Children

Our community has been treated with the sad story of the personal life of the star player on the major league football team in our state.  He admits to the charge that he switched his four years-old son so energetically that there emerged welts and open wounds on the child.  In the follow up of reporting on his life it has been reported he has six children by several mothers.  He has been charged by authorities for abuse and will appear in court in a few days.  It is alleged that his private life is quite different than his public persona.  The story is sordid.  His career is on hold.  All this is occurring at the height of his career, at an age in which future skills will be diminished from this high point.  The public is now taken with discussion about how children should be disciplined, but there is an underlying feeling that physical spanking of children has become an abusive approach.  However, it also appears from the evidence that verbal and neglectful approaches are often more abusive.  The common problems in parenting and guiding children have not been adequately addressed in a society that believes it to be sophisticated, but offering unguided children to adulthood and the future.  It has been suggested that children for some decades have not had their emotional needs met so creating a distorted context for themselves and society when they reach physical maturity.  Children are guided by emotional response, and adults are presumably guided by thoughtful ones.  Without preparation it will be difficult to gain reflective/thoughtful approach to life and conduct.

The ten common problems listed in the emotional lives of children that need parenting for management:

1. Anger – a feeling that displeasure is to be treated with anger, sometimes ranting, the child learns to respond in anger so to pay back in kind what has been offered as behavior in others (parents usually).
2. Fear – a feeling of anxiety about how things will turn out in anything, perhaps a dark room, or boogy sounds or odd conducts including parental conflict or neglect.
3. Guilt – a feeling that the family troubles are somehow the fault of the child.  What did he or she do that caused Mom and Dad to separate, perhaps divorce?
4. Hopelessness – a feeling of a lack of control when things look bleak, always on the edge of a cliff in this or that, perhaps short finances, illnesses or threats.
5. Loneliness – a feeling that you can’t trust the people in your life so there is a chasm between the self and others, sometimes virtually all others.
6. Resentment – a feeling of unfairness.  A sibling is the favorite and will get the attention and benefit from parents, perhaps other family members, but another sibling will not.
7. Sadness – a feeling that something has been left out of one’s life, perhaps later identified and found to be true, or when found an illusion discovery that it took hold and creates an ongoing feeling of sorrow.
8. Self-consciousness – a feeling of unattractiveness, perhaps of oddness or difference from others, especially different from those who gain popularity.
9. Unloved – a feeling, sometimes fortified by the words and attitudes of close adults or bullies that they are unloved, perhaps incapable of being loved.  (Persons able to generate children may not nurture them.)
10. Worthlessness – a feeling that grows out of neglect. Persons who should have cared for us did not, so implied worthlessness.  When denied value in childhood the individual will not develop confidence.

For some the above might require a book of illustrations and suggestions for correction.  The purpose of this Page is first of all to challenge the reader to take on the process of recovery in any of the above that hangs on to his or her life and psyche so to reduce the joy of a life delivered from emotional imbalances, and to forgive those who missed in helping us to find the way to the best context for each individual life.  The second purpose is to make sure that as a parent, or adult figure in the life of a child, or even another adult, that we recognize the smoldering emotions, like slothfulness, that disturb life.  Even if Christianity were not true, I found there the values related to life that made my children, and onward to our own succeeding generations into productive and adjusted adults believing in nurture for maturity.  Caring is love in action.