion.

Personal position of the parent. Such parents have an inner life position that they are companions of the child on the path of life. They try to comment on their actions, thus explaining the main principle of their actions. They try to avoid putting pressure on the child, always being aware of the child's state of affairs. First of all, they are honest with themselves, and the child is taught to do this.

It is not necessary to correct such relationships if they have a beneficial effect on the development of the child's personality. Moreover, in this case, usually, no such request for help comes from anyone.

Democratic parents

Children of democratic parents know and know how to behave adequately to the situation in which they find themselves. They are quite critical in relation to themselves and know how to evaluate the actions of other people. In conflict situations, they prefer to reason consistently, skillfully argue their opinion.

Personal position of the parent. Prioritize honesty and fairness. They try to listen to the child's opinion, listen to him carefully in order to understand. By their own example, they educate children in discipline, independence, confidence, respect for oneself and other people.

Thus, it is only our own irrational beliefs that prevent our children from being happy. Therefore, give them freedom of choice, but at the same time be there so that they can always turn to you for help or know where this help can be obtained.

Leading psychologist ODMPKiIP FKU CEPP EMERCOM of Russia