In my first month at a new high school, I had an episode I’ve never forgotten. It is hard to call it molestation, though I have used the term before, since it was incredibly brief and mild as far as such things go (though it did upset me greatly). It was between periods, it was indeed very brief, although rough, and I remember seeing the boy run off afterwards, supremely self-confident.
Self-confident I was not. I found out later there was a gang of boys doing this to every girl, so I wasn’t singled out or anything, but at the moment I certainly felt as though I had been singled out. I wondered what I had done to draw attention to me.
The thing is, I clearly remember wanting to tell someone about it. My next period teacher was my English teacher. I loved English class, but he was an ineffectual teacher at best. He couldn’t control the class and people hardly payed attention to him. So I remember deciding in my mind that I could not tell him. And I was really upset - I spent the whole class nearly in tears, and to make matters worse, he didn’t notice at all, and I was the only ‘A’ student in his class. I guess I kind of expected him to notice.
What I don’t know is why I didn’t tell anyone else. I would never have told my parents; they would definitely have blamed me and said I must have egged him on in some way. But I trusted a lot of teachers. I was a straight A student, and the teachers liked me. But somehow I had it in my head that I couldn’t tell anyone this.
Where does this idea come from in the first place? Do other parents notice this about their kids? Is it just an inherent fear of authority we all have? A lack of self-esteem? I know it could be said it stemmed from my distrust for my parents, but IME, even people who trust their parents sometimes have issues with this.
You’ve taked in the past about your mother, and I’ve posted how strikingly similar she sounds to mine in many respects despite the cultural differences, sooooo … here’s my not-very-well-thought-out WAG:
As I kid, I sometimes (often? I’ve blocked so much of this crap) got in trouble for things that were *so totally *not my fault. I could see in a situation like this, where even though at the time you didn’t understand ezzactly what the hell just happened to you, you probably felt intuitively that it was a Big Honking Deal, and that an adult would make a Very Big Fuss over the event. Perhaps … I dunno, you didn’t want to call attention to yourself in case it turned out to be negative attention? (Maybe you knew this was coming: “Dammit, aanamika, how could you sob DO this to us??!? You must have led that nice boy on, didn’t you?”)
If you wanted to hear from Dopers who didn’t have trust issues w/ their parents, you’ll have to wait for someone else to chime in.
I agree with this. I had plenty of adults I could’ve gone to about various things. However, my parents often blamed me for things I didn’t do, didn’t understand, or that they told me to do in the first place. I tried each of the following a few times, then started keeping quiet:
-Parents: would put blame on me.
-“Good church people” (group leaders, etc): would be judgmental, or give advice to do things that wouldn’t help (basically amounted to waving it away by saying “pray about it” or “God has a plan” when it was clear they were out of ideas).
-Teachers: meant well, but were consumed with their work, which involved helping hundreds of kids, some of them with problems much worse than mine. Would sometimes seem not to care, sometimes treat me with pity, and sometimes act like they thought I just wanted a way out of doing the work for their class.
-Friends’ parents: all were neutral to slightly fond of to extremely big fans of my parents. My family put up a great front for a long time. To a teen, not being believed or taken seriously a few times feels like “Nobody will ever understand.”
Depending on the problem, of course there are usually adults - doctors, counselors, religious figures, or just people who care about the child - who can help solve the problem. Sometimes, though, the kid tries a few times, finds no one, and doesn’t realize that just trying one more time might make a huge difference.
You know, this is interesting. While reading the thread, I was thinking that I generally had no problem going to teachers or other adults with issues – in fact, I explicitly trusted them to be able to help me. But it is definitely true that I did not have trust issues with my parents. They were not perfect by any means, and we had our conflicts, but I trusted them. If my father said that something was stupid (smoking, for example), then there was no way I was going to do it. And if I went to my parents with a problem (anything ranging from “I’m afraid of dying” to “I want to drop my biology class”), they would sit down with me, calmly talk it out, and help me figure out what to do. I guess because of their example, I expected the same type of response from other adults.
So there’s your answer from a Doper who didn’t have trust issues with her parents.
I think it’s nearly universal. Your experiences maybe/probably exacerbated those feelings but it seems like all of us were reluctant to reach out to adults.
