Re: Nada lives alone

[Guest guest]

Hi ,

That is a fascinating article, thanks for posting it.

My own personal opinion is that (1) in some cases, children are born with

extreme temperament traits or neurological/cognitive conditions (the precursors

of mental illness) that affect their perception of the world and their reactions

to their perceptions.

And (2) in other cases its the parents who are creating a hostile, punitive,

frightening, unpredictable environment, or an emotionally impoverished,

negligent environment, or a parentifying, soul-sucking environment for their

child or children that skews, retards or even prevents the child's normal

emotional development.

And I suspect that in some cases, its both.

It would take a lot of intense study to tease out what is actually going on in

any one given case. The main problem as I see it is that a tiny preschool child

spends most of his or her waking hours in the care of the mother, alone with the

primary caregiver (usually the mother) and possibly with other siblings, so how

can an objective evaluation be done unless a neutral third party observer is on

the scene 24/7 recording the child's daily interactions with mommy/primary

caregiver?

Regarding the situation in which a child was born with an organic brain

disorder, here is an article (from the Los Angeles Times) about a child

apparently born with schizophrenia. Jani spends most of her waking hours in a

psychotic/delusional state and only sleeps about 3 or 4 hours out of every 24,

and has from birth:

http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-schizophrenia29-2009jun29,0,4834892\

..story

Her parents are heartbroken, in anguish over the intractable nature of this

disorder, yet grimly determined to do the best they can to care for Jani, and

for her baby brother who shows no signs of this disorder.

At age 6, Jani is too young to live in a treatment center for schizophrenics so

her parents take turns giving her the constant, 24/7 supervision she needs so

that she doesn't hurt herself or others (particularly her younger brother.) And

Jani is highly intelligent, understands that the creatures she sees and talks

with aren't real. She understands that she is ill and that the hurtful, mean

things they tell her to do are wrong, but they never go away. Its very, very

tragic.

-Annie

> Exactly Annie - that child has no way to know it isn't normal, just life. I

just read part of a disturbing article about " preschooler depression " here

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> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29preschool-t.html

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> And it just concerns me so much. If a kid is acting depressed at age 2, maybe

rather than diagnosing them with depression a good hard look needs to be taken

at the PARENTS! I wish like you there could be a system in place to help kids,

but even the systems we've got look quickly to make it a problem in the

children's biology rather the parents. Ugh. I wish it were a better world too.

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