When Not Traumatizing Your Child Is Abusive
contrary ideas
What a strange and immediately “clickbaity” title this is. Though there is something to this and it is worth philosophical investigation. The idea isn’t really clickbaity. In fact, it is probably quite a controversial point. I do not recommend anyone take action on the ideas presented here because they are not fully developed and have the potential for great harm. Instead, just sit back and consume them and bring forth your own dialogue with your own personal hypothesis on the matters. We are going to discuss post-traumatic growth and how it could be neglectful to not provide such growing experiences for a child.
There is an element of relativity to what is considered abusive or proper parenting. Naivety allows one to be an incidentally bad parent without the social repercussions. Yet, the child still faces the consequences regardless. Consider the time where smoking during pregnancy was not considered a problem. There were even posters recommending smoking to soon-to-be mothers. These to-be parents probably couldn’t be considered actively abusive to their children but if someone were naïve to the effects of pregnant smoking today, they would undoubtedly face major social punishment, even if they were as unwitting as the mothers of the past.
Undoubtedly we still engage in improper parenting today, likely on a chronic and uninformed basis (hopefully). There’s no indication that we’ve mastered parenting as a species and this is probably very obvious. Beyond parenting, we are likely harming ourselves and others in ways that we aren’t even aware of yet. For example, we may be harming the climate with our daily habits, which will eventually harm either our children or those of the future. This may all be based on naivety and also on social acceptability mediating people’s willingness to engage in harmful behaviors. We would look at someone who cuts themselves for the subsequent sense of euphoria as misbehavior but then if we see someone eat a candy bar, we ignore the harmful elements and even normalize the behavior. We celebrate holidays like Halloween, where many children are able to engage in self-harming behavior. What if instead of letting kids eat candy, we let them smoke this one day of the year. This seems outrageous but I would wonder which of these is actually worse. Is allowing children to celebrate Halloween with candy abusive? So it seems we have selective permissiveness in the ways in which we harm people, including our children.
Now, what about the ways in which harming our children could be beneficial? This seems absurd, but hear me out. There is something known as post-traumatic growth, which is exactly what it sounds like: experiencing a profound rise in personal ability in response to traumatic experiences. Wikipedia defines it as: “positive psychological change experienced as a result of adversity and other challenges in order to rise to a higher level of functioning.” For those of you who have never heard of this, it may be shocking to realize that trauma can sometimes be beneficial to a person. This is likely a great simplification as people’s responses to trauma may more often be mixed, providing both benefits and setbacks. It is hypothetically possible that humans will find the mechanisms of the benefits and be able to extract the types of traumatic experiences that produce a refined and purely positive outcome. It is also important to consider that we do not fully understand post-traumatic growth and some have even questioned whether or not it exists at all.
If we do discover the answers to this puzzle, would we not be inclined to provide these traumas to our children? Moreover, would we be neglectful to our children if we refused to do so? I think so. Refusing beneficial traumas to your child may be akin to psychologically malnourishing your child. Those children who did not undergo ritualistic growing traumas would appear to have stunted growth in comparison. This could even be the basis of certain cultural practices that engage in adulthood transformative experiences that involve physical harm, like body piercings, tattoos, being bitten by ants, and so on. Although, it isn’t clear if these rituals induce post-traumatic growth in practice.
My thoughts on this topic are still a little fuzzy. So I’d like you to engage with me on this topic, either by commenting below or via DMing me. I may update this post further with your insights if it sparks something I feel fits.
Should we find ways to induce post-traumatic growth in our children?
Discuss in the comments!
i agree and think it’s a natural part of growing up. it’s the same as shielding a child or being overprotective. they grow up with a distorted, utopian view of the world, ignorant to the extent of the capacity for evil by humans and the evil that is naturally present in the world.
i have observed this in many people i’ve known, who cannot understand the suffering of people who have had ‘traumatic’ experiences. from what i can tell they are also a lot less motivated than those who have had to endure pain and build themselves up again. when they inevitably experience a trauma, they are ill-equipped and can easily be derailed when this doesn’t fit their utopian schema of the world.
parents need to accept that suffering is inherently part of being alive and instead of trying to shield their children, equip them with the courage, motivation and resilience to overcome their suffering.
"What does not kill you, only makes you stronger"