Casual thoughts about parents and adults, #2

 

New York Times gets my “sophisticated” Op-Ed comments. Other media get my gut or snarky ones. Thinking of the recent horde insurrection at the Capitol, I slapped this on Slate –

Test question: Psychological childhood prematurely ends when – (a) you stop believing in Santa Claus; (b) you experience trauma such as incest or kidnapping; (c) you have to “grow up too fast” because of parent’s abuse, absence or incompetence; (d) you realize that almost half the adults in the country are immature fuck-ups and the other half haven’t figured out yet how to stop them. (More than one answer may be correct.)

I don’t work with kids under age 15 anymore, but I wonder how the younger ones feel when they watch the rank insanity and destructive rage of “grownups,” hear screamed convictions that have the ability to kill the belief in truth, and see the blundering incom­petence of those in protec­tor roles. Parents are in protector roles. Do these kids start to think that their own parents are the only guard at the door ensuring sanity and safety and keeping the rest of the world at bay? Or do they begin to see them differently?

In my work I’ve learned a thousand ways that children become unhappy as their new nature. The insult can be so quiet, insidious that they won’t know when they are losing that spark. Most of the insults come (actively or passively) from home. So maybe worldly matters don’t affect them as much, or at all. But I suspect that even if their parents remain basic heroes, know­ing well from sick, the pervasive­ness of today’s anarchy must poison them to some degree. It must translate in their minds, however indirectly, as failure, as “non-objective reality” (Ayn Rand’s term) replac­ing reality.

I will always wonder what can be done about parents and adults.