An Unloved Child
When the Absence of Love Becomes a Form of Violence
A child lies awake in their room. The house has grown quiet, but inside the child there is no peace. The child is trying to understand what happened earlier that day. The words that were spoken. The look that turned away. The door that was closed. The silence that followed.
Perhaps the child was not hit. Perhaps there are no visible marks on the body. No neighbour heard shouting. No teacher will notice bruises the next morning. And yet, something has happened. The child has begun to doubt what should never be in doubt:
Am I still loved?
For a child, this is not merely one question among many. It is the question that holds the world together. A child can endure not getting everything they want. A child can endure boundaries, disappointments and correction. A child can also endure parents who become angry, tired and inadequate. No parent is perfect, nor do children need perfect parents. But the child must be able to trust that love remains. That they still have a place. That they cannot fall out of the family because they did something wrong, were difficult to understand or failed to become what the adults wanted them to be.
When this security disappears, something fundamental happens. The child does not only lose trust in the parents. The child may begin to lose trust in themselves.
Love as the Foundation of Life
We often speak of love as a feeling. We say that parents love their children even when they do not always show it. Perhaps this is true from the adult’s point of view. But for the child, love is not primarily a feeling hidden inside the parent. Love is something the child must experience.
It must be present in the voice that answers. In the hand that holds. In the look that says: I see you. In the meal placed on the table. In the adult who returns after a conflict and says: What happened was not good, but you are still my child. You still belong here.
A young child cannot create their own sense of worth alone. The child learns who they are through encounters with others. Before the child can say “I,” they have been addressed as “you.” They are carried, cared for, protected and spoken to. Through these early experiences, a basic sense begins to develop: I exist. I matter. My needs can be met. The world can be a place where I belong.
This experience is not merely sentimental. It is a foundation for trust, self-worth and the ability to form close relationships later in life. The child sees themselves reflected in the faces of those who care for them. When met with warmth, the child can gradually learn to meet themselves with warmth. When met with contempt, contempt may move inside.
An unloved child is therefore not necessarily a child who has never been held or cared for. It may be a child who receives food, clothing and a place to sleep, yet still experiences their very existence as a burden. A child who repeatedly notices that the adult’s expression hardens when they enter the room. A child who learns that they create problems simply by being there.
When Love Becomes Conditional
All parents make demands of their children. Children must learn to take others into account, wait their turn, clean up after themselves and respect other people. Boundaries are not the opposite of love. Good boundaries can be a form of care. They help the child understand both themselves and the world.
The problem begins when it is no longer the child’s action that is corrected, but the child’s worth that is placed at risk.
There is a difference between saying, “What you did was wrong,” and saying, “There is something wrong with you.” There is a difference between setting a boundary and threatening to withdraw love. There is a difference between showing anger and making the child afraid that they may lose their place in the family.
Conditional love teaches the child that belonging must be earned. The child must be clever enough, quiet enough, grateful enough or successful enough. Perhaps the child must constantly monitor the parents’ mood. Perhaps they must hide their own needs in order not to create unrest. Perhaps they learn to smile when afraid, to be helpful when exhausted, or to remain silent when they desperately need to speak.
Some children become experts at reading a room. They notice the slightest change in tone of voice, a raised eyebrow, a particular way in which a door is closed. They constantly try to remain one step ahead of the adult’s reaction. They are watchful not because they are unusually sensitive by nature, but because their safety depends on detecting danger early.
Because if love can disappear, the child must protect themselves.
The child may make themselves small. They may become invisible. They may try to be perfect. They may take responsibility for the atmosphere in the home. Or they may become angry, restless and demanding because they have no other language for their fear.
Behaviour that adults experience as difficult may therefore be the child’s attempt to survive emotionally. Behind the anger there may be a question: Will you still want me? Behind the disobedience there may be a test: Will you leave me now? Behind the withdrawal there may be resignation: There is no point in asking for anything.
