Parents are responsible for feeding, protecting, and loving their children. But when love is tinged with control, fear or condition, it can hurt durably. According to psychologist Siyana Milnéva, certain parental behaviors-often anchored in family history-mark the child far beyond childhood. Here are five revealing signs of these invisible injuries.
Family beliefs that enclose more than they protect
To understand the dysfunctional family dynamics, Siyana Milnéva summons the words of Psychotherapist Susan Forward:
“The family is a system, a group of people linked by emotional relationships, each of them having a deep influence on others, sometimes in an occult way. It is a complex network of love, jealousy, pride, anxiety, joy, guilt, a flow and incessant reflux of the whole range of human emotions.”
In some families, this system is structured around limiting beliefs, transmitted from childhood.
“”This happens when parents act more for fear of the social gaze than by real attention to their children, they impose a rigid framework, often filled with taboos“, Analysis the psychologist.
Grow without ever being able to say no
In these family contexts, expressing a disagreement becomes unthinkable. The child is summoned to obey, without discussion.
“Children owe respect to their parents, in all circumstances.”
But a true love, underlines the expert, is not measured by submission:
“Children have the right not to agree”, or “they must be able to be mistaken without fear of rejection”.
In other words, to love a child is also to accept what he is – even when it bothers.
When individuality becomes a danger
In a healthy family, the child gets to know each other, to trust himself, to assert himself. But in families where control dominates, self -expression is perceived as a threat.
The child then has only two options: to be silent or fade. Adult, he will keep the stigmata: difficulty in laying down his limits, fear of displeasing, feeling of illegitimacy.
He learned very early on that it was risking abandonment or anger.
The trap of false love: when to control is “to protect”
Sometimes this control is exercised under the guise of love. Excessive attention, constant monitoring, disguised infantilization.
Susan Forward, quoted by Siyana Milnéva, illustrates this mechanism:
“Protecting a two -year -old child who runs in the street is legitimate, but forbidden him to cross alone at ten years is to deprive him of his freedom on the pretext of love.”
“It’s for your good”: ordinary emotional blackmail
When the affection becomes conditional, the child learns to deserve love rather than receiving it.
“I do all this out of love”, “it’s for your good”: these sentences are sometimes the masks of a conditioned lovealert Siyana Milnéva.
The child then has no voice anymore: we do not listen to him, we do not believe him, his emotions are ignored. What he feels does not count.
This deleterious emotional climate generates a fragile identity, built on the renunciation of oneself.