PARENTING

How Much Does Your Kids’ Sanity Matter to You?

Some parents are damaging their kids, and the time has come to address this issue!

COVID-19 is an insidious killer. If we are smart, we will eventually eliminate it. But we live in societies where an often silent and just as insidious killer lurks: Aggressive personalities. It is a killer that shows no signs of abating.

Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance ~ Will Durant.

I can only concur with such a statement. And given the fact that learning requires three main criteria:

• Being aware there is always so much to discover,
• Having access to knowledge,
• Most importantly, being humble and brave enough to unlearn & learn again,

I am addressing this urgent message to this niche with the hope they could contribute to influencing their circle at their level, and that we may be a witness to a butterfly effect at some point!

The ‘Aggressive Personalities’ concept

Dr. George Simon, Ph.D. introduced it as below:

The aggressive personalities are individuals whose overall style of interacting involves considerable, persistent, maladaptive aggression expressed in a variety of ways and a wide range of circumstances.

All of the various aggressive personalities possess characteristics common to narcissistic personalities. Indeed, some theorists tend to view aggressive personalities as merely aggressive variations of the narcissistic personality.

He also took care of defining the following five subtypes:

The Unbridled Aggressive

These are the individuals we have typically called “antisocial” in their behavior pattern because they so frequently violate social norms and end up running afoul of the law.

The Channeled Aggressive

Individuals with this personality type frequently channel their aggressive energies into socially sanctioned outlets such as competitive sports, military careers, etc., and bossy corporate enterprise.

They contain their aggression but will cross socially acceptable boundaries when they feel assured they will get away with it.

The Covert-Aggressive

They do their best to appear benign on the surface and to veil all their aggressive agendas.

Covert aggression is the subtle, hard to detect, but yet deliberate, calculating, and underhanded tactics that manipulators and other disturbed characters use to intimidate, control, deceive, and abuse others.

For those of you who are more familiar with the Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) glossary, be aware that Covert Narcissists belong to this third subtype.

They could portray themselves as a genuinely good-hearted, compassionate, and virtuous person, as well as a victim: of life in general, of their co-workers, of their spouses, of their parents, of their kids; you name it!

Many times, they come across as depressed. They feel very taken advantage of and undervalued for how wonderful they are.

The sadistic aggressive

Most aggressive personalities hurt other people. But that is not their principal goal. Aggressive personalities generally want what they want and if they have to run roughshod over someone else to get it, so be it.

Causing pain is not their aim. Getting their way is their main desire. But for the Sadistic Personality, inflicting pain and demeaning others is a primary objective.

The predatory aggressive, the psychopath (alt: sociopath)

These individuals are first and foremost characterized by their senseless, remorseless, and empathy-devoid use, abuse, manipulation, and exploitation of others. Some of these individuals also lead parasitic lifestyles.

Again, for those of you who are more familiar with NPD, the malignant narcissist is a combination of the sadistic aggressive and the predatory aggressive. You can imagine the resut!

What does this have to do with our kids at all?

Everything. How come? You only need to have a look at the official statistics about the number of kids who commit suicide— the best-case scenario become neurotics who struggle with their self-esteem daily.

What is the major root cause reported by the survivors or the victims’ families? School bullies.

Bullies tend to be physically stronger than the average student and, from a personality perspective, tend to be more aggressive, manipulative, and low in empathy (Olweus, 1993).

School bullies are more likely to become those character-disturbed adults introduced in the beginning unless they could get effective help while their brain is still in their most flexible state. I am inviting you to have a look at this video:

Don’t you think that no single kid/teenager deserves to be abused like this young lady? Can you guess what has helped her cope so far, preventing her from ending her life?

Let me help you! She was fortunate enough to be surrounded by healthy human beings. Unfortunately, many kids didn’t have this chance to address their mental health issues through the right channels before it was too late.

Their caregivers weren’t present and didn’t even see it coming — in most cases unwillingly. They were absorbed by their struggles and prisoners of their invasive subconscious program.

They can barely live with this guilt afterward, and it is too sad.

What new alternatives could we consider?

I am aware of human nature: we need to see the light at the end of the tunnel. This bullying issue is no secret to anyone. Many brilliant minds have been working on it for so long. Nonetheless, the results are still limited.

Hence, I thought of giving a try to come up with some new alternatives, and maybe collectively execute them, given the issue scale is global.

Do you think school bullies could have been raised in a healthy family system? I’m guessing the answer is evident and straightforward.

Chances are high they grew up in dysfunctional environments, and that one of their parents/caregivers — if not the two of them — belong to those troubled people introduced above, in all likelihood.

More to the point, what if we can reflect, collectively, on some new reforms starting from inside the schools?

What if we can have a therapist assigned to every single school in the world, that we call any bully’s caregivers to a session with the psychologist, and this procedure becomes legal? Three possibilities would emerge from it:

• The parent (s) is (are) suffering from some chronic depression or anxiety or any other benign mental health disorder, in which case the kid could stay home on one condition: everybody should be regularly seeing a therapist to reframe the limiting beliefs, help heal the scars and process the feelings.
• One of the parents is diagnosed as a disordered-character aggressive person. The partner would need to understand a separation is mandatory if they want to keep their kid. The partner would also need therapy since they would surely be another victim of emotional, verbal, or even physical abuse.
• The two caregivers suffer from some aggressiveness disorder. In such a case, the law would prohibit them from raising the kids. The temporary solution would be to direct those children to a new kind of rehab that, instead of dealing with drug or alcohol addictions, offers qualified caregivers who would foster the kids until they could be adopted by a new healthy family.

What if we can give a real chance to such a delicate and urgent conversation to start and be followed up seriously? We could probably, together, save the generations unborn. Do you think this can be part of our new reality post-COVID-19?

You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not?’ – George Bernard Shaw

Gratitude

As usual, I want to thank all of you, dear readers, who decided to stop by and give this piece some of your precious time!

Also, my gratitude goes to the “RESONATES” publication for giving my words a platform, as well as its brilliant and generous conductor Morris T!

If you enjoyed your read and that you can get excited about the idea, we can become email friends here! Also, if you find value in my creations and are willing to support me, you can become a patron here: Myriam Ben Salem is creating Blogs | Patreon