Children of Alcoholics: Caged, Silenced Songbirds
Children of Alcoholics: Caged, Silenced Songbirds
Get more articles and resources on health at
http://parentingtoolbox.com/clinical.html
Author: Rama Rao, MD
Community Psychiatry for Adults and Children
Imagine a house in which a child feels that the walls and floors are
constantly moving and shaking. Would anyone be at peace in such a
setting? For the children of alcoholics, life can feel much this way,
and it is estimated that at least seven million children in America
alone have alcoholic parents.
Common characteristics of caretakers and parents that accompany
alcoholism-such as denial, dishonesty, selfishness, fear, and lack of
consideration-have profound and direct effects on children. In this
environment, self-esteem is not able to develop normally, and the
emotional energy required to live with an alcoholic parent steals
from the magic of childhood. These children instead learn to create
walls and barriers to honest expression, and to resist sharing their
emotions and developing trust. Such roadblocks cause children to shut
down their own awareness of how they feel, affecting relationships
with peers, relatives, and other adults. Children are left confused
and full of self-doubt as they receive mixed messages from parents
who are not behaving consistently, or honestly.
Children who speak up about the problem are often met with ridicule.
Many times their observations, opinions, and insights are not
acknowledged at all. Because immense denial is in operation about the
use of alcohol and all of the destructive behaviors associated with
it, children gradually disavow what they feel and lose touch with
their own sense of what feels right and true.
Before intervention or treatment, children of alcoholics are like
caged songbirds. They deny their own freedom because they become used
to the dysfunction of constricted feelings and to restrictive ways of
solving problems and conflicts.
Common emotional problems
Depression: Children who have alcoholic parents may be at a greater
genetic risk of developing a mood disorder, or they may develop
depression that results from the helplessness and isolation they feel
at home. It is particularly difficult when both genetics and
circumstances create severe depression in children.
Guilt, shame, self-blame, and embarrassment: Children exposed to the
destructive forces created by alcoholic parents tend to blame
themselves for the problems at an early age. This creates the
difficult cycle of codependency throughout childhood and adult life
in which the child feels responsible for the family chaos and tries
to fix and rescue the disabled parents. This pattern runs so deep
that children and adolescents may choose destructive and abusive
relationships that do not meet healthy needs. The child of an
alcoholic remains locked in the past, and often there is an immense
conscious or unconscious desire on their part to take care of others
and to try to fix other people's problems.
Read part 2 and 3 of this important article at
http://parentingtoolbox.com/clinical.html and click on the "Abuse &
Addiction > Living with Addiction" links.
Did you know you can Beat Breast Cancer? Find the answers at
http://www.parentingtoolbox.com/breast-cancer/
What do women need most? Discover it at
http://www.parentingtoolbox.com/women/
Get more articles and resources on health at
http://parentingtoolbox.com/clinical.html
Author: Rama Rao, MD
Community Psychiatry for Adults and Children
Imagine a house in which a child feels that the walls and floors are
constantly moving and shaking. Would anyone be at peace in such a
setting? For the children of alcoholics, life can feel much this way,
and it is estimated that at least seven million children in America
alone have alcoholic parents.
Common characteristics of caretakers and parents that accompany
alcoholism-such as denial, dishonesty, selfishness, fear, and lack of
consideration-have profound and direct effects on children. In this
environment, self-esteem is not able to develop normally, and the
emotional energy required to live with an alcoholic parent steals
from the magic of childhood. These children instead learn to create
walls and barriers to honest expression, and to resist sharing their
emotions and developing trust. Such roadblocks cause children to shut
down their own awareness of how they feel, affecting relationships
with peers, relatives, and other adults. Children are left confused
and full of self-doubt as they receive mixed messages from parents
who are not behaving consistently, or honestly.
Children who speak up about the problem are often met with ridicule.
Many times their observations, opinions, and insights are not
acknowledged at all. Because immense denial is in operation about the
use of alcohol and all of the destructive behaviors associated with
it, children gradually disavow what they feel and lose touch with
their own sense of what feels right and true.
Before intervention or treatment, children of alcoholics are like
caged songbirds. They deny their own freedom because they become used
to the dysfunction of constricted feelings and to restrictive ways of
solving problems and conflicts.
Common emotional problems
Depression: Children who have alcoholic parents may be at a greater
genetic risk of developing a mood disorder, or they may develop
depression that results from the helplessness and isolation they feel
at home. It is particularly difficult when both genetics and
circumstances create severe depression in children.
Guilt, shame, self-blame, and embarrassment: Children exposed to the
destructive forces created by alcoholic parents tend to blame
themselves for the problems at an early age. This creates the
difficult cycle of codependency throughout childhood and adult life
in which the child feels responsible for the family chaos and tries
to fix and rescue the disabled parents. This pattern runs so deep
that children and adolescents may choose destructive and abusive
relationships that do not meet healthy needs. The child of an
alcoholic remains locked in the past, and often there is an immense
conscious or unconscious desire on their part to take care of others
and to try to fix other people's problems.
Read part 2 and 3 of this important article at
http://parentingtoolbox.com/clinical.html and click on the "Abuse &
Addiction > Living with Addiction" links.
Did you know you can Beat Breast Cancer? Find the answers at
http://www.parentingtoolbox.com/breast-cancer/
What do women need most? Discover it at
http://www.parentingtoolbox.com/women/