Gaslighting and its Effects on Children
What is Gaslighting?
Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse that uses manipulation in order to control or coerce someone.
How gaslighting works?
List of gaslighting techniques:
Lying.
Feeding false information to the victim.
Insisting that an incident never happened.
Convincing the victim that they are remembering events wrong.
The goal of the gaslighter is to make the victim question their own sanity, reality, mental stability, or version of events.
What is Parental Gaslighting?
Parental gaslighting occurs when a parent consistently uses lying and manipulation to gaslight their child during childhood.
As children are easier to manipulate than adults, many parents may use gaslighting as a way to control their child rather than having open and honest conversations with them.
What the parent might think are innocent white lies could actually be classified as gaslighting. Many parents may not realise what they are doing is gaslighting, or the long-term harm gaslighting can have on their child. This is why it is important to know how to spot gaslighting, especially if you do not realise you are doing it. Parents may not realise that gaslighting their child is a form of betrayal that will permanently affect their child’s trust in them and feelings of security in the parent-child relationship. Learn more about our books about gaslighting parents below.
Why do parents gaslight?
Parents may gaslight their children due to several reasons:
A gaslighting parent may have mental disorders such as narcissistic or borderline personality disorder.
The parent does not want to take responsibility for their own actions or mistakes.
The parent does not want to deal with the consequences of their actions.
The parent may find it easy to control their child by gaslighting them.
The parent does not want to have difficult or honest conversations with their child.
The parent wants their child to be dependent on them.
How Does Gaslighting Affect Children?
A one-off incident of gaslighting may leave a child feeling confused about one particular incident or distrustful of their parent for a short period of time or relating to a specific incident.
However, frequent and consistent gaslighting throughout their childhood will have a serious long-term impact on their life well into adulthood. This impact could last their entire lifetime and affect their daily life, career, self image, and relationships with others.
Children who experience gaslighting are often affected in these ways:
They lack confidence.
They develop low self-esteem.
They are unable to trust their own memories and opinions.
They suffer from anxiety.
They are insecure about their own abilities.
They find it difficult to make decisions by themselves.
They are overly dependent on others.
They feel insecure in relationships.
They feel betrayed and as though they cannot trust their parent.
They may underachieve in school or work.
How can we support children who have experienced trauma through gaslighting?
Gaslighting is a form of emotional manipulation where someone makes the victim doubt their own perceptions, memories, or reality. For children, this can create confusion, low self-esteem, and difficulty trusting themselves. In a domestic violence situation, a child may witness one parent denying abusive behaviour, saying things like, "You’re imagining things," or "That never happened, you’re just too sensitive." This can cause the child to doubt their own experiences, making them feel powerless and unsure of their reality.
To support a child through gaslighting trauma:
Acknowledge their feelings: Validate their emotions and let them know it's okay to feel confused or upset.
Name the experience: Help them understand that gaslighting is confusing and reassure them their mind did nothing wrong by being confused
Encourage sharing: Provide a safe space for them to talk about their feelings, either alone or with others.
Journaling: if age – appropriate, encourage writing or drawing to process emotions and clarify thoughts.
Group support: Connect them with others who have had similar experiences for peer validation, where appropriate
Reinforce self-worth: Affirm their value and strengths to counteract the manipulation.
Set boundaries: Teach the importance of boundaries and respect in relationships.
Give them a voice: Empower them to trust and express their own truth.
By supporting them in these ways, children can regain their sense of self and heal from the effects of gaslighting.
How Our Books About Gaslighting Help Children
Rocky Books’ “Ginny Bravely Identifies and Tackles Gaslighting” tells the story of a 12 year old girl who experiences parental gaslighting by her mother. The book centres Ginny’s experience and feelings when she is gaslit and provides therapist-approved tools for children and parents to help them identify and work through conflicts at home.
Gaslighting causes a child to have low self-confidence and low self-esteem. This is why we have focused on helping children rebuild their confidence in themselves to result in a strong, unshakeable sense of self.
Our book on gaslighting includes:
An example of parental gaslighting.
How to recognise if you are being gaslit.
Commonly used phrases and behaviours of gaslighters.
Illustrations depicting the many confusing feelings that come with gaslighting.
Support for families to work together to tackle gaslighting.
Teaching children how to take back their confidence and learn to trust themselves.
Therapist-designed role play exercise with someone you trust. This exercise puts you and a partner in the place of the gaslighter and the person being gaslit, helping you understand how gaslighting works and working on healthy communication.
Our books about
gaslighting:
Ginny Bravely Identifies and Tackles Gaslighting
When Ginny experiences being gaslighted at home by her mum, she bravely learns how to identify gaslighting and cope with the complicated emotions it can cause.
Sources
Daniel S. Lobel PhD, “Have You Experienced Parental Gaslighting? It’s Time to Trust Yourself Again.,” Psychology Today, May 6, 2024, https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/my-side-of-the-couch/202405/effects-of-frequent-parental-gaslighting.