It’s nine o’clock at night and I’m sitting in my office with a tearful fifteen-year old girl. She is dressed in fashionable, older-than-her-years clothes, but the effect is only to make her look more helpless and childlike. We are talking about the fact that she is pregnant and what can be done about it.

      This is familiar ground for me, and for anyone who works with teenagers. It doesn’t mean, though, that it can be hurried. What matters is that, for the young woman sitting in front of me, this is the worst day of her life and she needs all the support, time and clarity, that I can offer. About all, she must make her own decision.

      I ask about her parents’ likely reaction – when they find out. She almost spits out the answer.

      ‘Oh, they’ll say they told me so. They always said I’d never amount to nothing!’

      Later, as I drive home, that one sentence stays in my mind. ‘They always said I’d never amount to nothing.’ I’ve often heard parents talk to kids like that.

      ‘You’re hopeless.’

      ‘God, you’re a nuisance.’

      ‘You’ll be sorry, just you see.’

      ‘You’re as bad as your Uncle Merv’ (who’s in jail).

      ‘You’re just like your Auntie Eve’ (who’s fond of a drink).

      ‘You’re crazy, do you hear?’

      This is the kind of programming that many youngsters grow up with; it is passed on unwittingly by overwrought parents and continues as a kind of family curse down the generations. It’s called a self-fulfilling prophecy because saying it often enough makes it come true. Children, with their brilliant, perceptive, strangely co-operative ways, will usually live up to our expectations!

      These are extreme examples, which we’d all recognise at once as destructive. Most negative programming, however, is much more subtle. Observe children playing in a vacant block, climbing trees. ‘You’ll fall! Watch out! You’ll slip!’ cries the voice of the anxious mother from over the fence.

      The slightly drunk father ends a half-hearted argument with his wife, who goes off in a ‘huff’ to buy some cigarettes. ‘There y’are son, never trust a woman. They’ll just use y’up.’ The seven-year-old looks up solemnly and nods. Yes, Dad.

      And in a million sitting rooms and kitchens:

      ‘God, you’re lazy.’

      ‘You’re so selfish.’

      ‘You silly idiot, stop that.’

      ‘Dumb!’

      ‘Give it to me, stupid!’

      ‘Don’t be such a pest.’

      What we have discovered is that this kind of comment doesn’t only have the obvious effect of making the child feel bad momentarily. Put-downs also have a hypnotic effect and act unconsciously, like seeds in the mind, seeds which will grow and shape the person’s self-image, eventually becoming true facts about the child’s personality.

       How do we hypnotise our children?

      Hypnosis and suggestion have long been a source of fascination to people. They seem slightly mystical and unreal and yet are well accepted scientifically. Most people have witnessed them, perhaps as part of a stage show, for getting help to cure a habit, or for relaxation.

      We are familiar with the key elements of hypnosis: the use of some device to distract the mind (‘vatch ze vatch’), the commanding tone (‘you will feel nothing’), and the rhythmic, repetitious tone of the hypnotist’s speech. We also know about post-hypnotic suggestion, the ability to implant a command which the unsuspecting person later carries out, often to his or her dismay, at a given signal. It all makes for good theatre, but also for excellent therapy in the hands of a qualified practitioner.

      What most people don’t realise, however, is that hypnosis is an everyday event. Whenever we use certain patterns of speech, we reach into the unconscious minds of our children and program them, even though we have no such intention.

      The old concept – that hypnosis required an altered state of mind, or trance – has been abandoned. This was only one form of unconscious learning. The rather frightening truth is that the human mind can be programmed in normal waking life beneath the awareness of the person involved. Already in the US, many sales and advertising people are being trained in the use of hypnotic methods embedded in normal business conversation – a chilling concept (For more details, see ‘Further Information’ in the Appendix.) Fortunately hypnosis requires great skill to use in a manipulative way, and can be countered if the subject becomes aware of the process. Accidental hypnosis, though, is so much part of everyday life that parents – without realising it – implant messages in their child’s mind, and these messages, unless strongly contradicted, will echo on for a lifetime.

       Hypnotised without knowing it

      The late Dr Milton Erikson was recognised as the world’s foremost hypnotist. He was once called upon to treat a man who suffered extreme pain from cancer, was refusing to have hypnosis and was not being helped by painkillers. Erikson simply stopped by his private ward and talked about the man’s hobby of growing tomatoes.

      A careful listener could have detected the unusual rhythm in Erikson’s speech and the stressing of odd phrases, like ‘deep down’ (in-the soil), growing ‘good and strong’, ‘easy’ (to pick), ‘warm and loose’ (in the glasshouse). Also, the observer could have noted that Erikson’s face and posture changed very slightly as he spoke those key phrases. The man in question simply thought that it was a pleasant exchange. Until he died, however, five days later, as doctors knew he must, the man felt no pain.

       ‘You’ messages

      A child’s mind is full of questions. Perhaps the greatest of these are the questions, ‘Who am I?’, ‘What kind of person am I?’, ‘Where do I fit in?’. These are the questions of self-definition, or identity, upon which we base our lives as adults, and from which we make all our key decisions. Because of this a child’s mind is remarkably affected by statements which begin with the words, ‘You are’.

      Whether the message is ‘You are so lazy’ or ‘You’re a great kid’, these statements from the important ‘big’ people will go deeply and firmly into the child’s unconsciousness. I have heard so many adults, overcome by a life crisis, recalling what they were told as a child: ‘I’m so useless, I know I am’.

      Psychologists, like many professional groups, tend to complicate things just a little, and call these statements ‘attributions’. These attributions crop up again and again in adult life.