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I witnessed some very interesting things about people over the past few days since last Friday’s fiasco regarding the troubles of my neighbor girl (see those posts).  The biggest issues I ended up encountering had to do with people’s attitudes toward children in general, and toward hitting (spanking?) children in particular.

I very quickly learned that whether or not children should be protected by law from being physically assaulted by grownups is NOT a topic open to nearly anyone’s rational thinking abilities.  Talk about a HOT TOPIC!  Because I believe nothing much positive can be accomplished through animosity, aggressive disagreement, arguing, heated passions in strong opposition and defense — I now know there are very few (too few for me to find) adults who I can even begin to talk with about the subject of protecting children from assault by all adults.

And, yes, I define any physical act of violence and aggression by big people against little people to be wrong.  And, yes, I believe children need to be protected against actions of violence and aggression by adults BY LAW.

I quickly discovered that the kinds of changes I would like to see in America to enact fundamental protections for our little people will not happen in my lifetime.  We are NOT much of a civilized society when it comes to thinking about what the CHILDREN need.  We appear to be far more concerned with what ADULTS WANT based on their beliefs about ADULT rights.

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Any conversation I tried to have with adults in order to explore this topic instantly turned HOSTILE!

Even worse than this I found that adults cannot hear themselves on the topic.  I think it would be easier and more accepted in this nation to remove adults’ rights to vote than to protect children from adult ‘rights’ to HIT them whenever an adult (so-called parents, teachers and caregivers) WANT to hit a child — for some fantastical believe in the legitimacy of violence by BIG people against little ones.

The underlying emotional ocean from which the right-to-hit children comes from appeared to me to be FEAR OF CHILDREN!  In this fear-based attitude toward children these adults I tried to converse with intelligently about the needs and rights of children, often openly stated that children lie, manipulate, and cannot be believed or trusted.

I had to rein in my own thoughts and feelings in response as I saw that these undercurrents run very, very close in truth and honesty to hatred of children.

Children – not to be believed?

ARE CHILDREN THE ENEMIES OF ADULTS?

Apparently so.

If I stretch to find a more innocuous perceptual position from which to view what the adults I talked to were saying, the most naive stand I can take is that adults in America’s trained-monkey consumerist materialist culture KNOW that their children belong to them as POSSESSIONS.

Children are not, to these (in my personal opinion) ignorant and misguided adults, really people at all!  They are — in truth — as judged by the rage-filled attitudes of these adults, inherently CRIMINALS in need of PUNISHMENT.

Are adults afraid of the innocence of children?  Are they afraid of the free-wheeling creative thought of children?  Are they afraid of the PEOPLE that children actually ARE?

Do these adults wish to unconditionally reserve the right to BULLY children by wielding POWER over these children as threat, terrorism and  trauma?  What adult among us desires to be WHACKED with physical force — that is supposedly ONLY a SPANKING deserved — for — WHAT?  Deserved for being ALIVE?

Great.  We as a nation are giving birth to our own enemies?

We have a long, long ways to go.  I try to be positive.  I try to look at “how far we’ve come” in attitudes toward the needs and rights of children.  I try to say “we are buds who will blossom sooner or later.”

Yet if people cannot converse rationally about an issue so important to children as the right and need not to be hurt, betrayed and physically HIT (assaulted) by big people without any power of their own to HIT the adults back in self defense — how is anyone who NEEDS to learn something new about who children are and what they need to grow peacefully into a peaceful, safe, secure and happy world — going to happen?  HOW exactly are we ever as a nation, as a species, going to grow, change and improve?

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If you don’t think passing a law nationally to criminalize ‘spanking’ in America is a HOT topic, try speaking with ten people in support of such a law.  You will be shocked, sickened, ashamed, dismayed.  But don’t defend your ideas.  There will be a fight – it will not be a pretty situation — or a productive one.  But it will be enlightening.

See:  State by State — United States statutes as they pertain to spanking and child abuse

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Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

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April 10, 2012 – Adobe Peace Garden in its budding for this new season — it is slightly overcast today – and I don’t know how to change any settings on this camera I have now – not sure this one has the best color — the here’s the garden nearly read to BLOOM!

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OK – Reactive Attachment Disorder – take THIS

Steve Winwood – ROLL WITH IT

Time for some DANCING!  We deserve to dance in freedom!

Sabrina — I will dance for you until you are free to dance for YOURSELF!

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I must clarify:  Empathy and compassion are not the same thing!  The simplest way I can think of to describe the difference between these is that empathy is a physiological reaction and process through which compassion manifests itself in intent and then through action.  Empathy involves a mutual sharing of information between people.

Both processes heavily rely on physiological pathways in the nervous system and brain – but the empathy response is PRIMARILY an automatic instantaneous PHYSICAL response, while compassion — I believe — is a quality of the soul that can be fostered far more easily than empathy disorders can be ‘corrected’.  Compassion is what we DO with the information our empathy gives to us.  The health of our attachment system determines how well (healthily, appropriately) our empathy abilities operate.

Healthy empathy is designed to let one person receive accurate and clear information about the internal state of another person.  It is in no way (in my opinion) supposed to involve the NEEDS of the receiver in any way.  Clear empathy is about THE OTHER PERSON.

