subtle emotional abuse...

...the kind most parents won't acknowledge. After all, if they survived it, it must not be so bad, right? Don't have much more than a few links at the moment - way past time for beddie-bye (? is there an approved spelling for that??) so I'll just stick 'em up here for now.

Emotional Abuse: Harsh and Abusive Words Can be Worse Than Physical Abuse

Some abusers are very good at their game. They mix you up to the point you fall into their trap without even knowing it. Many have two sides - being abusive and in a sharp turn, being kind and affectionate and sometimes for long periods. You couldn't possibly believe, this person who is kind and affectionate, could be an abuser. Surely, they just had a bad day. You pass it off and give understanding to their bad day - only it isn't just one bad day. You may hear the harsh and abusive words infrequently, which leaves you to believe even more, that you aren't possibly being abused.

Emotional abuse can come on so slowly that you aren't aware you are being abused. No one has hit you. There are no wounds or scars. No one has done anything blatantly obvious. You try to unravel the words you have heard and the negative treatment toward you. You aren't sure you deserved this or not. Something feels off, but you can'tdecipher exactly what. You may begin to blame yourself. You begin to question yourself. Your confidence gets to an all-time low...

Focus on emotional abuse

In Working Together to Safeguard Children, the Department of Health defines emotional abuse as: ‘the persistent emotional ill-treatment of a child such as to cause severe and persistent adverse effects on the child’s emotional development.’ The report goes on to state: ‘It may involve conveying to children that they are worthless or unloved, inadequate, or valued only insofar as they meet the needs of another person. It may feature age or developmentally inappropriate expectations being imposed on children. It may involve causing children frequently to feel frightened or in danger, or the exploitation or corruption of children.’This is amplified in the Children and Young People on Child Protection Registers report in 2001: ‘Because it is invisible, emotional abuse is the most insidious and under-recognised form of child abuse.
The child who experiences emotional abuse presents a range of behaviour, from extreme passivity and over-compliance to extreme aggression and rage. The child may:

appear very anxious or depressed

avoid doing things with other children

behave much younger than his or her age

behave like an adult, eg a ‘little mother’

lag in physical, emotional and intellectual development

soil or wet the bed

Emotional Abuse

Minimizing is a less extreme form of denial. When minimizing, the abuser may not deny that a particular event occurred, but they question the recipient’s emotional experience or reaction to an event. Statements such as “You’re too sensitive,” “You’re exaggerating,” or “You’re blowing this out of proportion” all suggest that the recipient’s emotions and perceptions are faulty and not to be trusted.

Trivializing, which occurs when the abuser suggests that what you have done or communicated is inconsequential or unimportant, is a more subtle form of minimizing.

Denying and minimizing can be particularly damaging. In addition to lowering self-esteem and creating conflict, the invalidation of reality, feelings, and experiences can eventually lead you to question and mistrust your own perceptions and emotional experience.

The Heart of Parenting: Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child (http://eqi.org/gottman.htm)

"Much of today's popular advice to parents ignores the world of emotions. Instead, it relies on child-rearing theories that address the children's misbehavior, but disregard the feelings that underlie that misbehavior."

"The ultimate goal of raising children should not be simply to have an obedient and compliant child." p 16

** if you want to label something, label your feelings. (sph)

Love by itself isn't enough. p 16

He dedicates the book to Haim Ginott.

When a child is emotional, it is a ideal time for bonding.

Poor emotional coaches:

1. Dismissing parents, who disregard, ignore, or trivialize children's negative emotions (what I would call invalidating parents- sph)

2. Disapproving parents, who are critical of their children's negative emotions.

3. Laissez-faire parents, who accept their children's emotions and empathize with them, but fail to offer guidance or set limits on their children's behavior.

[Also, lazy parents like those who use distraction like bribing, tickling (sph)]

see example on p 23 of the actual book

sph comment - I would say of the three, the first two do much more damage to the child/teen.

seeking strength

Lionesses: trying to fill the empty space left by draining life experiences and relationships. Seeking some kind of power source, to light the internal fire and overcome the sense of helplessness and inadequacy that comes from long-term emotional neglect.

Words that come to mind:

strength
serenity
peace
power
solitary
social
fluid
grace

Something about these feels like the mother(s?) I've always longed for. (Not sure why, but I've always preferred to surround myself with images of animals and nature rather than people...they feel, maybe, more comforting? Safer?)

I do not accept the power differential

Why should I? Why should I bow down, defer, bend? They're no better than me - no smarter, in no way more valuable than I am.

We get all these messages from the culture about how women are the same as men (and yet, at the same time, not); how everyone has an equal chance (the meritocracy myth). And yet: It's all a lie. We aren't the same; we don't all have the same shot at success.

I'm probably getting boring with beating this same old drum over and over again, but I feel like I can't say it often enough: Most of the unfairness humans is experience is perpetuated by other humans.

Yes, there are plenty of 'act of god' unfairnesses like hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, etc. But in the larger scheme of thing? Most unfairnesses, the ones that really grate on us, are the ones perpetrated by other humans.

Why do I fight this, you say? Why don't I just give in?

And I say, why should I?

You might say, well, wouldn't it at least be more peaceful?

And I say, Give me freedom or I'm fucking out of here.

And I do not mean the freedom to

suffer;
be equally oppressed.

Power is like the water the fish swims in: People who have it can't see it - they take it for granted.

The Secret says the barriers to 'success' are internal. I say they're external.

I say it's like blaming the sunflower that was planted in the shade for failing to grow as tall as the ones that had lots and lots of sun. Once again: We have no control over our circumstances. We have no control over whether we were born

rich
pretty
smart
strong
fast
talented

We have no control over whether we grew up in a society that values traits other than the ones we innately possess. To see someone else succeeding at what you have tried again and again to achieve can be the source of the utmost anguish. Think of Salieri in Amadeus: One man, Mozart, is held up as a genius, elevated to the status of prodigy by a capricious king. Salieri, the court composer, is displaced by the brash, crude young upstart, humiliated in front of his peers by Mozart's dazzling, and apparently effortless, displays of musical prowess. Salieri, mortified, takes his revenge on Mozart by slow degrees, playing on the man's vanity, taking advantage of his penchant for juvenile and tasteless displays by seeing that appreciation for Mozart's gift is overshadowed by the hoi polloi's disgust at his lack of taste (or good judgment - is there a difference?).

Links:
Power and Powerlessness by Susan Rosenthal
Victim Blaming and the Power Hierarchy
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh
The Male Privilege Checklist

I do not like
green eggs and ham.
I do not like them,
Sam-I-am.

