anastasiav (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
anastasiav) wrote2009-02-13 08:54 am
anastasiav) wrote2009-02-13 08:54 am
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised." - M Manson
Some of you know that I make a strong -- and stronger all the time -- effort to avoid stories of children in peril, because (for whatever reason) since E was born they have a very visceral effect on me.
Last night, while reading an article which should have been free of such nonsense, I stumbled across a very short (three sentence) description of the murder of a three year old boy by his mother (the crime took place in the mid-90's, in Chicago) which was written in such a way that you didn't realize what had happened until the last four or five words - which brought to me so powerful an image that I ... well, I threw up. It wasn't a graphic image - no detailed blow-by-blow descriptions of the crime. It was more the emotion of the moment (from the boy's perspective) and the love and trust in showed in his mother to the very end that got to me. (I'm trying not to write it out here lest I trigger the same emotions in other parents who read this journal.)
I wish - WISH - I had a better handle on what, exactly, about these stories sets me off. I wasn't abused as a child or an adult; I didn't witness abuse. My own son is beautiful and loved and I have no fear that any family member (blood or chosen) will abuse him. In a lot of ways, these types of stories - the mentally ill mothers and the dead children - are about as far from my personal experience as you can possibly get.
And yet there I was, throwing up in the bathroom.
And here I am now, unable to get the mental image of this small boy and his last moments out of my head.
I understand why people believe in an afterlife. They want to believe that this little boy is living on in peace and love with angel wings, existing for all eternity with all the comfort and security he never had in his three years of life. But, see, I don't believe that. I wonder if that fact -- my inability to believe that the eternal afterlife exists in any meaningful way -- is part of what makes these stories harder to bear for me. But if that were true, wouldn't stories of adults being tortured and killed have the same effect on me? Because they don't.
About five minutes after the throwing up part, E and his dad came home from the store, and E had an armful of Irises for me. "These are for you, Mamma!" and then he handed me the flowers and wrapped his arms tight around my neck and said "I love you, Mamma, I love you."
I just fail to understand how anyone can inflict such pain on these small, loving, trusting creatures. And, worse, I feel so helpless. With just about any other "social issue" there is something you can do. With abuse like this - nothing. It happens in secret. Really the only action I could take would to be becoming a foster parent and trying to help children who escape abuse, but that simply isn't an option for our family right now. Short of having a time machine, there is not a single thing I can do to change the lives of abused children in America. And it eats at me.
My apologies if this is all too heavy for a Friday morning. I'm hoping that by writing about it I'll be able to get it all out of my head, or that one of you will have some useful suggestion. Because this child is going to stay in my mind with me all day now. That's good, in a way, I guess, because one really lives only so long as one isn't forgotten. But its painful for me in a way that I can't really describe. And I'd like to be a little less painful, if possible.
Last night, while reading an article which should have been free of such nonsense, I stumbled across a very short (three sentence) description of the murder of a three year old boy by his mother (the crime took place in the mid-90's, in Chicago) which was written in such a way that you didn't realize what had happened until the last four or five words - which brought to me so powerful an image that I ... well, I threw up. It wasn't a graphic image - no detailed blow-by-blow descriptions of the crime. It was more the emotion of the moment (from the boy's perspective) and the love and trust in showed in his mother to the very end that got to me. (I'm trying not to write it out here lest I trigger the same emotions in other parents who read this journal.)
I wish - WISH - I had a better handle on what, exactly, about these stories sets me off. I wasn't abused as a child or an adult; I didn't witness abuse. My own son is beautiful and loved and I have no fear that any family member (blood or chosen) will abuse him. In a lot of ways, these types of stories - the mentally ill mothers and the dead children - are about as far from my personal experience as you can possibly get.
And yet there I was, throwing up in the bathroom.
And here I am now, unable to get the mental image of this small boy and his last moments out of my head.
I understand why people believe in an afterlife. They want to believe that this little boy is living on in peace and love with angel wings, existing for all eternity with all the comfort and security he never had in his three years of life. But, see, I don't believe that. I wonder if that fact -- my inability to believe that the eternal afterlife exists in any meaningful way -- is part of what makes these stories harder to bear for me. But if that were true, wouldn't stories of adults being tortured and killed have the same effect on me? Because they don't.
