I decided to do this piece because my daughter is at the age where the whole tale is crumbling, and this is never a pleasant thing for kids. It isn’t cool that we lie to our kids in this way in the name of, “Aww, but it’s Christmas… what is childhood without all the bullshit we spin around them all year with bunnies and eggs, flying reindeer and pissed off pumpkins that all have no connection to anything whatsoever, no compelling morality tale nor awakening message? You’re an awful parent if you deprive them of all that!” Well, there are many cultures that don’t spin all these larks for their kids, because children are quite capable of spinning a world of wonder around themselves without our help, in fact, they’re infinitely better at it.
I want my daughter to know what the Santa myth stands for, what “gifts” were brought, why, by whom and finally: what’s in it for her.
In our culture, we’ve always kind of wondered how the heck Santa is connected to Christmas other than the fact that he brings gifts. Most of us were lead to believe that Santa Claus is a child-friendly version of Saint Nicholas – we even call him St. Nick occasionally. Although Santa became a mutt of sorts over time, including a bit of St. Nick (from Sinterklaas, the original and current European version), the actual origin of Santa is much more interesting, way before St Nick was a glint in his mama’s eye.
It all begins with a mushroom. Yes. A mushroom. Did you expect it to begin with something man made? Then you’re not thinking far back enough. Humanity’s first interactions were with earthly things.
The name of the mushroom is Amanita muscaria, also called Fly Agaric.
Muscaria is a psychotropic, causing visions and altered states. It is also toxic, and must be handled in a particular manner so as to get the psychedelic effects without the toxic ones. You may have heard of the word “shaman”, which is a word from the Tungus-speaking people of Siberia, to connote a religious specialist.(1) The Tungusic are Russian indigenous people who live in the arctic circle (north pole) and they are reindeer herders – I shit you not. (2)
A shaman dealt with the mushrooms, as both a safety practice and as part of the spirituality of the people. In fact, often the shaman would eat the mushrooms and then the people would drink the shaman’s urine – this way, the shaman acted as a filter, because the psychedelic effects remain intact but the toxicity is eradicated.(3)
Another way to decrease toxicity is to dry the mushrooms completely. The mushrooms would be harvested in late Autumn and strung up around the hearth-fire to dry in preparation for the winter solstice. (4)
The home of those in the cold north, such as Siberia, was, and is, often a “yurt”, which is similar to a tee-pee.
In some shamanic rituals, such as the initiation of shamans in Buryatia, a tree will actually be erected inside the (yurt) … passing through the smoke hole (in the roof)… in some … the shaman literally climbs the tree; in others … the shaman drums at the base and only ascends with his spiritual being. As the shaman ascends the tree in his ecstatic state, he describes his journey to the upper world. Also, even in the absence of an actual turge tree, the shaman will still travel to other worlds after exiting through the smoke hole, often after his spirit has metamorphosed into a bird.
Travel to the upper world requires the ability to fly, and shamans often change themselves into birds in order to make the journey. They may also ride upon a flying deer or horse. (5)
The shaman would collect the mushrooms in a bag and deliver them to families, who would then often hang them in socks around the fireplace to dry – the mushrooms would be ready to share their revelatory gifts in the morning of the solstice.
Amanita Muscaria grows only beneath a Christmas tree (coniferous/pine tree) in a symbiotic, non-parasitic relationship with the roots of the tree. (6) It used to be thought to be the fruit of the tree.
Finding these vivid red and white gifts beneath the Christmas tree was a treat indeed!
Especially for reindeer, who absolutely loved them. After eating some, they would prance around and some have said that is where the idea they could fly came from. There is more evidence however that the whole flying thing comes from a blend of two facts, one is that under the influence of Muscaria there are several common visions: things appearing much bigger or smaller than they really are; faeries and gnomes and other beings; and flying – either flying one’s self or seeing other things flying. This is how many would see the shaman fly off on his reindeer sleigh after his special visit. Muscaria’s other name, Fly Agaric is said to be called that because it is used as pesticide for flies, but it is useless at this apparently, and the moniker refers to the visions. (7)
Here are some tripped out reindeer courtesy of BBC’s Weird Animals:
Altogether, that is a very tight connection to our Christmas, and that is either a wild coincidence or is what actually makes the whole Christmas Santa story intelligible. Without this history, the tale stands for nothing, goes nowhere and is inexplicable mish mash.
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There are those who don’t like this connection, and the best argument against it we currently have is oft repeated from the wiki page, and here it is:
Historian Ronald Hutton has since disputed the connection; he noted reindeer spirits did not appear in Siberian mythology, shamans did not travel by sleigh, nor did they wear red and white, or climb out of smoke holes in yurt roofs. Finally, American awareness of Siberian shamanism postdated the appearance of much of the folklore around Santa.(8)
I have researched all those claims and what I found was:
Reindeer were very important to the Siberians, they even put antlers on their headdresses to symbolise the protector spirit of the reindeer. (9)
Shamans did travel by sleigh, in fact many people did… and still do.
Shamans did wear red and white, but not exclusively.
Shamans did climb in and out of yurt holes. A “hole” was special in their religion, seeing it as an entry point to another dimension. See quote above for more info on the yurt hole regarding trees.
Hutton’s final claim that awareness of Siberian shamanism came after the evolution of our Santa claus is irrelevant. Things have evolved without public knowledge regularly, including ancient historical memes in current symbology and ritual. The Christmas tree and the date 25th December are both pagan in origin (utilised initially to appeal to the pagans of the time)(*). Although given a cursory nod by apologists today, for the last 2000 years most Christians did not have awareness of those pagan origins. The majority awareness does not necessarily precede the appropriation. He has used a logical fallacy.
Every point he makes to dispel the Muscaria-Santa-Christmas connection is false… but it would be a logical fallacy on my behalf to say that means it is necessarily true. However, you’ve seen some of the history now… what do you think?
The dress of Santa is his most distinguishing feature (when not on a reindeer sleigh with a sack full of presents) that seems to be where we have refined him over time. Some Siberian shamans do have the red and white of the Muscaria, such as the shaman with the mushrooms in this picture:
We need to slip over to the west a little bit, just as our myths did, to get to the next phase of the evolution of Santa – to the God Odin in Scandinavia. It seems he took a little ‘shroom himself:
Odin’s (8 legged) steed was capable of bearing him through the air and to and from the land of the dead. (10)
And…
Santa Claus, a jolly old fat man with a long white beard who is said to distribute presents to good children on Christmas Eve, is largely based on Odin, merged with the Christian legend of Saint Nicholas of Myra. Christmas itself and most of its traditions in Germanic countries derive from the pagan winter solstice holiday Yule…
… children would place their boots, filled with carrots, straw, or sugar, near the chimney for Odin’s flying horse, Sleipnir, to eat. Odin would then reward those children for their kindness by replacing Sleipnir’s food with gifts or candy. This practice, she claims, survived in Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands after the adoption of Christianity and became associated with Saint Nicholas as a result of the process of Christianization and can be still seen in the modern practice of the hanging of stockings at the chimney in some homes. (11)
And if you still doubt, here is a picture of Odin:
I noticed that Santa and garden gnomes look identical and after a quick google I found that in Sweden the word for both is the same – tomte. With the gnome as a strong visual during a Muscaria experience, I find that interesting but I can’t really consolidate it.
And of course, we have faeries, often seen in the visuals, and often found in children’s literature hanging about Muscaria.
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The evolution to the Santa we know from the Odin point on is generally known (or easy to find). So I’d like to step back a little instead, back into the relevance of the original reasons for the mushrooms that started all this. For openers, a controversial painting of Adam and Eve called Fresco at Abbaye de Plaincourault, which resides in Mérigny, France. It was used as evidence that the forbidden fruit was the fruit of the Christmas tree:
Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality
There are many examples of mushrooms in historical religious iconography. (12) Soma (“body”, or “soul”; Hindu equivalent of Eucharist) is a ritual plant eaten/drunk to become “one with God”; it has evidence to suggest it is Muscaria although scholarly debate continues… but it is certainly a psychosomatic substance. Apparently the only religion that can’t be traced to a psychedelic root is Buddhism. The works of John Allegro are interesting food for thought.
It makes sense that most religions were founded on psychedelic experiences because our culture is usually very similar to other cultures when we trace back to our own roots – and cultures that have not strayed too far from humanity’s roots still use entheogenic plants. Entheogens “generate the God within” (en = in, within; theo = God, divine; gen = create, generate). Examples are Amazonian tribes with ayahuasca and native Americans with peyote.
These ideas freak most westerners out, even the open minded ones because we can’t imagine a time when such substances were so commonly accepted. Perhaps a reminder that not so long ago cocaine was in Coca Cola and heroin was given to babies to help them sleep is in order. Cocaine was in common usage as was opium until the last century. Alcohol has been illegal at various times. Marijuana is currently under review in the United States and we could safely bet that it will eventually become legal again. That’s the way of things… they change. That we once used psychedelic plants in religious ritual and for general awakening purposes is not a big deal, nor is it a stretch of the imagination.
What bites is that powerful others have control over these changes, not us – after all, these things are plants, and we have basic human rights to all the plants our planet comes furnished with – risks included. Humans have always worked it out as long as force (for or against) is not involved. As soon as force (law) is involved, suddenly it is like a fat person on a diet: we lust for, lie for, cheat for and overindulge on that which is forbidden.
Those who have had an entheogen describe it as a religious or spiritual experience, almost universally. Particularly those that contain the DMT molecule, although not necessarily (Muscaria does not contain DMT). DMT is a substance found naturally in the human body, and no other purpose has been considered for it except “extra sensory” incidents, such as near death experiences (perhaps naturally increased to help the transition to the Other Side) and spontaneous, inexplicable mystical experiences. Inducing such experiences seems to be encouraged by nature (or the Creator, whichever you prefer), considering just how many plants contain DMT (thousands)! (13)
Only people who have not experienced an entheogen deny the implications or the reality of the experience. They are busy in their studies writing essays against the testimonies and rejecting them as hallucinations… without any experience to do so. Like near-death experiences, the reports are often that the experience feels more real than life, like it is waking up, and life is the dream.
In a 2009 interview with Examiner.com, Dr Rick Strassman described the effects on participants in a study of volunteers injected with DMT:
“Subjectively, the most interesting results were that high doses of DMT seemed to allow the consciousness of our volunteers to enter into non-corporeal, free-standing, independent realms of existence inhabited by beings of light who oftentimes were expecting the volunteers, and with whom the volunteers interacted.” (14)
It is also released when we go to sleep. This means we break the law every night because DMT is schedule-1 under the Controlled Substances Act. The powers that be certainly wouldn’t want us accessing that kind of mind opening experience, now would they?
Perhaps certain… groups… already know.
Entheogens are said to “lift the veil”. There are many dimensions to life and the universe, and quantum mechanics seems to be smacking up against that very issue. It seems a human body is given particular sensory limitations so as to function on this plane, so ordinarily only extenuating circumstances would allow for most of us to see, hear or sense anything beyond what anyone else can. There is a ceiling, a limit, and science is now suggesting that it may simply be chemical in nature.
We are expecting a big hole or doorway, something like a black hole, and we jump through it to another place; or that aliens or other-dimensional beings will come down from the sky – much like we believe that’s where God is: “up there somewhere”. Yet, it seems to be all right here inside each of us, we are part of the universe and we are the universe – you are looking for God, yet you are God. No wonder we never find It.
The scriptures never said, “God is everything… except you.” You were included. Entheogenic experiences seem to suggest that you were much more than merely included.
Removing the limitations, lifting the veil, is perhaps nothing like hallucination and everything like “expansion of the senses”. Entheogens show you that, and unless you’ve seen it yourself, you can only speculate.
Mushrooms are the reason for the season!
Mind expansion, becoming as one with Christ, or as the scripture says in Genesis of the fruit of the “tree of knowledge”:
For God knows that as soon as you eat it, then your eyes shall be
opened, and you shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil. (15)
Christmas = Christ’s mass or eucharist (taking of the soma/body/soul)
Does this mean we give our children a magic mushroom trip for Christmas? Uh, no. Christmas has been watered down to a holiday almost solely for children (except for some eggnog and a few office parties which are thrown in for adults), but I think that is because it seems too much of a fairy tale for adults. We’re left to make it about Jesus’ birth or a family get together if we aren’t Christian. Considering that nowhere in the bible does it reference the 25th having anything to do with Jesus’ birth, then that takes a kind of “la la la I can’t hear you” ignorance that many of us simply can’t partake in, Christian or nay.
