Psychology of abusive parents

Sky News interviewed a psychologist this morning over the awful case in Austria in which a father had his daughter and some of the children he fathered by her kept in a cellar for years and years. I was interested in what she had to say about the case-partly for personal reasons and partly for (ex)professional ones. My dh still works for CAMHS and it has to be said there are some similarities in the way abusive parents present.


The psychologist said these kinds of parents were very often authoritarian- by this she did not mean parents who have true authority in the home and can set appropriate boundaries for their children's behaviour; but rather a control freak kind of authority in which secrets must be kept. I know parents who would demand absolute loyalty from their children-not healthy loyalty as one would expect from a loving family, but secret keeping-bad secret keeping. Children would be made to feel fear and guilt at the thought of trying to tell anyone else what happened within the confines of the family.


The other thing this psychologist mentioned was the 'respectable veneer' these kinds of parents often clung to.


Again I was struck by this. I too know parents who have done this. They cultivate a sense of being a pillar of society, known in the local community or church as someone 'good'. Under the veneer something rotten lurks of course, and if any whiff of this gets out those parents will usally blame the person who has seen it-cutting themselves off, or even keeping clear of people to avoid being found out.

I have seen families where friends are not allowed to come to the home, where children are isolated from any friends they make at school for fear of any 'secret' getting out.

So, one thing I think I have learned about abusive parents is this; THEY KNOW. They are not ignorant that what they are doing is bad. Healthy families do not ask children to keep secrets like that. They are not afraid that someone might find something out about them and they are not constantly bitter and angry about other people who may or may not have sussed there is a problem.

What fascinates me the most is how boring evil is. Satan is incapable of making anything new; he can only take what is and drain the colour from it, twist it out of shape or break it. I am coming to the conclusion that like Original Sin, all evil is not a 'something' but a lack of something. And I think there is always a deep anger-a fury even, against anyone who might shine a light on them.

I have seen that anger first hand in more than one situation working with or knowing abusive parents. It's something I think social services need to be much more canny about. I am shocked to see families that are rotten to the core being allowed to adopt and foster children.My dh has mentioned a case like that only a few days ago and the results for the child have been utterly dreadful.

Finally the psychologist went on to say she thought a lot more of this kind of abuse went on that we could imagine. I want to disagree, I really do. I want to say, no, it's rare-and I think the extreme cases like this one and the one my dh is working on are fairly rare; but abusive families are not and they need to be.

Dr Ray Guarendi has written about this somewhat in his book Back to the Family. I've mentioned it before. Many of the excellent parents in this book had survived pretty dreadful upbringings and had made an act of the will to NOT behave the way their parents did. It is not inevitable that abused children grow up to abuse, no matter how hurt.

Sometimes cases like this one in Austria may bring back horrible memories for survivors of abuse, but those memories serve only to ensure that act of will remains.

Honourable Fatherhood

I've been listening to MP3 downloads from Catholic Radio about the role of father's in the home and the general state and view of fatherhood as a whole in Western culture. Steve Wood does a lot of programmes about fatherhood-very good stuff.
There are three rules

Put God first

Then your family(wife and children)

then anything else.

He points out that many men get things in the wrong order and put work or their own needs first. The programmes help to give father's a focus and reminder of their role which has been so undermined by feminism and the selfish culture of today.

So many children grow up without a father at all, or with one of those detached father's who comes home for dinner, but hardly interacts with his children. How many times do I hear on Dr Ray Guarendi's phone in programme that dad leaves all the discipline to mum?

It is interesting that most mums, chatting together or phoning programmes are only too happy to submit to their husbands as per Eph 5 as he takes on the role of priest and father of the family. A father who leads as head of his family is a father who brings his children nearer to God the Father. Isn't that wonderful?

But what about those who have been so abused they cannot 'honour father and mother'?

Sr Mary Martha in her blog once said there is a special place in puratory for parents who don't do their job properly-and I do not doubt there is a certain place in hell too.

Charlotte Mason insists that a mother (and I am sure she means father's too) must give what she calls a "thinking love" to their children. We need to think about the love we give and how we give it. Discipline and routine for our children comes from us-the parents. If our children behave badly, become bad people even-isn't at least some that down to us?

I'm rambling sorry. It's just I seem to be coming across so many poorly parented people these days; sad, lonely and desperately selfish in their brokeness.

A friend of mine talked about the children she has fostered today and it brought back memories of my own work with children in the mental health system.

I will never understand parents who will not love their children, or who are so lacking in thinking love that they collude with and enable bad behaviour.

A father is given the beautiful task and all the graces he needs to help his bride, the mother of his children bring up their treasures for heaven.

God have mercy on those who wont.

We went pick your own

After meeting up with grandad we took the children and their auntie to pick fruit. This is an ideal 'all the family' activity. It wasn't wheelchair friendly, but I managed on crutches and the little one had a wonderful time.

We put the baby on a towel on the ground as we went - so at one point she was the baby found under a gooseberry bush.

We came home with an abundant harvest of strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries and blackcurrants.

