... and spoil the child.
Sep. 24th, 2015 08:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberett(CN abuse.)
azurelunatic, elsewhere, a while ago:
So since then I've been trying to catch myself when I tell a partner they're spoiling me, because what I'm actually doing with that, I think, in addition to the you shouldn't (because I don't deserve nice things; because I shouldn't get used to them; because they'll end up resenting me for it or holding it over me; and on, and on...) is -- distancing myself from it, reframing it as something I understand, as something that is not a gift freely given for the sake of maybe making me smile, but a calculated transaction to keep me quiet and buy my time and my energy and my compliance. I'm trying to turn it into something that makes more sense to me; what I mean is you don't mean this.
And that's not fair to my partners, and it's not fair to me, so I'm trying, ever so gently, to retrain myself on this one.
azurelunatic, elsewhere, a while ago: When people say "spoiled child" I look for not enough love, not too much. It seems to me that often people who could be described as a "spoiled child" come from backgrounds where a child is "cared for" by starving them of attention, affection, and approval, but they do have all their apparent physical needs met, and are given expensive things instead of giving them the positive human contact they need. It's a really insidious form of neglect. [...] When the expensive thing is exactly the way the child would like it, it's a sign that the parent is paying attention to the child's hopes and preferences. When the thing is not exactly right (since the parent is perceived to be infallible in making material things happen), it is a sign of inattention/disapproval and is a horrible catastrophic sign of a degradation in the relationship.
So since then I've been trying to catch myself when I tell a partner they're spoiling me, because what I'm actually doing with that, I think, in addition to the you shouldn't (because I don't deserve nice things; because I shouldn't get used to them; because they'll end up resenting me for it or holding it over me; and on, and on...) is -- distancing myself from it, reframing it as something I understand, as something that is not a gift freely given for the sake of maybe making me smile, but a calculated transaction to keep me quiet and buy my time and my energy and my compliance. I'm trying to turn it into something that makes more sense to me; what I mean is you don't mean this.
And that's not fair to my partners, and it's not fair to me, so I'm trying, ever so gently, to retrain myself on this one.
Re: . . . BABBLE ALERT? Ahem.
Date: 2015-09-25 11:21 am (UTC)And it's that I have very very strong memories of being called spoiled by adults-not-in-my-family for some of my behaviours. Specifically, there was the point in year 3, so when I was 6 or 7, where I was informed that I'd been put on a PE team with the two kids who had up til that point in that school bullied me most consistently and unpleasantly, and what I said was "I don't want to, I want to be on a different team", with a great deal of urgency and poor volume control and emotional regulation and stamping my foot, because as it turns out I was terrified and I'd been taught that you'll only piss people off and reduce the chances of getting what you want if you waste their time with explaining why, and there's no point saying what you want or that you're scared anyway because you'll just get hit for it and told that the authority figure doesn't care provided whatever's being done to you doesn't make enough noise to disturb them, so by the time I was scared enough of something to think it worth risking saying anything I was out of my mind with terror.
And apparently, to more than one adult in my life who'd had training in what abused kids looked like and appropriate responses to them, that read instead as entitlement and an expectation that the world would do what I wanted it to because nobody ever said no to me, so they should say no to me ~for my own good~.
So. Superficially similar behaviour of "child has apparent tantrum when not getting its own way", just a very different cause; and I've internalised how people described me as a small to the point that I apparently consider it a standard usage despite the fact that I broadly agree with your description.
(And, for the record, seeing you talk about how you interact with children is always such a goddamn relief and a comfort; thank you.)
Re: . . . BABBLE ALERT? Ahem.
Date: 2015-09-25 04:28 pm (UTC). . . except that . . . acting out and lashing out and random outbursts with no apparent reasonable cause are classic abused child behaviour . . . .? (Like this is in the abbreviated literature in like, pamphlets handed to class leaders, even!)
