Notes from a boom by psychologist John Bradshaw

Poisonous Pedagogy

The Swiss psychiatrist Alice Miller in her book, For Your Own Good, groups these parenting rules under the title "poisonous pedagogy." The subtitle of her book is Hidden Cruelties in Child Rearing and the Roots of Violence. She argues that the poisonous pedagogy is a form of parenting that violates the rights of children. Such violation is then reenacted when these children become parents.

They exalt obedience as its highest value. Following obedience are orderliness, cleanliness and the control of emotions and desires. Children are considered "good" when they think and behave the way they are taught to think and behave. Children are virtuous when they are meek, agreeable, considerate and unselfish. The more a child is "seen and not heard" and "speaks only when spoken to," the better that child is. Miller summarizes the poisonous pedagogy as follows:

1. Adults are the masters of the dependent child.

2. Adults determine in a godlike fashion what is right and wrong.

3. The child is held responsible for the anger of adults.

4. Parents must always be shielded.

5. The child's life-affirming feelings pose a threat to the autocratic parent.

6. The child's will must be "broken" as soon as possible.

7. All this must happen at a very early age so the child "won't notice" and will not be able to expose the adults.

If followed, these family system rules result in the absolute control of one group of people (parents) over another group of people (children). Yet in our present society, only in extreme cases of physical or sexual abuse can anyone intervene on a child's behalf.

Abandonment, with its severe emotional abuse, neglect and enmeshment, is a form of violence. Abandonment, in the sense I have defined it, has devastating effects on a child's belief about himself. And yet, no agency or law exists to monitor such abuse. In fact, many of our religious institutions and schools offer authoritarian support for these beliefs. Our legal system enforces them.

Another aspect of poisonous pedagogy imparts to the child from the beginning false information and beliefs that are not only unproven, but in some cases, demonstrably false. These are beliefs passed on from generation to generation, the so-called "sins of the fathers." Again, I refer to Alice Miller, who cites examples of such beliefs:

1. A feeling of duty produces love.

2. Hatred can be done away with by forbidding it

3. Parents deserve respect because they are parents. (Note: Any 15-year-old can be a parent without any training. We give telephone operators more training than parents. We need telephone operators, but we need good parents more.) [Emphasis mine.]

4. Children are undeserving of respect simply because they are children.

5. Obedience makes a child strong.

6. A high degree of self-esteem is harmful.

7. A low-degree of self-esteem makes a person altruistic.

8. Tenderness (doting) is harmful.

9. Responding to a child's needs is wrong.

10. Severity and coldness toward a child give him a good preparation for life.

11. A pretense of gratitude is better than honest ingratitude.

12. The way you behave is more important than the way you really are.

13. Neither parents nor God would survive being offended.

14. The body is something dirty and disgusting.

15. Strong feelings are harmful.

f 6. Parents are creatures free of drives and guilt.

17. Parents are always right.

Probably no modern parents embody all of the above. In fact, some have accepted and imposed the opposite extreme of these beliefs with results just as abusive. But most of these beliefs are carried unconsciously and are activated in times of stress and crisis. The fact is, parents have little choice about such beliefs until they have worked through and clarified their relationships with their own parents. I referred to this earlier as the problem of adult children. Let me explain further.


Children's Belief Patterns

The great paradox in child-parent relationships is that children's beliefs about their parents come from the parents. Parents teach their children the meaning of the world around them. For the first 10 years of life the parents are the most important part of the child's world. If a child is taught to honor his parents no matter how they behave, why would a child argue with this?

The helpless human infant is the most dependent of all living creatures. And for the first eight years of life, according to the cognitive psychologist Jean Piaget, children think nonlogically, egocentrically and magically. You can better understand nonlogical thinking by asking a four-year-old boy, who has a brother, if he has a brother. He will probably answer "yes." But if you then ask him if his brother has a brother, he will usually either be confused or answer "no."

An example of egocentric thinking is to stand across from a pre-five-year-old child who knows his right hand from his left. Hold your hands out and across from him. Ask him which is your right hand and your left hand. As his right hand will be opposite your left hand, he will say that your left hand is your right hand. His mind is immature and has not yet attained the ability to completely differentiate or separate himself from objects around him. The child projects his own view of the world on everything. His viewpoint is the only viewpoint. Winnie-the-Pooh has exactly the same feelings the child does. Little matter that Pooh is a toy bear. This egocentricity contains a survival value- for the child as it relates to self-preservation.

The magical part of the child's thinking deifies the parents. They are gods, all-powerful, almighty and all-protecting. No harm can come to the child as long as he has parents. This magical idealization serves to protect the child from the terrors of the night, which are about abandonment and, to the child, death. The protective deification of the parents, this magical idealization, also creates a potential for a shame-binding predicament for the child.

For example, if the parents are abusive and hurt the child through physical, sexual, emotional or mental pain, the child will assume the blame and make himself bad in order to keep the all-powerful parental protection. For a child at this stage, realizing the inadequacies of parents would produce unbearable anxiety.

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