The Borderline Home is often hell for the children

There is an ugly side to life, the shadow side that isn't discussed in polite company. It is sometimes embarassingly referred to as "dirty laundry." Often times adults are embarassed and children are warned that what happens at home, stays at home. The fascade that is presented to the public often is not an accurate picture of what actually goes on at home. Sometimes people talk about the Dr. Jeckle/Mr. Hyde split between the behavior outside the home and the behavior inside the home. Lewis Carroll says in Alice and Wonderland, "When I used to read fairy tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one."

Indeed we read in the news how Susan Smith killed her children by allowing her car to roll into a lake with her children stapped into their seats in the car because her boyfriend was trying to break up with her saying that he no longer wanted to date a woman with children.

In the children's fairy tale Hansel and Gretel, the witch mother says "Husband, listen to me. Tomorrow at daybreak we'll take the children out to the thickest part of the forest...They'll never find the way home again and that way we'll be rid of them."

Short of physical death, children of Borderline parents often are emotionally, mentally, and verbally abused. Christine Lawson opens her book, Understanding the Borderline Mother, with a quote from one of her patients who said, "It's like drowning. There is darkness within her that can suck you in and swallow you whole...yet it's unfathomable...because it's your mother."

Such people are often experienced as "bottomless pits." They are never satisfied. If you give an inch, they want a foot, if you give a foot, they want a yard, if you give a yard, they want 10,000 miles.

Christine Lawson says that children of borderline mothers have some common thoughts about the experience of the relationship:

I never know what to expect.

I don't trust her.

She says it didn't happen.

She makes me feel terrible.

Everyone thinks she is great, but they have no idea.

It's all or nothing.

She's so negative.

She flips out.

Sometimes I can't stand her.

She drives me crazy.

I suppose all people have these experiences from time to time in a relationship, but for children to experience the relationship with a parent in these ways consistently breeds trouble. Overall, the child's experience of home is one of a place where one never knows what to expect. There is a sense of walking on eggshells, and pins and needles. With school age children there is a dread of going home after school, and a sense of security and safety in getting out of the home to go to school in the morning. Kids from Borderline families often experience school as the one safe, secure, predictable environment in their life. This feeling though is often not shared by the parent who sees the school as a threat, as a vehicle contributing to a loss of control over the child, and as a source of jealousy competing for the child's affections.

The basic elements of an authentic, happy home such as safety, security, order, predictability, consistency, respect, consistent nurturance, validation, and encouragement are missing on a regular basis. Rather than heaven, the borderline family is often experienced as hell first by the distressed and unhappy borderline parent, and thus by consequence, the child.

This is post #2 in a series of posts on the Borderline parent based on Christine Lawson's book, Understanding the Borderline Mother.