Parents had better keep bitter exchanges away from children

Parents need to know that quarrels will hurt the growth of children. FILE 

By Peter Mutua

Posted  Monday, January 6  2014 at  18:27

In Summary

• Disagreements happen but airing dirty linen in front of young people is unacceptable.

It is sad that many parents do not realise how badly it traumatises children of all ages when they see their parents in verbal or even worse, physical conflict. - A pastor at a Nairobi church.

One evening Steven* and Angela* had a heated business discussion that went on late into the night. Leaving their room in the middle of the discussion for some coffee, their two children accosted them in the kitchen with worry written all over their faces.

“Are you getting a divorce?” the youngest blurted out while her brother looked on with what are called “balancing tears.” Both were concerned.

The parents were shocked, first by being confronted at the strange hour and second by the children’s perception of what was to them a healthy discussion and vigorous exchange of opinions.

While they were initially tempted to issue harsh reprimands to the children complete with warnings about poking their noses in matters concerning adults, the looks on their faces cautioned them to consider the next course of action.

During a recent survey of a local high-cost school it was established that at least 30 per cent of the children came from broken homes with a further 20 per cent coming from single parent or other domestic arrangements.

In some of the more tragic cases, the children themselves were the subjects in acrimonious divorce proceedings with custody shared between parents.

It is in this context that many children of leaders of family business grow up and receive their education. Even where individual parents are careful about their relationships, it must be accepted that children grow up in a setting in which separation, divorce and possible abandonment are everyday realities.

In the mind of a child there is nothing more frightening than the disintegration of the family. Because this is the only world such a child knows, the possibility of it being taken away is normally more than the child can bear, forcing such children to develop harmful coping mechanisms.

For adults to constantly bicker, quarrel or even worse come to blows in front of their children, ranks among the un-fairest of all human conditions superseded only when such an environment is combined with the verbal or physical abuse of the children themselves.

For parents in conflict to call in their children to mediate disagreement is even worse, seeing that the children cannot possibly have the knowledge, expertise or emotional intelligence to deal with such conflicts.

For one parent to go even further to advance their cause against their counterpart to get the children to side with them is sacrilegious.

While every family has its own domestic challenges and disagreements, leaders of family business should not air dirty linen in front of children.

Children should never have to experience seeing their parents in conflict much less be called in to mediate such disagreements or even worse be conscripted into one parent’s side against the other.

Such incidents traumatise the children in the immediate sense, cause them to lose respect for one or both parents as they grow up and render them bitter or resentful of their parents in the long term