*mentally resets timeline* Okay, to be fair, WHEN YOU WERE A CHILD, they may legit not have known that. We have learned much in the last few decades about what abused children actually look like (and the VAST SPECTRUM) as opposed to what our narratives say they should. *scrubs face*
(nb: actual appropriate response, applicable all children: "wee!kab, inside voice, and we do not stamp our feet." because repetition of expected behavioural standards is important because sometimes kids legit just forget in the momentary grip of emotion, and then one of two options: one is the one where there is Non Movable Reason for grouping, which does not really apply to "being on a team in PE" but would go something along the lines of EXPLAINING non-movable reason etc - this is more along the lines of "yes you have to stand in this order to get your shots/no you cannot go on the fieldtrip without a signature from your guardian" etc; two is more appropriate for "being on a team in PE" which is "establish reason for Unexpectedly Vehement Reaction and go from there." Among other things, if it IS a child just being mean zirSELF, in the "but they're UCKY and I don't LIKE them", it's going to be much more effective to pull that out and detail why THAT's not acceptable or correct behaviour than to just make the child go over there, at which point the child will just continue to misbehave and act out, because this is what children DO when stressed. BUT I DIGRESS.)
But yeah I can see how that gets there easily.
And I mean fwiw, shit that got me literally attacked with "spoiled" when I was young: getting to have music lessons, going to see my grandparents, completely imagined gifts and stuff that I "must" be getting because my parents were "rich", being designated user of one of the two family cars (because this in turn allowed my mother to deploy me for family errands/picking up siblings/etc), having a cell-phone (because this let my anxious mother be able to find me AT ALL TIMES), having weird emotional needs that involved things like needing to avoid people at times that were disapprove of by adults around me . . .
Shit I attack MYSELF for being "spoiled", to this day: parents continuing to help me financially (they own the condo, the car is a family car, etc), getting support and help when severely depressed, etc.
But these were . . . *waves hand* they included versions of "spoiled" that even I back then would stop and think "but that's not what that means, I don't act like that", it's just, even if you don't think you are $thing, if people call you $thing all the time you start doubting your sanity, whee, gaslighting! Even inadvertent!
So yeah. When I say "in my idiolect" I mean "as ever used by actual well-intentioned adults around each other to describe a phenomenon now that I am also an adult", and it's also pretty much always a judgement on the parenting going on, not on the child, it's just that for whatever reason it's the child we have to deal with.
ANYWAY.
Re: . . . BABBLE ALERT? Ahem.
Date: 2015-09-25 10:24 pm (UTC)Maybe you weren't in full meltdown, when confronted by that team decision, but poor volume control and having difficulty expressing yourself and negotiating emotions all have an explanation in autism as well as in abuse. So that's another pattern your teachers missed, and a combination likely to feed on the interaction of each aspect with the other in the worst way possible
When you combine inconsistent emotional abuse, with your need to model behaviour in order to negotiate it, that's a pretty horrifying combination for the development of a child. It's no surprise you find difficulties in this, I'm surprised you manage it at all.
Re: . . . BABBLE ALERT? Ahem.
Date: 2015-09-25 11:35 pm (UTC)Thank fuck for taxpayers and the NHS, hey?
Re: . . . BABBLE ALERT? Ahem.
Date: 2015-09-26 03:15 am (UTC)*headdesk*
(no subject)
Date: 2015-09-29 01:22 am (UTC)We had a GRAND time beating some stuff through the heads of one of my cousin's schools: they could not wrap their brains around the idea that, when he hit RAGE ESPLODE, putting him in a corner with a computer game was NOT, in fact, "rewarding the bad behaviour". It was "allowing him to systematize and process sufficiently to interact with the rest of the world instead of dissolving into a ball of red-hot overstimulated mess."
We got there. Eventually. In a family with a physician and a lawyer and all of us pushy as Fuck.
*there are a handful of exceptions, except that one of them has severe GAD, one of them's bipolar, and one has severe dyslexia. We're also waiting for two of the others to give up and get diagnosed already.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-09-29 10:32 am (UTC)Ugh, this is making me reflect, wincingly, on how much damage was likely done to people before the idea of ASD and SpLDs got some traction in schools.
(Rant based on personal experience deleted, apparently it's even more of a hot button issue than I realised).