Beautifully written! Thank you. The other day my husband asked me what I would say to my childhood self if I could travel back in time. My answer is that I would tell her to give our mom some grace. That she is doing her best and facing things we don’t know about.
Ah I just wrote about the vapidity of “It Ends with Us” and I bet these meme creators probably loved that movie/book. It certainly made the mother look like an empty vessel.
“It’s only after children have been discovered to be severely battered that their parents are forced to take a childrearing course as a condition of regaining custody. That’s much like requiring no license or driver’s ed[ucation] to drive a car, then waiting until drivers injure or kill someone before demanding that they learn how to drive.”
—Myriam Miedzian, Ph.D.
.
“The way a society functions is a reflection of the childrearing practices of that society. Today we reap what we have sown. Despite the well-documented critical nature of early life experiences, we dedicate few resources to this time of life. We do not educate our children about child development, parenting, or the impact of neglect and trauma on children.”
—Dr. Bruce D. Perry, Ph.D. & Dr. John Marcellus
.
"I remember leaving the hospital thinking, ‘Wait, are they going to let me just walk off with him? I don’t know beans about babies! I don’t have a license to do this. We’re just amateurs’.”
—Anne Tyler, Breathing Lessons
.
“It has been said that if child abuse and neglect were to disappear today, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual would shrink to the size of a pamphlet in two generations, and the prisons would empty. Or, as Bernie Siegel, MD, puts it, quite simply, after half a century of practicing medicine, ‘I have become convinced that our number-one public health problem is our childhood’.”
I believe that to possibly proactively avoid invasive State removal of children in cases of dysfunctional familial situations, we should be willing to try something unconventional to prevent future dysfunctional family situations: Teach our high school students the science of how a child’s mind develops and therefor its susceptibility to flawed or dysfunctional daily environments, notably in family life.
Rather than being about instilling ‘values’, such child-development science curriculum should be about understanding, not just information memorization. It may be an alternative to the dysfunction seemingly increasingly prevalent.
When I asked a teachers’ union official whether there was any such curriculum taught, he unfortunately immediately replied there was not. When I asked the reason for its absence and whether it may be due to the subject matter being too controversial, he replied with a simple “Yes”.
This strongly suggests there are philosophical thus political obstacles to teaching students even such crucial life skills as healthy parenting through understanding child development. But what troubles me is, how teaching this would be considered more controversial thus a non-starter than teaching sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) curriculum, as is already taught here? …
Although society cannot prevent anyone from bearing children, it can educate all young people for the most important job ever, even those intending to remain childless.
This!! I wrote something similar about parenting with my ancestors, rather than in spite of them (check it out on my Substack if that interests you). I used to follow you elsewhere, Graeme, and am happy to find you here! Followed ❤️🔥
There’s a naïve perception resulting in the perilous implementation of procreative ‘rights’ as though the potential parent will somehow, in blind anticipation, be innately inclined to sufficiently understand and appropriately nurture the child’s naturally developing bodies, minds and needs.
In Childhood Disrupted the author writes that “[even] well-meaning and loving parents can unintentionally do harm to a child if they are not well informed about human development” (pg.24).
Although society cannot prevent anyone from bearing children, not even the plainly incompetent and reckless procreator, it can educate all young people for the most important job ever, even those intending to remain childless. Rather than being about instilling ‘values’, such child-development science curriculum should be about understanding, not just information memorization. It may even end up mitigating some of the familial dysfunction seemingly increasingly prevalent in society.
If nothing else, such curriculum could offer students an idea/clue as to whether they’re emotionally suited for the immense responsibility and strains of parenthood. Given what is at stake, should they not at least be equipped with such important science-based knowledge?
Crucial knowledge like: Since it cannot fight or flight, a baby hearing loud noises nearby, such as that of quarrelling parents, can only “move into a third neurological state, known as a ‘freeze’ state. … This freeze state is a trauma state” (pg.123). And it’s the unpredictability of a stressor, rather than the intensity, that does the most harm. When the stressor “is completely predictable, even if it is more traumatic — such as giving a [laboratory] rat a regularly scheduled foot shock accompanied by a sharp, loud sound — the stress does not create these exact same [negative] brain changes” (pg. 42).
The prolonged absorption of such traumatic experiences will cause the brain to improperly develop. It can readily be the starting point towards a childhood, adolescence and adulthood in which the brain uncontrollably releases potentially damaging levels of inflammatory stress hormones and chemicals, even in non-stressful daily routines. It can make every day a mental ordeal, unless the turmoil is prescription and/or illicitly medicated.
There is so much healing and wisdom in this piece. Thank you for saying what needed to be said 👏🏽🌹
Thank you so much ❤️
I needed to read that. Powerful!