Bring meaning back to Christmas. Christmas is the birth of the christ within, KRST(16) (17) (18) (19), and in our culture this is symbolised by Jesus – you can be Christian to do this, or not. Jesus was pretty clear that he wants you to wake up, so … wake up. He gave you the map, and the internet has made it so there are almost no esoteric “secrets” left, they’re all out there now – we can ALL be mystics, with the true inner knowledge that the Vatican and others would rather we didn’t have.
Failing that, there are always psychedelics to open our minds with a WHAM and shamans only too happy to wake us all the heck up by guiding the experience safely. Hellish journeys are often reported, of course. The type of journey you experience is much like life – your thoughts determine your reality. There is something to learn in all of it.
What do Christmas psychedelic experiences have to teach us? The same as all the psychedelic experiences… in the words of those who know:
“We are all one.”
“I was the universe and everything in it.”
“Love. Nothing but shining, drop-to-my-knees-in-tears Love.”
“Light. Golden-white brilliant light.”
“I’ll never been the same, everything has changed.”
“I was swimming in an ocean of oneness with all beings in a way I cannot effectively find words for.”
“A snake curled around my legs, up my body, and stared me in the face… all my fears looked right back at me.”
“I flew through the void.”
“Peace surrounded me, I’d never felt such peace and joy… I never wanted to leave that space.”
When my kids are testing my every nerve, chances are good… no, chances are certain… that they have some feelings that desperately need to come out. After they have a cry or a rage, it is like a switch – they become pleasant and serene, they concentrate and focus well and the mood of the whole day changes. It is so bankable that I like to start the day with a big tantrum… and sometimes my kids do also.
Usually though, they wake happy as Larry and it takes an hour or two for them to piss each other off enough to reach breaking point. My daughter tends to just walk off and shut herself in her room, generally to get away from my toddler son who can become a maniac when that point strikes. He yells at every little thing and no one can please him and the wrong word can send him into a melt down. If intervention isn’t forthcoming, he will stay this way, sometimes all day. I’d like to explore this and offer an alternative perspective and action plan that many parents may not have considered before.
First, I need to debunk the term “misbehaviour”. That is a judgement that only serves to skew my empathy for my children and turn to anger. There is only “behaviour” that I have deemed right or wrong. I have been wrong in my judgments before, I won’t risk it again.
Second, due to the length of this and the chances most readers won’t stay the course with me, the upshot is: hold your children when they cry or tantrum, with love and compassion. That’s it really. Want to know why and how? Read on.
Babies and children get stressed, and even traumatised, just as adults do. The beginnings of emotional repression are in infancy, when a baby is shown that no one wants to hear her cries. By the time they are one, most western children have a control pattern – an object or behaviour that suppresses their crying or raging, dulls the pain and loneliness of having feelings no one wants to hear. Commonly these are blankets, pacifiers/dummies, thumb sucking, soft toys or a repetitive action against themselves or a parent – however the list is as varied as children are. Parents often introduce these things, and call them “comforts”.
To identify a control pattern, look for these signs:
They demand it frantically when crying/raging or on the verge of it.
They stop crying when they have it.
They often glaze over with it (look distant, a little sleepy perhaps). It disconnects them.
They may seem to want it more than they want mama, or mama may feel that she cannot console her child quite like this “comfort” thing does.
They use it to fall asleep.
You dread losing it, and may have duplicates “just in case”.
A child can have more than one, and they can also change to different ones although there is more commonly one stand out control pattern… any others may not exist or are harder to fathom. My son has cycled through bouncing, music, sucking, rocking and a little blanket. All of those things can still work to instantly calm him down. As children get older, control patterns become more intricate, more like adult ones and are much harder to identify. Some remain easy to spot, such as watching TV or nail biting. Some kids have none, but you probably won’t meet one of those unless you visit a natural tribe or a family that has awareness of the topic this article is about.
A child without her control pattern will cry and rage in your arms or in your presence.
I am a long term advocate of attachment parenting, which is just a fluffy term to describe instinctual, primal type parenting. There was a gaping hole in attachment style for me in that my daughter started tantruming before age 4 and I felt powerless, and dare I say it… bullied. My current methods were to distract, negotiate, belittle (yeah, I tried a few ugly things). Sometimes one would work, sometimes not.
Attachment advocates are against punishment, 123 magic and all that bullshit and some – like myself – are even against discipline altogether. I believe instead in the inherent goodness of children and that any buttons pushed or mistakes made are simply part of the building of the mental filing system of this confusing ride we call life. However, I felt I had no way to deal with her radical outbursts – not realising that previously, her attachment to her blanket had kept her “calm” and her tears at a manageable minimum. There came a point when the dam burst and rage came with it and she started having outbursts and demands.
That’s when I found the work of Aletha Solter, which is attachment style with a bonus – children have valid emotions that need expressing, not repressing.
As soon as I read that, it was one of those *slaps own forehead* moments. Of course, that makes sense.
Most of us, especially attachment parents, are doing everything we humanly can to “comfort” our child, which in both attachment and mainstream families translates as “crying is bad, fix it, stop it.” It hadn’t occurred to me that perhaps my baby doesn’t have a desperate need for bouncing, even though it makes him stop. Perhaps my daughter doesn’t actually want to turn into the Tasmanian devil. Maybe they’re both upset and want to release that. I instantly resonated with the philosophy and applied it to my whole life, not just to my daughter. The last time I had done anything like that was after I read that gut wrenching, life altering book Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff.
I like Pam Leo’s quote, “It’s not nice to hit people; children are people.” Simple. Profound. “Children are people too” – what a gorgeous phrase. It is the perfect reminder for me for how to react in any given situation.
I felt I had been given permission to “allow” my daughter to be angry, to cry… to express herself. I had always been considered – by myself and others – to be an empathic person, open to the emotions of others, always there with a ready ear and sympathetic noise of genuine interest. To suddenly realise I had denied my own child this basic concept was a shock to me, and the guilt started to ooze in… oh sweet guilt, why do you torment me so?
Guilt, like all emotions, serves a purpose. Without guilt, I would have remained a stagnant parent, unaffected, unwilling and complacent. In fact, without guilt, we’d all be perfect arseholes to each other – even more than we already are, God forbid. In fact, it seems to be the only emotion that specifically protects others from ourselves – or at least, from repeated harm. I eventually embraced my guilt and allowed it to lead me to the glorious release I needed to move forward – the slow release of sorrow and anger that was as deep as the Armageddon tides. At the same time, I started to allow my daughter to release, and the first time, luckily for us both, was a raging success. Pun intended.
She was being difficult this day, to put it mildly. I’d had enough and she started to crumble into a tormented, kicking, screaming mess. I clicked into gear and dropped all my irritation to find a place of empathy for her and got down to her level and pulled her into my arms and said to her that she sounds very angry and sad and that I’m here and listening. The raging quickly turned to full fledged sobbing; tears were flowing and I held her and stayed present with her until she calmed of her own accord. This took a long time.
When finished, it was like it never happened, and her mood altered drastically. She was calm and happy and content and also, really compliant – bonus! A connected child is a compliant child… this is another profound truth I could drop to my knees with gratitude for also. ”Misbehaviour” is a need to release feelings or lack of connection. Usually both because one begets the other. Every day I reconnect with my children many times, or after school, and they’re putty in my hands.
The tantrum miracle spurred me on to where I was actually looking forward to them yet she only had a few more, and then they just stopped. Emotions were still there, she’s human after all and fresh stress hits almost daily, but she seemed to have more resilience, and our bond became very strong. She abandoned her blanket not long after all this. She is 8 now and some days, especially after a stressful day, she becomes difficult and if I am on the ball, I can get her into tears or some kind of expression so she can move forward. The dynamic with her brother has brought us all new challenges, and I don’t know how I would have coped without this basic human tool of empathy and freedom to express.
I felt I had power back, and best of all, it felt “right”. No matter who you are, punishing someone always carries a deep sense of “wrong” with it (although, some are able to shake that right down to the recesses of their hearts)… kind people do it begrudgingly, and the phrase “this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you” speaks volumes of this phenomenon, of how we do things even with a sense of wrongness about it. I’ve literally seen mothers kneeling at a closed door in tears while their child wails on the other side of it because they have been lead to believe they are doing the right thing – regardless of that incredibly powerful sense of wrongness. Then they will tell me they’re “just not good at parenting”, that they don’t have mothering instincts. What have we done to our families?
A note about “colic”. Many people think this is an actual illness of the digestive tract. Farting, puking, and pulling their legs up in what looks like pain certainly looks like digestive distress. In fact, it is the phantom diagnosis given to babies who cry for long bouts, often, and for no known reason. A baby with a perfectly functioning bowel will pull her legs up when crying, the whole body clenches actually. Note how it seems like she is trying to crawl into you, or into the fetal position… following?
A puking baby is sometimes simply over-full. My daughter was bottle fed from 2 months and after cycling through myriad different formulas in a bid to find one she didn’t throw up I figured out she was feeding for comfort – meaning, she was feeding way past “full”. I had to find a way to give her less without upsetting her (hence, the blanket. Sigh). I fed her old-school method which was every four hours, so mimicking breastfeeding can help, feeding less milk more often. It is something to try, before the ever ready diagnosis of “reflux” and the medication that follows; medication that stops the natural regurgitation reflex that rids the body of too much milk. Always check with a doc if you feel you should, of course.
From my personal experience, research and work with many parents, turns out colic is:
The need to be in-arms more often to dispel energy and for security.
The need to release feelings.
Usually both. ”Infant colic drops” might have some use to help the parent feel they are doing something, but if a parent wants to try something radical, I suggest those two things above. Making sure they cry in-arms and that all other needs have been met.
Colic does not exist in many natural cultures. I was lead to believe that if I held my baby ALL the time, he wouldn’t cry because that would emulate the natural cultures where babies are held skin to skin 24 hours a day, even during sleep. I tested this theory with my son, and it turned out to be partly true.
The true part is that even if all else is fine, but you don’t hold a new baby all the time – he will cry. They need to be held and not just when upset and there’s no getting around it. Sorry. I didn’t even buy a pram for my son as the easiest way to get more in-arms credits was to sling him. However, the false part is that it isn’t ALL they need. A well-held baby can still cry I learned, much to my disillusioned sleep-deprived discontent.
My son had a traumatic birth, his head was almost crushed by what is called a Bandl’s ring in my uterus. I had to factor that into my expectations. Then there were a few other challenges health-wise and whatnot… he had a lot of stress for a small person. He has feelings to express, and I’m the one he wants to rant them at. So I sat with him in my arms, for hours, listening to his cries. I thought my experience with his sister had prepared me… it hadn’t. He would have been diagnosed with colic if it existed, for sure. He wasn’t hungry, in fact, he kept insisting I take my boobs away, thank you very much; several health checks showed he wasn’t sick. My diet was already free of gluten, dairy and every-other-bloody-thing so my milk had a freakin’ halo – it wasn’t allergies. He had no issues at all, just crying, nothing to see here people.
Months down the track and I was literally out of my mind with sleep deprivation. I NEEDED this boy to SLEEP – how sad can a person be, for Christ’s sake? Regrettably, I installed “blanky”. Sigh. I’m such a trickster, I filled it with my smell (wore it for days) and sneaked it in between us when I held him… he learned that blanky was as there for him as I was. Then blanky was there… even when I wasn’t. Blanky became more reliable than mama. He needed it for everything – it was officially his control pattern and he sucked his thumb with it to boot.
People are kidding themselves when they say this is because a child is more independent. Dependence is dependence, no matter what it is on. I wouldn’t call grown tribal men dependent, would you? Yet they cosleep their whole lives and are carried the first two – by four they’re carrying other babies. We have our definition of dependence backwards and in my estimation, both dependence and independence only lead to strife. Interdependence is the way to go.
Everything else remained the same for my son, we still coslept and I still slung him to me everywhere we went. But I had committed one of the western parenting quick fixes and now I had that hairy guilt visiting again… I had to reverse it but wasn’t sure how. I cannot explain here what I learned and did because it is an article of its own. My advice is not to instil a control pattern to begin with (in my experience, easier said than done). And with or without one, the way back home is to start by seeing tears and tantrums as OK.
Oh, and don’t take a child’s control pattern away. Not only is that disrespectful and traumatic but they’ll just replace it in some way. They will release the need for any control patterns only when they feel safe enough to do so.
It’s ok to rage.
It’s ok to cry.
It’s ok to be scared.
Suppressing those things is when there is trouble. Or funneling every emotion through one in particular that we’re not as uncomfortable with… such as anger, so that every adversity in our life makes us lash out in rage. Men (stereotypically) have funneled sadness through anger because sadness is frowned on in males; in females, sadness is safe but anger is frowned on.
