Alice Miller - My Afterword 2007

Revising this book for the paperback edition, I have decided to omit one of the case studies after receiving from its protagonist an account of the way her story has developed in the meantime. In the hardback version of Paths of Life (1998) a grown-up daughter, whom I call Sandra, proudly relates that she has succeeded in persuading herself to visit her elderly father and, with relative equanimity, to confront him with the fact that he abused her sexually when she was small. She was proud that she had not allowed herself to be swamped by strong feelings and had calmly told him about what she had found out in the course of therapy. As her father could not deny these facts, Sandra felt confident that she could look forward to a complete recovery from her residual symptoms. But to her amazement these symptoms actually became more acute in the space of only a few years. At the same time, new memories and distressing dreams assailed her, revealing her father's extreme sadism, which she had been unaware of up to that point. She now realized that her father's jovial "confession" had deceived her about the whole truth, and this realization provoked a towering rage in her. It was the rage of a small girl at her omnipotent father, who had sacrificed her at such an early stage to his pedophiliac leanings. The intense feelings, dreams, and physical responses aroused by all this revealed a man who had nothing to do with the well-meaning father who had so easily confessed to his abusive behavior when she met him in Toronto. At that meeting he must have known that Sandra's memories revealed only part of the truth. So he continued to play the part of the nice, rather patronizing daddy whose sincerity she so dearly wanted to believe in. Only now did she realize that he had left no trace of empathy for his little child in her memory.

It was this long pent-up, immeasurable rage that freed the adult Sandra from her idealization of her father and her "love" for him. At long last she was able to relinquish the compassion she had cultivated within herself since her childhood as a token of her own generosity. She could finally perceive the full extent of the cruelty done to her as a child, and her migraine attacks and insomnia disappeared as a result.

My book Paths of Life was already in the bookshops when I heard of the turn these events had taken. In the meantime, the reader mail addressed to my website has shown me that many women are unable to sever the bonds attaching them to their fathers, though they are clear in their minds about the brutality with which they were beaten and humiliated. Some of them even suffer from multiple sclerosis or fibromyalgia, chronic pain disorders indicating the beatings they received from their parents and the child's suppressed rage. Yet they still adhere unswervingly to the conviction that they love their parents and are loved by them in return. In childhood, acceptance and expression of that rage would have involved severe punishment or total abandonment, and the fear of these consequences lives on in the adult children. But as soon as they realize that they are no longer in danger, they will be able to understand the situation they were in as children and to rebel inwardly against the cruelties perpetrated on them, instead of continuing to forgive them "generously." Normally, this will bring relief, and the body will no longer need to avail itself of the symptoms that are its only way of expressing itself.

I soon realized that Sandra's wishes had deceived me into thinking - like many therapists - that a "beneficial" heart-to-heart talk with the parents can help to alleviate the injuries inflicted in childhood. Today, nine years later, I doubt that this should be true. Even if Sandra's father had "come clean," even if he had sincerely admitted to his sadistic games (and this rarely if ever happens), he could still not have relieved her of the work she had to do. In my latest book Saving Your Life (2007), I describe this "work" and the inner processes it involves. The reality of childhood will never go away. Even if these parents were suddenly all transformed into angels, the memories of their cruelties, their hatred, their rejection remain as knowledge stored in the bodies of their children. The task devolving on the adult children is to free themselves of those memories, not by forgiving and forgetting, but by accepting the logical response to torture, the experience of rage they have denied themselves for so long. Medication can do nothing to reveal this truth. All it can do is to camouflage it, often for decades, without bringing any genuine relief.

Like Sandra, most of us are adamant in refusing to believe that parents can be so cruel to their little innocent children, despite the appalling facts we read about in the papers every day. This refusal leads to a deceptive idealization of our own childhood and hence to an unconscious repetition of that cruelty. The only thing that can help us to relinquish our blindness and spare our children the same fate is the courage to accept this truth.

By Alice Miller
© 2007 Alice Miller

Source: Alice Miller's website

... only better parenting will reduce youth violence

Image by*trixie-ville*'s photos

Columbine scared the nation out of its wits about 10 years ago. It was on the news and special reports for days in the aftermath of the massacre. Now school shootings seem to be routine like gang shootings in Allentown. Are we becoming immune to the violence? Or have we begun to think it's normal?

Our society and culture seem rooted in violence and it has become normal. Our homes are full of violence to children or in their presence. Our children witness politicians and government leaders using violence to solve conflicts and problems. TV, video games and movies suggest that violence is necessary and even brave. Psychologist Alice Miller states in her many books on child abuse that the violence we see on the news -- the gang shootings, the domestic violence, the school shootings -- are all found in the way children are parented.

She further asserts that in the name of ''good parenting'' and ''good discipline'' we teach our children to be violent. Children who have suffered spankings, beatings, humiliations and neglect in the name of discipline will either grow to act out their rage at their parents on their own children or anyone near them; or become depressed by suppressing their rage. Rage begins very early in life. Babies cry desperately in their cribs for their mother or father and the comfort they can give. Many are instructed and warned not to pick up their crying baby frequently to avoid ''spoiling'' her. Parents regularly ''spank'' (parent code for hitting) their children and believe the children are the better for it.

