The Silent Treatment Between Parents: What Children Learn

The short answer: the silent treatment between parents isn’t peace. Children read the silence and often feel they must keep the adults connected. Break it yourself, with one small step.

Some parents say, with some pride, “We never shout in front of the children.” And it is true. There is no shouting. There is only silence: days of it, after an argument nobody remembers clearly. The father eats with his eyes on his phone. The mother speaks to him only through the children. “Tell your dad dinner is ready.”

I have a principle about this. Silence is not the same thing as peace. A house can be quiet and still be at war. And children feel that war as clearly as any shouting.

Why silence feels safer to adults

To the adults, silence can feel like the responsible choice. At least the children aren’t hearing a fight. Sometimes it is a way of avoiding saying something cruel. Sometimes one partner is overwhelmed and does not know how to talk. Sometimes it is used as punishment. Often both are waiting for the other to speak first.

Understanding why it happens does not make it harmless.

What research says about withdrawal

Researchers who study children and parental conflict count withdrawal among the destructive ways adults fight. In two studies following families for three years, E. Mark Cummings and colleagues described destructive conflict as including “personal insults, defensiveness, marital withdrawal, sadness or fear”, and linked it to later depression, anxiety and behaviour problems in children (University of Notre Dame, on Cummings and colleagues 2006).

The marriage researcher John Gottman calls this pattern stonewalling: when “the listener withdraws from the interaction, shuts down, and simply stops responding to their partner” (The Gottman Institute).

What children may be learning

Children hear what is missing: the “good morning” between parents, the shared joke, the hand on the shoulder. Because nobody explains, they fill the gap with their own guesses. Depending on their age and place in the family, they may learn:

• That they must keep the adults connected. A child used as a messenger between two silent parents is carrying a job no child should carry. Some carry it into adulthood, always the peacemaker.
• That when things get hard, people disappear. An older child may start doing it themselves, behind a closed bedroom door.
• To watch adults’ faces for danger. A small child may ask, again and again, “Are you happy?”, trying to read a mood nobody will name.
• A picture of love. That people who love each other can stop speaking for days, and that this is normal.

And there is one more cost. While the parents are absorbed in their cold war, they drift away from their children. A child who cannot find warmth at home goes looking for it outside.

Breaking the silence

Someone goes first. “We haven’t really spoken since Tuesday. I don’t want to keep going like this.” It does not have to be the person who was “wrong”.

Take it to the closed room. Disagreements between parents are settled in private, properly discussed, not frozen. If emotions are too high, agree a time: “Tomorrow, after the children are asleep.” A break with a return time is different from silence with no end.

Stop using the children as messengers. Speak to each other directly about practical things, even while the bigger issue is unresolved.

Tell the children something. Not the details. Just enough: “Mum and Dad have been upset with each other this week. It’s not about you. We’re sorting it out.”

Let them see the thaw. A shared meal, a real greeting, a joke between the parents. Children notice.

Look at what keeps causing it. A marriage rarely goes cold for one reason. Busyness, small daily criticisms, all the attention going to the children, different ways of handling conflict learned in different childhood homes. A shared goal for the family, time together, and a rule against criticising each other over nothing prevent many silences before they start.

Get help if it keeps happening. If silences last for days or weeks, again and again, couples counselling can help you find another way through disagreement.

When silence is control

If silence is used to punish, frighten or control, if one partner is regularly ignored as a way of making them comply, that can be a form of emotional abuse. Support services can help. If you or your children are in danger, call your local emergency number.

One step tonight

If there is a silence in your home right now, break it with one sentence, tonight, in private: “I don’t want the children to grow up thinking this is what love looks like. Can we talk tomorrow?” Then keep the appointment.

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Next step

Look at the pattern between the adults. Answer a few questions about the silences and arguments that keep repeating, and get a 7-day sheet for both of you. Pattern Check →

Sources

• University of Notre Dame (2006). New studies confirm impact of parental conflict on children’s futures, on Cummings, E. M. and colleagues, Child Development. al.nd.edu
• The Gottman Institute. The Four Horsemen: recognizing destructive communication patterns. gottman.com