Caring For The Kids
My life has fallen into a few stages.
As a child, I lived in Box Hill when it was village. I then became pastor to the slums of inner Melbourne for eight years. I was then a country parson and a teacher at a one teacher bush school out at Jackson Creek in Western Victoria and then for 13 years, I was a suburban minister in one of Australia’s largest suburban ministries.
And then, for more than 27 years I’ve been Superintendent in Sydney of Wesley Mission, Australia’s largest church ministry.
I’ve told you stories of people in each of these places.
Tonight I want you to come with me into the heart of the city.
Dealing with children and parents brings Professor Kim Oates, CEO of the Children’s Hospital at Westmead and Wesley Mission’s Lifeline and Dalmar into contact with each other and with some very sad and distressing family problems. One of these is child abuse. It’s a gloomy topic, but one where people who care about children need to become involved. Professor Kim Oates helped me greatly in understanding the issues in the mid 1980’s involved with the children, their parents and friends
and with the mind of the abuser. Wesley Mission cares for many children, many of them suffering from abuse. In the first 100 years of caring for children, we cared for 10,000 in our first 90 years, 10,000 in the next 10 years and now 10,000 every three years.
Professor Oates says, “Being a paediatrician involves more than just fixing injuries and treating rare diseases, it means caring for the whole child—health, welfare family and future. Child abuse affects all of these areas, and that’s why it is so important to address”.
The physical abuse of children is a difficult subject. There are no easy answers, and I don’t claim to have any—but I believe there are things which can be done to help these children. Sadly, I have witnessed hundreds of abused children brought to Wesley Mission for care and recovery.
It is a problem of major proportions. The NSW Department of Youth and Community Services has tens of thousands of notifications every year, making it one of the most common childhood problems. There are certainly many more cases than those, as only a proportion come to official attention.
Although a lot is known about the characteristics of parents who physically abuse their children, there is no simple diagnostic profile. We know that the problem occurs in all socio-economic groups, but that there are also definite links with poverty, stress, the childhood experiences many of these parents have, particularly if they were abused as children. We find that many of these parents have low self-esteem, difficulty in forming trusting relationships, few community supports and often high and unrealistic expectations for their children. Less that 10 per cent have a psychiatric disorder. It is important to stress that the physical injury is an outward sign of problems within the family.
Some have argued that the Old Testament view of punishment of children means that our society condones a certain degree of beating of children, quoting the King James Version of Proverbs13:24, “Spare the rod and spoil the child.” I prefer the more caring translation of the New International Version, “He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline.”
I want to say something about the rod—and about discipline. The rod referred to in Scripture is usually the rod of the shepherd, used for guiding the sheep—not beating them. The shepherd would gently steer the sheep, especially the lambs, by simply holding the rod to block them from heading in the wrong direction and to nudge them into the right way.
There is no doubt that children need discipline, but parents can confuse discipline and punishment, assuming that discipline means punishment.
Punishment is only a small part of discipline. Discipline involves training a child in mind and character to enable him to grow into a self-controlled, constructive member of society. Discipline involves training in a number of ways—role modelling by parents (a grave responsibility for parents), teaching by example, giving verbal instructions.
The most important part of discipline is for a child to feel loved and to feel worthwhile. All other aspects of discipline become easier when the child feels loved and accepted. They are then able to begin to accept their parents’ guidance.
This approach to children has the love and concern that Christ showed. Paul was aware of the need of parents to encourage children to build up their self-esteem. In Ephesians 6:4 he writes, “do not exasperate your children: instead bring them up in the training of Lord.” Again in Colossians, he puts it even more concisely, “do not embitter your children or they will become discouraged.” Some parents equate discipline with “spanking” and say that as Christians, they should have a right, indeed a duty, to spank their children.
“Spanking” is a euphemism. That is, it is a pleasant-sounding word for a practice that is anything but pleasant. We use it here because it is the most commonly recognised term in our language denoting violent behaviour by adults toward children. “Hitting”, “beating” and “battery” are often more accurate and more honest words.
Some researchers claim that every act of violence by an adult toward a child, no matter how brief or how mild, leaves an emotional scar that lasts a lifetime. To some extent we can demonstrate this from personal experience. Most of us must admit that the most vivid and most unpleasant childhood memories are those of being hurt by parents. Some people find the memory of such events so unpleasant they pretend that they were trivial, even funny. You’ll notice that they smile when they describe what was done to them. It is shame, not pleasure that makes them smile. As a protection against present pain, they disguise the memory of past feelings.
