Re: The Twelve Points

February 14, 2004

Greg,

I hate to tell you this, but #6 is inaccurate. I knew when I had child number 2

I had no idea how to raise her right. I found every book I could on child care

and used them. I now have very 4 well rounded children who know how to care for

children in the proper way. So children of abuse do not have to grow up to abuse

their children. They have to want to break the cycle enough to do something

about it. I have a number 6 child who was abandoned by his mother. He too is

coming along pretty well. They and I believe that sometimes a spanking is

warrented, but there is a mile wide gap between a spanking and abuse. Spankings

should also be reserved for offenses that are really bad, but only if a talking

to doesn't do the trick the first time. I do not condone spanking if a talking

will do the trick. I never condone leaving bruises or marks on a child. It also

takes self discipline to not hit back if you were raised in a home where

everyone hit each other when they were angry. I never hit someone out of anger.

I probably will if my mother ever hits my kids with her fist again. However,

since I won't be taking my kids around her I eliminate that problem altogether.

Just thought you ought to know that some of us do not turn out all bad.

I also want to correct you on number 8. Speaking as a child the system

supposedly wanted to help. I wouldn't turn anyone in to child protective

services after what I have been through with them. First as a child and then as

an aunt trying to get her neices and nephews. If anyone wants a child to turn

out to be a drug addict, abused, etc, putting them with those people will do the

trick. Especially in Florida, Michigan, or Georgia. Believe me, I know what I am

talking about.

The best thing to do if the child's life is not is danger is to stay out of it.

You can make things much worse for the child and maybe even endanger the childs

life.

I know that you mean well, and you have wonderful sentiments and feelings of

protection for children. It shows. But honestly, children are so much worse off

in a system like ours is now then they are at home with their own parents. I

have seen people turned in just because somebody was p.o. at them and the child

was ruined. The end results was that the parents were not guilty, proved it, and

yet the devastation and destruction to the family was such that it could never

be totally repaired again. The system isn't what most people believe it is. It

is just legalized kidnapping. They get blood money every time they adopt those

kids out. I call it blood money because in 95 percent of all cases they cannot

prove any kind of abuse what so ever. But the kids never get to go home again.

Most kids are never the same, when you take them from a loving home and give

them to someone else. In severe cases there does need to be someone and

someplace else for these children. But just not our system like it is.

Ok, I am off my soapbox now. Your heart is in the right place anyway.

Debbie

--

--- Original Message -----

From: Greg

To: ModOasis

Sent: Saturday, February 14, 2004 12:32 AM

Subject: The Twelve Points

The Twelve Points

1. All children are born to grow, to develop, to live, to love, and to

articulate their needs and feelings for their self-protection.

2. For their development, children need the respect and protection of adults

who take them seriously, love them, and honestly help them to become oriented in

the world.

3. When these vital needs are frustrated, and children are instead abused for

the sake of adults' needs by being exploited, beaten, punished, taken advantage

of, manipulated, neglected, or deceived without the intervention of any witness,

then their integrity will be lastingly impaired.

4. The normal reactions to such injury should be anger and pain; since

children in this hurtful kind of environment, however, are forbidden to express

their anger, and since it would be unbearable to experience their pain all

alone, they are compelled to suppress their feelings, repress all memory of the

trauma, and idealize those guilty of the abuse. Later they will have no memory

of what was done to them.

5. Disassociated from the original cause, their feelings of anger,

helplessness, despair, longing, anxiety, and pain will find expression in

destructive acts against others (criminal behavior, mass murder) or against

themselves (drug addiction, alcoholism, prostitution, psychic disorders,

suicide).

6. If these people become parents, they will then often direct acts of revenge

for their mistreatment in childhood against their own children, whom they use as

scapegoats. Child abuse is still sanctioned - indeed, held in high regard - in

our society as long as it is defined as child-rearing. It is a tragic fact that

parents beat their children in order to escape the emotions stemming from how

they were treated by their own parents.

7. If mistreated children are not to become criminals or mentally ill, it is

essential that at least once in their life they come in contact with a person

who knows without any doubt that the environment, not the helpless, battered

child, is at fault. In this regard, knowledge or ignorance on the part of

society can be instrumental in either saving or destroying a life. Here lies the

great opportunity for relatives, social workers, therapists, teachers, doctors,

psychiatrists, officials, nurses, and bystanders to support the child and to

believe her or him.

8. Until now, society has protected the adult and blamed the victim. It has

been abetted in its blindness by theories, still in keeping with the pedagogical

principles of our great-grandparents, according to which children are viewed as

crafty creatures, dominated by wicked drives, who invent stories and attack

their innocent parents or desire them sexually. In reality, children tend to

blame themselves for their parents' cruelty and to absolve the parents, whom

they invariably love, of all responsibility.