I will not eat them with a mouse.
I will not eat them in a house.
I will not eat them here or there.
I will not eat them anywhere.

I do not like green eggs and ham.
I do not like them, Sam-I-am.

credit

to my far-away friend who has willingly given me lots of verbal sparring practice, which has helped me build confidence in my own views and is teaching me, in a direct, visceral and experiential way, to stand up for myself and what I believe.

Thanks, far-away friend! Big, gigantic hug for ((((((((you))))))))!!!! :-)



Speak your truth, even if your voice shakes.

swimming upstream

Going against the cultural paradigm of 'might makes right' maybe seems like a Sisyphean task, maybe even strikes some as ridiculous. My other brother, the one in the middle, once said this to me: I always thought you just didn't get it. Meaning that he believed I was too clueless to get how the world worked.

My response: No. Of course I get it: The world is made by men, for men, to meet mens' needs. My needs and feelings don't even come into it. I totally get that, and there's no way in hell I'm abiding by a set of rules that were designed to be expressly to my disadvantage.

I wasn't quite that eloquent at the time, of course, although I'm pretty sure the first sentence is almost verbatim. I felt very powerfully at the time that what I was saying was absolutely true, even though I had yet to encounter any real feminist writing at that point. The rest of it is a paraphrase, imposing my currently clearer views and understanding of how I feel about it.

is it wrong

for me to feel that when I see my nieces' boundaries being crossed, that my boundaries are being crossed?

I don't feel that I'm in the wrong for standing up for them, but what if the people who are nominally their parents* can't see that continually violating their childrens' sense of self-respect is not a good thing?

I guess I'm trying to figure out: When is it my business to intervene, and when is it not my business?

And when it is my business, how do I go about it?

***
How do I know when one of the girls' boundaries has been crossed in a way that requires intervention?

Well, I just feel it. After all the years of being completely out of touch with my own feelings and working so hard to get re-connected, I just know.

I trust this. I don't feel bad about my 'meddling'; I just feel bad that I handled it badly. In other words, there should have been a way to do it that didn't make my SIL feel bad about herself. I'm not blaming myself here - both of us handled it badly, as far as I'm concerned, and neither of us have stepped up to the plate to make amends.

I'm not feeling stubborn about this, particularly, but I'm recognizing that there's a halfway point, a point midway across the bridge between any two people where we should meet in order for the relationship to feel balanced. Or, as somebody else put it, we need to both be investing the same amount (roughly, plus or minus, on average over time) into the relationship in order for it to work, to be satisfying to both people.

I realize that I didn't choose SIL, and she didn't choose me; if it weren't for my brother, we probably wouldn't have met. We have very little in common except for the girls; we often seem to have little to talk about except the surface issues.

And yet, when we're together, we seem to get along ok. There just doesn't ever seem to be any real impetus to the thing, any forward motion - it always feels a bit forced and awkward to me, something that we both do because we know we should rather than because our hearts are in it.

Which is of course human nature: We gravitate to who we gravitate to, for whatever reasonse, explicable or not. Just like taste: No accounting for it.

We may grow to like each other better over time; or not, as this article suggests:

Familiarity breeds contempt
"...on the vast majority of occasions the less we know about someone the more we are inclined to like them. [...]ambiguity allows us to imagine that other people share our world-view, our personality traits or our sense of humour. Unfortunately as soon as we start to find out more about them, we're likely to find out how different they are to ourselves and, as a result, to dislike them."

There are a couple of sarcastic quotes from the article's lead-in, but I won't quote them here. I'm severely ambivalent about sarcasm these days - my general sense is that's it's simply wrong, and nearly always destructive; that certain kinds of teasing may serve to diffuse tension between two people who know each other really well and are respectful of, and careful with, each others' feelings.

But when sarcasm is used as a weapon (as it almost always was in my family), as a put-down, a way of mocking someone, then to me it is simply a bad thing. Period. There is no redeeming value to making another person feel bad about themselves.

Not sure how I feel about that last statement. Let it sit for a while and see if it rings true.


*'Nominally their parents': I think Americans are fairly unique in our perception of children as 'possessions', as I've mentioned before. I feel strongly enough about this to link to this article again: Many Mothers, Many Fathers: The Meaning of Parenting Around the World

stuck again, or still

When something gets broken (a relationship) and it feels like the only way to fix it is to apologize for something you don't feel you were in the wrong for, then what?

You can say, well, I value this relationship and I want to do what's necessary to ____ (have to fill in that blank later).

Is it stubborn pride? Sometimes.

But what if it's something deeper than that? Like a fear that if you let that little thing slip by, without comment, it sets a precedent for other (boy am I having a hard time writing this, even thinking about it! It so goes against everything my family seems to believe. The 'rules', so to speak.)

It's like, either you play by our rules, or you aren't welcome here. Kind of like belonging to a club. Even when I was a little girl I didn't like their rules - didn't like being bossed around, didn't like being treated like my feelings didn't matter. Stood up to my father, as best I could (though something happened in my teenage years - puberty, maybe? that put me in a tailspin of self-doubt from which I seem to have never recovered. This is ringing some bells about works that discuss how strong, outspoken 11- and 12-year-old girls suddenly go silent at puberty, something to do with the social pressures to conform to being 'feminine'. Carol Gilligan wrote about this, if I'm remembering right. Have to go look later.)

So once again, the same damn lightbulb, over and over again: Fucking patriarchy. Either you conform, or you're out. You're on the outside, in the cold, alone, shunned (makes me think of Clan of the Cave Bear).

I sit here in my hermitage whiling away the hours, safely far away from all these conflicts. Then, bam! The instant I leave the house I'm confronted with the ugliness in some form or other, whether from some random guy passing on the street, or a neighbor, or what have you.

There's a pretense at respect from some men; and as I say that I realize it's not quite what I mean. But I'm going to leave it there until I figure out exactly what I do mean.

when other people can't perceive your hurdles

Still noodling over this 'playing the victim' idea, trying to figure out how to bridge the gap between people who think like this and my own way of thinking about it.

One of the most useful concepts I've seen for deconstructing power imbalances is Unpacking the Backpack of Privilege, . A variant on t

Getting someone who has some kind of unrecognized privilege to actually think about it is another thing altogether. I mean, why would they? Why would they give up something that, from their point of view, they deserve? Why would they even consider another point of view?

