All children receive messages or injunctions about their worth from their parents, including foster parents, grandparents, older siblings, and other family members, as well as teachers and people who live in the neighborhood. Any or all of these messages contribute to a child’s positive or negative esteem.

A child who receives only positive messages will have much less need later in life for self-reparenting than one with the opposite experience. However, even if a child has ideal parents, there are often other significant persons, such as teachers, stepparents, grandparents, or older siblings, who give injunctions that interfere with health and happiness.

Injunctions are commands, directives, or orders. The word is used here to refer to statements or acts by parenting figures that adversely affect a child’s sense of being alive and well, capable and competent, free and joyful.

There are a number of basic negative injunctions, according to psychotherapists Mary and Bob Goulding. The first two are against the very idea of being itself: “Don’t be” and “Don’t be you.” Two are about relationships: “Don’t be close” and “Don’t belong.” Next are those concerned with personal growth: “Don’t grow up” and “Don’t be a child.” Others are against physical or emotional wellness: “Don’t be well” and “Don’t be sane.” Two are against achievement: “Don’t be important” and “Don’t succeed.”

Don’t Be is often a lethal injunction. It is a message given verbally or nonverbally by parents who do not want a particular child to exist. This can be for many reasons. The parents may be very young, unmarried, and unable to cope with the problems involved in having and raising a child. Or, they may believe they already have enough or too many children and not want “one more mouth to feed” or “one more diaper to change.” Other parents may be physically or emotionally ill, almost incapable of coping with life at all. Still other parents may dislike each other intensely and see a child as a burden that could put pressure on them to stay together. Then there are an increasing number who don’t want children because children would interfere with their careers. The most common responses to Don’t be” are passivity and depression.

Don’t Be You is not as lethal as Don’t be,” but it is still a devastating attack on a child’s identity. It is most strongly given by parents who wish a child were of the opposite sex. Parents may openly complain, “Oh, if you were only a boy” or “I sure wish you were a girl.” The child soon learns that his or her basic sexual identity does not please his or her parents.

Children may even be dressed and treated as if they were of the opposite sex. This often causes deep despair or confusion, and liberation from it may require extensive professional help.

Don’t Be Close is a negative injunction often given by parents who see themselves as too busy to listen, comfort, play with, or teach a child. This injunction is also given nonverbally by parents who abandon their children. A child who is abandoned may decide never to love again, or never to be close to a person of the same sex as the parent who left. A child may make a similar decision if a parent dies. Death feels like abandonment.

Another way this injunction is experienced is when divorce, or continuing conflict, splinters a family. When strong bitterness is expressed between parents, they may compete for the affection of a child and issue the message, “Don’t be close to that so-and-so of an ex-spouse; only be close to me.”

Don’t Belong is experienced by children if they are rejected by parents who wish a particular child were not part of the family—often because of embarrassment over physical or emotional problems that the child might possess. In such cases, it is not unusual for a child to wish for other parents.

Furthermore, if children are taught that they are better than others, or not as good as others, they may also feel like outsiders. And, if they are rejected by their peers or by teachers, they may also feel like they don’t belong anywhere.

Don’t Grow Up is an unspoken command of parents who want their children to remain under their control. In spite of what they may claim, such parents do not want their children to think or act independently. They want obedience and compliance to their opinions, ideas, and demands. They criticize with remarks such as, “Can’t you grow up and think like a decent human being?” These parents are really reinforcing the idea in their children’s minds that they are, in fact, destined to remain perpetual children—exactly what the parents wish for them to be.

Don’t Be a Child is just the opposite injunction of “Don’t grow up.” It is often given by parents who themselves act like children. They reverse the parent-child roles and insist that their children care for them—either physically or psychologically or both. It is also given by parents who are overly ambitious for their children. Pushing their children to be first, such parents may feel inadequate and use their children as compensation for what they lack in themselves. The same message often accompanies a “Don’t be close” injunction given by parents who are too busy and refuse to listen to what they label as “kid stuff.” The same message comes through if they never play with their children or imply that play is less important than work.

Don’t Be Well is a very subtle injunction given by parents who, often without awareness, expect a child to be physically dependent upon them, although it may not be necessary. After all, if a child is not well, then a parent’s attention is required. This can lead to a parent feeling important and necessary. In a family where a sibling or other family member is chronically ill or incapacitated in some way, it is not unusual for a healthy child to feel a twinge of guilt for being well.

Don’t Be Sane is an injunction sometimes given by parents who do not want their children to be sane because they might see how irrational they, the parents, are. It is also given with accusations between two parent figures when they make remarks to each other such as, “You’re impossible; you’re always acting crazy” or “Everybody in your family is crazy.” The implication is that some form of insanity has been inherited or is acceptable.

Don’t Succeed is an injunction that often leads to a banal script. It can come from parents who do hot know how to cope with success, or from siblings who manage to downplay success, or from a teacher who may have a classroom favorite. Often the message voiced in the home is “You think you’re better than your own family, don’t you.”

Such parent figures can give the injunction by continually criticizing less-than-perfect grades so that a child concludes “I’m not perfect; therefore, I can’t succeed.” When grown up, these persons may almost reach goals, then do something at the last minute that undermines their confidence and stops them from attaining what they want or need.

Don’t Be Important is very similar to “don’t succeed.” To be important is to be special and to be recognized as such. Children with a “Don’t be” or “Don’t be you” injunction also believe they are not important as individuals. Their parents may pay more attention to another child, a job, or a hobby, and use comments such as “Don’t bother me” or “Don’t be such a nuisance” or “Don’t be a show-off; you’re no better than anyone else.” They structure their time and interactions in such a way that their children conclude “My needs are not important; therefore, I’m not important.”

Don’t… is a more generalized injunction. It is given in a threatening tone of voice and intended to create paralyzing fear. “Don’t you dare look at me like that” or “Don’t contradict me or I’ll beat you until you wish you were dead.”

People who receive this kind of injunction are continually fearful of taking an assertive position, of sticking up for themselves, of making decisions, of doing something new, of thinking, of changing, of taking charge of their own lives. Indeed, of everything.

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