9. For some years now, it has been possible to prove, thanks to the use of new

therapeutic methods, that repressed traumatic experiences in childhood are

stored up in the body and, although remaining unconscious, exert their influence

even in adulthood. In addition, electronic testing of the fetus has revealed a

fact previously unknown to most adults - a child responds to and learns both

tenderness and cruelty from the very beginning.

10. In the light of this new knowledge, even the most absurd behavior reveals

its formerly hidden logic once the traumatic experiences of childhood no longer

must remain shrouded in darkness.

11. Our sensitization to the cruelty with which children are treated, until

now commonly denied, and to the consequences of such treatment, will as a matter

of course bring to an end the perpetuation of violence from generation to

generation.

12. People whose integrity has not been damaged in childhood, who were

protected, respected, and treated with honesty by their parents, will be - both

in their youth and adulthood - intelligent, responsive, empathic, and highly

sensitive. They will take pleasure in life and will not feel any need to kill or

even hurt others or themselves. They will use their power to defend themselves,

but not to attack others. They will not be able to do otherwise than to respect

and protect those weaker than themselves, including their children, because this

is what they have learned from their own experience and because it is this

knowledge (and not the experience of cruelty) that has been stored up inside

them from the beginning. Such people will be incapable of understanding why

earlier generations had to build up a gigantic war industry in order to feel at

ease and safe in this world. Since it will not have to be their unconscious life

task to ward off intimidation experienced at a very early age, they will be able

to deal with attempts at intimidation in their adult life more rationally and

more creatively.

- from For Your Own Good, by Alice

February 14, 2004

Deborah, this is a very heated topic for many people, so I'll try not to add

more fuel to the fire.

#6 says " they will OFTEN direct... " not that they WILL direct. If it was a

foregone conclusion then it would be pointless to rail against it...for how

can we not be what we irrevocably are? Regardless, I'm not on a

fault-finding, zero-sum mission. People do the best they can with the

knowledge they have at their disposal. I'm questioning whether the advice

some of the " experts " are giving is helpful or just an unquestioned vestige

of their own upbringing. The issue is not whether we fall short of ideals,

but to question what our ideals should be in the first place. Luckily, the

bigger-people-hitting-smaller-dependent-people-who-are-developmentally-incap

able-of-higher-level-reasoning advice is on the decline. has said

that if one feels ashamed or " guilty " after reading her books on the

poisonous pedagogy it is because they are a product of that poisonous

pedagogy. It's circular reasoning but I feel it is correct.

Yes, it does take quite a bit of restraint and insight not to hit back if

that's how you were raised. That's good progress.

Back in the 50s pregnant mothers used to smoke because they didn't know any

better. Is the fact that their children grew to be healthy because of or in

spite of that smoking?

I do agree that there are varying degrees of abuse. But to say that one

form is less harsh than another generally only serves to deny that the

lesser is also wrong - just to a lesser degree. There are MANY alternatives

to ends-justifies-the-means, Us-against-Them, zero-sum mentality punishment

that don't involve a power-over dynamic. Children are social by nature.

They want to know how to act in society, they're just developmentally

limited. They are not enemies but allies. Society expects them to

understand why stealing is wrong when they don't even understand the concept

of ownership...that the world isn't centered around them.

Hit your wife, it's domestic battery. Hit a prisoner, it's

unconstitutional. Hit your dog, it's cruelty to animals Hit your neighbor,

it's battery. Hit your own child and it's called child-rearing. It wasn't

long ago that domestic battery was seen as acceptable and even necessary.

Punishment by definition is either painful, humiliating or frightening or a

combination of the three. If it is none of these then it is not punishment.

Punishment no doubt effects a short-term behavioral change (for the sake of

expediency), but does it teach inner conviction? And supposing it does

teach inner conviction is it because of the pain, humiliation, fright or

because of other factors at work...again because of or in spite of?

" Punishment may make us obey the orders we are given, but at best it will

only teach an obedience to authority, not a self-control which enhances our

self-respect. " - Psychiatrist Bruno Bettelheim

Discipline in it's original definition (Latin " discipuli " means " student " )

had to do with teaching and nothing to do with inflicting pain, humiliation

or fright. The fact that it has been hijacked to describe violence should

cause one to think. Why all the euphemisms and defensive posturing? If

punishment does teach, it teaches one to lie or blame others to avoid

further punishment and provokes the counterwill and thus, further violence

and antisocial behavior. It's an assault on a person's autonomy.

I've often asked why parents are exempt from this violence. Given that a

parent has done something really wrong (recall the " they are children " BPD

post here recently) , why can't the child hit them in an effort to teach?

The only answer I've been given is the normative view that this would

violate generally held principles. These are precisely the principles that

I'm questioning.

