Children should be seen and not heard…
I made you and I can make another one just like you…
I brought you into this world and I can take you out…
I am in my mid 40’s and these were the quotes that adults spoke to children when I was growing up. These 3 sentences were the theme of my childhood. It is no wonder that we struggled with self-esteem growing up. Those statements were not said to lift us up, they were said to remind us that we were being controlled. Not taught, controlled.
Not long ago, I was in the reception area of a doctor’s office. There was a boy about 4 years old coloring quietly at a small table. I kept looking up from my magazine to peek at him. He was determined to stay in the lines and his tongue was even poking out of the corner of his mouth while he focused with all of his might. Finally his mom caught my gaze and I smiled at her and said, “Oh my gosh… he is so cute!” She replied (somewhat jokingly), “Ugh… he’s a little monster! You want him? Take him!
The boy barely budged. He had heard this and possibly worse before. His mother, the woman who grew him in her womb, the woman who gave him life, the woman who nurtured him as an infant just offered to give him to a smiling stranger! I was crushed for him. If another man told her husband that he found her attractive and her husband replied with, “you want her? Take her!” How would she feel? She would be mortified, yet to say this about her son, she found acceptable.
My response was simply, “Yes, I do, but I’m sure you would be devastated without him…”
