Neglect in families

There are some wounds that cut too deep but yet, you are found with no physical scar to prove it, most of the time. That is what neglect in families looks. Neglectful abuse is usually emotional, not physical. At its worst, children are malnourished, unkempt and look worse for wear.

Neglect is the failure to provide necessary care, attention or maintenance to someone resulting in harm and disrepair. Being ignored hurts. Some parents will ignore their children and refuse to give basic care. However, the biggest neglect children suffer these days is not malnourishment, being unkempt or being kept in a dungeon. It is emotional neglect. The absence of a father or mother at times of emotional need. Both parents work in most household, and that can easily lead to emotional neglect of a child. Being healthy means all your needs are met including emotional, physical and mental needs. The children are left in need and want of their parents’ attention, care and love.

James 4:17 Therefore to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.

Neglect is being ignored, being overlooked. It feels like you are not important. You are an afterthought. Being ignored sucks. No one takes solace in being overlooked and having a parent not make time to care about you. Neglect in the Bible is defined as a serious sin of omission, where failing to do what is right leads to spiritual decay, relational breakdown and divine judgement. 

In popular culture, Bridgerton tv series, Penelope Featherington, is a perfect example of neglect in modern times. She came from an influential family, she lacked nothing in terms of material things but her mother, father and sisters did not care for her. Until she got engaged and married Colin Bridgerton.

It’s a painful recollection of all things that I bottled up and hid behind the hills of a foreign planet. To remember is to dig through some stuff that I have spent some time lying to myself that they were not too bad. My mother neglected me and my father died when I was 8 years old. She just let me wander around our neighbourhood and it was not a safe place. I got hurt, more than a few times. (A story for another day).

My mother didn’t stop there. She did not attend school meetings or make time to ask of my well-being or help with homework. I remember looking for middle school placement at 12 years old. I travelled alone all over Zimbabwe until I found some sub-par school that I began to attend. That school decision hurts me to this day because it was not a good school. I never understood my mother’s actions but maybe she was still grieving my father, her husband who had died when I was 8 years old? That’s what I want to believe but my mother made time and loved and cared for her nephews and nieces (her brother’s children). I don’t know how to explain that.

1 Timothy 5:8 Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

Low self-esteem will come. You don’t feel confident or worthy of anything good. You suffer from the idea of having little to no confidence. Confidence is everything in life. If you believe you can then you can. But if you believe that you can’t, then you are also right in that you can’t. It’s not a nice feeling. Most children are not even aware that they have low self-esteem until they grow up and realise that they are failing at life. It is a parent’s duty to love and care for their child so that they feel worthy. Not just worthy of love, but worthy of a good life.

There is this undercurrent, the anger that runs underneath our emotions that is so violent and turbulent. I call it the vortex of anger. Adults from neglectful backgrounds, usually have uncontrollable outbursts of anger. Babies learn to co-regulate their emotions and well-being from their mother but when she ignores us, neglects us, we become emotionally dysregulated. We are not sure of our emotions and anger can become the default emotion as we struggle to identify other emotions.

We learned not to trust at an early age. Child abuse and neglect are predictive of disorganised attachment as well as insecure attachment. How can you love of you don’t trust or have the know-how to attach to someone in a healthy way? All partners become suspicious to us. There is also the fundamental belief that our neglectful parents gave us that is; we are unlovable. We struggle to find love and if we don’t heal, we may struggle all our lives. There are a lot of behavioural problems later in life after suffering neglect from childhood. 

This hurts. Adults who had a neglectful childhood rarely fit in with people who come from loving backgrounds. Because we have certain behavioural problems, we can be too much to people who come from loving backgrounds. Our outbursts of anger are like nothing they have seen before. Our lack of emotional regulation leaves them flabbergasted. Parents and family estrangement is odd for people who come from loving backgrounds. They will find our behaviours odd. Even our family dynamics are odd to the happy ones. It’s complicated and only someone with similar experiences can understand.

• David. David seems to have been a scapegoat of the house of Jesse. They didn’t think that he was worth of kingship when prophet Samuel visited David’s father’s house. He was the shepherd boy. His brother shouted at him when he went to deliver food to him during Goliath’s attacks. It seems like David was the scapegoat of the family, an afterthought to them. 1 Samuel 16
  
• Leah. Jacob did not love Leah. It was neglect of romantic love. He ignored her. She named her children according to the pain she was going through. Leah must have felt lonely. How do you heal a broken heart? Genesis 29:31
  
• Joseph. Joseph was the apple of his father’s eye. It was Jacob’s favouritism that caused strife among his children. Are you favouring one child over another causing you to neglect the needs and wants of the ‘ignored’ child? Joseph, the first born of Jacob’s beloved Rachel, was his favourite. Even though Jacob had older children from Leah, they were not his favourites because he had married Leah through trickery from Laban. The favouritism and neglect of not just the other spouses but children also is the reason I think God changed the marriage laws to one man and one woman. No more polygamy because it causes a lot of strife in families. Genesis 37:3
  

Being neglected can be a lifetime wound. It can be a beneath the surface current emotion that is ruining our relationships, our lives. You can go for counselling, choosing to heal what doesn’t serve you anymore. You can choose to become very aware of yourself, to have introspection which will allow you to ask yourself why you act and say certain things. The first step to healing is to know you are sick. It doesn’t mean that neglect was our fault but it means the healing part is our job.