|
SEMINAR 6
The Care of the Child |
 |
"The Sleeping Beauty, the Prince and the Dragon"
An Exploration of the Soul
| Seminar
1 click here |
 |
What is the Soul? click here |
| Seminar
2 click here |
|
The Origins of the Concept of Soul click here |
| Seminar
3 this page |
|
The Myth of the Fall click here |
| Seminar
4 click here |
|
Myths, Fairy Tales and Dreams click here |
| Seminar
5 click here |
|
The Roots of Depression click here |
| Seminar
6 this page |
|
The Care of the Child this page |
| Seminar
7 click here |
|
The Great Web of Life click here |
| Seminar
8 click here |
|
The Brain and the Neuro-psycho-immune System click here |
| Seminar
9 click here |
|
The Dragon: Integrating the Archaic Psyche and the Shadow click here |
| Seminar
10 click here |
|
Rebalancing the Masculine and the Feminine click here |
| Seminar
11 click here |
|
Base Metal into Gold: The Process of the Soul's Transformation click here |
| Seminar
12 click here |
|
Individual
Soul, Cosmic Soul and Spirit click here |
|
The
Wisdom Texts click here |
Seminar 6 and talk on the Care of the Child
THE CARE OF THE CHILD
©Anne Baring (talk given in Wokingham Sept. 2004)
The tiny, vulnerable body of a baby is an expression of the miraculous creative nature of life, ever renewing itself through the union of male and female. It calls forth our deepest feelings – both the best and the worst. It may evoke our love, our caring and devotion or our hatred, rejection and cruelty. The child may carry the burden of the injured or destroyed emotional life of its parents who may vent their rage and hatred upon its fragile soul and body, or it may be nourished by the loving care of parents who are able to respond instinctively, wisely and patiently, to its physical and emotional needs.
If there is one word which summarises the needs of the child in today’s world, it is the word sanctuary. In our dysfunctional and predatory society, where people are increasingly out of touch with each other and there is no consensus as to what values should direct our lives, and no time to attend to their emotional needs, millions of children cannot find sanctuary either at home or at school.
The charity Childline was founded in 1986 and is now adopted in 43 countries. It receives over 2 million calls a year, some 5,000 a day of which only 2,300 can be answered. 10% of our children harm themselves physically because of the mental anguish derived from fear of bullies and abusive parents. 1 What does this say about the care of our children? What is the effect on them of one-parent families, exhausted working mothers, Day Nurseries from infancy, serial partners, bullying, television and video violence and the dubious values absorbed through the media? How are they being programmed into aggressive behaviour and early, promiscuous sexuality by those values and by the images put before them? What is the effect of our failure to educate them for the responsibilities of parenthood, to give them practical skills and a basic knowledge of nutrition? A recent study has shown that one in five first babies is born into a home with no father. 18% of first born children and 15% of all babies go home with just their mother. 2
The last 40 years have seen:
The doubling of rates of depression, suicide, crimes of violence, drug and alcohol abuse
These statistics reflect immense suffering and immense cost to the NHS and therefore to all of us whose hard work finances the NHS. Is there a possible root cause of all these symptoms? Can we do anything to prevent them happening?
New life begins with the meeting of the male and female nuclei, the connection of sperm with ovum. This meeting signifies the beginning of a new individual who will carry the genetic material from both parents. However, the way this genetic material develops is not predetermined. It can be modified positively or negatively during pregnancy by nutrition. It can be injured by toxins derived from alcohol, smoking and drugs. It can be damaged by anti-biotics and other medical drugs. 5 For example, an increasing number of babies are being born in this country with low birth weight, with their brain and nervous system damaged by their mother’s heavy drinking. We apparently have the highest number of female bingers in the world. 6 If we want healthy babies, the wisest course would be for women to abstain from alcohol altogether from 4 months before and during pregnancy. 7
Good nutrition is vital during the months when the embryo and foetus are developing. We now know when and how the nervous system and the brain form in the womb. We also know that a diet deficient in specific nutrients in the pregnant woman can lead later on to a whole spectrum of disorders which include mental illness on the one hand and cancer, heart disease, diabetes and diseases of the nervous system on the other. 8 There are two main factors that are thought to contribute to poor nutrition quite apart from the amount we eat:
First, the depletion of the soil over the last fifty years and the lack of essential amounts of trace elements have led to a general weakening of our immune system and that of the animals we eat. There is evidence for example, that lack of selenium contributes to heart disease and cancer which are now affecting younger and younger age groups. Cancer is now reaching epidemic proportions. More than 5 million people have asthma in this country and 1 person dies from it every 7 hours. A recent study in America has found a definite link between asthma and a deficiency in selenium and a study in this country has found a lack of iron and selenium in the umbilical cord of children who have later developed asthma and eczema. 9 999A discovery of great importance was the fact that an essential element in the formation of a healthy foetus was folic acid. Spina Bifida has fallen by 60% since pregnant women were given folic acid 10. Yet, astonishingly, 4 out of 10 pregnant women still do not take any kind of supplement, including folic acid.
The second crucial factor in poor nutrition is a lack of fish oils - particularly the Omega 3 fatty acids DHA and EPA which, since our consumption of fish has declined dramatically over the last 50 or so years, is lacking in our diet. These fatty acids are now known to be vital for brain development and for the stability of the nervous system. Research in many countries has shown how depression and violent behaviour correlate inversely with fish and seafood consumption. The suicide rates in countries with the lowest consumption of fish are up to twice as high as those with the highest consumption, homicide three times as high, bipolar depression 20 times and major depression 40 times. 11 A recent study suggests that Alzheimer’s disease may be prevented by taking DHA. 12 Depression also responds to this.
