Punishments and punishments....

a cute woodchuck trying to reach a fruit in a fruit tree
(photo: Steve Thomas).

[Updated during the day]. During my shower I came to think: we have a ban on corporal punishment in Sweden since 30 years. And I think that’s a right thing to have. Because it at least gives signals to children that spanking is forbidden.

But along with that it ought to be information about what spankings causes. Not only what they CAN cause, but what they actually cause. Because they are always damaging. Even though the damage can become softened by an enlightened witness, to the point that the beaten child as grown up doesn’t direct his anger at other people, but on her/himself? The effects ought to become investigated more…

I also came to think, when I went on drying my hair after the shower, that children not only need to get their physical needs met, such as with shelter, food, clean clothes and environment, but also - and not least – when it comes to emotional needs. They need to get their emotional needs met too! And not least, to be able to live as functionally as possible. As fulfilled and real and genuine as possible.

You can punish a child emotionally too with a lot of means, and these sorts of punishments are too belittled and minimized. And maybe they are even more important to meet, than if the child doesn’t have to starve or have clothes that aren’t clean and these sorts of things??

Some loud thinking in the midst of preparing myself for a long working day.

Thinking further on emotional abuse/punishment on the bike to work and from it to lunch: to surround a child with silence, laugh at it, belittle its feelings and reactions, what it says and expresses, how it says things and expresses things…

Miller writes about a wall of silence... And what it actually does in and to a child. That it's so extremely painful so the child has to suppress the feeling entirely, and thus have no connection with it later, and don't really understand what she/h is doing in turn, to a child or a person in her/his power.

But after all, it's different when we experience this wall of silence as children compared to as adults. In the first case we have no options, no choices. We cant leave the relation or divorce, but as adults we can usually escape the situation or react in some way. Except for in a therapy or therapy-like situation, when we maybe have landed in a childlike state, i.e. regressed to some degree (more or less).

Dependent on how harmed we were when we came to that therapy or how much we have processed early experiences or not we can handle a latter wall of silence. Condemn it if it's justified, and not stay in a bad relation. Not being incapable of leaving, and/or blaming ourselves for the bad treatment. That about an open, genuine, real communication!

And then I am back to decent treatments of people on a list for those harmed early in life, and abuse of power from a moderator and what it can cause...