I think I'm trying to 'know my enemy', and boy is it like turning my mind into one big knot! It's like trying to see the back of your own head without a mirror...

moving on

little kitty

big mama kitties


sagacious mama-cat

images

power, power everywhere, and nary a drop to

mondo spin-o mode - can't shut the puppy down. Might be time for a wee tap from the ol' Jack Daniels hammer, see if we can't take the edge off a little. Up, then down - normal cycles.

So if there is a slight extremeness, well, put it down to the aforementioned insecurity trap. When you're depressed, nothing is working. So it maybe makes sense (to me anyway) that when one finally gets functional again, one might go into high-speed hyperdrive just to make up for lost time.

Silly thought in the bathroom: Hunting for clip to put my bangs out of the way so I could wash my face, saw one of the small spider-clippies but chose not to use it 'cause it was black and looked way too much like a frickin' real spider, not at all something I want to (intentionally!) put in my hair.

So I fished around some more, thinking how I have a whole drawerful of unwanted hair accessories because in the world of womens' hair clippies, one has to buy a whole bunch of something one doesn't want in order to get something one does. Which is a fairly common compromise to have to make, I guess.

Immediately leaped to mind (given current frame of thought) the notion of dysfunctional relationships and how we get trained by them to accept things that are bad for us as part of our internalized definition of so-called love.

But, hey, guess what - it's frickin' everywhere, man, this pestilential poison of unwantedness. In fact, one might say it's the engine that runs capitalism, and that capitalism, in and of itself, is one, big, gigantic abusive fucking relationship. Especially in light of the most recent machinations/tomfoolery/bullshit our gubmint and some high-profile major institutions have been pulling.

Anyway... as always, it all hooks together. Universal field theory and all that.

Who was that little guy, Ozymandias (college beginner lit class, very vague memory), who asked his wise dudes to come up with something to write over the doorway of his tomb that would always be true, and here's what they came up with:

This too shall pass.

insecurity impedes clear thinking,

and here's proof, my little ankle-biters (as Robin Williams would say).

More from Bringing Oxytocin into the room:

Perception, Mirror Neurons and Suggestibility

Several studies have shown that the brain is highly responsive to suggestion. In a series of remarkable experiments it has been shown that the performance of simple, seemingly unrelated tasks can be increased or decreased merely by placing a briefcase or sports equipment nearby, triggering unconscious associations with work or play.

In an interesting study, subjects were made happy or angry, then shown happy and angry faces and friendly and hostile interpersonal scenes in a stereoscope. Happy subjects perceived more happy faces and friendly interpersonal scenes while angry subjects perceived more angry faces and hostile interpersonal scenes.

In addition, it has been shown that relatively small favors or bits of good luck (like finding money in a coin telephone or getting an unexpected gift) induced positive emotion in people, and that these emotions increased the subjects’ inclination to sympathize or provide help.

On closer reading, it appears that the evidence he's gathered mostly has to do with men. Not so useful, unfortunately.

ack, still going, even if only on fumes

amygdala. Overstimulation shuts it down? Say I am in a fear/anxiety state much of my childhood; it never gets resolved, is never brought down to a manageable level.

If amygdala is where my future-reference patterns are stored, do I fail to store those memories because I'm blocking... no, that's not it.

Ok, so this stuff gets triggered over and over by new events because the old stuff never got resolved. So the 'reaction' is still sitting there, somehow, like a - potential, maybe? that needs to be released in order to complete the circuit.

But it never gets released, so it's like pressure building up behind a dam. Or, maybe, a pipe that's getting gunk built up inside it (like clogged arteries), so the pressure keeps building and building, at the same time the aperture though which the 'stuff' can be released (and experienced?) gets narrower.

See, for me, unless there's somebody on the receiving end (a la Alice Miller's 'enlightened witness'), it doesn't come out. I have no idea what analogy here to use, except maybe baseball: You need somebody to catch the frickin' ball. Otherwise it's the same ol' one hand clapping routine. Nobody there to hear you, you don't get heard. Not really; not in any real sense. It's just another kind of cotton candy for the soul - you go away hungry, un-nourished. Which is why we revisit the same old stuff over and over and over: We need that resolution. It is not a matter of 'playing the (fucking) victim,' goddamn it to fucking hell.

It's a matter of fucking hurting, really fucking badly, and wanting to fucking lance the fucking wound.

Am I making myself perfectly fucking clear yet?

A snippet from a (painful) poem I once wrote seems apropos here:

my heart is weeping through this pen onto the page
this paper is my ear
this pen my mouth
it is a closed circle
so what good is it?

I know I've had this particular lightbulb moment over and over again, I'm pretty sure I've written about it before, possibly even today. But I'm looking for the linchpin, the rosetta stone, the key to unlocking this part of the pattern.

So help me out here. What do I do? Where's the lever with which to pry this one loose?

victim?

one more, then like the Gene Wilder (?) character in Stir Crazy ("pillow"), I'll have to take a break, brain hurts.

Flashes of thought about power: Brother saying I'm always playing the victim.

I think to self, but if I'd been, say, mugged, you wouldn't say that, right? I mean why, if somebody's bullied me or knocked me down and I'm frickin' hurt do I have to pretend that everything's ok? Can I not say, Ow, cut that out you mother-f*cking son-of-a-*****? (feminist self-editing voice chiding me for anti-woman curses.)

Men think in terms of power, hierarchy, dominance. Always. At all times.

And it may be only the 'alphas' who do this; insufficient data at this point.

According to Carol Tavris? Gilligan? (? not sure I'm quoting the right person, will straighten out my source attributions later, gotta get these thoughts down), men talk to establish status. Which makes sense of a whole lotta things...

So it doesn't matter if it's the size of their ____ or how big their car engine is, or their hard drive. Or whether 'their' team is bigger, better, faster, more powerful: It's always about the pecking order. Dominance. Who's on top.

I sometimes think women go along with this because it's just easier that way (unless you're dealing with someone who's physically violent, in which case I recognize that it's sometimes a matter of literal survival, no intent to diminish that fear/possibility here, just haven't personally experienced it.)

Which is why men fear women's laughter as if it were literally life-threatening, worthy of responding to with physical violence and extreme anger: Men define themselves by their position in society.

Circling back 'round to the original point (not sure about this mind you, working it out), victim is not acceptable language for hierarchical thinkers. (Man does this ever make my brain hurt. Literally, getting a headache, which I almost never do. Feel like I ought to get some kind of medal or something for even attempting the mind-bending feat of trying to understand how men 'think'.)

it's all about power

Just an image, for now:

I think what I'm doing here is arming myself, giving myself the weapons and tools I've never had: A series of images, initially, to help me get clear about what's what. And then, hopefully (yeah, I know that's bad construction) I'll get to the point where I can actually apply what I'm learning in real time.