The crucially important time for the formation of the nervous system and future brain functioning is the first three months of pregnancy and particularly between day 15 and 28 after conception when the neural tube is developing. Quite apart from toxins derived from alcohol, smoking and drugs, poor nutrition invites serious damage to the embryo’s basic development, particularly to the connections between the different regions of the brain:
“Neural tube disorders occur about three weeks after conception, and lead to serious disabilities such as spina bifida, cleft palate and hair-lip as well as to mental disorder. At about three weeks the embryo is a long disk. This folds length-wise and fuses into a tube. If DNA production is slow, the tube may fail to close completely. Any gap left may become a cleft in the palate, for instance, or an imperfect junction between the two sides of the brain. Also forming at this stage are striations across the neural tube, delineating the spinal column and regions of the brain. Imperfect fusion or delineation can lead to inadequate connections with poor signalling between different regions of the brain… Low signalling activity features in the brain scans of people with violent temperaments…This indicates a poor level of communication between the thinking, feeling and motor regions of the brain. Trials using nutritional supplements have reduced neural tube disorders by a high percentage.” 13
The second most important time is the last three months and the first ten months of infancy, when the brain is growing very rapidly. The brain is 10% docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). If the supply of this is insufficient, the development of the brain and nervous system will be impaired. 13
The third important time is late adolescence when both the body and the brain are growing rapidly, particularly in young boys.
Which is the wise option? To continue as before or to educate the population at all age levels to awareness of the effects of toxins and poor nutrition on the development of the foetus and embryo?
According to the research carried out by the McCarrison Society, preparation for conceiving a child needs to begin 4 months before conception.
During these 4 months:
The Limbic Brain. There is something that is not widely understood in our culture and that is the importance of the limbic brain. We have three brain systems and they continually interact with each other. The oldest (reptilian, 500 m years) gives us our instinctive survival reflexes; the second (mammalian, 200 m years) our capacity for empathy and group bonding, and the third (neo-cortical, from 1 ½ m years) our capacity for abstract thought, reflection and everything we call consciousness. In infancy and early childhood, each develops successively out of the other. The reptilian and mammalian brains together form what is called the limbic system (autonomic nervous system and fight/flight reflexes). The neo-cortical brain and everything we call consciousness grows out of the limbic system in the first few months and years of our lives. (for a fuller explanation of this process see a most interesting and valuable book - Sue Gerhardt, Why Love Matters) We are not a body and a brain but a miraculously integrated body/brain organism. (Candace Pert, Molecules of Emotion)
The maternal instinct is innate and rooted in the limbic brain but it can be deflected from its natural instinctive response if the mother experienced rejection, abuse or abandonment in her own childhood or if her mother offered a poor model of parenting. Her natural instinct to bond with her child may then be overlaid by the imprinted pattern of her own experience at the deepest instinctive level of the limbic brain. Insight into this fact and informed support can prevent the transmission of a negative pattern to a new generation.
We now know that the instinctive bonding between mother and child - the experience of physical and emotional connection is absolutely essential for the child's future emotional and physical well-being. It is the emotional and physical bonding between mother and infant that establishes and develops the neuronal pathways throughout the body/mind organism. The sense of trust and safety develops through the infant’s seeing, touching; listening; tasting, smelling the mother. If this pleasurable sensory bonding is established in a contented infancy, the neuronal circuits are grounded in the experience of relatedness and love and there will be the possibility of a healthy integration of the three brain systems (reptilian, mammalian and neo-cortical) and a further development of the neuronal pathways in the frontal lobes. But if there is disruption of bonding between mother and child, and the experience of constant fear and anxiety at the limbic level (instinctive level of the autonomic nervous system) in early infancy, then a healthy and strong connection between the three brain systems will not take place. The capacity to relate to others with care and compassion in the future will be impaired. How does the too-rapid expulsion of mothers from hospital and the lack of support and help given to young mothers after birth affect this essential mother/child bonding? ( in France, mothers stay in hospital for 5 days)
Dr. John Bowlby, writing in the 1950's, was the first person to draw attention to the effects of maternal deprivation through neglect, depression, abandonment or death yet society as a whole is still not aware of these. Until the age of 5 years or so small children have no sense of time. Instinct tells them that absence of the mother means abandonment. Bowlby found that infants or small children who had lost their mothers through death or abandonment developed depression in later life. They did not recover from the trauma of separation. Buried grief can harden into anger later in life. If the bonding between mother and child is incomplete or deficient, the growing child will remain negatively imprinted at the limbic, instinctive level, experiencing constant anxiety that will affect his or her ability to make and sustain good relationships later on. In view of this, are Day Nurseries a good idea for infants and very young children? This is not to criticise mothers who leave their children in Nurseries but to suggest that, as a society, we may need to rethink our priorities.
The heart. In the foetus, the heart is the foundation of the nervous system which develops from the heart cells, 65% of which are neural cells. The brain develops from a mass of undifferentiated heart cells before they form into the four cardiac chambers. The right hemisphere of the brain is the first to develop out of the heart cells. The heart is connected to all the vital organs of the body. (See Nilsson, p 92-4) Recent research has shown that the well being of the heart is of primary importance to many processes, including cognition. It has over 40,000 sensory neurons. It has its own independent nervous system. The electrical signal of the heart is 60% more powerful than the electrical signal of the brain. The electro-magnetic field of the heart is 500 times more powerful than that of the brain and in the adult extends 10 feet beyond the body. 15 Just putting the hand over the heart area changes the brain waves. The heart produces a balancing hormone - oxytocin, the bonding hormone - and this hormone is activated in a loving and nurturing maternal environment. Frustration and fear make the heart rate jagged and rapid. Loving, stroking, caressing, make it rhythmic.We know now that the foetus in the womb registers everything the mother is experiencing - her happiness and delight in her growing child or her distress, fear and anxiety. We know it is affected, as I said earlier, by alcohol, smoking and drugs but also by tension and violence in the parental relationship. We know it is sensitive to music, noise and the quality of the environment the mother is experiencing. (taking tiny babies into supermarkets is not a good idea) All this affects its heart and nervous system. The transcendent experience of intense bliss comes from the limbic system; the infant can know these feelings in the womb and in the first few moments of being reconnected with the mother after birth and in close contact with her touch, her voice and her body throughout infancy. This experience is the foundation of later feelings of trust and love, of joy, ecstasy and delight in life.
Until the age of 3-5 years, the neural connections between the limbic brain and the neo-cortical brain and frontal lobes are not established. Until then, the young child lives purely through the limbic brain or instinctive level of behaviour. Between 3 and 5 the neo-cortical level is activated and the child develops a sense of self. The memories associated with the older brain levels become “unconscious”. Yet these early memories imprinted on the limbic brain still have immense power to influence our lives and our behaviour. A wound to the limbic brain can programme our lives in negative ways to the end of our days.