I hated getting in trouble and I hated being hassled, it always seemed like involving teachers/adults meant a big dose of both.
School really screws with our perspective, no one likes a tattle tale. Also, adults are practically required to hand down responsible, mature advice which is largely ineffective in a school setting.
We have dust-ups in the bullying threads around here all the time. People point out that it’s irresponsible to advise kids to fight and then a bunch of us pipe up that fighting was the only thing worked when we were young.
Experience is the most convincing teacher and mine taught me that adults didn’t give a shit and when they did they couldn’t produce results.
My folks were great but they couldn’t always help. When I got bullied my mom hauled me in and talked to the principal, he did nothing to help and basically told us to stop whining. Mom did her best but she could not help me and she added to my stress by getting my principal involved.
My dad advised me to just have the fight and be done with it. It turned out that he was right but we can’t expect responsible adults to hand out irresponsible advice. An educator can’t tell a bullied kid to try and give as good as he gets.
One of my friends told me about her abusive boyfriend. It scared the shit out of me and I told the only teacher I was close to. My teacher was sympathetic but she couldn’t do anything.
Those kind of situations crop up for kids all of the time and experience teaches them that adults can’t or won’t help. It really, really sucks. There were kids in my class who did drugs, vandalized property, and were generally bad over and over. They got caught and punished but they didn’t go away or change behavior so why would some kid risk being branded a tattle tale and make themselves a target? It’s not worth it.
This is my take on it too, maybe without the touch of cynicism at the end. My parents didn’t jump up in alarm and rush out to right wrongs whenever I pointed them out and, more often than not, I ended up with a lecture which I really didn’t like. Short of a major problem I just learned to take care of it myself. Thanks mom and dad, and I mean that.
I totally trusted my parents — yet sometimes I was afraid of disappointing them. They were not pressuring over-achievers; in fact, they always seemed slightly astonished that I was such an achiever.
My guess (and how I operate as a parent) is that children fear the disapproval of their parents or teachers. They grow up learning how to behave, which naturally requires a lot of correction on the part of the parents and other adults. Often it is a mystery to the child what he is doing wrong, until he internalizes it. Finally he ‘grows’ a conscious after repeated reinforcement of positive behavior and negative consequences for undesirable behavior.
When something unexpected, frightening and confusing happens, which something like a hallway groping might cause, the child experiences unfounded guilt. Guilt keeps the kid from talking to a parent …after all, in the past before he understood why something he was doing wrong was wrong, he felt confused and guilty. So the child now in his/her state of guilt and confusion, is afraid to talk to the parent, for fear of disapproval and/or chastisement.
We adults won’t disapprove or chastise in a circumstance such as this but the kid or teen, in their immaturity, doesn’t know that. So they’re afraid to tell. That’s why it’s so important to create and open atmosphere of communication – so that your child always knows that he can talk to you, even if it’s something that he feels he might get in trouble for.
Yeah shiftless, that was kind of harsh. Both of my posts are rather grim but I agree that I basically just learned to handle my own problems and that was a good thing.
You said it better, I definitely wanted to avoid the dreaded lecture whenever possible.
I trusted my parents and liked them just fine. They were not lecturers. But I never told anybody anything if I could help it.
I remember quite clearly as a kid that I actually didn’t know that I could go to a teacher or an adult for help. I wonder if it was a failure to generalize (because I was little)–I knew that adults could help with, say, an injury on the playground, but I was not aware that I could ask my teacher for help with difficulties in math. For the most part, I saw my life as something I had to deal with pretty much on my own.
In high school, many of the girls were perfectly aware that the chemistry teacher was a creep and it was best to stay away from him. If you were a TA in his class (only pretty girls got that job), you told each other never to accept a ride from him in his pretty red sports car. He used to come up behind me and massage my shoulders in the middle of class, which was horrifically uncomfortable but I didn’t know what to do about it. I’m not certain that I earned that A I got in that class.
And none of us ever told any other adult about the chemistry teacher. Why didn’t we? In my own case, it simply did not occur to me at all. I don’t think I would have expected anyone to be able to do anything about it. I guess I was a really fatalistic kid. I don’t know what the others were thinking.
