In my groups, when I go over handouts about the abusive family system or when I go over something like how to do a genogram, I tend to give this really specific hypothetical. And the hypothetical is say you're in the fourth grade, which here in the us that's something like eight years old, and at school you're bullied by a teacher.
Or you're made fun of because you got the free lunch because of your family is poor. Or simply another kid threatened to kill you, or you got into a fight because you weren't liked in that system. And the next part of the hypothetical is what happens when you go home? Was there somebody home? Were you safe to bring it up if your parents were home?
Or how would you get parented around abuse from a teacher or from a kid, an older kid or whatever. The second part of that hypothetical is I think the most important part because to be able to process what happened to us in school systems, um, because of what I learned from my mentor, the greatest lesson that she gave me about Healthy Family Systems is.
Kids need a safe home base to go home to. And for me, we can't really separate school abuse from home abuse because not knowing what is going on for your fourth grader. Not noticing their trauma response if they're being sexually abused, not believing them about the teacher, or even giving them horrible advice about how to take on a bully, who is say four grades ahead of you.
That is also abuse in context of what's going on at school. So let's look at eight examples of abuse at school. But what I'm also gonna tie into is the parenting piece for each one of these. If you're new to me or new to the channel, welcome. I know, yes, I'm in a new office.
Um, I'll be adding some more stuff to it. I hope you like it, but wanted to acknowledge the change. The change there. So let's dive into these. I'll be providing some journaling prompts for each one as I go through them, and I will put those in the video description, the prompts, as well as some timestamps for you.
Okay, so number six, crushes. Yes, that's a weird place to start, but I find with clients, including myself, who had debilitating crushes that those are a sign of childhood trauma at home, especially for younger children. Did you have a crush on a teacher? Maybe you wanted to live with them, that one boy or girl really early on that we were really drawn to.
We might not have understood attraction at that age, but were, you may be desperate to be connected with somebody or desperate to receive attention or love. And I know it's different in kid terms, but I don't think healthy children before say, adolescents need to have such debilitating crushes because they're securely attached at home and therefore.
They ha they already have their person. See how all that works. So in the first grade, my family was about, unfortunately, to go through its biggest traumatic event and that story is for another time. But I was about seven years old and I was madly in love with my teacher's assistant. The teacher's assistant.
Um, it was the eighties. So I had this, I had this black London fog jacket that I pretended was a leather jacket, like the fawns. And I would, I would just always go into the bathroom and wet my hair because I didn't know how gel worked. I thought it was just white hair and I had these sunglasses. Um, and I got the attention I wanted because the teacher's assistant who was from the south, she just said in this really.
It wasn't insulting, it was just really cute thing. Oh, Patrick's dressed as the fawns today. Um, and I don't think she knew what it was all about. So like that was an example of how, at such a young age, about how much energy I was putting into already just trying to get somebody to love me. So I know that now that I was drawn to her because I didn't have a safe person at home later crushes can also have a desperate sense to them.
Um, which again, I think is from being not loved at home, not being attuned to somebody not being attached. Healthy kids get crutches too, but I don't think there's such desperation and life affirming stuff behind them. Like, I'll finally be lovable if I had so-and-so. And as a side note, a huge part of school-based trauma is word getting out.
That you have a crush on somebody and that can be debilitating as well. We'll come back to that later when we discuss, um, teasing and ridicule. So the journal prompts related to crushes, if you had them, were you the apple of your parents' eye? If no, could that be related to those crushes? Were you in valid need of being valuable or lovable to somebody?
Like were you in a deficit of that stuff? Um, did you long to maybe be living with another person with in another home like a friend or their mom or something like that? These are all very common things for childhood trauma where you wanted to be somewhere more safe and some more connected. Why did you want that?
Moving on to number five, not getting help, just expected to perform In another video that I did where I tell my story about being the class clown, um, I talk about an age from like where I was in the sixth grade, where I did poorly in school, like really a C student, um, due to really what was going on in my home life.
But the focus from home and school was. It was about my failings, not what I needed. And of course those are my grades. There was no consistency at home. There was no help at home. There was a lot of chaos and abuse at home, but no one was picking up on that school-based trauma around this is big, it's, it's being abused about performance.
Without giving any resources where it's clear there's a delay going on, or learning disability or something of the like. I like to think that systems are better at this now, but again, we need it from home more as well. This looks like not recognizing that that is abuse at home. In the system or anywhere else in the community?
