When you do not punish and ignore - pariah

I have a question about children, how they learn and whether so called manipulating behaviours and defiance is learnt from watching other children?

I am not judging here, I want to figure out the dynamic and if I can find common ground, reassure my family.

In essence I live temporarily with my family, and next door we have person A, B and their children F3 and Fbaby. Mum A has a lot of fear about my children being in contact with her children, because she thinks her children learn how to behave "badly". She has not actually spent much time talking to my children, or me, or even spent much time with them at all apart from last year after we had a big life change and my children were actually quite traumatised. Their dad has arranged 4 international moves, isolating us many times, and I returned to family because I was distraught and needed some time to assess options.

The only evidence she has to go on that my children are infecting her children with "disobedience" is that she says her 3 yo is less "obedient" after spending time with us.

I have noticed that her daughter (3) wanted to come and see us, and since we are in the next house with my parents, she walks over to see us. We did not realise at first there was an issue, because we are all family and F3 has done this often before. But her mum wants her to ask for permission because my family are here and I am authoritative/liberal rather than highly authoritarian like her. I said to N that when she wanted to come over to tell her mum that she wanted to, and her mum said no not tell, ASK. Their children's emotional life is ignored, and I see threats, bribes, punishment,name calling as a go to.

I am wondering if their daughter, seeing me listening to my children and responding, has made her realise her emotional life is okay or that it exists? I noticed that she will do things my children have never really done, like make things up to get attention, i.e. telling me one of my children hit her when I had actually seen that all that happened was they were playing and my daughters said we are going inside now, bye, and ran in. Or she will pretend to cry, or use coy facial expressions and baby talk. She also will not let people touch her, or cuddle her, she pushes away physical touch which is something I have never seen before? My parents have looked after her for 1-2 days a week since she was a baby and she rarely touches them or cuddles. After a few days of knowing me, she was often cuddling me and clinging to my leg, and sitting on my knee, which I think threatened her mum as she is not allowed too much touch as it is seen as spoiling.

When I see those behaviours, I try to see what her need is, does she feel she is not heard, so I listen, does she need attention, does she need to rid of tension, so I make her laugh. It seems that mum A is dismissive avoidant, and dad B the same perhaps fearful avoidant. (If you know attachment theory I am more preoccupied!). And I think we are polar extremes so find it hard to understand eachother.

Would you have any ideas on how to reassure them? I am moving out as soon as I can, in the next few days, but it would be preferable that the relatinship was restored.

Hello spiralingup: I cannot comment with regard to your concern. However, I see that this is your first post here on PC. So... welcome to PsychCentral… from the Skeezyks! I hope you find the time you spend here to be of benefit.

PsychCentral is a great place to get information as well as support for mental health issues. There are many knowledgeable & caring members here. The more you post, & reply to other members’ posts, the more a part of the community you will become. Plus there are social groups you can join & chat rooms where you’ll be able to connect with other PC members in real time (once your first 5 posts have been reviewed & approved.) Lots of great stuff! So please keep posting!

Hi, spiralinggup, and welcome! Alas, I don't think you'll be able to patch things up. I do think children watch how other parents respond to things and then try them out on their own parents. It sounds like the daughter knows she'll get a response when she lies about your children.

Ignoring is okay, in my opinion, for little things. You don't want to reinforce those behaviors. But people are smarter than the animals Skinner studied.

My two cents' worth anyway. Interesting and important issue. I'm glad you brought it up. What do other parents here think?

Hello, spiralingup.



Sincerely,

Rainy

Interesting points you bring up about the family life of this little 3 year old. As young as I can remember, I pushed away my parents & didn't want to touch or hold their hand....my reasoning as I recall was that I didn't want anyone to know they were my parents. Something about them embarrassed me about them.....but at that age, I had NO IDEA what in the world that was or even why or what thought had come to my mind that made me feel that way. I just knew that I was different around other adults than I was around my parents. They made me think it was me that had the problem.....it's only been in the last several years (I am now 63) that I realized just how dysfunctional my parents actually were. I didn't tell stories or anything for attention. Being an only child, I was used to entertaining myself so getting attention wasn't something that was natural for me either.

The thing is that if her mom is dysfunctional for whatever reason, there isn't much that can be done about it. The only thing you can do is to give the child attention while calling her on any untruths she thinks is needed to get attention & to call her on lies that YOU have actually seen the truth about so that she knows she can't get away with it.

Sadly, parents are what they are & kids grow up learning whatever skills they create along the way to make up for parents dysfunctions. Shoot, I worked so hard at NOT being like my parents but having no good guide for another way, I created my own dysfunctional way of caring for my own daughter. It was basically a 180 different way of being dysfunctional, but dysfunctional in it's own way.

Being a parent is never easy especially if you haven't had a good example growing up. Only thing is that sometimes outside people do make the difference whether it's branded as making their kid more disrespectful of not.....just interface with the 3 year old the way that feels natural to you.