Have you ever stopped for a minute and allowed yourself to fully allow a feeling in? I don’t mean expressing it, but simply experiencing an emotion? Try it one day, just stop, lay down and say, “ok, come get me, I fully allow this feeling to be here.” and let it burn, risk it consuming you. See what happens. Here’s a tip: it won’t consume you, it will liberate you; it will show you the source of emotions are thoughts.
I keep the phrase “children are people too” close by, so when my son flares in a tantrum or my daughter dons a princess bitchface hat right when I am late for an appointment AND I’m in the mall AND I’m with all my judgmental peers sneering I-told-you-so looks down their noses I’m more likely to react as though my child is a beloved friend in emotional need than the killer of all my hopes, dreams and youth.
If an adult friend starts crying or raging in my presence, I do not give her a time out. I do not yell at her. I do not hit her. I do not send her to her room or threaten her with the loss of something.
I listen.
I simply stop the bullshit in my own head for a while, and I be there for my friend.
At the end, she feels “heard” and even if I haven’t given a speck of advice, she feels strong enough to get on with the business she needs to attend to.
Beware the broken cookie syndrome. This is when a little thing becomes the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Don’t be fooled; she isn’t really that upset because her cookie broke (or because you gave her the wrong glass), it’s that now the flood gates are open and her body and mind are trying to heal from a stockpile of past stresses. I can relate… I watched PS I Love You and sobbed for an hour afterwards but it had nothing to do with the movie, my body just took that opportunity to pour some shit out. I felt a million dollars after that for ages.
Don’t assume a child’s life is stress free because they don’t have bills and loan sharks threatening to knee-cap them – we’re no longer bothered by the things children are but they are still just children. We’re hardened adults, seasoned by time and adversity. Broken cookies matter, god-damn it.
Another cue is when their behaviour is off. Perhaps they’re being aggressive, (common in the toddler set); perhaps they’re being disagreeable and demanding and life is just not quite “so” for them right now. I find a releasing session sets anyone straight, but particularly children because they are so raw and ready. Healing a child physically is quicker and easier than healing an adult and the same is true emotionally. They dump old baggage fast, they just need an opportunity. They’ll create one if they have to, so be alert. Accident prone kids can often be the result of consistently finding a sympathetic ear to tears from physical pain, but not from anything else. That isn’t manipulation, it is beyond their control because life finds a way to heal.
If my son yells at his sister, I ask him if he needs to get some feelings out and he starts crying and I hold him and it can escalate dramatically; I feel useful at these times, like I’m playing a part in healing him. I have held him for two hours screaming and kicking – although that only happened once, back when I started being more present for his releasing instead of getting blanky to do all the work. A fully connected child is fully present in his life, not in constant pleasure addiction and pain aversion.
Experiencing emotions often entails tears, even for joy and anger. Tears have been examined and shown to contain stress chemicals. Every exiting body fluid has a purpose, a cleansing purpose – why would tears be any different? Body and mind are intimately connected, it makes sense to me that releasing emotions results in the release of something tangible from the body.
With babies and toddlers who lash out during releases: protect yourself from being hurt but remember you are the grown up, don’t carry on like they slashed you with a chainsaw. Gently catch their arms if they swing at you – you won’t need a degree in self defense for this – and kiss the hand that swung. Meet rage with love. Protect yourself, yet allow them to push against you, arching back can be release of birth trauma and other times where they’ve felt powerless.
Older kids with serious aggression need to release more than anyone yet they can actually do serious harm so find a place where damage control is easy. Laughter releasing might be better for that child – that is not in the scope of this article. Playful Parenting by Lawrence Cohen PhD may help.
My parenting style is an investment in a child’s emotional future, not in immediate results – this means that my children are not given strong consequences and this unnerves people. My brother asked, “So do you just give them anything they want?” and this has been a common question. Here’s my answer: yes and no. Again, it is treating them as a person, as a friend, with common courtesy. If a friend asks me for something and I am willing and able to give it, then I give it. Same with my children. If I am unwilling or unable, then no, I don’t give it – no, you can’t have a horse and no, you can’t have cotton candy. Decisions are much simpler when I consider my children as people.
My brother also asked me, “So, what about when they tantrum over whatever it is you won’t give them?”
If a person, young or old, is upset, even if that is because of a decision I have made, the rules are the same: empathy empathy empathy compassion compassion compassion. No, you can’t have a horse and I can see that really upsets you but I’m here with you would you like a hug?
My brother eventually said, “Actually, that all makes sense. I never thought of it that way.”
The best part is that now my daughter is 8, some of those “you’ll make a rod for your own back” comments from way back can be addressed just by her, being her. She is talented, gifted, kind, happy, quiet, brave, profound, polite and does things like stands up for spiders that are being tormented by kids – she is social yet isn’t part of the pack mentality. I need only point to her and say, “She has never so much as been sent to her room. Nuff said?”
I sniff my own smug occasionally, but it’s good for morale.
A word about crying as a “tired sign”.
People do not cry simply because they are tired. Tiredness can trigger a release though. Adults and children alike can hold themselves together for long periods and through great adversity if they have the energy reserves. When that energy is all used up, we need to eat or sleep, depending on time of day, to replenish the stores. Fatigue therefore weakens our defenses, and we can become irritable and express emotions that we were otherwise holding in check. Fatigue does not cause these emotions, however. Most parenting books have a list of tired signs in babies and one of them is always irritability and tears. We hand them the control pattern and this squashes those feelings in again and they go to sleep. With their defenses down, it is a good opportunity to help the child release some pent up feelings instead of trying to drown them out with a control pattern or repetitive motion.
People free of inner stress simply go to sleep when they are tired. My son, content, just closes his eyes wherever he is. He seeks out a lap most of the time, but he has been known to fall asleep sitting in a chair, no tears, no fuss at all. When he had stress inside, he would become difficult when tired, irritable and fussy and usually end up in tears or even rage. The experience of many of us is that a child sleeps better after a release – but only if they have been held, and their pain witnessed by a loving carer.
IMPORTANT:
ALWAYS hold a baby when he is crying. With older children, always hold them if they will let you. They may push against you and arch back, even older children may arch back like a baby when tantruming in your arms, this doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t want to be held, sometimes it feels good to push against something. They don’t know what they want during a melt down, they may come to you and move away again but if possible, get them near you and at the very least, stay present and attentive. If they absolutely refuse to be held and that is made very clear, not just by pushing against you but by making strong efforts to get off your lap and move away. NEVER NEVER NEVER leave a baby OR child alone to cry. For any reason. Not negotiable.
Addendum: Ok, it’s negotiable. If you think you might hurt them… that would be a reason to leave and pull yourself together.
It can be difficult for some to sit with the powerful emotions of others, particularly rage (it can feel like blame) and particularly with their own children when they themselves were denied this as a child. It triggers deep, unrecognised feelings that can lash out in all kinds of ways, creating the same cycle with our own kids. Due to this, and to the fact that laughter is at least as important as tears for healing and for moving into release of stress and trauma – collect more information. Either in book form or via Aletha Solter’s site Aware Parenting. In Australia, I recommend Marion Badenoch Rose from Parenting with Presence for real time support. She’s beautiful, serene and compassionate.
I dont fully understand the anarchist. our most basic unit (a family) has some structures that tend to make it a govt. Without a set of rules to go by then what is acceptable and what is not? Without a form of govt then who enforces what is considered acceptable by the unit?
I tend to believe govt should be strongest and most powerful the closest it is to the people and should loose strength the further it moves away from the people. A community should handle the needs of the people as it is most closely associated with those people. By time you get to a body as far removed as the UN it should have little or no power. Maybe if nations where kept weak then they wouldnt be so ready to go to war.
Im hoping our elections here are a pull back of power the govt has taken from the people. The ruling class in the last 2 years took a normal market correction and turned it into a crisis and thereby not only hurt this country but the economy’s of many other countries. No govt should be that powerful.
D. Thacker
I understand your points. I don’t think anyone can call what America was in for a “normal market correction” though. The patsy, regardless which party line s/he towed, was going to take a big, ugly fall. I’m not American, just married to one, so I’m not a democrat or loyal to any political bent but I do agree with those who say the fall was inevitable. How could it not be? America went to war… America invaded several countries this decade… that alone causes a depression, if history is anything to go by. When thought of statistically, logically and historically, America has fared extraordinarily well considering how much money they have shelled out in military bullshit. There is nothing normal about war, and it is devastating on all levels especially financially, including the invading country… just ask Germany.
I do agree, though, with what you say about gov’t powers, when it is thought of in terms we know community to be – based in agriculture, structure, hierarchies, etc. Most of us have never lived in any other kind of society, so therefore cannot even create in our minds an alternative. I’d like to run down that road for a minute, starting with a quote I found while googling this info:
Children (as Liedloff saw in the indigenous societies in the Amazon) were always touched and always treated with complete confidence, but were never pampered. They got what they needed without ever being told what to do and parents never expressed anger towards them. Every step children took was of their own will and motivation. She refers to this as instinctual parenting. That is something primal. Her realizations are rather universal…
But civilized living is anti-primal. Children must be broken and must learn to obey orders from the start or they may never be of use. To become a part of the machine, we must start from birth. We must learn very early the need for efficiency. And what’s more efficient than complete standardization?
Liedloff saw that a baby is taken immediately from the womb into the arms of its mother. She’s the first thing the child will see. It hears the familiar heart beat and feels the heat of bodies. She saw births in the hospital where children are taken in sterile hands, measured, weighed, and set alone to learn the most central message of civilization: infinite need. What it eventually gets is a pathetic substitute for being held: bottles of formula, mechanical love, noise, and the loneliness and boredom of the crib. It cries for distant parents who are eager to ensure their independence and gets more attention from soft fabric than warm skin. It learns the importance of compromise.
Confident and fulfilled children are not efficient machines. Everything must be done to undermine them.
But the psychological pain goes deeper than this. It begins at conception. It takes in the anger, hate, love and fear of its mother in a world of compromise and the misery of not being efficient enough. We are assured that children are not thinking even if the religious say that they are full beings crafted by god. They’re just lower on the social ladder.
We are told not to listen to the senses. Words are more important. Science can prove it.
With this divine knowledge, we can continue to inflict the original trauma without consequence. And even better, we can take no fault for children with homicidal and suicidal tendencies.
Chemical imbalances, chemical solutions. We breed the killers and they are increasingly efficient.
There is a reason I bang on about instinctual, primitive, connected parenting… because the way people parent ultimately affects my world and everyone in it, because each of us as parents is the caretaker of a future adult.
If we inflict foundational harm upon our children in deep psychological ways, then we will pay a price, we have paid a price. When we compromise our child’s emotional well being for an immediate desire (or “need” as we prefer to call it), by putting them in child care too early, not holding them frequently, isolation sleep, “crying it out” to sleep, punishing emotions (like tears or anger), shaming, slapping, yelling… well, the list is long – when we do this, it is easier for now, and we may even get compliance or a good night’s sleep depending on the immediate goal, but the long term sacrifice is a well rounded child.
Hurt people hurt people, and since we have all been hurt, we all continue to hurt others, and we hurt our kids and pass the baton down. Have you ever considered how a person might parent if they were never damaged as a child themselves? If they were the “ideal” balanced human being, filled with light and love? Perhaps our birthright, if we follow our instincts instead of our ego and the latest advice? I’m not sure if there is such a person out there, but I know that there are those who are much closer to that than the western human being, and at least one such tribe is living in the Amazon basin.
It is important how we treat our babies from birth onward. Be it circumcision, lack of skin on skin contact or the many other things we inflict on our babies, people in our culture have a traumatic entrance to life. We are so deep in this indoctrination, most people I speak to about this have not even considered it before… we take it all for granted because we can’t remember any of it ourselves.
Something has gone terribly wrong with our society and we are out of our minds if we think we can heal it without considering how we treat our infants, and by extension, each other.
I don’t think anarchy is tenable. Perhaps it is, depending on the definition… and I like to think anything is possible. I am not saying I don’t believe in hierarchy, soft hierarchy. I just don’t believe gov’t works – but then, “works” is a subjective term. If I am a Bush relation or a fearful, compliant middle class white collar, well crap, gov’t works brilliantly!
Being governed is all our ancestors have ever known for thousands of years, and such embedding is all but impossible to reconsider.
Government relies on force and punishment. Since you mentioned family, I should mention I do not do either of those things as a parent, and don’t believe they are necessary. In fact, I know they are not necessary, because of families like mine and whole cultures.