In an attempt deny or minimize the dangers of spanking, many spankers have been heard to argue, “spanking is very different from child abuse”, or “a little smack on the bottom never did anybody any harm.” But they are wrong.
A good comparison to spanking is exposure to chemical compounds containing lead. In earlier generations, most people lived in houses painted with lead based paint, and most survived with no apparent ill effects. Were they smart, or just lucky? Today, we don’t do that anymore. We know better. Likewise, informed parents recognised that spanking children is like exposing them to a dangerous toxin. No good can result and the risk is great.
But some parents will ask, “how can you claim to be a responsible parent if you don’t grab the child who is about to run out into traffic and deliver a good smack so that your warnings about the danger of the street will be remembered?”
In fact, being spanked throws children in to a state of powerful emotional confusion making it difficult for them to learn the lesson adults claim they are trying to teach. Delivering a so-called “good smack” may indeed serve an adult’s need to relieve tension and anger, but at the expense of the child. While the adult’s relief is temporary, the effect on the child is permanent. Spanking does not teach children that cars and trucks are dangerous. It teaches them that the grown-ups on whom they depend are dangerous.
Some parents rarely spank or don’t spank at all, but are always threatening to do terrible things. “If you don’t keep quite while I am on the phone, I am going to sew your mouth shut with a big needle,” or “Better watch out, or somebody is going to chop your fingers off. That’s what they do to naughty children who are always touching other people’s things.” They find it easy to manage children by these fearful means—at least temporarily. At first, while children believe adult’s threats, they obey out of fear. But they soon learn to sneak and tell lies in order to evade the terrible punishments they believe are in store for them. Later, as they discover the threats are empty, they conclude (correctly) that the grown-ups they once trusted are in fact not trustworthy. It is very sad to have to care for children who say they do not like their parents…if you push them a little further, what they mean is they do not trust them.
When trust between children and their closest caretakers are damaged in this way, the children’s ability to form trusting relationships with other is also damaged. This may render them incapable of ever achieving cooperation or intimacy with anyone. People who have been damaged in this way tend to seal all relationships as negotiations, as deals to be won or lost. They see innocence, honesty and trustfulness in others as weaknesses to be exploited, exactly as it was it once done to them.
In the overwhelming majority of cases, husbands and wives whose relationship includes violence are also violent toward their children. Such parents surely were spanked when they were little and witnessed other being spanked. Thus there is a cycle of violence that must be broken.
Battering and battered spouses who spank their children are raising them to be batterers and victims exactly like themselves. The children learn from their parents’ example that the way to vent frustration, express disapproval and assert authority is by hitting someone smaller and weaker than themselves. They see this principle demonstrated every time they witness their parents fighting, as well as every time they are on the receiving end of violent punishments.
They learn that once they are big enough and strong enough, they can control others by threatening or hurting them. They learn that it is okay for husbands and wives to batter each other and for adults to batter children.
When children, whose personalities have been formed in violent households, grow up and produce children of their own, they find it very difficult to break free from the behaviours they have witnessed and experienced. The skills they apply to family life will be the poor ones they earned from their parents and they are likely to carry on the cycle of violence through their own innocent children.
Spanked children don’t regard their bodies as being their own personal property. Spanking trains them to accept the idea that adults have absolute authority over their bodies, including the right to inflict pain. And being hit on the buttocks teaches them that even their sexual areas are subject to the will of adults. The child who submits to a spanking on Monday is not likely to say “no” to a molester on Tuesday. People who sexually molest or exploit children know this. They stalk potential victims among children who have been taught to “obey or else” because such children are the easiest targets. Such children in care are very special and it is difficult to rebuild trust and faith in adults.
What can be done for abused children, what happens to them in the long term? The reality is that most stay in their families and that most families, given enough support to help them cope with the stresses of child rearing, manage reasonably well. A small proportion are better off with other families. For many abused children, life remains difficult. Our studies show that many develop behavioural problems, communication difficulties and low self-esteem, emphasising the need to provide a long-term, child centred approach to treatment. It is clearly better to prevent these situations occurring. There are some excellent child abuse prevention services available, including Life Line: but it is difficult to prove how effective a prevention counselling program is. However, more services need to be provided for prevention, services which will relieve some of the stresses on families, teach young parents about normal child behaviour, so their expectations will be appropriate; and which will help abused children to develop normally. If this can be done, the cycle of abuse may be able to be prevented from re-appearing in the next generation.
