The Inadequate Father- BOUNDARY BUSTER DAD

This is the father that busts the personal boundaries of his children through abuses. It could be physical abuse, emotional, verbal and even spiritual abuses. A few years back we heard so many stories coming from the Cross-river and Awka Ibom axis about children they were calling witches and wizards and throwing away...it got so bad that the government had to set up schools to take them in. Most of these children were taken to churches and were beaten and stoned and branded with hot irons and those doing it said they were beating the demons out of them...this is spiritual abuse, those children may reject God for life except for some divine intervention

A certain lady who is 49 years old has refused to get married and when investigations were made about this, it was discovered that her father busted her sexual boundaries by having sex with her from age 4 till she was 16. There is also psychological abuse whereby parents purposely withhold certain things in a bid to punish their children e.g. school fees, shelter etc. He busts the personal boundaries of his children.

The legacy such dads leave for their children are:


1. The children have problems communicating boundaries with others. They don't know where they begin and the other person stops. i'll give you a funny example, you must have come across certain people who come and pick up your pen where u dropped it and you say:

'put my biro down'
'watin, na you be the first person when don get biro we never see before?' he replies
'please put down my pen'
'ah you want to make a big deal over this cheap biro sef...mscheeew'
' I SAY PUT DOWN MY PEN!!!!'
'na this small thing dey make you dey scream? I beg ooo, you people should not come near this kind of person ooo, small thing like this wan cause quarrel'

and you are wondering is he mad? Its my biro, I say don't touch it. The problem is no one respected his boundary when growing up so he doesn't know what boundaries are, they don't know how to respect your space because every time someone kept disrupting theirs

2. They also have problems with attachment...and find it hard to receive from people. Every kind gesture from another person is interpreted as a trap to use against them later

3. They don't believe God can be good or have goodness for them. They are so negative about what God can do, they believe he will do good for others but not them. Because if their earthly father didn't have good for them why would a God they don't even see have goodness towards them. They can't receive from God no matter how many years they have been Christians

4. Children of such fathers either under function or over function. They either just don't do anything or over so. Your supervisor may tell four of you in a team to work on a certain project and before the others in the team can blink, there is this one person that has done everything. We call it eye service, but really he has to overdo because he is trying to impress daddy enough not to bust his boundary on this. They are usually fantastic mediators and sit on the fence most times because they are afraid to go either ways

5. They have a high tolerance for chaos, they will put up with alot of wahala (trouble) before they agree they should move on. A certain lady was in an abusive marriage, her husband beats hers and throws her out of the house whenever they fight. She kept going to her pastor to cry about it and one day when the beating was so severe it almost got out of hand, the pastor asked her 'dont you think you should get away from this man, at least for some time' and she responded:

'ah pastor my own is not that bad ooo, my friend's husband when he beats her, he pushes her out in the rain and she sleeps outside in the rain. But my own when he sees its raining, he opens the door for me so I can come inside and sleep'

They will put up with a lot before they admit that something is wrong. Why? Even if they complain... who would listen?

Does this sound familiar to you? Are you a boundary buster dad or mom? Was your boundary busted? Mine was...my father never beat me but he could mess with your head via verbal abuses. There is nothing in this world I or my brothers weren't called while growing up, and he abuses you in the way that you will believe it. You dare not complain about anything cos you might get a 'eh?? is that why you are carrying face? so you don't have enough sense to deal with it, when you will not be focused be doing mumu mumu things there etc etc etc' and that would bring about a whole new topic where at the end you will blame yourself for taking your issues to him in the first place. For the life of me I could never understand why I was called ashewo often when I had done something wrong...  I never even had a boyfriend at those age.

I remember vividly on the 4th of June 2002... I had gotten myself and my younger brother ready for my uncle's birthday, which also happened to be my birthday. We had been planning for weeks how I would be celebrating my birthday with him that day together. I had told my friends. My uncle's son and I had mutual friends since we were in the same secondary school so I knew the place would be packed full with our school mates. I had bought a dress that week and braided my hair...it was my birthday. And as I was getting ready, my dad walked to me in the kitchen and the following convo ensued between us:

Dad: 'Were are u getting ready to go'
Me: (chuckled nervously) Its almost 1pm..I just want to finish here so we can start going for uncle *Greg's bday
Dad: Who is we? you are not going anywhere
Me: (confused) huh? mummy said she'll meet us there, are we not going again?
Dad: We are going, you are not... u think I don't know your plans? that's how you and your foolish friends will now start misbehaving and ur clique will mess yourselves up there and embarrass your self...see how excited you are already. Stay house... that nonsense will not happen. I'm going with your brothers
Me: ...but what of my birth-day, it hmmm its my bi-r-th da a ay too na (I stammered)
Dad: and so??? my friend get out of here...nonsense

I went to the room, entered my wardrobe (not closet o) and cried and cried because you see, crying in his front or in a place were he can chance upon you crying would have worsened it...my dad has no tolerance for tears, so we always went into hiding before we cried (or laughed out loud for that matter). And I knew I had to come out and bid them farewell (my elder brother declined going so daddy went with my younger brother) bcos if I didn't come out, it would be interpreted as wanting to do 'strong head'. So i came out, plastered a smile on my face and bid them farewell....

And that was just one incident out of the many each week had. I thank God I turned out well sha...lol. And me and my dad we are cool now that everyone is grown up and left home...the distance helps and he is a wonderful father...now.

The last Inadequate Father we would talk about in this series...is the SHADOW DAD

Stay tuned

Nutty Jay