5 things I learned about being a father while working as a counselor
by
Mike Hamilton
My entire career as a counselor has been almost exclusively working with trauma clients. The word trauma covers a vast range of abuses including neglect, physical and otherwise. As you sit with these amazing survivors you begin to see a picture of a person wounded to the point of being blind to the truth of what God created them to be. And when you sit with one of these amazing survivors you begin to see a little boy or a little girl who was put into a home without some very important things to help them survive as a person who believes they are valuable, lovable, important, worthy. The longer I work in this field the better dad I become based upon seeing wounds and fractures of these adult versions of wounded kids.
So I compiled a list, which seems to be the hot blog topic these days…..here are my 5:
1. Worthy to die for: Children in trauma based families are put into positions where they are responsible for causing harm to the parents and then responsible for repairing the damage they cause. Parents are often the victims and use the children's naiveté to manipulate them into giving the parent anything they want to feel "better" or "not sad". Somehow this fills the parent and often puts them into a position to continue to demand more and more from the child who is desperately incapable and out of control to meet those demands. Eventually nothing is off limits. Most of the abuse leads to the child leading a life of feeling dead so that the parents can feel alive.
No child is capable of dying for a parent, not in any way. A parent is the one who is created to be willing to give up their literal life to save or protect a child. This also goes towards the idea that once you have a child you are no longer in charge of your own life, your life becomes important for their survival and emotional health as a child. Dying for your children can be as simple as playing hot wheels car lot salesman with your kids, sitting for hours in a really small chair sipping pretend tea and being willing to give up sleep to hold them when a storm blows through. You are a vast cistern of pure water to be poured OUT of your heart into theirs, not the other way around. I always remember like this, my children are not "mine" but I am "theirs". In no way should I saddle them with the responsibility of making me okay, happy, not lonely, not angry or another "not" category. I am created to die for them, not the other way around.
2. Lovable: Children in trauma based families are not loved. Some might have a problem with that statement, but I do not talk of some biological "love" we feel for our children, I talk more about the love of a Christ who suffered for us all. Trauma parents do not do this. Their "love" is tied to withholding it to get access to whatever they want to strip and rape from their children's emotional cache. Their "love" is about getting close physically for their own gratification. Their "love" is about physically bullying a child into conforming to what they want…period. What the child experiences is so painful that they will forgo love for the rest of their lives, instead asking for an alternative that felt less scary and empty and painful. For some this was sex or power or being hated or being liked or perfect. And you will see an adult spend the rest of their lives demanding this instead of being loved…they run towards abusive situations and shy away from a person who would love them well.
Love is not an investment. Love isn't a blue chip stock that we pour money in and expect a return for that investment. Love is not a recipe for cookies that we mix up and put in the oven so that we can eat the yummy cookies later. Love at its best is a man who died on a cross and suffered for those around Him. Love is Jesus standing in front of a woman who was caught in adultery and telling her that He doesn't judge her. Love is finding ways that your kids can feel unmerited grace just like the adulteress woman did. They need to know that you will love them no matter what they do, and during any exchange of discipline or anger you should never make them wonder if in those moments you love them. Your love isn't a bartering tool for better behaviors, your love is the very thing a child needs in order to grow to believe they are lovable. Without this ability they will always trade down for lesser things for themselves. I tell my children many times a week that I am proud to be their daddy, that I am thrilled to get to see them every day, that they are lovable and that I am excited to get to love them each day. I tell them that they are lovable on their best and worst day, I ask them if they are still lovable after they are disciplined….and I ask them if they are lovable after an amazing day at the zoo. You must interact with them in this place, this place where they are forced to receive the best thing you have to give them, this place that will force them to write into their hearts a narrative of being loved and wanted to love back. This charge, to make them know and then to teach them to give love is of utmost importance.
3. Being Known: In a trauma based family the child is placed into a situation where they have to give up who they are in order to make their parents okay or happy. Sometimes you will find children who are hated for being a girl or boy and that child will begin to take on traits of the other sex. At their very core, at this point, they have been taught that the caregiver hates what they are which speaks partially to who they are. Parents might hate an intelligent child because the parent might feel inadequate or stupid. Parents can hate a girl who looks like the parent when they were 4 and being abused. Children are told to be physically beautiful at the cost of a desire to be a little messy kid, a kid who might be torn to eat with their fingers and play in the mud puddles. Trauma kids can be told they are fat, ugly, sexy, stupid, told they are athletes, told they are too sensitive, too stubborn, they can be made to believe almost any combination of things that make unhealthy caregivers lash out. Unhealthy parents can make their children responsible for giving perfection, a perfect kid, a perfect school career, a perfectly clean home. Or just the opposite, they can demand that the child be the black sheep, scape goat, reason for all things that are wrong. A dumping ground for the parents' rage, dysfunction and self-hatred.
