When I was teaching high school, I discovered that the neglect of children is much more prevalent in our society than I imagined. A sad reality. 

During the ten years that I taught public school, I had to report abuse a number of times, for the boy who was hit across the back with a broom handle by his grandfather. For the student whose parents had disappeared into drugs and no longer fed her. For the girl who was molested by another student. I referred the boy who was being forced into a gang by other family members.

These were extreme cases. And there were way too many of them.

But there were many, many more unreportable cases. Of emotional neglect and subtle emotional abuse. There were far more students who at some point were told they were “stupid” or “ugly” not to be “too big for their britches” or to “shut up,” stopped in their tracks and discouraged by the people they trusted the most, those they were most dependent on. 

There were even more incidents beyond that of students who were just simply ignored. Or at least, their emotional needs were ignored. Harder to identify and articulate, this kind of neglect can be just as damaging. And it’s way too common.

Parents don’t have to train to be parents. Hospitals provide and sometimes require baby-care classes, how to feed and swaddle and burb and change a diaper, but not how to emotionally care for our dependents, for these innocent, growing human beings, who—having their own code of DNA—are absolutely unique. Each and every one. 

Schools rarely offer classes in parenting. And here’s the thing. We have come a long way in the 20th and 21st centuries in understanding human psychology and neurology. We are starting to understand mental illness without stigmatizing it as badly as we have in the past. We have experts on healthy communication, on the impact and commonness of shame, on helping people to become more self-aware and thus make major changes in their internal lives to lead better, happier, more productive external lives. 

And we only get one life. Even if you believe in reincarnation, there will never be a life like this one.

It is my belief that a scaled form of psychology and emotional health needs to be K-12 curriculum: learning and understanding emotional language, naming our own emotional responses to situations and words (and the emotional messaging of advertising and marketing, whether consumer-focused or political), learning how to care for one’s mental and emotional help, learning how to use “I-statements” and have healthier relationships, how to disagree amicably, to negotiate, to resolve conflicts. 

I believe that having a good therapist needs to be part of anyone’s overall health program. And by “good” I mean just like with your physician, it’s important to choose one that works for you; after all, we’re all human. And therapy combines expertise AND human contact/chemistry.

We introduced therapy to our children early—not because they experienced trauma. It wasn’t in REACTION to anything. They had regular-old anxiety about a few things in their lives, the usual stuff, relationships with friends, school. Nothing life-threatening. But we wanted them to understand that therapy is a resource available to them. (We were fortunate to be able to pay for it—even on a sliding scale when our financial situation was fraught. For us, it was a priority, like healthcare insurance—which SHOULD cover effective therapy in some way.) We wanted to help our children see that their emotional health was something they could take care for. And something we cared about and paid attention to. 

 More on this in another blog. Time’s up for today!