No. Um, not being placed with tutors and resources, not being tested for maybe an organic learning problem such as dyslexia. Um, post flushing out the trauma, not simply being asked in a safe way about what is going on for you by the adults having to hide your deficits and being called on to read out loud.
Really probably made you want to die, and time stood still, and the fact that no one really picked up on how anxious we were is just awful. So instead the message is, why are you such an F up? Why can't you be more like your brother? When I had him in my class, these create what I call like academics downward spirals because, um, you felt like a failure in the second grade because you couldn't multiply, and that gets worse to the grades every year, so you end up hiding stuff.
I've had clients tell me they, they fully didn't get left from right. Um. Until high school clients who couldn't read until their twenties, clients who dropped out because the damage was done to their self-esteem in a bigger systemic issue. I'm learning that our system is not, is so focused on performing, not helping raise creative and freethinking young minds.
But again, my focus here is to mostly include the family stuff that happened at home. So some journal prompts, if you fell through the cracks and systems like this because of what was going on at home. Or you had to work twice as hard just to keep up. The first prompt is how were you parented? Parented if you struggled with grades and performing and keeping up?
The second prompt is do you currently have such problems as such as starting things? Or do you struggle with believing that you're dumb when that's not true? Do you still hide stuff that you don't know or do you not ask for help academically or intellectually? And what I mean by that is like you may not even ask for clarification on something 'cause you don't wanna appear a certain way.
Even if's something as stupid as like, what's the capital of Colorado? That's what I mean. Um, as a side note, help would've looked like parenting and school discussions about resources, about the delays or about the learning disabilities or the behaviors without the blame and shame around performing that.
Wouldn't that be amazing to just be sort of accepted, oh, you just need help. And moving on to number four, abusive teachers. My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. S, was a ball of anger and anxiety. She smelt like she chain smoked and bathed in coffee. She wasn't necessarily like a bad teacher, but she was so tightly wound that she just snap at you and kind of blow up.
Um, and I'm giving a light example here, but she would really definitely lose it on us. Specifically me. I had just moved, I was already pretty traumatized and I never felt really felt fully safe with her as an adult. I really appreciate the special sort of underpaid and overworked, how that is being a school teacher.
And I, and that's a truth too in all this, but she was so aggressive with us. If I saw a teacher say, talk to my son in that way, the way she talked to me, I definitely would pull 'em out. And I don't believe in how adults are freely to be able to just use their power over children because their moody or their irritable, or their life sucks or whatever.
It's really not. Okay. So some more extreme examples though. Teachers not treating you like the other kids due to favoritism or that you're not ideal to them, or teachers getting triggered by something about you and they act out with you. Teachers who get violent and cross boundaries. Teachers who act out on problems from their own lives on you.
Teachers who are essentially predators sexually or emotionally or physically. Here are some journal prompts. If you were abused by a teacher, would your parents have believed you if you told them, or did you try to tell 'em? What was the response? The second prompt is, do you struggle with the integrity of those in authority and power?
Um, what did you need from your parents as well as the school specifically in terms of justice? No one really advocated for us growing up. So that's number four. Moving on to number three, which is teasing, ridicule, and vulnerability. Here is where as kids we start to really dread and become terrified of school when we're growing up.
What I really don't like about these systems is I grew up in the eighties and nineties, so I'm looking at it from that lens, but I can't imagine it's, it's that much different and some better than others I get. But these school systems back then. Definitely sort of, they could be sociopathic and they could be really unsafe.
What I hate about those systems or these systems is the pressure to have the right clothes, the right hair, the right skin color. You gotta play sports, you gotta be straight. You gotta compete for being popular. You can't be poor, can't be weird. And you have to be in the right socioeconomic group. So when you don't have.
All that going on, all those acceptable things in addition to being abused at home, you're highly vulnerable, and this is what I find to be the most abusive, systemic thing in these schools and other kids and some of the adults really zero in on that and make it a thing that can last for years for you.
Here is what this looks like. Being made fun of for your skin color or, or singled out for that or your culture, which is horrific, being ridiculed for your apparel, braces, shoes, hair, whatever. Um, being ridiculed or point or put on the spot for learning disabilities or phy physical disabilities. Um, really antagonistic stuff like your dad's such a loser.
He's a garbage man. You know, we know that about you. We're gonna burn down your house tonight. It's really sadistic stuff. Um. Really button pushing stuff like I know your mom goes to shop at that store. Um, or ha ha, you're wearing genetic shoe, generic shoes, blah, blah, blah. Where'd you shop at? You probably eat from dumpsters kind of stuff.
