My parents exposed me to so much that I now realize was not good for me and I could not handle, besides early physical, sexual, emotional, and spiritual abuse.
Add making us watch close up recordings and narrations of surgery (on TV) while eating dinner. I often felt severe nausea. I got them to stop exposing my younger sibs (down to age kindergarden) to this by joking that I'd had enough since the baby's face being peeled back looked literally identical to the lasagna we were eating. They thought this was hilarious, and based on my ability to make light of this (I was 11), ended the nightly surgery school during meals. (I think they have sociopathy and did not feel nausea, plus both are like robots when it comes to medical stuff as medical types.)
But what is NOT healthy for kids regarding death and disease?
I have wondered about this and try to pay attention when others speak about this, about what was not good for them.
I read in "Black Elk Speaks" that even for a native American boy at age 11 to go off to war and fight and kill grown men to defend his village during the colonial period of USA, was unhealthy for his spirit, he said, as a man in his 70s, in the 40's. This was based on his own assessment of himself, not some theory.
At age 10-11, I was exposed to long hours in a critical care facility of UW Seattle Medical where my beloved grandpa was slowing dying of cancer. It was not treatable then. It was all just morphine, ice, and palliative. I was there every weekend and holiday, for hours each time for a year. So were my sibs younger than me, who don't remember as much of that time as I do. I think it was bad for me to see someone I loved dying of cancer at age 9-10. I was high IQ enough to know what was happening to my loved one, but not verbal and abstract enough to discuss my emotions or how to conceptualize or how to ask questions about what would happen. I was not emotionally centered or loved at home enough to handle the complex emotions of loss, ambiguous loss, death, afterlife and spirit.
I was told things like "god would listen to my prayers and save his life" which God was not going to do in the 1980s for Multiple Myeloma. Trauma, could be defined as proof that if there is a God, this being has no problem with a hands off policy on the worst horrors imaginable and cannot therefore, be easily summed up as "good" or in any way "comforting."
There was no way for my f-ed up parents to "do that right." but how can you be honest with a kid about death to mitigate and not over-expose them?
I have read that it's not even good to take kids to funerals until after age 13 due to their not having the abstract thinking skills yet to handle the grief and discussion about afterlife, etc. Of course, we were taken to the funeral. But we were not present when he was in his last moments. We were spared or left out of that.
Thank you for helping me "correct" my mind on what is harmful and healthy for kids to figure out why I"m having emotional flashbacks to this period of life (I had PTSD prior to this) as if it were pretty traumatizing.
Add making us watch close up recordings and narrations of surgery (on TV) while eating dinner. I often felt severe nausea. I got them to stop exposing my younger sibs (down to age kindergarden) to this by joking that I'd had enough since the baby's face being peeled back looked literally identical to the lasagna we were eating. They thought this was hilarious, and based on my ability to make light of this (I was 11), ended the nightly surgery school during meals. (I think they have sociopathy and did not feel nausea, plus both are like robots when it comes to medical stuff as medical types.)
But what is NOT healthy for kids regarding death and disease?
I have wondered about this and try to pay attention when others speak about this, about what was not good for them.
I read in "Black Elk Speaks" that even for a native American boy at age 11 to go off to war and fight and kill grown men to defend his village during the colonial period of USA, was unhealthy for his spirit, he said, as a man in his 70s, in the 40's. This was based on his own assessment of himself, not some theory.
At age 10-11, I was exposed to long hours in a critical care facility of UW Seattle Medical where my beloved grandpa was slowing dying of cancer. It was not treatable then. It was all just morphine, ice, and palliative. I was there every weekend and holiday, for hours each time for a year. So were my sibs younger than me, who don't remember as much of that time as I do. I think it was bad for me to see someone I loved dying of cancer at age 9-10. I was high IQ enough to know what was happening to my loved one, but not verbal and abstract enough to discuss my emotions or how to conceptualize or how to ask questions about what would happen. I was not emotionally centered or loved at home enough to handle the complex emotions of loss, ambiguous loss, death, afterlife and spirit.
I was told things like "god would listen to my prayers and save his life" which God was not going to do in the 1980s for Multiple Myeloma. Trauma, could be defined as proof that if there is a God, this being has no problem with a hands off policy on the worst horrors imaginable and cannot therefore, be easily summed up as "good" or in any way "comforting."
There was no way for my f-ed up parents to "do that right." but how can you be honest with a kid about death to mitigate and not over-expose them?
I have read that it's not even good to take kids to funerals until after age 13 due to their not having the abstract thinking skills yet to handle the grief and discussion about afterlife, etc. Of course, we were taken to the funeral. But we were not present when he was in his last moments. We were spared or left out of that.
Thank you for helping me "correct" my mind on what is harmful and healthy for kids to figure out why I"m having emotional flashbacks to this period of life (I had PTSD prior to this) as if it were pretty traumatizing.
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