Characteristics of an Emotionally Abused Child and an Emotionally Abusive (Coercively Controlling) Parent

 Characteristics of an emotionally abused child:

• May not be able to speak out in therapy about what the abusive parent does not want them to speak about.
• May not be able to speak out for themselves in any circumstances.
• May not be able to say the positive things in their heart about the abandoned parent because they have been punished by a coercively controlling co-parent for saying such things in the past. This may be so deeply ingrained that it may take many years, if ever, to unlearn, even if they feel something different inside.
• May have been manipulated by material possessions or desirable trips and activities to do what the abusive parent wants, so they learn to manipulate to get what they want.
• The controlling parent may encourage the child to see appropriate discipline from the rejected parent as wrong. For example, a controlling parent may tell the child that it is not appropriate for the rejected parent to make a rule restricting a child’s access to television, the internet, or electronic devices such as computer games and smartphones until the child has completed chores or schoolwork. By doing so, the controlling parent undermines the other parent's authority and relationship with the child. In addition, the controlling parent may also be teaching the child to have Oppositional Defiant Disorder.
• The controlling parent may encourage a child to express strong emotions as a healthy response to stress-filled events, thus sabotaging their co-parent’s relationship with the child.
• The emotionally abused child may struggle with relationships with their peers because they have learned unhealthy relationship and coping skills from their controlling parent. The coercively controlled child may develop depression, anxiety, and suicidal tendencies.
• Both adults and children who are people pleasers are especially susceptible to coercive control. They do what they think will make other people like them or give them something they want.
• The child may learn to lie to get what they want or to protect their relationship with a coercively controlling parent.

My Story:  

When my daughter was a toddler, she almost never threw tantrums. She was a loving, sweet-natured child inclined to giving away her possessions to strangers in need.

    Eventually, my daughter started throwing massive tantrums when she did not get her way.  At first, she was just being manipulative. When I set limits, such as limiting her computer use, she could shut down her emotions. Then my daughter’s therapist undermined that limit by saying that my daughter would never learn self-discipline if I did not give her unlimited use of the computer. When the therapist gave this advice to me in front of my daughter, she eliminated my way of coping with my daughter’s frequent and intense tantrums without offering me another way of coping. I suspect my daughter was coached by someone in Dad’s household to complain about my requirements for chores as abusive. My ex-husband and his second wife also told our daughter that I was unreasonably strict. And her therapists at an acute psychiatric hospital labeled me as emotionally abusive for setting limits on my daughter’s outbursts of sadness and anger.

I think my daughter’s stepsister probably influenced her. Her mother undermined her own daughter’s relationship with her father by telling her that she should be free to express her emotions. My daughter got the message that she, too, should be free to express her emotions.  

A therapist attempted to teach my daughter and me Nonviolent Communication.  My daughter had been exposed to it, but my ex-husband and his new wife both criticized Nonviolent Communication and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy at home, and my daughter flew into an hour-long rage during the therapy session, during which the therapist tried to teach us Nonviolent Communication. I worried that our weekend visitation, which began that day, would be stress-filled, but the moment we walked out of therapy, my daughter calmed down, and we had a good time. So I never quite knew when her emotions were genuine and when she was trying to manipulate me. After this session, the therapist told me that my daughter had Borderline Personality Disorder.  She fired us as clients about six weeks later.  She said that we were the most difficult family she had ever worked with and that she could not help us. My ex-husband immediately blamed me when the therapist fired my daughter and me as clients.  

Characteristics of an Emotionally Abusive Parent

The parent may isolate the child from friends and peers to keep them isolated from the rejected parent by:

• Discouraging contact with the co-parent.
• Insisting on being present and monitoring contact with the co-parent.
• Limiting the child’s access to social media.
• Limiting the child’s access to the internet. I guess I did this. I wanted my daughter to do chores and complete schoolwork before she had unlimited internet access. Was I abusive?
• Telling the child that prolonged expression of intense emotion, such as anger or sadness, is a reasonable response to the other parent’s healthy disciplining of the child while severely punishing the child for that same expression of emotion in the coercively controlling parent’s home.
• Promising the child a ride to school or a class, but not being home to provide it and not being available by phone when the time comes.
• Criticizing and blaming the child for their problems and family problems.
• Refusing companionship to the child.  For example, mother and father may eat dinner in their bedroom instead of in the dining room with the child, so the child feels isolated, alone, and unwanted.
• Refusing to give the child their possessions if they leave the parents’ home.
• Does not care for children during visits to the parent’s home. For example, the controlling parent may stay in bed all day or go out shopping while children are left on their own.
• Does not feed child during a visit to the parent’s home. Does not keep food in the house for the children to eat during a visit to the parent’s home. Tells children that food in the house is for other family members and is not for them to eat during the children’s visit to the parent’s home.
• Does not answer child’s attempts to contact parent after the child leaves the parent’s home.
• Makes plans for a special outing in front of children but makes sure they know they are excluded.
• Refuses to attend therapy with children or rarely attends therapy with children.
• A coercively controlling second spouse who is not the parent of the child who tries to control the relationship between the biological parents and the child.  For example, the stepparent insists that all emails and contact between the biological parents go through them.
• Does not follow a therapist’s advice in their relationship with their children. For example, my ex-husband was told by our parenting coordinator to change one thing at his house to make it more comfortable for our son. My ex-husband refused.
• A coercively controlling parent laughs at, interrupts, and puts down the child during therapy or at any time at all.
• The parent buys clothes, electronics, and other desired objects for a child, takes them on trips, and hints that the child will have more if they move into the controlling parent’s home.
• The parent takes desirable trips and leaves children at home, either telling them about it to rub it in their faces that they are being left out, or the parent keeps the trip secret from the child.

My daughter's father and stepmother forbade her from using Facebook during the months before her father's lawsuit to take custody of her from me went to trial, supposedly because she had been bullied online.  Interestingly enough, my son followed my daughter on Facebook because they had a mutual friend and because I asked him to look at his sister's Facebook, because it was the only connection I had with her.  My son saw who the bully was--my daughter’s stepsister, with whom she lived.  The bullying that the stepsister engaged in could potentially have been used as evidence in court by my attorney because it would have shown that her father’s home was not the paradise that her father and stepmother and, honestly, my daughter, insisted it was.  I did reveal this to my daughter’s therapist, who would respect confidentiality, but I did not use it in court because I knew that my ex-husband would use my son’s watching his sister's Facebook at my request as an argument that I was abusive and not respectful of my daughter wanting privacy from me.