Dear future historian,
Lets see.. where to start here? I read, some days ago, a book 'The explosive child' (by Ross W Greene PhD).. and I feel so ready to explode (a 'must read' book.)
Its unbelievable how in the West we pathologies our most brilliant minds, medicating them to 'normalize' them. We then fill them with unrealistic expectations and on top we blame them for not fulfilling these expectations. And we never listen to their objections, we only name their reactions with offensive words, like meltdowns or disorders.
Suppressed anger leads to aggregation. Anger is a valid feeling. But anger is, for some reason, considered uncivilized. Yet censorship in anger is what brings most meldowns. People think meltdowns are random. They are totally not. Yes.. sensory issues management can help and feeling overwhelmed, tired and hungry can actually trigger meltdowns.
But usually before a meltdown there is an attempt to express the angry feelings, or an existential terror. On the other hand, an attempt to suppress and restrict, either actively or by just dismissing them, these attempts is what's causing the exposition usually.
And then Sam Harris https://samharris.org/
describes a guru in the East, that had an existential crisis at 16, laying on the floor, unresponsive for hours. But he wasn't medicated or taken to a mental institution, he was in a society that honours the ones that 'see' something that most don't, and that troubled boy became a guru.
So.. what's wrong with us?
The explosive child had to dedicate a whole part on explaining to the parents that it's normal for their child to feel some foods are disgusting! And how dismissing their needs and feelings leads to unmanageable behaviour. People need to actually have someone tell them this thinks!
Dayna Martin, a children advocate https://daynamartin.com/
came in my life exacly when I needed her. Like she was a manifestation of a need's fulfilment, more that a real person. What was important for me was to read my thoughts written on paper, or spoken in a video, from a person in the other side of the world. She helped me having trust to my inner voice mother instincts, in a society that thinks attachment parenting is spoiling your kids. But her book was proved to be insufficient evidence for the ones that think 'kids do well if they want.' I had to find someone with Ph.D and decades of experience in 'respectable' institutions, to be listened finally.
Why? Why people need someone with a Ph.D to tell them they should be nice to their children?
My dear future historian, please tell me that at least in your time people get it? I know the environmental disaster, and racism, and wars, is how people measure our negative progress. But I do see people being at least nicer to their kids as parents in the 80s where, or at least try to be, or at least watch shows that expect them to be. I see a progress that gives me some kind of optimism.
And then I read books like that, and have that bitter sweet feelings of, it is nice that someone with 'authority' finally talks about these things.. and at the same time, why these thinks even need to be debated? Why the need for logical arguments on 'you have to treat your children with kindness and trust that they are doing their best?'
My dear future historian.. just please, if we don't make it, I leave it in your hands, to make sure that people will finally learn to be kind, the way the Capaldi Doctor would say.
'Hate is always foolish, and love is always wise. Always try to be nice, but never fail to be kind.'
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