Too protected (or too little protected?)...

Talked with my mom this morning… I don’t know why we came to talk about this; but we recalled how it was when we (me and my siblings) grew up compared to how it is today… Yes, she mentioned the abilities for parents to be home with sick children, something that didn’t exists when my youngest sister, x, grew up either (she was born 1966 and mom got back to work as nurse 1970 after having been home with six children until then, born closely)!

When she started work she didn’t know where x should be. On the hospital where she should work they had a sort of kindergarten for the employees. And then it was just to leave the small child there!! With no stepwise period of adjustment (inskolning I Swedish)to the kindergarten!

They came there, to a very noisy kindergarten, children screaming and playing, mom had no real idea how many teachers when she now recalled it!!! But, as mom said, she "had" to leave x there (it was so it was, she couldn't risk the job!!?? One didn't do such a thing then, the job came in first hand. But in her case it wasn't so!!! She didn't have to work for the economy's sake... But she wanted to work?? So this was, in fact, rather egoistic?? But looked like something else, and should look like something else? As loyalty and solidarity against the work and work-place!? And the patients? But then there wasn't too little people on clinics? And did all mothers have these options? All our friends then had their mothers home!? Were they forced to work? But those which WAS forced to work... Really was forced to leave their children in the conditions that was then...).

But back home she mentioned how she experienced this to the woman living next to us. And this woman said:

“No, I can take x!! She shall not be at kindergarten!”

Said and done. This woman had children in x's age. But how was this actually for x? To be left in that way, in the way she was?

Not prepared by mom (or dad) I think. Because it was so it was; mom and dad didn’t inform when they were going to a “party” in the evening, so we shouldn’t worry!!!! So one could awake in the evening or even night (in a child’s sense) and mom and dad were gone, a babysitter there instead… What did this create? Security? Trust?

We moved a lot. Nowhere, ever, there was any talk whatsoever of being adjusted to anything anywhere! It was so it was then!

When I started school I didn’t know any classmate, hadn’t met our teacher either? We had moved there (where we lived then) less than a year before I stared school and lived a bit from the village (on the agricultural school nearby, which was as a small society in itself, with all what that meant).

And later when we changed schools and classes it was never any question of being adjusted…

Also came to think about a person (probably not entirely unique sad to say) which wasn’t allowed at all to be out playing with other kids. Held between the home’s four walls until y started school…

And there didn’t exist any school healthcare more than a doctor and a nurse, which one hardly ever aw. And didn’t really know existed or didn’t understand if he/she was accessible and how… And by the way, it was out of question to tell about anything, if one at all questioned what went on at home… The child probably thought it was like this in all home!?

What has this done in all which grew up then? All haven’t reacted in the same way I think and guess!? Some think they learned the hard way how life as, and that they have benefited of these experiences!??? And are grateful for what they learned? And/or rationalize it with that it was so it was then (thus meaning it was less harmful!!)…

The first category is the ones preaching “harder grips”, more discipline, strictness and limit setting???

I think they are in denial of how it actually was… And are they the most armed in fact?? Or those that had fewer or hardly any knowing or compassionate person in its environment during their upbringing (no excuse at all for their insensitiveness! They are the most tick-skinned)?

With this not said that I should lack all sorts of insensitiveness and be one that sees clearly… That I will underline. But I am thinking and reacting and questioning what’s happening…

Reacting over many politicians, not least in our current government… Different rules seem to rule for different people. Where the ones in power are allowed things, while the ones on the bottom are chased…

As a physician said to me:

“YOU have to (as employees in this case), but they (our bosses) don’t have to!!!”

This is true in many other circumstances!!??? Even on governmental level, as on a global, and down to the family (where the roots and origins to this lies, with lacking respect for oneself as grown up which is passed further onto the children, which are accordingly treated with lacking respect to different degrees)!!?? Where parents are allowed things the children are forbidden!!! Whether noone sees this or not, thee things exists even in families!!?? It’s already there we have learned these things, and are taking the further with in different manners, depending on a lot of circumstances on the way when we moved from early childhood to adults…

But what we learned early; are our fates sealed (våra öden beseglade in Swedish), so we have no options, just have to cope with facts we can’t change?? I don’t think so, I don’t want to believe it is so … BUT, it can be a hard work to change this, to work with this… Even very hard. And, yes, there can be people that have been so harmed this change is almost impossible!??