For boys at least, there was when I was growing up a very strong culture or expectation among one’s friends that you did not involve adults in your problems as a matter of “honor”. No-one wanted a rep as a “mamma’s boy” or “squealer”.
Yeah, my parents were pretty bad in some cases. I remember not even a year later this particular incident:
I got pulled over by a cop on the way home one day - I can’t remember why. Maybe I was speeding. I pulled out the insurance and registration and the insurance had been expired for one day. Whatever it was, he admonished me gently to carry current insurance papers and sent me on my way without a ticket.
Cool, right? So I went home and told my parents, and asked my dad if he could just put the new insurance papers in the glove box. Conversation’s over.
Three hours later, my dad goes down to put the new insurance papers in. He finds the new ones already in the glovebox, underneath the old one - I had grabbed what was on top and didn’t even know there was more in there.
So…and it still kind of stings to remember this one…he comes back in and FLIPS OUT over this. I mean yelling, screaming, getting my mom involved, who also started yelling and screaming at me for being dumb and irresponsible and didn’t I ever look with my eyes open? I was taken aback. And that match went on for three hours.
Things like that do of course erode your trust. And maybe I thought since my parents didn’t listen, no one would. Especially when it came to anything sexual, since I knew my parents would believe me. But it irks me a little to this day that that kid and his horrible little gang got away with everything they were doing. I wonder if THEY ever think about it.
I also had a feeling of the “whatever happens, it’s YOUR problem to deal with it” that dangermom and others referenced. And a significant lack of self-esteem.
Upon thinking about it more, I think I want to add one more thing, too. My home life was pretty fucked up in terms of emotional abuse - but no one knew this outside. I was desperately trying to maintain an image of the perfect little girl with perfect grades and perfect mannerisms. Admitting something like this might have marred that image I was trying to maintain.
Nowadays we tell kids all the time - go talk to a parent or teacher. Do kids listen more now, do you think? Do they think it’s safe?
I think a lot of it comes down to “what’s the point?”
If something has happened it happened. And you say “What good will come of it?”
You can’t make it “un-happen” and if the person isn’t removed, they’re only gonna get madder and get another attempt at you.
It’s like at work, when you work with a jerk, who does nothing, but you know will never get fired. So if you complain, the manager will confront the jerk and let him/her know that she was told upon, but nothing will get done.
Now the guy/girl who was a jerk before, knows you got him/her in trouble and now he’ll be even a BIGGER jerk and the situtation will be the same since he/she won’t be fired.
Looking to authority for help is often a losing proposition even as an adult. There are plenty of things that are technically not legal that no law enforcement officer actually cares about, or will do anything about, or is able to do anything about without proof-on-tape that it happened. The HR person at work is not your friend, in fact she’s your worst enemy. Your insurance provider is out to screw you. Your doctor thinks you’re an idiot. Social services thinks you’re scamming the system, etc etc etc.
The bottom line is that a lot of things that supposedly deserve help, don’t actually when you come down to it (like, every time someone advises a doper to call the police about noisy neighbors? HA!)… or if the help is given, you’ve gotta crawl for it.
It’s just better to deal with things yourself, in any situation that you can. Or duck your head and put up with it.
Inside the chest of every hardened criminal beats the heart of a ten year old boy. And Vice versa.
Snitches got stitches. Or more likely social ostracized.
I think the root of this type of thinking is that children don’t have much real power. They live on the whims and orders of more powerful people, like parents or teachers. Parents, teachers, cops, and human beings in general are imperfect. We all knew at least one authority figure who was cruel or unfair. To the powerless, authority becomes viewed as arbitrary and ineffectual, which it frequently is.
They learned it from watching/reading Harry Potter. One of the most annoying things about the story, to me, is that their world is in this incredibly serious crisis and for no particularly compelling reason 3 inexperienced kids have to solve it all on their own.
To me it just jumps out as annoying that of all the good guys, three of the least capable do all the work. It’s pretty easy to ignore that and enjoy it for what it is, but it jumps out at me immediately. I would imagine for most younger people it doesn’t jump out as much - it makes more sense to them that kids aren’t really with the adults and they need to solve their own problem.
That said, I’m not particularly old and it would probably have annoyed me when I was younger too. I did not have a problem trusting adults or turning to them for help.