To be spanked is a degrading, humiliating experience. The spanked child absorbs not only the blows, but the message they convey: “You’re worthless. I reject you” that message powerfully influences the child’s developing personality. It instils self-hatred.
Sooner or later every child is exposed to substances that promise instant relief from feelings of worthlessness and rejection. Everywhere people can be seen putting things into their bodies to make themselves feel good. It is difficult to convince a child who is suffering that such relief is an illusion, that one cannot restore self-esteem by means of something swallowed, inhaled or injected, but can easily bury it deeper under the weight of new problems.
If we could turn for a while to sexual abuse. If we think child abuse was taboo until recently, the discussion of sexual abuse was an even greater taboo. It is only in recent times that society has even begun to acknowledge that it exists.
Sexual abuse by strangers did not present such a taboo. But only one quarter of sexual abuse is caused by strangers—three quarters are from people who the child knows and trusts and most of these cases are from within the child’s own family. But for too many years these instances were closely kept family secrets, people didn’t feel comfortable even telling their doctor about it and their doctor often didn’t want to know about it.
Yet it is a common condition. Over half the child cases we see are of sexual abuse. The true incidence is unknown, but a well-designed study in San Francisco in 1983 found 12 per cent of women had experienced an episode of sexual abuse from within their own families before the age of 14. Only 2 per cent of these cases were even reported. This high incidence has been confirmed by recent studies from the UK and Australia.
Sexual abuse knows no social class or economic boundaries and occurs throughout the whole spectrum of society.
Unlike physical abuse, sexual abuse within the family is usually not violent, the young child may not even be aware that the behaviour in which they are encouraged to participate in is abnormal.
Because children are powerless and because they are taught to obey adults, the sexually abused child is usually put in an intolerable position where they have no choice but to comply. It is common to hear the story that the father said, “this is our little secret. If you tell anyone, I will kill your mother” or “I will kill you” or “I will throw you all out on the street.” Therefore the child feels they have the responsibility for holding the entire family together. With all its faults, this is all the family they have, so they have no choice.
We now teach doctors that in making the diagnosis of sexual abuse, the most important thing is to be aware of the possibility and to believe the child. If a mother brings a young child to the doctor saying that the child gives a story of sexual interference, that story should be believed. These stories used to be dismissed as due to a child’s vivid imagination. Young children do not believe the life experience to be able to concoct a story of sexual abuse. This is outside the scope of their experiences and imagination. Such stories should be taken seriously.
It is a difficult area, difficult not to be angry with the parents. It is distressing to see children disturbed and fearful as a result of being brought to hospital by police after a complaint of sexual abuse has been made and it is upsetting to talk along with a child about what happened.
What happens to these children? How damaging is the experience? No one really knows. A recent study looked at children who had been abused 3 years earlier. Those assaulted by strangers who had supportive families and who received good counselling seemed to do fairly well. But there was a very high incidence of behaviour difficulties and low self-esteem in children who were abused within their own families.
What should be our view as Christians of all of this? Certainly not to ignore the problem, perhaps even to have some understanding of and even compassion for the offenders; and certainly to try and help the children who are the victims. The serious allegations made against the Governor General Dr Hollingworth for not taking such complaints seriously enough may have served a good purpose if it has encouraged the greater care for abused children.
As well as protecting the abused child and as well as providing service for them and their families after the abuse, we should all become more involved in prevention.
The best form of prevention is to help the children grow up feeling loved and worthwhile so they will be able to pass this feeling of being loved and valued on to their own children.
Our Lifeline counsellors are at the forefront of prevention, helping parents who are having difficulties with the stress of bringing up children by providing advice and just listening as the parent talks with some who cares, and then by sometimes being able to link these families with some of the fine caring families offered by the Wesley Centre and by other organizations, they are, in fact, preventing cases of child abuse.
At the same time, they show a Christian compassion which reminds parents under stress that God cares for all people, no matter how abused or neglected they might feel, and that the contact and concern shown to them that a moment of crisis can sometimes change life in far greater ways than we can ever imagine. Wesley Mission must be in the forefront of prevention and care for the abuse victims and in the correction of adult misbehaviour and perception.
The city of Sydney would grow to be one of the world’s great cities and Wesley Mission would grow to be one of the world’s great churches and I was privileged to spend each day in the heart of both.