Do I sound pretentious again? And entirely unrealistic??

No, maybe not many, or any, will ever be perfect, but this doesn’t mean we don’t have responsibility for what we do, and how we do things… These things don’t have to be contradictory…

And what have we taken with us from the experiences I first described in this blogpost??? Which problems? That could have been totally unnecessary?

Mom also recalled how it was when she came home with the sixth baby (in the end of August), and we had just started school. My second brother yy (the fourth child in line) first class and we should all cycle to school together, even that seven year old little boy! And we older wee fast and almost disappeared in the distance, and yy got tears in his eyes, which he didn’t really want to show to mom… “Too many children, too little attention” to any of them… Yes, it was so it was? We had to manage a lot of things on our own? And was told to take care of each others, to care in general…

Too much responsibility?? A heavy burden on a small child's fragile shoulders? Too much to carry??? Much too much? And nothing a child should carry at all?? A responsibility that was another individual (ow much she/he couldn't take it , it was his/her)?? Had to be clever? And very obedient? And to be counted (by not least the dad) the child (not least the even less worth child with female gender) had to make fantastic achievements, and succeeded with this for many years... In a false hope of getting something that never existed and would never exist, and that the child should have got already earliest in life, a time that was passed for ever? Avoiding the pain of the truth, by a lot of maneuverers?? Trying herself blue... Later met with contempt for trying to be so clever and for having so high demands!!! On top! But why was his? And did this in act harm others??? Actually? Either!??

And all these children has also been met with (and adopted themselves, to protect themselves from the still unbearable truth):

“Think how much you learned by this!!!”

But, how many problems has those learnings coasted on the way, payments which are invisible (to an insensitive environment/world)?? We, and all around, tend to idealize these learnings?? A collective need to defend ourselves, because almost all of us have experienced something we have had to suppress and have to defend ourselves against (where sme are less haremd and are more prone to develop as human beings? OR are forced to develop? Some doesn't have any options?)? Think if we had been better served with other learnings!!??

Thinking on the current debate here about these things...

Many should need to sensitize themselves, on the contrary, in society today?? Not least among those which have power and decide for a whole society and country (and even have a whole world's destiny in his hands, through military strength for instance)... As the society is, this isn't made easier!!!??? People are getting themselves more and more enough, or?? Are there tendencies to resistance movements?? Sound hopefully... People reacting indignantly on what's happening??

Many of us which grew up with our mothers at home should be very stable and not having problems!?? But when I look back on all these I had as classmates during the years at folk high school (after the gymnasium) studying music, I can't find anyone (though probably existing?) which has had a problem free life? With this meaning, they have had quite a lot of problems?? In health, relations (broken), one is member of a quite fundamentalist religious teaching (Livets ord) etc. etc. Smaller and bigger crisis... (the phenomena crisis is also tended to be seen as something you should be glad for, and as a chance to develop... But can't there be crisis which you have to pay a lot for?? Maybe too much??? So I think one shall be careful with glorifying the phenomenon crisis! Just because you need to b comforted, or, a bit ironically. A well known psychiatrist here Johan Cullberg wrote a popular and well known book already more than 25 years ago, "Crisis and development" ("Kris och utveckling" in Swedish) with the theme that crisis is a chance or opportunity to develop and change, this book has come in a new edition 1992 (??). This psychiatrist is actually relative to the Swedish choreographer Birgit Cullberg, and one of his brothers Erland got schizophrenia or manic depressiv, he has written in a recent book! See about the Cullberg Ballet).

And the generations coming after us, that are in lower middle age (or in their thirties): what have they experienced?? They have got their share, children to the ones before us, and to our generation... Phew!!