" I Was Spanked and I'm Fine! "

http://nospank.net/hunt3.htm

Most of the advice on using the rod originated in Proverbs and other Old

Testament passages. If you're free from a literal interpretation you can

interpret the rod to be a shepherd's rod to guide sheep,

http://nospank.net/popcak.htm

(It also goes without saying that Jesus' message (different from his

abuser-in-charge father's message) was anything but violent)

As for #8, I agree that child protective services for the most part is part

of the 'society' mentioned there, but I can't say that it's all bad.

The Twelve Points

>

> The Twelve Points

>

> 1. All children are born to grow, to develop, to live, to love, and to

articulate their needs and feelings for their self-protection.

> 2. For their development, children need the respect and protection of

adults who take them seriously, love them, and honestly help them to become

oriented in the world.

>

> 3. When these vital needs are frustrated, and children are instead

abused for the sake of adults' needs by being exploited, beaten, punished,

taken advantage of, manipulated, neglected, or deceived without the

intervention of any witness, then their integrity will be lastingly

impaired.

>

> 4. The normal reactions to such injury should be anger and pain; since

children in this hurtful kind of environment, however, are forbidden to

express their anger, and since it would be unbearable to experience their

pain all alone, they are compelled to suppress their feelings, repress all

memory of the trauma, and idealize those guilty of the abuse. Later they

will have no memory of what was done to them.

>

> 5. Disassociated from the original cause, their feelings of anger,

helplessness, despair, longing, anxiety, and pain will find expression in

destructive acts against others (criminal behavior, mass murder) or against

themselves (drug addiction, alcoholism, prostitution, psychic disorders,

suicide).

>

> 6. If these people become parents, they will then often direct acts of

revenge for their mistreatment in childhood against their own children, whom

they use as scapegoats. Child abuse is still sanctioned - indeed, held in

high regard - in our society as long as it is defined as child-rearing. It

is a tragic fact that parents beat their children in order to escape the

emotions stemming from how they were treated by their own parents.

>

> 7. If mistreated children are not to become criminals or mentally ill,

it is essential that at least once in their life they come in contact with a

person who knows without any doubt that the environment, not the helpless,

battered child, is at fault. In this regard, knowledge or ignorance on the

part of society can be instrumental in either saving or destroying a life.

Here lies the great opportunity for relatives, social workers, therapists,

teachers, doctors, psychiatrists, officials, nurses, and bystanders to

support the child and to believe her or him.

>

> 8. Until now, society has protected the adult and blamed the victim. It

has been abetted in its blindness by theories, still in keeping with the

pedagogical principles of our great-grandparents, according to which

children are viewed as crafty creatures, dominated by wicked drives, who

invent stories and attack their innocent parents or desire them sexually. In

reality, children tend to blame themselves for their parents' cruelty and to

absolve the parents, whom they invariably love, of all responsibility.

>

> 9. For some years now, it has been possible to prove, thanks to the use

of new therapeutic methods, that repressed traumatic experiences in

childhood are stored up in the body and, although remaining unconscious,

exert their influence even in adulthood. In addition, electronic testing of

the fetus has revealed a fact previously unknown to most adults - a child

responds to and learns both tenderness and cruelty from the very beginning.

>

> 10. In the light of this new knowledge, even the most absurd behavior

reveals its formerly hidden logic once the traumatic experiences of

childhood no longer must remain shrouded in darkness.

>

> 11. Our sensitization to the cruelty with which children are treated,

until now commonly denied, and to the consequences of such treatment, will

as a matter of course bring to an end the perpetuation of violence from

generation to generation.

>

> 12. People whose integrity has not been damaged in childhood, who were

protected, respected, and treated with honesty by their parents, will be -

both in their youth and adulthood - intelligent, responsive, empathic, and

highly sensitive. They will take pleasure in life and will not feel any need

to kill or even hurt others or themselves. They will use their power to

defend themselves, but not to attack others. They will not be able to do

otherwise than to respect and protect those weaker than themselves,

including their children, because this is what they have learned from their

own experience and because it is this knowledge (and not the experience of

cruelty) that has been stored up inside them from the beginning. Such people

will be incapable of understanding why earlier generations had to build up a

gigantic war industry in order to feel at ease and safe in this world. Since

it will not have to be their unconscious life task to ward off intimidation

experienced at a very early age, they will be able to deal with attempts at

intimidation in their adult life more rationally and more creatively.

>

> - from For Your Own Good, by Alice

>

February 14, 2004

, I will never be able to thank you enough for bringing the intelligence

and thoughtful essays that you bring to the forum. Your posts in December took

me to a point where I felt that I could say, I have healed. So much of the

insanity in my head disappeared. The order that these kinds of articles have

created in me has been awe inspiring. The knowlege has replaced the FOG. I

keep them around for anytime I start slipping. I have a file for your posts and

Edith's. And, I can't wait for the article to post from Milwaukee's magazine.

I want to be you when I grow up. Thank you for the thought you put in answering

this. tiki