The drama of the gifted child: and the broken society

I used to love Alice Miller. She was big on accepting the whole self within your child. When I had my daughter, Danny, Alice Miller was there, guiding me to accept all of my child's thoughts and feelings. I wanted to embrace a whole relationship with her. To accept all parts of her. I wanted her to know that she didn't have to achieve to make me proud. That she was already everything I needed her to be. That she was her own person.

Alice Miller focuses on the child who is forced to achieve in order to be 'good enough', the child who is compelled to meet his parents' unconscious needs. The child who is unable to share that his parents were not there for him in the way he needed most, except through symptoms. The soul speaks very bad English. It doesn't say "Oh, this is what is wrong...." Alice Miller explains that symptoms tell the truth, helping a person to tell the full story. The past is put together, piece by piece, until the world is right again.

We protect our children but society might not

I used to think that childhood was crucial. I still do. Mistreating children causes all kinds of anxiety. One of my psychology lecturers went so far as to say 'if you mistreat children, you create killers.' But I no longer believe childhood to be everything. Parents can value their children deeply, care about them and nurture them, and still send them out into a hostile world. A world where boys don't cry, where racism is rife, and where school systems are designed for certain children but not others.

As my daughter began to grow up, the child I loved and never wanted to hurt began to fear the dangers she faced. She had just started high school when Reeva Steenkamp died. She came home with frightened eyes. "Oscar Pistorius shot his girlfriend..." That was how the story had been told. Oscar in the foreground. The anonymous girlfriend in the background. Gender based violence eroding her sense of safety. There would later be stories of how the men women know are the biggest threats.

Danny was sensitive. She began to listen and to learn about the world. She learned the pain of her adopted 'black' friend who was searched at the airport while her 'white' parents were able to walk through the door. She learned of a library in Mali and asked questions about colonialism. She wondered why schools valued cleverness over compassion. Social injustices bothered her and began to threaten her.

There is still a place for cherishing our children

I still understand Alice Miller's need to protect children and to give them the humanity they deserve. I understand the need for the full self to be valued, no matter what. I understand the need to hold our children when they cry and be there for them when they rage. But I think we need to do more. We need to challenge a world which tries to keep our children ignorant of their human rights, which tries to assist them to fit in with dominant cultural beliefs, which upholds inequalities and indignities.

Alice Miller challenges narcissism. She challenges the belief that our children should fit in with parental needs. That the prizes and achievements a child makes are a reflection on their parents. She encourages us, as parents, to embrace the difficulties, the messiness and the neediness of small children. She encourages us to offer love, no matter what. And to be good enough. But every thought or perspective leaves out a different one. It's time to create changes outside of ourselves, to create a world where all children might feel safe, regardless of 'race', 'gender', ability or intelligence. And it's time to do this while embracing our children for who they are.

Light in the Dark...and Lines in the Sand

This past week, I've been looking at Gloria Anzaldua's book Light in the Dark which explores the role of imagination and empathy in creating social transformation. She focuses on that part of us which exists between worlds, between the world of dominant culture and our own imaginations, and between the world of the ordinary and the spiritual.

This book speaks of the chaos which sometimes shakes up our worldview when we start to look at the world from a holistic perspective. And she explores the struggles and confusions this brings to our lives.  As we search continually for the parts missing in dominant perspectives of the world, this sometimes means that our worldview constantly changes and evolves.  Exploring new knowledge or alternate perspectives can place us on a continuum between hope and despair.  But Gloria Anzaldua speaks of the traditional healer or shaman, who knew that in order to offer healing to his/her community, s/he needed to go through a process of being dismembered or torn apart.  When s/he is able to pull the pieces together again to create a new reality, s/he has something to offer.

This book also focuses a great deal on empathy, and the ability to see the perspectives of 'the other' in order to work towards change.  How interesting that my second book this week gave a lived example of how to this.

Lines in the Sand is by A.A. Gill, who writes with a great deal of sensitivity about the experiences of refugees, explaining that although he has tried not to be the good samaritan, once you stop and see the human face of 'the refugee', then it is impossible to ever turn away.  The book is a collection of articles which explore what it means to be displaced with such kindness and compassion that I found it hard to stop reading.

One of the articles which resonated most deeply though was the experience of going out to eat in a shelter for people who have no homes.  A.A. Gill speaks of the different cities we inhabit, depending on the lives we are able to live, and the opportunities open to us.  He introduced us to his own life, and the lives of those who have lost homes, families or opportunities, and the struggles many members of his (and any) city have from day to day.  There is the woman from West Africa who is in London without family or people.  She lost her job and her home.  Tears trickle down her face as she eats.

There is the Baptist Minister who no longer has a congregation.  He thanks God for chicken and rice.  Gill says:

"Now I don't know a damn about the mysterious ways of God, but I suppose it's no coincidence that at the heart of all religion there is food.  The sharing of food.  The act of feeding someone is the most basic transubstantiation.  To make them whole, and well, to feed their future, and the hope for the better tomorrow... "

He ends his article by explaining that we don't actually exist in different cities, that we still eat alongside people who are homeless, who are cleaners, who are abused, trafficked or kicked out.  We just choose to dis-remember.  He shares that 'others', including the volunteers who try to make a difference need our help.  Not a lot.  Just a little.  We all have something to offer.