Like really just stuff that really hard to take in a client. And I were talking about school systems recently and what came up for them. Was that they notice something that as an adult, that if they're in a busy restaurant or a public place, and if they hear a group of people laughing behind them, their inner child still thinks it's about them in adulthood, and that's something to process and heal in childhood.
But I think you would know what I'm talking about if you grew up in these systems in my own recovery. High school really even haunted me into the early years of my recovery. I was never comfortable in my own skin at that place. Um, given what was going on, given how the place was, but also given what was going on at home.
And all of it really had to reinforce this kind of live or die kind of high school mentality. Um, here are some of the journaling prompts, if you struggle with this one. How are you set up from home, your home life to be singled out in school? For vulnerability. Were you desperate to be accepted and loved?
Did you want to be popular in some way? The second one is, what did you need from a parent if they were safe about ridicule, teasing, and vulnerability? Moving on to number two, relevant to it is social pressure. Very relevant, but a little bit different from the last one. This one is the focus really on conforming for survival.
Um, let's again come back to the idea of having a safe home base when kids are faced with the following. And a lot of this is just kind of maybe innocent, normal stuff, feeling like you don't have the right Barbies or the right GI Joes to pass muster with the rest of the people. Pressure to to really know how to do sports.
Sports, sports sports, sports. Sports. I'm not a sports person, but I grew up in a town of athletes and a athletic families who only connected through sports. It was like the, they were like obsessed with, and I couldn't get the rules because I didn't start playing in pre sports just wasn't my thing. And like let other kids, but all of that pressure.
You have to be into this to be normal. It took me years to kind of heal from that resentment and being anxious about not contributing to things like say, a bake sale because your parents are too dysfunctional or too poor or too apathetic to contribute to them. And the library lady running the bake sale looks down at you for wanting a brownie.
And I'm kind of sorry if that's all very real to you, but that's kinda like what it was like later in a, in adolescence and in high school, it's pressure to engage sexually. Too young pressure to do prom night, right. Pressure to perform without the help that other kids might be getting. And for me, this one is really about survival in a system that has very specific rules.
And the traumatized kids have to navigate that usually without help to hide the mess that they're going through. A lot of anxiety around that. Let's say you're 15 even. And let's say you're growing up in a fundamentalist religious church and the pressure of the church and your parents, and combine that with the pressure of needing to appeal, appear normal in a school system and not be a target.
What about just being 15? So some journaling prompts about this one. How would a healthy parent have guided and helped you through those school pressures and took them seriously with you? What would've been good enough? About the prom, the bake sale, the, the dance or whatever. Who was responsible for how you had to hide and conform?
Number one. Of course, it's gonna be bullying. You know, you save the most intense one for last. Yeah. I, I, I don't even like talking about this one, but here it goes. Um. One could start their childhood trauma work right here if they were bullied in school and work to include the parental piece down the road.
I find a huge correlation that kids who are bullied are also bullied at home in some way. Maybe not in the same way, but in which, which some kind of varying vibe of it. Here's what it looks like. Consistent violence from a kid over an extended period of time. For me, it was like three to four different bullies over the course of grammar school from high school, the threat of violence from another student, which is worse emotionally than just incidents of violence.
Like really think the threat, like, I can't wait to see you tomorrow. You know, like that kind of stuff because the threats consume us as kids. Like we're going to sleep with it. So bullied also from groups of kids, like our vulnerability is their entertainment. It's also their group cohesion. It's what makes them a solid group is picking on the other or the outsider.
Um, and then again, as kids, we're being totally consumed with the next incident that will come the next day. The more vulnerable you are. Growing up in poverty, being LGBTQI plus being a child with autism is, I find the worst bullying comes to those populations, but you can also experience it as simply a kid who's trying to be loved or be acceptable, and you're simply become a target for that.
Here are the effects of bullying. Early in our adulthood, we still find ourselves experiencing rage over the abuse of power. We can really distrust groups. Makes sense? We can not wanting to appear, uh, vulnerable or disclose parts of myself for fear. Parts of yourself, for fear of what happens. Being caught up in revenge fantasies.
You know, to be honest here, many of us thought about bringing weapons to school because we were starting to get. The feeling that that's the only recourse we had. I often think of something like Columbine in those cases when kids kind of have enough of it. When Facebook came on the scene, like most people, I looked up folks from my high school and I came across the profile of my, like the high school bully that I had, like bully number three, like exhibit C, bully, um, bully three, just exuded hatred.