A child isn't a lump of clay for me to mold. A child is a known person before God knitted them together in the womb. My job as a parent is to find out who they are and then help them get through life as that person. Ask any parent of multiple children…not two are the same…ever. The way I play with my tender son might be similar as to how I play with my rough and tumble son. Sure. All boys like to wrestle. But the way I show emotion to my tender son is far different than the way I do with my other one. I can look my tender son in the eyes and put my nose against his nose and speak of emotions with him. He cries happy tears, sad tears, fearful tears, he is in touch with a vast range of emotions and he allows me to move into them. My other son, not so interested. He is moving, hitting (playfully), dodging and looking away when I talk to him. He is not and has never been a snuggler. I should never force him to be. To know my son is to know him in that way, and he is not to be changed so that I can guilt him into being a snuggler for my benefit. However that same rough and tumble son will play independently from his brother, with me, for as long as I'm willing to lay in the floor. Our one on one time is paramount to him feeling connected. The tender son sometimes needs to play alone, without anyone….why should I change that? Especially for me? I know him in that, I enjoy him in that, I hope that he knows or learns that it is okay for him to be that person. Whether they are bossy or shy, powerful or quiet, hilarious or dry, a leader or a follower, snuggly or independent…..I want to deeply know them so that I can deeply enjoy them……so they can have the experience of? Being deeply known and enjoyed.
4. Being Safe: In a Trauma family, no child knows safety. Their anxiety is always on high alert to watch for the changing and subtle cues that can warn them of danger within the home. They are always vigilant, always planning, and often have no concept that they will one day be an adult, 40 years old, living in a house in suburbia someday. Their world is dangerous and painful and scary, which in their little kid brains will never, ever be different. They live in constant fear of their caregivers, they live in the tension of the constant fear that some outside person will find out about their caregivers. They do what they can to get close to the abuser to avoid terror filled situations. It's almost like the idea of sitting on a German tank invading your town is slightly less terrifying than having that tank move towards you in the street. Trauma children are masters of finding ways to get close to perpetrators (to be "safe") and to keeping distance from people who would find out (never allowing those who might help get close enough to do so, for fear they will have to face the reality of the abusing caregiver). They are never safe at home and they are never safe to tell. Their world is one day after another of wondering how they will survive.
Children need to know they are safe. I tell my children every day that they are safe in our home. Is that true? Sort of. Could a fire break out that traps us? Yes. Do my children need to know that at any point in their lives tragedy can strike and kill them? Absolutely not. I can not only teach them that they are safe but I can do what it takes to teach them how to be safe. My children know what a red flag person is (a person who might ask or try or succeed in touching them inappropriately). Once my younger child (still a baby at the time) accidentally brushed my older son's private area while in the bathtub. My older son leaned close to my ear and said "Daddy, I think he is a red flag person". They listen. They learned. They need to know what they should do if this unthinkable happens. We talk about fire. We talk about "bad guys". We talk about the police and firemen as well. They learn our address, our last names and our phone number. We talk about finding safe people to help them in an emergency. We tell them to tell, to share when things don't seem right or have not gone right. We do not "not ask" because we are afraid of the answer. They are created to be emotionally safe as well as physically safe. We try our best to let them be angry, to be sad (very important), to be disappointed (very hard to do), to be happy when we aren't and to have a good day if we've had a bad one. They get to have their emotions and they are safe (to the point we can humanly make it so) to have these emotions. It is safe to be touched, hugged or kissed in our home and it is safe to ask for us not to touch them, hug them or kiss them. We do not make them feel obligated or guilty for choosing to forgo these things.
5. Not draped in obligation: Trauma children live the rest of their lives obligated. They are obligated to "love", obligated to have sex, obligated to be interested in others, obligated to care, obligated to visit, obligated to be in good moods….obligated to take care of others instead of themselves…obligated to think of others instead of themselves….the list of obligations is never ending….and a trauma survivor as an adult will find ways of making something you might want to give them into a obligation for them to receive it. Nothing in their mind is free of this shackle. Every interaction with another human will lead to them trying to find out what they are obligated to give or do or think or feel.
No child should be draped in obligation. Every good thing you will receive from your child will only be that which is not coming from an obligated place. If I feel like I have to give you a hug and kiss when I get home, I can assure you it will not be coming from a place of love or reality. I will feel closed and rigid and resentful of your requirement of this. Now, you might get that hug and say "it was good to hug him"…but it will never be a true intimate, loving embrace. Children are the same way. They can give from two places, from a free place from their own hearts out of a desire to give joy or from a prison-like place where they are forced to grind out a statue of emotional stone to hand you in their stead. If my kids say "no" when I ask for them to sit with me or lay with me or watch with me etc…..I am okay with that. If they want to play instead of going for a ride around the block, I'm okay with that. If they want to paint watercolors instead of watching a movie, I'm okay with that. And because of that, when I do receive from them I know it is from a place of no obligation. It is real. It is a place where a little boy really does want me to be there with them and to experience that moment with them, to be there in it, side by side, sometimes nose to nose…
I plan to continue this list over the coming weeks, 5 seemed to be meaty enough for one day's topic….