Invisible Violence
When we hear the word violence, we tend to think of hitting, kicking and physical force. Physical violence is concrete. It can leave marks that can be documented. It can be described in a medical record, photographed and presented as evidence.
Psychological violence is harder to see. It may be carried out without anyone raising their voice. It may hide in the habits and language of everyday life. In ridicule. In a look of disgust. In prolonged, punishing silence. In threats that the child will be sent away. In comparisons with siblings who are always more successful. In repeated statements that the child is stupid, ungrateful or impossible to love.
Psychological violence may also involve making the child responsible for the adults’ lives. “Look what you are doing to your mother.” “It is because of you that we live like this.” “If only you were different, everything would be better.”
The child is not able to understand the adult’s helplessness. The child takes the words literally. They may believe that the parents’ anger, illness, sadness or conflict is their fault. And because the child depends on the parents, it is often easier to conclude that something is wrong with the child than to recognise that the adult is unable to provide safety.
A child may survive the thought that their parents are inadequate. But this thought threatens the child’s entire world. The child therefore often turns the blame inward: I am the one who is wrong.
This is the beginning of shame.
From Guilt to Shame
Guilt concerns something we have done. Shame concerns who we believe we are.
A child who has done something wrong needs help to take responsibility. The child must be able to apologise, make amends and try again. But when a child is humiliated, the child does not necessarily learn responsibility. The child learns shame.
The ashamed person does not only say, “I did something foolish.” They say, “I am foolish.” Not only, “I failed,” but, “I am a failure.” Not only, “Someone rejected me,” but, “I am a person who cannot be loved.”
Shame is especially destructive because it becomes an inner voice. Eventually, no one needs to speak the degrading words aloud. The child has learned them by heart. The adult voice from childhood continues to speak inside the person:
Do not think you are worth anything.
Do not take up space.
Do not show weakness.
No one will want you if they see who you really are.
In this way, the relationships of childhood may continue long after the child has left home. A person may grow old without becoming free from the feeling of being fundamentally wrong. They may have an education, work, a family and friends, yet still live with a deep fear of being exposed and abandoned.
Some people try to overcome shame through achievement. They work harder than everyone else, do everything correctly and hope that recognition will finally give them the worth they lacked. Others withdraw from close relationships because closeness also involves risk. If I am truly known, I may be rejected.
Still others repeatedly enter relationships in which they are treated badly. Not because they wish to suffer, but because what is familiar can feel safer than what is unfamiliar. A person who never learned that love could be warm and stable may struggle to recognise it when it finally appears.
The Child Who Witnesses Violence
Children who live in homes where one parent is subjected to violence are often described as witnesses. The word may suggest that the child is standing outside the situation, watching something that happens between adults.
But the child is not outside.
When one parent hits, threatens or humiliates the other, the child’s entire sense of safety is affected. The person the child turns to for protection is themselves in danger. The home, which should be the child’s safe place, becomes unpredictable. The child does not know when the next outburst will come or what they can do to prevent it.
Some children try to intervene. Others hide. Some take care of younger siblings. Others try to comfort the abused parent. In this way, the child may be forced into a responsibility that belongs to adults.
The child learns that love is connected to fear. That people who say they love one another may also harm one another. That closeness does not necessarily mean safety.
Violence against a parent is therefore also violence against the child. The child is not a spectator to the family’s suffering. The child lives in the middle of it.
Discipline and Humiliation
In earlier times, physical punishment was often defended as discipline. One was expected to punish the child one loved. The blow was presented as necessary, perhaps even as an expression of care.
Today we know that love does not make violence less violent. The adult’s good intentions do not remove the child’s fear. A blow teaches the child that the stronger person may use their body against the weaker. It teaches that love and pain can come from the same hand.
But discipline can also become abusive without physical violence. Adults may use the child’s dependency as a means of power. They may threaten to leave, to send the child away or to stop loving them. They may reveal private and vulnerable information about the child in front of others, laugh at the child’s fears or turn the child into a source of family entertainment.