Kind of like jiu-jitsu for the mind...

know I'm going to get hammered for saying this

Being smarter than the rest of the family while simultaneously at the bottom of the family/gender hierarchy meant that I understood them better than they understood me (basic Power Dynamics 101. Think master/slave. More on that later, maybe.)

Anyway. So: I get them; they don't get me.

I do all the adjusting, coping, adapting, because I can, because I know how. And (least palatable): Because I have to. Have no choice (arguments about 'perception of choice' vs. 'actual choice' may be entertained at some future date. But not now.)

They do none of the work necessary to having a relationship with me; they totally take advantage of my willingness/ability to morph myself to fit any situation. Having all the power, they can do whatever they want. (Except the younger of my two brothers - he came along too late in the story to be any real part of the dynamic I'm describing here. Though of course as a male in a patriarchy, he eventually gets his slice of the pie. Me? Still waiting. Any time now, I'm ready :-)

End result: I grow up not knowing how to do it any other way; hence, when I get out in the world, I carry with me the same limited coping skills I developed growing up in my (entirely sub-optimal) environment.

So now as an adult I'm trying to undo this: Remove the top of my own head, stir things around in there to see if I can find which wires, circuits, whatever to re-connect in some fashion that's more useful to me. Cranial screwtop, I call it.

This is difficult, because my whole life, starting with my father's negativity and total unwillingness to ever say anything positive to me on any subject whatsoever, compounded by my mom's total silence on nearly any of these same subjects, then further hammered home by the culture's (and the world's) insistence that women only exist to please men and reflect them back to themselves at twice life size (see previous Virginia Woolf quotes for elaboration), I've developed a pretty major resistance to even admitting that I might possibly be good at something. I mean, how many times does one have to be fried to an utterly blackened crisp to finally learn not to put oneself in any kind of place where one might mistakenly be perceived as the human equivalent of a fricking lighting rod?

They even have a name for it, there's something called the Impostor Syndrome (which I won't link to any references right now because I'm too fried, maybe later). I think it's basically a survival technique akin to the trapped-wolf-chewing-off-a-foot analogy: You do it because you can't think of any other way to get out alive.

But I think most of us would prefer to have all four feet functional, thank you very much. Going through life with a self-inflicted limp (again images of women being expected to hobble ourselves in order not to threaten men flash through my mind) is really not what you want.

Hence all the efforts to self-heal (yes, more overused psycho-babble/New Age [read somebody say it should be pronounced like 'sewage'] speak]).

more human behavior stuff

Wandering deeper into the thicket of human behavior, thoughts about connections between gender, anger, amygdala, oxytocin. (And probably serotonin, cortisol, dopamine, etc., while we're at it :-) .)

While reading about the amygdala, I came across this idea that womens' amygdalae respond differently than mens' do to fear-inducing stimuli (ooh, two Latin plurals in one sentence! What do I win?) From this article in the University of California Newsletter written in April, 2006:

Larry Cahill, an associate professor of neurobiology and behavior, and Lisa Kilpatrick, a former postdoctoral fellow in his laboratory, have found that the amygdala, an almond-shaped structure found on both sides of the brain, behaves very differently in males and females while the subjects are at rest. In men, the right amygdala is more active and shows more connections with other regions of the brain, even when there is no outside stimulus. Conversely, in women, the left amygdala is more connected with other regions of the brain. In addition, the regions of the brain with which the amygdala communicates while a subject is at rest are different in men and women.

Given the tendency of most 'science' on any gender topic to fan the flames of the endless battle between the sexes (with women usually on the losing end), I was immediately annoyed. But always looking for 'truth', such as it is and what there is of it, I dug in further. Knowledge being power and all that. And of course remembering, always, that so-called 'knowledge' about dang near anything that's this speculative is subject to change at any moment without notice. I'm sure there's some saying in the scientific community about this that's apropos. Maybe it's really just that even 'science' isn't immune to the use of anecdata, aka 'cherry picking'. Or as Mark Twain said, "There's three kinds of lies: Lies, damn lies, and statistics."

So here I am digging away with Google. Found this interesting piece of writing by a guy who seems to have already done a fair amount of thinking along the lines I'm exploring here: Bringing Oxytocin Into The Room: Notes On The Neurophysiology Of Conflict. Needs more cogitation before I'll have much to say about that one, I think.

Another link to monkeys' sense of fairness, Monkey Economics. No quotes just now.

something happy

Stumbled on an old favorite the other day, One Froggy Evening:

feeding myself

Realizing that this writing is a way to put together the pieces, tell the story of my life in ways I've never had the opportunity to do. Weaving the tapestry.

so if I had bad models right out of the gate,

can I re-imprint myself?

The 'self re-imprinting' approach would be what I think cognitive behavior therapy tries to do. Anecdotally, it sounds like it might work for some folks. In fact, I'll even admit (despite major skepticism) that it might even be working for me, to some degree.

But you know what? I still hold that any real progress I've made at re-mapping, rewiring, whatever you want to call it, is experience-based. I'm pretty convinced at this point that the only way genuinely useful changes happen on the behavioral front is to have different experiences.

Once again we're at the mercy of fate here, I'd say. You can do all the groundwork you want, but if the right person doesn't come along at the right time, no amount of 'therapy' is going to do the trick. If the therapist(s) you're using to try to help you rewire things aren't the right match for your particular type of brain and individual situation, you could easily end up worse off than you started (which happens all the time). It's basically a game of chance.

how we learn to have relationships

From what I've read (wry smile acknowledging irony), people learn how to relate to others via the relationships they have in childhood. It's something like a blank slate, the idea of 'imprinting', kind of like what Lorenz did with the geese:

I'm trying to think of a tech analogy - something to do with software - it's like writing a new program, only the thing teaches itself, like with artificial intelligence. In other words, it learns from its environment, and is continually adapting to new information.

The difference is that with a child, many of the emotional/relational imprints are stored as raw impressions rather than as logical constructs, so that eradicating and/or undoing them once they've been imprinted is rather like trying to cancel out an image that's been stamped into a piece of metal (embossing, I think that's called - ooh, feel some convoluted connection trying to get my attention, but will ignore the temptation to derail for now).

Or like I've probably said before, the blank cassette tape analogy where the old recording leaks through into the current 'data' (can't think of the right word).

