Hi friends. If you've been following, you know that I'm working to recover from a lifetime of parental abuse, neglect, endangerment, abandonment, exploitation, scapegoating, invalidation, toxic shaming, parentification and gaslighting about it all. I experienced this from four parents (two bio and their two partners whom I used to call stepparents but now don't).
Today I'm looking at why endangerment and then gaslighting about it, might be the worst form of child abuse. I include in endangerment, parentification (making the child parent the parents and other children). There are many reasons why this child abuse is so bad, but I think the biggest is how it destroys the child's sense of self. Depending on the age that endangerment begins, it can damages the self-concept before it even begins to form.
When I talk about endangerment, I'm not talking about open to interpretation situations. All parents have probably done the occasional thing that others might question. Leaving kids in the car during a snowstorm, to mail a letter 12 steps from the car. These are mistakes at worst and don't happen regularly and seem to be in the kids' best interest.
The endangerment I'm talking about is knowingly and willful, as in the parent goes out of her way to, put her child in vulnerable, scary, icky, exploitative, hurtful situations. This endangering parent leaves the child alone in the car to take a girl to a clinic to have an abortion. Or a 4 year old to wander blocks away alone. Or a 5 -year old play in a park blocks from home where a convicted pedophile has been known to frequent. Or a 6- year-old alone to play at a marina not knowing where mom is. This is consistent endangerment, not accidental or unwitting. There is no emergency or excuse. The parent isn't working and can't afford care. In my situation, both parents were unemployed.
Endangerment also goes beyond neglect. The parent purposely exposes his daughter to unsafe people and often triangulates (pits the unsafe adult against) his child. The mother leaves her daughter unsupervised at far too young an ages. The parents absent themselves, are unapproachable and unavailable. They place the child in uncomfortable situations with sketchy people.
They are unavailable because they don't want the child to rely on them as parents. They shame the child for needing them. They behave as if they want the child to be injured, molested, abducted or worse. It's not just that they don't care what happens. Or are too oblivious, such as the drunk parent. They manufacture dangerous situations to leave the vulnerable child in. And then fault the child if something does. But then almost seem glad it did.
Children are abducted literally under their parents' noses. Even with everyone watching and caring, accidents occur. Children of good vigilant parents come to grief. Loving parents who want their children, have them taken from them. So how did I who was exposed to threat almost daily, survive?? Seriously, I have more far, far more memories of dangerous situations with no parent around, than of normal loving safety. In fact, I really don't know what that looks like.
People I've told have shaken their heads too. Don't get me wrong. There were many times I was hurt, exploited and traumatized. But for all the endangerment, it could have been a lot worse. It was not for their lack of trying however. One person aptly asked "were they trying to get you killed??" Which gets me back to why endangerment is the worst child abuse.
Four reasons: First, parents are good at hiding it. My parents (before and after they were divorced) moved around a lot. They've been homeless and on the run. Really. From child abuse charges and legal trouble. They've squatted. But they were good at making it all look quasi-legit. Enough to keep relatives from looking too closely. And when anyone did, they moved far enough away to avoid prying eyes.
All of which should have been a clue but for reason two: it hides in plain sight. What I mean is that in my situation, my parents looked like normal people. And endangerment like I lived with is so bizarre that no one expects it. You really can't make this shit up. No one in any place I've lived did anything like this. I think my grandparents, aunts and uncles had no idea because they themselves would never do anything like this. And who was going to tell them? Me? I was too young to know how weird it was. And I'd have kept quiet to protect mommy and daddy.
Which is also reason three. Abusive parent rely on kids keeping quiet. They gaslight us into thinking its not weird and that no one would believe us anyway. Which is kind of an oxymoron. If it's not weird, why would no one believe us that it was that weird? And that saying something is disloyal. The gaslighting is real.
Reason four is covered in the previous post. Sorry. I'm just so shell-shocked from writing all of this I can't write anymore.
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