People often told me my plans as a parent would not work, because children need to be led, punished, disciplined, controlled, or at the very least guided. I call bullshit. And I have evidence on my side… evidence for love and against tyranny.
When I hear it extrapolated into whole communities that we need to punish, force, dictate (“lead”), threaten… I can’t help but wonder if they are also wrong about that. People are hopelessly wrong about human nature in general. We underestimate not only our children, but ourselves, and our fellow beings.
What do we have gov’t for? What do we have all these rules and laws for? For safety and security? The crime rate in countries with strong governance and tight laws, such as the USA, can be comparable to that of countries with civil unrest! The sense of security is all but missing, fear is rampant, health is flailing, freedom is a memory and people are overworked and trapped. But hey, they get to vote so YAY, hail government.
Ok, I know most agree with all that and think that a change in gov’t is the answer… I say: deluded much? But I understand the attraction to being dragged into political games, and it doesn’t help that we are afraid of being the only one left standing on a soap box, that “a gov’t will be chosen, so I should at least have a say which one it is”… playing the game is the only option we’ve been given. And that is why it is important to think outside the GIVEN information.
The fear is real that if we take back our freedoms and reject most of gov’t then we will have to fight for our lives – all of us, not just the handful that live in dodgy neighbourhoods, such it is currently. People believe the strong will take everything and the weak will starve and so on and so forth… and secretly, most of us believe we are weak, so this picture does not appeal. However, I suggest a look around you… who has most of everything anyway? Is it you? Is it even anyone you’ve met in your life? I’d expect the next point brought up would be that yes, I guess we do have to struggle to get by, and most of our resources are controlled and used by a very tiny minority but at least we haven’t been treated like slaves, at least we aren’t tortured or have our towns burned to the ground; we’ll sacrifice some freedoms to be free of the worst potential.
At this point I’d like to take a moment on the word “slave”. I see it defined as a person owned, deprived the right to payment and unable to quit work.
We have a sense of free will, because no one can technically force us to work, but what happens when we stop working? We will lose everything, and unless we get charity, we will die from lack of shelter and food. The free will idea is a total illusion.
For those lucky or privileged, we are able to choose our poison, and get weekends off. Good’nuff.
In countries like Australia, they have more of a sense of free will. A mother is paid over $1800 a month to stay at home with her children until they are 6 years old. Socially, that resembles a family much more… however, hand to mouth is no way to live. The money is barely enough for rent and food. Plus, you have to contract yourself very heavily to the gov’t for the hand outs, they now know more about you than you do.
If the planet was still covered in food trees, then perhaps being out of work wouldn’t be so scary… feeling hungry, go out foraging. But we’ve paved everything, so that’s out. If the planet was still covered in greenery, we could fashion a shelter… but we’ve paved everything, so that’s out. If it isn’t paved, it’s owned by someone else. When we scale it right back to ABSOLUTE FREEDOM, it becomes blindingly obvious that those living in the jungles are the only ones who have any clue what that is.
The “want of something more” is our culture’s branding through childhood, the aching need to have, to be, to DO, so much so that the mere thought of simply playing like children in earth’s gardens without TV and museums scares the shit out of every single one of my friends and family.
There are cultures dotted around the globe that do not have gov’t, or anything like it. They are self governing. Alas, we can’t just take a note pad and have a round table with these people to extract their system blueprints, because it is very little to do with structure and there is no system. Actually, it’s a little like looking for God… it ain’t “out there” in a system or a book, it is within the people and the environment, it is completely organic, and built into the way they move and think … it is the totality. To isolate or separate parts of the whole destroys the whole. Like God, if you can describe it, that’s not it.
We need to start in the cradle, by throwing the cradle away and then holding more, loving more, listening more while they cry in our patient arms, being more present. The link between infancy and politics is not acknowledged, yet it is definitely cause and effect. How can it not be? We stopped listening to our instincts and started treating our most receptive sponges like inconveniences to run from as often as possible, confusing their biological instincts so much they become attached to comfort objects (aw, ain’t it cute?) and learn not to cry or rage, then we stick all these angry people together in a school yard… and we wonder why people are broken and bruised. Broken and bruised people have no place in gov’t, but we have no other choice – we’re all broken and bruised.
There was a story told by Jean Leidloff in her book. First, it is important to know that babies in this tribe rarely cried, they were compliant and happy and could play by a fire or a cliff safely. They are extraordinary, and they turn into extraordinary adults who have no word for “work”, because there is no distinction between work and play, it’s all just life. Women walking to the river to bathe, tossing babies to each other, laughing, playing, collecting and cooking; men running around like boys in a robin hood movie; they give and take fluidly, no one feels fearful, they have complete autonomy and no one expects apologies because no one assumes fault… it’s magnificent.
So comfortable in their naked bodies, comfortable with touch, just the way eden may have been before we tore things apart and built new things in an effort to understand… SCIENCE we called it (science means “knowledge”) and then we separated concepts and events into “good” or “bad”, right and wrong, and the duality was born. A myth was written to capture this moment when we crossed from wild paradise to caged fear: “eating from the tree of knowledge” or the tree of “good and evil”. It’s a story at the beginning of a very famous book I once read.
Well, in Leidloff’s story, there was a little boy who was taken from the jungle to America for a couple of years. When he came back, he was just like a western child – snitty, seemingly uncomfortable in his own skin, whiney, cried often, had tantrums, wanted more, gave little… we know that child, we’ve met that child, we WERE that child! He eventually healed. No one pandered to him, but no one reigned him in. He was given unconditional trust, and although he initially abused that trust, he healed.
People in these kinds of cultures don’t need govt because they aren’t expanding and don’t need to make a bunch of decisions. They live simply and symbiotically with each other and earth. They don’t ask for permission from anyone or seek a law book. Children included.
Soon, they will all be gone. There were millions of them, now there are thousands of them. We are killing them for various reasons: our diseases, our pollution, our moralising attitudes, for openers. Our fear has us wondering how they deal with the danger, what about health care?? Our progress has given us surgery and pharmaceuticals, guns and steel… what would we do without them, surely they have some small place in the world??
The state of my culture is such that we would need guided leadership for some time if we decided to work towards minimal governance. I do think it should be a goal though, because this merry go round is headed to hell. There is TOO much invasion from the gov’t. They only need do 1% of what they currently do. America has the most prisoners in the world, and the most cops. They are over policed. Our culture allows the gov’t into our bedrooms by legislating sex and morality, it allows it in our backyards by legislating plants… PLANTS!! There is nowhere gov’t has not raped and plundered our rights and freedoms. Religion and the morality brigade have been instrumental in this. ”Taking offense” being at the top of the list… when we started applying laws to victimless acts, we fell down the slippery slope.
I’m not sure if I’m an anarchist yet, they say it doesn’t work. Yet, gov’t doesn’t work either. So it’s not really a good point of comparison is it.
A bird born caged will know a kind of joy. It may have an uncomfortable sense of wrongness and want of “something more”, but it has never known freedom… and as long as it never sees a bird in the wild, it will be satisfied with “all it has ever known”. In fact, most caged birds set free will die, and many fly back to the cage. It is not long ago that people referred to wild humans as “savages” and we still compare that lifestyle to “living like an animal”. But it is the only way we were meant to live, because we are animals. We are mammals, named so because we have mammary glands to breast feed and yet even that has been all but eliminated and the breast sexualised. We are not thriving in this caged environment.
“When an American physician says that circumcision prevents UTI or cancer of the penis, he is sincere. But, it is like a medieval Chinese physician saying that foot binding prevents flat feet. If someone asks me, “What rate of preventable UTI would justify male circumcision?” I respond by asking, “What rate of preventable UTI would justify female circumcision?” The second question is patently absurd unless one’s cultural bias allows a sympathetic view of female circumcision. Therefore, the first question can be only slightly less absurd.”
The foreskin is attached like a fingernail (see #4).
Need I say more?
Don’t forget to have the volume on for the following video.
That we have the legal and ethical option to inflict pain upon vulnerable, trusting, helpless babies for an unnecessary procedure is a testament to how far we still have to go before we can consider ourselves out of the dark ages.
50% of circumcisions in the United States are performed without any anaesthetic at all. The 50% that do use it, often use the topical cream which is wrought with hazards. The toxins in anaesthetics aside, the major problem is the doctors are not waiting long enough for the anaesthetic to work (link shortly), they are waiting an hour or less (sometimes only minutes) when it takes two hours or more to work. Add to this, in babies under 6 months of age, they must not have the cream on longer than 1 hour.
The dorsal blocks and other needle locals have their own problems. The pain of a local is quite significant and for a newborn it is shocking at best. Then we have the issue of whether the block worked – for some it simply doesn’t, as many of us know ourselves. For others, it takes longer, or it needs a top up… all these things an ADULT can communicate, a baby cannot. So when the baby cries, they do not know this baby is experiencing great pain. That is offensive and out of order, officially it is torture, although many parents who circumcise their boys object to the use of such a term… a rose by any other name… is still torture.
Then we have the millions upon millions of boys who are circumcised without anaesthetic because that is their custom, often ritualistic or religious.
It was not long ago that there was debate whether babies even feel the pain of having the most sensitive organ on their body sliced and peeled off. This has now been conclusively scientifically debunked, however I think many people still cling to the idea that a newborn is such a non-entity, or the common, “they made it through the birth canal didn’t they?” that they don’t feel as much pain as an adult. Add to that the fact that newborns in our society protest and scream so much that we can jot their experience of circumcision up to just another inconvenience, pat them on the back, and move past it.
Studies show there is tremendous pain felt by infants during and after circumcision.
Over a dozen studies confirm the extreme pain of circumcision. It has been described as “among the most painful [procedures] performed in neonatal medicine.”(2) In one study, researchers concluded that the pain was “severe and persistent.”(3) Increases in heart rate of 55 beats per minute have been recorded, about a 50 percent increase over the baseline.(4) After circumcision, the level of blood cortisol increased by a factor of three to four times the level prior to circumcision.(5) Investigators reported,
“This level of pain would not be tolerated by older patients.”(6) …
When you lay them on their stomachs they scream. When their diaper is wet they scream. Normally, they don’t scream if their diaper is wet. Baby boys who are not circumcised do not scream like that. The circumcised babies are more irritable, and they nurse poorly.(24) (see note on affects to breastfeeding, below)
Babies can actually survive torture, abuse and many other emotionally and physically horrific things and look quite fine in the morning, smiling at those who inflicted it upon them. Did they not feel that pain, just because they cannot communicate it in a language we understand? Or could it be that they are much more zen about suffering than an adult, who will replay the event over and over in their head and moan and whine about it for long lengths of time? Could a baby also give up trying to communicate their continued suffering, because they are not linguistic and in our culture, that is all we consider to be ‘communication’; screaming and bucking at restraints apparently isn’t clear enough to us.
Men who have been circumcised as adults have said that it hurts like hell to have their foreskin cut and removed. However, they had it easy compared to a baby because a baby’s foreskin is still attached to the glans. “Fused” is the term used in medical books. It slowly and naturally wears down so that by the age of ten the foreskin is independent of the glans. So a baby not only has the pain an adult has of circumcision but also the added pain of ripping the foreskin from the glans prematurely.
If you still insist on doing this to your child, do you know the answers to these questions:
Do you know for sure they are going to use anaesthetic on your child?
Do you know for sure the anaesthetic is a cream or a needle, which can be painful in itself?
How do you know for sure the anaesthetic will work?
Will you know the anaesthetic has kicked in before they cut? This is a very common problem that an infant cannot communicate.
Do you know why they prefer you do not accompany your baby to be circumcised and in some places you are not allowed to?
Perhaps you’d like to consider the instincts a mother has to protect her baby are there for a reason. If you see your child restrained and screaming desperately for you, even before the pain occurs, you will feel an overwhelming urge to grab your baby and run. Trust nature and follow that instinct. Keeping mothers from their babies during this abuse prevents that instinct from fully kicking in, although it will be there to some extent.
A friend told me she couldn’t watch her child being circumcised. I asked if she would sit by her baby if he had been harmed in an accident and was screaming for her, perhaps in much pain. “Of course, that’s my job.”
“Could you sit through awake surgery, blood and all, for your son?”
“I see blood every month on my panties; I’d walk through fire for my son, I would be there.”
So I asked, “What is so different about this? Because you’ll be the cause of it?”
Her mouth did the open-close goldfish thing but I could see I’d asked “the” uncomfortable question. Congratulations, you’ve just given birth to several pounds of guilt. Such is motherhood.
