Weemie
Policy Enforcement
It seems silly to say basic things like "I wouldn't hit my kid for eating garbage off the ground because I failed to feed them," but y'know. I wouldn't. This seems like an interesting exercise. As not necessarily what you think your parents could have done better, but what you would do, if faced with a child like yourself. For me, I internalized quite early on that I was a bad kid who deserved to be mistreated.
But when thinking of it in these more rational scenarios, it becomes clear that in reality I would advocate for such a child to be treated with compassion and care. That the focus should be on rehabilitation, reintegration, socialization, play, allowing their physical and developmental needs to be met, working on fostering a healthy sense of attachment, focusing on teaching empathy and modeling empathy and all of that stuff.
My therapist gets so focused on the things that happened from like 0-6, even though I frequently dismiss them due to not having many negative feelings about it. But she calls what happened "extreme" and in our very first session she brought up RAD by name before I'd even spoken about it (her words were, "it sounds like there was some attachment..." and I was like "yup," lmao.) So it's interesting to me that this stuff is some of the worst for her even though I've talked about being forced to cut off someone's fingers as a kid.
The most compounding part of it is that the person who did this (the 0-6 shit, not the spoilered stuff) to me, is someone I still maintain a positive relationship with && have forgiven. Yet, ignoring its effects on me has not been beneficial. && thinking about it like this, in terms of how I would do things differently if I had a child like me? Even presuming I got the kid at age 6, who already had ADHD, RAD and the beginnings of structural dissociation? (I didn't get the PTSD until 16, it was very delayed-onset.)
Even if I did get the Beth Thomas kid, I'd still work on developing a rapport based in compassion and rehabilitation. Instead of what did happen, which was seeing professional after professional who concluded I was just "oppositional-defiant" and "a bad kid." The last therapy session she brought up Romanian orphanages completely unprompted and then told me I should consider if I read a news article about a 4 year old being locked in a room and starved, how I would feel. And because I don't lie to her I had to say well, I probably would not feel anything, but I would say that is an egregious case of child abuse.
Anyway, this was something posited on a Reddit thread in the ASPD subreddit that I thought might be an interesting exercise to reproduce here. On that subreddit the focus was on how you would parent a child who had significant conduct and behavioral issues, but in this space I would expand that to a much more general criteria. What were you like as a kid, and how would you reflect on a child who was brought into your care (not even that you were necessarily your own biological parent) that was similar in many ways to what you were?
It's been intriguing to realize that even if I was looking after a stereotypically "bad" child, I would not blame them or accuse them of being bad, I would work as hard as I could to help them socially rehabilitate and develop age-appropriate emotional and empathetic responses. && I know this because my younger sister N, struggled with ADHD and ODD, and I never mistreated her or accused her of being bad. I worked as hard as I could to model behavior for her and engage with her and help her mother obtain assessments for her and educated her mom on various treatments for both that didn't result in her being an over-medicated zombie child who blamed herself and lashed out at others.
Now she's a volunteer firefighter. M, my other sister, never had the same issues, she internalized, but she still talks to me and trusts me because I didn't yell at her as a kid and I protected her from my dad. So I know that is what I would do because I did it. Which means that if I were faced with a kid like me, who was frankly a "special needs" kid, I would try to do the same thing && would be moved even further to assist them because I know exactly what it's like to be in those shoes.
How 'bout that, eh?
But when thinking of it in these more rational scenarios, it becomes clear that in reality I would advocate for such a child to be treated with compassion and care. That the focus should be on rehabilitation, reintegration, socialization, play, allowing their physical and developmental needs to be met, working on fostering a healthy sense of attachment, focusing on teaching empathy and modeling empathy and all of that stuff.
My therapist gets so focused on the things that happened from like 0-6, even though I frequently dismiss them due to not having many negative feelings about it. But she calls what happened "extreme" and in our very first session she brought up RAD by name before I'd even spoken about it (her words were, "it sounds like there was some attachment..." and I was like "yup," lmao.) So it's interesting to me that this stuff is some of the worst for her even though I've talked about being forced to cut off someone's fingers as a kid.
The most compounding part of it is that the person who did this (the 0-6 shit, not the spoilered stuff) to me, is someone I still maintain a positive relationship with && have forgiven. Yet, ignoring its effects on me has not been beneficial. && thinking about it like this, in terms of how I would do things differently if I had a child like me? Even presuming I got the kid at age 6, who already had ADHD, RAD and the beginnings of structural dissociation? (I didn't get the PTSD until 16, it was very delayed-onset.)
Even if I did get the Beth Thomas kid, I'd still work on developing a rapport based in compassion and rehabilitation. Instead of what did happen, which was seeing professional after professional who concluded I was just "oppositional-defiant" and "a bad kid." The last therapy session she brought up Romanian orphanages completely unprompted and then told me I should consider if I read a news article about a 4 year old being locked in a room and starved, how I would feel. And because I don't lie to her I had to say well, I probably would not feel anything, but I would say that is an egregious case of child abuse.
Anyway, this was something posited on a Reddit thread in the ASPD subreddit that I thought might be an interesting exercise to reproduce here. On that subreddit the focus was on how you would parent a child who had significant conduct and behavioral issues, but in this space I would expand that to a much more general criteria. What were you like as a kid, and how would you reflect on a child who was brought into your care (not even that you were necessarily your own biological parent) that was similar in many ways to what you were?
It's been intriguing to realize that even if I was looking after a stereotypically "bad" child, I would not blame them or accuse them of being bad, I would work as hard as I could to help them socially rehabilitate and develop age-appropriate emotional and empathetic responses. && I know this because my younger sister N, struggled with ADHD and ODD, and I never mistreated her or accused her of being bad. I worked as hard as I could to model behavior for her and engage with her and help her mother obtain assessments for her and educated her mom on various treatments for both that didn't result in her being an over-medicated zombie child who blamed herself and lashed out at others.
Now she's a volunteer firefighter. M, my other sister, never had the same issues, she internalized, but she still talks to me and trusts me because I didn't yell at her as a kid and I protected her from my dad. So I know that is what I would do because I did it. Which means that if I were faced with a kid like me, who was frankly a "special needs" kid, I would try to do the same thing && would be moved even further to assist them because I know exactly what it's like to be in those shoes.
How 'bout that, eh?
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