““When a child is subjected to verbal attacks, she sees it not as something being done to her but as something she has caused by her own failings. Because children cannot conceive that their all-powerful godlike parents can do anything wrong, they believe what their parents say. The parent's negative opinion becomes the fact on which the child bases her self-image. If the messages the child gets about herself are primarily positive, her self-image will be healthy. But for many children, the positive messages are constantly being canceled out by negative ones.””