As I understand it (layperson here), the amygdala*

stores these impressions almost like a single frame of a movie, complete with all the sensory data that was perceived at the time, a snapshot: Sound (loud? confusing?) , color, light (flashing? bright, overwhelming? dim, foggy?), smells (ever connect a smell to something unpleasant without knowing why?), touch. The whole works is there, the complete package.

It's a way for our pattern-matching intelligence to create a pattern to which to match future inputs: Like a series of slides that the mind (is that the right word?) instantly sorts through at a subconscious level to see if the current 'input' signifies 'danger' or 'not danger'.

It seems to be very much a binary, very much an on/off, black/white, either/or, highly simplistic lizard-brain kind of thing. I think I've said this elsewhere already, but my impression (from observation of self and others as well as reading on the subject) is that there ain't a whole lot we can do about it.

We can try to become aware, but mainly this is in a janitor-with-a-mop after-the-fact kind of way. Messes happen because our really smart, really fast, prehistoric brain that kept us alive through all kinds of split-second decisions dealing with hazards that our conscious brains would've been way too slow for, is now using that split-second reaction behavior in situations for which it's often completely unsuited.

And the fact is, we ain't evolved much since then. Evolution takes place on an epochal scale, and the amount of time that's passed since we moved out of the trees into condos hasn't been long enough to significantly rewire our basic hardware.

So even though we may live in the concrete jungle, our equipment operates as if we're still swinging from branches, expecting something slithery with fangs on the end to drop on our heads at any moment.

How to deal with this? As always, it seems that awareness is the best we can do (something niggling about Eve and the apple, and the apple representing self-awareness as the serpent that ruined the Garden, that changed us forever from being contented, non self-aware animals like all the others into neurotic, self-reflective worriers who are continually trying to sort right from wrong. Subject for another post.)


*From the biopsychiatry.com link:

The amygdala, an almond-sized and -shaped brain structure, has long been linked with a person's mental and emotional state. But thanks to scientific advances, researchers have recently grasped how important this 1-inch-long structure really is. Associated with a range of mental conditions from normalcy to depression to even autism[...]

Derived from the Greek for almond, the amygdala sits in the brain's medial temporal lobe, a few inches from either ear. Coursing through the amygdala are nerves connecting it to a number of important brain centers, including the neocortex and visual cortex.

From serendip.brynmawr.edu:

From the evolutionary standpoint, the theory is that fear is a neural circuit that has been designed to keep the organism alive in dangerous situations. How does it all work? Learning and responding to stimuli that warn of danger involves neural pathways that send information about the outside world to the amygdala, which in turn, determines the significance of the stimulus and triggers emotional responses like freezing or fleeing as well as changes in the inner workings of the body's organs and glands. There are important distinctions to make between emotions and feelings. Feelings are "red herrings", products of the conscious mind, labels given to unconscious emotions. But the components of fear goes beyond feelings and emotions. It is also the specific memory of the emotion. After a frightful experience, one can remember the logical reasons for the experience (e.g. the time and place) but one will also "feel" the memory, and his body will react as such (i.e. increased heart and respiration rate, sweating). In one recent case, after a near drowining incident, the victim could not only vividly remember each detail, but when doing so, his body reacted as though he were reliving the experience. These feelings of memory are stored in an almond shaped structure in the brain known as the amygdala. [bold mine.]

ok, I've got it:

Life is a poker game.

We all keep our hands close to our chests, never letting anybody else really know what we have.

And intimacy is another one of those false ideas that says that we can let somebody close enough to see how we're really feeling about things.

This is cutting too close to the bone. Stopping now.

Maybe I'll revert to the old favorite method, thinking in terms of song lyrics (from The Gambler):

You got to know when to hold 'em
Know when to fold 'em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run

You never count your money
When you're sittin' at the table
There'll be time enough for countin'
When the dealin's done.

I think part of it is

that men are used to women doing all the relational work. In my 20s, I spent all kinds of time and energy trying to learn how to do this - how to appear interested, how to ask questions that kept a conversation going. (My mom didn't know how to do this stuff, so I had to teach myself. Interestingly, this both freed me from the compulsion while at the same time handicapping me as a 'woman' in the world. And yes, I'm a woman in all senses of the word. But as a feminist? I realize fully that it's all about expectations - ain't none of this shit innate. We all have to work at it to some degree or other, which is, I believe, perhaps, antithetical to the whole bullshit EvoPsych position on how women are designed to fill certain roles in life. Fuck THAT noise. Patriarchy, baby, patriarchy - follow the power.)

So when my friend, and other men in my life who've gotten used to me pulling the weight of the emotional sledge (hm, read too much Hans Christian Andersen as a child. I believe in modern times, dear, we say something like 'cart'), see me suddenly step out of my socially-constructed harness and wander off as if I don't really give a shit, they get worried.

Verbivoric distractions aside: He realized, belatedly, that if he wanted to keep me around, he'd have to put in some effort. I wasn't putting up with his shallow-ass shit any more.

I could say this is about boundaries again. But who frickin' cares? It obviously is too dry and tasteless (meaning having no flavor) a concept for me to find useful.

So I have to find something else that works better for me.

Metaphor, metaphor, who's got the right metaphor for this one? Have to noodle around a bit.

still chewing

It feels as if we are all constantly manipulating, maneuvering, jockeying for position.

And the ones who are truly skillful at it never let on that they're doing it - they're sensitive to the slightest nuance that they've 'lost' you - like a highly skilled fisherman working the bait. (Yes, I'm frickin' cynical, so get over it already! Whaddya expect, life I've lived - have to be some kinda frickin' Pollyanna er some damn thing to remain unfazed. And guess what: Pollyanna is a fictional character. So fuck that shit.)

going round in circles

I think I'm going to disagree with the shrinks here.

Let's say it's not about boundaries.

Let's say that people are basically selfish; they give as much as they feel they have to to get what they need (and sometimes they'll give a little extra when they're feeling 'flush' because, hey, look what a benevolent son-of-a-bitch I am! Status seeking, status seeking - selling all the time [attempt at a little auction/marketing lingo there]).

Let's say that people only give if there's something in it for them.

It doesn't matter how small a 'thing' it is - could be prestige, could be a 'deposit' for anticipated future withdrawal from the 'relationship bank'.

The 'boundary setting' thing has more to do with power (ooh, now my brain's really getting tangled).

Have to stop and think about this for a minute.

life isn't fair

This one has always bugged me. My dad used to trot this one out any time we complained about somebody getting more than somebody else, or one person getting in trouble for something that another person got away with.