If you still do this to your child, at least have the guts and decency to be there. You are putting them through this, stand up and be accounted for, don’t turn your back because it’s too hard for you to sit through. This isn’t about you, it’s about them, snap out of it. Learning that now will save you the next 20 years of anguish as you battle for your lost identity to the new one of “mother”.
2) The procedure and pain has long lasting consequences.
Like we should need to be told something like that.
We don’t remember our babyhood and most of our childhood is a blur. This had led us to believe that anything that has happened during those “black” spaces of memory has not affected us. Now that science and psychology is becoming more advanced, just what it can see on the surface shows this is far from the case.
The foundation years, although not even a memory to almost every adult, are profoundly important and influential to our future reactions, relationships and general interaction with the world. The implications of being taken from the natural home of our mother’s arms, having our most intimate sexual body part forcibly inflicted with pain and altered while spread eagled on a table and with no compassionate face or touch to be found before we’ve even been given a chance to figure out where we are in this world, is profound.
That should not be a surprise. Yet how often I hear, “I hadn’t thought of that.” That’s because: We’re just not thinking about this at all. We do this out of social norm, habit and medical mythology and only a tiny fraction of people research this.
Trauma results in dissociation, a separation of the traumatic experience and associated emotional pain from awareness [28]…
The possibility of circumcision resulting in traumatic effects on older children can be better explored because of the easier access to memory and the child’s ability to talk. Two reports have studied the ritual as practiced without anaesthesia on children in Turkey. In the first report, testing subjects 4-7 years old shortly before and after the ritual yielded this result: ‘Circumcision is perceived by the child as an aggressive attack on his body, which damaged, humiliated and, in some cases totally destroyed him’ [37]. According to this study, circumcision resulted in increased aggressiveness and weakened the ego, causing withdrawal, and reduced functioning and adaptation. Withdrawal is a defensive response that individuals use to protect themselves against further attack.
Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity, and fashion will drive them to acquire any custom.
~ George Bernard Shaw
Anyone who was instrumental in having their son circumcised bucks at the term “mutilation”. It is the correct term, however. We don’t use the term commonly yet because people don’t like to hear the blatant truth of what it is.
The female version is female genital mutilation (FGM) according to most medical, legal and social arenas.
If we’re not comfortable with the term, there’s good reason for that. It isn’t the name of it that should make us uncomfortable but the FACT of it.
An interesting parallel:
According to a joint WHO/UNICEF/UNFPA statement, the use of the word “mutilation” reinforces the idea that this practice is a violation of the human rights of girls and women, and thereby helps promote national and international advocacy towards its abandonment…They also state that parents resent the suggestion that they are “mutilating” their daughters.
Specifically, it fits the criteria of mutilation in these ways:
- to cut off or otherwise destroy the use of;
- deprivation of a limb or of an essential part
The foreskin is cut off and destroyed. Just that alone fits the criteria. It is an essential part. Some contest “essential”, apparently. Yes, we live without it but we can live without many body parts, so that is not what is meant by “essential” here. Essential to natural penile function. And again, I agree a cut penis “functions”. But it no longer functions naturally. For the natural functions of the foreskin and penis, check the points about sensitivity loss and female problems.
∞
4) In babies, the foreskin is attached like a fingernail.
Rip off your fingernail. Notice the pain.
In infants, the foreskin is attached in the same way to the glans. Medical texts call it “fused”. The glans and the penis are like “one”. This slowly separates over time until the foreskin moves independently from the glans. A baby’s fingernails are more easily peeled off – anyone with kids may have accidentally discovered this horrifying fact! My son loses bits of nail covering now and again, his nails are like paper. Peeling back the foreskin of a baby is possible, difficult, but possible – like his fingernail.
The glans (or head of the penis), like the clitoris, was designed to be an internal organ that only comes “out” for intercourse. It is important not to retract the foreskin of an intact baby due to this as damage can result. Protect your intact son from doctors who will retract the foreskin in an examination. You don’t peel back a fingernail to see what is underneath it, to clean it or to treat any condition of it. Like a fingernail, you can see any problems from the outside and treat it orally or topically. Step in fast, doctors can rip it back before you even get a chance to stop them, causing damage. If a doctor or other health care worker attempts to retract, or already has, please follow these guidelines to prevent it happening to another baby: A Warning For Parents of Intact Sons
Once the foreskin has been removed, there is absolutely nothing to protect the glans, and it remains exposed. What was meant to be a moist, deep red internal area like the mouth is now dried out, chafed and skin coloured like the surrounding skin.
The circumcised male brings little lubrication to intercourse as the foreskin is retains the pre-ejaculate fluid; as such, western sexuality is almost cliche with the expectation that it is the woman who brings the wetness or a tube of lube. The woman alone cannot maintain the lubrication required to prevent chafing and friction for the full length of a sexual experience. Even entry to the vagina requires saliva or other artificial means most of the month except commonly during ovulation. Most of the brunt of friction was meant to be taken by the foreskin, not a glob of lubricant. Add to that the fact that a large percentage of cut men tend to thrust longer and harder to achieve the necessary sensations due to decreased sensitivity (see #8).
I once met a nurse who said a foreskin was hard to look after, yet compared to post-operative recovery, how bad could it be? Turns out there are three rules to the care and feeding of the intact penis:
1) leave it alone.
2) leave it alone.
3) leave it alone.
Uhhh, that doesn’t seem all that difficult to me. Two years on, and I have never had to do a thing to my son’s penis. It cleans itself, it’s the easiest part of his anatomy, truth be told. And no, he isn’t just “lucky”. 80% of the world is intact. Problems with body parts occur in the ears, eyes, hands, umbilical cord, heart, brain and yes, penis and foreskin. They are all rare, not something you “expect” just because the baby has that body part.
One day, male genital mutilation will be invalidated the way female genital mutilation (FGM) is in most countries now. Females are mutilated in certain cultures for the same reasons we mutilate our boys, reasons like religious morality, hygiene, protection from disease and simply out of habit. They see all that female flesh and think it serves no purpose, is ugly, pointless and a trap for discharge and dirt and the cause of immoral behaviour. All these things are exactly the way the male foreskin has been viewed. On both counts, male and female, they are all myths, dangerous, damaging myths.
The female equivalent of the foreskin is the clitoral hood (not the labia, or “lips” as commonly believed). It is called the prepuce in both men and women and has been the most vilified normal human anatomical structure for at least several thousand years.
FGM varies in severity from removal of the hood right through to removal of the entire outer labia and clitoris itself. However, the removal of the clitoral hood is technically termed Type 1a FGM This is the equivalent of “circumcision” in males, however it is illegal in most of the world and recognised as mutilation. FGM even has it’s own UN sponsored awareness day, Feb 6: International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation
I predict that one day, so shall male genital mutilation.
Just as calling male circumcision mutilation has elicited strong emotional reaction in parents, so has likening it to female genital mutilation. I’ve personally been told that it is an “offensive” and “ridiculous” comparison. This only shows the common ignorance to the facts of both male and female genital “alteration”. Apparently the removal of the female prepuce (clitoral hood) is completely different to the removal of the male prepuce (foreskin).
The idea nature or God made some kind of mistake in males or females like that is ludicrous. Nature doesn’t make mistakes. WE do.
FGM is most common in Africa, and most commonly done on young girls although often on babies, too. The parallels are interesting:
- the mother is offended at the term “mutilation”. She does NOT believe what she did to her daughter is mutilation.
- they believe it helps prevent disease. They believe it keeps things ‘cleaner”. They believe it looks better than a natural one. They believe it makes absolutely no difference to the sexual experience, or that it is better.
- they have orgasms, and believe their sexuality is fully functional and that nothing traumatic happened to them, and that no deprivation of liberty occurred. They do the same to their own daughter.
- the mother believes she has the “right” to do this to her daughter.
Now, if you’re a woman with your foreskin (prepuce) intact, are you glad you still have it, or do you think you would have been better off if you were pinned down screaming and cut because “your mother was” or because “it’s unclean” and “dirty” and “ugly”??
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6) It is pointless and absolutely unnecessary.
Remaining intact is natural. Surgery immediately upon birth is not.
There are NO medical advantages. HIV was the only medical idea showing results slightly in favour of circumcision occasionally. However, not in the most recent studies of grown males:
After adjustment for age and number of partners, circumcision was unrelated to STI history except for non-specific urethritis (higher among circumcised men) and penile candidiasis (lower among circumcised men).
Circumcision was unrelated to any of the sexual difficulties we asked about … except that circumcised men were somewhat less likely to have worried during sex about whether their bodies looked unattractive. No association between lack of circumcision and erection difficulties was detected. After correction for age, circumcised men were somewhat more likely to have masturbated alone in the previous 12 months.
I really like this man’s response to all this data:
Why are people even doing this research. You wouldn’t cut of any other healthy functional part of your body on the off chance that it may later be involved in a disease. Posted by Peter Hoathhere.
Pro-circumcision advocates will tell you that circumcision in infancy prevents penile cancer and STDs.
An infant is not sexually active! They have no risk of STDs, so again… it can wait.
As for penile cancer, it is not a risk in infancy, prophylactic surgery on an infant is maniacal. Especially when you consider the fact that penile cancer is actually more rare than breast cancer in men! 2000 men get breast cancer, 500 die in a year.
1 in 100000 men get penile cancer. When someone gives you this as a reason, feel assured you are dealing with a desperate pro-circ advocate who will be extremely biased because this particular statistic is not a valid reason to mutilate a child upon their birth. No reason is, however this one is particularly offensive.
Urinary tract infections (UTIs) at least have a statistic in whole numbers, at about 1 or 2% in boys depending on who’s statistics you buy. 8% are suffered by females. They are also the only reason given by pro-circumcision activists for circumcision in infancy. UTIs are easily treated, leaving a very tiny statistic of children at risk of any kidney involvement.
Over all, the medical argument is the weakest area of the pro-mutilation argument. Studies are showing there is no benefit, now or in future. Earlier studies that showed those benefits are so obscure (penile cancer) or simple (UTIs) or futuristic (STDs) that it is rather comical.
There are no advantages to genital mutilation for either a boy or a girl however there are many disadvantages and risks.
Aside from very rare medical issues, such as phimosis, there is no reason to remove a foreskin. We don’t cut every baby’s eye muscles just because a rare few are born with strabismus (crossed eyes) and need those muscles cut. The foreskin is necessary, removing it is insanity based on mythology and in our culture almost always done simply for tradition.
Cutting a pumpkin for Halloween is a cute tradition, stick with that. Cutting a penis just because the rest of the family is cut… not so cute.
Circumcision actually has it’s history based in religion and morality (more on this in #18). However, once that reason lost favour with the people in the 1900′s, the medical reasons became popular. There are no medical benefits to having a perfectly good body part removed, and that includes the foreskin… just so we’re clear.
However, there have always been an interesting list of things the medicos of the day said you could avoid if you were circumcised.
For over a hundred years, circumcision has been a solution looking for a problem, and the problem has typically been the most frightening disease of the day -
“masturbation insanity” in the 19th century,
then tuberculosis,
Sexually Transmitted Diseases (then called Venereal Disease or VD) after World War I,
penile cancer in the 1930s, and
cervical cancer in the 1950s, when cancers were terrifyingly untreatable,
Some will say there is one advantage of genital mutilation, and that is of course, satisfying God or the religious community’s expectations. The covenant with God in the Jewish faith, for instance, has always entailed circumcision of an infant at 8 days old. Only 3% of Israeli Jews refuse to circumcise their sons. However, the movement against MGM is growing, and questions are being raised amongst the faithful.
There is the option for Brit Shalom, or Brit b’li Milah (covenant without cutting). Your son can choose to have his foreskin removed in his teens, it is the only right course of action. God will understand. What is God, if not the energy of understanding? If you believe in a vengeful God, and many do, then you may fear God’s wrath will rain upon your son. Fear not for your son. God will not blame your son, for the choice is not his, he cannot be blamed for having an intact penis. The choice to leave him intact will be yours. Therefore, the blame falls to you.
The question then becomes: do you have the courage to take the blame from God to protect your son’s genital integrity so he may make the choice for himself at a later age?
Here’s a tip: God can see into your heart, even more clearly than you can. God knows you are acting with love, he will forgive you. A loving family will also forgive you. No one will blame the child, no one who isn’t a raving lunatic, at any rate. God made the foreskin, and many babies die with one, are the babies to blame? No, God’s not stupid.
Will you act from fear, or will you act from love? Think deeply, the two are easily confused.
Many parents say it is their “choice” and they have the right. This is FALSE. You do not own your child’s body. It is their body, from birth until death. You are to help them keep it clean and healthy and safe, that’s it, that’s all.
