“Velociraptor Parents” - Intelligent Predators Hunting in Packs
Part 3 of 3 - Explaining why this type of parenting is so ‘effective’.
Trigger Warning : While I do hope that using Jurassic Park to describe this sort of behavior helps to make it more understandable and palatable, I am going into more detail this week about the tactics a Velociraptor Parent might use, and that might trigger some people. I humbly suggest those with parental trauma tread lightly and practice self-care.
Like many Steven Spielberg films, “Jurassic Park” (1993) is populated with dreamy complex heroes, intriguing side characters, and 2-dimensional villains. Watching it over the past three decades, I’ve noticed myself identifying with characters differently as I age. As a pre-teen watching the movie with my younger brother, it was easy for us to emphasize with the kids. Rewatching the movie recently, I expected to identify with the adult scientists. I do, after all, fancy myself a woman of science. And the arts. And chaos, come to think of it.
This time, I was surprised to find my eyes glued to the gamekeeper Robert Muldoon. Although we know very little about him, his way of staring with infatiguable vigilance struck a chord. He sees very plainly how the Velociraptors are different from the other dinosaurs. He also doesn’t hesitate to talk about the danger he sees or protect the humans in his care. He’s a real ‘Mama Bear’ of a man, and I respect that.
There are many iconic gruesome deaths in Jurassic Park. This last viewing, I felt such dread watching Muldoon die that I almost fast forwarded thru it. He is the single human in the world who best understands how to handle Velociraptors, but is still lured into their trap. It’s tragic, and it goes a long way to help the viewer understand how high the stakes are.
This intelligent trap reminds me of the way many persons I would label Velociraptor Parents maintain control over their adult offspring.
Again, I want to stress that I (and the adult offspring of Velociraptor Parents) understand that most people might not believe that some parents do this. But this is also a brilliant part of the Velociraptor Parent’s strategy: they are able to utilize the average person’s disbelief in this behavior to take control of their offsprings’ lives. If your parent is hurting you, and the people around you don’t believe you, it’s easy for the parent to convince the offspring that they have to suffer their parents’ abusive attention.
Just like the two velociraptors trapping my sweet boy Muldoon, the Velociraptor Parent hunts in packs. They are intelligent enough to leverage the average person’s disbelief into being another sort of force to wedge their offspring into exactly the right psychological position where the Velociraptor can do what it wants. They are good at enlisting other family members and authority figures into validating the Velociraptor Parent’s right to control the offspring.
It is very hard for an adult person to break away from an abusive family member, because they know they’ll be not believed and judged by the majority of the people in their life. They are afraid to show people abusive messages from their Velociraptor Parent because they are afraid of being labeled ‘broken’ or ‘crazy’, or they think it’s a normal thing to be intermittently torn apart emotionally by a family member. Or they think there’s no escape.
I’ve even heard of therapists telling clients suffering from this sort of abuse that it can’t be really happening. We should know better. But it happens.
Parents abusing offspring is one of the biggest taboos in our society. It’s disturbing for many people to even hear about. People prefer to think it’s not happening.
But if this series of articles has helped ‘the scales fall from your eyes’ about patterns of behavior you have witnessed first hand, I want to encourage you to take that pattern of behavior seriously. It is my dearest wish that if you think you are being controlled by an Velociraptor Parent, you try to find a therapist who specializes in C-PTSD or to start reading books by therapists about C-PTSD. Pete Walker’s “Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving” is a current fave.
And if you have never witnessed a Velociraptor Parent in the wild, I encourage you to keep your mind open. There is far more behind the lush greenery of our society than docile herbivores and easily outwitted omnivores. There are predators. Some of them are more intelligent than you think. And some of those ‘clever girls’ find it convenient to eat their own young.
Thank you for sharing this!