Power and Powerlessness:

Children as Manipulators - Parents as Victims

As children, many of us felt the sense of powerlessness that comes from being part of a society that views children as less than full human beings. We come into the world full of our own power. Systematically, we learn that using this to speak our truths as children is not accepted. As a result, many of us learn to diminish ourselves in order to be accepted and loved by the adults around us.

We also learn, as I have written elsewhere, that those who are given power in our society, adults, in this case, use it over us to mold us into socially acceptable, productive adults.

We grow up and in turn become parents who are uncomfortable when children around us begin to use their personal power to get their needs met. Our culture labels children (and even babies) as manipulative. We cast ourselves, the adults, as victims of children's manipulations. Because of our socialization, the powerless (children) become the powerful and we are the victims of these powerful creatures.

I, too, have fallen into the victim status as a parent. I have to work hard, particularly when I am under stress, to not feel a sense of powerlessness in living with the strong wills of Martel and Greyson.

I was talking with another parent about this sense of powerlessness and was able to trace it back to my own, fairly typical and dysfunctional, childhood. I was describing a time when as a little girl, I felt powerless to change destructive adult behavior. My anger, fear and rage were fierce in that moment, and yet they did not change how my parents behaved.

From those moments as a child, it can be easy to fall back into a sense of powerlessness. It can be easier to just stay in the feelings of being a victim to our children, or we can work to overcome what we learned as children. We can accept the socialization we have received as truth (children are powerful manipulators) or we can challenge it to look at who in our culture is given the power to control others (adults and parents).

Because of our status as adults, we have even more reason to look at how we use power with the children in our lives. The power dynamics inherent in the adult-child relationship that are reinforced in our society can easily overwhelm children.

I was not one of those parents who clearly understood this power dynamic from the time Martel was born, despite the many years I had taught others about the cycle of socialization and the system of oppression. Sometimes I did understand the power I had over Martel, but chose to use it anyway.

As I have been in the process of liberating myself from what I learned throughout my life, I had to become conscious of how I use my power with Martel. This de-conditioning process impacts both of us. I must stay alert to ways in which I use my power to get he and Greyson to do what I want, and Martel has learned to reconnect to his own personal power because he was used to being controlled in many aspects of his life.

As always, the process is on-going. As Martel and Greyson grow, I am faced with new situations that might take me back to my own sense of powerlessness as a child. I then need to face those situations, challenge my socialization, and look for a different way to be with the children in my life.

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