Study after study has shown that emotional and physical abuse of the mother-to-be affects the neuronal circuits of the child she is carrying and that the neglect or abuse of the infant and small child alters the balance of its neural chemistry and programmes it to depression or to violent behaviour later on. What happens is that when fear or distress is experienced, the adrenal glands produce a high level of the stress hormone cortisol and this upsets or disturbs the optimal formation and equilibrium of the nervous system, interfering with the neural connections between the different parts of the brain. We need to ask whether the bullying and aggression that is so apparent not only in schools but in the home and the workplace does not in part originate in foetal and infant distress.
We are born with 100 billion nerve cells. From 3-10 months a culling takes place with the loss of 50,000 connections between brain cells every second. Cells that are not used during this time die. Every cell has several branchings off it called dendrons. The more you use the cells the more connecting dendrons develop. They develop complexity and increase by use. If they aren't used, they can be lost. The mother's holding and responding to her infant is vital to the development of these dendrons. Care and bonding with the mother or primal carer help the cells to be active and are absolutely essential in the first 10 months. 16
What can help the mother’s bonding with her infant? Baby massage is one of the most effective ways to help young mothers bond with their babies, particularly the 10% of mothers who are suffering from post-natal depression. If mothers can be taught this method in a group it helps them to feel more confident and to meet other mothers and make new friends. Home Start is an excellent enterprise.
Cellular receptors can hold memories of trauma stored deep within the body, in the hormonal system, the digestive system and in the muscles. Working with deep massage later in life may release traumatic memories that have been stored in the cellular memory for decades.
It is interesting that some 1000 primary schools have adopted a peer massage programme that is seeing remarkable results. Once children begin to touch each other on the head, neck, shoulders and back in a gentle way for ten minutes, first asking the other child for permission to do so, the whole class settles, bullying decreases and they develop greater trust in each other. Children feel happier, have more friends and work with greater concentration. 17
What are the deeper roots of violence?
Each of us carries in our limbic brain the archaic programming of predator and prey transmitted from earlier phases of evolution, but what triggers it? Children who have experienced violence and the deep distress caused by abandonment and neglect are likely to become violent (predator) when they are older or to remain fixated in the role of victim (prey). 18 People who have been traumatised by violence may be attracted to causes and ideologies which justify and even celebrate violence as a means to an end. Their capacity for love and altruism will be projected onto the cause or ideology and their unconscious rage will be projected onto the enemy(ies) of the cause or ideology. Nothing activates the instinctive defences of the limbic brain and disturbs the nervous system more than fear. Trauma and terror can transfix the victim of violence in a state of perpetual fear and anxiety at the limbic level.Many families in this and other countries are victims of terrorism in the home where one adult maintains absolute control over partner and children through the threat of physical or verbal violence. An animal in such a situation would attack or run away. But the small child, because it needs food and shelter for survival, cannot run away. Too young to articulate its feelings, it may develop mental or physical symptoms of distress or it may become silent and depressed. Some children live in a state of hyper-vigilance and visceral fear for years at a time, with disastrous effects on their mental and physical health. All of us concerned with the welfare of children need to be trained to recognise the symptoms of a victim of such terrorism.
In some children, the impotence of the terrified and unhappy child later becomes the omnipotence of the violent, bullying and controlling older child or adult or, alternatively, the passivity of the victim. When in a position of power in relation to a weaker human being, the unconscious limbic wound can erupt in some kind of predatory attack on a weaker person – whether rape, murder, torture, sexual abuse or bullying. Bullying is basically the torture of a helpless victim but we should always look for the origins of this behaviour in the emotional distress of the child who enacts it.
I do not believe that certain children are born evil nor that we are genetically programmed to aggression. However, predatory patterns of behaviour exist in latency in the limbic brain of each one of us. Through good nutrition, parenting and education they can remain dormant. Through poor nutrition, poor parenting and poor education they can be triggered into taking over the psyche, particularly where an ethos of violence and brutality is condoned or encouraged by a culture. One should also bear in mind the influence of herd bonding and herd copying – again coming from the limbic brain behaviour patterns, particularly in the young.
I am in no doubt that the continual viewing of violence on television, the nightly glorification of murder and brutality arouses and encourages predatory behaviour. On television and in videos such as Manhunt, in which a man roams the street killing anyone he comes across, we give children models of cruelty and depravity to copy. We have fostered a culture in which every child - even as young as 5 or 6 - sees people being beaten, kicked, shot and murdered every day, in its home, often just before going to bed. They see images of murder and violence announcing an “exciting” forthcoming programme. What does this suggest to them about adult behaviour, about life in the world? We deplore the existence of evil, yet we celebrate and encourage it. Why should we be surprised when our children act out the images of cruelty they have seen? As the mother of a murdered son said recently: “This game gave the ideas, the violence, the method to my son’s killer.” The judge said there was no evidence to support a link. Some 'experts' would like us to believe that children are not adversely affected by these images but this seems a strange conclusion in view of the known fact that children absorb most when they are excited and their emotions are involved.
What I would like to suggest to you is the possibility that the unconscious limbic brain does not distinguish between fantasy violence and real violence. Children may be very frightened by the brutality continually set before them. To compensate for this fear, they may unconsciously copy the aggressor because, to the limbic brain, strength and brutality offer a role model that ensures survival. Boys in particular copy this role model but now girls are also copying it. Our increasingly decadent society suggests that unless we wake up to what we encourage in the name of freedom of expression, we will condemn ourselves to repeat the predatory patterns of behaviour that now threaten the survival of our species. What we call civilised behaviour is a very thin skin covering a substratum of instinctive survival responses to danger.
Developing the Child's Gifts
Every child in this country carries great gifts. We could help our children to become well-rounded human beings, intellectually alert, emotionally intelligent, experienced in the practical necessities of life as well as fulfilling their own creative potential if we gave them a more balanced education. We could help them to develop the heart and the imagination as well as the mind and to develop practical skills, using their hands as well as their brains. We could develop their bodily strength and general health through sport. It is the soul of our children that is suffering from the harshness and superficiality of our technologically advanced but ecologically illiterate culture. So many children can find no deeper meaning to life reflected in the values they see around them and for this reason turn to sex, alcohol and drugs. What instinctively could be expressed as love is expressed as hatred, greed, bullying and violence.There is an enormous spiritual vacuum left by the collapse of Christianity but there are many initiatives beginning to fill it. The most important fact I can convey to you is that if the creativity of the imagination is not nourished by a vision which inspires love and delight and relationship, it turns negative and destructive.