It is through appropriate and clear empathy – along with love, compassion and appropriate response — that an infant’s caregiver builds both safe and secure attachment circuitry into the emotional-social rapidly growing right brain of an infant, and also into its rapidly growing and developing nervous systems (Central Nervous System and Autonomic Nervous System).

In infant-caregiver interactions this is called MIRRORING.  The caregiver is supposed to resonate with the ‘feeling states’ of an infant and MIRROR these back to the infant without caregiver contamination in the information being sent back and received by the infant.

Again, as I have said so often, the information needed to understand the truth about attachment – and empathy – is here:

+BEING A PHYSICAL BEING IN AN IMPERFECT WORLD

Again, PLEASE also see:

*Preschooler empathy

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The entire scenario with Sabrina (see posts listed below) would have gone entirely differently if I did not have the most severe type of insecure attachment disorder and resulting empathy disorder that I received as my body-brain was built from birth in an unsafe and insecure, inadequate, traumatizing, abusive environment.

My own needs, feelings, memories, etc. would NOT have been triggered.  I would not have dissolved (become disoriented-disorganized) in any way by Sabrina’s condition.  I would have been able to respond entirely appropriately in the situation.

Most certainly I would have been able to lock Sabrina into my house and refused to let her out at least until her mother provided me the telephone number of Sabrina’s probation officer – so that I could give it to Sabrina.  This is what Sabrina needed!!

My compassion cannot result in the most appropriate actions I COULD take because of what I just wrote in bold type.

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This post follows these ones:

+WHO WILL HELP MY NEIGHBOR GIRL? SUCH CRIPPLING DESPAIR…..

+MY MOSAIC OF REACTION TO BEING FACED WITH……..

+”WHY SHOULD I CARE? IT’S NOT MY CHILD!”

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As things stand I am completely in need of reestablishing my own self-organization and self-orientation as a result of my own terrible LONG history of traumatic abuse having been triggered.

Every piece of furniture in my house came to me used.  All of my ‘table chairs’ but one have duct tape repairs to them.  On my one ‘best’ chair I will keep a flowering plant, a vase of fresh flowers, a plant of some kind — for a long long time to come.

NOBODY will be allowed to sit in this chair.  This chair is now SABRINA’S CHAIR.  It is the chair in which that suffering troubled child sat as she pleaded for protection, safety, help.

If anyone asks about this chair, I will certainly tell them its story.

Abused children live in war zones.  They are not equipped to fight back against those who are harming them.  They cannot win against a society who does not honor and help them – but instead is protecting their abusers.

This chair is now a memorial space for suffering I cannot stop.  The issues represented by Sabrina’s Chair are those around which my entire life centers.

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Not law yet but HOPEFULLY!!

CANADA – Senators approve anti-spanking bill

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Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

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If every single person who has the capacity to care about the well-being of children had a child walk into their yard, into their home, in the state of complete meltdown despair, terror, sorrow, hopelessness – and need – that I did two days ago (see post links below) – perhaps some needed changes on behalf of suffering children would REALLY begin to happen.

I challenge everyone to imagine how such a scenario would play itself out for you, for any battered child who came for your help, any differently than this has happened for Sabrina — and for me.

The law is completely on the side of battering parents – it is NOT on the side of infants and children, no matter what we want to pretend differently to ourselves about the TRUTH!  Again, see:  State by State — United States statutes as they pertaining to spanking and child abuse

We still legally sanction, condone and support parental bullying, terrorism and assault against infants and children – no matter what we might wish to comfort ourselves by believing to the contrary.

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Please take a look at the information in this post:

*Preschooler empathy

It is important to understand that as with the information about ‘kindling’ that I popped into my last post, insecure attachments create empathy disorders that can NEVER really be repaired.

People like to throw around words like ‘plasticity’ and ‘resiliency’ as if those words have any real meaning in a real conversation about what matters to children who are terrorized and traumatized by hatred, stupidity and abuse.  THEY DON’T — !!

I see the image of a cake in my mind — all prettily frosted and ready to be eaten.  Oops!  A cake built in terror and trauma?  Let’s pretend we can just FIX it down the road in a child’s/person’s life.

NOPE!

All we can learn about healing ‘later on’ – is like baking a secondary cake.  You cannot put these two cakes together as one.  You cannot bake a second ‘better’ or ‘right’ cake later on, down the road once the damage to a growing child’s body and brain has been done in an insecure and unsafe world — and pretend that things are now OK!!

Sabrina will NEVER be OK as if she had been treated with tender love, care, respect during these developmental years she is concluding now.

Sabrina will spend the rest of her LIFE suffering consequences from the wounding harm that has been done to her and is continuing to be done to her.

Please take a few minutes to read the above link and to THINK about what it is saying – and what the implications are for anyone who has not had a safe and secure attachment environment during their earliest years — which is true for at least half of our population to one degree or another.

We can celebrate our little holidays and pretend we are individually happy while we ignore the plight of suffering infants and children if we want to.  Go right ahead.  Who is to care?

The pain of children does not stop on holidays.

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following these posts:

+WHO WILL HELP MY NEIGHBOR GIRL? SUCH CRIPPLING DESPAIR…..

+MY MOSAIC OF REACTION TO BEING FACED WITH……..

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Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

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