I had a good group of friends despite everything that was going on for me. And I remember his group mixed with my group at lunch and picture this big sixties, like round mid-century, love like lunchroom with windows all around. It was kind of cool actually. Um, and I think. I just sort of, he was sitting next to him one day and I think I just asked him a question and he turned to me and threatened to kill me if I ever spoke to him again.
Um, and this is the kid who was known for really hurting kids in fights, and, and he, he looked for fights and I would have run-ins with him. Other times he'd throw me into lockers as like a rage dump for himself. And weirdly, at the time. I kind of felt that it wasn't even about me. There was something about his rage, but I couldn't really name that back then.
And I, I, God, I hated him and his rage was about me trying to be part of something, which is the vulnerability thing. Anyway, so I find his profile and he became this award-winning bodybuilder, and no offense to bodybuilding in any way. It's not about that, but it was surreal that his personality back then.
Moved into bodybuilding, like not much had really sort of changed. I had like just very egoic and tough guy kind of stuff. So I looked down at this award picture that I had and I read the comments and I saw this comment from what must have been his mother, and it read something like, you look like an oily raisin.
And I think that's when I finally understood what happened to this kid. The mother looked really rough, like kind of a alcoholy, and the comment to me was really insulting and off it felt for like I kind of felt for him in that moment. And I just totally understood more and in no way am I suggesting for you to feel compassion for those who bullied you later for that after processing his mother's comment though, close the door on all the bullies for me.
'cause it really gave me perspective. They learn it and they then they enjoy it and then it's their go-to thing. But then later in life they're kind of stuck with it, I think. So there's that. So some journaling prompts on bullying. What did you need if you had healthy parents? Really think about that. What did you need from the school?
Think about justice. Was it really about you? Even though it was made so personal. What did the bully get out of it, and do you value that? So some final thoughts for balance. I know I definitely didn't cover everything here, and if I miss something important to you, leave a comment and talk about it.
Please know that while this, my examples may have been light here, I do know that kids rightfully will go to a suicidal place given what happens to them in these systems. And given what happens to them coming from home in those systems. Another point I wanna make is I don't believe it's the system's job to raise children.
It is a supplemental experience outside of the home for development for healthy development. Children need a safe home base with sane parents and resources, and I don't agree that schools should be the catchall, but that's, it's kind of a pet peeve of mine when I, when I look at this stuff. And in this example, I'm gonna go all old man here.
Like Boy Nichols had pictures of bumblebees on em growing up in the eighties and the nineties. Um, you got actually a reprieve from bullies from say, 5:00 PM to 8:00 AM You might get a crank phone call or something like that, but children these days are now online and the bullying can exist in a 24 7.
Way, like in the gaming, the apps, they now kids email each other. I can't imagine dealing with that. I think that that really would've broken me given if I put that into perspective of my own childhood. Um, another point is I was a straight kid growing up in that era, and while I had it bad, a effeminate boys or masculine girls had it so much worse.
Homophobia. Was like the cultural glue in the town that I grew up in. And people are vicious about things that they don't understand and they, they think it's contagious. Kids and teens identifying as LGBTQI plus are still one of the most vulnerable populations and in these systems, which really saddens me and I just wanna honor that.
I also wanna honor socioeconomic status and racism. Like thinking back to the system I was in, I believe a white child would be more likely to receive something like an IEP while a black child would be just considered. Not trying hard enough. I presented bullying from the lens of a boy in a school system.
But girls are just as bullied and in some different ways. That is more like psychological bullying and coercion from both genders. Um, so there's that. Some final thoughts. I often get comments on my channel when I discuss abuse of parenting, and the commenter says that, or the individual says that they were never abused at home, but they definitely were abused in school.
Those comments are actually frustrating to me given the nature of this whole video. It's kind of a pet peeve of mine given how crucial it is to have a safe home base. And I get it. They probably just don't know what they don't know about healthy parenting. But I'm hoping this video gets you to think about the family system in context of what you went through in school.
Um, I think the, the hard part about all this stuff is we. We have no idea what a healthy family does or what it looks like. And lastly, this stuff can all certainly happen to healthy kids too. The difference is, is that they have a parent to go to to talk about it with, to advocate for them, to guide them through the feelings and take concrete steps of getting the child what they need.
Even a healthy parent, even if they don't know what to do, they'll go get a resource that'll help their kid. Lastly, lastly, I hope to see you at the webinar on April 9th, 2022. And if you like this video, two relevant and helpful videos are my seven types of toxic family systems and six unknown childhood trauma triggers.
They can really help you put this into perspective about this video,