This is one of those home ed kind of activities in which the children get to understand where some of their food comes from. We do grow a few things in our small garden, but this was a chance to really see food growing.

And you simply can't help wondering at the generosity of God.

Farming is a tough job and the farming community in the UK have had a lot to contend with. St George and St Isadore the Farmer are the patron saints of farmers.

So the freezer is full and I am stocking up on pectin sugar - I use half and half with normal sugar. We will have jams, jellies, smoothies and icecream with plenty to give to friends and family.

Hehehe.

27 children

I watched a programme last night about a family with 27 children. It was an extraordinary story of a Christian couple who had two biological children and felt called by God to begin adopting the children 'no one else wanted'. They began adopting and had two more biological children. With the adopted children coming with some terrible illnesses they have had five children die, but they all work together caring for one another.

All the children could be seen clearly reaching their potential, overcoming the limitations their various disabilities have placed on them to lead full and happy lives.

I think they said that fifteen of the children have Down's Syndrome.

They are home educated and even in that they work as a team-as most home ed families do-teaching one another.

They have a son named Cody. He was offered to them at ten days old by his biological mother who presumably had known she was expecting a Down's baby and had made the (in this day and age) brave decision to allow her son to live. She had then asked the Murphy's to adopt him.

The biological grandparents went to court fighting for custody.

The programme did not explain why they objected so much to the Murphy's having the little boy- who is now a happy 16 yr old-and the biological mother was not interviewed.

I was trying to understand what the grandparents thought was better about their situation; but they simply went on about 'special schools' and the sort of 'buy-it-in' solutions that do not necessarily make a child happy.

Then I lost all sympathy when the grandmother snidely said "And she home schools," and went on to say Mrs Murphy wasn't qualified to do so!

Don't start me on that one!!!!

But I did think about this family and their amazing and beautiful attitude to life. I thought of how much grace has been poured into their lives because they asked God what He wanted of them.

And I thought, the reason they have had to be so extraordinary in their love and ability-after all 27 kids is more than even a large family- is because so few of us would answer the call.

If we all opened our hearts and homes to disabled children and offered them genuine love-imagine what we could do.

I can't have any more children. But I pray God will send me children no one else wants.

Rough night

My baby daughter is unwell so we had a rough night-poor thing.
I wondered as I sat up with her and struggled with her so she could breath and feed at the same time-something she is finding difficult with a bad cold- how a non-parent might deal with it.
I had to work outside of the home for many years until my husband got promotion and we were able to get by on one wage. I was fortunate however, that I never needed to leave the children overnight.
But I saw the story of Louise Woodward the English nanny who was convicted of killing a baby in her care. She was 18 at the time. The parents both worked.
I have an 18yr old who is very good with his little siblings and he works in an old people's home-something most kids of his age wouldn't cope with I think-but even so, I can't imagine leaving him to deal with his little sister for long periods without support.
I saw a news programme about Darfur where they admitted that although orphaned children were being cared for by other families they did not receive the same care as the families own children.

I needed grace and patience last night-and I was given it, but was it easier because I am her mother, or becuase God just does that? Could someone who was just being paid to care actually love my child? I have never seen it-not unconditionally anyway. Kindness, yes, but not love.

I am so grateful I can be home for my children now.

Morality and clothing the children

We will have to go clothes shopping soon. Teenagers grow! And I mean gROW!

Clothes shopping should be a straight forward activity really-but it just never seems to be.

First of all for the boys; they are not allowed logos or messages on their clothes that are rude, agressive or satanic, so that means they buy plain tops.

One of my son's is pretty artistic and has used fabric paints to make his own logos that are pretty good I have to say.



My daughter is a good judge of clothes and dresses smartly and modestly for a small budget. She manages to find clothes that her feminine and practicle without having to look frumpy or weird.
It has been remarkably easy for me to ensure she is sensibily dressed because she has not had to go through negative peer pressure. Her friends, who she has known since her school days, are also sensible in their dress choices. Not many mothers have this luxury these days I know.

So having somewhat easily stepped over the 'nasty-inappropriate-dress' hurdle I am faced with the tight-budget=cheap-clothes hurdle.
This one is a moral quagmire for us.

We are living on one wage here in the UK where the cost of living is high and it is not easy. We are very blessed indeed that the younger children have been given so much in clothing and baby equipment that we hardly spend a penny on them. With other friends who are also having babies, we simply share the things we need.
Baby and little-people clothes and stuff seem to survive well, but toddler and up is harder. Clothes wear out quicker because the children use them harder.
So, we have to buy clothes sometimes.

Cheap clothes are available all over the place-but WHY are they so cheap? This worries me.
Tesco's and Asda(Wal-Mart) have already been accused of using whyat amounts to slave labour for their clothes production-so who else is doing it?

Strangely it seems more often than not it is the expensive brands that get into trouble for slavery-which is easy-we don't shop at that level anyway.

So far Matalan does not have a bad reputation-so we go there, but if that should change...

The fight against slavery still goes on. Sad isn't it?