The Parenting Styles and CEN

December 19, 2020

Childhood Emotional Neglect  ( Episode 1 )

Episode 1 :  Parenting styles

Hi everyone, this is Ludemia ( aka Mia ), and welcome to Heart-Mind Equation.  Today we are addressing CEN  known as Childhood Emotional Neglect and how it is related to parenting styles.

In episode 3 of our Emotional Intelligence Podcast series, we have addressed the topic of how the emotions of the parents influence their baby in the womb.  Now, after that baby is born, this is the time when his/her emotional journey really starts.  

The parent’s psychological presence is so important, that it can shape the child’s trust in people and his environment. The family home, being the first social environment,  is where the child learns how to interact with someone different than him.

We know cases when the new mother suffers from Postpartum depression.  Often in those cases, despite her unconditional love for her new baby, she can manifest some psychological/emotional detachment towards her baby.  

Sometimes, even in routine care for her baby, she can be distant in a way that the baby picks up on her feelings, making him feel confused and distressed. What I mean by ‘’distant’’, I mean not engaging in any interaction with her baby while providing care to him. For example, she can be looking away when feeding him ( no eye contact ), she can be either crying or keep an apathetic face, etc. 

To illustrate that topic, there was an experiment that was done, by the experts of the Child Development Unit, at Harvard University ), directed by Dr. Edward Tronick.  

In this experiment, a mother is placed in front of her 12 months old baby.  She was asked to interact positively with her baby: talking to him with a high pitched voice, smiling, making funny mimics, etc.  We can clearly see the baby, happy, trying also to communicate with the mother. 

Then we ask the mother to stop talking, stop her interaction with the baby, keeping a still face, while looking through the baby – not at the baby.  That’s why we call it: The Still Face Experiments. They witnessed the baby becoming confused, disorganized, and distressed before starting to cry.  

The young child ( especially the infant ), has the capacity to feel our emotions, 10 times stronger.  They don’t know what we feel but they feel what we feel.

 In the same way, we pinpoint the necessity for the parents to acknowledge the emotional presence of their child.  If not, the child could be at risk of emotional neglect.   

We define childhood emotional neglect ( CEN ) as the incapacity or difficulty of a parent to respond to his child’s emotional needs. 

Dr. Jonice Webb ( psychotherapist ) specifies that emotional neglect is not something the parent does to the child, but something the parent fails to do for the child.  She goes on to say ( I am quoting her words ):  ‘’The fact that it is not something that happens, but rather something that fails to happen, our brain doesn’t record it and our eyes don’t see. ‘’ We can only imagine how easy it is for the CEN,  to do some silent damage.

We all know that child emotional needs are:  to be nurtured, to be encouraged, to be listened to, to get attention and affection, to have his presence acknowledge, to be defended, to be noticed and comforted when he feels angry or hurt, to feel like the parent believes in him,  and proud of him, etc.                                    

We can regroup different types of parents ( about 12 of them ) that are more at risk of neglecting their child’s emotions.  But we are only going to present 7 of the most relevant ones, today.

1. For example, the narcissistic parent tends to bring down the child often, to prevent himself from looking bad in front of others.

It’s also the parent who always wants to be right and is unable to recognize when he has made a mistake or when he is wrong. 

The child feels like who he is or what he does, doesn’t matter, just so long parents don’t look bad. He also gets to believe that the parent and everyone around him is always right and that he is always wrong.  This child learns to be shameful. Therefore, his emotional need for validation is dismissed.

1. We also have extremely authoritative parents that show love to their child only when he/she obeys him, at any cost.  The child feels like the only way he can feel love is when he does what he is told.  The child grows up to be an adult with less assertiveness, also with a lack of decision making. Some adults who became a ‘’people pleaser’’ are usually those who had very authoritative parents that expected them to be perfect all the time, … to somehow deserve their love.  Those parents value more what the child can do, instead of who he is. The child’s emotional need, which is neglected here,  is the sense of approval.  It also happens sometimes, that those future adults overcompensate for that lack of approval, by manifesting behaviors that are similar to  maladaptive adolescents, such as being controlling, defiant, arrogant, sometimes narcissistic, etc

1. We also have, on the other hand, the extra permissive parent, who does not give any boundaries.  The child can feel misguided or not important enough to be protected by the parent. May become someone who goes out of his way to seek attention… no matter what kind of attention.  The child’s neglected emotional needs are protection and guidance. Later in life, he may also become a ‘’forever teenager’’ adult, going in life with no proper guidelines, not knowing how to regulate his own emotions.

