The Conscious Parent

In each of these and so many other cases, we presume we know the
reason our children behave in a particular way, which of course we are
certain comes from an evil intention. To impose such judgments on our
children causes them to experience a sense of helplessness. A verdict has
been handed to them without their input.
When we approach our children in this manner, especially our teens,
they soon wall us out of what they are feeling. So hurt are they by our
constant judgment of them that they become immune to our input. We
think this is because they “don’t care,” which is to further judge them,
again imagining we know their intent. Little do we realize they are tired
of living in shame, tired of being thought “bad.”
If our children turn their sense of helplessness inward, they are likely
to retreat into a shell, internalizing the belief that they are “bad.” If they
turn their sense of helplessness outward, they may seek to do to others
what has been done to them, which is how a bully is created. A bully is a
person who has grown up feeling such disempowerment that to hold it
within is unbearable, which causes them to humiliate the recipient of
their bullying, making this individual feel powerless in the way they
themselves have been made to feel powerless. The reason children bully
is only ever that they are filled with pain themselves. When bullying
escalates into violence, it’s because the individual has internalized such
an intense feeling of humiliation that their only recourse for relief is to
unleash their pain on others. Cut off from their authentic goodness, such
individuals attack the goodness in others.
In other words, violence in our young people originates from the level
of disempowerment a child feels in the parent-child dynamic. When our