Humiliation often has an audience. The person who is humiliated is made small in the eyes of others. The child loses not only control of the situation, but also control of the story of who they are.
Some adults defend themselves by saying it was only a joke. But the joke is not innocent when one person holds all the power and the other cannot leave. The stronger person decides what will be called humour, while the child is left to carry the shame.
Discipline should help the child enter the world. It should not destroy the child’s belief that they have a right to be there.
Parental Inadequacy
Writing about children who do not experience themselves as loved does not mean dividing parents into good and evil people. Parenting is carried out by vulnerable and imperfect human beings. Many parents carry their own experiences of violence, neglect and shame. Some have never experienced secure love themselves. They pass on the language they learned, even though they may have wished to speak differently.
Others live under the pressure of poverty, illness, addiction, conflict or psychological distress. They may love their children and still lack the ability to protect them. Love as a feeling is not always enough if it is not translated into care.
Understanding the parents’ history does not make the child’s suffering less real. Explanation is not the same as acquittal. The adult bears responsibility precisely because the child is dependent and unable to protect themselves.
At the same time, society must recognise that parents may need help before neglect becomes severe. Zero tolerance for violence must not become zero tolerance for human weakness. A parent who feels that anger is taking control must be able to ask for help without immediately being treated as a monster. A family in crisis must be met before the child has learned that fear is normal.
The child’s safety must always come first. Help for adults can never be bought at the price of the child’s continued suffering.
When the Child Is Not Believed
Many children do not speak about what is happening at home. They do not have the words. They may believe that every family is like this. They may fear what will happen if they tell someone. Perhaps they have been told that the family will be destroyed, that a parent will be sent to prison, or that the child will be taken away.
Children are also loyal. They may love the person who harms them. They may be angry, frightened and desperate, while still longing for that same parent’s closeness. This complexity can be difficult for adults to understand. We prefer clear stories with victims and offenders, love and hatred. The child’s reality is often more complicated.
A child may also try to speak and not be believed. The adult appears kind and respectable to others. The family seems to function well. The child may have behavioural difficulties, making it easier to assume that the child is exaggerating or misunderstanding.
When the child is not believed, the violation is repeated. First, the child learned at home that their feelings and boundaries did not matter. Then the child learns that their words do not matter outside the home either.
Children therefore need adults who can listen without immediately dismissing, explaining away or demanding a complete and coherent account. Children often tell their stories in fragments. They test the adult’s response before saying more.
To listen to a child is to receive something that may not yet have found a language.
Society’s Gaze
Violence against children often takes place in private, but it is never merely a private matter. Children do not belong to their parents as property. They are persons in their own right, with their own rights and a dignity that cannot be cancelled by the boundaries of family life.
Society therefore has a responsibility to protect. Teachers, health professionals, childcare workers, social workers, police officers and neighbours may all find themselves in a position to see what the family is trying to hide. But in order to see, we must know what to look for.
The quiet child is not always the child who is doing well. The disruptive child is not always the problem. Behaviour may be a message about something the child is unable to express directly.
The question should therefore not only be: What is wrong with this child?
We must also ask: What has happened to this child? What is the child trying to protect themselves from? What does the child need from us now?
A society that only corrects the child’s behaviour risks making the child responsible for the harm inflicted by others. The child may be sent from one intervention to another while no one stops to ask whether the child’s unrest might be meaningful.
The child needs more than treatment. The child needs recognition. The child needs adults who see not only the symptoms, but the human being trying to live with them.
The Professional Who Lends the Child Belief
A teacher, social worker, school nurse, therapist or coach cannot replace a parent. Yet an encounter with a safe adult may have greater importance than the adult themselves will ever understand.
Perhaps this is the first person who does not laugh when the child speaks. The first who does not turn away. The first who says: What happened to you should not have happened. It was not your fault.
Such words can open a crack in shame.