1. There is the widowed, divorced, or separated parent and the depressed parent. In that case, the parent who just experienced a loss or separation may be dealing with his or her own depressed feelings. That way, it could be more difficult for them to be psychologically present for the child.  What is very sad, it’s the fact that the kid tends to blame himself for the parent’s feelings.  He feels guilty for needing the parent to be there for him, as the parent already feels depressed. This child’s neglected emotional needs here is to be reassured and comforted.

1. The addictive parent is one kind of parenting where childhood emotional neglect is more flagrant.  The parent focuses more on what they’re addicted to than the child’s emotional need.  They can be addicted to substances ( drugs and/or alcohol ), to their phones or computer, to compulsive behaviors, like surfing on social media, online video gaming or online shopping, gambling, etc. The child’s neglected emotional need would simply be to have his parents’ attention.

1. Some of us have dealt with the perfectionist parent.  Patterns are similar to the narcissistic parent. The parents overlook the child’s emotions. What matters most for them is to have that perfect child, who is well behaved, get good grades in school, good in sports, excel at some talent he has.  The parent’s acknowledgment for the child is based on his/her performance in everything. The child’s emotional neglected need is for his parents to acknowledge him more for who he is than for what he does.

The risk factor of having a perfectionist parent is to be feeling very insecure in most areas of life, later on.  Some others become adults who are perfectionists, in return, towards themselves, towards others, and towards their own children.

The problem is that:  being a perfectionist often hides someone’s insecurities.  It is like chasing after our own tale, because: ‘’How good enough is good enough’’?

1. The workaholic parent, by his absence, automatically puts the child at risk for emotional neglect.  When a parent is present, he/she is so tired, that he feels that a home is a place where he would be charging his batteries, to get some strength, so he can restart the same routine tomorrow.  There again, the child’s presence is dismissed, therefore, not acknowledged or barely.  The child’s neglected emotional needs are nurturing presence, attention, and affection. Very often, those parents feel guilty about not spending enough time with their child and tend to compensate by providing a lot of material things.  But we know, just like Albert Einstein said: ‘’ Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted truly counts.’’

What I find more unfortunate about us adults, who have experienced CEN, is that subtle feeling of emptiness inside, without knowing why. 

Another way to suspect that we were probably victims of CEN, is by constantly blaming ourselves for everything, beating ourselves up all the time, and feeling that we don’t matter or are not as important as anyone else.

I, myself, felt that emptiness at one time in my life.  I know today that many characteristics described before were expressed by my own parents. To be more specific, they fell in the categories of the narcissistic, extreme authoritative, and perfectionist father and a depressed mother.

I now understand, as an adult, that when our childhood emotions were not validated or not adequately responded to,  as adults, we get to disregard our own feelings, even repressing them.  I remember, growing up, putting everyone’s emotional needs above my own, trying to make everyone feel good, even if I was unhappy.  That was a way that I was searching for validation and significance.  The worst comment someone could give me, from my teenage years, until today, is ‘’ I am disappointed in you’’.  These words hit me more than if someone would have said I hate you.  Thankfully, I have addressed my childhood emotional wounds, by facing my parents about it.  Received help from psychological therapy and a lot of prayers.  I say to everyone: As God is my Source, everyone else is my resource.

Before you go, I would suggest you take a little quiz of 22 questions that will reveal if you have experienced CEN in your life.  This yes or no quiz has been created by Dr. Jonice Webb (the same psychological therapist I was talking to you about, earlier ).  She is specialized in CEN ( Childhood Emotional Neglect ) therapy.  You can go on her website to drjonicewebb.com to take the quiz.

So this concludes Part 1 of the Emotional Childhood Neglect Podcast series. If you have appreciated the content,  don’t forget to give me a thumbs up, leave a comment below, or simply follow me on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube.

Stay tuned and get a notification for our next episode on how we can recover from CEN. 

Until then, thank you for tuning into Heart-Mind Equation: To unlock hidden potentials.