Chapter 6 - The Things I Had Called “Strict”
The first week after the salon, I wanted to make Daniel the entire explanation.
Then Ava’s therapist asked me:
“What had Ava learned would happen if she complained about Daniel?”
I knew.
“She thought I’d ask him.”
“And then?”
“I’d try to understand both sides.”
The therapist nodded.
“How did that work when one side was an eight-year-old child?”
I cried.
Not because hearing both sides is wrong.
Because I had treated every conflict as though power were equal.
It was not.
Daniel had vocabulary.
Authority.
Adult composure.
Ava had:
“He’s mean.”
“He always makes everything a rule.”
“I don’t want him doing bedtime.”
I heard a child resisting structure.
Sometimes she was.
That became the category I used even when the facts changed.
I remembered one evening six months earlier.
Ava said:
“Daniel makes me say sorry until he believes me.”
I laughed slightly.
“What does that mean?”
“He says I don’t sound sorry.”
Daniel explained:
“I ask her to make eye contact and try again instead of mumbling.”
I told Ava:
“That’s reasonable.”
Maybe once.
Then I learned he sometimes made her repeat apologies four or five times.
Not screaming.
Not threatening.
Just:
“Again.”
Until her face and voice looked sufficiently remorseful to him.
He called it accountability.
Ava experienced it as having to perform the emotion an adult demanded before she could leave.
I had missed that.
Another memory:
“Daniel says I’m manipulative.”
I told her:
“He shouldn’t use that word with you.”
Then privately asked Daniel.
He said:
“She cries every time a consequence appears.”
I answered:
“She’s eight.”
He said:
“Exactly. She’s learning what works.”
I disagreed.
Then did nothing.
Small moments.
Nothing that alone announced:
Danger.
Together, they revealed a worldview.
Daniel believed visible distress during correction was often strategic.
So Ava’s tears became evidence against Ava.
Once that happens, a child loses one of the only signals available to her.
I apologized to her carefully.
Not:
Mom should have known everything.
That would be false.
I said:
“You told me some things felt wrong, and I kept making you prove they were serious enough before I changed anything.”
Ava nodded.
“I’m sorry.”
She stared at the carpet.
Then:
“I thought you liked when he made me behave.”
That hurt.
Because sometimes I had.
The house was calmer.
Homework got done.
Fewer bedtime arguments.
I benefited from Daniel’s strictness.
I did not know what it was becoming.
But I liked the results enough that I stopped asking enough about the method.
That was mine.
Not his crime.
My blind spot.
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I had wanted a stable family so badly that I treated stability as evidence that everyone inside it felt safe.
They are not the same thing.