"Life isn't fair," he'd say complacently, almost smugly, as if it fucking pleased him to finally be the one who got to hand out this irritating-as-shit, bitter pill, dispensing the daily dose of 'fuck you,' just as he was (I assume) similarly dismissed as a child.

And so we grow up with this gnawing inside of us, this emptiness, this hunger for fairness, this sense that we matter, that our feelings count.

As you get older, you either look for opportunities to settle the score (road rage, cheating, cutting in line, helping yourself to the last piece of something all the while knowing full well that somebody else wanted that. And rather than sharing, taking the edge off and enjoying the benevolence of that, instead we hoard, we turn inward, we try to slake our thirst, assuage our hunger by giving nothing back), or you simply seethe, and boil, and resent the shit out of everybody who's got it better than you.

Which is pretty much par for the course, human nature, normal, near as I can tell.

Maybe that's what it is, as Cap'n Jack said in one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies:

Take what you can, give nothing back!

That's just how people are.

Altruism, then, is more about having been caught at being selfish one too many times, and the relational cost thereof being higher than simply giving in to the other person's desire to have some of what we have.

In other words, underneath our basic selfishness, we know we need other people, so we do what we have to to keep them around. But there's always a tension between the two, the dance of testing the limits to see how far the bond will stretch before it breaks altogether. And most of us don't like to test it that far; most of us, when there seems to be some strain, will patch things up just enough to keep the thing going. Kind of like pouring just enough oil into that old beater car's engine - never enough to really make it run right, just enough to keep it from stopping altogether.

So there you go: Some people are assiduous about checking their oil, tidying this, tidying that, paying bills, taxes, etc., what have you. But are these same people equally concerned about maintaining the relationships in their lives?

See, this all comes up because I spoke to a 'friend' today, who is quite clearly in the 'fair weather' category, and was struck by how hard he was trying to patch things up with me.

Why? I don't know. Several times that I talked with him recently (about a sort of business-y matter) he was very abrupt with me, cut me off in ways that I felt were rude, and so finally this last time, when he finally seemed inclined to be a bit more chatty, I cut him short and was abrupt in turn. In other words, I made no effort to hide my irritation. I think he was a little surprised, a little hurt, a little shocked, and wanted to make amends.

But I hate having to do

Wait a minute. I think I maybe just got something (yes, another one of those 'light bulb' moments that I have a thousand times before an idea actually sticks) - this is about boundaries, isn't it?

You know, no matter how many times I write down 'boundaries' on some Post-it and stick it somewhere so I won't forget, I still forget. And every so often I have this "D'oh!" moment where I go, oh yeah, frickin' boundaries again. THAT ol' thing!

Well, here it is again.

So, grasshopper, what do we learn from this today?

That trust is a - something? - that needs constant maintenance. That it cannot be taken for granted. And when it IS taken for granted, bad things happen: People get angry, relationships get trashed.

I'm sure there's more to that, but it's all I can think of for now.
***
Back again, thought of something I want to add, from a National Geographic article about a study on whether monkeys have a sense of fairness:

The question of whether human aversion to unfair treatment—now shown by other primates—is an evolved behavior or the result of the cultural influence of large social institutions like religion, governments, and schools, in the case of humans, has intrigued scientists in recent years.

The new finding suggests evolution may have something to do with it. It also highlights questions about the economic and evolutionary nature of cooperation and its relationship to a species' sense of fairness[...]

"It looks like this behavior is evolved … it is not simply a cultural construct. There's some good evolutionary reason why we don't like being treated unfairly,"

Brosnan, a biology Ph. D. candidate schooled in zoology and psychology at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center and Living Links Center at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, said her research was inspired, in part, by studies into human cooperation conducted by Swiss economist Ernst Fehr, who found that people inherently reject unfairness.

we like people for what they do for us

Ok, I know we're supposed to act like we believe in altruism and all that, but I seriously think that people really only do things because it benefits them in some way.

Feeling today like 'friends' are fickle, unpredicatable - that it's all about what's convenient, can't count on anybody, ever-shifting landscape, quicksand. It's true that there are plenty of people I could call in a pinch, it's just on the day-to-day basis I don't seem to have anyone who's part of my life. The whole 'couple' thing seems to be the only acceptable solution in these here United States at this point in time. All the stories I've read over the years about the friendly boarding house, the all-inclusive village (where even the village idiot is accept for who he [and it's always a 'he'] is) are just that - stories. They don't really exist. (Here I'm realizing the cost of growing up with books as my mentors: At some point I have to face the real world, and I find I'm very ill-equipped. Guess there's a good reason I'm a hermit :-)

Still trying to make sense of the rules, the dang social rules, and feeling like every time I start to get a grip on things, something shifts and everything I thought I understood has turned upside down.

I think the thing is to create your own little 'world' populated with people who by-and-large 'get' you. And the hope is to populate that little universe with more than just one other person. Which, I think, is often why people have families: To create a miniature universe in their own image. (Ooh, scary - weird thoughts about 'quiverfull*' people and parents seeing themselves as gods. Echoes of all the child abuse stuff. It all hooks together, all hooks together.)

I've read a million times that we're supposed to like each other for 'who we are', not for 'what we do'. (And yet, in reality, the 'what we do' is what we all judge each other by - once again, "Your actions speak so loudly I can't hear a word you say.")

I think what I'm leading up to here is a connection (circuitously, oh so circuitously [dang, that word does not roll off the fingers!]) between, once again, what we say and what we do.

So: One of grasshopper's many revelations for the day: This idea (meme?) in the culture (and I get this largely from internet dating sites and self-help articles, so your observation may not match mine) that people are somehow supposed to be totally happy alone, and that they choose someone to be with not because they need that person, but because they're both totally happy and self-sufficient just the way they are and only opt to be with this other person because they like them. They don't actually need a dang thing from one another.

Once again I call bullshit. Everybody needs something, all the time. That's part of what being human is about. Remember ol' Maslow?
I'm not sure I totally agree with his 'hierarchy' (here's an interesting discussion on the subject), but I definitely agree that needs are what drive us. Understanding those needs is a whole other can o' something-or-other.

Having said all that, what I wanna know is, why? Why do we constantly pull this self-deception bullshit? Is it really better this way? Easier?

And more to the point, why do I seem to be incapable of operating the way 98.7% of the rest of the human species seems to operate? Why? Why me? Waaaahhhhhhhh! *tears out hair*

Ordered Radical Honesty from the local lib again. Maybe that'll be a bit of an antidote to the omnipresent bool shite...