Back OFF.
This is as much a choice as removing the labia from your daughter – do you consider that a choice that you have? Why not? Do you have the right to alter your son’s earlobe? No? Why not?
We get confused, thinking all the decisions we make on the behalf of our children such as vaccinations, schooling and dental visits are the same as removing a perfectly healthy part of their body for no reason other than “preference”. Circumcision has been put on the smörgåsbord of parental “choices” out of sheer madness and lack of clear thinking and knowledge.
If you have ever been a foster parent, you will be aware of the odd sensation of parenting a child who is not, and perhaps never will be, “yours”. You are entrusted with their care but unlike other parents, you don’t make long term decisions on behalf of that child, because it might not suit the child’s future family, religion and preferences.
It is a shame we don’t apply this same respect to our own children.
“The court will not approve the treatment unless it is necessary and in the young person’s best interests.(132)… The basis of this attitude is the respect which must be paid to an INDIVIDUAL’S BODILY INTEGRITY…. On a strict interpretation of the assault provisions of the Queensland Criminal Code, routine circumcision of a male infant COULD BE REGARDED AS A CRIMINAL ACT.”
This is the most studied and obvious aspect of this topic. Regardless of the volumes of studies on the tissue, the science, etc, the best evidence of this comes from studies of intact men who get circumcised as adults. Regret is almost inevitable. They do this for newly adopted religious reasons, misguided ideas or information on benefits and other reasons.
The foreskin is full of nerve endings and is the way of retaining natural lubrication. It is also a protective cover. Removing that cover exposes the glans of the penis to constant stimulation and rubbing against clothing. This idea makes an intact male shudder. Where some people think the exposed glans heightens sensitivity and sexual pleasure, the reverse is actually true. The penis desensitises to cope. The newly cut man will experience heightened sensitivity, however it is usually uncomfortable more than enjoyable and it does not last.
If you ask a circumcised man about sexuality and sensitivity he will usually tell you everything is fine, great, just dandy. However, he doesn’t know it any other way. You can’t miss something you’ve never had. Only those who have been circumcised as adults have that perspective.
The whole of this article is full of reasons and links about the decrease of sensitivity. However, aside from the before and after stories of men who were cut as adults, another way you can note the lessened sensitivity is the way a cut man masturbates. He will often grasp the shaft really tightly and may even reef up and down like he might pull it right off. If you have never done this, and are partnered with a circ’d man, clasp his penis and have him clasp around your hand and show you how tight to hold him, you might be surprised! It is actually difficult to maintain that kind of grip for very long. Intact men usually have to “teach” an experienced woman how to hold gently. Tell me, how is a soft vagina that has perhaps pushed out a baby supposed to compete with that kind of grip? No wonder a “tight vagina” is the holy grail in our culture.
As a female, this was a particularly important aspect in my research.
It includes problems in the relationship, problems people would never think to suspect altered genitals as the culprit. Yet, it makes so much sense when a little thought and research is put to the topic.
Mutilated/altered genitals = problems during sex for the victim and the victim’s partner. It’s not a big stretch. Suddenly everything starts to make sense. How does a woman tell her partner that although long hard thrusts are good now and then, particularly when begged for, overall, they are more irritating and… let’s be frank, boring if that is how it goes every session.
Female orgasm during sex is almost myth, with the majority of orgasms occurring during foreplay or a specific part of intercourse dedicated to “her”. The amount of books in the American market on the low libido of women is phenomenal, with sexual dysfunction in men a close second. A little anthropological look around the world will unearth the disconcerting fact that this is not occurring in natural cultures. Although there are many contributing factors in our culture, it’s time to take a good hard look at what we’re really trying to achieve by mutilating perfectly good sexual organs. Are we really going to play shocked at this point that it may be a contributing factor to one of our culture’s biggest relationship problems?
Emotional issues such as low libido, sexual frustration, disconnection from partner, lack of bonding and physical problems with lubrication, friction, and lack of clitoral stimulation to name a few. The original reason to cut men was to decrease sensitivity and keep him morally upstanding… however, these are not goals in the bedroom of a long term loving relationship!
The loss of the required extra 15 inches of flesh means the erect penis is very tight; depending on the amount of foreskin loss, it can actually pull the pubic hair off the pubic mound and up the shaft, causing chafing in the lower vagina.
America has one of the highest global rates of circumcision and is the highest by a huge margin for non-religious cutting.
One of the more common problems with circumcised penises is the tendency to cause chronic bladder infections in women from the long thrusts and “bladder banging”. Ya hear me girls? I know you hear me. Amen.
Perhaps you agree with some, all, or none. Regardless of your experience, the fact is, these things affect many people. Some may seem unrelated, too big a leap… and to that I say, unless you’ve been there, you are not in a position to say. We can only give our own perspective, we cannot speak for the truth of others.
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10) The option will always be there when he grows up.
This speaks for itself. It is my son’s foreskin. It’s his choice.
As an adult, he may wish he was circumcised at which point he can go ahead and get it done. The reverse is not true. Should he wish he had a foreskin as an adult, he cannot ever put it back on. Restoration is possible, but it is not the same as the original, with all its nerve endings. Which is tightly related to the next topic…
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11) It is irreversible.
Once gone, it’s gone. That’s it. Kaput.
Restoration is not the same. The percentage of men who become circumcised as adults is very small. The percentage of those who then restore is even smaller, mostly because people don’t know it is an option. However, those men do exist and the reports are that sexual function and sensation was a 10 before the cut, a 3 after the cut and a 7 after restoration.
Restoration won’t make it a natural 10, but a 7 is better than a 3!!
It is an incontestable fact at this point that there are more deaths from complications of circumcision than from cancer of the penis.
It is unlikely that a listing of the hazards of circumcision will deter parents who insist on circumcision of their infant for religious reasons. However, for all other parents, physicians should become more vociferous than they have been in discouraging circumcision of the newborn.
(from link above)
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13) Babies Tell You They Don’t Want To Be Circumcised.
Although I find it ridiculous that I must write this “out loud”, write it I shall because the world is full of twattery. Fathers actually believe their child wants this done, because they prefer their own circumcised penis and are glad their parents made that choice. Mothers believe their child wants it for much the same reason – they see their partner is happy with their lot – and because they prefer the look of the cut penis.
The babies are not giving you “future” consent. There is no such thing. They are not giving their consent at all, and their reactions make this clear. There are different cries in babies, and mothers in a natural setting (the jungle, for example), are so in tune with their babies they rarely cry. In fact, they don’t have diapers/nappies at all, they “just know” when the baby needs to go. When asked by Westerners how they could possibly know this, the mother looks at them like they’re whacked and says, “How do you know when you need to go?” It’s a no brainer to them, yet such a mother-child connection is an unfathomable freaky weird mystery to us.
Infants DO communicate, in quite a complex fashion. Their cries change and even our culture can tell the difference between some cries, for instance, the pain cry. If your baby is sick, a doctor will ask if your baby has a “high pitched, urgent cry” and this cry elicits panic from those around the baby, especially the mother – nature intended this reaction.
Watch this video again if you are not sure what a “pain cry” sounds like. THAT is a pain cry. Mixed with terror and confusion.
Don’t forget: they are human beings.
Our culture tends to forget that. We treat our children with much less respect than we do adults, and we already treat each other with such little respect that doesn’t say much for what’s left over for kids. If an adult hits another adult, even on the legs, he or she can be charged with assault. Yet an adult can hit a child, even in public, and not only is nothing done, they may get smiles from onlookers. That alone speaks volumes. But it’s the tip of the iceberg. We take liberties with our children, and then wonder what the heck is wrong with our social chaos, depression skyrocketing, crime widening… something is obviously going horribly wrong and I suggest how we treat our very foundation, our children, is the root of the problem. Circumcision is only one of many ways we have lost our innate ability to parent effectively.
Breastfeeding in our culture is difficult enough with everyone urging you to put the baby on formula at the first hint of a problem. A woman doesn’t need the added stress of a baby in pain and recovery from a surgery that can be completely avoided. Peeing hurts them, laying on their belly hurts them… there are many things to consider and with all the other things on a new mother’s plate, why add to that?
The statistics of failed attempts to breastfeed are huge in the United States.
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15) It Goes Against Natural and Attachment Parenting
At the moment in our culture/society attachment parenting is a minority, but it is growing. It is based on the earth-based cultures who have less or no crime, no social dysfunction and have extraordinary children, and babies that rarely cry. Anthropologists have always been amazed at these striking human/social differences to our own culture, and plenty of texts have been written on the subject, however most are not layman user friendly. For more easy to access info on this topic, I highly recommend The Continuum Concept by Jean Leidloff and The Vital Touch by Sharon Heller. The connection becomes stronger, perhaps not as strong as living wild in community and nature, but much stronger than it otherwise may have been. This connection steers you so well, you don’t need any other books as you learn from the master – your baby!
A mother ignoring her instincts will often experience what we call “post natal depression”. And the baby will experience what we call “colic”. We have a barrage of medicines for both (typical attitude “just medicate it!”) when the remedy is simple. Teach the mother to trust her instincts and stay 24 hours a day with the baby. Yes, even when she is complaining that she feels “trapped by the baby”. I had PND, very severe in fact. The remedy was information and trust and the overwhelming relief that I could bond with my baby and stop his crying if I just held him – all the time! No prams, no cots, no swings or electronic baby sitters, just me (and usually a warm breast nearby).
Babies studied in other cultures don’t arch back like they’re in pain, don’t draw their legs in like they have gas, don’t vomit like they have reflux, and don’t scream constantly. If the baby has been used to longing for you, it may take a while to build that trust, so hang in there and just hold him while he readjusts. When in doubt, hug. Good rule, that.
So for me, this was a very important point as I am an attachment parent of two. The birth is sacred, with appropriate quiet and darkness, like a cat or any other mammal giving birth seeks these elements. When born, the baby, if untouched by anyone else and left in peace, will actually crawl her own way to the breast and latch on. It is called the “newborn crawl”, and you can see it in this video. Nature always provides, in ways we can’t even imagine yet. Inbuilt mechanisms and connections… the way breast milk changes from the touch of a baby’s lips to give the baby what it needs – how does the mother’s body know from his lips what he needs? Miraculous.
If we leave things alone, and trust nature and our bodies and instincts, things go well. Removing a baby from the mother any time within the first weeks has further reaching consequences than our current medical system will admit, even with the evidence dancing in front of it.
When a baby cries, a mother wants to pick him up but our society has told her she is “spoiling” the baby. For centuries now we have left babies crying, using judgment instead of instinct to decide if they “deserve” to be given affection or if they are better left to “cry it out”. Reject judgment, trust your baby. He’s not manipulating you, you’re trying to manipulate him, he’s just trying to restore order.
Leave the baby alone, leave the mother alone, they know what they’re doing.
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16) It is Medieval, Shocking Barbaric and Weird.
People in the future will look back at MGM the way we today look back at public disembowelment as a form of punishment, or blood letting and leaches as sound medical practice. Back then, they scoffed at the previous century’s weird medical ideas and practices. We always think we’re so advanced, but really, we’re just infants of the scientific stage. When a thing is all pervasive, a normal part of one’s culture, even those who don’t practise it can’t see it for what it really is. If you can step back for a minute and take a good hard look at circumcision, really think about it, think about the vulnerable, trusting babies… the whole fact of it, how can a reasonable person not come to the conclusion that it is weird, barbaric and medieval?
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17) Spread eagled restraint is like torture to a baby.
Some babies are simply strapped down, others held down. They buck and writhe so severely they have to bolt the circumstraint to the table. Some babies have vomited from the hard crying, some have bled internally from stress. And all that is before they even start to mess with their organs – often without anaesthetic.
A baby has a natural urge to ball up, preferably on the chest of his mother It’s a gorgeous photographic moment for a reason, but it isn’t meant to be a moment, it is meant to be where the baby lives for quite some time. Natural baby slings help. Simply taking the baby from his mother will usually cause him to cry unless he is less than two weeks old (sleepy weeks). Taking a baby from his mother and wrenching his body open will cause him to react violently. Do not mistake this for stubbornness, for God’s sake he’s just been born!
I’m finding this hard to write, I hope you are finding it hard to read. If you are, maybe you’ll spread the word with me. We need to stop this, have I made that clear enough yet? That I protected my son is not enough for me. Information will stop this practise, please help me.
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18.) The historical reasons for it are morality based
I don’t know about you but I’m the captain of my own morality. I don’t need to be told what is wrong and right and what is respectful loving behaviour and what is out of line.