Suppose we told children from earliest childhood that they participate in a great Web of Life, and that they need to take care of it so that no part of it is injured or destroyed. Suppose parents and teachers told children at about the age of 5 that each one of them has a special gift – a hidden treasure that, with time and effort, they could discover and develop. Suppose we told them the story of the planet and how recent our human story is in relation to that ancient story and how important their role is in protecting rather than exploiting the Earth.
Suppose, when they are still in Primary School, we showed them Nilsson’s wonderful pictures of how their life came into being, how precious and fragile it is at the beginning, how miraculously all the systems of the mind/body organism work together to maintain their life. Their body is not a machine, existing in isolation from its surroundings but an organism vitally connected to the greater organism we call nature.
Urban children have little connection with nature yet a sense of wonder and connection with nature and with animals is innate and instinctive in a small child. We could nurture and encourage this connection in every school in the country so that our children become ecologically literate, aware of how their lives are embedded in the life of the planet. There are initiatives which are encouraging children to grow vegetables and plants in schools, learning about nature, nutrition and cooking at the same time. 19 Following a Swedish initiative, one experiment that is being tried here is taking children into woods and fields at least once a week, to learn about plants, animals and trees by exploration, touch and observation rather than in the classroom. Children love this and look forward to it. (Sadly, the fear of paedophilia may prevent this)
How could schools become sanctuaries? By enlisting the help of every child in the country – making it a conscious goal. There needs to be zero tolerance of bullying in our schools and an explanation given to children of why children bully others and how it harms both victim and perpetrator. Village by village and city by city, we could make this country a no-bullying zone. An initiative called Values Education 20 has been developed at West Kidlington Primary School in Oxfordshire and is now in place in many schools in the south of England. It teaches social skills, listening skills, consideration for others, the ability to reflect on deeper questions and to exchange ideas. A few minutes silence and meditation every day is a part of it. The results are better relationships, better manners, less bullying and greater calm.
What happens to a culture when adults give children no values beyond the materialist ones that now engage us? What happens when there is no vision in society as a whole and when children are intensely lonely because their parents are so busy working that they are unable to spare the time to talk to them? Naturally, they turn to television and videos to fill the void in their lives. Extending their time at school will not fill this void. How can we inculcate responsibility, gentleness, compassion in our society if we fail to love them because there is no time to be with them? How can we teach our children how miraculous and extraordinary the creation of their own life is and how important it is to prepare, even as adolescents, for the future well being of their own children if we are unable to relate to them emotionally? We need to place the huge amount of information they absorb in the context of an extended field of relationships, not only with us as parents, but with every other species, the planet and the vastness of the universe beyond.
Notes
1. Mental Health Foundation, Camelot Foundation report 6/9/04
2. Study Professor Kathleen Kiernan, London School of Economics, June 2004
3. Dr. Andrew Powell, Royal College of Psychiatrists
4. McCarrison Society Newsletter, August 2003
5. Yale Medical School Survey 1991-9. Report Sunday Telegraph 12/9/04
6. Talk given to International Symposium: Brain Function and Dysfunction, The Royal Society, May 14th, 2004. Summary Michael Crawford for the McCarrison Society.
7. The Rev. Simon House, member McCarrison Society
8. The McCarrison Society
9. Avon Study, report Sunday Times 3/8/04
10. McCarrison Society Newsletter, August 2003
11. Rev. Simon House, “Nourishing Brains for Mental Gains,” McCarrison society newsletter, Spring 2004 shhouse@ntlworld.com
12. Professor Greg Cole, University of California, Los Angeles, senior author of paper in the journal Neuron “A diet rich in DHA, or docosahexaenoic acid, dramatically reduces the impact of the Alzheimer’s gene.”
13. Rev. Simon House, “Nourishing Brains for Mental Gains,” McCarrison Society Newsletter, Spring 2004
14. Rev. Simon House, booklet Nutrition and Health, 2000, Vol. 14, Generating Healthy People. Publication for McCarrison Society
15. Institute of HeartMath www.heartmath.com see also HeartMath training in Europe, the Hunter Kane Resource Management, 26 Broad Street, Wokingham Berks RG40 1AB
16. I am indebted to Dr. Peter Fenwick, Senior lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, London, for this information.
17. Massage in Schools, tel: 07773 044282 – Daily Telegraph, July 6th, 2004 . See also Antonella Sansome’s book below
18. They are nine times as likely to become violent if they carry the MAOA gene but this does not correlate with violence unless triggered by abuse. Rev. Simon House, McCarrison society Newsletter Christmas 2002, “Genes, Fish and the Brain”.
19. Article, the Times, July 3rd, 2004 “The Kindegardeners”. See Oliver Quibell commmunity infant school, Newark, Notts. Maggie Brown, Organic Gardens for Schools – offers practical advice and seeds. See also Angela Verity, Scotholme Primary School, Nottingham. She has transformed a derelict allotment into an organic garden for the children.
20. Values Education: developing positive attitudes. ISBN 1 898908 76 1 £5. Curriculum and Entitlement Office, Oxfordshire County Council Education Office, Cricket Road, Oxford, OX4 3DW
report in Positive News, No. 41, Autumn 2004. www.positivenews.org.uk
Books
Lennart Nilsson and Lars Hamberger, A Child is Born, Doubleday, £25 www.booksattransworld.co.uk new edition 2004. ISBN 0-385-60671 (essential reading for all parents-to-be)
Sue Gerhardt, Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Baby’s Brain, Brunner-Routlege, London, 2004 £9.99
Antonella Sansome, Mothers, Babies and their Body Language Karnac Books, London, 2004
McCarrison Society for Nutrition and Health. Dr. Michael Crawford, Editor, 0207 973 4869 michael@macrawf.demon.co.uk
Rev. Simon House, 0208 741 1998 shhouse@ntlworld.com
For Education
Positive News would be an excellent newsletter to introduce into all schools. Year’s subscription £10
Resurgence Magazine – current issue on education, October 2004 www.resurgence.org tel: 01208 841 824
Seminar 6: The Child and the Parental Relationship
©Anne Baring
Prayer Before Birth
I am not yet born; O hear me.
Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat
or the clubfooted ghoul come near me.
I am not yet born; console me.
I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me,
With strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me,
On black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.
I am not yet born; provide me
With water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk to me,
sky to sing to me, birds and a white light
in the back of my mind to guide me…
I am not yet born; forgive me
For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words
When they speak me, my thoughts when they think me,
my treason engendered by traitors beyond me,
my life when they murder by means of my
Hands, my death when they live me….
I am not yet born; O hear me,
Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God
Come near me.
I am not yet born; O fill me
With strength against those who would freeze my
humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton,
would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with
one face, a thing, and against all those
who would dissipate my entirety, would
blow me like thistledown hither and
thither or hither and thither
like water held in the
hands would spill me
Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me,
Otherwise kill me.
Louis MacNeice
The tiny, vulnerable body of a baby is an expression the miraculous nature of life, ever renewing itself through the union of male and female. It holds the hope for the continuation of our own life, our unlived potential, all that we have been unable to live in our own lives. It calls forth our deepest feelings - both the best and the worst. It may evoke our love, caring, devotion or our hatred, rejection, cruelty. The child will carry many projections from both parents: hopes, plans, the longing for it to flourish, the fear that it will not. He or she may carry the burden of the injured or destroyed emotional life of parents who may vent their rage and hatred upon its fragile soul and body or it may be nourished by the loving care of parents who are able to respond instinctively, patiently, to its physical and emotional needs.
Each child who comes into the world is a soul entrusted to our care. As mother and father we reflect for the child the two great feminine and masculine principles or archetypes of life. How we relate as parents to each other and to our child is of the greatest importance for the child's future health, balance and well-being as an adult. The mother and father connect their child with the deeper levels of life by the values which influence their own lives and by the quality of their relationship with each other and with their child. It is through the quality of their care and their attention to their child's emotional needs as well as physical ones that they transmit the values which will enable their child to survive and flourish in the world and to care in turn for the lives entrusted to it.Do we value our children?
Child Running in a Landscape,
Odilon Redon, c.1864/5
Musee du Louvre, ParisIn this country (the United Kingdom) we give generously to humanitarian tragedies all over the world and to all kinds of animal charities yet we have the worst record in Europe for caring for our children. Childline answered over 1.5 million calls in the year April 2000 to March 2001. What does this say about the suffering of our children? What is the effect on them of divorce, one parent families, step-fathers or mothers, television violence and the values absorbed through the media and in schools? What is the effect of many women's total lack of preparation for motherhood, of any basic knowledge of nutrition or of how to prepare food, and care for a home?
This country is way behind other countries in Western Europe in the provision of good housing, preventive health care and, above all, preparing men and women for the role of parenthood. We have the highest number of teenage pregnancies in Western Europe. We also lag behind in attending to the physical and emotional well being of the mother during and immediately after pregnancy and in the first year after giving birth. For example, the general practice is to discharge mothers two days after giving birth (except after a Caesarian) and send them home, where they are expected to carry on as before, possibly caring for other children as well as their new baby without sufficient rest and without the certainty of physical and emotional support (except that provided by the midwife) from their own mothers, relatives or friends. Family support may be available but frequently it is not available or is inadequate. Nothing is more frightening for a young mother than to find herself alone without any real knowledge of how to care for her baby and herself, with a partner who is equally unsure of himself, who may wish to absent himself from the domestic scene or who has already abandoned it. Is it surprising that so many marriages end in divorce or that young mothers succumb to post-natal depression - something that is still insufficiently recognised, anticipated and sensitively treated?The Roots of the Problem
The last decade has brought ever more dreadful revelations about what has been brushed under the social carpet: the number of children secretly murdered by their parents (believed to be three a week); the children who have died atrocious deaths because of the failure of the Social Services to recognise and act on the symptoms of abuse; the sexual and emotional abuse of children in institutions; the sexual abuse of children by parents and others; the physical and emotional abuse of women by men in front of their children. All these have existed for generations yet now, suddenly and fortunately they are coming to light, attracting our attention, arousing our concern, our guilt, our desire to be more aware, more responsive to the need to put an end to these human tragedies.
I doubt if any of these would have come to our attention without the existence of psychotherapy and the training of many counsellors and psychotherapists to recognise the symptoms of distress and abuse. For centuries, owing to the general belief that women deserved to be held in a state of subjection to their husbands, they were beaten by them. For centuries men have inflicted and are still inflicting injuries on women and children while under the influence of alcohol. For centuries alcohol was the only solace for men and women living in the most dreadful conditions imaginable. Only recently have women been able to gather enough sense of self-worth to emerge from this nightmare. Yet it was not only women from an impoverished background who suffered these traumas, but women from every social class (see the recent biography of Lord Carman).
My personal view, derived from my study of the history of persecution by the Christian Church in Europe, is that one of the deepest roots of the abuse of and cruelty towards women and children lies in the Christian doctrine of Original Sin (see seminar 3 website: annebaring.com). With this doctrine, the Church unconsciously justified and condoned the abuse of women (particularly during the centuries of the trial and burning/hanging of witches). There have been centuries of brutal, alcoholic fathers who ruled their families with a rod of iron and centuries of brutalised, "victim" mothers who were told that their "lot" was to suffer in silence and who were unable to change the unbearable circumstances of their lives. It is estimated even now that up to 40% of women still suffer emotional and physical abuse from their partners. On top of this religious and social programming there was the effect of the Industrial Revolution and the movement to cities of huge numbers of people living in overcrowded conditions of atrocious poverty and deprivation.
Two world wars killed millions of young men in Europe. Imagine the effect of these wars: the loss of life; the widows, the children conceived and then left without fathers; the survivors of the enslavement of whole populations in eastern Europe; the return home of exhausted and often deeply disturbed men, unable to speak of their experiences, preferring to bury all memory of them for the rest of their lives. Imagine the emotional distress of women who lost their husbands - in those days the sole provider. From one day to another they had to think of how they were going to survive; how they were going to help their children to survive. A war widow's pension in this country was and is a contemptible sum, not enough to provide any kind of life or security for a family. (How little money is spent on nurturing life in comparison with that spent on the weapons that bring death).
