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Authors: Beverly Engel
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ment all alone. She tried to get me to go out with her to the clubs, but I really didn’t like it. I knew my dad didn’t like me going there and that it made my parents worry about me. Besides, my dad told me that my mother had been really depressed ever since I left home.”
A smothering parent assumes that her child’s mistakes will trap him for life, and so she will try to manage her child’s life in such a way that the child will accept his parents’ attitudes about the world. We saw this happening with Lupe earlier in the chapter. The prob- lem is that the parent’s behavior prevents an adult child from devel- oping his own attitudes and beliefs. Although a smothering parent may only be trying to protect her child from harm and disappoint- ment, her attempts may actually emotionally cripple the child later in life, causing him to fear venturing out on his own or trying new things.
If a child identifies with his parents’ overprotective attitude, as we saw with the example of Mark, he will live his life in fear, doomed to being an underachiever. If he is unable to take risks out of fear of get- ting hurt, he will never experience the joy of accomplishment and the pride of reaching his potential. This will inevitably cause him to feel like a failure and to suffer from low self-esteem. When parents trans- mit a lack of confidence in their children’s ability to get along in the world, or constantly warn them of how people are untrustworthy, they often create a self-fulfilling prophecy in which the child grows up overwhelmed with insecurity or expecting people to disappoint, hurt, or take advantage of him.
Because their parents’ needs cancel their own, adult children of smothering or possessive parents are often unable to discover what
their own needs are, and many grow up to passively accept even unac- ceptable behavior instead of asserting themselves. Many who were smothered in this way end up also being controlled by their partners, bosses, or other significant people in their lives.
The Overly Controlling, Tyrannical Parent
Parental Mirror: “You Are Powerless”
Lorraine is an attractive woman with large, dark eyes, flawless skin, and a luscious mouth. She was once considered voluptuous but is now extremely overweight. But what stands out the most about Lorraine is that she talks and acts like a little girl. At nearly forty years old she has the mannerisms of a young child. Although she is quite intelli- gent, she frequently appears confused and cannot easily understand instructions from her employers, which has cost her more than one job. Why does Lorraine behave the way she does? She is still suffer- ing from the emotional abuse she experienced as a child at the hands of her mother.
When Lorraine was a child she was expected to act like an adult. Her mother insisted that she and her sisters take responsibility for cleaning the entire house while she was at work. This wouldn’t have been so bad, except that her mother was a perfectionist. The girls could never do anything right. Lorraine remembers one time when her mother told her to scrub the kitchen floor, even though she was only six years old.
As usual, when her mother got home from work she inspected the house, looking for anything out of place or left undone. When she found scuff marks on the kitchen floor, she became furious. She yelled at Lorraine, calling her “a stupid good-for-nothing girl who never did anything right.” Lorraine was humiliated. She told her mother that she had tried and tried but was not able to get the scuff marks off. Even though it was past Lorraine’s bedtime, her mother insisted that she scrub the floor until the marks were completely gone. This took
hours. By the time the marks were gone Lorraine’s fingers were bruised and bleeding.
Lorraine still remembers how helpless and hopeless she felt as she desperately tried to get the scuff marks off the floor. Today, whenever a boss asks her to do something,
A smothering parent assumes that her child’s mistakes will trap him for life, and so she will try to manage her child’s life in such a way that the child will accept his parents’ attitudes about the world. We saw this happening with Lupe earlier in the chapter. The prob- lem is that the parent’s behavior prevents an adult child from devel- oping his own attitudes and beliefs. Although a smothering parent may only be trying to protect her child from harm and disappoint- ment, her attempts may actually emotionally cripple the child later in life, causing him to fear venturing out on his own or trying new things.
If a child identifies with his parents’ overprotective attitude, as we saw with the example of Mark, he will live his life in fear, doomed to being an underachiever. If he is unable to take risks out of fear of get- ting hurt, he will never experience the joy of accomplishment and the pride of reaching his potential. This will inevitably cause him to feel like a failure and to suffer from low self-esteem. When parents trans- mit a lack of confidence in their children’s ability to get along in the world, or constantly warn them of how people are untrustworthy, they often create a self-fulfilling prophecy in which the child grows up overwhelmed with insecurity or expecting people to disappoint, hurt, or take advantage of him.
Because their parents’ needs cancel their own, adult children of smothering or possessive parents are often unable to discover what
their own needs are, and many grow up to passively accept even unac- ceptable behavior instead of asserting themselves. Many who were smothered in this way end up also being controlled by their partners, bosses, or other significant people in their lives.
The Overly Controlling, Tyrannical Parent
Parental Mirror: “You Are Powerless”
Lorraine is an attractive woman with large, dark eyes, flawless skin, and a luscious mouth. She was once considered voluptuous but is now extremely overweight. But what stands out the most about Lorraine is that she talks and acts like a little girl. At nearly forty years old she has the mannerisms of a young child. Although she is quite intelli- gent, she frequently appears confused and cannot easily understand instructions from her employers, which has cost her more than one job. Why does Lorraine behave the way she does? She is still suffer- ing from the emotional abuse she experienced as a child at the hands of her mother.
When Lorraine was a child she was expected to act like an adult. Her mother insisted that she and her sisters take responsibility for cleaning the entire house while she was at work. This wouldn’t have been so bad, except that her mother was a perfectionist. The girls could never do anything right. Lorraine remembers one time when her mother told her to scrub the kitchen floor, even though she was only six years old.
As usual, when her mother got home from work she inspected the house, looking for anything out of place or left undone. When she found scuff marks on the kitchen floor, she became furious. She yelled at Lorraine, calling her “a stupid good-for-nothing girl who never did anything right.” Lorraine was humiliated. She told her mother that she had tried and tried but was not able to get the scuff marks off. Even though it was past Lorraine’s bedtime, her mother insisted that she scrub the floor until the marks were completely gone. This took
hours. By the time the marks were gone Lorraine’s fingers were bruised and bleeding.
Lorraine still remembers how helpless and hopeless she felt as she desperately tried to get the scuff marks off the floor. Today, whenever a boss asks her to do something,
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