The enormous importance of the parenting and care taking style and of not exposing children to stress...

A quick blogposting in the morning, spontaneously thinking loudly.

Read the article ”How Childhood Trauma Can Cause Adult Obesity”.

Reducing the stress, already for the not born baby and by treating it with the greatest respect during its whole childhood (and understanding its "inadequate" reactions), is of enormous importance, not only for the individual and her/his future life and life quality, but also for the society and the world.

With other words we have to treat the children with love, genuine love, and if we can't genuinely love we should be willing to explore why; if it has with us or in fact with the child to do. Maybe what the child is triggering in us.

But if you became stressed and didn't get what you needed early I think you can recover later, with a lot of work though, and recover if your painful experiences aren't/haven't been played down. And by that adults recognize what is actually painful, thus needed to be repressed and/or played down, experiences that are still remaining in the body with all what that means, for the individual and her/his environment wherever this person is in the society.

And this has nothing to do with forgiveness. Even if forgiveness probably can feel good for the moment, because what you are ding when you are forgiving is to deny (more or less) what was done and how painful and even harmful and not right it actually was (meeting evil with evil doesn't solve anything, not even when it comes to a parent meeting a small child's evilness with punishments).

See what Alice Miller has written about this with forgiveness, for instance in "Decepetion Kills Love."

Also see the preface to Alice Miller's book "From Rage to Courage."

And it's crucial how we meet children who have already become traumatized and who are stressed (maybe showing it in hyperactivity) later on. That we are willing to listen to them and not expose them for even more stress and pressure. I'm very critical to the current school politics and they who are responsible for it (and oher politics) in the Swedish government today. See David Korten being shocked that countries like Sweden are on their way of copying his home country USA when it comes to economic politics (causing increasing inequality with everything that follows in the footsteps of this).

And what is hyperactivity about? What is ADHD etc. actually?

The article points out that a child being exposed to another parenting style than her mother's (father's or parents') changes her/his future parenting style. So a child born to a neglectful parent who is raised by a caring caretaker becomes a caring caretaker for her/his children later.

The article also refers to research showing that early stress causes a lot of health troubles of different kinds. Troubles that could become avoided.

I think those (we) could be healed to different degrees if they (we) were allowed to admit to the things we have been exposed and were allowed to call early (and later) experiences in question.

Also read the blogposting (my translation of the heading of the posting from Norwegian to English, but the text in the posting is in English) "Adverse Childhood Experiences and Psychosis."

Violations, punishments, trials to make the child obedient and what that has caused and causes in the adult life, in the society and the world…

Have come to think about violations again. Searched for old postings on this here. Found one in which you can read about the American therapist Jean Jenson on what she thinks violations are, inspired by Pia Mellody’s ideas. I use the "Summary" I made in English in this posting and have made small changes and additions in it.

Yes, different treatments were and are used as punishments and to make the child obedient. Used to silence it etc. And we take this with into adult life if we don’t get help to process them and these early experiences cause us a lot of problems depending on the degree we have gotten help to process them. Sometimes we have huge problems.

And some play this out on other people close to them who are in lower positions. Women usually on their kids because they haven’t gotten other power positions in this world. Men play them out on wife and kids if they have any, and/or at work depending on the power position he has there.

Miller speculates on what had happened if Hitler had had kids, i.e. if he had had objects to abreact on at home. Had he become that world tyrant as he became?

And what happen with those whose voices were entirely silenced? Who maybe never got a voice and didn’t get the opportunity to express themselves. And with those who had a voice and got the opportunity to express themselves, but in a, from the truth, disguised way.

About this Miller speculates in one of her last books, “The Body Never Lies – the Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting.” About authors and other artists who expressed themselves, sometimes very bravely, but never really called early experiences in question. They became sick. Also see what the Norwegian physician Anna-Luise Kirkengen and her findings in this respect.

To come back to Jenson and Mellody; they mean it isn’t only a question of physical or sexual violations but also of emotional violations. Of disrespect even emotionally. Verbal violence, demands on perfectionism, neglect, abandonment and “exaggerated control of reality” (the child is told what to wear, what friends to have, how to think [and not think], what it shall believe in), they see all these things as violations.

And they also write about the phenomenon emotional incest, to use the child instead of the partner or another grown up as the intimate or confidant, something the child couldn’t escape or say no to, and something Mellody thinks is very common in our cultures, and what is a violation too according to them, an infringement on the child's integrity.

Jenson writes about an emotionally not accessible father, what that means to the child; giving it a feeling of not being good enough.

A mother “sick” because she was drunk and the children were hindered to disturb her or "give her troubles" [this mother wasn’t there for her kids either, absent, if not physically so emotionally/psychologically]. Threatened by their father if they did “disturb” her, with being spanked, and how THAT felt. Maybe so painful so they had to suppress that feeling. Probably because of their whole history and other experiences with their caregivers.

They write about growing up with many siblings, where each child didn’t get enough attention or time. That was an emotional violation. Neglect. Giving the child a feeling of being forgotten, and being unimportant.

And about a family in which all seemed to be kind and friendly (and maybe even caring, at least on the surface), but when the child tried to communicate something that worried it its mom used to change subject (not listening or not wanting to listen) and dad sat hidden behind the newspaper (not wanting to listen either, also avoiding the problem). An emotional violation. Being abandoned. Giving the child a feeling of being ignored and not being good enough (to be listened to, being taken seriously, being seen and cared for) etc.

The right to have ones feelings, emotions, thoughts, and to express them loudly just as anybody else, so long as you don’t harm anybody. Not become silenced. Again.

Men have had the power and money (material wealth), that is things that have made it and still makes it easier for them to raise their voices (and see the Norwegian Berit Ås with her Master Suppression techniques).

On the King of Pain...

[Slightly edited October 19]. About one of the effects of child-rearing techniques read “The King of Pain, Chapter 6 of Republican Gomorrah” by Max Blumenthal, 2009, Nation Books, NY.

And more on James Dobson, with his “Focus on the Family”.

Also read "Passion and Purpose for Parents in every season" , “James Dobson: Focusing on Himself-

How James Dobson, leader of Focus on the Family, sets himself up as the moral authority of the nation -- taken from his own words and from other media reports" by Brian Elroy McKinley: “Move over George Washington. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, wants to take your place as father of our country. But rather than being a true father -- one who helps us mature into individuals -- he is little more than another Pharisee, setting himself up as a religiously-based political dictator bent on getting us to support his personal view of legislated morality. And what's even worse, Dobson goes to great length to use Scripture to support his view, and yet according to Time magazine he doesn't even have any formal theological training. In short, Dobson, using his position as a radio psychologist, has set himself up as our moral authority and asks us all to blindly follow.” See quotations by James Dobson. See about the book ”Republican Gomorrah: Inside The Movement That Shattered The Party” by Max Blumentahl.