*Quiverfull: From Urban dictionary:

A branch of evangelical Christians who take the Bible literally. They believe that one of the most important of God's commands is to "be fruitful and multiply" (it's written twice!). Quiverfull families have as many children in the least amount of time that is humanly possible. The quiverfull mission is to repopulate the world with white Christians, and the movement is one of the fastest growing segments of Dominionist Christians.

More about this if you're really bored and have nothing better to do: www.quiverfull dot com (no frickin' way in hell I'm linkin' to that shite!)

parental oppression

I was taught that my feelings didn't matter.

The teachings went like this:
Shame her
Mock her
Humiliate her
Tease her
Make fun of her
Belittle her
Confuse her so she doesn't know which way is up.

Is this love? Is this respect? Is this caring, kindness, compassion, or any of the things I expect to get from my parents?

NO. A big, fucking, pissed off, goddamn-it-to-hell, NO!!!!!!!!!!

What I expect:
To be treated with respect, as if my feelings (and hence, needs) matter just as much my parents'.

No FUCKING power games, thank you very much.

hypersensitive bullshit detector

From this:

"Indigo Children can sense dishonesty, like a dog can sense fear. Indigos know when they're being lied to, patronized, or manipulated. And since their collective purpose is to usher us into a new world of integrity, the Indigos inner lie-detectors are integral. As mentioned before, this warrior spirit is threatening to some adults. And the Indigos are unable to conform to dysfunctional situations at home, work, or school. They don't have the ability to dissociate from their feelings and pretend like everything's okay ...unless they are medicated or sedated."

you're not allowed to be special

you must be ordinary, plain as dirt.

You may not bloom, nor blossom; if I see any slightest sign of you spreading your wings/petals in glory and joy and the warming sun, I will smash you into the mud.

Why? Because I can.

Why? Because I hate you - I hate your joy, your unfettered, open nature, your capacity to run freely and play.

anger is difficult!

Growing up in a conflict-avoidant family that used sarcasm, bullying and other forms of passive aggression instead of open expression of anger, I never learned how to use it (anger, I mean). 'Permission' to use anger seemed to be split on strict gender lines: Men could be assholes, women were meant to be doormats (yeah, no misogyny or anything in my family. No ma'am.)

In fact, I never even knew I was angry until my mid- late 30s, when several male friends said, unsolicited, Wow - you're really angry. And I thought, I am? Huh. Interesting.

It didn't make much of an impression until the third or fourth person said the very same thing within about a 6-month period. It was a relatively short time after my ex and I had split up (5 years together, owned a house, not married, no kids), and I think, in retrospect, that I was angry about many, many unresolved issues between the two of us, which I would never get a chance to resolve because he'd already moved on to a new relationship. And in any case, our inability to resolve, or even discuss, emotional issues was pretty much what did us in in the first place.

That, compounded with leftover unresolved feelings after my father's death 8 years earlier, sent me off down the road of beginning to try to untangle all the old stuff. It was slow going at first, and I didn't really dig in for another 3 or 4 years.

Anyway, today I came across something that seems useful about dealing with anger:

From Elaine Aron's HSP site, an artical on HSP teens and 'dealing with strong feelings':

"The point is, think strategically. Use your anger to your advantage, not to your disadvantage. Anger is the most moral emotion. When you express your reason for your anger in the right way (often without needing to express any actual anger), it simply tells others they have gone too far. If well done it should not cause a big flare up back. Your anger actually helps them know what you like and not do what you do not like. They are doing something to you that is wrong for you. Your anger keeps them from doing it again. "Good fences make good neighbors." Your anger is like one of those invisible fences that gives a dog a zap when it crosses it. After a few times, it stays in its yard.

What is the right way to express anger? In a way that does not make the person feel ashamed. When people are ashamed they become what we call defensive. They will blame you instead, or deny they did anything wrong, or say you do it too. If they think you are saying they have done something wrong, they may feel you are also saying they are a bad person. Then it is as if you have thrown a sticky shame ball at them. They don't want it, so they throw it back at you. "You started it, not me." "I didn't cut in line--you were so slow I went around you."

I must say I think that much of the rest of her 'advice' sounds like someone who's either never been a parent or has never been in the situations she's describing - her suggestions are a bit glib and unrealistic for my taste. Nonetheless, the quoted segment (mostly) rings true for me.

parenting styles

A bunch of links about parenting that I want to keep track of.

Remember: Take what you need and leave the rest.


Some authoritarian parenting style definitions:
From Do You Know Your Parenting Style:

Parents who tend to overemphasize the discipline side of the equation are referred to as authoritarian. Authoritarian parents are demanding in the worst sense of the word. They are intimidators, requiring obedience and respect above all else. They become overly angry and forceful when they don't get that obedience and respect. Their love and acceptance appear totally conditional to the child. They do not teach or listen to their kids or explain the reason for their expectations, which are frequently unrealistic. They often see their children's individuality and independence as irrelevant or threatening.

Research has shown that authoritarian parents tend to produce children who are more withdrawn, anxious, mistrustful and discontented. These children are often overlooked by their peers. Their self-esteem is often poor.

From Authoritarian Parenting Style Has Long Term Drawbacks:

An authoritarian parenting style has a strong focus on discipline and setting limits with less emphasis on expressions of parental love. Although this doesn't mean that these parents do not love their children, it does illustrate their reluctance to express love and connection—two things that are critical to healthy development in children.

Those who strictly follow this style may take issue with the last paragraph and claim they set firm limits because they love their children. They want their children to grow up to be good people. They want their kids to love and respect them for all the sacrifices they've made. Sadly, these parents believe that using punishment, coercion, blame and shame is the way to achieve that end.

Think about how backwards this is—parents think that by using harsh indoctrination, their children will somehow grow up to be good and caring people.

To examine the ill-directed principles behind authoritarian parenting, let's start on common ground.

I think we can agree that most parents want their children to love and respect them. Most parents want their children to grow up to become good people. However, like two routes to the same destination—one barely tolerable with a harsh taskmaster at the helm and the other an enjoyable journey during which all the travelers develop close and lasting bonds—we can wind up at the same place without damaging our children's psyches in the process.

The tools of authoritarian parenting are blame, shame, coercion and punishment. I think it's safe to say that it does not feel good to be on the receiving end of such behavior, but many parents convince themselves that these tactics are necessary to "teach a lesson."

Why?

Because this was how they were raised.

Let's consider for a moment what children are learning when parents treat them in this way.

