When I was little my parents did that but only at particular times, when they didn't want us kids to understand.
And to curse, which was very, very rare. They certainly cursed in Yiddish.
Under one's breath. Gey in dr'erd. Drop dead.
But they didn't mean it.
If they called someone a name, it was in Yiddish. A schleper (one who doesn't get anywhere). A mishuganah (a lunatic). A shlamiel (one who is down on his luck, never seems to have any luck).
If they gossiped, they gossiped in Yiddish. We kids didn't know the language, and it was insinuated that we shouldn't know the language. How else could they speak their secret language?
Which brings us to our first picture of the day.
Diagram #1 Healthy Families
What you see here are three healthy couples in committed relationships. The two couples in the top ellipses to the left and right have one child each. The first, a boy (rectangle-below, left); the second, a girl (circle- below, right).
These three couples are all heterosexual, all rectangles and squares, just to get that out front right away. We could have used ellipses with committed double circles, double squares. There are no differences in family systems of gay and lesbian couples.
The parents and kids are either married or in committed life-partnerships, or they have spouses, husbands, wives. We'll use married for convenience sake in this post.
Notice that nice solid lines make up the ellipses in this diagram. If you remember from previous family diagrams, nice, solid ellipses around couples increase the odds that they'll make nice, solid executive decisions about their children or other things.
What's this got to do with speaking Yiddish, Spanish, German, or Portugese?
Well, one of the more common types of family dysfunction starts with dotted ellipses (see Diagram #2 below). And many times that particular type of dysfunction begins with dependency, parents dependent upon children of all things.
Immigrant families, no disrespect intended, can be prone to such role reversal. Middle-aged newcomers to a country can have some difficulty with the new language. Their children, however, pick up language quickly (see that post on neuroplasticity). They use their children to translate and mediate with the culture at large.
This can be a set-up for marital conflict when that second generation commits to raising a family of its own.
When a child has the role of cultural liaison, i.e., talks to doctors, beaurocrats, cable guys, bill collectors, school teachers, in lieu of his parents, the job doesn't necessarily terminate under the chupah, at city hall, or in the chapel. A son or daughter may not resent this liaison role. It's the least he can do for the people he loves, the people who have struggled for him.
Parents do, by the way, generally speak some English, sometimes very good English, enough to benefit from family therapy. A therapist need not be bi-lingual to respectfully work with this population. The important dialog, after all, is between family members.
Sometimes when a dutiful son marries a girl who does not speak his family's language it can be a problem at family dinners or at coffee in the sitting room. (We could be using "dutiful daughter" married to a boy who doesn't speak the family language, or a girl, for that matter).
The in-law child is left out of the conversation. In this case, his parents may or may not like their daughter-in-law, but it's not usually about that. It's most often about communicating more comfortably in the native tongue.
The daughter-in-law, after a time, tires of this. She will mention feeling left out to the son.
Why can't his parents speak English when she's around? They know enough English to converse fairly well.
At first she suggests this quietly. Then her reminders become something of a rant as she gets used to nagging. Then a big complaint, a serious complaint, building to a roar or even a tantrum. She doesn't like not knowing what's going on, reading magazines while they're talking, perhaps about her for all she knows.
He says, "What am I supposed to do? They're my parents. Teach them English?"
She says, "They know English. I can't stand this. They have to try a little harder. Do it for me. Or have them do it for me."
And around and around. In the end someone sees a therapist like me, usually her, then she brings him in as soon as possible (that's how I do it, at least). The games begin. Diagrams like you see in this post end up in every chart at some time or another, assuming you have a family therapist.
It's not only about psychoeducation and pictures, obviously. The couple therapy here is mostly about empathy and communication. But for this post, let's focus on the psychoeducation piece.
"THIS is healthy," I say, roughly sketching Diagram #1 (above), emphasizing the nice, bold boundaries.
"THIS is not." I'm sketching Diagram #2 (below).
"You two are working Diagrams #2 and #3 (most probably). My crystal ball does not bode well for the two of you. Change this system and pay at the door.
Diagram #2, Not good. Now you should know that when the couple on the left captures their son (note the larger ellipse with the three of them in Diagram #3), when they steal him away from his primary dyad (wife, main squeeze, significant other), it's not usually intentional. But it can be.
And the reason for enmeshing him doesn't have to be because they need him to chat about the weather in Swahili. It can be because he functioned in their marriage on numerous levels. A different lesson for a different day.
Here his parents have become one point of a triangle that leaves the daughter-in-law out on the fringes (see Diagram #3 below). The daughter-in-law is effectively triangled out. Notice that the distance between the son and his parents is shorter than the distance between him and his main squeeze.
Diagram #3, Really not good at all.
They might operationalize this procedure by having him come over to watch the Super Bowl while she stays home to putter around the house. They might do this by having him come over to change a light bulb. Or they might do this by simply not including her in the conversation.
In this case he has to tell his parents, in any language, that they have to make the effort to speak English when his girl is around. If they refuse, he says, he will take her home. He has to tell them that he thinks it's impolite to leave her out. He feels badly for her, and they should, too.
Then, when the four of them are together, he has to sit with her, show his parents that they're a tight couple. Or they won't be. Not forever. These marital grudges don't go away and as the years go by, they can get stronger and angrier, and there you are, at fifty, living with your parents because she's told you, as she forced that pen into your hands,
"This is what you wanted anyway."
And you know, she didn't say it in Yiddish.
Copyright 2008, therapydoc