The history of circumcision is firmly rooted in morality judgments. This changed once this angle lost favour but for centuries (at least) the moral majority really felt that reigning in our sex drive would cure all societal ails. Two problems with that, one being circumcision does not curtail the sex drive, the second being… it failed miserably at curing anything, let alone society’s ails.
I believe that the best thing I can do for my son’s sense of “morality” is to be the best person I can be. I can tell him things until I’m blue in the face, but it is who I am that shapes him. I want him to know that nothing external really matters, that no matter how he alters himself or adorns himself, be it tattoos, piercings or clothing, he is already perfect, if he will just be still enough to allow that perfection to shine through.
How can I send him that message if I cut and alter him? By altering him to somehow make him “better” than he was born, I would instantly become a hypocrite.
Morality is not contained beneath the foreskin, if you hope to expose it there, you will be sorely disappointed.
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19) 80% of the World’s Males are Intact.
Circumcision is the overwhelming minority, and America has the highest rate of non-religious male genital mutilation in the world.
Most of the world has normal, natural, whole penises. This usually comes as quite a shock to the average American. Yet the rate of divorce, cancer, HIV, and pretty much every reason to circumcise is highest in America.
From a global perspective, most of the world does not practise circumcision; over 80% of the world’s males are intact (not circumcised) [1]. Most circumcised men are Muslim or Jewish; the USA is the only country in the world that circumcises most (60%) of its male infants for non-religious reasons. Other countries that circumcised a significant minority of male infants for non-religious reasons include Canada and Australia.
Spread the word, particularly to parents-to-be: It’s A Boy!
Talk to each other. Talk to your parents about it, but try not to blame. Who can we really blame, the parents, the doctors, or the whole system? To point that finger we first need to check the ways in which we, personally, do things out of habit or tradition or culture; the way we parent, the choices we make.
Talk to your own son if you are the regretful parent. Let him in on the secrets you’ve learned, perhaps he would benefit from restoration. Perhaps a deep psychological healing will occur just from acknowledgment and validation.
None of this is intended to make a circumcised man “feel bad about himself”. I have been told many times that it is better for men to never know they have been missing something and were so terribly brutalised. On some, ostrich-type level, yes, this is true, ignorance is bliss. However, by not disclosing the truth, it continues, and that is unacceptable. They deserve to know the truth! They still have a choice to do foreskin restoration. In the meanwhile, let’s stop this from happening to other babies, other men. Truth is power, but it isn’t always pleasant.
Good” Children – at What Price?
The Secret Cost of Shame by Robin Grille and Beth Macgregor
A five-month-old baby is lying in his mother’s arms. He is close to sleep, then wakes and begins to cry. His mother tells him that he should stop being a naughty boy, and that she will be cross with him if he doesn’t sleep.An 18-month-old child is taken to a restaurant with her father and uncle. Her father goes to the bar, leaving the child with the uncle at the table. The child gets down from the table to follow her father. She is grabbed by her uncle and told that she is a bad child, and to stay in her chair. She looks around worriedly for her father.At an adult’s birthday party, a six-year-old is awake long past his bedtime. He is running around the hall with the helium-filled balloons. His father yells at him to leave the balloons alone, and tells him to stop being a trouble-maker.What did these children learn from these experiences? Many would say that the adults’ responses were necessary to teach the child the difference between right and wrong: between “good” and “bad” behavior. Verbal punishment is common in almost every home and school. It relies on shame as the deterrent, in the same way that corporal punishment relies on pain. Shaming is one of the most common methods used to regulate children’s behavior. But what if shaming our children is harming our children? Could it be that repeated verbal punishment leaves children with an enduring sense of themselves as inherently “bad”? If so, what can we do differently?What is Shame?Shame is designed to cause children to curtail behavior through negative thoughts and feelings about themselves. It involves a comment – direct or indirect – about what the child is. Shaming operates by giving children a negative image about their selves – rather than about the impact of their behavior.What Does Shaming Look and Sound Like?Shaming makes the child wrong for feeling, wanting or needing something. It can take many forms; here are some everyday examples: The put-down: “You naughty boy!”, “You’re acting like a spoiled child!”, “You selfish brat!”, “You cry-baby!”. Moralizing: “Good little boys don’t act that way”, “You’ve been a bad little girl”. The age-based expectation: “Grow up!”, “Stop acting like a baby!”, “Big boys don’t cry”, The gender-based expectation: “Toughen-up!”, “Don’t be a sissy!”, The competency-based expectation: “You’re hopeless!”. The comparison: “Why can’t you be more like so-and-so?”, “None of the other children are acting like you are”.How Common is Shaming?
Shaming is very common, and is considered by many to be acceptable. Shaming is not restricted to “abusive” families; in fact, it occurs in the “nicest” of family and school environments. A recent study of Canadian schoolchildren, for instance, found that only 4% had not been the targets of their parents’ shaming; including “rejecting, demeaning, terrorizing, criticizing (destructively), or insulting statements” (Solomon & Serres, 1999).
As parents we tend to resort to shaming when we feel overwhelmed, irritated or frustrated, and we feel the need to control our children. Until very recently little consideration has been given to its harmful effects.
Shame: A New Frontier of Psychological Study
The use of corporal punishment against children has been hotly debated, and under increasing negative scrutiny in recent years. More and more nations legislate against it, schools ban it, international organizations devoted to its elimination are proliferating, and research psychologists have amassed mountains of evidence of its long-term damaging effects. In the meantime, the issue of “shaming” as punishment has been largely overlooked. Only recently have psychologists begun to discover that shaming has serious repercussions.
Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, says that we are now discovering the role that shame plays in relationship difficulties and violent behavior. There is a new effort by psychologists to study shame, how it is acquired, and how it affects a person’s relationships and functioning in society. The study of this previously “ignored emotion” is such a new frontier because it is the most difficult emotion to detect in others. Dr Paul Eckman, from the University of California, says that shame is the most private of emotions, and that humans have yet to evolve a facial expression that clearly communicates it. Is this why we might not see when our children are suffering from this secret emotion?
How Shame is Acquired
Children have a natural desire to develop a social conscience. When treated with the same respect as adults, and exposed to adults who respect each other; children will naturally develop a capacity for empathic, caring and respectful behavior.
No-one is born ashamed. It is a learned, self-conscious emotion, which starts at roughly two years of age with the advent of language and self-image. Although humans are born with a capacity for shame, the propensity to become ashamed in specific situations is learned.This means that wherever there is shame, there has been a shamer. We learn to be ashamed of ourselves because someone of significance in our lives put us to shame. Shaming messages are more powerful when they come from those we are closest to, from people we love, admire or look up to. That is why parents’ use of shaming can have the deepest effects on children. However, shaming messages from teachers, older siblings and peers can also injure a child’s self-image. Since children are more vulnerable and impressionable than adults, shaming messages received in childhood are significantly more difficult to erase.Messages of shame are mostly verbal, but there can be great shaming power in a look of disdain, contempt, or disgust.Why Is Shaming So Common?Shaming acts as a pressure valve to relieve parental frustration. Shaming is an anger-release for the parent; it makes the shamer feel better – if only momentarily.When made to feel unworthy, children often work extra hard to please their parents. This makes the parent think that the shaming has “worked”. But has it?
The Damaging Effects of Shame
To understand the damage wrought by shame, we need to look deeper than the goal of “good” behavior. If we think that verbal punishment has “worked” because it changed what the child is doing, then we have dangerously limited our view of the child to the behaviors that we can see. It is all too easy to overlook the inner world of children: the emotions that underlie their behavior, and the suffering caused by shame. It is also easy to miss what the child does once out of range of the shamer.
Even well-meaning adults can sometimes underestimate children’s sensitivity to shaming language. There is mounting evidence that some of the words used to scold children – household words previously thought “harmless” – have the power to puncture children’s self-esteem for years to come. A child’s self-identity is shaped around the things they hear about themselves. A ten-year-old girl, for example, was overcome with anxiety after spilling a drink. She exclaimed over and over: “I’m so stupid! I’m so stupid!”. These were the exact words her mother had used against her. She lived in fear of her parents’ judgement, and learned to shame herself in the same way that she had been shamed.
If children’s emotional needs are dismissed, if their experiences are trivialized, they grow up feeling unimportant. If they are told that they are “bad” and “naughty”, they absorb this message and take this belief into adulthood.
Shame makes people feel diminished. It is a fear of being exposed, and leads to withdrawal from relationships. Shaming creates a feeling of powerlessness to act, and to express oneself: we want to dance, but we’re stopped by memories of being told not to be “so childish”. We seek pleasure, but we’re inhibited by inner voices telling us we are “self-indulgent” or “lazy”. We strive to excel, or to speak out, but we’re held back by a suspicion that we are not good enough. Shame takes the shape of the inner voices and images that mimic those who told us “Don’t be stupid,” or “Don’t be silly!”
Shame restrains a child’s self-expression: having felt the sting of an adult’s negative judgement, the shamed child censors herself in order to escape being branded as “naughty” or “bad”. Shame crushes children’s natural exuberance, their curiosity, and their desire to do things by themselves.
Thomas Scheff, a University of California sociologist, has said that shame inhibits the expression of all emotions – with the occasional exception of anger. People who feel shamed tend toward two polarities of expression: emotional muteness and paralysis, or bouts of hostility and rage. Some swing from one to the other.
Like crying for sadness, and shouting for anger, most emotions have a physical expression which allows them to dissipate. Shame doesn’t. This is why the effects of shame last well into the long term.
Recent research tells us that shame motivates people to withdraw from relationships, and to become isolated. Moreover, the shamed tend to feel humiliated and disapproved of by others, which can lead to hostility, even fury. Numerous studies link shame with a desire to punish others. When angry, shamed individuals are more likely to be malevolent, indirectly aggressive or self-destructive. Psychiatrist Peter Loader states that people cover up or compensate for deep feelings of shame with attitudes of contempt, superiority, domineering or bullying, self-deprecation, or obsessive perfectionism.
Severe Shame and Mental Illness
When shaming has been severe or extreme, it can contribute to the development of mental illness. This link has been underestimated until now. Researchers are increasingly finding connections between early childhood shaming and conditions such as depression, anxiety, personality disorders, and obsessive-compulsive disorders. In his book, The Psychology of Shame, Gershen Kaufman goes further to assert a link between shaming and addictive disorders, eating disorders, phobias and sexual dysfunction.
Shame Doesn’t Teach about Relationship or Empathy
While shaming has the power to control behavior, it does not have the power to teach empathy. When we repeatedly label a child “naughty” or otherwise, we condition them to focus inwardly, and they become pre-occupied with themselves and their failure to please. Thus children learn to label themselves, but learn nothing about relating, or about considering and comprehending the feelings of others. For empathy to develop, children need to be shown how others feel. In calling children “naughty”, for example, we have told the child nothing about how we feel in response to their behavior. Children cannot learn about caring for others’ feelings, nor about how their behavior impacts on others, while they are thinking: “There is something wrong with me.” In fact, psychotherapists and researchers are finding that individuals who are more prone to shame, are less capable of empathy toward others, and more self-preoccupied.
The only true basis for morality is a deeply felt empathy toward the feelings of others. Empathy is not necessarily what drives the “well-behaved” “good boy” or “good girl”.
The Myth of Morality
We are naive to confuse shame-based compliance with morally motivated behavior. At best, repeated shaming leads to a shallow conformism, based on escaping disapproval and seeking rewards. The child learns to avoid punishment by becoming submissive and compliant. The charade of “good manners” is not necessarily grounded in true interpersonal respect.
What Should We Consider Shameful?
Shame varies among cultures and families: what is considered shameful in one place may be permissible, unremarkable, even desirable in another. What is called “naughty behavior” is usually arbitrary and subjective: it varies significantly from family to family.
In one family, nudity is acceptable, in another unthinkable. Being noisy and boisterous is welcome in one family, frowned upon in another. While one family might enjoy speaking all at once around the dinner table, another family might find this rude. Such examples help us to realize that our way is not the only way: that our own way of deciding what is shameful behavior can be arbitrary and variable.
The History of Shaming
Children have been shamed for many hundreds of years. Historically, they have been thought to be inherently antisocial, and their behavior was seen through this lens. One seventeenth century author,Richard Allestree, wrote: “The newborn babe is full of the stains and pollution of sin, which it inherits from our first parents through our loins”1. In the Middle Ages, the ritual of Baptism actually included the exorcism of the devil from the child. Children who were felt to be too demanding were thought to be possessed by demons. Some early church fathers declared that if a baby cried more than a little, she was committing a sin. It has been an age-old pattern to blame the child for the numerous challenges and difficulties encountered by parents.