Effects of Authoritarian Parenting

When children are blamed, shamed and punished as a rule, they learn:

• to feel bad about themselves.
• what NOT to do, but not what to do.
• that their parents' love is contingent on their behavior.
• to avoid inappropriate behavior, not because they have developed strong values, but because it will get them punished.

From Authoritarian Parenting Style - Is the Authoritarian Parenting Style Effective:

An authoritarian parenting style is one in which the parents demand obedience and blind compliance from their children. Authoritarian parents have rigid rules with harsh punishments for bending, questioning or disobeying them. Although this style of parenting has been predominant for most of human history, it best serves societies in which children grow up to follow exactly in their parents' footsteps, toiling away their lives in agrarian or industrial societies.

Wisegeek.com, What are Some Different Parenting Styles?

The Authoritarian Parent

Other various links on parenting and parenting styles:
From Child Abuse, section on Styles of Child Rearing (p. 20):

"...very different styles of child rearing can emerge from the interaction of two fundamental dimensions of parenting: (a) the degree of parental demandingness, and (b) the degree of parental sensitivity. Demandingness is defined as the amount or degree of control the parent attempts to exert over the child, and responsiveness is defined as the frequency of parenting interactions (both positive and negative) that are child centered versus parent centered (i.e., the degree to which the parent behaves in response to the needs and behavior shown by the child.)"

From section entitled Authoritarian Parenting Style, p. 21:

"There is a great deal of overlap in the attitudinal and behavioral correlates of authoritarian and abusive parenting styles, which suggests that abusive parenting may be a more extreme version of the authoritarian style... Authoritarian parents exhibit an insensitivity [bolds mine] to the child's level of ability, interest or needs that may impair the child's self-esteem or motivation..."

From Emotional Intelligence: Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child, by John Gottman:

We have tracked children's physiological responses during stressful parent-child interactions. We have carefully observed and analyzed parents' emotional reactions to their kids' anger and sadness. Then we have checked in with these families over time to see how their children developed in terms of health, academic achievement, emotional development, and social relationships.

Our results tell a simple, yet compelling story. We have found that most parents fall into one of two broad categories: those who give their children guidance about the world of emotion and those who don't.

I call the parents who get involved with their children's feelings "Emotion Coaches." Much like athletic coaches, they teach their children strategies to deal with life's ups and downs. They don't object to their children's displays of anger, sadness, or fear. Nor do they ignore them. Instead, they accept negative emotions as a fact of life and they use emotional moments as opportunities for teaching their kids important life lessons and building closer relationships with them. [bolds mine]

The process of Emotion Coaching that my research colleagues and I uncovered in our studies of successful parent-child interactions typically happens in five steps. The parents:

1. become aware of the child's emotion;

2. recognize the emotion as an opportunity for intimacy and teaching;

3. listen empathetically, validating the child's feelings;

4. help the child find words to label the emotion he is having; and

5. set limits while exploring strategies to solve the problem at hand.

From Emotion Coaching at parentingcounts.org:

"We spend a lot of time teaching our children simple things such as tying their shoes, yet we often expect them to learn how to handle complex feelings like anger, sadness and frustration without much help. Research studies make it clear that children do better when parents nurture, support and encourage their emotional development."
***
On the trail of emotions.
"It might not be apparent, but a boy who becomes sullen and angry with a younger sister may be feeling insecure with his place in the family and jealous of the attention she is getting. The reason a girl suddenly wants to stop going to her childcare center might have nothing to do with childcare at all. Instead she may be feeling rejected by a playmate at the center who found a new friend.

The hints to children's feelings aren't always written on their faces. Helping children develop the language to talk about emotions is an important part of the process. For example, they need to learn the words for emotions like disappointment, hurt feelings, sadness, and worry. But even before kids learn to express themselves, tuned-in adults can often decode children's messages by listening closely and trying to view the world from their point of view."
***
Looking for clues in make-believe.
"It's not uncommon for young ones—especially those under seven—to express their own fears and uncertainties while playing. A young girl who is happily cuddling her doll, Molly, might suddenly say 'Molly doesn't like it when mommy and daddy yell at each other.' Take note when this happens. Children often use characters and scenes during make-believe to talk about difficult or confusing feelings.

Nightmares can also offer a glimpse into the child's emotional world, just as they do the adult's. Even at a young age, our subconscious mind finds ways of dealing with emotions that our conscious mind avoids. Comfort your child after a bad dream, explain the difference between dreams and reality, but keep an ear open for the real-life issues behind the nightmare. "
***
Attitude is important.
"Viewing emotional moments as opportunities, rather than burdens, is not an attitude that comes naturally to everyone. We are all wired to deal with emotions differently. Some parents are more likely to dismiss their child's feelings as silly and unimportant. If a kid is feeling hurt or sad, they might say, 'That's life, and the sooner you realize that the better.' Others see negative emotions like sadness or anger as dangerous or harmful, and try to help their children get rid of them as quickly as possible by replacing them with more positive, happy feelings.

For others, displays of emotions just make them uncomfortable. They may try to avoid or ignore their children's feelings, resorting to bribery or threats to control their children's emotional behavior.

Both of those approaches can actually do more harm than good, according to Gottman. Emotions—even negative ones—are not something to be dismissed or ignored; they are a normal part of being a happy, healthy, and fully-functioning person." [bolds mine]
***
Learning how emotions work.
"For young children, emotions are new and sometimes overwhelming. Kids don't have the benefit of an adult's life experience to understand that the pain they feel when a pet dies will get better with time. Parents and caregivers who support and comfort their child during hard times become that much closer with their child. By offering guidance and experience, they teach the child to deal with feelings that will emerge time and time again in their lives.

Opportunities to teach a child aren't just limited to heavy emotional moments. As all adults know, feelings can escalate. What starts out as mild anxiety about getting the first haircut can grow into a screaming fit once a child is in the barber's chair. By noticing and talking about feelings before they grow into a crisis, parents and caregivers not only defuse issues when they are small, they teach children an important problem-solving strategy.

Whether it's an intense emotional outburst or a quiet, less obvious emotional experience, how a parent acts in the emotional moment is critical. It's important to show patience, interest, and a willingness to join the child in the feeling before working together to find solutions. Parents who take the time to listen, understand, and teach during emotional moments do themselves and their children a lot of good. Not only are their children more likely to see mom and dad as important friends and allies during tough times, they are learning how to deal with emotions in a healthy, effective way. "

A link on forcing kids to eat things they don't like:
Should parents force their kids to eat foods they don't like when they are young?
Discussion thread, various points of view, mostly against.