Theos-Talk Archives (April 1996 Message tl01168)

To respond to what Richard Ihle sets forth below:

Richard asks:  "Why is it that for thousands if not millions of years parents
in every type of culture have been at least able to successfully raise their
own children . . . but that it seems like such a major problem for us?"
Children today have greater obstacles at hand, ones that put them at greater
risk, and many if not often times parents and/or guardians can be counted
amoung those obstacles ... particularly when given a parent who cannot hope to
even be aware of what Richard stated below, never mind use practical
application.  I'm talking about a generation of adults who dwell in perpetual
"reactive mode", whose every thought, action and response is in reaction to
their own pain, be it spiritual, mental, emotional, or physical.  These
individuals are dangerously blind to how their behavior affects others.

How the next generation makes it out of perilous childhood, in my opinion, has
everything to do with the gifts they were born with.

-------------------------------------------------------------
Jerry S.>
>I work with foster children, and have for over 30 years now.  The new
>ones are infinitely worse than the old.  The new
>generation of foster/abused children is too scary to contemplate.
>       One problem that I have found--overly permissive and protective
>society today.  Touch a child today, and you have child abuse.  This is
>taught to children in schools, and all too soon they learn that they can
>pretty well get away with anything.  My wife and I are almost ready now
>to quit with foster children.

Richard Ihle writes>
Hi, and thanks to Donna Faber for starting this interesting thread.

Jerry, you are right there on the front lines, aren't you?!  As usual, I find
myself agreeing 100% with your assessment.

In fact, the main reason I started looking into the possibility of something
like a "psychogenesis" was because of my work with "at-risk" high-school
students a few decades ago (now I only deal with "talented-and-gifted" and
college-bound sections).  I had been, of course, familiar with all the
"cognitive and moral maturalists"; however, their ideas just did not seem
helpful enough when it came to the day-to-day problems with children.

I found myself asking the same simple question again and again:  Why is it
that for thousands if not millions of years parents in every type of culture
have been at least able to successfully raise their own children . . . but
that it seems like such a major problem for us?

The mystery started to clear up considerably when, unlike most of the
academic maturationalists, I considered the possibility that perhaps the
focus should not be on what ~attributes~ of children may be maturing in
sequential fashion, but rather, on ~what children can potentially believe
they ARE~ which also may be maturing according to a predictable, age-related
pattern.

The egoic possibilities of the first five seven-year cycles in aborted form:
 I am my "energies" (animating); I am my body (physical); I am my desires
and/or the emotions which follow their satisfaction or frustration
(desire-feeling); I am my desire-tainted ideas or mental postures which
secure advantage for me (desire-mental); I am my pure, dispassionate ideas or
things I know how to do (mental).  (The potential "semi-Selves" which can
form within these broad categories are countless, of course--e.g., having
liked ice cream in one moment and having liked French fries in another would
count as two different semi-Selves which have appeared and passed away.)

One problem with child-rearing, I believe, is the inability for people to
understand how, for example, a five-year-old child can have a strong emotion
but not yet BE that emotion in the same egoic sense as a fourteen-year-old.
 The main tenant of my version of Psychogenesis, at least, is that opening up
opportunity for new egoic delusion ("delusion" because it is a
"contamination" of *Self*) is an age-related process. Unfortunately, the neat
seven-year pattern is complicated somewhat by the circumstance that the egoic
possibilities of the next cycle start showing up in "experimental" form at
the mid-point of the current cycle.

Be that as it may, I believe even a rough idea of Psychogenesis can help with
parenting. For example, somewhere in the Animating Cycle, perhaps about age
three-and-one-half, the simple technique of "channelling" of a child's
energies has to be augmented, when necessary, with the operating principle of
the coming Physical Cycle--*dominance*.  The big person bosses the small
person--period.

Now, if there is not something fundamentally more seriously wrong (an actual
organic physical/psychological debility or the fact that people did something
really bad to her early in the Animating Cycle) many of the problems with the
nine-year-old girl you described may well stem from her never having had the
feature of subordination/superordination consistently inculcated into her
behavioral patterns as she approached and passed into the Physical Cycle.

The key term here is *consistently.*  The popular issue of spanking versus
not spanking may be largely irrelevant.  I have known students who have never
had a hand laid on them who turned out great; I have known students whose
parents often "took the belt to them" who turned out great.  The common
denomenator often seems not to be method but ~consistency in application~ of
whatever method is used to subordinate the child's will to that of the
parent's during the critical years when a child is testing the semi-Selves
(temporary egoic identities) which form in the physical type of
differentiated consciousness.

Sometimes people point to the lack of success of parents who used overly
harsh methods.  In my experience, however, it does not seem like this
so-called "child abuse" is always the principal issue.  It is many times a
situation like this:  the child is allowed to do whatever he or she wants for
a while; then the parent beats the crap out of the kid. The child is again
allowed to run free; then somewhere down line the parent beats the crap out
again.

If the harsh parent had been dominating the child on a more moment-to-moment
basis, there might be fewer big problems later.  Similarly, if the "time-out"
type parent could keep the child under his or her gentle thumb without any
frequent or extended hiatus, there might be fewer big problems.  (Both types
of parents, however, have to face the fact that any simple "dominance"
technique has to start being phased out, sometimes as early as age
ten-and-one-half but almost certainly after fourteen, when the child
approaches and then later enters the Desire-Feeling Cycle.)

To many parents, ~simple dominance~ does not have a pleasant ring to it.  In
their modern wisdom they may prefer using "giving the reasons for things"
etc. as a substitute technique, even with very small children.
 Unfortunately, we often see the sad results.  In the case of a young person
of middle- or early high-school age, typically what you have to work with are
these two things:  1) the ~habits of compliance~ the young person brings from
the Physical Cycle, and 2) the ~emotional rapport~ which, all other things
being equal, the young person actually wants to establish with you.  However,
if the teenager brings no habits of compliance . . . well, a
fourteen-year-old really running wild is not nearly as amusing as a
five-year-old sort of running wild. . . .

The parents of the old days probably made many mistakes; however, turning
into ineffectual humanistic philosophers whenever their own children started
throwing stones at them (as in the example you cited) was probably not among
these mistakes. . . .

Godspeed,

Richard Ihle