About five minutes after the throwing up part, E and his dad came home from the store, and E had an armful of Irises for me. "These are for you, Mamma!" and then he handed me the flowers and wrapped his arms tight around my neck and said "I love you, Mamma, I love you."
I just fail to understand how anyone can inflict such pain on these small, loving, trusting creatures. And, worse, I feel so helpless. With just about any other "social issue" there is something you can do. With abuse like this - nothing. It happens in secret. Really the only action I could take would to be becoming a foster parent and trying to help children who escape abuse, but that simply isn't an option for our family right now. Short of having a time machine, there is not a single thing I can do to change the lives of abused children in America. And it eats at me.
My apologies if this is all too heavy for a Friday morning. I'm hoping that by writing about it I'll be able to get it all out of my head, or that one of you will have some useful suggestion. Because this child is going to stay in my mind with me all day now. That's good, in a way, I guess, because one really lives only so long as one isn't forgotten. But its painful for me in a way that I can't really describe. And I'd like to be a little less painful, if possible.
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Your love for your Little One leaves me with warm fuzzies. You're pretty amazing, Anne. I have so much respect for you and how you've built your life.
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I giggle a little, because I don't feel like I "built" my life. I sort of stumbled into it. Its not like I moved across a continent to a new country and built my own business from scratch or anything like that. :-)
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It does the same thing to me and has since L was born. I can't even watch fictional stories about children in peril or sick children without leaving the room to check on her and touch her to reassure myself that she is alright.
I think it's a lizard brain motherhood thiing.
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At some level, it's personal -- even though no one's targetting you and yours and no one ever has. You still relate, I think.
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Actually, I think it's that, right there. For those people who grow up securely attached to basically decent human beings who treat them reasonably well, that is their template of parenting they carry in their minds into adulthood. To them such stories aren't just horrible, they're deeply violations of their model of the world. For those of use who grew up in... other sorts of families, while such stories may provoke blistering fury on behalf of the victim, there is no shock, no moral surprise. We, alas, don't expect parents not to do such things. Our experience taught us that all too often, parents go mad with the power our society and nature invests in them over their children, and we never ask how anyone can do such things: we know.
And, worse, I feel so helpless. With just about any other "social issue" there is something you can do. With abuse like this - nothing. It happens in secret. Really the only action I could take would to be becoming a foster parent and trying to help children who escape abuse, but that simply isn't an option for our family right now. Short of having a time machine, there is not a single thing I can do to change the lives of abused children in America. And it eats at me.
This is not true. There are things you can do, especially as an articulate person and a blogger.
What you can do is participate in the public discourse that normalizes treating kids lovingly. There's this horrible dark thread in entirely too much of the parenting discourse which is self-justification for parents behaving badly. ("How dare the government/CPS suggest there are limits to what I can do to/with my child?!?"/"Little monsters, aren't they? I'll show them.") Fight with your voice on the side of the angels.
Believe it or not, there are parents whose otherwise egregious behavior is stayed by the thought, "But what would the neighbors think?" To the extent you help normalize non-abusive community standards of conduct, you're helping constrain those who are morally weak, who use excuses like, "Well, anybody might run out of patience and smack their kid around a bit."
If you can, educate parents on child abuse, and how not to slide into being abusers. Use your moral rank as a parent to address other parents as a sympathetic peer that they can't dismiss. Invite parents to become more conscious about the parenting patterns they learned from their own parents, and to examine them closely and critically, keeping what they find good and rejecting what they find bad. While acknowledging how hard it is to get support and help parenting, encourage parents not to give up the struggle to get those things, because they do make a difference. Direct their attention to the loveliness in their own children, remind them of their joy.
Believe it or not, there are parents who don't know how to love their children. They were not loved, so they're unclear on how it all works. They don't know how to relate to a baby or a child (and take it all personally), they don't know how to set limits without being brutal, they don't know what to pay attention to (and miss those moments of grace), they are unprepared for how having a child brings up stuff from one's own childhood (and then act out their distress). So tell them. Teach them to appreciate their children and to have reasonable expectations.
These are things that make a difference. These are things you can help with.