The child may long have believed that they deserved the treatment they received. When another adult names the injustice, a new interpretation becomes possible. The problem was not that the child was impossible to love. The problem was that the adults were unable to love in a way that created safety.
The professional must sometimes lend the child their belief: belief in the child’s worth before the child is able to believe in it. Not through grand declarations, but through reliability. By arriving when promised. By tolerating the child’s anger. By setting boundaries without humiliation. By showing that conflict does not cancel the relationship.
For the child will test the adult. The child may reject the adult before being rejected. The child will investigate whether this relationship too will collapse when things become difficult. The adult who only tolerates the friendly and cooperative child may easily repeat what the child has already experienced.
Helping therefore means more than being kind. It means being trustworthy.
Can an Unloved Child Learn Love?
Childhood does not disappear simply because the years pass. What happened cannot be undone. Some wounds will accompany a person throughout life.
And yet the story is not finished.
A person may encounter other experiences. A friend who stays. A partner who does not use vulnerability as a weapon. A therapist who can bear the silence. A community in which one does not need to perform in order to belong. A professional who sees the strength behind the defence.
Through such encounters, the old conviction may gradually weaken. Perhaps I was not unlovable. Perhaps I was not the one who lacked worth. Perhaps the love around me was too weak, too unsafe or too wounded to reach me.
Healing does not necessarily mean that the pain disappears. It may mean that the pain no longer defines the whole person. The adult can gradually learn to recognise the inner voice that comes from childhood and answer it in another language.
You are not a burden.
You have a right to boundaries.
You do not need to earn your place.
You can be loved without hiding who you are.
This is not a quick process. For someone who learned early that closeness is dangerous, safety itself may feel unsafe. Love without conditions may feel unfamiliar. But a human being is not shaped only by what happened first. We are also shaped by what happens later, by the relationships that give us new experiences and by the choices we gradually become able to make.
Saying “I Love You”
Parents should tell their children that they love them. But words alone are not enough. “I love you” cannot be used as an explanation after violence or as a demand for forgiveness. Love must be felt in the way power is used.
To love a child is to take responsibility for the fact that the child is weaker. It is to understand that the adult’s words carry greater weight, that the adult’s anger feels larger and that the adult always bears a special responsibility for restoring contact after a conflict.
It is to be able to apologise to the child.
Parents do not lose their authority by admitting that they were wrong. On the contrary, the child learns that responsibility is not the same as shame. The adult can say: I became too angry. What I said was wrong. That was my responsibility, not yours.
In this way, the child learns that relationships can be repaired. That people may hurt one another without love necessarily disappearing. That conflict does not have to end in silence, threats or rejection.
A child does not need parents who never fail. A child needs parents who try to understand when they have failed and who dare to return.
What a Child Should Never Have to Doubt
A child should be able to feel angry without losing love. A child should be able to fail without losing dignity. A child should be able to be different from what the parents had imagined without losing their place.
The child should not have to lie awake calculating what they must do the next day in order to be tolerated again.
Perhaps this is the most fundamental thing we can give a child: the certainty that belonging remains. Not that every action will be accepted, but that the human being will not be rejected.
The unloved child often carries a loneliness that no one sees. The child may sit at the breakfast table with the family, go to school, laugh with other children and still be alone with the question of whether they have any worth.
We must therefore dare to look beyond visible marks. We must listen for what is not being said. We must understand that violence may also exist in coldness, contempt and love used as reward and punishment.
And when we meet the child, we must not only ask what has happened. We must also communicate something the child may never before have been able to believe:
You are not what was done to you.
You are not the words that were spoken about you.
You are not the shame that was placed upon you.
You are a human being with inviolable worth.
No child should have to earn love. No child should have to prove that they have a right to belong. And no child should have to go to bed at night wondering whether they are still loved.
Authors note: This essay is based on over 40 years professional work and research with children who have experienced violence and abuse. The text is developed from my lecture notes on this topic for students of many different professions. The illustration was made by OpenAI/ChatGPT
No comments:
Post a Comment