Trigger Warning / Content Note

This article contains narrative descriptions of parental alcohol use, emotional ambivalence, and subtle shifts in family safety. It reflects the lived experience of a child’s shifting perceptions of care and risk within a domestic setting. Readers may find it distressing, particularly those with lived experience of addiction, family violence, or emotional instability in caregiving relationships.

Narrative Memory: “The Kick Before the Change”

“HIGHER – HIGHER!!”

She was so happy, running around screeching her head off.

She sounded like a demented flying dinosaur.

It was hilarious watching her do it.

Dad kicked it again – it went as high as the tree.

I couldn’t believe it.

“Dad, that was HUGE!” I screamed. “You’re amazing, did you see that? You kicked it as high as the tree!”

Dad laughed and kept kicking the ball every time we brought it back to him. Every time. It must have been ages.

Mum and the smallest sat over near the mound of dirt we kept trying to turn into a fairy castle.

The dirt was so hard though – it was impossible to do anything to it.

She was looking over at us and smiling. Then would look back to the smallest.

A car drove up the driveway. It was Dad’s friend.

“Thanks, old boy, here you go – to say thank you!”

A bottle of brown water, with the red sticker.

It was the bad water.

It was worse than the white one with the ice.

“Dad, can you kick it again, please?”

I tried to make him come back.

“No, I’ve had enough now, girls. We’ve had a great time, haven’t we?! Thank you so much for playing with me.”

He gave us a hug and a kiss. He had a huge smile on his face just for us.

“Now it’s time for Daddy to have a talk with his friend, ok?”

We kept kicking the ball around, but made sure to watch.

You needed to.

It was only a matter of time.

One… two… three…

That’s not Dad anymore.

The Emotional Architecture of a Good Afternoon

This memory opens with warmth, laughter, and connection. The child’s joy is real, as is her father’s affectionate engagement. In a moment of playful attunement, the family unit appears safe and whole. These types of interactions are protective and even restorative. They are what Bowlby (1982) described as “safe base” experiences – instances of secure connection that support resilience.

But the power of this memory is not just in the joy; it’s in the anticipation of its ending. Even as the play continues, the child is already scanning for a shift. She is not fully immersed in delight – she is also forecasting its disappearance.

This is a hallmark of children raised in unpredictable or substance-affected households. As Fisher (2017) and van der Kolk (2014) note, trauma-exposed children are neurologically primed to track changes in facial expression, tone, and bodily movement with exceptional sensitivity. Their systems are tuned not only to enjoy safety, but to predict its loss.

Alcohol as Emotional Threshold

This detail carries incredible weight. The child doesn’t call it alcohol – she identifies it by visual and emotional shorthand. She knows what happens next. She has developed a coded taxonomy of danger based on drink color, bottle label, and adult behavior. It reflects a cognitive-emotional adaptation that occurs in children who witness substance misuse without explicit explanation (Johnson & Leff, 1999; Sher, 1997).

The red sticker bottle signifies a ritual crossing point: from affectionate father to someone else. From playmate to risk. What is so striking is how calmly this is narrated. It’s not the moment of trauma. It’s the moment before it – the quiet, anticipatory grief children carry when they know a parent is about to disappear, emotionally if not physically.

“Come Back”: The Child’s Attempt at Preservation

This small request is heartbreaking. The child is not asking to play – she’s trying to hold him in place. To keep the version of him that was smiling and safe.

In trauma literature, this is sometimes called emotional anchoring – a behavior in which children attempt to hold caregivers in a “good mood” through service, affection, or distraction (Hughes, 2016). It stems not from manipulation but from adaptive survival: the recognition that once the shift happens, the child’s safety – emotional or otherwise – may not be guaranteed.

Affection and Its Disappearance: The Performance of Goodbye

This gesture, while outwardly warm, marks a significant transition. In secure environments, affection extends beyond mood. In homes affected by trauma, affection may serve as a closure signal – a bookend to a safe moment.

