Children take in more stimili than adults
A child has a heightened ability to take in stimuli but does not yet have the tools to deal with this stimuli.
Children’s’ senses are just as acute as an adult. In some cases their senses are even better, for example most children have better hearing and eyesight than adults.
What they don’t have yet is contextual analysis tools. When they see something they might not have the experience to be able to put the thing in context and analyze it. They have not seen enough violence to know how to process it, for example. An adult has seen so much violence that they can easily put it away in the part of their brain that deals with violence.
That part of the brain has developed the tools to diffuse or otherwise rationalize the violence so that it does not do any great damage to the rest of the body. For example an adult can see a murder in a movie and the mind easily explains that it is just acting and thus we don’t get upset by it.
A child however does not have these tools fully developed yet and the violence has nowhere to go. So it gets dealt with in various ways; it resurfaces later as trauma; it is expressed as violence to others; it does damage to the body via cancer or another stress; or the child actually inflicts violence to their own body.
This is why it is so important to be aware of what a child is exposed to.
But I do not think quarantine is the best route. A child can’t develop the tools unless they are exposed. If you keep a child away from violence their whole childhood, when they go into the world one violent event could destroy them.
They need to be exposed to real life as children, but HOW this is done needs to be considered with great care. I think the parent has to perform an ongoing proactive role as that part of the brain that the child does not yet have developed.
The typical example is the conversation almost every parent has with a child about how movies are just actors and not real. The parent is helping the child process the information, helping the child exercise that part of the brain.
Obviously helping a child develop is a fine line and can easily fall into propaganda and brain control. I strongly think that the child knows better what is good for them than I do. Helping the child develop their brain to deal with elements of life comes from the perspective that the child already has the essence of those tools already.
The adult is only a guide, much like a mountain guide helps climbers up a mountain. Like the guide is the employee hired by the mountain climbers, the parent is there to serve the child in their climb. The child is the boss of their soul. The parent only guides as somebody who is more knowledgeable with the current terrain.
But as the guide, there is tremendous responsibility. The adult must understand that the environment for the child is crystal clear and new. The great tragedy is when the adult fails to realize that even though the child doesn’t yet have the tools to process the environment fully, the child takes it all in with great intensity.
When you talk on the phone with the child in the back seat, when you glance at someone, when you speak in a certain tone of voice, when you say words (every single word): it is all taken in with complete clarity. Never mind that the child appears to not be paying attention. Their ears, their eyes, all of their senses are working perfectly.
The appearance that they are not paying attention is merely because, like all humans, they can multitast and also their mind is not necessarily engaged. But their body is engaged and they take it in and it gets lodged somewhere inside.
That is why a child can come out with something totally surprising. For example my four year old daughter put on a dress the other day and said, “I feel so sexy in this dress.” Nobody ever told her she looked sexy, but she probably picked it up when adults were talking about something else and thought she wasn’t paying attention.
The danger occurs when we loose control and presume that the child isn’t taking it in.
This video makes the point very powerfully:
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