Mother and daughter difficulties, 1939 - Susan Isaacs replies to a Headmistress about a girl approaching her teens and discusses the importance of ‘breaking the close and vicious circle of over devotion of mother and child'.

April 1939 in Home and School “Readers’ Questions”

Mother and Daughter difficulties

“Headmistress” writes:

            I should be grateful if you could tell me what is the right treatment for the following case. I have in my school a girl of 12 ¾ years of age. The mother is a widow and until the age of 11 Pollie was brought up in an orphanage. The she came back home and lived with her mother, who goes out to work all day. The mother is considerably distressed about the difference between the child’s behaviour at home and at school.

            At home, she seems to concentrate on her mother to a rather abnormal degree. She waits on her hand and foot although the mother says she does not want this or encourage it. She is extremely, and I think unchildishly, kind and considerate and never wants to go without her mother, and although at the orphanage, she was popular and had friends, she does not now seem interested in having them. She is most thoughtful and reliable.

            At school, she is unreliable, forgetful, disobedient and certainly not doing her best. I am not disposed to take the behaviour at school as seriously as her mother does because, as I have told her, it is a perfectly natural reaction from the strain that the child is putting on herself to behave so perfectly as she does at home.

            I told the mother that I thought Pollie was concentrating far too much on her and that she should encourage her to make friends. She says she has tried to do this but without success.

            Is there anything you could suggest my doing with the child at school which might adjust the balance and make her interests and emotions spread out into more channels than this one? The mother really is very worried about it and sincerely wants to help. I think she may be quite unconsciously a very emotional person whose personality makes demands upon the child without her knowing it.

            The problem you describe is an unusual and very difficult one. It seems likely that Pollie is terrified that she will lose her mother again if she shows any faults at all. She is probably also very resentful about having been sent to an orphanage in her earlier years, and her fear of loss is she should express any of her resentment calls out this abnormal effort for perfection at home. Naturally such an effort cannot be sustained all round, and the child is bound to be unreliable, forgetful and disobedient at school simply in order to maintain her mental balance. It would obviously not be possible for anyone to be so perfect over the whole field of life. I quite agree with you that her faults at school are a natural reaction to the strain of home life.

            Anything you could do to encourage Pollie’s friendships with other children both at school and at home would be a very great help to her. Are there any girls’ clubs to which she could be introduced? If you could win the mother’s co-operation in this it would be a good thing. It is very important for the mother to be able to convey to the child that she really wants her to have an ordinary child’s life. If the mother would invite the child’s school friends home, as well as bringing her own woman friends too, it would help to break this close and vicious circle of over-devotion of mother and child. I would suggest to her mother that she should allow the child to bring boyfriends home as well as girls.

            As regards school activities, it would be wise to encourage Pollie to express her feelings and imaginings in story or drawing and painting, or modelling, in dramatic work, or some other form of creative work, accepting whatever she wrote or drew with a minimum of criticism, letting her feel that she really is free to express herself in these ways. Such expression would help to relieve the inner tension which is making the child so abnormally good. And to discover that she could create things of value to herself and others by her own efforts with simple materials would give her confidence in herself.

            In her orphanage life, it is more the likely isn’t it, that she has been starved, not only of home and affection, but also of the experiences of making and doing freely, and of enjoying beauty.

            Furthermore, any method by which you could create a closer link between home and school would be helpful, since this would make the child’s life at home more robust and that at school a little more peaceful. Could you invite Pollie’s mother to see the child work at school and to take an active interest in her drawings and modellings and dramatic work? That might help to convince the child that her mother does not only want tidiness and service from her, but would also value her creative efforts. Pollie is evidently not convinced that her mother wants her to have anything really for herself, and the mother will need to demonstrate this, both by valuing the child’s creative gifts, and by opening the door freely to Pollie’s friends of both sexes.