Alice Miller, Child Redeemer, plus mischief...

Alice Miller, a child therapist who started to draw serious attention to the common incidence of cruelty to children in the ‘70s but is still away ahead of her time, noted a pervasive unease with early experiences. She said: “we find the effort, marked by varying degrees of intensity and by the use of various coercive measures, to rid ourselves as quickly as possible of the child within us – i.e. the weak, helpless, dependent creature – in order to become an independent adult deserving of respect. When we re-encounter this creature in our own children we persecute it with the same measure once used on ourselves. And this is what we are accustomed to call ‘child rearing’ (from “For your own Good”) It really can take an inordinate amount of strength sometimes to be gentle and kind in a society of rules and roles, where child-like open-hearted, open-minded freshness is often only welcome in tightly prescribed circumstances, and for some and not others."

Parental expectations hem in the child's natural freedom, engendering a subconscious rage that can be lived out irrationally in adult life to perpetuate child abuse. A favourite metaphor of hers about what is at stake is the story of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his own child's life at the whim of a distant authority, but her familiarity with the myths and literature of culture generally is formiddable.

A concise round-up of her books can be viewed at: Books by Alice Miller, Ph.D. - The Natural Child Project


Still, children can pose challenges, such as these:

A Dad's Story - When my daughter was about four years old, she still had a hard time grasping the concept of marriage. But anyway, I got out our wedding album, thinking visual images would help, and explained the entire service to her. Once finished, I asked if she had any questions, and she replied, "Oh, I see. Is that when Mommy came to work for us?

A mother took her three-year-old daughter to church for the first time.
The church lights were lowered, and then the choir came down the aisle, carrying lighted candles. All was quiet until the little one started to sing in a loud voice "Happy Birthday to you..."

After listening restlessly to a long and tedious sermon, a 6-year-old boy asked his father what the preacher did the rest of the week. "Oh, he's a very busy man," the father replied. "He takes care of church business, visits the sick, ministers to the poor... and then he has to have time to rest up. Talking in public isn't an easy job, you know."
The boy thought about that, then said, "Well, listening ain't easy, either."

At the beginning of a children's sermon, one girl comes up to the altar wearing a beautiful dress. As the children are sitting down around the pastor, the pastor leans over and says to the girl, "That is a very pretty dress. Is it your Easter dress?" The girl replies almost directly into the pastor's clip-on mike, "Yes, and my mother says it is a bitch to iron."

I had been teaching my three-year-old daughter, Caitlin, the Lord's Prayer for several evenings. At bedtime she repeated it after me. One night she said she was ready to solo. I listened with pride as she carefully enunciated each word, right up to the end of the prayer. " Lead us not into temptation," she prayed, "but deliver us some e-mail. Amen."

A mother was preparing pancakes for her sons, Kevin, 5 and Ryan, 3. The boys began to argue over who would get the first pancake. Their mother saw the opportunity for a moral lesson. "If Jesus were sitting here, He would say, 'Let my brother have the first pancake. I can wait.'"
Kevin turned to his younger brother and said, "Ryan, you be Jesus!"

A father was at the beach with his children when the four-year old son ran up to him, grabbed his hand, and led him to the shore, where a seagull lay dead in the sand. "Daddy, what happened to him?" the son asked. "He died and went to Heaven," the dad replied. The boy thought a moment and then said, "Did God throw him back down?"

After the church service a little boy told the pastor, "when I grow up, I'm going to give you some money." "Well, thank you," the pastor replied, "but why?" "Because my daddy says you're one of the poorest preachers we've ever had."

A wife invited some people to dinner. At the table, she turned to their six-year old daughter and said, "Would you like to say the blessing?"
"I wouldn't know what to say," the girl replied.
Just say what you hear Mommy say, " the wife answered.
The daughter bowed her head and said, "Lord, why on earth did I invite all these people to dinner?"