Year Round Valentine
The request came from a colleague who too is a parent educator. Write about the need and the importance of cherishing children. Write about the importance of saying “no” to children. Write about children and their understanding of words like justice, freedom, liberty, and integrity. Children should not be growing up “pumping bullets into someone else.” Too many newspaper articles and too many lead news stories focus on the explosive results, which occur when children, guns and violence collide. Why is it that stoplights are constructed at dangerous corners only after a pedestrian is hit? Policemen, parents, shop owners are killed. What is happening to our children?
Actually we have known for years what kids need. Attachment theory assures that secure parent-child relationships influence how children interact with and react to parents and to others. Securely attached children are more responsive, caring, and competent in their interactions with others. Rejected children avoid or resist their parents and experience rejection by their peers. Rejection leads to loneliness and an inner sense of personal dissatisfaction. When there is no attachment, children feel threatened which can be detrimental to their self-esteem and interpersonal relations. It is this isolation that leads one to connect with guns as a reliable support.
When people aren’t there for you, when people don’t believe and care about you, the abandonment can lead to outbursts of anger, rage, and violence. We know that the ultimate power of the powerless is disruption. Nothing is emptier than feeling without power, without value, without purpose. Carrying a weapon is a form of protection against the inside feeling of “I’m no good.” What each child needs is the knowledge, that I am someone’s valentine every day of the year. What each child needs is the assurance I do not have to grow up alone. It is in the dark corners of abandonment and isolation fear slowly festers into rage and violence.
Actually we have known for years what kids need. Attachment theory assures that secure parent-child relationships influence how children interact with and react to parents and to others. Securely attached children are more responsive, caring, and competent in their interactions with others. Rejected children avoid or resist their parents and experience rejection by their peers. Rejection leads to loneliness and an inner sense of personal dissatisfaction. When there is no attachment, children feel threatened which can be detrimental to their self-esteem and interpersonal relations. It is this isolation that leads one to connect with guns as a reliable support.
When people aren’t there for you, when people don’t believe and care about you, the abandonment can lead to outbursts of anger, rage, and violence. We know that the ultimate power of the powerless is disruption. Nothing is emptier than feeling without power, without value, without purpose. Carrying a weapon is a form of protection against the inside feeling of “I’m no good.” What each child needs is the knowledge, that I am someone’s valentine every day of the year. What each child needs is the assurance I do not have to grow up alone. It is in the dark corners of abandonment and isolation fear slowly festers into rage and violence.
posted by Ada at
1:16 PM
