Back Story:

 The whole of South Africa is reeling. A few weeks ago, a family restaurant (complete with a kiddies’ play area) became the scene of an horrific crime. A little girl, aged 6 or 7 years, was dragged into a toilet and raped by another patron, who had by all accounts been stalking her as she played. South Africans are somewhat desensitized to most crime… There’s just so terribly much of it. But thiswas different. This was an innocent child.And a childplaying in an area designated for children. In a restaurant where parents have, in the past, felt free to exhale for a moment, and worry lessabout the safety of their children than they might do in other contexts. (The little girl’s mom has received some criticism for allowing her daughter to pop to the loo on her own… I have zero judgement. I have been that mom… I have, in the past, at similar restaurants, given the environment a cursory risk-scan, and allowed my own 5 year-old to use the bathroom on her own. Never again, obviously).

Fast Forward:

 On Friday afternoon, I was sitting in my lounge, listening to the sounds of my daughters playing outside with their little cousin.  All was well with the world, until Ariana came burstingin, spewing an impassioned soliloquy about how she had been wronged by the other two. My platitude programing kicked in, and I responded with the same line our mothers, aunts, grandmothers and great-grandmothers used on their children: “Don’t tell tales! They are your friends. Go and sort it out”.

And then I caught myself, dead in my tracks.

Really?

Really?

Does that actually make any sense at all?

In thisworld, now, is that the best way to deal with a child running to her safe haven, for counsel and care..?

 We do that, you know… We have an inbuilt repository of inherited (non)-wisdom, and a sophisticated neuro-psychological cross-referencing system, and we parent on repeat… (Perhaps it’s just me…). When “x” happens, say “y”.  When they say “a”, respond with “b”.  And so we end up with Facebook memes which muse that “sometimes I open my mouth and my mother comes out”.

Private Practice Experience

 I have worked with many adult survivors of child sexual abuse. The recent “Me Too” movement demonstrated just how manypeople have, in fact, been violated in this way… Of profound interest is the reality that most survivors are affected in equal measure by two factors, one obvious, and one less so. There’s the actual violation that remains traumatic and horrifying. But oftenthe therapy ends up focusing less on that, than on the sense of betrayal or disappointment in the adults around who were supposed to see, know, believe and protect. And who had, for a range of reasons, just not seen, known, believed and protected.

It’s actually thisexperience that I find is almost asharmful as the crime itself. Further confirmed by the trend that survivors who hadsomeone intervene powerfully and decisively on their behalf fare better in the long run than their less fortunate counterparts.

Mothering Recalibration

 So this all got me to thinking about the stance I take with my girls, when they want to share with me how they feel wronged… If I shut them down when they rush to tell me how their cousin pinched them, or their sister isn’t sharing, how can I be sure that they would instinctively know to come to me if something more heinous or sinister has happened, or is about to happen…

I think the “don’t tell tales” stance has typically and traditionally attempted to toughen kids up… To make them more independent and emotionally robust… And for them also to navigate their own social predicaments increasingly effectively with experience. I’ll be honest and say “don’t tell tales” is also a pressure release valve when it’s embarrassingthat one’s child is spewing accusations about another mother’s child, in that mother’s presence. “Oh Ariana, s/he didn’t mean it, s/he’s your friend, go and sort it out…”.

I call bullshit on that, and I’ll never do it again…

 There is no doubt in my mind that there was probably very little that would have spared that little girl her awful fate, at the child-centered restaurant. So I must stress that that just inspired my thinking… But children have relatively simple on-board computers, I’d imagine. They cannot necessarily compute the complexities of when it’s acceptable to seek parental comfort and counsel and when it’s not.  We simply cannot expect them to gauge the nuances of this, and so we mustthrow open the floodgates and permit it all.  So they knowthat all is permitted.

But…

 But obviously, then, if this is to be our stance, we need to be very careful how we handle the really benign, “normal” stories that we will be told by our children. The difficulty with parenting, as with life in general, is that there are unintended consequences, and one action sets in motions a set of seemingly unrelated results. So, in agreement with our mothers, aunts, grandmothers and great-grandmothers, we certainly don’twant to raise a generation of spoilt, molly-coddled, entitled and self-centered humans. And thus, when we are listening to these ‘tales’, we need to do so mindfully and responsibly.

One view of intensive psychotherapy is that it’s a form of re-parenting. Not that the parents necessarily did anything wrong at all… But an adult patient is able, now in adulthood, to saywhat they need, saywhere it hurts, and verbalise the elements of their lived experience that are confusing, overwhelming and disturbing. And, therapy done well is, over time, actually internalised.The process, the languaging and the train of thought becomes build in to the patient’s psyche, and can be accessed at all times, in all circumstances, far beyond the realm of the clinician’s office. This is when it’s worked! When it’s been successful! When it’s been transformational.

But parenting, in an ideal world, would ideally alsoserve this function, in this way. When we listento the ‘tales’ (and everything they say, for that matter, beyond just blame and insult), we teach them how to process negative experiences. We massage into their psyches a format and a framework to tackle uncomfortable situations. But in the interest of responsibility, we must be careful to guide in the right way… So they wronganswer would be, “yes! Simon is a meanie; throw rocks at him!”.  The rightprocedure would be a series of:

• “Tell me the whole story”… (allowing the catharsis of expression, and the security of being heard”.
• “How did that make you feel?” (allowing emotions to be a normal and expected part of daily life, with validity and import”).
• “Why do you think s/he did that?” (inviting the small human to consider the position of their otherperson, thereby encouraging empathy and countering narcissistic traits).
• “How do you think s/he is feeling now?”
• “What are our options for dealing with this?” (encouraging a sense of agencyand personal resourcefulness).
• “Can I tell you what I think?” (encouraging teachability and interest in the views of others, and also allowing a more mature voice of wisdom into the situation”.

And then encouraging whatever action is deemed appropriate in the situation.

This process serves two functions: it models emotional intelligence, and it ensures that if your child feels threatened in any way at all, you will undoubtedly be the first to know.

A Touch Of Grace…

 I truly believe we are all doing our bests, with the resources we have at our disposal. I find that my motheringand wife-ing “best” is often not very good at all… I spend much of my time feeling terribly torn between all the demands of life, career, self, parenting and relationships, and somehow I’m never quite satisfied with how the cards fall. But I’m adamantthat we do our bests until we know better… And then, the moment we knowbetter, we have to do better… Immediately and forthwith!

I’m a shrink. I listen to my kids. I do. And I try incredibly hard to mould their little minds and hearts into healthy and well little people.

But my epiphany this past week will become my new mantra… Never again will it be heard from my lips that my child mustn’t tell tales. Never again will I be dismissive of something that has pained them,even ifit puts me in a potentially awkward situation. (But, even on that score, I’ve often been really inspired by the way some of my parent friends parent, and taken on board some of their strategies and power-lines… And I’d imagine the same would be true of this.  For example, I was seriously impressed recently, when hearing a dad teach some quarrelling friends what ‘sharing’ means… That it doesn’t mean ‘hand over all your shit, it’s selfish not to give’, but rather, sharing means ‘you get a turn, then I get a turn, and in that way we can all enjoy our time together’. Simple, but profound.)

So this has just been a little position paper, for want of a less academic term, about the path that my thoughts have been on since being exposed to the shocking and tragic news of the little girl at The Dros…