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| When
words hit harder than fists |
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By
Sybil Adelman Sage
SPECIAL
TO MSNBC |
“He’s driving me crazy.
He’s so wild. He can’t do
anything right.” These are but a few
of the complaints we’ve all heard my
cousin make in the presence of her
14-year-old son, Jonathan.
TRUE,
JONATHAN isn’t the kid any of us
were fantasizing about while we were
poring through books of names and
shopping for a crib. He’s one of
those kids you see in restaurants dumping
salt onto the table, whining and
interrupting, knocking over drinks,
continually up and down, provoking fights
and asking, “What did I do?”
when rebuked. He’s the reason you
wish they’d add a “No
Brat” restriction to the “No
Smoking” section. My cousin’s
habitual condemnation of him, I was sure,
only added to the kid’s problems.
According to
my cousin, the school psychologist —
who sounds more like Jackie Mason than a
trained professional — tested
Jonathan and reported, “He has
something like attention deficit
disorder, not exactly ADD, not the kind
of condition that responds to medication,
but he does have problems. His problems
are serious, but not that serious, not
serious enough so he qualifies to take
untimed tests.” Maybe if there had
been a clearer diagnosis, my cousin would
be more tolerant. Instead, she and her
husband blame the boy and are always
angry at him, calling him lazy, worthless
and stupid.
LABELS
THAT LAST
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My parents were never
verbally abusive, but anything they said
about me became permanently fixed in my
psyche. My mother’s comment,
“She’s more fragile than she
looks,” made it unlikely that
I’ve ever run a marathon or even try
to lift more than 10 pounds. In those
early years, we tend to trust our parents
and believe they know who we are. That
doctor who administered chemotherapy to
herself in the South Pole, I’m sure,
wasn’t labeled “fragile”
by her parents.
If a seemingly
benign comment had such dramatic impact
on me, what must repeated berating do to
Jonathan?
Intervening is
risky, which is why I’d swallowed my
urge to suggest that my cousin’s
unrelenting disapproval had to be a
contributing factor to Jonathan’s
discomfort. I suspected she’d
construe anything I might say as
criticism. But after one particularly
heated battle I witnessed between
Jonathan and both parents, I called my
cousin to say the kid appeared to be
crying out for help. I asked if
they’d considered family therapy. My
cousin said it could be a long and costly
process. I pointed out they could afford
it and wouldn’t hesitate if this
were a medical problem. Happily, she
seemed to trust I was on their side, and
agreed to consider the suggestion. It
would be easier and more productive, I
suspected, for them to hear their words
characterized as verbally abusive from a
therapist than from me.
It’s
upsetting to see a kid, even a
stranger’s kid, abused —
physically or verbally. For years
I’d been wincing at Little League
games each time Tyler’s father
screamed at his son during Little League
games, “What are you, blind?
Why’d you swing? Why didn’t you
swing?” Other parents in the
bleachers cringed with me at each remark,
but none of us spoke up. I finally worked
up the courage to ask the father how
Tyler felt about his comments. He
shrugged.
BETTER TO
SOUND SUPPORTIVE |
“I think my son
would be distracted if I called out at
the games. He’d probably get
angry,” I persisted. This got
another shrug and was followed by more
yelling at Tyler.
His
indifference didn’t discourage me
from continuing to play unofficial child
advocate. I intervened when Ashley’s
mother reacted to her daughter eating
cake at a birthday party by announcing,
“She’ll be sorry she’s fat
when she doesn’t get asked for
dates,” and when a mother sitting
next to her cranky toddlers laughingly
said, “Aren’t there times you
just want to kill them?”
Practice
doesn’t make it any easier to speak
up. Offering unsolicited comments on
parenting is risky. I try to inspire
trust by being understanding and empathic
to the parents, disarming them by letting
them know I’ve found myself in
similarly stressful situations. I go on
to say in my experience, my son has been
more receptive when I speak to him
privately. If they’re still
listening, I tell about a friend who
allegedly gave me good advice — that
it’s more effective to sound
supportive, rather than critical, quoting
this pretend expert as having told me,
“I’d love for you to straighten
up your room,” is apt to get better
results than, “You’re a
pig.”
No voice is
more penetrating than a parent’s.
Kids may seem indifferent to what their
parents are saying, but they hear the
words. My hope is that words from one
parent to another will also be heard.Sybil
Adelman Sage lives in New York City with
her husband and son.
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