Children thrive when there is harmony and hope in the home.
“He’s fast asleep” “she’s too small to understand” “he didn’t hear anything”…how often as adults we convince ourselves that our children are not in any way affected by adult fights/ arguments/unpleasantness. In fact we tell ourselves that if an incident of this kind did not take place right in front of a child, then he hasn’t even registered it, so where’s the question of being affected by it.
This is simply not true. If we go back a little into our own childhood, all of us can remember feeling that tight knot of tension in the stomach, when there was a problem between our parents or other adults in the house. You may have heard out-and-out yelling or bickering or gossiping; or you may have heard nothing at all, but picked up on all kinds of non-verbal clues that clearly indicated to you, that all was not well.
It is now so well-established that infants, even embryos, are affected by moods, tones, nuances and actions of the adults in whose care they are. Why then do we tell ourselves that our kids won’t know anything about us unless they’re actually told? It is time we fully recognized that our children are deeply affected by even the unsaid and unexpressed in the household.
Of course, every family has its ups and downs, rifts, reconciliations, arguments. What is significant, is how these are handled, and how they come across to your kids. If adult relationships around a child are basically good, strong, respectful and trusting, then a child is able to take a certain degree of disagreement, raised voices, or unhappy silences in his or her stride. It is when fights in the household signal that there is an absence of love and mutual trust and respect between the adults, that a child begins to be badly affected.
Children today are brought to doctors and counsellors for depression, lack of concentration, slow physical growth, eating disorders. Most people tend to lay the blame on ‘outside distractions’ – TV, video games, fast food, and other such externals. However, in at least 7 out of 10 cases, there is a fairly serious relationship problem that the child is ‘witness’ to in the household. Again, there may be nothing openly wrong, but there are often undercurrents of discord, that play a key role in unsettling a child and make him or her vulnerable to all kinds of disorders, emotional and physical. The adults in a house may individually shower a child with attention, facilities, love, praise… And yet, if the interpersonal relationships between these adults are unpleasant, even covertly so, much of what is showered on the child simply slides away, not nourishing him at all. After all, a tree cannot bloom however much of fertilizer you feed it, if the basic supply of soil, sun and water is not assured. Children simply thrive on harmony and hope; and if these are often absent in their homes, their spirit shrivels. No amount of ‘pretend happiness’ between adults ever fools a child. We simply have to provide them the real thing by working genuinely on our own relationships.