This way of thinking about children has persisted into modern times, although in less extreme ways. For example, a child having a tantrum is often seen as “spoiled”, and deliberately trying to antagonize his parents. A crying child risks being described as a “little terror” or “whiner” who is “just trying to get attention”.
There is no question that parenting can be frustrating sometimes. But it is groundless to automatically assume that the child is out to upset us, or to attribute some kind of nasty intention to the child. This imagined malevolence is usually what underlies the impulse to shame children.
A Shift in Attitude: Respecting the Child
It is entirely possible to set strong boundaries with children without shaming. However, this requires a fundamental attitude shift, beginning with re-evaluating what we think is motivating our child’s behavior.
Children have a natural desire to develop a social conscience. When treated with the same respect as adults, and exposed to adults who respect each other; children will naturally develop a capacity for empathic, caring and respectful behavior.
“Misbehavior”? Or Developmental Stage?
Toddlers can be exasperating. But does this mean they’re “misbehaving”?
Sometimes what we condemn as “misbehavior” is simply the child’s attempt to have some need met in the best way they know, or to master a new skill. The more parents can accept this, the less they are tempted to shame children into growing up faster. For instance, it is normal for toddlers to be selfish, possessive, exuberant and curious. It is not unusual for two-year-olds to be unable to wait for something they want, as they don’t understand time the way adults do. It is quite ordinary for three-year-olds to be sometimes defiant or hostile. If we shame instead of educate, we interrupt a valuable and stage-appropriate learning process, and our own opportunity to learn about the child’s needs is lost.
A three-year-old who defies her mother by refusing to pack up her toys – after being told to do so repeatedly – may be attempting to forge a separate and distinct self-identity. This includes learning to exercise her assertiveness, and learning to navigate open conflict. Toddlers can be exasperating. But does this mean they’re “misbehaving”?
Sensible limits are essential, but if children are shamed for their fledgling and awkward attempts at autonomy, they are prevented from taking a vital step to maturity and confidence. In the period glibly called the “terrible twos”, and for the next couple of years, toddlers are discovering how to set their own boundaries. They are learning to assert their distinct individuality, their sense of will. This is critical if they are to learn how to stand up for themselves, to feel strong enough to assert themselves, and to resist powerful peer pressures later in life. If we persist in crushing their defiance, and shaming children into submission, we teach them that setting boundaries for themselves is not okay.
Even babies are thought to misbehave, such as when they don’t sleep when they are told to. How could a five-month-old baby, for example, possibly be “naughty” for failing to go to sleep? Though it can be difficult for parents when babies experience disturbed sleep, it is nonsensical to see a non-sleeping baby as “disobeying” the parent, and to blame the baby for this.
Consider the example of an eight-month-old who crawls over to something that has flashing lights and interesting sounds. He pulls himself up to it and begins to explore. He does not know that it is his father’s prized stereo. He finds himself being tapped on his hand by his mother, who tells him to stop being naughty. He cries. At eight months, a baby is unable to tell the difference between a toy and another’s valuable property, and would be incapable of self-restraint if he could. Children’s ceaseless curiosity – a frequent target for shaming – is what drives them to learn about the world. When a child’s exploration is encouraged in a safe way, rather than castigated, their self-confidence grows. Unfortunately, we frequently call a behavior which may be entirely stage-appropriate “naughty”, simply because it threatens our need for order, or creates a burden for us.
A flustered mother and her distraught four-year-old daughter emerge from a local store. The girl is sobbing as she is forcefully strapped into her stroller. “Stop it, you whiner!” screams the mother, as she shakes her finger in the little girl’s face. Children are often berated for simply crying. Many people believe that a crying baby or child is misbehaving. Strong expressions of emotion – such as anger and sadness – are the child’s natural way of regulating their nervous system, while communicating their needs. Children cry when they are hurting, and they have a right to express this hurt! Even though it is often hard to listen to, it must be remembered that it is a healthy, normal reaction that deserves attention. It is tragic to see how often children are shamed for crying.
Here is a further example of what happens when we are unaware of developmental norms. Until recently, toddlers were started on potty-training far too early, before they were organically capable of voluntary bowel control. Many found this transition to be a battle, and toddlers were commonly shamed and punished for what was a normal inability. What was once a struggle for both parents and children has been greatly alleviated through more accurate information about childhood development. Shaming often takes place when we try to encourage or force a behavior that is developmentally too early for the child’s age.
We have come a long way in our understanding about child development in recent decades, and made many advances in childcare as a result. Easy-to-read child-development books fill the stores, by authors such as Penelope Leach, Katie Allison Granju, Pinky McKay and Jan Hunt, and these can help parents to have reasonable and realistic expectations of their children. Children and parents are both happier when parents have reasonable and age-appropriate expectations of their child’s behavior.
Understanding Instead of Shaming
Is it possible to understand what motivates children when they are “behaving badly”, instead of shaming them? What might “bad” behavior be a reaction to?
When we don’t seek to understand a child’s “bad” behaviors, we risk neglecting their needs. For instance, sometimes children repeatedly behave aggressively – over and above what can normally be expected of children their age. This could be due to conflict in the home, bullying at school, or competition with a sibling. Often what we expediently label as “bad” behavior is a vital signal that the child in question might actually be hurting. Research has repeatedly shown that a consistent pattern of antisocial behaviors, for example hostility and bullying, are children’s reactions to having felt victimized in some way. Children often “act out” their hurts aggressively, when they have not found a safe way to show that they have been hurt.
Ironically, shame itself can be the underlying cause of difficult behavior. Since shaming is a judgment from someone with more power than the child, this makes the child feel small and powerless. Sometimes, children turn the tables: they reclaim this lost power by finding another person to push around – usually someone smaller or more vulnerable than themselves.
Children are usually highly sensitive to the “vibes” in their environment; they pick up tensions between their parents, or other family members. At times “naughty” behavior may be the child’s way of reacting to this tension.
Children are less given to act out when they are receiving enough attention, when their hunger for play, discovery and pleasurable human contact is satisfied. Provocative behavior can indicate boredom, or perhaps the need for another “dose” of happy engagement with someone who is not feeling irritable, someone who has the time and energy to spare.
Finally, children can be grumpy or “difficult” simply from over-tiredness. In this case, what is dismissed as “bad” behavior might be a child’s way of saying “I’m over the edge, and I can’t handle it”. Curiously enough, when we as parents react with verbal assaults, we are communicating the same thing. Isn’t yelling at children that they are “naughty” or “terrible” (or worse) a kind of adult tantrum, a dysfunctional adult way of coping with frustration?
It is worth remembering that some causes of “misbehavior” are a lot less obvious. For instance, children need to feel our strength – they are uncomfortable with weakness in our personal boundaries. They need exposure to our true feelings, and they sense when we are hiding or pretending. They need their feelings and opinions validated, and are highly sensitive to poor empathy. Frequently, they react to any of these conditions by becoming provocative. Sometimes we blame and shame children for their vexing behavior, because the causes are hard to see.
Cultivating Empathy: Through Remembering
Parents often do to their children as was done to them. It is known that violence can be passed down through generations. Many parents realize that they are perpetuating a cycle in which they are shaming their children, in the same ways that they were once shamed by their own parents. Those that have forgotten the sting and humiliation of being shamed, risk being insensitive to the shame they inflict on their own children. Change requires deepening one’s empathy toward the child, and this comes from remembering how it felt to be a child. The understanding that comes from seeing the world through a child’s eyes can help adults to influence children without shaming them.
Managing Emotions
As parents, it is not unusual to find ourselves struggling, frazzled, or nearing an emotional boiling-point. When we don’t find healthy ways to discharge this frustration, we risk taking it out on our children. Although irritation is a normal part of parenting, this is not because children are “too demanding”. Children are children, and the fact that child-rearing can be difficult is not their fault. There are many ways to reroute our excess anger, such as chopping wood, going for a walk, or talking our frustration through with friends.
Everyone’s capacity for loving patience is finite; that’s human. When parents experience excessive strain this is largely due to our adherence to the myth that it takes just two adults to raise a child. Our society has grossly underestimated the energy required to truly meet children’s needs. We can avoid shaming simply by sharing the load – by asking for, and accepting, practical help from trusted friends and community. When we hear ourselves shaming our children, we might take this as a sign that we are needing more assistance.
What Do We Do Now? A New Paradigm for Boundary Setting
Respectful boundary-setting implies a strong statement about you, as opposed to a negative statement about the child. In this way, children gradually develop a good capacity to hear and comprehend the feelings of others. Children benefit from open expression of emotions; from seeing when their parents are angry, or upset. It is OK to be angry with your children, to let them see you are annoyed at something they have done, (as long as you don’t shock or terrorize them). Children learn best when they can see the kind of impact their behavior has on the feelings of others. Finally, it helps children to listen to and respect your feelings, if their right to express their feelings is equally respected.
Redirecting the Child’s Impulses
From time to time, we are compelled to intervene in our child’s activity, when we fear that either a person or a treasured object might get hurt. Shaming can be avoided if, instead of just chastising or stopping the child, we also provide a safer, alternative activity. Occasional aggression is part of normal, balanced healthy development. Children are often shamed and punished for this, when instead they could be shown ways to channel their natural aggression safely. Sometimes it is important to re-evaluate whether we need to chastise at all. A guideline comes from considering whether the behavior in question is actually causing harm to anyone, or creating a concrete risk.
The Role Model
Role-modeling is the most powerful teaching tool. Children don’t do what you say, they do as you do. The kind of respect they show others and themselves is a reflection of the kind of respect they have themselves been shown – and the respect they have witnessed displayed between the important people in their lives. Are we role-modeling the kind of behavior that we want our children to display?
Conclusion
Many people are still convinced that smacking or shaming are the only antidotes for preventing antisocial behaviors in children. The suggestion of giving up shaming or smacking is misinterpreted by some as attempts to disempower parents; to turn them into guilt-laden, ineffectual and permissive wimps. Not so. The most effective and healthy boundaries can be set without resorting to violence or shaming. Being strong with children does not mean being harsh, or humiliating.
There are alternatives to shaming that are healthier and more effective. Children who are shown consistent boundaries by parents who are able to express their feelings and needs in a trusting and respectful way, grow up with stronger self-worth and social awareness, free of the toxic effects of shame.1 Richard Allestree, The Whole Duty of Man (London, 1766), p.20.
Editor’s note: See “The Myth of Original Sin” for a conflicting theory formulated by Arminius in the same century.
Most of the references are strewn through the article itself with links; these are extras:
References
Bradshaw, J. (1988) Healing The Shame That Binds You
Gilbert P & Gerlsma C (1999) “Recall of Shame and Favouritism in Relation to Psychopathology” The British Journal of Clinical Psychology Vol. 38 p.357-373
Goleman, D. (1995) Emotional Intelligence – Why it can Matter more than IQ. New York: Bantam Books
Kaufman, G. (1989) The Psychology of Shame – Theory and Treatment of Shame-based Syndromes. New York: Springer-Verlag
Loader, P. (1998) “Such a Shame – A Consideration of Shame and Shaming Mechanisms in Families” Child Abuse Review, Vol. 7 p.44-57.
Solomon C. R. & Serres, F. (1999) “Effects of Parental Verbal Aggression on Children’s Self-Esteem and School Marks”, Child Abuse & Neglect, Vol. (23)4 p.339-351.
Tangney, J.P. & Fischer, K. W. (1995) The Self-Conscious Emotions – The Psychology of Guilt, Embarrassment, and Pride. London: Guilford Press.Robin Grille is a Sydney-based psychologist. He has a private practice in individual psychotherapy and relationship counseling. Robin can be contacted at: interact@worldpacific.com.au.Robin Grille’s book Parenting for a Peaceful World (Longueville Media, 2005) is available in our gift shop for North American buyers. Buyers from other countries can order the book from Robin’s website.Beth Macgregor is a psychologist, and an adult educator in the fields of child protection and child development. She is a member of the NSW Committee of the Australian Association of Infant Mental Health.First published in Sydney’s Child, May 1, 2002.Reprinted with permission of the authors.
Hutton’s final claim that awareness of Siberian shamanism came after the evolution of our Santa claus is irrelevant. Things have evolved without public knowledge regularly, including ancient historical memes in current symbology and ritual. The Christmas tree and the date 25th December are both pagan in origin (utilised initially to appeal to the pagans of the time)(*). Although given a cursory nod by apologists today, for the last 2000 years most Christians did not have awareness of those pagan origins. The majority awareness does not necessarily precede the appropriation. He has used a logical fallacy.
Perhaps certain… groups… already know.
