Abuse By Rejection
While neglect is certainly the most common form of rejection, there are some children who are raised in fierce, open, and active discarding by a parent. Here, there is no subtlety.
Some adults have never gotten over the vivid image of a father’s icy stare signifying hateful contempt for the very personhood of the child. This kind of clear and total rejection is never fully overcome but can be carried, scars and all, if one’s value is restored through intensive, insight-oriented therapy aimed at throwing off the lies communicated during childhood.
In one of the most extreme cases I have treated, a widower with a 5-year-old son married a woman who had not been married before and had no children of her own. From the very start, she became irritated by almost everything the boy did or said, even though the child had a very gentle and sweet personality and was very obedient.
This little one, having his real mother’s death still weighing on him, endured constant nagging and direct verbal abuse by his stepmother.
With each new child born to the couple, the rejection of the first became worse. Stepmother eventually stopped pretending, quit hiding her hostility, even when visitors were present in the home. In time, anyone could see that she blatantly had it in for the boy. By the time he reached his teens, he tried to stay away from home as much as possible.
A very bright child, he lost all motivation; became a substandard student; gave up the career dreams and fantasies of his earlier childhood; and began to settle for existence rather than life. He was convinced that he deserved nothing. Even his father had given up any emotional support and gave all of his attention to the later children, those he shared with his wife.
One day, when she was sure the boy would be away, the stepmother took everybody else to the photographic studio for a family portrait.
It happened that one night, as a young adult, this same victim had managed to spend some time with his father, and the two had gotten very drunk. He used the occasion to ask the question that had plagued him all of his life: “Why did you never love me?” The father looked at him and said nothing as the son implored him again and again to answer. No answer ever came–not that night, not ever.
The son could not adjust to this horrible reality.
Processing the information, grieving, and moving on would be impossible until the condition made some kind of sense. He performed his own therapy by never giving up his search for a cause. Then, one day, through a distant family member, he received his answer:
The man he thought was his father all of his life was not. He further learned that his deceased mother had been extremely promiscuous all during the marriage, and any one of a long list of men could be his real father.
Compared to the rejection issue, the identity of his biological father did not matter very much. He had solved his problem, for now there was an explanation. From the very instant of his discovery, he was relieved. Little grieving was necessary, because he had indeed mourned the issue all of his life.
Now he knew the problem was not with himself. He became somewhat empowered, and very soon began the work of exploring who he really was, apart from being anyone’s son. Very essential to him was a strong spirituality that enabled him to put the matter largely to rest by concluding that he was on Earth because his heavenly Father willed that he be here, and further, that there was an excellent purpose for his life.
Some children experience the brunt of rejection even when they are, in fact, loved. There are many parents who are quite able to love but not able to demonstrate it because of their own deficiencies in the way they were raised. When a parent has missed a warm, accepting, and openly affectionate relationship with his own parent, he or she can be disabled in what would be normal parent-child interaction.
But such unfortunates are not aware of the deficiency because most people feel that what occurred in their families of origin was normal. Thus this partial parenting, without intervention, will be passed on from one generation to another and will tend to produce robotized adults.
In the most severe cases of outright rejection of a child, a terrible fact is realized: that while all children love their parents, not all parents love their children.
The above excerpt from “AM I BAD? Recovering from Abuse” is brought to you courtesy of St. James the Elder Theological Seminary online.
Dr. Heyward Ewart, III, is a former psychologist and active priest with 25 years of commitment to victims of abuse and other violence, both males and females. He has spoken widely on these issues and has served as an expert witness in several states. He is a diplomat of the American College of Forensic Examiners and a former member of the White House Conference on Families. His book, “AM I BAD? Recovering from Abuse,” is available from Loving Healing Press as well as Amazon. His online seminary can be found at http://www.child-to-adult-victim.com/whats_new_3.html
Tags: child abuse, children, example, neglect, parenting, rejection, results of
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