On Parenting and the Negative Effect of Mixed Messages

Image via Caleb Angel

While walking through the grocery store, I saw something I’ve often seen, that struck me differently this time. A young boy, probably no more than four years of age, was being chauffeured around by the people I presume were his parents, when the man who was likely his father, given his appearance, shoved him as he walked past him further down the aisle. He might have been playing around, but the kid didn’t take it that way. He was upset and to the best of his limited abilities gathered whatever strength he could find and used it to verbally snap back at his father in a small act of dissent. Whatever he said must have registered as a challenge because the father quickly closed the gap between them and dug his hand into the chest of the child, overshadowing his growing frustration. All of this took place in front of me within the span of a few seconds, but it was enough time for an important message to be sent.

This type of messaging creates more problems than it solves. Young children like this boy are constantly learning through their environment, especially through their family. Mostly through what family members do to each other and how they ascribe meaning to those behaviors. Messages that simultaneously communicate it is okay for an adult to hit a child unprovoked, that it is not okay for a child to respond in anger, but it is okay for the adult to retaliate, are mixed up and confusing. Not for the adult who sees no issue with such a self-serving arrangement, but for the child who is forced to make sense of it on their own. An unenviable task for a child, to mentally corral a storm visited upon them by the person tasked with loving them.

Maybe this man is nothing himself but an amalgamation of mixed messages that he received, handed down to him by the adults in his life. It’s impossible to know, but what I suspect will happen over time, from knowledge and intuition, is something like this. The child will eventually internalize these messages if they receive them frequently enough and learn that he must submit to and appease others in order to survive and endure relationships. At least until he is strong enough to imitate them, which will be his form of open rebellion against those who have caused him pain.

Whichever way it plays out, the amount of emotion a child suppresses to handle this situation is immense and this early and persistent lack of expression leads to emotional difficulties. Later, other people will be subjected to these difficulties and will be forced to reckon with them out of their own sense of love and duty. This sets the stage for a sinking pit of reoccurring pain. It gives credence to the generational curses that people speak about, and the idea that trauma is sometimes transmitted through the family, whose rules and behaviors give traumatic experiences their structure and shape. And it is difficult to disentangle, undo, and replace the influence of decades of lessons learned in such harsh ways.

Mixed messages can also be hidden under the guise of positivity. Some children are eventually grow to feel tormented by the message that positive feelings are the only acceptable ones. They are praised for being sweet, kind, strong, and pretty, or some variation of these things, and taught that this is a standard of behavior they must always reach. Frequently they are punished for falling short of these things, either receiving criticism for being unlike this idealistic image or abandonment by being ignored until they can behave better. They are left to deal with their emotions on their own, like the boy in the grocery store.

The message to them is clear. I love you because you are good. I love you when you are pleasing, which pleases me. I love you for me. A child who associates love with good feelings only is no better equipped for life than a child who associates love with pain. They will seek out the familiarity of this mental programming in their future experiences and find themselves equally frustrated and unsure of what to do.