Notes From the Queen's Castle
Julie Donner Anderson

“SHOW ME THE BEAST!”
An article by Julie Donner Andersen

Author of “PAST: Perfect!PRESENT: Tense!  Insights From One Woman’s Journey As The Wife Of A Widower”
http://www.weyantpress.com/andersen.htm

Early in my career as a mother, I recall a precise moment in time where I stood, wagging a digit at my then 4 year old daughter for breaking a treasured cut glass vase as she bounced a forbidden basketball in the family room. I yelled at the top of my lungs in absolute frustration and anger like a crazed Tazmanian she-devil. 

And as I raged on and on, I caught a glimpse of myself in the window beside me.  It was not a pretty sight.  My face was all snarled up like a twisted pretzel.  My hands were shaking and fisted, taking on the appearance of a prizefighter’s.  I took a step backward and then forward again just to make sure it was me I was seeing, and not some half-crazed serial killer.  All that misplaced rage - and for what?  A piece of broken glass? 

That vase was not the only thing shattered on that day.  So was my daughter’s heart. 

Remember the Disney™  movie, “Beauty and the Beast”?  Do you recall the part where the heroine, Belle, was defending her ugly friend to the town’s people as they threatened to kill him?  Belle pleaded with the crowd, telling them that her friend may indeed look terrifying, but he was really sweet and kind on the inside.  She then held up a magic mirror and begged it, “Show me the beast!”  The reflection showed a growling, hysterical creature with matted hair and sharp, glowing fangs.  I’m sure it was hard for the throngs of fearful people to imagine that the beast ever had a heart at all, and they were more afraid than ever.

 As I peered at my reflection in the window on the day of the broken vase incident, all I saw was the Beast…and she frightened me.  Was this the same woman who sang lullabyes and baked brownies in an Easy-Bake oven?  Looking into my daughter’s tear-stained face, I realized at that very moment, the Beast was also the same image my daughter saw as I screamed at her, and it changed me for life.  It was the last time I ever raised my voice to a decibel that would deafen a dog.

 To live in fear is to forever cast doubt on trust.  Children who grow up in a hostile environment usually end up with very low self-esteem.  For them, hostility, and even violence, become the only familiar answers to life’s problems.  These same children also learn that the fallout of fear is resentment, and end up confused and outcast when faced with social situations.  They balk at authority and wind up as disagreeable loners who cannot seem to make it in the real world. 

 When we scream in anger at our children, we make them fearful of the beast inside of us – the one that teeters on the edge of losing control and threatens our children’s very basic feelings of security, self worth, and trust.  In a child’s eyes, the image of a sweet, loving mother is replaced by an image of a monstrous, hideous stranger – a beast.  This hairy animal is not someone we, as parents, are proud of.  Sometimes we barely recognize the monster within, since it only comes out of its cave once in awhile.  But we should know it well, for it behooves us as responsible parents to take a good, hard look at our own anger and soften the lines around its face when we are dealing with our children.  Before it has a chance to scar our children for life, we need to wrestle it back into its cage, lock the door, and throw away the key…forever.

 Knowing the scary but true statistics about children of a hostile upbringing, we need our own magic mirrors to show us the beast within, so we can make a concerted effort to change our fear-inducing parental reactions.  We have a responsibility to act humanely and sensitively when we are frustrated by our children’s mistakes.  And, most importantly, we need to constantly remember that a simple vase is nothing compared to the treasure of our children’s love and trust.

 (Copyright 2002 Julie Andersen.  All rights reserved.)

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