The kiss and hug are not sustaining; they are part of the departure.

This is aligned with what Cassidy and Shaver (2018) describe in ambivalent attachment patterns: affection is intermittent, confusing, and often arrives with a sense of foreboding. The child internalizes that “good moments” are limited and that love is temporary or performative. They may even feel guilty for having asked for more.

The Hypervigilant Child: Watching for the Switch

This moment illustrates the cognitive-emotional reality of hypervigilance. The child is playing – but not really. She is monitoring, readying herself.

This is the moment when children raised in emotionally unstable environments begin what Porges (2011) would call neuroception: an unconscious evaluation of risk. The smile is gone. The cues have changed. And now the child must shift – quietly, without disrupting the adult dynamic.

What is remarkable is how calm the narration is. This calm is not a sign of resilience – it’s a sign of internal suppression. The nervous system is bracing.

The Disappearance of the “Good Father” and Emotional Dissociation

This closing line is devastating. It does not describe abuse directly – it describes the absence of the protector. The emotional anchor has slipped. The adult in the room is physically the same, but psychologically absent or altered. The child must adjust.

This moment mirrors what Freyd (1996) calls betrayal trauma – when a trusted figure becomes unpredictable or unsafe. But rather than flee, the child suppresses awareness in order to preserve the attachment. The phrase “That’s not Dad anymore” is not just sadness. It is a psychological partition – a necessary emotional disconnection to keep functioning.

The Mother’s Distance: Presence Without Power

The mother is present, even smiling – but not intervening. This dynamic, often misunderstood, reflects a form of protective withdrawal.

In homes where one parent dominates or changes unpredictably, the other may attempt to manage from the margins, especially when younger children are present (Humphreys & Thiara, 2003). She smiles, she stays nearby – but she doesn’t interrupt.

It is likely she knows the shift is coming too.

Her silence, while painful, is not necessarily indifference. As Kelly (1988) argues, women in coercively controlled or substance – impacted families often face impossible choices – when intervening may escalate harm, and withdrawing is the only path to short-term stability.

The Fairy Castle and the Hard Dirt: A Subtle Metaphor of Childhood Resilience

This detail about the children’s attempt to build a fairy castle reads as an incidental memory, but functions as a potent metaphor. They are trying to create magic on terrain that won’t allow transformation. The dirt won’t soften. The dream doesn’t hold.

This becomes a metaphor for the psychological conditions of the home: efforts to create beauty, connection, and fantasy in an environment where the emotional substrate is too hardened to support them.

Children in these environments often develop adaptive imagination, using story, play, or fantasy to create meaning or control (Cohen, Mannarino, & Deblinger, 2006). But over time, when those stories can’t take root, even imagination can feel like a betrayal.

Layered Trauma and the Long-Term Internalization of Conditional Safety

The narrative arc of this memory shows no shouting, no explicit harm – only an emotional withdrawal that the child knows how to name. This, too, is trauma. It is layered, covert, and deeply encoded.

Research into Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) has shown that emotional unpredictability, substance misuse, and emotional neglect – even without physical abuse – significantly impact brain development, attachment style, and adult relational patterns (Felitti et al., 1998; Anda et al., 2006).

Children who grow up in these conditions are more likely to:

The moment the ball stops being kicked is the moment the internal shift begins. From play to performance. From presence to protection.

Conclusion: Who We Watch While They Change

This memory is not about abuse in the legal sense – it’s about emotional abandonment in real time. A child knows that affection has a deadline. That the smile is temporary. That the bottle with the red sticker changes the rules of the house.

It teaches us:

It is not a metaphor. It is a diagnosis – a child’s way of naming dissociation, grief, and survival all at once.

And for those of us listening, it’s a reminder that we must stop asking only what happened.

We must also ask:

When did the child realize the person they loved wasn’t there anymore?And what did they do to stay safe, once they knew?

References