Many inmates in parenting classes in prison tell me that they were spanked and they turned out all right. Miller points out in her books that nearly all inmates were victims of ''discipline,'' spanking and child abuse. Many times inmates who have committed murder like serial killers will talk about their treatment as children. Chillingly, the stories they tell are not abuse to them, but are normal. The reasons for their brutality do not excuse their crimes. Instead, it is stark, horrifying reason for our society to look at the violence in ourselves.

Parents treat their children as they were treated as children unless they make a concentrated effort to change. Parents who call their child stupid, or say they are no good are enacting violence of the most insidious kind. Children internalize these words; after all, their parents said it was true. Is it any wonder that abused and neglected children grow into adolescents and adults full of rage? Child neglect viciously trains a child to believe he is unimportant. A child neglected will be as enraged as one who is obviously beaten and subjected to the worst possible punishments.

Yet incredibly when a child commits a school shooting or plans one, we ask why he has done it. No one looks to the parents, the home life and hold parents accountable for the rage they have instilled. One mother, who is being prosecuted, even bought the gun her son planned to use in a school shooting. Mistreated, abused and neglected children will likely be abused by their peers and are more vulnerable to perpetrators because they have no idea what is normal or who to trust, Miller states.

Not all children turn to violence. Some repress the rage only to become depressed and suicidal. Miller states that children abused and neglected are always left with brain and neurological damage, that is, lesions, which are permanent. Adult children of abuse struggle through life trying to find normalcy and form healthy relationships.

We don't need gun laws, we don't need tighter criminal laws and we definitely don't need more prisons where rage-filled people are abused and mistreated then released into the public. What we need is good, compassionate, kind, empathic parenting that meets the needs of the child without violence or neglect. A parent who reads Miller's book, ''Thou Shalt Not Be Aware,'' will be moved to change the way they parent their child. Parenting requires more than creating children and feeding them. It requires serious thought about how the child is to be parented from conception on. One by one, parents can choose to raise their child in a nonviolent home using nonviolent parenting methods. One by one, these parents will change the world.

By DeNise Watkins Hamilton

DeNise Watkins Hamilton of Bethlehem has a bachelor's degree in psychology and has been a licensed practical nurse for more than 30 years.

Source: The Morning Call

Stop using under-fives, Channel 4 told

Popular: But Supernanny Jo Frost above comes in for criticism

Channel 4 has been urged to stop using children younger than five in its hit parenting shows Supernanny and Bringing Up Baby after children's charity NSPCC branded the programmes "outdated and potentially harmful".

NSPCC parenting adviser Eileen Hayes Hayes called for TV producers to stop featuring children under five until guidelines are introduced to safeguard their welfare.

Childcare experts were concerned about the parenting techniques espoused by programmes such as Supernanny, she said.

Speaking at a debate hosted by the Royal Television Society yesterday, Hayes said that TV nannies such as Bringing Up Baby's controversial baby expert Claire Verity were often unqualified and had no children of their own.

She also said that their advice exploited small children and undermined new parents' confidence.

Hayes revealed that the NSPCC had received a number of complaints from parents who felt their lives had been ruined by appearing on nanny-style programmes.

One Supernanny participant, mother-of-three Kerry Hillhouse, backed these claims, saying that producers had made her look like "the worst mother in Britain" by editing out any positive footage of her family life.

Supernanny is produced by Ricochet.

Channel 4 has faced a barrage of criticism over Bringing Up Baby, which aired last month.

The programme, made by Silver River Productions, advocated leaving infants to cry and limiting cuddling time to 10 minutes a day.

Channel 4 is also investigating claims that Verity does not hold childcare qualifications. So far media regulator Ofcom has received 743 complaints about the show.

The watchdog plans to publish new guidance for TV producers filming with children next month.

Tanya Shaw, the executive producer of Bringing Up Baby, defended the programme, saying it had "a real educational purpose".

Source: The Guaridan

Also see:

Parenting in the Age of “Supernanny”

Ritalin of no long-term benefit, study finds

Research released today raises questions about the long-term effectiveness of drugs used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

A team of American scientists conducting the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD (MTA) has found that while drugs such as Ritalin and Concerta can work well in the short term, over a three-year period they brought about no demonstrable improvement in children's behaviour. They also found the drugs could stunt growth.

The research, which will be broadcast on the BBC Panorama programme tonight, shows that GPs in the UK prescribed ADHD drugs such as Ritalin and Concerta to around 55,000 children last year – at a cost of £28m to the NHS.

The MTA's warning about ADHD drugs constitutes something of a revised opinion. The scientists, who have been monitoring the treatment of 600 children across the US since the 1990s, concluded in 1999 that, after one year, medication worked better than behavioural therapy for ADHD. This finding influenced medical practice on both sides of the Atlantic and prescription rates in the UK have since tripled.

