Mixo
Blue
- Aug 2, 2020
- 773
This discussion is inspired by @OrcWitch's thread comparing child raising to baking a cake.
On child abuse: "It's like knowing a language. If you've spoken one language your whole life, that's all you know. You can want to speak another language but until you learn how, you'll always go back to what you know."
I once heard this metaphor from a 90's songwriter Jewel. She said it once in an interview with Howard Stern when asked about her experiences of child abuse growing up. Her father was a drunk and beat her, her mother ran out on her family (she talks about it specifically in the video @ 30:45). She says, "Until you learn how to speak a new language, you're just going to go back to what you know." It's a bit like saying if you're a native French speaker and you want to speak English, but you never set about taking lessons or trying to find ways to learn, you're eventually going to wind up going back to speaking French. As someone who grew up in an intensely emotionally abusive household, I related so much to her story.
If parents only know one way to deal with children - through abusive tactics, that's what they'll do eventually, even if they want desperately to avoid it.
On child abuse: "It's like knowing a language. If you've spoken one language your whole life, that's all you know. You can want to speak another language but until you learn how, you'll always go back to what you know."
I once heard this metaphor from a 90's songwriter Jewel. She said it once in an interview with Howard Stern when asked about her experiences of child abuse growing up. Her father was a drunk and beat her, her mother ran out on her family (she talks about it specifically in the video @ 30:45). She says, "Until you learn how to speak a new language, you're just going to go back to what you know." It's a bit like saying if you're a native French speaker and you want to speak English, but you never set about taking lessons or trying to find ways to learn, you're eventually going to wind up going back to speaking French. As someone who grew up in an intensely emotionally abusive household, I related so much to her story.
If parents only know one way to deal with children - through abusive tactics, that's what they'll do eventually, even if they want desperately to avoid it.
