Repeating bad behavior

"Shut up, you stupid idiot."

My 8-year-old son screamed these words at me today.

These are the same words that my husband said to me during our 17-year relationship -- although, "idiot" sometimes would be replaced with "bitch" or "cunt" or "whore."

As soon as my son screamed those words, I knew that I was hearing the consequences of when a mother allows her child's father to verbally abuse her. Eventually, the child will spit out the same anger, the same cruelness, the same hurt. And the mother will feel such an intense guilt because she knows that it was her own weakness that allowed her child to learn such words.

I took every toy -- every car, every track, every stuffed animal, EVERYTHING -- out of my son's bedroom. I have grounded him for the remainder of the night in his room. I have disconnected his Wii and forbid him to watch television and play with the computer for the remainder of the week. I am taking a stand. I am trying to break the cycle with tough punishment and stern discipline.

But, as he cries alone in his bedroom, I sit here in my room and I cry too. I feel such guilt and shame for what I allowed to be said to me by his dad and for all the verbal vileness that I have thrown at my son's father in defense or in my own selfish anger.

The worst part of being a parent is witnessing your child repeat a dysfunctional behavior that you either allowed him/her to witness being done upon you or that you demonstrated through your own dysfunctional role modeling.

Sometimes, a parent's guilt is unbearably painful to the heart.