This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. The rampant, willful cruelty to the point of child abuse we’re inflicting on the children we are separating at the border.
When my son was little, there was a stretch when his home life was turbulent.
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When my son was little, there was a stretch when his home life was turbulent.
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He was too little to understand the concept of time. Everything that happened in the past was “yesterday”.
He has no grasp of the orderly passage of time.
That is the age when kids are most vulnerable to upheaval and chaos and unpredictability.
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He has no grasp of the orderly passage of time.
That is the age when kids are most vulnerable to upheaval and chaos and unpredictability.
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One month, I had to go away for a business trip for a few days.
So, I made him a calendar with pictures on it for where he would be all week. Where he would sleep. Who would be taking care of him.
Suns and moons. Order around the chaos.
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So, I made him a calendar with pictures on it for where he would be all week. Where he would sleep. Who would be taking care of him.
Suns and moons. Order around the chaos.
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It was relieving. It gave him a sense of control and predictability.
One thing I know very, very well from having been taught it by child psyche and seen it myself is this:
Kids don’t need the world to be perfect. They need it to be orderly.
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One thing I know very, very well from having been taught it by child psyche and seen it myself is this:
Kids don’t need the world to be perfect. They need it to be orderly.
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Kids don’t need perfection. They don’t need the world to be free of imperfection.
They absolutely need it to be orderly though.
They need it to be explicable and foreseeable. They need to know that, even when they don’t understand it, there is an order.
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They absolutely need it to be orderly though.
They need it to be explicable and foreseeable. They need to know that, even when they don’t understand it, there is an order.
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My son, thankfully, is resilient and adaptive. He handles change and challenge. He copes and adjusts.
And part of that is because even when life was hard or unfair, it wasn’t wholly unpredictable and chaotic.
What we are doing to these kids though...
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And part of that is because even when life was hard or unfair, it wasn’t wholly unpredictable and chaotic.
What we are doing to these kids though...
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We are ripping away the single source of consistency and permanence in their already challenged lives: their parents.
It is a barbarism. A cruelty. It is a willful trauma after which they will never fully be the same.
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It is a barbarism. A cruelty. It is a willful trauma after which they will never fully be the same.
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Thinking about the children separated at the border with no idea where their parents are, when they’ll see them again, or IF they’ll see them again just brings me back to thinking of my own son and those many moments when all it took was predictability to bring him peace.
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These poor kids.
There are no words that do justice to the grave harm we are doing to them - knowingly and purposefully - as if abusing enough immigrants will persuade others not to try.
It is a cruel and barbaric vulgarity. A stain on our country. A sin.
9/9
There are no words that do justice to the grave harm we are doing to them - knowingly and purposefully - as if abusing enough immigrants will persuade others not to try.
It is a cruel and barbaric vulgarity. A stain on our country. A sin.
9/9