The result of these various historical factors has been the physical and emotional impoverishment of generations of women and children (mainly, but not entirely, in the poorest section of the community). Women, ravaged by exhaustion, alcohol, violence and emotional abuse, could not offer a safe and healthy environment for a child. There was no concept of perinatal care. There is still hardly any awareness in society as a whole of the need for women to prepare for the child, helping them to be in as healthy a state as possible, eating foods that will nourish both mother and child, avoiding smoking, drinking alcohol or coffee to excess.
Until very recently, women were undervalued by society. During the war they were expected to help with the war effort, to work on the land or in munitions factories, filling jobs left vacant by the men who were fighting, and then, after the war, to return to their homes and take up their former role as wives and wives. Many women discovered qualities and capabilities in these years that they did not know they had. After the war, they wanted to continue to develop these gifts. Many went to universities and became highly qualified intellectually. Men returned from the war to find women changed, wanting to play a wider role in society, no longer content to be "only a mother." Contraception was another factor that radically altered women's lives. The old image of woman had gone forever. We have still not assimilated the implications of this enormous change which has had both positive and negative effects. Collective attitudes that have prevailed for centuries are being transformed but it is difficult for men and women to be aware of what is happening rather than to be swept along by the social attitudes that are currently in fashion.The Foundations
Parenting, as most of us who are parents know, is the most long term and dedicated commitment any of us can make in our life time. It requires long years of devoted care, constant vigilance, and emotional and physical effort to bring a human being from infancy to adulthood. Until they become parents themselves, or unless they are part of a large family, children usually have not the slightest idea of what parenting involves. Most mothers do their best within their physical and emotional capacity. Many mistakes are made or were made through ignorance or depression or circumstances beyond control but with insight, support and good-will they can be corrected in a new generation.
Strangely, there is no preparation in our society for the role of being a parent. Parenting is thought to be an instinctive pattern of behaviour and, in essence, it is. What is not understood is that it is also a learned one that is unconsciously copied or absorbed by the child as it grows up from the way its parents, but particularly its mother, treated it. If the mother (or the father) has suffered an emotional injury or wound in her own infancy or childhood, her (or his) pattern of parenting is likely to be flawed or inadequate and she (or he) will pass on that pattern to her child. Today, with a quarter to a third of marriages or relationships breaking down, the instinctive pattern of parenting transmitted from parent to child is likely to be broken, disturbed and deeply flawed. It has been flawed in the past for reasons of poverty, religious indoctrination (in the negative, authoritarian sense) and lack of education. But today, in addition, there is the absence of any moral influence on parental behaviour and a general lack of responsibility towards the child who is often casually brought into the world without thought or preparation and expected somehow to survive. In the past this moral influence came from the Church. Men and women talk about their rights in relation to conceiving or adopting a child but there is scant awareness of emotional responsibilities or of the rights of the child which ought, in my view, to come first.
How unconsciously such a precious being is usually conceived - a being so vulnerable, so dependent on our care and love for its happiness and health. How casually a child may be carried in the womb of a mother who has no awareness of the need to prepare her body and her psyche for this new being. There is very little understanding among men or women that the future health and happiness of their child is enhanced, perhaps even created by this vital preparation.
How little knowledge there also is of the importance of the child having two parents committed to its well being; aware of its need for relationship with both mother and father in order for it to have a balanced psyche and the possibility of being able to communicate with and relate to both men and women as it grows older. To be abandoned by one parent - usually the father in today's society - deprives it of a role model and an image of relationship between male and female. Two streams of life, two different streams of energy coming from the mother and father are reduced to one. While many single-parent mothers and fathers (there are now 140,000 of such fathers) do their best to bring up their children, and fiercely defend their ability to do so, how can this deprivation not be an impoverishment of the child's experience of what it is to be human? Sometimes bereavement inflicts this impoverishment and the child carries a deep wound. But so many children in our society carry the wound of rejection through divorce or the multiple relationships entered into by their parents, a rejection which might not be necessary if there was more recognition of the responsibility of the paternal and maternal role before a man and a woman conceive or adopt a child.
Some mothers are so psychically fragile that they have children in order to have someone to love them. Some fathers have such a deep need for attention from their partners that they become jealous of their children as soon as they are born, unable to stand the focus of their wives' care and concern moving from themselves to their child. Fathers who have received poor maternal care are particularly vulnerable to this jealousy which is rooted in unconscious anger that their own infant receives the love they themselves were deprived of. Mothers who did not have sufficient emotional support from their own mothers may lack any confidence in their ability to care for their child or to manage domesticity with either skill or pleasure.
The casual way in which sexual relationships are entered into in today's society creates children who feel unwanted, unloved; who have to accept step-fathers and step-mothers who may not love them as much as the children created in the new partnership; who will feel themselves to be second-best in the new cycle of relationships, second best in relation to their mothers whose life is focused on the new partner, second best in relation to new siblings. The dysfunctional lives of media stars offer a poor example to the young. These different factors, which are largely unconscious, contribute to the suffering we inflict on our children.
The foundations of a happy or unhappy life and of positive or negative relationships are laid in childhood and in the relationship of the parents with each other and with their child. Many of the social problems we are now facing derive not only from poverty and poor education but from emotionally deprived infants and children who, as adolescents and adults, re-enact in their own lives and their behaviour towards others what they absorbed from their parents' behaviour towards each other and towards their children. So the pattern of good or bad parenting affects the wider community and is passed on to the next generation.The Failure of Relationships
If a woman is unsure of herself, lacking respect for herself and unaware of her own deepest values and instincts, she will find it difficult to choose a partner who will care for her and their children. She may be insensitive to her children's needs because she has no awareness of her own. They will grow up deprived of that initial instinctive bonding with a mother and father and the love which would enable them to survive as strong and vital human beings, giving them a deep trust in themselves and their ability to make rewarding relationships with others as they grow up.
How can a woman who grows up in this society value herself as a woman? How can she avoid being imprinted with the superficial values and patterns of behaviour that currently form collective attitudes and values? How can she look forward to and enjoy the experience of being a mother or, indeed, discover how to be a mother in such a complex world? Her sons and daughters lie on our streets, abandoned and outcast, children so deprived of love and support from their own mothers and fathers that they cannot value their own lives, and succumb to drugs and promiscuity.