The report's co-author, Professor William Pelham, of the University of Buffalo, said: "I think we exaggerated the beneficial impact of medication in the first study. We had thought that children medicated longer would have better outcomes. That didn't happen to be the case.

"The children had a substantial decrease in their rate of growth, so they weren't growing as much as other kids in terms of both their height and their weight. And the second was that there were no beneficial effects - none.
"In the short run [medication] will help the child behave better, in the long run it won't. And that information should be made very clear to parents."

Dr Tim Kendall, of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, who is helping prepare new NHS guidelines for the treatment of ADHD, said: "A generous understanding would be to say that doctors have reached the point where they don't know what else to offer.

"I hope we will be able to make recommendations that will give people a comprehensive approach to treatment and that will advise about what teachers might be able to do within the classroom when they're trying to deal with kids who have difficult problems of this kind.

"I think the important thing is we have a comprehensive approach that doesn't focus on just one type of treatment."

The new treatment guidelines will be published next year.

• Panorama: What Next for Craig? will be broadcast on BBC1 tonight at 8.30pm.

Source: The Guardian

Also See:
A Few Simple Truths About ADHD and Stimulant Drugs:

Gap Kids: New Frontiers in Child Abuse

Myanmar : portrait of a little boy

An estimated 246 million children are engaged in child labour...

photo by :foto_morgana

It was enough to make you vomit all over your new denim jacket. The Gap has been caught using child labor in an Indian sweatshop, and not just child labor -- child slaves. As extensively reported on the news, the children, some as young as 10, were worked 16 hour days, fed bowls of mosquito-covered rice, and forced to sleep on a roof and use over-flowing latrines. Those who slowed down were beaten with rubber pipes and the ones who cried had oily cloths stuffed in their mouths.

But let's try to look at this dispassionately -- not as a human rights issue but as a PR disaster, ranking right up there with the 1982 discovery of cyanide in Tylenol capsules. Think of this as a case study in a corporate Crisis Communication course: How is The Gap handling the problem, and could it do better?

This is not the first time The Gap has been caught using child labor, but CEO Martha Hansen went on the air to state that the situation was "completely unacceptable" and that the company would "act swiftly." Two problems here: One, she failed to detail the actions. It would have been nice, for example, if she had announced that some of the top-producing child slaves would be reassigned to manage Gap outlets in American malls, and that the under-performers would be adopted by Angelina Jolie.

The other, more serious, problem is that she got defensive about child labor. This is the mistake Kathie Lee Gifford made in 1996. When accused of using child labor in Honduras to manufacture her Kathie Lee line of clothing, Gifford broke into tears on TV. Maybe Hansen meant to cover herself by saying that The Gap would not "ever, ever condone any child laborer making our garments" rather than saying the company does not condone child labor itself. We already knew, from the rubber pipes and oily cloths, that The Gap does not condone much from its child laborers.Hansen underestimated the potential support for a full-throated defense of child labor. More and more American children are tried and punished as adults today. And the ubiquitous conservative pundit William Kristol will surely be enthusiastic, considering his recent -- though possibly facetious-- statement that "whenever I hear anything described as a heartless assault on our children, I tend to think it's a good idea."

The core of the argument, though, is that anyone who opposes child labor has not witnessed its opposite, which is child unemployment and idleness.

Hansen claims to be a mother herself, but I wonder how often she has returned home from a hard day in the C-suites to find her unemployed offspring Magic Marker-ing the walls and crushing the Froot Loops into the carpet. This is what jobless children do: They rub Crazy Glue into their siblings' hair; they spill apple juice onto your keyboard. Believe me, I see this kind of wantonly destructive behavior every day. Vandalism is a way of life for unemployed children, and they do not know the meaning of remorse.

In fact, corporate America should go further and make a strong statement against the sickening culture of dependency that has grown up around childhood. Why are jobless children so criminally inclined? Because they know that whatever damage they inflict, the Froot Loops will just keep coming. The Gap should portray its child-staffed factories as part of a far-seeing welfare-to-work program, which will eventually be extended to American children as well.

To appeal to American parents, our own child factories should be run more like Montessori schools, where the children are already encouraged to regard every one of their demented activities as "work." If they're going to pile up blocks and knock them down all day, then why not sew on buttons and bring home a little cash? But even American families will have to brace themselves for the inevitable cost cutting measures. First the cookies and milk may have to go, then, as in India, the toilets and beds. Wal-Mart has already pioneered the price-cutting defense of human rights abuses, and The Gap should follow suit.

The company can of course expect some lingering opposition. Just as there are vegetarians and pacifists, there will always be some men, for example, who would rather wear skirts than blue jeans impregnated with the excrement and tears of 10-year-olds. Well, let them shop at American Apparel or some other "sweat-free" vendor, and if they can't find anything there, let them wear dhotis. In a nation that cannot bring itself to extend child health insurance (SCHIP) to all children in need, child-made clothes make a fine fashion statement. And why not accessorize your denim jacket with a scarf derived from one of those oily cloths stuffed in weeping workers' mouths?

by Barbara Ehrenreich

Source: ZNET