I needed to write it. Thank you for witnessing. ❤️
Beautifully written! Thank you. The other day my husband asked me what I would say to my childhood self if I could travel back in time. My answer is that I would tell her to give our mom some grace. That she is doing her best and facing things we don’t know about.
Ah I just wrote about the vapidity of “It Ends with Us” and I bet these meme creators probably loved that movie/book. It certainly made the mother look like an empty vessel.
“It’s only after children have been discovered to be severely battered that their parents are forced to take a childrearing course as a condition of regaining custody. That’s much like requiring no license or driver’s ed[ucation] to drive a car, then waiting until drivers injure or kill someone before demanding that they learn how to drive.”
—Myriam Miedzian, Ph.D.
.
“The way a society functions is a reflection of the childrearing practices of that society. Today we reap what we have sown. Despite the well-documented critical nature of early life experiences, we dedicate few resources to this time of life. We do not educate our children about child development, parenting, or the impact of neglect and trauma on children.”
—Dr. Bruce D. Perry, Ph.D. & Dr. John Marcellus
.
"I remember leaving the hospital thinking, ‘Wait, are they going to let me just walk off with him? I don’t know beans about babies! I don’t have a license to do this. We’re just amateurs’.”
—Anne Tyler, Breathing Lessons
.
“It has been said that if child abuse and neglect were to disappear today, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual would shrink to the size of a pamphlet in two generations, and the prisons would empty. Or, as Bernie Siegel, MD, puts it, quite simply, after half a century of practicing medicine, ‘I have become convinced that our number-one public health problem is our childhood’.”
—Childhood Disrupted, pg.228
Agree! The emotional part of it is much harder than changing diapers.
I believe that to possibly proactively avoid invasive State removal of children in cases of dysfunctional familial situations, we should be willing to try something unconventional to prevent future dysfunctional family situations: Teach our high school students the science of how a child’s mind develops and therefor its susceptibility to flawed or dysfunctional daily environments, notably in family life.
Rather than being about instilling ‘values’, such child-development science curriculum should be about understanding, not just information memorization. It may be an alternative to the dysfunction seemingly increasingly prevalent.
When I asked a teachers’ union official whether there was any such curriculum taught, he unfortunately immediately replied there was not. When I asked the reason for its absence and whether it may be due to the subject matter being too controversial, he replied with a simple “Yes”.
This strongly suggests there are philosophical thus political obstacles to teaching students even such crucial life skills as healthy parenting through understanding child development. But what troubles me is, how teaching this would be considered more controversial thus a non-starter than teaching sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) curriculum, as is already taught here? …
Although society cannot prevent anyone from bearing children, it can educate all young people for the most important job ever, even those intending to remain childless.
This!! I wrote something similar about parenting with my ancestors, rather than in spite of them (check it out on my Substack if that interests you). I used to follow you elsewhere, Graeme, and am happy to find you here! Followed ❤️🔥
There’s a naïve perception resulting in the perilous implementation of procreative ‘rights’ as though the potential parent will somehow, in blind anticipation, be innately inclined to sufficiently understand and appropriately nurture the child’s naturally developing bodies, minds and needs.
In Childhood Disrupted the author writes that “[even] well-meaning and loving parents can unintentionally do harm to a child if they are not well informed about human development” (pg.24).
Although society cannot prevent anyone from bearing children, not even the plainly incompetent and reckless procreator, it can educate all young people for the most important job ever, even those intending to remain childless. Rather than being about instilling ‘values’, such child-development science curriculum should be about understanding, not just information memorization. It may even end up mitigating some of the familial dysfunction seemingly increasingly prevalent in society.
If nothing else, such curriculum could offer students an idea/clue as to whether they’re emotionally suited for the immense responsibility and strains of parenthood. Given what is at stake, should they not at least be equipped with such important science-based knowledge?
Crucial knowledge like: Since it cannot fight or flight, a baby hearing loud noises nearby, such as that of quarrelling parents, can only “move into a third neurological state, known as a ‘freeze’ state. … This freeze state is a trauma state” (pg.123). And it’s the unpredictability of a stressor, rather than the intensity, that does the most harm. When the stressor “is completely predictable, even if it is more traumatic — such as giving a [laboratory] rat a regularly scheduled foot shock accompanied by a sharp, loud sound — the stress does not create these exact same [negative] brain changes” (pg. 42).
The prolonged absorption of such traumatic experiences will cause the brain to improperly develop. It can readily be the starting point towards a childhood, adolescence and adulthood in which the brain uncontrollably releases potentially damaging levels of inflammatory stress hormones and chemicals, even in non-stressful daily routines. It can make every day a mental ordeal, unless the turmoil is prescription and/or illicitly medicated.