Kids know more than we think: Leaving them alone with fears risks them becoming adults skilled at forgetting scary things
Kids know and observe a lot more than we imagine, from fairly benign topics to scary ones. There is a sort of unconscious deal that parents make with children. Parents pretend kids don’t overhear their arguments, notice their moods, and pick up on conversations about work stress or conflicts with friends and relatives. Kids pretend they don’t either. This isn’t necessarily all bad. Sometimes it’s fine to know things but keep quiet and learn to respect that certain topics don’t need to be talked about.
However, there is a danger in denying difficult things and keeping them in the realm of that which cannot be talked about. It can leave kids alone with their fears. For instance, a young child overhears his divorced parents arguing. Mom says under her breath that she wishes Dad would just go away and never come back. The child worries that his mom will get her “wish” and is left wondering what Dad did that was so awful.
When this happens repeatedly, there can be a risk that these kids will grow up to become adults who, in varying ways, become really skilled at avoiding. They can build a habit of knowing and denying, politely “forgetting,” or keeping secret the very real scary things of their lives.
Some families have a value that feeling bad is to be avoided at all costs
There are many ways we learn not to know what we know—not to acknowledge what we see. Many things can contribute to “forgetting,” but a specific type of “polite forgetting” is of particular concern in families. There are facts and events that happen in families that are tough to sit with. Sometimes families have a value that “making people feel bad” is to be avoided at all costs, even when those bad feelings are an important part of facing the reality of the world honestly.
For instance, a child might bring up a tussle she had with her sister a week before: “Remember when you broke my doll?” That child is still working through hurt feelings. We can imagine a parent, intending to uphold the value of “not making anyone feel bad," intervening and saying, “Don’t remind your sister of that. We’re not mad about that anymore, are we?” But, of course, the child who brought it up is still upset and perhaps still needs space about it. While it’s no fun to be reminded of an accident, facing those feelings is important, even if it feels bad. The kids, then, also become participants in not ever talking about an issue that caused upset.
Over time, polite forgetting becomes a skill for avoiding uncomfortable feelings, memories, and conversations
When difficult situations happening in childhood are never talked about, kids can become adults who never talk about challenging things either. And when they’re 23 years old and a new, scary, and awful thing happens, they have a built-in mechanism from which to forget that thing happened too. They form the neural pathways or a habit of polite forgetting, taking known things and burying them.
Forgetting (polite forgetting) becomes a “skill” for avoiding uncomfortable feelings, memories, and conversations. We pretend—we disavow—not just to others but to ourselves certain aspects of relationships or people we know. There is a line between polite courtesy (like pretending not to notice a cold sore when we run into a friend at the grocery store) and complicity (pretending we didn’t notice a friend, known to be 18 months in recovery, stumbling out of a bar).
This habit of polite forgetting is so pernicious not just because it is reinforced as normal or kind but because it “works.” One can, for a while, seemingly avoid all kinds of discomfort in this manner. But the discomfort doesn’t really go away. Instead, it shows up in our habits, emotional pains, and anxieties. For example, we can imagine this playing out in relationships. A boyfriend drinks too much and is embarrassing. Yet, there is a habit of covering up for him the next day: “It’s okay. It wasn’t that bad. I don’t want to make him feel bad.” It is a kind of dishonesty about how we really feel and how we are really harmed.
A task of adulthood is to face life in all of its difficulties
One key task of adulthood is to be able to face life with all of its difficulties and discomforts. Healthy adults must be able to deal with conflict, sex, death, money, loss, disappointment, disease, and hate. Anything that reinforces avoidance and supports our desire to resist this imperative keeps us small, afraid, and avoidant.
How can people kick the habit of polite forgetting as a way to avoid hard things? Noticing the ways this can play out in adult relationships is a huge start in the process of overcoming it. There is grief work here as well—in a sense, feeling bad about how we’ve not allowed ourselves to feel bad. This is important work commonly done in therapy. The work is in turning on the switches that control noticing and feeling what comes with noticing parts of the world to which these reactions have been suppressed. Then, of course, the task is to begin to name these things more and more as they come up.