Why are there so many broken marriages in our society, so many abandoned children? A pattern of abandonment and rejection may be a re-enactment of the parents' own early experience. Those who have experienced these traumas may have the greatest difficulty in bonding with their child. They may have had no role model to follow. The instinct for relationship has been traumatised and without awareness of this situation, and help in understanding and transforming it, the trauma will be repeated in the next generation. Obviously, there are many variations in this pattern.
Here is one example of the kind of scenario that exists in today's society. A couple marry; both have jobs. They want to own their own home. They find a house which requires a large mortgage. Both parents work in order to support the mortgage. They decide to have a baby and start one without thinking about how they are going to look after it. The baby arrives; because the mother is working full time, she asks her sister-in-law, who has two children of her own, to look after it during the day. The baby bonds with the sister-in-law and her children. The mother is hurt and angry that the baby cries when it is taken away by her at night. Its crying keeps the parents awake. The mother feels rejected by the baby and hits it when it cries, at times flinging it away from her in anger. The sister-in-law finds she is pregnant again and can no longer cope with the baby (now nine months old).
The mother now asks her own mother to look after the baby during the day. The mother (who has a history of alcoholism), agrees but the arrangement comes to an end after a couple of months. The mother turns to her mother-in-law, asking her to come to her house every day to be with the baby while she is at work. She cannot give up her job because she needs the money to keep up the payments on the mortgage, the car, the furniture. She cannot sleep at night and is put on Prozac by her doctor. The marriage comes under increasing strain. Her mother-in-law, distressed by the baby's increasing signs of emotional disturbance, and driven by her own sense of guilt if she is not looking after everyone save herself agrees to look after her but this means giving up the job she enjoys and the income and independence it has given her, helping her to pay off old debts accumulated during the years of bringing up her own three children. She is deeply upset to leave her job but sacrifices her needs in order to respond to her son and daughter-in-law's appeal for help. After six months, the arrangement breaks down under the increasing resentment of the baby's mother towards her mother-in-law. Under these circumstances, what possible chance has the baby of growing up to be happy, well-adjusted in its relationships and loved?Understanding the child
The child is our future and it is only through a deepening understanding of the child's nature and needs that we can hope to change the negative inheritance of the past. What wounds the heart of a child? There is a general belief that children are resilient, tough, able to survive the most atrocious experiences. But the experience of therapists suggests that this is not so. The child may survive physically and intellectually, may be able to hold its own in the world, but the wound to the heart will show in the difficulty it has with relationships; in the way, as an adult, it treats its partner or its children, and in depressions, obsessions and compulsive negative behaviour of all kinds. It will develop a defensive carapace, a false self, in order to survive the pain of its experience and may believe this false self is its true individuality. The false self in league with the superficial goals of our culture, will drive the person to seek power and control over others through a pattern of bullying or manipulating others, for to be more powerful or in control of other people is to be beyond the reach of the child's sense of powerlessness and worthlessness. Alternatively, it will be enacted in the role of the victim who is repeatedly drawn to an abusive or defective partner or a negative life situation.
The psyche of the child is like warm wax. Its sense of self is barely formed by the time it reaches adolescence. It is impressionable, fragile, sensitive, vulnerable. What it absorbs from the atmosphere of the home and the wider environment of school and society, is imprinted indelibly on the memory. Children without a stable and happy home, children who have to survive in a brutal or depraved environment, often witnessing the emotional or physical cruelty inflicted on one parent by another, children who are exposed to the anger, lust, cruelty or the rigidly imposed belief system of their parents, step-parents or foster parents, are like a baby thrown into an abattoir. They have little hope of psychic survival. Indeed, as someone has written, they are the victims of soul murder.(1) As they grow up, the memories of intolerable pain are repressed into the nervous system and muscles where they may manifest eventually as a defence system that inhibits the ability to experience empathy for others, and also as habits that lead to illness. There may be no awareness of the actual circumstances or traumas which wounded them. These repressed memories may be re-enacted in destructive or self-destructive scenarios which are a kind of code language telling the story of what happened to them 10, 20 or 30 years earlier (2)
Children in the first months and years of their lives, need the constant care and attention of at least one adult, preferably two. If they are separated too early from their mothers, put into nurseries and day-care, the deep and essential primal bond with the mother is weakened, perhaps broken. John Bowlby has written with the greatest authority about the effects of maternal deprivation in infancy and early childhood. It is astonishing that his work does not seem to have reached the consciousness of women about to embark on becoming a mother. (3) Hundreds of studies have shown that the quality of care a child receives in the first months and years of life determines its capacity to make relationships in later life. (4) (see Oliver James, the Independent 17/11/98).A Secret Garden - Delight in Life
Each child carries a secret garden within herself, the sensitive core of her being. The primary job of a parent is to keep this garden of the heart alive and flourishing, planting seeds that will grow into plants and trees and flowers until the child himself can take over the job of being gardener to his own soul. In some children, this garden may become shut away behind a high wall, inaccessible even to the child who may lose the key that enables him to pass to and fro between the garden of his heart and the outer world.
Awareness of the external world comes slowly into focus from the deep ground of the soul: "In the child, consciousness rises out of the depths of unconscious psychic life, at first like separate islands, which gradually unite to form a continent, a continuous land-mass of consciousness. Progressive mental development means, in effect, extension of consciousness." (4) Joy, the feeling of delight in life, the feeling that life is mysterious, marvellous and magical is every child's birthright and the key to being in touch with both the imagination (the heart) and the world. Joy and trust are feelings that naturally belong to earliest childhood. A child's bright, shining eyes reflect this joy and trust. If joy and trust are killed, the key to the garden is lost. The whole art of parenting consists in the ability to nurture this sense of delight, enthusiasm and trust in life. The whole art of healing is the ability to help oneself or another to re-discover this key, to re-experience the spontaneous delight in life of a happy well-nurtured childhood. (see the example of the Queen Mother's childhood). This means removing the guilt, fear and grief that have caused it to be lost. It means changing the unconscious programming of the nervous system.
