Grooming Our Children to Live 'Happily' With Cognitive Dissonance Creates Big Problems Down the Line

Grooming seems to be a pretty accusatory term. When it was used in my “Healthy Boundaries” training for my degree, it was focused on sexual predators. But in this instance, I’m talking about something quite different. This is about teaching children what healthy emotional boundaries should look like and how they deserve to get their needs met. This is a story of my personal experience and how my family culture failed to prepare me for the hard, real world.

If we don’t talk about the reality of people’s lives around us with our children, they will be confused. And that confusion can set the stage for a child’s acceptance of a certain level of naivety and trust, even when it may not be deserved. And even when it may be outright abusive.

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One of the key parts of the process of being groomed is gradually learning to unconsciously deny our own intuition, our “gut”. By dismissing our children’s needs for emotional and psychological safety teaches them to do this very thing. If they have questions that don’t get answered, they don’t feel safe. If they are dismissed and told that they are “too young” and “they wouldn’t understand” then they learn to tell those inner voices that we so desperately need, to “hush”, then to “go away”, then finally, “Stop Talking to Me!”. And they do stop talking. And our children will suffer because of it. I know, because I did.

As a child, my family, like many, did not talk about “real” things. We talked about religion, school, and made family vacation plans. It was a wonderful family. But, on the other side of the spectrum, I had an abusive uncle who beat his wife and kids. I had alcoholic great-grandfathers. I had a great-grandmother who was raped in her 80’s. I had a grandfather with depression. I had parents (at least a mother) who harbored shame about her own youthful intimacy needs. I had a father who dealt with panic attacks (a male version quite different than my own).

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These are some of the “real” things we didn’t talk about. And, because of that, and the fact that I am the oldest daughter in a large family, I felt them, but I didn’t have words for them. I saw everything as I grew up. But as I didn’t have words for these things, I had to just lock them away and chase them with something else, something happier. That was the solution.

And thus…when I married a selfish bastard of a man at age 19, I continued to lock things away and chase them with something happier. I’d bake. I’d run. I’d eat. I’d read. I’d work more hours. I’d cross-stitch and hang out with my cats. I’d have my little sis and her friends over for a sleepover. I’d fill my life with happy things. Because the “real” things didn’t get talked about.

And that practice — let’s call it that — started when I was young, with instances such as these:

One night, my uncle lost his shit with my aunt and his kids. They lived about 20 minutes away on their farm. She had taken the station wagon, loaded with children, and had arrived at our home at night. It was summer. But it was dark. The smaller kids were weepy, but the older ones were stoic. My aunt was hysterical, but in a quiet and scary way. The adults spoke in hushed tones, lay the kids in the bedroom to go to sleep, while my dad called the cops and he and mom talked with my aunt, all the while keeping watch over our home.

My mind was abuzz with questions that were never verbalized.

Why is it that Aunt “Suzy” is here with the kids?
Why are the doors locked?
Why did Dad call the cops?
Why are my cousins scared?
Why is my aunt crying?
Am I safe?

Along the course of life, incidents continued to occur, of course. We were a living, breathing family. Not abnormal at all. But, to the outside world, we were. We always looked put together. We always behaved and got good grades. We worked hard at our jobs and had good friends from respectable homes. We took good care of our home, yard, and gardens. It looked perfect. We were nothing like wealthy, but every penny was counted and cared for. My mother was the überMom, truly. And I knew my dad was Superdad.

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As I’ve attempted to rid myself of the man I married at that tender age of 19, I’ve wondered why I settled as I did. I wondered why it didn’t occur to me that there was a problem in the first place. And then, why it was that my family had no idea I was unhappy in the marriage? And finally why my sister-in-law was on HIS side for most of the divorce?

And just the other day it occurred to me that I had been groomed. From a very young age, I was taught NOT to speak my mind. I was taught not to have expectations for other people and voice my needs or dissatisfaction. I was taught that I needed to figure out how to take care of myself, well enough, without voicing discomfort or concern. I was taught that feeling unsafe was “normal”.

One night, my siblings and I were away with a cousin’s family. It was her birthday and we had gone out for pizza. We rarely went out so it was a really awesome treat for us. But, as we drove into the driveway (we lived in the country so the lane is long), we saw an ambulance, cop cars, a fire truck, and all of their lights going. It was very alarming, especially to me. (I understand why this was so hard for me now and it has to do with my childhood-onset PTSD symptoms). But…here I was with my siblings.

I was the one in charge once we got home. I was to put the younger ones to bed. Mom and Dad were out on one of their very rare dates. But, here I was, looking at those lights and all of the people. And I was going to be in charge!

My aunt got out of the car. I couldn’t see our van there, so it wasn’t Mom and Dad. They hadn’t gotten home early. They were safe, surely. The questions flew around in my head.

Then, no questions answered, we drove to my aunts where we spent the night. The next morning, my mom came to pick us up. She told us that there had been a woman who had walked into our house while we were gone and our neighbor saw her and followed her in. Mom said quickly that she had lost her mind and had looked at our pictures on the walls and called us her children. (That really gave me the creeps!)

Questions I had before I tried to sleep that night before and then the following morning:

Why was there an ambulance at our house?
There was a woman here who just walked into the house?
She had lost her mind?
Where was her mind — what does that even mean?
Was she dangerous?
Is someone else going to just walk into our house, too?
Am I safe?

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Sometimes getting some clarity is worse than having none. Full disclosure is needed for some children. I was one of those children. I had a very active imagination and when questions were not answered, I felt unsafe. Plain and simple.

Fast forward many years and my daughter is like that as well. Throughout the divorce of myself and her father, she read all of the documents. She went online and read everything she could find. She felt incredibly unsafe. But she refused to be “groomed” the way I had been. She was going to have all of the facts.

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Of course, that was not a conversation we ever had. I never kept information from them. My parents didn’t “groom” me to fail at my marriage on purpose. This is the point. We must be active in countering the effects of this kind of lack of integration around meaningful things.

I talked with my kids about everything. That is one “gift” of homeschooling that continues to give. They know more about my life and the inner workings of my mind and my heart than I will ever know about my parents. When my siblings were having hard time and called me, my kids would overhear. When my little cousin got pregnant out of wedlock as a teen, my children heard. We talked about it. It was just part of our daily schedule, I guess.

I had learned the hard way that some children really need that. My neurological system had normalized NOT being safe. But there does come a point when our bodies have paid the price for too long. Our words and careful explanations, our conversations and careful listening, can be the prophylactic work we need to do.

It’s hard work. But the cost of NOT doing it is more than I would ever want to pay. It is the price of a child’s heart. It was the price of my heart, over and over again as a child. It was the price of my heart, over and over again as an adult. I’m not sure it’s even over yet, honestly.

It seems closely akin to neurological programming. Feeling safe is kinda everything to us, as humans. To feel safe, I do all kinds of things. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. And there are still things I cannot make myself do. Asking for what I need continues to be the hardest thing in the world to me.

Let’s make sure our children feel safe. Let’s give their little voices space until they become big voices. Then let’s give their big voices space, as hard as that is. It is the only way we can make sure they know that they deserve to be safe, they deserve to feel loved, and that we are part of the solution.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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