Joy is something that most of us have had a glimpse of. But as we grow older, we tend to feel it less and less and substitute pleasure or material things to compensate us for that unbearable loss. We may destroy it in our children by putting an end to their imaginative playing, substituting competitive goal-seeking instead. We may destroy the very activity that could nourish their instinctive life, out of which could develop their future balance, happiness and creative work. We may allow them insufficient time for fantasy and play, no time just to be, giving them too early a sense of hurry and striving, or failure and disappointment, believing that we are helping them to "face reality" and become equipped for life. But the reality we force them to face up to is our reality, not theirs. Their view of life may not be allowed to grow and flourish because there is no time or space for it to do so. Under the pressure of society's goal-seeking competitive ethos, parents may fear that without access to a good education, their children may falter in the race of life. Yet too much emphasis on succeeding at school as the atmosphere in the parental home can make children conform too quickly and compete against each other too early and this pressure may deflect the instinct from its natural path and destroy the innate and instinctive desire to discover and explore, and their trust in themselves throughout life.
When the child enters the wider world of society already damaged by the home situation, and finds an impersonal, frightening environment (too many children in a school or a classrooom) and a curriculum devoted to the achievement of goals, where there is no beauty or mystery or magic, no nourishment for the heart, it will again be traumatised and the neglected imagination will be channelled into negative fantasies. The pathology of violence presented on television, film and video will increase the sense of fear and powerlessness, for what children watch, night after night, in scenes of sadistic violence, is the spectacle of the desecration of the soul, which is, ultimately, their own desecration. Consciously, people may say that children don't copy the negative mythology they see, but this is too literal and simplistic an approach to the issue. Unconsciously their instinct (limbic brain or autonomic nervous system) absorbs violent, barbaric images and unconsciously it identifies with the aggressor as the only way to survive. In a society which is increasingly brutal, brutality becomes an admired pattern of behaviour, tied in to survival instincts which are activated by society's inability to protect children from bullying and violence. (relate this to the number of young males in prison)
Children whose feelings did not matter to their parents will, as adults, ignore their own feelings and those of others. Compulsively, in addictive or manipulative behaviour of all kinds, they will repeat or re-enact the original trauma by attracting to themselves situations or relationships that punish them, traumatise them, destroy them (see article at end of notes). They may also, by unconsciously identifying with the aggressor who wounded them, wound their own chosen victims - always someone weaker than themselves, making them suffer the intensity of the pain they are enduring themselves. The child is the weakest element in society and will suffer the most from this behaviour. Some commit suicide or run away from home because they do not know how to survive the fear and trauma caused by school bullies.The Child in the Womb and the Experience of Birth
The foetus in the womb registers everything the mother is experiencing - her happiness and delight in her growing child, her distress, her fear, her anxiety. It is affected by alcohol, smoking, drugs, anger and violence and tension in the parental relationship, and is sensitive to music, noise and the quality of the environment the mother is experiencing. Care and a good diet and an unstressful environment during the first three months of pregnancy are vital for the formation of a happy and healthy child, for it is during these months that the basic structure of the nervous system is formed. This structure includes the development of the heart cells, 65% of which are neural cells. The brain develops from a mass of undifferentiated heart cells before they form into the four cardiac chambers. The heart is connected to all the vital organs of the body and is linked to the cognitive and learning processes.
1. In the watery dimension of the womb the experience of the foetus may be a feeling of supreme bliss or a feeling of constant anxiety or something in between. These feelings may lead in later life to self-esteem, the ability to communicate with other people and the deeper aspects of life, happiness and creativity (love of water and swimming) or to self-disgust, self-abuse and the feeling that life is against one (fear of life, water etc.). Think of how many women were terrified of dying in childbirth until very recently and how that anxiety was transmitted to the foetus during the birth process. Think of how many young women died of puerperal fever after childbirth in the past. These old fears linger in the unconscious. So the first question to ask in pregnancy is: "what do I feel about this child?" Am I looking forward to the birth or am I full of anxiety, fear or resentment? Secondly, what am I doing to care for myself and provide the best internal and external environment for my baby? Thirdly, what is my relationship with my partner like? Do I feel reassured by his interest and support or anxious because these are lacking?
2. the first stage of birth for the child gives rise to feelings of helplessness, of being stuck and confined within a narrow, unyielding space. The foetus cannot move and there is no way it can know that this constriction will end. A long protracted birth amplifies these feelings.
3. the propulsion through the birth canal is experienced as a titanic struggle with powerful forces that crush one and hold one in a vice-like grip.
4. the release of the birth itself brings feelings of expansion, ecstasy, light, warmth and the bliss of being in touch with the mother's body. See the books of Drs. Michel Odent and Leboyer (5) for how to give the infant a good experience of birth. Not holding the newly born infant upside down; a calm, dark environment. The mother sitting in warm water during stage 2 and 3 can help both mother and baby. Warm water, quiet, and a semi-dark room (no bright overhead lights) help the mother to relax and allow her instincts to guide the whole process. They also help mother and infant to bond after birth.
It used to be thought until very recently that foetuses and infants do not feel pain. But we now know that the infant can feel constriction, pain and suffocation, particularly in a protracted or difficult birth. The work of Stanislav Grof has shed enormous light on previously unrecognised birth trauma.(6) The buried cellular and muscular memory of the experience of constriction, suffocation and excruciating pain can be reactivated by any difficult life experience. "I will never get out of this mess." "I am stuck in a trap." "Nothing good will ever happen to me." "I will not be able to survive." (often constriction in chest area; inability to breathe).
Danger programmes us to one of three responses: fight, flight or paralysis
The kind of birth we have had can programme us to responding to a life situation with a tendency to fight, flight or paralysis. (The third response has not received anything like the attention required. I believe it lies at the root of depression in later life). In therapy, this primal terror can be embodied in the image of a spider or an octopus, for example, and this image can help to heal the trauma if it can be imagined, discussed, related to the trauma and eventually accepted without fear. The chemical constellation in the nervous system can be changed. This process of healing through relating to the image sends a message to the nervous system to relax so that the effect of the original traumatic memory can be transformed.
The Child and the Mother
The child starts life in a state of psychic identification with its mother. Only very gradually does it send out the small shoots of awareness and relationship which eventually lead to the development of a conscious ego or sense of self. The sense of self develops (by age 3 approximately) through the child responding to its mother and father, then becoming aware of its immediate surroundings (through crawling and exploring), then encountering the world of ideas, feelings and va